Somebody Check Jim Baker's Passport!

We could, perhaps, use the byline for this, and include "Cleveland, Iran".

It is being reported, from credible sources, that the Iranian Election this weekend makes the Bush Cronies robbery of 2000 (and 2004) look like stealing lunch money.



The Iranian branch of election-fixers haven't even bothered to wink-and-nod ...

Is Mir Hosain Mousavi in the process of becoming the Iranian Al Gore?

Are the Iranian Ayatollahs adios?

Allah O Akbar!

You could, it appears, alter the infamous Apocalypse Now line to "I love the smell of a fixed election ... It smells like revolution!"

It's hard to grab the narrative here, with so much still very fluid, as to the news going on inside, and coming out of, Iran.

So, we're just going to lightly riff here, and point you to a whole, great bevy of posts (and, you can go out to Memeorandum, for a cavalcade more).

Not surprising, Al Giordano has his finger-on-the-pulse, and a great headline - A World at the Edge of Its Seat;

That this video made it out of the country and on to the Internet this morning tells you everything you need to know about the difference between the youth uprising in China's Tienanmen Square twenty years ago this month - quashed with a massacre - and what is possible in Iran. Today, the world is wired from the bottom up: personal video cameras, cell phones, text messages, YouTube and the Internet in all its manifestations. Whatever is happening right now in Iran will not be easily swept under the Persian rug.

Andrew Sullivan points out that "The Revolution Will Be Twittered", and, in another, pointed out by a reader, that "Iran is headed for civil war."

"Tehran Burning", according to Libby Spencer, on the Impolitic, who then points to some great videos over on Michael Totten's blog, who notes that "The BBC says clashes between demonstrators and police in Tehran are the most violent in a decade."



There are also reports that Mousavi has been arrested (or has been placed in "house arrest).

Salon has a post up, from "Anonymous" on what's going down in Iran.

Juan Cole has a great read in "Stealing the Iranian Election" (and another, on Salon), as does Gary Sick, with his "Iran's political coup".

First, Cole;

As the real numbers started coming into the Interior Ministry late on Friday, it became clear that Mousavi was winning. Mousavi's spokesman abroad, filmmaker Mohsen Makhbalbaf, alleges that the ministry even contacted Mousavi's camp and said it would begin preparing the population for this victory.

The ministry must have informed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has had a feud with Mousavi for over 30 years, who found this outcome unsupportable. And, apparently, he and other top leaders had been so confident of an Ahmadinejad win that they had made no contingency plans for what to do if he looked as though he would lose.

They therefore sent blanket instructions to the Electoral Commission to falsify the vote counts.

Now, Sick;

The current election appears to repudiate both of those rules. The authorities were faced with a credible challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, who had the potential to challenge the existing power structure on certain key issues. He ran a surprisingly effective campaign, and his “green wave” began to be seen as more than a wave. In fact, many began calling it a Green Revolution. For a regime that has been terrified about the possibility of a “velvet revolution,” this may have been too much.

• On the basis of what we know so far, here is the sequence of events starting on the afternoon of election day, Friday, June 12.
• Near closing time of the polls, mobile text messaging was turned off nationwide
• Security forces poured out into the streets in large numbers
• The Ministry of Interior (election headquarters) was surrounded by concrete barriers and armed men
• National television began broadcasting pre-recorded messages calling for everyone to unite behind the winner
• The Mousavi campaign was informed officially that they had won the election, which perhaps served to temporarily lull them into complacency
• But then the Ministry of Interior announced a landslide victory for Ahmadinejad
• Unlike previous elections, there was no breakdown of the vote by province, which would have provided a way of judging its credibility
• The voting patterns announced by the government were identical in all parts of the country, an impossibility (also see the comments of Juan Cole at the title link)
• Less than 24 hours later, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamene`i publicly announced his congratulations to the winner, apparently confirming that the process was complete and irrevocable, contrary to constitutional requirements
• Shortly thereafter, all mobile phones, Facebook, and other social networks were blocked, as well as major foreign news sources

[snip]

In their own paranoia and hunger for power, the leaders of Iran have insulted their own fellow revolutionaries who have come to have second thoughts about absolute rule and the costs of repression, and they may have alienated an entire generation of future Iranian leaders. At the same time, they have provided an invaluable gift to their worst enemies abroad.

Steve Clemons, on The Washington Note, has two great posts up - "Iran: There Will Be Blood" and "Anatomy of Iran's Right Wing Coup", while Ali Frick, at Think Progress points out that the Right Wing Freak Show is blaming Obama, for Ahmadinejad, and the entire fraud election.

Lastly, the Guardian UK has an excellent article - "The Iranian election controversy: what happens now?" - that lays out, succinctly, the happenings, what's going to happen, if that can be predicted at this particular moment.

It would appear, that the Iran its' citizens woke up to today, and the many mornings to come, is going to be vastly different than the Iran that was in place before this heisted election.

As we noted above, to stay on top of this, go to Memeorandum, for the newest reports and posts.

And, you gotta be thinking, that somewhere, wherever they are, James Baker, and, perhaps, Katherine Harris, have bags packed, and placed near the door, possibly expecting a long-distance phone call, saying they are needed, pronto, and to bring the whole team over, the Ayatollah's want the Deluxe Bag Job, now that they have, seemingly, screwed up the basic intro package.

Or, maybe, the Carlyle Group will dispatch him ...

Yes, Allah O Akbar ...

From the rooftops ...

Bonus Cleveland, Iran Heisted Election Links

Steve Hynd: Still Confused About The Iranian Election

Nate Silver: Statistical Report Purporting to Show Rigged Iranian Election Is Flawed

Juan Cole: Class v. Culture Wars in Iranian Elections: Rejecting Charges of a North Tehran Fallacy

Jill: The Iranians are not sitting idly by and watching their election be stolen by right-wing thugs

Digby: Iran

Brad: Memo to the Iranians