NYT: Iranian Guards Threaten to Crush Dissent as Vote Errors Are Admitted

[FourScore]

Iranian Guards Issue Warning as Vote Errors Are Admitted
By NAZILA FATHI and ALAN COWELL
Published: June 22, 2009

TEHRAN — Threatening to crush dissent, the powerful Revolutionary Guards warned protesters Monday that they would face a “revolutionary confrontation” if they returned to the streets in their challenge to the presidential election results and their defiance of the country’s leadership.

The warning, on the Guards’ Web site, was issued despite an admission by Iran’s most senior panel of election monitors that the number of votes cast in 50 cities exceeded the actual number of voters, according to a state television report two days after the country’s supreme leader pronounced the ballot to be fair.

The discrepancies, the most sweeping acknowledged so far by the authorities, could affect some three million ballots of what the government says was an 85 percent turnout numbering 40 million voters.

But the authorities insisted that the discrepancies did not violate Iranian law. The Guardian Council, charged with certifying the election, said it was not clear whether they would decisively change the result.

A Revolutionary Guards statement Monday told protesters who took to the streets in a week of demonstrations to “be prepared for a resolution and revolutionary confrontation with the Guards, Basij and other security forces and disciplinary forces” if they continued their protests, news reports said.

The Basij is a militia accused by the protesters of brutally repressing demonstrations that culminated in a day of bloodshed on Saturday. It was not immediately clear if the demonstrators would heed the Guards’ warning...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/world/middleeast/23iran.html?hp

[babylonsister]

1. Breaking just now: police attacking with tear gas. m$nbc. nt

[BlooInBloo]

2. "vote errors" - bwahahaa!!

http://www.juancole.com/2009/06/chatham-house-study-definitively-shows.html

[JPZenger]

3. NPR: Supreme Leader Can be Removed if He's Not "Fair"

A couple days ago, NPR had a good story about the Iranian system. They said that there is a process for the other religious leaders on the council to remove the "Supreme Leader" if he is not "fair."

[Political Heretic]

4. Actually the Guardian Council said it clearly would not change the result....

I don't know why anyone would take their word on anything, but that's what they said, as reported in a read statement by NPR this morning.

I don't know why that group would have any special authority or trusted to tell the truth, but there it is.

By the way, as a tie-in to the other article I posted from worldnutdaily (I'm proud to be a nut)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5897087&mesg_id=5897087

- the issue is not about whether there was deliberate election fraud or discrepancies - not insofar as the question of who is behind the Mousavi movement. The question of fraud - and there damn well may be some willful fraud as opposed to just an inept voting system - is separate.

The point of the article is to review some history and remember it, and then suggest that we ought to be questioning the power behind Mousavi - especially when so many people are out on their streets losing their lives because they want genuine democracy. This would not be the first time that a "reformer" was bankrolled by pro-western privileged interests who turned around and betrayed the very people that shed blood to put them in power. That's what concerns me about all of this.

See, all the world attention goes away once the protests are done either way. If a regime change hapens, and the protesters win a victory, everyone packs up and goes home, and few report on what happens next. Typically (at least all too frequently in recent history) what happens next is a pro-western reformer becomes a pro-western dictator and implements policy that brutalizes the working class and (typically) privatizes most of that whatever that countries resources happen to be for foreign corporate consumption - all without the consent of the people who, again, shed blood to put that person in power.

I fear that's where this is headed.

[sufrommich]

5. I would surmise that Iranians are well aware of the history

of US involvement in Iran and are quite capable of ferreting out the truth without the pompous musings of the American left.

[Political Heretic]

6. There's no need for it to be either/or

There's no reasons why these musings shouldn't be made. And its not clear to me why they are "pompous."

[sufrommich]

7. It's as pompous as American right wingers of past claiming that

the insurrections in El Salvador or Nicaragua were the work of nefarious outsiders intent on establishing Russian dominance in Central America.The world is not made up of useful idiots attached to puppet strings.The far left and the far right meet in the middle and agree that the world marches according to their ideology.

[Political Heretic]

8. Well that sounds nice I guess, but there's a small difference.

That difference being, I'm not afraid of considering new or different ideas just because they don't fit the world as I want to see it. Which means, I'm not afraid to consider the idea of something going on that most certainly has happened before in history - as well documented fact, with our own declassified documents bearing that out. But I'm also not afraid to consider the idea that this is not what's happening at all, and that a new and powerful popular movement is on the verge of being born.

I can handle both of those possibilities. And there's no reason for me not to think about these things. And I'm also not immediately outraged and reactionary about articles that make me think about what might be happening.

If I was trying to tell Iranians what to do, now that would be pompous. But I'm not, I'm trying to understand and interpret what is happening based not just on what I emotionally want to believe, but based on what seems to be most accurate.