Wampum

New readers, this part 5 in a series. The most recent prior installment is Part (4), Part (3) has links to Parts 2 and 1. 789.

Old readers, I'm going to continue the update format, top-posting. viz [now][old][older][the press].

[Update 2/22 7am EST: Xinhua ran a good process piece, devoid of all the outcomes and actors. Most of the press has the "two elections" story, conservatives win on ballots cast, and reformers win on ballots not cast.]

[Update 2/21 7am EST: APF reports reformists may retain about 60 to 100 seats. 10:45am EST: I get my first piece of unsollicited mail from the underground radical Islamic organization Hizb-ut-Tahrir in Central Asia. Gosh a mickle and dill a pickle, now I'm probably on one of John Ashcroft's little black lists, just when I was booking a flight to Rome to moan to ever-supine ICANN about Verisign's latest attempt to sack the Net o' the West. Oh, they want help getting rid of Musharraf. Replace Generals with Mullahs. Everyone's agenda for the 21st Century. Not. Still, more entertaining than the usual Nigerian 419 traffic.]

[Update 2/20 6pm EST: "At polling stations in Tehran, some observers said turnout was lower on February 20 than it was for last year’s municipal election, when under 12 percent of eligible voters cast ballots. In many cities, shops remained closed throughout the day and streets were virtually empty. At dusk, the streets filled with people celebrating the boycott’s seeming success."
That from Eurasianet.org, so it is clear that in Tehran the conservatives failed, with all the resources at their disposal. Whether it is true or not, the fraud story has legs -- lots of them. The military is voting often. That's the kind of story you simply can't buy at the K Street K-Mart.]

[Update 2/20 11am EST: Voting is extended at least an additional 30 minutes, now that is a nice touch. It isn't just here in Oceania that the President is fabricating evidence to support war and domestic violence ... er ... vigilence. In Eurasia ... Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati (Sec. Guardian Council) delivered the following in today's sermon: "each ballot cast will fire a bullet into the heart of Bush". These guys should get together and free up one speach writer for something less redundant.]

[Update 2/20 4am EST: The candidate-stepped-down count is now at 1,179. The IIRC offices are sealed and its website is down. Next to go may be the Participation Front, led by the president’s brother, Mohammad Reza Khatami, and the Mujahideen of the Islamic Revolution Party. The WaPo has a nice piece on the last hours at Yas-e Nou.]

[Update 2/19 8pm EST: Albawaba.com reports that the number of candidates who have stepped down has risen to 888.]

[Apropos of nothing in particular, I've been ignoring the Bush Whitehouse's next slice of Niger Yellow Cake, but the sock puppets at VOA have Scott McClellan's on record that ``the Bush administration has "serious concerns" about reports that inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency have found previously undisclosed equipment in Iran that could be used to enrich uranium.'' First, under the IAEA rules, the equipment disclosure requirement is triggered when the gear gets dirty, not when its not, and the IAEA pointed out that the gear wasn't dirty. Second, the Bush Whitehouse passed on the NPT. Third, the rational "got fossil fuel, so all use of fissiles is weaponry" is wierd. Fourth, see the piece I posted on Lisa English's Ruminate This. Hold on to the handrails if the spinning makes you dizzy.]

[Update: 2/19, 4pm EST: Writing in Eurasianet.org, Ardeshir Moaveni has a good summary of the facts on the ground, both in the capital and outside. If you are going to read anything in the next 24 hours about Iran and the elections, from the Beeb/Reuters to NYT/WaPo, read this instead. This is what every educated person should know, not too little, and not too much, and no attempt to simplify or deconstruct the actors.]

Base: Elections in Iran are Friday. Yesterday the Letter-of-the-Hundred (my name for it) was made public. It is unsigned, but there are a hundred signatories. Jokes about Occulted Imams are not inappropriate at this point.

I need to steal some free time and write about what I think is the crux of the issue, the "conservative vs reform" and/or "secular vs clerical" dicotomies, which really are projections of the dominant trans-Atlantic culture's transition from one faith to another, is a dull mirror. [Do not wander into an extended essay on the limitations of Dualism in European discourse, or otherwise try to show off indigenous intellecutalism, which is a closely held secret. Keep the twenty cents. Ed] Speaking for the SCOTUS, Ayatollah Rehnquist ruled that the municipal elections committees of Miami-Dade were deviating from the Line of the Imam and were correctly arrested by Florida Provincial Executive Jeb Bush (younger son of the former Shah George Herbert Walker Bush), after the intervention of the American Revolutionary Guard Corps (ARGC - Pasdaran-e Inglish-qibab), dispatched by the Mullahs of the Lower House, lead by Mullah Tom DeLay ... It doesn't work. There are similarities, but it isn't As you like it, being performed by a sequence of high school drama clubs.

With that agreement with the future, here is what I know today. Two days ago the existance of the letter became public. The letter is consistent with the statement of Abu al-Fazl Rauf, et alia, that the legal basis for the acts authorized by Ayatollah Khamenei does not exist. Reuters caught the "violate[s] the legitimate freedoms and rights of the people" line, without catching the theological nuance, as if all the actors in this were differeing civil libertarians, rather than all or almost all, differeing Shi'i clerics.

Two newspapers published the letter, Yas-e Nou and Sharq yesterday. Today they were closed. I'll update as time and events conspire.

There is a wicked funny piece in what was the last, or next to last edition of Yas-e Nou, which is available here, at World Press Review On-Line. Read it and grin.