Yesterday:
"New vote tallies released yesterday showed President Hamid Karzai leading in the presidential election, with 45.8 percent of the votes counted. His top challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, was trailing with 33.2 percent."
"With about one-third of the vote counted, Karzai now leads Abdullah 46.2 percent to 31.4."
Today:
"Vote tallies released Monday from the Aug. 20 balloting showed President Hamid Karzai leading with 45.8 percent. Challenger Abdullah Abdullah trailed with 33.2 percent."
Related: The Afghan Vote
A Big Fat Front-Page Lie That Made Me Cry
Afghanistan's Swing Vote
Getting An Afghanistan Fix
Afghanistan Exit Polls Were Accurate
Afghan Vote Being Rigged
I just wanted you to have some background when you read this next piece:
"Security fears kept Afghan women from polls; Observers also blame apathy for poor turnout" by Pamela Constable, Washington Post | September 1, 2009
KABUL, Afghanistan - Five years ago, with the country at peace, traditional taboos easing, and Western donors pushing for women to participate in democracy, millions of Afghan women eagerly registered and then voted for a presidential candidate. In a few districts, female turnout was even higher than male turnout.
But on Aug. 20, when Afghans again went to the polls to choose a president, that heady season of political emancipation seemed long gone. This time, election monitors and women’s activists said, a combination of fear, tradition, apathy, and poor planning conspired to deprive many Afghan women of rights they had only recently begun to exercise.
That's odd; My MSM reported a tremendous success.
With insurgents threatening to attack polling places and voters, especially in the rural south, many families kept their women home on election day, even if the men ventured out to vote. In cities, some segregated female polling rooms were nearly empty, and many educated women who had voted or even worked at polling stations in previous elections decided not to risk going out this time.
“Everywhere I went before elections, I urged women in the villages to vote. But when the day came, even professional women in the city who normally felt free to go to work and shops and weddings stayed home. I was shocked,’’ said Safia Siddiqui, a legislator from Nangahar province. “There has been a lot of talk about women’s civic life and political movements, but security comes first.’’
Although no official turnout figures are available and the election results are not yet final, election monitoring groups and political activists from Taliban-plagued provinces report that in dozens of insecure districts, almost no women voted.
Makes you wonder WHY they spent SO MUCH TIME and ENERGY REGISTERING and ENCOURAGING THEM then, doesn't it?
Nationwide, they say, women’s participation was much lower than in either the 2004 presidential or 2005 parliamentary elections.
The sense of eroding political rights for women did not begin with this election. In the past several years, Taliban attacks on prominent women have sent a powerful message to others who dreamed of entering public life.
I'm sorry. This MAY WELL BE TRUE; however, I NO LONGER BELIEVE MY MSM!
What I BELIEVE is that MUSLIMS LOVE THEIR WOMEN just like anyone else!!!!
Related: How I Came to Love the Veil
Afghanistan: Violence and the Vote
In the southern province of Kandahar alone, a female legislator, a women’s affairs official, and a female prosecutor were gunned down by terrorists. Others have received constant threats, travel with armed guards, or rarely visit their constituencies.
Related(?):
"It is foolishness to look at “militant Islamists” and the CIA Special Forces teams who are sent in to fight them as two separate entities, without realizing that they are one and the same. In Central Asia, the scary “Islamists” appear, as if by magic, wherever the oil companies have an interest."
The Boston Globe's Invisible Ink: Blackening Out Blackwater Assassins
The Boston Globe Bucks Up the CIA
Slow Saturday Special: Cheney's CIA Assassination Teams
Of course, the Globe would tell us if.... right.
When rural women did vote in this election, it was often by proxy, which lent itself to fraud, monitoring groups report. Monitors and others said that across the south, women’s voter registration cards, which often had no photographs because of conservative taboos on women’s faces being seen, were taken to the polls in batches by male relatives or tribal elders.
In some cases, they said, those same cards were used by officials or partisans to stuff ballot boxes....
Gee, just who would want to do that, cui bono?
--more--"
"Years wasted in Afghan effort, UN official says" by Jason Straziuso, Associated Press Writer | September 1, 2009
KABUL -- .... Hundreds of Afghans from the country's ethnic Pashtun south -- Karzai's stronghold -- met with Abdullah in Kabul on Tuesday to show their support. The tribal leaders alleged that massive fraud had taken place in the south, and that some districts that had no voting stations still somehow sent thousands of ballots to Kabul to be counted.
The support from the Pashtun tribesman is significant in a country where tribal allegiances trump almost everything. Karzai is an ethnic Pashtun, while Abdullah is half Tajik and half Pashtun, but is primarily seen as the northern, Tajik candidate....
Oh, this is STINKING of a RIGGING!!!!!!!!!
U.S. officials had hoped the presidential election would establish an Afghan government with the legitimacy to combat the Taliban, corruption and the country's huge drug trade. The fraud allegations, however, have raised the specter of more violence....
--more--"
Just so you know where we are headed, 'murkn.
Update:
KABUL -- .... On Monday, an Afghan man told reporters that Taliban militants cut off his nose and both ears as he headed for a polling station in central Afghanistan.
"I was on my way to a polling station when Taliban stopped me and searched me. They found my voter registration card," Lal Mohammad said from a hospital bed in Kabul. He said after cutting him, they beat him unconscious with a weapon.
"I regret that I went to vote," Mohammad said, crying and trying to hide his disfigured face. "What is the benefit of voting to me?"
--more--"