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Mass Arrests of Journalists Follow Iran Elections
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Reporters Without Borders is alarmed by the fact that no less than 23 journalists have been arrested in Iran in the week following the elections, making Iran one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist. Online activists are trying to counter this trend by giving advice for helping Iranian protesters. One problem is that Iranian leaders are trying to delegitimize the reform movement by pretending that the reformers are puppets of foreign powers, so special discretion is required for anyone wanting to help the Iranian people."
No it, doesn't confirm the elections were a farce. But there is quite a lot of statistical evidence, and even the government admits to some apparent overvoting. Yes, it could all be coincidence (the statistical evidence allows for a less than 1% chance the chance the election results weren't made up), and it is possible that in between 50 and 170 districts, people voted outside their voting districts and therefore produced greater than 100% turnout, but it's extremely suspect all the same.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
The reason it's so important to cut through the misinformation is that the Iranian government is now tweeting with false information, and it's crucial to keep track of what is real and what is FUD. They are taking other measures as well; there are several reports that a speech by President Obama (who has yet to speak in support of the protesters) was translated as a speech calling for revolution and the overthrow of the regime. This lets Iran claim that the protests are the result of meddling by the Western powers.
Fark seems to be doing a really good job of cutting through the FUD and getting solid, reliable information out there. One of their users, Tatsuma, has a quite detailed and extensive analysis of the crisis, the players, and what is happening now. Their Iran threads would be a good place to start.
Never underestimate the potential of Human stupidity. -Heinlein
They can still do that. If you read the history of these Iranian assholes, specifically the 1972 revolution, and the killings afterward. Or if you want to get totally horrified you can check out the history of the Iran-Iraq war (there's a reason Teheran and Baghdad have the largest cemetaries in the world, despite the fact muslims don't normally have graveyards at all. Those graveyards even have pictures and stories, which goes explicitly against islam, and yet these ayatollahs and even the Iraqi Sunni's support it).
They lost about 500.000 children in the following manner. The imam would give them a little plastic "key to paradise", you know, with the 72 virgins and so on, then send them almost naked and unarmed into a minefield to clear a path for soldiers.
Let me repeat : they did this to 500 THOUSAND children.
Are you certain this is sinking in ? 500 THOUSAND kids dead.
That's what these guys did to get, and remain in power. They are still more than capable of repeating this. Or it might be a reason for them to not repeat those things. I pray (to a God whose idea of an afterlife does NOT include slavery, not for me and not for anyone else) that they don't repeat their history.
The mullahs are probably correct in thinking that if they don't get the demonstrations under control they will get hanged though. They certainly deserve it, but I doubt they agree.
Bush won the mandatory Florida recount as well. The Supreme Court disallowed the hand recount because Florida wouldn't have it completed by the deadline.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
Now, here's a pop quiz. If the RIAA and MPAA sued Microsoft and Oracle over breaching the copyright of their DRM, Richard Stallman testified on behalf of the RIAA and Theo de Raadt spoke in favour of Microsoft... Who would you cheer for?
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DON'T PANIC.
Your analogy is flawed. A CEO is responsible to his shareholders and can be replaced if he does a bad job. This is more analogous to a democracy, where, in theory a leader doing a bad job can be voted out and replaced. A CEO who was such by birthright, had absolute power and held no responsibility to anyone other than himself would very likely be worse than a CEO responsible to shareholders, like a leader responsible to the people would be better than one not responsible to anyone.
Benevolent dictators are not unheard of, but are definitely in the minority.