Jun 15 2009
Ahmedinejad Comes In A Distant 3rd?
A UK news organization is reporting this interesting tidbit:
Mr Mousavi’s wife and co-campaigner, Zahra Ranavard, was reported as warning that riot squads would be equipped with live ammunition, raising the prospect of serious bloodshed.
Iran’s Interior Ministry said Mr Mousavi would be responsible for any consequences if he went ahead with the protest.
Mr Mousavi’s cancellation of the protest came as sporadic disturbances continued around the Iranian capital, and reports circulated of leaked interior ministry statistics showing him as the clear victor in last Friday’s polls.
The statistics, circulated on Iranian blogs and websites, claimed Mr Mousavi had won 19.1 million votes while Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won only 5.7 million.
The two other candidates, reformist Mehdi Karoubi and hardliner Mohsen Rezai, won 13.4 million and 3.7 million respectively. The authenticity of the leaked figures could not be confirmed.
If true, this would shatter the Iranian government’s hold on the state.
Given that Mousavi has canceled his protest, the Government’s hold on the state looks pretty secure.
Mousavi’s no real reformer – he’ll knuckle under to whatever the Guardian Council tells him, and so will the Iranian people. Aminadjeb has all the guns, and he’s willing to use them. The people will hate him, but will retreat into depression and apathy.
Unless a large number of them are willing to die for their freedom, they won’t have it. And I don’t think they are.
Just further proof of how people in that part of the world respect strength and the show of force over truth, justice and the American way. If any place needs a separation of church and state, its Persia.
WWS:
I know that Mousavi is no Thomas Jefferson, but for some reason the powers that be seemed bound and determined to keep him from power. That makes me wonder if he is perceived as a threat for some other reason. Perhaps corruption, or maybe just maybe he was seen as less extreme and the ruling mullahs consider any move to the middle, even a small one to be a danger to them.
But the people do not have a real choice and perhaps that is what this is about. They wanted Ahmadinejad and gone and they are furious at being ignored.
Note how Merkel of Germany has shown more support for the Iranian people thus far than the President of the United States has.
For people following the issue here is another blog with more pictures and live updates.
I agree with Obama not getting too vocal right now. We don’t want to give the mullahs any excuse to make this about the US and try to unite the population behind the current establishment against us. We don’t want to become a distraction. By staying quiet, we are allowing the people in Iran to remain focused on the problem in Iran.
Germany can say these things. We can’t. We can’t involve ourselves right now as an official government lest we undermine those working for democracy.
But we as individual human beings can support them with all our hearts.
I read this at FREEREPUBLIC, Hitchens is no right wing nut job. So his observations are interesting, and in my opinion sounder then Obama’s.
Don’t Call What Happened in Iran Last Week an Election
06/15/2009 6:48:30 PM PDT · by nuconvert
Slate ^ | June 14, 2009 | Christopher Hitchens
It was a crudely stage-managed insult to everyone involved. By Christopher Hitchens For a flavor of the political atmosphere in Tehran, Iran, last week, I quote from a young Iranian comrade who furnishes me with regular updates: I went to the last major Ahmadinejad rally and got the whiff of what I imagine fascism to have been all about. Lots of splotchy boys who can’t get a date are given guns and told they’re special. It’s hard to better this, either as an evocation of the rancid sexual repression that lies at the nasty core of the “Islamic republic”
Maybe the Revolution is really on! Found this at FREEREPUBLIC.
Revolutionary Guards Arrested in Iran
The Washington Times ^ | June 15, 2009 | Jim Robbins
Posted on 06/15/2009 7:42:40 PM PDT by Abakumov
According to the Cyrus News Agency, Tuesday morning 16 senior members of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps were arrested. “These commanders have been in contact with members of the Iranian army to join the people’s movement,” CNA reports.