Just wondering whether anyone's had a check in from any of our wikimedians in Iran? Any safety reports on our folks?
Philippe
On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 3:00 PM, philippephilippe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Just wondering whether anyone's had a check in from any of our wikimedians in Iran? Any safety reports on our folks?
Good question. I just know that Mardetanha (a steward) is physically good and frustrated with election results. But, he is not living in Tehran. I'll ask people at fa.wp to send to me information what is going on with them.
Thanks, Milos... i was concerned about Mardetanha because of my connection to him on Elec Comm, good to know he's well. Now let's see what we can find out about the rest of our folks!
Thanks.
On Jun 20, 2009, at 9:21 AM, Milos Rancic wrote:
Good question. I just know that Mardetanha (a steward) is physically good and frustrated with election results. But, he is not living in Tehran. I'll ask people at fa.wp to send to me information what is going on with them.
I've got the first report. There are no information that something happened to any Wikimedian.
Take a look at [1]. I don't expect bigger scale problems in Iran, but not just because of that analysis. Except theocratic structures, preset situation in Iran reminds me a lot to the situation in Serbia during late period of Milosevic. State structures without connection to reality have to reform themselves or they'll be replaced. Fortunately, [ordinary] Iranians don't want war because still fresh memories to war between Iraq and Iran. The situation was similar in 2000 in Serbia.
[1] - http://www.ted.com/talks/bruce_bueno_de_mesquita_predicts_iran_s_future.html
Milos Rancic wrote:
I've got the first report. There are no information that something happened to any Wikimedian.
Take a look at [1]. I don't expect bigger scale problems in Iran, but not just because of that analysis. Except theocratic structures, preset situation in Iran reminds me a lot to the situation in Serbia during late period of Milosevic. State structures without connection to reality have to reform themselves or they'll be replaced. Fortunately, [ordinary] Iranians don't want war because still fresh memories to war between Iraq and Iran. The situation was similar in 2000 in Serbia.
[1] - http://www.ted.com/talks/bruce_bueno_de_mesquita_predicts_iran_s_future.html
Nuclear weaponry in Iran may a concern to powerful western countries, but I don't see it as being a major factor in the country's internal politics. While there may very well have been widespread fraud, that alone wouldn't be enough to explain away a 29 percentage point spread. A strong line of national security scare-mongering is always good source of votes in the less educated parts of a country. We hear a lot about what is happening in Tehran, but very little about the rest of the country.
Ec
On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 2:07 PM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
While there may very well have been widespread fraud, that alone wouldn't be enough to explain away a 29 percentage point spread. A strong line of national security scare-mongering is always good source of votes in the less educated parts of a country. We hear a lot about what is happening in Tehran, but very little about the rest of the country.
It's easy to explain any margin you want when there are no monitors, no reporting of local tallies, and vote aggregation is controlled by a small group in one government agency. It's basically a matter of changing numbers in a spreadsheet.
Regardless of what actually happened, it is pretty clear that the process of voting in Iran lacks the fundamental transparency necessary to provide confidence in the results.
-Robert Rohde
Robert Rohde wrote:
On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 2:07 PM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
While there may very well have been widespread fraud, that alone wouldn't be enough to explain away a 29 percentage point spread. A strong line of national security scare-mongering is always good source of votes in the less educated parts of a country. We hear a lot about what is happening in Tehran, but very little about the rest of the country.
It's easy to explain any margin you want when there are no monitors, no reporting of local tallies, and vote aggregation is controlled by a small group in one government agency. It's basically a matter of changing numbers in a spreadsheet.
Regardless of what actually happened, it is pretty clear that the process of voting in Iran lacks the fundamental transparency necessary to provide confidence in the results.
Sure, transparency is a problem, but its absence alone does not imply fraud. It hurts the Iranian authorities even more if the vote count is accurate because nobody believes them.
Ec
2009/6/21 Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net:
Sure, transparency is a problem, but its absence alone does not imply fraud. It hurts the Iranian authorities even more if the vote count is accurate because nobody believes them.
Evidence the numbers were made up: humans are not very good at picking random numbers:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/20/AR2009062000...
(This is way off-topic ...)
- d.
On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 10:00 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Evidence the numbers were made up: humans are not very good at picking random numbers:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/20/AR2009062000...
(This is way off-topic ...)
Convincing, surely, but not as definitive as reports that the Interior Ministry in Tehran (where votes are counted) remained closed during and after the election, with doors locked against employees who would otherwise be tallying ballots.
David Gerard wrote:
2009/6/21 Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net:
Sure, transparency is a problem, but its absence alone does not imply fraud. It hurts the Iranian authorities even more if the vote count is accurate because nobody believes them.
Evidence the numbers were made up: humans are not very good at picking random numbers:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/20/AR2009062000...
Evidence disappears when spoiled ballots are included: http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/8ufal/at_last_a_statistical_smoking...
(Haven't checked myself though.)
2009/6/20 Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net:
Milos Rancic wrote:
I've got the first report. There are no information that something happened to any Wikimedian.
Take a look at [1]. I don't expect bigger scale problems in Iran, but not just because of that analysis. Except theocratic structures, preset situation in Iran reminds me a lot to the situation in Serbia during late period of Milosevic. State structures without connection to reality have to reform themselves or they'll be replaced. Fortunately, [ordinary] Iranians don't want war because still fresh memories to war between Iraq and Iran. The situation was similar in 2000 in Serbia.
[1] - http://www.ted.com/talks/bruce_bueno_de_mesquita_predicts_iran_s_future.html
Nuclear weaponry in Iran may a concern to powerful western countries, but I don't see it as being a major factor in the country's internal politics. While there may very well have been widespread fraud, that alone wouldn't be enough to explain away a 29 percentage point spread. A strong line of national security scare-mongering is always good source of votes in the less educated parts of a country. We hear a lot about what is happening in Tehran, but very little about the rest of the country.
Believe me that it is possibly to fraud an election and shift the real results completely :-) History knows many of such examples.
See for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_people%27s_referendum,_1946
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_general_election,_1946
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Vietnam_referendum,_1955
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud
I don't know if it happened in Iran or not - I think we will know it for sure not eariler that 50 years from know, or maybe even never...
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