Whether you like it or not …
Sep 22nd, 2009 by pedestrian
A part of our fate lies in the hands of these men:
Today was the sixth meeting of the current Assembly of Experts in Tehran. The assembly holds a diverse body of people.
From MAD:
To my long time crush:
More importantly, a part of our fate will also depend on the ability of the man on the right to negotiate with someone like Ahmad Khatami, the notorious prayer leader who has asked for our execution, on the left:
According to Tabnak:
Mohammad Yazdi, a former head of the judiciary and the man who vocally spoke out against Rafsanjani after his Friday prayer, was absent.
When Rafsanjani was speaking, the room was deathly silent and the members were taking notes.
MAD was sitting in a seat in the corner.
Vaez Tabasi who has also been under attack by Ahmadi & Co. came right at the beginning of Rafsanjani’s speech, and left immediately after.
Some of the members had come with a taxi and not used a chauffeured vehicle.
After Rafsanjani’s speech, Dori Najaf Abadi asked reporters and journalists to leave the room.
MAD looks sheepish here!
What do you expect to come out of this Mullah room? Anything less than disrobing khamenei doesn’t make me happy
LOL … with MAD and Yazdi there, I doubt it … but we can always dream
unrelated, but have you heard of this new poll from the US that finds that 81% of iranians view ahmadinejad as the “legitimate” president of iran?!?!
i think these polls are useless – why do they even try to gauge what’s going on the country?
i wrote a post about it here: http://newestdeal.blogspot.com/2009/09/poll-finds-81-of-iranians-view.html
mass, I have heard of it. And I think it’s rubbish because hardly anyone in Iran would be willing to talk honestly OVER THE TELEPHONE, which many believe to be TAPPED …
(I just read your post, so we are on the same page)
Is there any more news yet from this AoE meeting? And how long does it last, only a day?
Mabe the concrete “actions” were spoken after the journalists had to leave the room..
Shurik, I will update you if I find out anything new!
@ pedestrian and naj: I suppose it is also worth mentioning that, whether we like it or not, there are people and places that matter more than others in Iran. This is something that has been proven time and again during the various political crises that have plagued Iran over the past 100 years or so. Tehran is the key, and the further you radiate outwards the less important it all becomes. All polls, then, should weight their results accordingly (how you would do that, though, I have no idea). There are also some people that for a variety of reasons (apathy, family considerations, age, education, etc.) are largely disconnected from politics and the political process. They might vote but not necessarily for political reasons (i.e. for reasons extending beyond their and their family’s personal interests). These people are the ones who will likely sit in their homes no matter what happens. The people in the various street protests whom today we might refer to as either Greens and Blacks have a stake or want to have a stake in the political process. They are the ones, in the main, who will decide the future direction of Iran. People talk about how the Islamic Revolution was unique because of its levels of mass participation but even there perhaps 10-15% of the population took part in the demonstrations and rallies that led to downfall of the Shah.
I’ve always wondered about the number supp. Is that 10-15% a personal guess or have you seen it somewhere?
Are you referring to the poll too? b/c while I agree with you, and I ALWAYS, ALWAYS wonder how they distributed the phone calls in a diverse country like Iran … this importance of lack of in various place shouldn’t matter in a poll should it?
10-15% is an educated guess. I’m sure someone has done some serious analysis on this (or someone should try to).
Yes, I am referring to the poll. And, yes, I believe that the weighting is crucial if it’s going to be used to gauge the political climate of the country. If it’s completely random, it’s much less useful. I realize that such weighting is perhaps counter-intuitive from a quantitative sociology and survey research perspective but I think it applies in this case. There are places that matter less from a national political standpoint. For example, we’ve had low-level civil war going on in Iranian Kordestan for years now. Baluchestan too. Those conflicts have not (as of yet) made a significant dent in the direction of national politics–unless you want to tie the increasing militarization of the highest levels of government to them. Somehow I think that has more to do with the Iran-Iraq war. No national politician has campaigned on these issues. Similarly, some people count for less in matters of national politics. For example, those who vote for a candidate on threat of violence or firing or those who supposedly voted for Khatami because he was a seyyed. These people are not politically oriented or have been depoliticized. Over time, that may change but if we’re using these polls to gauge the “mood” of the country right now, their effective “non-position” on the issues raised both skews the results and doesn’t show up in the subsequent analysis of them. Some of these folks may be among the 52% who refused to respond but I would assume that a fair number of them did respond, perhaps in affirmation of their “non-position.” I don’t know if that makes sense to anyone. For the time being, though, I’ll just hope that someone figured out what I’m getting at and will perhaps phrase it better than I did.
supp, I definitely agree with you that a “random” poll throughout Iran wouldn’t work in any way. And I think you put it very well.
But in a decent poll (and I’m not being overtly idealistic here) there needs to be some sort of random sampling in EACH community. Now this “community” has to be smaller than one province. I’m from khuzestan, and there we have dozens of different groups that would each need to be sampled.
But here I think is where the poll could be split in two polls. One, is what you mention which would give a good overview of who believes what, where it matters a poll which will show the social/political landscape of Iran in the sense of which players might determine the future. We will need to consider some sort of additional weight for certain responses and/or communities.
The second poll would factor out “those who matter” bit, and come up with what Iranians feel as a whole – whether they voted for Khatami for being seyed or whether or not they wish to play a role in future events. It would draw out a good map of Iran as a whole.
I think these are essential two polls, not one.
Assembly of Experts concludes meeting without chairman Rafsanjani
http://www.payvand.com/news/09/sep/1263.html
What does that mean now? And why was Rafsanjani absent? To me it looks like he doesn’t agree with the statement.
Shurik, there’s a little debate on whether he left or was absent from the beginning. And apparently Ahmad Khatami insisted that every last word of the statement was approved by him …
But his absence says a lot.
But as always, with Rafsanjani, we can only interpret.
I guess we should never have expected to much from a mostly hand picked gremium by the SL.
Here an update on why Rafsanjani and others walked out (if that’s really true I cannot confirm):
http://mikverbrugge.tumblr.com/post/195773513/source-on-rafsanjani-and-khobregan-fiasco
Shurik, who is mikverbrugge? credible?
Well I wish I could tell. He has some good stories and claims he has contacts to sources close to Rafsanjani and also in the army.
What I can tell is that some stories he predicted became true later and some stories not. Hard to tell. But I wouldn’t ignore it at the moment.
Shurik, thanks for the info!