Mebane: Signs of Fraud on Iran Presidential Election

A report by the Michigan Professor

Walter R. Mebane Jr, the election forensics expert who continues to wade through the official vote count from the Iranian elections has his starkest conclusion yet: that there was "extensive ballot box stuffing on Ahmadinejad's behalf."

The title of report is "Note on the presidential election in Iran" and you can find it in 27 pages here.

Mebane, a professor of political science and statistics in the University of Michigan, then goes further, suggesting that "[w]ithout the ballot-box stuffing fraud ... the election outcome should have been at least a runoff between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi." In his latest update on a report on the Iranian election Mebane added"There are suspicious elements here, but there's no solid evidence of fraud."

Mebane concludes that, "Tests such as those considered in this paper can in general only identify places where there may be problems with the votes. In some places the suggestions may be extremely strong (e.g., for recent Russian elections, see Mebane and Kalinin 2009). In general the tests’ best use is for screening election results, not confirming or refuting claims of fraud. A significant finding should prompt investigations using administrative records, witness testimony and other facts to try to determine what happened."

Mebane most striking conclusion is: "The problem with the 2009 Iranian election is that the serious questions that have been raised are unlikely to receive satisfactory answers. Transparency is utterly lacking in this case. There is little reason to believe the official results announced in that election accurately reflect the intentions of the voters who went to the polls."

Find the original report@University of Michigan

Survey of official Iran results casts serious doubt on victory claims

a report by Chatham House
21 June 2009
Authors:
Ali Ansari, Daniel Berman and Thomas Rintoul,

A survey of Iran's election results, published today by Chatham House and the University of St Andrews, raises serious questions about the plausibility of the claimed victory and demonstrates irregularities in the official results.

According to this report:
Even the official statistics - obtained from the Ministry of the Interior - indicate that:

*
votes cast exceeded the number of eligible voters in two provinces
*
claims that Ahmadinejad swept the board in rural provinces flies in the face of previous results

The plausibility of Mr Ahmadinejad's claimed victory is called into question by figures that show that in several provinces he would have had to attract the votes of all new voters, all the votes of his former centrist opponent, and up to 44% of those who voted for reformist candidates in 2005.

Irregularities are found in conservative Mazandaran and Yazd provinces where votes cast exceeded the number of eligible voters.

Professor Ali Ansari said: 'The analysis shows that the scale of the swing to Ahmadinejad would have had to have been extraordinary to achieve the stated result'.

Thomas Rintoul said: 'The claimed results in minority provinces are particularity extreme, the numbers from Ilam, Lorestan and Hormozegan almost defy belief".

Read paper @ Chatham House

Download the report here

CSIS report: An Israeli strike against Iran would lack any success

A report by CSIS in Washington

During the last several months, the Burke Chair has carried out a detailed examination of Iran’s programs involving missile and weapons of mass destruction. The key drafts involved are available on the CSIS web site at:
http://www.csis.org/burke/reports/
A final comprehensive report will be published this summer as CSIS book by the Praeger Press.

In this detailed, 114-page assessment of how Israel could attack Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, conducted by Abdullah Toukan and Anthony Cordesman at the U.S.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. Cordesman is a military analyst and a former national security adviser to Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona.


Haaretz recently dissects this report but according to Haaretz:

“One of the conclusions from Toukan and Cordesman’s study is that it is questionable whether Israel has the military capability to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, or even to delay it for several years. Therefore, if the diplomatic contacts the Obama administration is initiating with Iran prove useless, and if in the wake of their expected failure the American president does not decide to attack Iran, it is likely that Iran will possess nuclear weapons in a relatively short time. It seems, therefore, that policy makers in Jerusalem should begin preparing, mentally and operationally, for a situation in which Iran is a nuclear power with a strike capability against Israel.

This is the place to emphasize Israel’s mistake in hyping the Iranian threat. The regime in Tehran is certainly a bitter and inflexible rival, but from there it’s a long way to presenting it as a truly existential threat to Israel. Iran’s involvement in terror in our region is troubling, but a distinction must be made between a willingness to bankroll terrorists, and an intention to launch nuclear missiles against Israel. Even if Iran gets nuclear weapons, Israel’s power of deterrence will suffice to dissuade any Iranian ruler from even contemplating launching nuclear weapons against it.”

Find the report @ CSIS

main report in PDF @ CSIS

In Search of female prisoner 650 in the US custody

Press release:
Press TV Exclusive: First TV interview with Binyam Mohammed on The Agenda show, Thursday 2 April.

Torture victim, Binyam Mohammed has given his very first TV interview since his release from Guantanamo in February. In the interview with Press TV he makes sensational claims about the plight of female detainees caught up in the war on terror.

His dramatic eyewitness account was aired this week on The Agenda, a lively political discussion show hosted by journalist, Yvonne Ridley.

When President Obama took office in January he promised his administration would be the most transparent in US history.

Yet, the British resident and former detainee reveals he is "one hundred per cent" convinced that a female detainee he saw during his captivity in Bagram prison is the elusive Dr Aafiya Siddiqui.

This contradicts the official position forwarded by the US Government that she and her children were not in US custody prior to July 2008.

Press TV’s robust investigations have eventually secured a major retraction from both The Pentagon and the Bagram media centre, after they were originally not so forthcoming.

Mohammed made the comment during a private screening of a Press TV documentary - In Search of Prisoner 650 - which premieres on Sunday, April 5, charting the investigation into the intriguing case of Aafiya Siddiqui.

The Agenda was broadcast on Thursday 2nd April at 9:06 GMT; and repeated on Friday 3rd April at 1:06 GMT and 2:33 GMT.
The footage is available on The Agenda website

The first part of the documentary film In Search of Prisoner 650 will be broadcast on Sunday April 5 at 1:33 GMT, and then repeated at 6:33 GMT, 12:33 GMT and 17:33 GMT. The second part going out on Monday, April 6 at 12:33 GMT, then repeated at 5:33 GMT, 11:33 GMT and 16:33 GMT.

Press TV is on Sky channel 515 or live stream online at www.presstv.co.uk. Agenda info desk: +44 20 8728 6461 and email at theagenda@presstv.com or the agenda@presstv.co.uk

British Jewish MP denounces Israelis war criminals

Sir Gerald Kaufmann, a Jewish MP, denounces Israeli leaders as war criminals



On his speech at the British parliament recently he said: "Israel was born out of Jewish Terrorism" Tzipi Livnis Father was a Terrorist" Astonishing claims in the Hous of Parliamnet. SIR Gerald Kaufman, the veteran Labour MP, yesterday compared the actions of Israeli troops in Gaza to the Nazis who forced his family to flee Poland.

During a Commons debate on the fighting in Gaza, on Thursday 15th January he urged the UK government to impose an arms embargo on Israel.

Sir Gerald, who was brought up as an orthodox Jew and Zionist, said: "My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town a German soldier shot her dead in her bed.

"My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians."

He said the claim that many of the Palestinian victims were militants "was the reply of the Nazi" and added: "I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants."

He accused the Israeli government of seeking "conquest" and added: "

They are not simply war criminals, they are fools."

more @ setfree68

Majority of Gazans are refugees of Israel occupation

Majority of the 1.5 million Gazans are refugees of Israel occupation

Rashid Khalidi
New York Times
7 January 2009,

NEARLY everything you’ve been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Below are a few essential points that seem to be missing from the conversation, much of which has taken place in the press, about Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip.


Most of the people living in Gaza are not there by choice. The majority of the 1.5 million people crammed into the roughly 140 square miles of the Gaza Strip belong to families that came from towns and villages outside Gaza like Ashkelon and Beersheba. They were driven to Gaza by the Israeli Army in 1948.

THE OCCUPATION The Gazans have lived under Israeli occupation since the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel is still widely considered to be an occupying power, even though it removed its troops and settlers from the strip in 2005. Israel still controls access to the area, imports and exports, and the movement of people in and out. Israel has control over Gaza’s air space and sea coast, and its forces enter the area at will. As the occupying power, Israel has the responsibility under the Fourth Geneva Convention to see to the welfare of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip.

THE BLOCKADE Israel’s blockade of the strip, with the support of the United States and the European Union, has grown increasingly stringent since Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in January 2006. Fuel, electricity, imports, exports and the movement of people in and out of the Strip have been slowly choked off, leading to life-threatening problems of sanitation, health, water supply and transportation.

The blockade has subjected many to unemployment, penury and malnutrition. This amounts to the collective punishment — with the tacit support of the United States — of a civilian population for exercising its democratic rights.

THE CEASE-FIRE Lifting the blockade, along with a cessation of rocket fire, was one of the key terms of the June cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. This accord led to a reduction in rockets fired from Gaza from hundreds in May and June to a total of less than 20 in the subsequent four months (according to Israeli government figures). The cease-fire broke down when Israeli forces launched major air and ground attacks in early November; six Hamas operatives were reported killed.

WAR CRIMES The targeting of civilians, whether by Hamas or by Israel, is potentially a war crime. Every human life is precious. But the numbers speak for themselves: Nearly 700 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed since the conflict broke out at the end of last year. In contrast, there have been around a dozen Israelis killed, many of them soldiers. Negotiation is a much more effective way to deal with rockets and other forms of violence. This might have been able to happen had Israel fulfilled the terms of the June cease-fire and lifted its blockade of the Gaza Strip.

This war on the people of Gaza isn’t really about rockets. Nor is it about “restoring Israel’s deterrence,” as the Israeli press might have you believe. Far more revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.”

Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia, is the author of the forthcoming “Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East."

main article @ NY Times

US should normalise low-level diplomatic relations with Iran

CFR Experts argued
20 Decemebr 08

As the Obama administration prepares to confront the challenges presented by Iran’s nuclear program, a new report co-authored by Council on Foreign Relations scholar Ray Takeyh and Brookings’ Suzanne Maloney advocates setting a new course for U.S.-Iranian relations. The report, titled “A New U.S. Policy toward Iran,” argues:

“The Obama administration may be tempted to take the easy way out by offering merely new rhetoric and modest refinements to the carrot-and-stick approach that has failed its five predecessors. This would be a mistake. Today, to deal effectively with a rising Iran, the United States must embark on a far deeper reevaluation of its strategy and launch a comprehensive diplomatic initiative to attempt to engage its most enduring Middle Eastern foe.”

The authors recommend “normalizing low-level diplomatic relations so that the U.S. government can gain familiarity with Iranian officials and achieve a better understanding of Iranian political dynamics. American officials are currently forbidden from direct contact with their Iranian counterparts, a stipulation that further degrades the already limited capacity of the U.S. government to interpret Iran.”

This report is part of the recently-published Saban Center at Brookings and Council on Foreign Relations book titled Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President. More information about the book can be found here: www.cfr.org/restoring_the_balance.

view the full text @ CFR