In my opinion, the main question is still this: Was the vote actually rigged? We still haven't seen that definite piece of evidence or heard that one statement...and as it is we're very unlikely to. I'm not a history buff or anything, but I've never heard of a government admitting to something like that no fewer than 20 to 30 years after the fact.
So the evidence that supports election rigging is widely available, but I want to point you to an article that has been discussed on the news by Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty which suggests that Ahmadinejad may have actually won the election fairly. The strange thing is, even if he really was favored by most Iranians, why were the results of an election with almost 40,000,000 paper votes announced two hours after the polls closed? That is the main one that sticks out to me, but there are still others. Something is definitely really, really fishy here...that's all I'll say.
Anyway, here's a response to the Ballen and Doherty article. The crappy thing is, everyone on both sides here actually makes pretty good points, and now the situation is getting more complicated as people are accusing the press as well as each other of ulterior motives as they either support the protesters (which means you must be an imperialist!) or assert that the protesters might be protesting in vain (which means you must be an asshole!). My parentheses are pretty much directly from readers' comments; occasionally there is wisdom in there, but alas, often there is not.
Anyway, the BBC has an analysis up which is important and answers a few of our questions while we wait for the truth to come forward.
There are reports going around that on IRIB Channel 2 (a channel inside Iran), the head of the Guardian Council announced that he received a letter from the Supreme Leader asking him to investigate fraud in the election. He vows to send Khameini the results of his investigation in 10 days time. 10 days, eh? So...you can just make what you will of that. I probably don't need to say anything else. Except for that 10 days when you're holding public demonstrations and getting the snot beaten out of you by police is a pretty long time.
Oh, one more thing: Obama has spoken, and it was great. Check it:
Obviously, all of us have been watching the news from Iran. And I want to start by being very clear that it is up to Iranians to make decisions about who Iran’s leaders will be, that we respect Iranian sovereignty, and want to avoid the United States being the issue inside of Iran...
Obama, you are the man and that's why I voted for you.
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