Proof positive the Iran election was stolen

if you're going to steal an election, best do it in such a way as to make it at least somewhat believable...

juan cole cites the chatham house study (pdf) and sums it up this way...

The numbers do not add up. You can't have more voters than there are people. You can't have a complete liberal and pragmatic-conservative swing behind hard liners who make their lives miserable.

The election was stolen. It is there in black and white. Those of us who know Iran, could see it plain as the nose on our faces, even if we could not quantify our reasons as elegantly as Chatham House.

would that when our presidential election was stolen in 2000 and 2004, we would have had the stones to kick up a fuss the way the iranians are doing...

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It seems like everybody is assuming our election will be open, honest, free and fair

why exactly would anybody be thinking that...?

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How the 2008 election has already been stolen

greg palast... watch it carefully...

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Moyers: "Democracy in America ... all bets are off"

all bets were off the day the supreme court handed down the decision of 12 december 2000...

The following is an excerpt from Bill Moyers' new book, "Moyers on Democracy" (Doubleday, 2008).

Democracy in America is a series of narrow escapes, and we may be running out of luck. The reigning presumption about the American experience, as the historian Lawrence Goodwyn has written, is grounded in the idea of progress, the conviction that the present is "better" than the past and the future will bring even more improvement. For all of its shortcomings, we keep telling ourselves, "The system works."

Now all bets are off. We have fallen under the spell of money, faction, and fear, and the great American experience in creating a different future together has been subjugated to individual cunning in the pursuit of wealth and power -and to the claims of empire, with its ravenous demands and stuporous distractions. A sense of political impotence pervades the country -- a mass resignation defined by Goodwyn as "believing the dogma of 'democracy' on a superficial public level but not believing it privately." We hold elections, knowing they are unlikely to bring the corporate state under popular control. There is considerable vigor at local levels, but it has not been translated into new vistas of social possibility or the political will to address our most intractable challenges. Hope no longer seems the operative dynamic of America, and without hope we lose the talent and drive to cooperate in the shaping of our destiny.

i repeatedly said that i have very, very few personal heroes... bill moyers is one of them...

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Just "close enough to steal" - truer words were never spoken

They just have to make it close enough to steal

headline on clammyc's diary, currently on the rec list over at daily kos... a point well worth considering and definitely evocative of the shameful supreme court decision of 12 december 2000...

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Greg Palast: Bush election fraud mechanics

from brasscheck tv...

Were you ever curious about why Karl Rove resigned so suddenly?

Alberto Gonzales, Bush buddy and ... all » Attorney General who made torture as American as apple pie, resigned around the same time.

The two events may be connected.

You see, Mr. Rove appears to have been involved in a felony called election fraud. And to pull it off, he may have had help from Alberto Gonzalez.

Remember all those federal prosecutors who Gonzales fired and replaced with Bush-friendly crooks?

You know why removing them was so important? They were standing in the way of Rove's scheme.

When this news broke it was on the front page of every newspaper in the world - except in the United States.

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You want to read something REALLY funny?

start with the title of this piece in the current edition of foreign policy...

The List: How to Steal an Election Without Breaking a Sweat

with me so far...? ok, NOW, let's look at the teaser...

From Abuja to Islamabad, autocratic regimes have become adept at manipulating “free and fair elections” to stay in power. Here’s how they do it—and how to stop them.

heaven forbid the u.s. would be included in the list...

anyway, here's a few of the things being "done" to steal elections and what we can "do" to "stop THEM"...

How it’s done: It’s much easier to steal an election when there are fewer checks on executive power and no legal framework for resolving disputes.

How to stop it: An independent judicial branch that is capable of arbitrating electoral disputes without partisan pressure is a must. It also helps if polls are managed by independent election commissions rather than interior ministries.

stop me if any of this sounds familiar...

How it’s done: In countries with little or no independent media outlets, opportunities are rife for leaders to use state-controlled media to broadcast propaganda or discredit the opposition.

How to stop it: The proliferation of Internet news sources and text messaging can make it harder to control the flow of information...

How it’s done: In close elections, a popular technique is to identify which polling stations are likely to be swing votes and replace trained election officials with government loyalists at the last minute.

How to stop it: Observers from international organizations are harder to remove and less susceptible to threats from local law enforcement personnel.

How it’s done: [O]fficial results are generally tabulated by officials at centralized locations away from public scrutiny, making deliberate miscounting all too easy.

How to stop it: [Use] mobile phones to text unofficial results to a central server, creating a tally that could be compared to officially released results

well, gosh, there's just lots and lots more, but you'll just have to go read it yourselves...

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