2nd Revolution in Iran?

[Horza]

:lol:

Now I'm curious what you wrote. :P

I'm on Reuters and BBC, but any other sources (particularly if they have credible, intelligent analysis) would be appreciated.

The Guardian's been running a liveblog, it's pretty useful as an aggregator and it has some analysis.

[awesome possum]

This snowballed from outrage to outrage, following the trail of funerals. The worst riots always followed funerals of murdered protesters.

I guess that might explain the thought behind earlier links claiming the government was taking away bodies from hospitals.

I've been keeping in touch with a former professor of mine who focused on Middle Eastern studies. If I have at work today I'll post some of this theories.

[dalThor]

:lol:

Now I'm curious what you wrote. :P

I'm on Reuters and BBC, but any other sources (particularly if they have credible, intelligent analysis) would be appreciated.

Actually, I listed twitter links.

Most of the articles I'm reading get linked there and that's where I'm finding the odd ones.

Huffington post has been digging up some good ones, you could try there?

[Xray the Enforcer]

The Guardian's been running a liveblog, it's pretty useful as an aggregator and it has some analysis.

Ooh, that's a good one. thank you.

DalThor -- aha! :)

[The Iceman of the North]

:lol:

Now I'm curious what you wrote. :P

I'm on Reuters and BBC, but any other sources (particularly if they have credible, intelligent analysis) would be appreciated.

I'm sticking to Norwegian radio, but I guess that won't help you too much. Given the dearth of foreign journalists in Iran, twitter seems the best source, but it's hard to shift through knowing what is facts, what is rumours and what is blatant misinformation.

[dalThor]

Here's a piece from Juan Cole's (U of Mich. Professor, et. al.) blog.

Eyewitness account of Tuesday's rally

Also, Photoshop enters the brawl. From Daily Kos.

Ahmadinejad Rally Photoshopped to Appear Larger

ETA: The latest from the Guardian:

Election turnout exceeded 100% in 30 towns.

[Ckrisz]

Juan Cole has ripped out some really great stuff.

Trita Parsi and Co. at the National Iranian Council have a good blog going.

NYTIMES has been excellent. Bill Keller, the chief editor, is in Iran and submits this outstanding report, including a trip to Isfahan where things are more violent than in Tehran:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/world/mi...otebook.html?hp

For a sense of what may await Iran’s discontented when there is no one around to report on it, consider Monday night in Isfahan, Iran’s third largest city and a five-hour drive from the nearest foreign TV camera.

As in Tehran, large parts of the city — the squares and boulevards — were scenes of smoke and flames, tear gas, stones crashing into windows, bloodied heads.

The uprising seemed more organic than organized — groups of a few dozen merging into groups of a few hundred, converging on lines of helmeted riot police officers, chanting “Death to the dictator!â€

But in Isfahan the police response seemed far tougher.

At one point, a white S.U.V. with a red ambulance-style light raced up behind a knot of protesters and smashed into them, running one over before racing a few blocks to the protection of the riot police.

Bands of Basiji, the authorized plainclothes vigilantes riding motorbikes and wielding long truncheons, were let loose by the hundreds to sow fear far afield from the actual unrest. Many wore the green headbands of the opposition — possibly to camouflage, or to confuse.

At one point some bystanders (including one journalist with a gift for being in the wrong place) were cornered on the ancient Si-o-Seh Bridge and faced a choice between getting their heads broken or tumbling 20 feet to the dry Zayandeh River bed. At the last minute, the thugs were distracted by other prey to beat on.

At 10 p.m., as in Tehran, a more lyrical form of protest broke out: protesters chanting in waves from the rooftops of their homes, “God is great! Death to the dictator!†In some parts of Isfahan, residents said, plainclothes thugs went door to door, smashing windows and sometimes shooting canisters of tear gas into homes.

edit:

Tehran Bureau's got some really great stuff on their website. Check out this report on Ahmadenijad's supposed rural support.

I just heard a CNN reporter in Tehran say that Ahmadinejad’s support base was rural. Is it possible that rural Iran, where less than 35 percent of the country’s population lives, provided Ahmadinejad the 63 percent of the vote he claims to have won? That would contradict my own research in Iran’s villages over the past 30 years, including just recently. I do not carry out research in Iran’s cities, as do foreign reporters who otherwise live in the metropolises of Europe and North America, and so I wonder how they can make such bold assertions about the allegedly extensive rural support for Ahmadinejad.

Take Bagh-e Iman, for example. It is a village of 850 households in the Zagros Mountains near the southwestern Iranian city of Shiraz. According to longtime, close friends who live there, the village is seething with moral outrage because at least two-thirds of all people over 18 years of age believe that the recent presidential election was stolen by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

When news spread on Saturday (June 13) morning that Ahmadinejad had won more than 60 percent of the vote cast the day before, the residents were in shock. The week before the vote had witnessed the most intense campaigning in the village’s history, and it became evident that support for Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s candidacy was overwhelming. Supporters of Ahmadinejad were even booed and mocked when they attempted rallies and had to endure scolding lectures from relatives at family gatherings. “No one would dare vote for that hypocrite,†insisted Mrs. Ehsani, an elected member of the village council.

The president was very unpopular in Bagh-e Iman and in most of the other villages around Shiraz, primarily because of his failure to deliver on the reforms he promised in his successful 2005 presidential campaign. He did have some supporters. Village elders confided, “10 to 15 percent of village men, mostly [those who were] Basijis [militia members] and those who worked for government organizations, along with their families.â€

...

By Saturday evening, the shock and disbelief had given way to anger that slowly turned into palpable moral outrage over what came to be believed as the theft of their election. The proof was right in the village: “Interior Ministry officials came from Shiraz, sealed the ballot boxes, and took then away even before the end of voting at 9 pm,†said Jalal. In all previous elections, a committee comprised of representative from each political faction had counted and certified the results right in the village. The unexpected change in procedures caught village monitors off guard, as it did everywhere else in the country.

By Saturday evening, small groups of demonstrators were roaming the main commercial streets of Shiraz, a city of 1.5 million residents, and protesting the announced results as a fraud. People refused to believe that Ahmadinejad could have been re-elected. Larger demonstrations took place on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, beginning in the late afternoon and continuing long after the sun had set. These attracted carloads of supporters from Bagh-e Iman and other villages, including several that were 60 kilometers from Shiraz.

Although the crowds shouted slogans such as “Death to Dictatorship,†most protestors shouted “Allah-o-akbar,†the popular chant of the 1978-79 Revolution. Indeed, in Shiraz, thousands climbed unto the roofs of their homes Sunday to shout ‘Allah-o-akbar’ for several hours.

Most villagers are supporters of the Islamic Republic, but they are ready for the reforms that they say are essential so that their children will have a secure economic future. They saw hope in Mousavi’s promise to implement reforms, even though he is a part of the governing elite.

...

[Angalin]

I'm getting updates from tehranbureau.com via Facebook, if no-one's mentioned it yet.

[Shryke]

Video from Sullivan's blog of Basij firing on Civilians.

[Shryke]

The man who leaked the real election results from the Interior Ministry - the ones showing Ahmadinejad coming third - was killed in a suspicious car accident, according to unconfirmed reports, writes Saeed Kamali Dehghan in Tehran.

Mohammad Asgari, who was responsible for the security of the IT network in Iran's interior ministry, was killed yesterday in Tehran.

Asgari had reportedly leaked results that showed the elections were rigged by government use of new software to alter the votes from the provinces.

Asgari was said to have leaked information that showed Mousavi had won almost 19 million votes, and should therefore be president.

We will try to get more details later.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2009/j...7/iran-uprising

[Annelise]

Guess they felt it was time to try and play this card:

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran has accused the United States of "intolerable" meddling in its internal affairs, alleging for the first time that Washington has fueled a bitter post-election dispute.

A state television channel in Iran says the government summoned the Swiss ambassador, who represents U.S. interests in Iran, to complain about American interference. The two countries broke off diplomatic relations after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. An English-language state-run channel quoted the government as calling Western interference "intolerable."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/articl...z-jajQD98SHRKO0

[Crazydog7]

Its all for show children, not going to happen. The people may be right but the people have no tanks.

[Annelise]

Further:

Those in power are also employing this double-sided tactic of acknowledgment and warning. Iran's Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani, who as former chief negotiator in the nuclear talks with the West is used to communicating in a crisis, criticized the bloody attack on student dorms in Tehran on Monday night. The Interior Ministry should clarify why the security forces destroyed the building and why students were injured or even killed, he said.

However, Larijani did not forget to point out that foreign forces were behind the protest movement -- and to then rail against the supposed puppet masters abroad, saying that Iran would not tolerate the interference of the U.S. and other Western countries. "He should govern his own country," Larijani said, referring to U.S. President Barack Obama. The suspicion that the demonstrators have been influenced by foreign agitators or that they could even be cooperating with foreigners is extremely dangerous for the opposition. Accusations of spying are hanging in the air and could conceivably be used against any demonstrators who are arrested.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/06/17/iran/

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

CD,

The people didn't have tanks in 1979 and managed to pull off that revolution.