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The indefatigable Elio Bonazzi and Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi expose Iran's sham elections for what they were in FrontPage:
Hardline fundamentalist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has swept to power in Iran, defeating his supposed “moderate” opponent Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in the second round of Iran's presidential election on Friday.The Iranian regime admitted that 7 million less voters turned up to vote in the second round. This is no surprise, since the ruling Mullahs have absolutely no support from the Iranian population. The regime stays afloat by its barbaric means, of course, and it continues to concoct numbers to feed the public. And while Iranians have been wise to this fact from the very beginning, the Western media continues to accept the lies spun by the Mullahs in Iran.
The details of the second round of “elections” are a depressing picture of where the ruling despots in Iran now stand with their own people. Photos taken by Iranians across Iran and posted on various Iranian websites and blogs, show that polling stations were mostly empty and that 30% of the people who showed up to vote due to having been blackmailed by the regime's forces deposited blank ballots into the boxes in protest. The intimidation was widespread: Iran’s Gestapo threatened civil servants’ jobs, old people's pensions and students’ grades and future university enrolment. The poor and rural people were intimidated by gun-toting guards who rounded them up to the polling stations. Even dead people’s I.D. cards got stamped so they could vote.
Read it all.
Posted by Robert at June 27, 2005 9:55 AM
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"Emad Alaabadi, a Saudi citizen who converted from Islam to Christianity, was arrested in December 2004 and has likely been tortured."
Please send a letter to your congresmen and president requesting the secure release of this and other prisoners of conscience in the Saudi gulags.
Posted by: 2pacshakur![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/nav-commenters.gif)
at June 27, 2005 10:28 AM
Despite the fact that this was a sham election, I am not convinced that the Iranian people would have overwhelmingly elected a true "moderate" is given the chance.
I know it might seem that way to Iranian intellectuals, but the fact is, we just don't know.
Seems to me there is deep popular support for getting the bomb and maybe even for using it too. I'm not convinced that this comes from the regime's keeping the country in crisis mode, either.
Rebecca
Posted by: rb at June 27, 2005 10:28 AM
The regime stays afloat by its barbaric means, of course, and it continues to concoct numbers to feed the public.
Where are the liberals when you need 'em. Where's Mickey-Mouse Moore when you need him. Don't expect a documentary from him any time soon exposing Iran's barbaric government.
Posted by: Report at June 27, 2005 10:43 AM
I still say a LOT of people voted for Admad, and they wanted to. Call them the ignorant masses, or the easily manipulated, but, unless there was absolutely massive voter fraud (I don't believe it made that much difference), the majority have spoken in Iran.
They want:
1) Islam
2) the elite who have stolen Iran's oil revenue punished
3) the bomb
This myth we have been fed about the majority of Iranians yearning for freedom and liberty is just that, a myth.
Iran has 30% unemployment and teeming masses of poor and ignorant. They vote too, and they resent the reformist elites.
Posted by: reset at June 27, 2005 10:54 AM
Reset:
It's hard to say just how popular the Islamists are with the poor and barely literate, but aren't the people stealing the oil wealth one and the same as the people accused of rigging the election -- the clerics?
Posted by: waterdragon52 at June 27, 2005 11:49 AM
rb: Seems to me there is deep popular support for getting the bomb and maybe even for using it too. I'm not convinced that this comes from the regime's keeping the country in crisis mode, either.
There seems to be similar popular support in Pakistan for using the bomb against India.
Should Iran nuke Israel, Israel would retaliate and take out Qum and Tehran, and all the oil facilities, and might do the same for Saudi Arabia, taking out Mecca and Medina as well -- and even Aswan High Dam.
If Pakistan uses it against India, India would retaliate in kind, taking out the big Paki cities. Pakistan would collapse into warlordism. India would then have the task of keeping maniacal Pakis from running over the border.
Both scenarios could happen, and soon too, but the Iran-Israel holocaust is more likely to happen first.
Posted by: Loxias at June 27, 2005 6:58 PM
......
Reset:
It's hard to say just how popular the Islamists are with the poor and barely literate, but aren't the people stealing the oil wealth one and the same as the people accused of rigging the election -- the clerics?
Posted by: waterdragon52
......
I think that is one of his problems. They are rich and getting richer. Rich people don't like giving up the gravy train. We'll just have to see how this goes.
I saw Ahmad on the news tonight. He is a tiny little man (no taller than 5ft 5in I would guess) with a wretched Arab nose. Nose job anyone? And he dresses in what looks Salvation Army used clothes. Just first impressions, all superficial, but hard to miss.
Posted by: reset at June 27, 2005 8:12 PM
reset-
Speaking of Salvation Army sartorial splendor...
One thing I've noticed that the Iranian men need much more than nuclear power:
-neckties.
What gives with their "I've just been mugged by a cravat thief, so I decided to open a falafel cart" look?
They all appear as if they're ready for a police line-up.
Soon, I hope.
Posted by: BigSleep at June 28, 2005 1:17 AM
Reset:
Ethnically, Iranians are not Arabs; the majority are Persians and speak Farsi, not Arabic.
Posted by: waterdragon52 at June 28, 2005 8:39 AM
The regime stays afloat by its barbaric means, of course, and it continues to concoct numbers to feed the public.Where are the liberals when you need 'em. Where's Mickey-Mouse Moore when you need him. Don't expect a documentary from him any time soon exposing Iran's barbaric government.
Posted by: Report
Strawman fallacy report. Liberals don't run this country, Christian Corportate "conservatives" do.
Real Question is where is Bush and the right wing?
Why they are busy demonizing liberals, ranting about ten commandments, and going about theocratizing America.
Read the news. The liberals lost out in the last two elections. Are you living in a trailer in the desert?
Posted by: Giaour at June 28, 2005 12:51 PM
Reset: The youth are the majority in Iran.
Thanks to the Iraq Iran war, the population of believers and fanatics was decimated.
The Ayatollah urged the people to breed for replacements, at a time when the world was growing smaller (especially electronically) the young folk of Iraq are not religious extremists, in fact quite modern. Maybe you should watch Arab and Iranian news on Mosaic,Link TV. They drive around Tehran with car radios blaring, and are (contrary to Saudis and Iraqi's) quite modern.
These kids did not show up for elections, they know they are a fraud. They were conned by Ayatollah al Khatami the supposed "moderate" mullah that was President, an office which has no teeth.
The governing Revolutionary Council of Iran (the Mullahcracy) selected the candidates that could be voted for, so there was no choice.
You should read Sandra Mackey's, The Iranians, Persia, Islam and the Soul of Nation. Quite insightful and educational.
The problem with Iran lies in their long past, history, tradition of a just king, it goes back to Cyrus the Great and Zoroastrianism.
Shah Pahlehvi was not a just king, he could have been one, but he isolated himself and tried to legitimize himself with ridiculous pomp, ceremony, uniforms and parades and the upper class isolated itself from the rest of society, became immune to the complaints and economic suffering of the people, using their power to enrich themselves, like tax breaks for the wealthy.
The revolution didn't start out religious, but it was shortly taken over by the fanatics, who were cohesive and organized, just like the Bolsheviks took over the Russian revolution, and now they are lodged and I fear can't be dislodged.
I also don't believe the war mongering hype about Iran, Simple reason that a stable government is a prerequisite to ensure the delivery of contracted oil, the honoring of contracts, the repayment of loans on schedule to international financial institutions...Iran provides just that.
Further consideration it was Iran that provided Chalibi with "evidence" (faked) that supported the claims of Blair and Bush that Saddam had WMD's, and stores of gas. Iran wanted badly to get rid of Saddam. Chalibi,Alawi, Ja'afari, al Sistani, al Hakim are Shi'a, brothers in faith to the Iranians, as opposed to the minority Sunni who consider them mushrik (polytheists), and it is the Sunni's who have been murdering the Shi'a, since before the election, because the Sunnis lost power , power that they have held since Iraq became Muslim.
The Sunnis were Saddams backbone, his butchers, his Mukhabarat, Republican Guard, his Army Command and Sunni triggers filled the mass graves of al HIlah, Babylon, Najaf with Shi'a bodies and Erbil and Mosul with Kurdish bodies.
Sunnis owe every one a tribal blood debt, and blood debts WILL be paid in Arabic society, with money or blood.
Iraq, besides being an Islamic Republic, and being essentially run by the Shi'a, is also run by SCIRI and SCIRI is run by Ayat Allah's Al Sistani and Al Hakim, both of whom have ties to Iran, and al Sistani is Iranian.
Posted by: Giaour at June 28, 2005 1:08 PM
Excellent post Giaour, glad you could make it. Unfortunately my friend, Loxias has it right. All signs point to Israel (read Ezekiel 38 and 39 if you dare) and the Iranians want a scrap. Well, it takes two to tango, be it in love or war, and the Americans want no part of the Iranians. That leaves little Israel in the crosshairs along with the Russians who also have an axe to grind with America and Mr. Bush. Neither the Russians or the Americans favor a direct conflict with one another, but Russia is looking to reclaim it's past glory. Russian military doctrine favors indirect pressure when in a position of weakness, be it economic pressure or threatening a smaller and closer ally that America favors. All fittings into the sockets of prophecy, just as God promised to us.
Posted by: Johnny Cash at June 28, 2005 7:50 PM
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