An unlikely argument for a corrupted vote count in Iran

Behind the Washington Post’s  free membership screen you will find this.

“The Devil is in the Digits” is an article that attempts to explain why the Iranian vote count may be fraudulent. It has to be one of  the more bizarre things written about this election. The premise is that it is difficult for people to make up numbers.  So if numbers are made up, they will have a disproportionate frequency. Either too many or too few. I cite:

The numbers look suspicious. We find too many 7s and not enough 5s in the last digit. We expect each digit (0, 1, 2, and so on) to appear at the end of 10 percent of the vote counts. But in Iran’s provincial results, the digit 7 appears 17 percent of the time, and only 4 percent of the results end in the number 5. Two such departures from the average — a spike of 17 percent or more in one digit and a drop to 4 percent or less in another — are extremely unlikely. Fewer than four in a hundred non-fraudulent elections would produce such numbers.

Oh, hooey. Any good cheater knows that you don’t make up the beginning numbers or the ending numbers, you make up the middle ones. The authors practically refute their own assertion when they compare Obama and McCain’s results and tell you “ The frequencies of last digits in these election returns never rise above 14 percent or fall below 6 percent,…” Oh, perhaps I should get excited by a 3% difference between Obama and Ahmadenijad’s results but I just cannot.

But that’s not all. Psychologists have also found that humans have trouble generating non-adjacent digits (such as 64 or 17, as opposed to 23) as frequently as one would expect in a sequence of random numbers. To check for deviations of this type, we examined the pairs of last and second-to-last digits in Iran’s vote counts. On average, if the results had not been manipulated, 70 percent of these pairs should consist of distinct, non-adjacent digits.

Not so in the data from Iran: Only 62 percent of the pairs contain non-adjacent digits. This may not sound so different from 70 percent, but the probability that a fair election would produce a difference this large is less than 4.2 percent. And while our first test — variation in last-digit frequencies — suggests that Rezai’s vote counts are the most irregular, the lack of non-adjacent digits is most striking in the results reported for Ahmadinejad.

This kind of logic must be trendy and fashionable. I see it often. I suppose I should get all googly-eyed and go “oooooohhh” but I can’t.  (Or alternatively: OMG, its is 62% instead of 70%! The sky is falling !)

Well, we should all have deduced by now that  this article has as much truth in it as the The DaVinci Code and National Treasure movies. I might even believe that is where the idea came from….62% of the time.

And, finally, does anyone think that “generating non-adjacent digits (such as 64 or 17, as opposed to 23) as frequently as one would expect in a sequence of random numbers” might just be an English language issue that does  not exist in Farsi? If anyone can show that these made-up-number theories are true for multiple languages, let me know.

Call me skeptical on this …about 62% of the time based upon the frequency of the letter ‘e’ in this posting which represents a 2-3% deviation from accepted blog postings on other topics unrelated to actual vote fraud.

Disclaimer: This blog posting is intended for purposes of comparison only and actual results may vary.

A Good Decision Today

I wrote previously that it was a bad decision to invite members of the Iranian government to the  4th of July celebration in the US.

As recently as yesterday, a colleague and I were talking about Iran and I stated my opposition to their invitation. I said that Obama should disinvite them for their actions toward the demonstrators.

Today President Obama did exactly that. Huzzah!

“Given the events of the past many days, those invitations will no longer be extended,” Mr. Gibbs said.

For those who do not know, the US has been in a cold war with Iran for over thirty years. The government leads  chants in the streets every Friday night for the destruction of  the US and of Israel. This is a totalitarian regime that uses religion and hate to focus the energies of the country on retribution,  revenge, and domination.

I am not speaking of the Persian people but the government of Iran.

Kudos to Obama for demonstrating some forcefulness towards our enemies.  Although I would like to have Iran as a friend,  it is never  time to treat them that way until they become one.

This is a bad idea: FBI and CIA

 Obama’s proposal of combo teams of CIA and FBI cannot possibly be real.

The task force charged with fleshing out President Obama’s ban on torture in interrogations is likely to recommend the creation of small, mixed-agency teams for interviewing the most important terrorist targets. Representing an implicit demotion of the CIA, which currently has responsibility for interrogating high-level terrorists, the teams would report jointly to the attorney general and the director of national intelligence, according to officials familiar with the proposal.

The teams are the brainchild of three members of the Intelligence Science Board, a panel that reports to the director of national intelligence: forensic psychologist Robert Fein, former Deputy Attorney General Philip Heymann and former CIA official John MacGaffin. About five years ago, the three security experts began researching the available social science literature concerning interrogations in a variety of nations, including the United States, France, the United Kingdom and Japan, in order to inform a humane and effective interrogation regimen.

As I said before teaching the police to torture is not a good idea. And if I did not say it before , then let me say it now.

Look,  torture should not be a systematized, trained, and studied process by any government for any reason. A country may need to use torture in some backroom in Morocco, however,  that should remain a clandestine, whispered event and not the foundation for  joint work teams of police and intelligence. This is  the stuff of secret police networks and totalitarianism.

I hope this goes nowhere.

A thought on Iran

The demonstrations in the streets of Tehran will make it difficult for those who wish to bomb Iran.

Eighteen months ago John McCain is singing “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran” to the Beach Boys’ song “Barbara Ann”. Today he is saying that President Obama is not speaking strongly in favor of the protesters.

I guess it was okay to kill a few Iranians last year but now today some of them have American potential. Is Sen. McCain still advocating bombing Iran?

In which I disagree with TChris at Talk Left…

The detainees who want to plead guilty are apparently motivated by the allure of martyrdom. The desire to be a martyr (particularly after a prolonged and isolated incarceration) might convince a detainee to plead guilty despite his actual innocence. An innocent detainee shouldn’t be executed even if that’s his wish.

Oh, I don’t know. I might have to think about that. Ok, done.

I have a different standard to go by than many others and I think it is a reasonable one.

“We should believe people who say they want to kill us and then prevent that from happening.” That is a reasonable standard to go by, don’t you think?

So in the case of foreigners  (let me emphasize this: not US citizens) who have averred their hatred for all things US and have stated that they wish to destroy America and have  aspired to achieve martyrdom , then perhaps we should have three final military commission  rulings: guilty and execute, innocent and set free, and, perhaps, ‘innocent but pled guilty, however,  execute anyway  for martyrdom fulfillment’. Helping one to achieve his  full potential is very American. I think that this might be the right approach for those that wish to kill us and be martyred while doing so.

I know that TChris sees that a military commission might not have the same protections for innocents as a civil trial. And I see that he is working mighty hard to hammer out a solution to prevent innocent people from pleading guilty in order to be killed by the Great Satan for their own God.  But, IMHO we should not overthink this. Death by martyrdom appears to be a reasonable solution for both sides.

U.S.  citizens would, of course,  be treated differently. A U.S. citizen that wants to kill Americans and destroy America should not be executed but be given two or three life sentences  in the Alabama State Penitentiary system. Although the inmates may be criminals of the worst kind, they draw the line at Americans who hate America. It seems to me they would provide an intervention or two to a US citizen who hates America and possibly convince him that he should Love America or Leave it…possibly in a horizontal position… and before his first life sentence has run its course.

S.1100 and HR 2346 Sec 1305: Cover Your Butt Legislation

S.1100
Title: A bill to provide that certain photographic records relating to the treatment of any individual engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside the United States shall not be subject to disclosure under section 552 of title 5, United States Code (commonly referred to as the Freedom of Information Act).
Sponsor: Sen Lieberman, Joseph I. [CT] (introduced 5/20/2009)

There you have it. The official “let’s make it a law so we don’t have to deal with it anymore” and the “pass-the-freakin’ -buck-approach” to withholding the detainee abuse photos.

This is a huge secrecy bill designed to circumvent the Freedom of Information Act as well as to protect people from criminal prosecution for  their roles during the Bus, Cheney, and Yoo Torture Years.

This is  a heinous piece of legislation designed to thwart the release of detainee torture pictures.

I know what you are thinking. You are thinking ”Hey RC, didn’t you just support the President when he refused to release the photos of detainee abuse?” 

Yes, I certainly did. But  there is a huge difference between a tactical delay of a few days , weeks, months , and even years and of crafting a law that will: 1. Make it against the law to release the photos, and 2. Prevent citizens from suing in court to have them released.

To prevent you from knowing the truth, the evil-doers are  removing evidence of possible war crimes and/or malfeasance by US government personnel. This is a cover-your-butt attempt to prevent possible criminal prosecution before you know what evil was committed.

I was once ambivalent about congressional hearings on torture but this has  just changed my mind. I want them now that I know somebody wants to keep things secret.

I hope this piece of legislation is just Lieberman being Lieberman. I would not want to hear that the Executive Branch put him up to this.

This is a bad idea…

President Obama has invited Iranian officials to the Fourth of July celebrations.  ReasonableCitizen believes this is wrong, it is premature, and it will invoke the highest disdain and disgust for the Obama Administration.

There is something personal about celebrating the liberation of America from Great Britain. Yes, there is the ceremonial fireworks but more than that this is a family get together and Obama has invited those who are fighting against us to our party. Obama made this political. Nobody will like it.

This is a seriously wrong move. Nobody invites the Crips/Hell’s Angels/ KKK/ Skinheads/ Nazis  to a block party do they? Then why would anyone invite the Iranians?

Twisted Blogger Thinking about Terrorists

Update below original post…

I  don’t know what happened but somewhere, somehow, people became twisted in their thinking about enemy combatants, terrorists, or whatever other name you wish to attribute to those who wish us harm. Specifically, the enemy combatants  at Guantanamo have raised everyone’s hackles.

I am fairly certain that logic applies at Guantanamo so I will venture to say that Gitmo contains: people who hate America and wish to kill Americans,  people who fought America because they were part of some group and not because they hate Americans, people who hate Americans but have  never performed a violent act, people innocently caught up in the events but cannot be released for a variety of reasons, and finally people who were turned in as terrorists but are not.

In this posting, the author at Crooks and Liars  agrees with Digby’s asinine allegation that :

There are literally tens of thousands of potential terrorists all over the world who could theoretically harm America. We cannot protect ourselves from that possibility by keeping the handful we have in custody locked up forever, whether in Guantanamo or some Super Max prison in the US. It’s patently absurd to obsess over these guys like it makes us even the slightest bit safer to have them under indefinite lock and key so they “can’t kill Americans.”

 This is a bizarre  argument that ‘because other terrorists exist that we should release the ones we have’.  And it is a false argument that we cannot keep them under lock and key. Of  course we can. We have millions of prisoners under lock and key to protect Americans already. (See update below.)

The issue is a mature  ”sorting out” process to ensure that the we have, as far as possible, identified those who wish us harm and we have taken measures to neutralize them. And that does not mean to indiscriminately kill them.  

Glen Greenwald’s and Will Bunch’s  fear (cited in the article)  that we would indefinitely lock people up without trial and the resultant ’sky is falling on America’s Bill of Rights’ appears overdone.

We should believe those who wish to kill us and take appropriate action. If they have killed Americans they should not be let go; if they hate us and have the desire and probable  means to kill us they should not be let go, and if they merely hate us then they should be released. And we should err on the side of releasing too many rather than too few.

I think that a military tribunal process is appropriate and, if these combatants are a viable risk to Americans they should not be let go until they are no longer a threat. Instead of indefinite, I would say an ’indeterminate’ amount of incarceration is appropriate. ‘Indeterminate’ detention with regular and periodic reviews of the reasons for continued detention and with the burden of proof on demonstrable reasons why detention  should be continued. 

We should not allow people in our custody considered to be a threat to Americans to be  simply  let go because there are others like them in the world. Nor should we be afraid to indeterminately  incarcerate those who wish us harm and have the means to do so.   We need a viable sorting out process and then  regular reviews of  the conditions to prevent their release to harm others.

Update 1:  Here is a list of terrorist plots prevented in the US since 9-11. Perhaps Digby thinks we should set these people free also? After all, there are still terrorists out there…

Torture Pics

Gratutitous release of pics makes no sense. Obama made a good call.

Use of pics in congressional review of Executive Branch excesses between 2001 and 2008 is entirely appropriate.

Documenting the establishment of  torture  in the US military and its spread to law enforcement agencies (FBI) is also appropriate.

Will Congress investigate these two aspects?

Iraqi Chemical Weapons April 2009

Five countries that have admitted possessing chemical weapons still have them: Libya, Russia, the US, and,  as of March 2009, Iraq. I cannot explain why the new Iraqi government waited until 2009 to declare the remnants of the chemcial program but they did.

While chemical weapons were thought to be in Iraq before the war, the production capabilites had been eliminated in 1991.

  ”Iraq submitted its initial declaration on 12 March 2009, and has declared two bunkers with filled and unfilled chemical weapons munitions, some precursors, as well as five former chemical weapons production facilities,” Pfirter said last week.

Iraq’s history with chemical weapons is well known. The Hussein regime developed blister and nerve agents, and then used them against Iran and Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s. Tens of thousands of munitions and nearly 700 metric tons of warfare materials were destroyed in the years after the first Gulf War, but suspicions in Washington persisted that Baghdad had not fully dismantled its arsenal, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

The U.S.-led 2003 invasion of Iraq was justified partly on the threat posed by the regime’s alleged WMD activities. No indications of existing unconventional weapons operations were found after the war (see GSN, March 20). Iraq joined the Chemical Weapons Convention earlier this year.

The declaration contained no surprises, OPCW spokesman Michael Luhan indicated. The production facilities were “put out of commission” by airstrikes during the 1991 conflict, while U.N. personnel afterward secured the chemical munitions in the bunkers, he said.

“These are legacy weapons, remnants,” Luhan told Global Security Newswire today. He declined to discuss how many weapons were stored in the bunkers or what materials they contained. The weapons are not believed to be in a usable state.

The bunkers were damaged during the 2003 campaign. The OPCW Technical Secretariat must now consider how to safely access the sites to verify Iraq’s declaration, Luhan said. Eventually, all production facilities will have to be fully dismantled and the weapons destroyed.”

 Now I am sure the Right will be pointing out that, hey, there were weapons in Iraq. And the Left will point out that they are harmless and were under UN lock down anyway.  Let us not open that debate again but instead focus on the fact that Iraq AFTER the US invasion takes 6 years to claim they still have something that qualifies as reportable to the UN’s  Technical Secretariat to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. 

What took so long?

The good news is that India, Albania, and South Korea have eliminated their supplies.  Others are working on it.

By the end of March, Russia had destroyed 12,065 metric tons of chemical warfare materials, roughly 30 percent of the world’s-largest stockpile that once stood at 40,000 tons. The United States had eliminated roughly 16,466 metric tons, nearly 60 percent of its original arsenal of more than 28,500 tons.

Both nations have until April 2012 to complete operations. The United States has acknowledged that it will miss that deadline by a number of years, while some observers are skeptical about Russia’s claims that it will meet its obligation (see GSN, Dec. 4, 2008).

Libya continues to prepare its destruction facility for elimination of an estimated 23 metric tons of banned material, Luhan said.