The Meaning of Neda's Martyrdom

Wow, I didn't realize that Iran was a suburb of Cairo! Since Iran is even further away from Egypt than Iraq, one must wonder: why Scott ignores the thousands of civilian casualities in the conflict there, yet comments regularly on the relatively few civilian causualities amongst the Palestinians? (that is, if they have been killed by Israelis. If they are killed by their fellow Palestinians Scott ignores them too). Since you are already commenting on Iran Scott: why not comment on Pakistan as well and the number of civilians killed by both the Taliban and the Pakistani army? Also, this month haven't 1,500 American civilians murdered 1,500 other American civilians? And: hasn't this rate of slaughter been going on for the last 60 years? Why don't Barack and Hilliary do something to put a stop to that, instead of trying to stop settlement expansion?

Also,just curious Scott: Mubarak has imprisoned, murdered and clamped down on countless thousands of Islamic fundamentalists in Egypt, yet that doesn't bother you at all. Yet, when Islamic fundamentalists imprison, murder and clamp down on their opponents, you get all huffy and puffy. Why is that Scott?

There are at least six point five billion problems in the world and I wholly appreciate your due attention, Scott, to this major human crisis that has touched us all.
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Neda's stare, or "Negaaye Neda", in an English phonetic of the Farsi, made many of us tremble with emotions for someone so far away, yet so close to us in so many ways. Neda was everyone's sister and daughter. She represented a youth embattled with the hardships of oppression yet resilient to succumb, even if that meant simply working in a travel agency where she could day dream about traveling outside of the borders that bound her. Neda was, essentially, the Iranian girl next door.
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For the first time in history, the sights and sounds of a revolution are being broadcast by the hard working people fighting for their rights. Twitter, Youtube, and live-bloggers have connected us directly with the protesters within the green revolution. In the past, we could only sympathize with freedom fighters; but now, we may empathize. Anyone can get on these social networks and speak directly to Iranians involved in the revolution. We are all able to support them in their fight. And it is true, much of the world stands in solidarity with the Iranians in their human struggle for inalienable and basic rights.

I agree with your sentiment, Scott, but not with your aspersions.

    There's no evidence of fraud in the election (so far), Mousavi is conspicuously silent, produces no evidence, refuses to cooperate in the very recount necessary to prevent the fraud (he alleges) in a new election. The ballot-count procedures are fraud-proof, and if they were not followed, there would be thousands of witnesses to it. The Iran bashers assume Iran's leaders are dishonest, immoral, liars -- like themselves (the Iran bashers). I doubt it. If their leaders (who preach honesty and morality) rigged an election, the entire population of Iran would go berserk.

    But I'm shocked by the basiji militia barging into homes, arresting and accosting people, without any process of the law they preach. I'm not shocked by what Obama lied about, the force Iran used to combat an obvious violent, criminal, conspiracy to riot, presumably paid for by U.S. taxpayers. But this nighttime home invasions and if they attacked peaceful protesters, that more than sucks.

    Who commands these thugs? That's what I want to know. It's stupid politics, accomplishes nothing, except drives a wedge between the people and their leaders. And because it's stupid, it surprises me, as very un-Iranian, the most rational people on the planet. I believe they can investigate their legitimate suspicions, protect themselves from US/UK-paid murder/arson, with arrests and questioning complying with their laws. -CJ Harwood (Warlaw)

Your aspersions, I forgot to explain, you omitted the most likely hypothesis.

    That Neda's killer is a CIA/Israeli-paid MKO sniper. (1) The Iran bashers endless, wistfully, gleefully, drooled, beforehand, that such killings would provoke ever increasing protests. (2) The salient fact, from the protests, is the lack of armed force by the state, it was strictly crowd control methods, the police were unarmed, and (as far as I know) the riot police, the secret service, and the basiji too, except at their station, that one attacked by the crowd, a violent lynch-mob, terrorizing the basiji inside, who would arguably be acquitted on grounds of self defense, in a U.S. trial. A few other killings, they could also be CIA-MKO snipers, paid by Israel or from the $500 Obama spent not interfering in Iran's internal affairs, in violation of the Algiers Agreement. -CJ Harwood (Warlaw)

Just when the deaths of Michael Jackson and Billy Mays were getting me down, CJ Harwood posts his lunatic conspiracy theories ("fraud-proof!" "CIA-MKO snipers!") and makes me laugh. Thanks for cheering me up, CJ. May the tinfoil on your head shine perpetually.

CJ Hardwood,
To produce evidence of election irregularities, it is tantamount for those accused of election fraud to provide the accusers the ability to discover such information in the first place. We have several substantially probative reasons to doubt the integrity of these elections. Among those, vote counts of zero for Moussavi in areas where his staffers were present and reportedly voted.
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But, your post was a nice echo of what I've heard before in countries where they want to keep the people silent under their ultimate rule. Governments are made to serve the people. If they do not, they will be made to instead. This is a march from revolution to freedom.
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Mousavi is but one of many leaders in this movement. The masses are asking for their individual freedoms, not just one man.

So much for the revived idea of nuance.
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Or for that matter any understanding of what the idea 'government control of the media' truly means.
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Right now, inside Iran, there is severe government control of all news outlets; both broadcasts and content. Communications, from internet to broadsheets are being either silenced, or arm-twisted into producing what the government wants to say.
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The latest commentary is that Neda was killed by unknown, but alleged nefarious outsiders, perhaps likely in cahoots with the rebellious protestors.
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Scott's martyr has now become an icon of the government.
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And let's remember, that there is no limitations on martyrs. The government can either promote or manufacture any number of loyalists, either security forces, or civilians, who fell in the line of duty or defending their own rights to the supposed results of the election.
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Scott's idea that millions around the world, can have an impact on Iran needs to remind himself of the lessons of Tiennman square. Today, most Chinese are hardly aware of this event as it has been written out of the local history.

To persianadvocate:
    I agree with your sentiment, but not your complaint.
    There are no "substantially probative reasons to doubt the integrity of these elections" which I've seen. Plenty of factless assertions, like yours: "vote counts of zero for Mousavi in areas where his staffers were present and reportedly voted."
    Where is the evidence? Where are these staffers? Let's hear them say it. We've had nothing but hearsay assertions, not a single witness has appeared to say what s/he did or saw, and especially conspicuous, not a single official election observer.
    A single, solitary, ballot box, in the whole of Tehran province, contains a zero vote for Mousavi, a box of 59 ballots (box 28, javadabad, varamin, tehran). Only 3 other boxes (totaling 629 ballots), contain less than 10 votes each for Mousavi.
    This is not suspicious. More precisely, it's not evidence of ballot-rigging, owing to the infinitesimal number ballots involved.
    Here are the ballot box counts in Tehran province (6,081 ballot boxes, if I counted them right, in 33 number-sequences), the tehran.csv file in the ballotspm directory of http://www.umich.edu/~wmebane/Iran2009_26jun2009.zip There's another 39,632 ballot boxes, in other files in that zip container, I didn't check them.
    The guardian council and the supreme leader both, publicly, and repeatedly, said, Mousavi could recount any boxes he doubted. This satisfies your complaint, that the state must provide a candidate a method to investigate his complaint.
    Where is Mousavi's complaint? Reportedly he listed some 600 grievances, in a letter to the guardian council, which has now said it investigated them all and found them without merit. Where is this letter? why hasn't Mousavi published it? (maybe he has, in Persian, I doubt it, else someone would have found it on the internet).
    The recount is where the rubber meets the road. Mousavi had it in his power to demand a recount of every ballot box at every polling station where his staffers voted and the count was zero (as you claim), and at every polling station where his observers were excluded (as others claim).
    Mousavi did not do it. He boycotted the recount. The obvious inference is, these claims are myth, it never happened, it's a lie.
    If it's fact, then it's a very simple matter to prove it, by a recount. And I refer again to the report of the fraud-proof methods of Iran's ballot-count procedures: Mark Weisbrot, "Was the Iranian Election Stolen? Does It Matter?" (June 28 2009), copy: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/28-3
    Nothing is completely fraud-proof, of course, hence the need for a recount, a close examination of ballots, and such.
    I presume there's no ID on the ballots themselves (to preserve the secret ballot), the names and thumbprints appear on the ballot stub, the voters's receipt, that s/he received a blank ballot. So, yes, after it was done, the sealed boxes could be opened Mousavi ballots removed, Ahmadinejad ballots substituted.
    But so fast? 45,713 ballot boxes? The results were publicly reported in near real time (totals, not individual boxes, that's true).
    And, on recount, what of the multiple copies of the original record of the count (one copy sealed, with the ballots, in the ballot box) bearing multiple signatures, of the 14 observers (I presume), and the observers surely also made a personal record of the count, so they could report back, in real time, to their masters (e.g., Mousavi's observers).
    Mr. Weisbrot's report, of the ballot-count procedures, has since been reinforced. I put on my tinfoil helmet, switched on my recorder, and tuned in CNN and there (but not on the BBC) were live excerpts of the Press TV satellite feed of the recounts in progress, showing the transparent plastic ballot boxes, the multiple seals, fitted by the various official observers (I presume) (including Mousavi's), the forms inside the sealed boxes being removed, showing (I presume) the original count, bearing (I presume) the signatures of the observers (including Mousavi's), the recount live on TV by large numbers of people, local citizens (I presume), living in the polling station neighborhood where the recounts occurred, validating (I presume) the original count, with (I presume) an incidental correction, or difference of opinion, now and again.
    I don't know which polling stations this 10% recount covered. Mousavi had the power to specify every single polling station which barred his observers (another factless allegation). Were it true, that would be a smoking gun, but apparently it's not true, else he would have done it, specified those polling stations, it remains merely an anonymous allegation (i.e., from liars).
    We haven't heard a single word from a single observer saying s/he was excluded from a polling station, or from the ballot count. And until we do, it remains myth, it never happened, it's a lie, bought and paid for by the $500 million Bush/Obama spent to promote democracy in Iran without interfering in its internal affairs (as Obama lied on TV).
    Finally, I come to your sentiment, which I agree with. That Iranians (like citizens in most countries) have plenty to be unhappy about, and a sparse menu of people to vote for. That thuggish militia, for example, that's intolerable, that they are permitted (by whom) to invade people's homes, accost people on the street, abuse them for how they choose to dress, if they want to hold hands, and such.
    But this is not evidence of a rigged election. Mousavi was promoted as a "reform candidate" by US/UK/Israeli liars, their conspiracy to rubbish the election. Inside Iran, did a majority prefer Mousavi? a return to the past? backed by a crowd tarnished by financial corruption? Ahmadinejad is left-winger, who did what he said he would do (as far I know), he put the nation's oil money on the table of the people, not in the pockets of the elites (grants for housing, rural development, and such, the details of which I don't know).
    In Tehran city, scene of the protests, Mousavi whipped Ahmadinejad, 53%-44%, 3152 ballot boxes (in 3 groups, 2788+338+26), 4,114,384 valid ballots:
      Moussavi         2,166,245 (53%)
      Ahmadinejad   1,809,855 (44%)
      Rezaei                     95,211 ( 2%)
      Karroubi                 43,073 ( 1%)
    My guess is this, half the people in the protests, voted for Ahmadinejad, as the least worst candidate, and because of his socialist policies, and they protested, in addition, to show they weren't happy about it, their choice of candidates, and the omission of human rights, by the candidates, from their campaign promises. -CJ Harwood (Warlaw)

"We haven't heard a single word from a single observer saying s/he was excluded from a polling station, or from the ballot count."
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Funny, we haven't heard much from anyone given that the Iranian government has pretty much shut down access by foreign correspondents and has not only thrown journalists out of the country, but thrown protestors into jail.
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It seems to me at least, somewhat difficult to protest an account if one is trying to avoid arrests / beatings, etc.
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CJ Hardwood,
This goes back to my original post to the bloggers here where I argued that most of the world, thanks in large part to the media, is viewing this whole situation under an incorrect context. Was the election rigged? Who cares ultimately -- the side that promised the people the freedom they've fought for since before the term "human rights" was even coined in the mid-20th century is not in power. What matters is the freedom for the people, not who is in office. After acknowledging the context of the struggle, freedom and not a rigged election, we can then turn to the latter.
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You are providing information that was supplied directly by the same persons accused of rigging the election. When one party serves as judge, jury and executioner over a matter, we call it a kangaroo court. Moussavi et al. are severely restricted in what they can say, and further, anything they do submit as allegations of voter fraud are kept secret from the public at large. To count the same ballots that were allegedly rigged in the first place serves no purpose other than to create the illusion that the system has integrity. There is a huge conflict of interest present there.
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The only solution is a re-vote under internationally neutral monitoring. Otherwise, the regime is placing a new nail in its coffin with each passing week.

And Jacob, don't be a naysayer. There is no futility in the march for freedom here. These Mullahs would back down if they knew it meant their demise. They are not as fanatically insane as you would like them to still be.

Look I am not going to get in a pissing match but CJ Hardwood is claiming a lot saying "The ballot-count procedures are fraud-proof” nothing is fool proof or fraud-proof. If its man made it can be manipulated. It's the government, society etc... People can and will always attempt to alter a process to get the desired product. I am not claiming that there was fraud but you cannot claim that its Fraud-Proof least we forget the Titanic.
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Part of the point of having the basiji militia is to avoid the law and enforce fear and control despite the law. So do not be surprised when they go around the legal system and they are not called on it. They are a branch that has its roots in the Republican Guard. Which for the most part is runned by the Ayatollahs?
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"Most likely hypothesis." what? How is that a more likely hypothesis than random or direct firing into crowds? Because that tid bit of media and independent, sources verified news. Besides while you cannot prove that it's some conspiracy you also can't disprove that it wasn't the basiji militia which are pro-government/pro-republican guard and dressed in civilian clothes so its impossible at times to distinguish where and who they are.
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@jacobblues: and do not forget the British ambassadors and diplomats thrown in jail and a few recently released.
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@persianadvocate: the only reason that the Mullahs seem less fanatical, and there are variants in some being more than the other, is that the general population, Tehran notably, is more liberal and pro-west in the sense that they are not so pro-Islamic Republic/theocracy. They may hold to their faith strongly still but not to the revolution that occurred before the majority was born. Because of that, the Mullahs would back down if they saw they could not spin or control the situation. They will do what ever they can to be on the up side of things.

I didn't say there was futility Nick. I was just pointing out that imagry is not a one-way street, certainly in a state where the government controls the levers of communication and the media.
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As for insane fanaticism, forgetaboutit. What you need to remember is that the Mullah's are the party, and the party is not about to hand over power willingly. They may not be suicidal, but they're also certainly not about to abdicate and hand over their power to the protestors without a fight. That has nothing to do with the issues of sanity or not, fanaticism or not.

Indeed lost-epic,
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The Iranians have had a field day with the British on several occasions now.

This is true, Jacob. Unlike the Shah, who literally did everything he could to hand over the country because he could not face more bloodshed, these Mullahs will not do so as easily.
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That said, in the end, the Iranians want democracy and not oligarchy. We are not looking to replace one dictator with another to topple in a few decades and we will not accept any abridged version of our due liberties.

Acceptance Nick, will be based on the regime's willingness to use lethal force to remain in power, and to what extent. Are the leaders OK with killing 10 people? 100? 1,000? 10,000? more?
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Plenty of people who are 'due' their liberties around the globe. I haven't seen too many authoritarian governments willing to just hand over the keys and go fishing.
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Looking for one or not, the protestors are likely to find themselves in a nasty and possibly protracted fight.
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One question that does come to mind, after I posted the two articles on the Iranian clergy, was the makeup and ideology of the marja taqlid's.
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Wikipedia has a list of 29 living marja's, of which about half are in and around the 80-year old mark. I'm wondering to what extent their age (though none can be described as young) has an influence on their political leanings, and what happens in say the next five years as they start to pass on?
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Ayatollahs

Well Scott, that didn't take too long, did it now?
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http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1908305,00.html

To persianadvocate:
    "The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" (Donald Rumsfeld, Carl Sagan), this leapt to mind, as I read your excellent argument which, facially, impugns the integrity of tens of thousands of ordinary Iranian citizens, who conducted the election balloting and vouched for an honest ballot count.
    This is evidence:
    45,713 ballot boxes in 368 cities and 558 districts (Iran's election officials). Voice of America adds, those boxes are in 32,000 polling stations. There were 14 official observers at each polling station, registered with the government, issued with ID cards, including local citizens and one for each candidate, that's 448,000 eye-witnesses to the ballot count, officially-certified, who signed on the dotted line, certifying the count. That's in addition to the tens of thousands of people who actually did the counting.
    They observed that each ballot box was empty to start with, before it was sealed shut. They watched poll workers checking voter IDs, stamping their ID card (so they can't use that card to vote twice), handing voters a blank ballot, voters signing a receipt for the ballot, finger-printing the receipt, marking their ballot, depositing their ballot in the box, poll workers counting the ballots at the end of the day, boxes of ballot papers, counting forms filled out, witnessed, signed, and resealed.
    Every single person in Iran, who voted, witnessed this evidence, these safeguards, live, in person, in real time.
    That's 39,165,191 eye-witnesses, live human beings, Iranian citizens. Each one of them, in person, with their own hand, deposited a ballot in one of those 45,713 plastic ballot boxes (38,755,802 valid ballots).
    What they saw, at their polling station, was the mechanism of an honest ballot count in action. Everything except the ballot-count itself, at the end of the day, after the polls closed, at 10pm. That count, they expect the competing candidates to vouch for it, a reliable check, the loser agrees, s/he lost, may be, should be, the signature of that loser's observer (including Mousavi's), one of several, on the dotted line.
    You challenge this evidence.
    You say it's a charade, echoing Mousavi. You don't know how they did it, but somehow they reported a fictitious ballot count, what the voters saw was real, but finessed away into oblivion, by persons unknown, by methods unknown.
        May be, the poll workers were government stooges, eager to lie, or anyway paid to lie, and paid and terrorized to keep quiet about it, by a violent criminal dictatorship.
        May be, the ballot boxes were destroyed and a fictitious set substituted (pre-prepared), complete with all the indicia of authenticity: forged ballots, forged ballot receipt book (forged signatures and fingerprints), forged form certifying the count, with forged signatures from the official observers, forged copies of the forged form substituted in various government offices for the originals.
        May be, they didn't trouble themselves so, back at head office they simply falsified the totals, ignored the reported count, except they used the actual count from 10%, 20%, of the boxes, in case they needed an encore performance, an enhancement to their charade, a recount live on TV to fool the doubters, press conferences, reporting the count in progress, the fictitious numbers.
    Is this the perfect crime?
    What "may be," "could be," "might have been," this is not evidence, it's an hypothesis, it might prove true and it might not.
    What evidence supports your hypothesis.
    I've seen none.
    Plenty of inferences, assertions, lies, some forged documents, a blitzkrieg of deceit, by the U.S./U.K./Israeli conspiracy to trash the election, label the Ahmadinejad government illegitimate liars, fit to bomb, down the road.
    Their headline lie, "Ahmadinejad declared immediately after the polling ended that he won 64%, not far from the 'official' result. How did he know?" (juancole.com comment, 'Anonymous,' June 13 2:56pm), and much such elsewhere.
        Robert F. Worth, Nazila Fathi, "Iran's state-run news agency said Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won Iran's presidential election in a landslide just two hours after the polls closed Friday night." (The New York Times, June 13 2009, page A1).
        Karim Sadjadpour, "It was announced by official state media that President Ahmadinejad had won, an overwhelming majority, when less than 20% of the votes were cast." (C-Span, Washington Journal, Sunday June 14 2009, 9:33-10:03am), simulcast in the U.K., by the BBC, on its parliament channel, 2:33-3:03pm).
    The BBC joined in, in their usual way, selecting guests and allowing them to tell this same lie without challenge, but I haven't yet collected all those instances and so I can't cite them here.
    The kernel of their headline lie is this Persian news bulletin, issued an hour and a half after the polls closed (IRNA newsid=543909, 1388/3/22 23:34:34, June 12 2009 23:34:34pm, 20:04:34pm London).
    I don't know what it says, the subtleties of it, their English news bulletin doesn't say that, issued a hour later (IRNA newsid=543957, 1:46:58am, 22:16:58pm London, 21:16:58pm GMT).
    Obviously, both news bulletins merely report the ballot count in progress and any embellishments are projections or exuberance. The ballots counted through 23:54pm (1 hour 54 minutes after the polls closed, at 10pm, 22:00pm), this count was announced at a press conference, which I watched on TV, and recorded, reporting 8,801 ballot boxes (19.42% of the boxes), 5,005,188 million ballots (Kamran Daneshjoo, head of elections headquarters, Press TV, broadcast on Live CNN, but not by the BBC, 00:15pm Tehran, 20:45pm London, a 3 minute excerpt, maybe a 5 minute delay). The Persian news bulletin, I presume, is based on an earlier ballot count, maybe 30 minutes earlier, the count 80-90 minutes after the polls closed.
    What Mousavi complained about is very simple to investigate, drawing into the public courtroom, in the process, those hundreds of thousands of eye witness. All Mousavi had to do is name the polling stations where he claims his observers were barred or not present. He refused to cooperate. The google translation of the election officials, their reply (June 23 2009) to Mousavi's complaint(s) (which I haven't seen), the translation is too faulty for me to assess.
    Donald Rumsfeld, a sophist, acted on his aphorism, he killed 1 million Iraqis, drove 4 million into exile, who lost their homes and jobs and businesses and wealth, many of them, he maimed and orphaned thousands, claiming "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
    Carl Sagan cited the same aphorism to justify inaction, not action: "Did Jesus turn water into wine." Carl Sagan said the absence of evidence of it does not mean it's not possible, but he wouldn't waste five seconds bothering about it, wondering about it, until some evidence appeared to show it is possible.
    The absence of evidence IS evidence of absence, as it accumulates, as you investigate leads, hypothesizes, people and places where that evidence is, if it exists. When you're done investigating, absence of evidence is persuasive, even conclusive, that what you're looking for does not exist.
    Mousavi was prime minister for 8 years, and so presumptively he knows how to rig an election, so it's unsettling, to hear him complain, even though it's suspicious, that he does not, can not, back up his complaints, with evidence, and refuses to cooperate in the search for evidence.
    That's the force of the big lie, a prominent figure, he has a reputation, a status, a position in society, we don't expect him to lie, to jeopardize all that, so he tempts us to believe he must know something and he must have a good reason to keep it secret, or else he believes he can not be proved to be a liar.
    He's playing with fire, accusing the leaders of fraud, deceit, corruption, rigging an election, the foundation of the republic. Mousavi is doing the conspiracy's business, sowing suspicions, dissension, discrediting the whole regime, including himself, because an honest man would cooperate in the recount absent a good reason which he does not offer and which does not appear.
    Because he won't cooperate, I believe the leaders must now recount 100% of the boxes, and assemble the 448,000 official observers, at each polling station, to verify their signatures and fingerprints on the original forms sealed in the ballot boxes, live on TV, day after day, week after week, rolling through the republic, all 32,000 polling stations.
    Having done that and proven, beyond all doubt, that the count is honest, that the public can trust election results, and that Mousavi is a reckless, deceitful, dishonest, liar, or that the count is fraudulent and exactly how it was done and by whom--
    Having done that, they should then announce a new election, to take account of the feelings of the protesters, give the candidates an opportunity to revise their campaign promises, to provide for human rights reforms (that's the only thing the protesters were complaining about, as far as I can tell). -CJ Harwood (Warlaw)

@CJ Hardwood: Using the logic and reasoning that you used in your argument. The Supreme Leader of Iran, claiming to be the one in the right, should allow foreign media and diplomats in to the area to verify independently the facts. If you claim that thousands of voters, from various voting districts are witnesses to the properly executed voting centers then where are the thousands of voters to stand up and denounce Mousavi's claims and the hundreds and thousands of protesters claims? If everything did happened and occurred correctly and the votes were counted and announced to the truth of what was voted then Iran should not have any trouble showing said evidence and allowing independent correspondence to verify. You are right lack of evidence is not evidence. It's come to the argument of "my word against yours."

@ lostepic
    1. "It's come to the argument of 'my word against yours.'"
    No. It's come to my 45,713 ballot boxes full of ballots, signed, sealed, and delivered, against your complaint, against which one(s) of them? Give me your numbers and we'll check them. It's come to, "My evidence against your claims."
    2. "Where are the thousands of voters to stand up and denounce Mousavi's claims."
    Excellent question, which illustrates the issue, and your excellent observation, too:
    3. "Iran should not have any trouble showing said evidence."
    Iran's election officials published the ballot count for each of the 45,713 ballot boxes. This enables each of the 448,000 official election observers to check the totals of the boxes they certified, against their personal record they took away with them (if they did), to telephone their head office (the candidates' observers) to give them the news, on the night. Who knows what percent of them did that, and still retain that record, so let's posit that some did, maybe many thousands have a record at home and can check against the published totals.
    They can see that the published count is honest, as concerns them, it accords with their retained record. And so they say to themselves this:
    "Mousavi must be talking about some other ballot boxes, at some other polling station, he's not talking about me, my boxes."
    All 448,000 official observers could each check their totals and each one of could say the same thing, and presume that Mousavi must be talking about somebody else, some other ballot boxes.
    Hence the need for evidence, for Mousavi to commit himself, produce his observers, to say they were excluded, or maybe he didn't have observers at some stations (did the other candidates). At least he can narrow the inquiry, he presumably had observers at many thousands of polling stations who can assure him their box counts, as published, are accurate. Surely he can provide a complaint specific enough that it can be investigated, i.e., name the polling stations where he had no observers or where they dispute the published box counts. As a caveat, he might have named some, I don't know what he said in his complaint(s), I read one later letter, addressed to the public, translated on juancole.com, where he asserts generalizations, but he didn't name anything which can be investigated (from memory).
    If he named the stations, that would then prompt those observers, at those stations, to speak up, "Now, he's talking about me, and the published count, that's what I observed and certified and signed my name too, he's mistaken, my count was honest, all 14 of us concurred and signed on the dotted line."
    But yes, that's an excellent idea, instead of a 100% recount, contact the 448,000 observers, show them one of the several duplicate originals of the very same form they signed (one duplicate is sealed with the ballots in the box), and ask them, live on camera, if that's their signature and to please read the numbers on the form, the votes for the 4 candidates.
    In this way, one by one, the polling stations, and their box counts, can be validated, live on camera, ticked-off against the published list (which adds to the total vote), box by box. That's good reality TV, get to know your neighbor, who lives in Iran, take-in the sights, follow behind with more TV to ask the locals (in effect) do they trust the 14 observers, or at least one of them, at their polling station, and also the poll workers, ask about them and later ask them, if anything unusual happened about the ballot count, confidence building TV.
    So I nominate your idea and -- on account of its brilliance, its economy (much superior to a recount), and it's promise to settle a serious dispute, by an elegant, rational, and irrefutable method -- I recommend a statute of you be erected in the Garden of the Heroes of the Republic (if there be such a place).
    4. "Allow foreign media and diplomats in to the area to verify independently the facts."
    Careful, you might send Patrick Clawson into quivers, of such extreme delight, he might not recover. Patrick Clawson, he urges the murder of Iran's nuclear workers and the arson of their IAEA safeguarded nuclear facilities, audio 2:17:16 at 1:28:22, 1:31:37.
    And all the while he's talking, the now Vice President of the United States (Joe Biden), he's apparently nodding in agreement. A Nuclear Iran: Challenges and Responses (U.S. Congress 109-2, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, hearing, March 2 2006) {SuDoc Y 4.F 76/2:S.HRG.109-679}.
    32,000 polling stations, 32,000 operatives spread all across Iran, and let's give them some company, make it 64,000. They're drooling, at the promise of it, the dark forces, the troika, U.S., U.K., Israel.
    If Iran did not have a facially fraud-proof balloting system, capable of being audited, by recounts, observers, signed certificates, operated by local citizens, then you would have an argument, that something was needed, to ensure, or at least spur, honest balloting, to provide citizens confidence in the result.
    But Iran already has that.
    What could international observers add to what they already have.
    What would you have them do. -CJ Harwood (Warlaw)
P.S. Karim Sadjadpour (C-Span, Washington Journal, Sunday June 14 2009, 9:33-10:03am), quoted above, the blog won't display the link to the video, but this will search: C-Span video 287009-6

Patrick Clawson (witness) (Senate Hearing 109-679), cited above with a faulty audio link, available from the SFRC hearing page: http://foreign.senate.gov/hearings/2006/hrg060302a1.html
    "On the military side, not my specialty, but let me just suggest that the potential for covert action, and that if we look around the Middle East, the way in which the Israelis stopped the Egyptian missile program in the early 1960s and the initial Israeli efforts against the Iraqi programs were to arrange premature deaths of scientists involved and to take other covert actions.
    The Iranian industrial facilities are highly complex industrial facilities that have been subject already to lots of industrial accidents. If the rate of accidents rose dramatically and that slowed down the Iranian program, that could have quite an impact.
    So, I would hope that if we ever got to that point ofmilitary action the first thing we would try would be things less confrontational like covert actions, because I worry that if we start attacking them they are going to attack us back." {SFRC, audio 2:17:16 at 1:28:22 (Joe Biden's question), 1:31:37}.

CJ Harwood,
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Your argument about the 45,713 ballot boxes holds water only if the election observers can independently audit the votes.
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It also would only hold water if the observers themselves are not co-opted by the regime.
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The reality is, that the regime has refused a full recount.
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As for a published count, sourcing is key. Do you have a site where these votes were published?
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The idea that Iran's voting system is "fraud-proof" seems somewhat speculative given that the NY Times reported that in 50 major cities there were 3 million more votes counted than voters.
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You would think that with such a 'locked system' that the government would have taken its time to actually finish counting the ballots before declaring the winner, mere hours after the polls closed.
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However, just from a forensic accounting point of view, the idea that there was consistent victory figures across voting regions doesn't pass the smell test. Where there's smoke, usually leads investigators to further research.

@ jacobblues
    1. "Your argument about the 45,713 ballot boxes holds water only if the election observers can independently audit the votes."
    No. Their job is to watch the voting and observe the count, and the details of that I don't know, they do this in the U.K., piles of ballots on tables, lots of observers milling around, looking at this and that, what they're doing I don't know, but they know.
    Auditing the votes, that's the poll workers' job, checking the id cards of the voters, getting a signed receipt from them, their fingerprint, stamping their card, so yes, may be, fraudsters could get truckloads of people, with piles of forged id cards, and drive around the country voting multiple times, with some ink removal chemical maybe, some ink repellant system, maybe, to make it easy to remove. Have to do the arithmetic, to see how many you'd need, the more people in the trucks, the more risk some might talk, it's a sensational tale, very tempting to talk about it.
    2. "It also would only hold water if the observers themselves are not co-opted by the regime."
    Exactly, hence 14 observers, not 1 or 2, including one for each candidate, and that's the key safeguard, did Mousavi have a complete compliment (32,000, if VoA is correct about the number of polling stations), and did he trust them. The details of all 14, I have to go and search out again, maybe Mr. Weisbrot's report (cited above) explains it, I can't do that tonight. I recollect maybe 4 of them represent different parts of the government (this and that council, government department), 2 or 3 of them local, not in the government, and did they actually do this at every polling station, or was there a shortage someplaces, easy to investigate, and Mousavi should know about his own observers.
    (I think Mousavi's people lied to him, used him, to provoke him to make bold claims he later discovered he can't back up).
    3. "The reality is, that the regime has refused a full recount."
    Nobody asked for a full recount, the losing candidates ask for a new election, I guess hoping from the turmoil, they might attract more votes next time, in a second round, maybe claim they will be better on human rights.
    But a full recount is a big burden, Mousavi surely could reduce the polling stations in dispute, agree the numbers from his observers, in most polling stations.
    But the guardian council and the leader both said, Mousavi could recount any boxes, polling stations, he doubted, and Mousavi stood mute, refused to cooperate, so they did a 10% recount, I guess a demonstration to their public, of the safeguard methods, the nitty gritty of how they operate when challenged. Mousavi and the others refused to provide observers even for the recount, but they put it on TV, so the public could observe it themselves.
    4. "As for a published count, sourcing is key. Do you have a site where these votes were published?"
    I linked above to professor Walter R. Mebane Jr. (University of Michigan, professor, political science, statistics), his zip file of box counts. He has a lengthy paper as well, analyzing the numbers.
    The counts presumably came from the moi site, I think this is it (moi.ir), reported, http://www.presstv.ir/classic/election2009/detail.aspx?id=98809. The links are to pdf files in Persian and I recollect the professor said (in his paper I guess) that his friend translated it (names of the candidates and ballot districts).
    5. "The idea that Iran's voting system is "fraud-proof" seems somewhat speculative given that the NY Times reported that in 50 major cities there were 3 million more votes counted than voters."
    I agree that 'fraud resistant' is a better description.
    The 50 cities, they have their explanation, sounds persuasive, that any citizen can vote anywhere in the country, not only where s/he is registered (e.g., http://www.presstv.ir/classic/election2009/detail.aspx?id=98726).
    So they have to do some guesswork about where they'll vote. A related superficial indicia of fraud, also much touted by the liars, they have to overprint ballots, for this purpose, more ballots than voters, to oversupply certain places where the voters might be (guesswork, from experience), e.g., university towns, they vote on Friday, a non-work day, so people might go visiting. This time, they printed more ballots even on the day of the vote, the big turnout worried them, that they might run out (http://www.presstv.ir/classic/election2009/detail.aspx?id=97944).
    6. "You would think that with such a 'locked system' that the government would have taken its time to actually finish counting the ballots before declaring the winner, mere hours after the polls closed."
    What they said was -- the chief election official, at a press conference (I think a google translate of an moi page), maybe a report in English on the IRNA site -- they were eager, this time, to report as fast as possible, they had a new, secure, computer system, to report the results from the field, as they were counted, and that's what they did, 5 separate interim reports, roughly every 6 million votes counted.
    But they did not declare the winner (as the liars pretend), until the count was complete, some 14 hours after the polls closed (from memory), they merely reported the interim, accumulating count.
    7. "However, just from a forensic accounting point of view, the idea that there was consistent victory figures across voting regions doesn't pass the smell test. Where there's smoke, usually leads investigators to further research."
    The results are not as you describe them, for example in Tehran city it was 53%-44% Mousavi over Ahmadinejad.
    What you're describing is one of the big lies, via St. Andrews University, a quick report published by Chatham House (a U.K. government funded think tank), they said what you said, using the first released numbers, a summary by region (for example Ahmadinejad won in Tehran province, despite being whipped in Tehran city), the later-released box counts show wide variation, box to box, and render the Chatham House study erroneous and obsolete.
    The Chatham House report was much touted by the liars, part of the blitzkrieg, used by the conspiracy to discredit the election at the outset. As Richard Dalton put it (U.K. ambassador to Iran, 2002-2006), with a full measure of satisfaction:
    "We're never going to reach closure, on interpreting the figures. I commend to you the analysis done by my colleagues at St. Andrews University, published by Chatham House, showing how it's possible to point-up such massive anomalies one can't say it's a fair election." http://www.newamerica.net/events/2009/iran_what_matters_now (NAF, WDC, June 26 2009, 12:30-1:30pm, video/audio at 4:55).
    The Iranians replied with their box-count release, an "up-yours" to Richard Dalton, and to all the good folks at Chatham House.
    Professor Mebane, in his pdf paper, he analyzes the box counts in a statistical way, maybe he touches on your query, I didn't yet study it. -CJ Harwood (Warlaw)

CJHardwood,
I admire your analytical personality and especially your keen interest in this election, as well as your rigidity in stance. However, I ask you again: where are you getting your facts? From the same people alleged to have committed the election fraud? Here, your sources are the same persons accused of rigging the election. This is a flawed logic. Based on the past behavior of the regime and the internal politics of which I am insider, I conclude without uncertainty that Ahmadinejad is a selected President rather than an elected one.
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And again, the more important matter at hand is the real reason why Iranians banded behind the reformists for weeks on end prior to the election. Even if Ahmadinejad continues being the President for four years, if he does not successfully rejuvenate the economy, abolish the moral police mechanisms and give the Iranians unadulterated freedom, the Mullahs will not live to die of old age.