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2nd Revolution in Iran?


Ser Scot A Ellison

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EDIT: Courtesy of Xray and Juan Cole, some evidence to suggest that the election was indeed fixed: http://www.juancole.com/2009/06/stealing-i...n-election.html

Credit where credit is due -- I got that link in one of Shryke's (I think it was Shryke) earlier posts. :)

But, yeah. The comments stream is interesting, with some counter-arguments and some further support data. I don't think that the whole thing is cut-and-dry and it is good to be skeptical. But I'm also really wary of this result because of some of the discrepancies in the urban areas that really should have gone to an opposition candidate. It's like Bush winning NYC or something equally absurd -- it could theoretically happen, but it raises a red flag nonetheless.

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Mousavi, Karroubi, Karbaschi and Khatami's brother are all arrested, according to Sullivan (from some Facebook link, so it might be bogus).

The MSM cant see beyond the US. Even the Indian elections where 400 million went to the polls received minimal coverage. Ehh, whatever, its not like there would be substantive analysis by Wolf Blitzer.

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A very interesting blog entry with some info/analysis:

http://garysick.tumblr.com/post/123070238/...-political-coup

Also, Mousavi is under House Arrest. It's been confirmed by him through Twitter.

I must now slightly damped my scorn for Twitter. I'm not liking this.

In fairness, who was supposed to anticipate that someone would actually harness Twitter for a positive humanitarian purpose? I'm with you on having to dampen the scorn. This is fascinating.

Also, the Chinese government has to be kind of freaked out by this. If people ever figured out how to get around their media control en masse, they might be in trouble.

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The BBC were doing some pretty good coverage. The BBC veteren reporter John Simpson - who isn't really happy unless he's wandering around a warzone with shit blowing up on every side - is in Tehran and was getting good coverage. At one point some policemen took him to one side but the protestors saw what was going on and forced the policemen to leave, which in Iran is pretty strong going.

The great irony of Iran, despite Bush's attempt to demonise the country, is that of all the Middle Eastern countries it's the one most likely to fully embrace Western democracy and would almost certainly be the first to resort to revolution to do that (and the 1979 Revolution was probably more about getting rid of the corrupt Shah by any means necessary as it was about putting Islamic fundamentalists in power).

Could this be the start of that? Maybe, or after a few days of rioting it could all blow other. Interesting to see how it goes.

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A very interesting blog entry with some info/analysis:

http://garysick.tumblr.com/post/123070238/...-political-coup

Also, Mousavi is under House Arrest. It's been confirmed by him through Twitter.

I must now slightly damped my scorn for Twitter. I'm not liking this.

Hell, I barely knew enough about Twitter to even heap scorn upon it. I just knew that it was the new fad in the media and people talked about it. I've never used it and still don't really know what it is.

Fuck I'm old.

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The BBC were doing some pretty good coverage. The BBC veteren reporter John Simpson - who isn't really happy unless he's wandering around a warzone with shit blowing up on every side - is in Tehran and was getting good coverage. At one point some policemen took him to one side but the protestors saw what was going on and forced the policemen to leave, which in Iran is pretty strong going.

The great irony of Iran, despite Bush's attempt to demonise the country, is that of all the Middle Eastern countries it's the one most likely to fully embrace Western democracy and would almost certainly be the first to resort to revolution to do that (and the 1979 Revolution was probably more about getting rid of the corrupt Shah by any means necessary as it was about putting Islamic fundamentalists in power).

Could this be the start of that? Maybe, or after a few days of rioting it could all blow other. Interesting to see how it goes.

I'm reading the John Simpson stuff too. Awesome, makes you want to be a journalist.

Is there really no US coverage?

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I have toured the bowels of my cable provider's offerings and I have NOT found any news on Iran aside from some bullshit crawl on CNN Int'l. I did, however, catch the tail end of Serenity, watched a bit of of a Led Zeppelin concert from the mid-70s, and discovered that there are actually shows out there that still play heavy metal videos \m/ (I'm actually surprised that anyone makes music videos anymore, TBH). Fuck you, Tee Vee.

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Even more Twitter:

Explosions heard in and around university of Tehran's campus. Vehicles on fire
BBC Persian is reporting mass arrests of senior figures in the opposition.
Foreign reporters are told to leave Iran. The government is not going to renew the visas
The building of ministry of industry and mining is on fire in Tehran
have heard of attacks to Esfehan University of Technology, they've arrested a lot of students
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Last thing before dinner:

Andrew Sullivan's blog wrote:

That is what this Tehran Bureau report suggests. Brian Ulrich thinks this makes sense:

A coup that originated with the military rather than the clerical or lay political leaders resolves what I saw the the main flaw with Juan Cole's reconstruction. It also dovetails well with Interior Ministry employees' warnings that Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi, who is influential in the military, issued a fatwa authorizing manipulation of the elections. A coup led by the military is also easier to explain than one ordered by Ayatollah Khamene'i. I had been thinking about the implications of a Mousavi victory, and concluded that, given the continuing conservative dominance of Parliament, the most important changes for Iranians would be a different economic policy and the replacement of someone hostile to the old revolutionary establishment embodied by the likes of Rafsanjani with someone who was actually a part of it.

Gary Sick wrote:

On the basis of what we know so far, here is the sequence of events starting on the afternoon of election day, Friday, June 12.

# Near closing time of the polls, mobile text messaging was turned off nationwide

# Security forces poured out into the streets in large numbers

# The Ministry of Interior (election headquarters) was surrounded by concrete barriers and armed men

# National television began broadcasting pre-recorded messages calling for everyone to unite behind the winner

# The Mousavi campaign was informed officially that they had won the election, which perhaps served to temporarily lull them into complacency

# But then the Ministry of Interior announced a landslide victory for Ahmadinejad. Unlike previous elections, there was no breakdown of the vote by province, which would have provided a way of judging its credibility

# The voting patterns announced by the government were identical in all parts of the country, an impossibility (also see the comments of Juan Cole at the title link)

# Less than 24 hours later, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamene`i publicly announced his congratulations to the winner, apparently confirming that the process was complete and irrevocable, contrary to constitutional requirements

# Shortly thereafter, all mobile phones, Facebook, and other social networks were blocked, as well as major foreign news sources.

All of this had the appearance of a well orchestrated strike intended to take its opponents by surprise – the classic definition of a coup. Curiously, this was not a coup of an outside group against the ruling elite; it was a coup of the ruling elite against its own people.

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MSM rundown: Top stories.

CNN.com--Six Flags files for Bankruptcy

MSNBC.com--Ruling on torture memos lets terrorists sue

Foxnews.com--Congratulations Not Yet in Order for Ahmadinejad (shocked the hell out of me the hell out of me, but still not substantially bigger than the other headlines, no art, no breaking news sort of alert)

BBC.co.uk--Ahmadinejad defiant on 'free' Iran poll (far more prominent than all other headlines, complete with masked protester in front of roaring fires art)

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John Simpson is reporting now on the BBC. There are riots in at least four major cities outside of Tehran. The crowds in Tehran had the run of the city for about 12 hours before the riot police took back control. The protestors took to their cars and gridlocked the city, beeping their horns en masse in response. There appears to be no organisation to the protests and no central figure around which the opposition is gathering (although the leading opposing candidate seems to be trying to drum up support), so a full-blown revolution appears unlikely right now. If things continue for a few more days, maybe this will change.

No confirmation of any deaths from the BBC so far, but they showed lots of fires. Cars and news-stands were shown burning in different parts of Tehran.

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John Simpson is reporting now on the BBC. There are riots in at least four major cities outside of Tehran. The crowds in Tehran had the run of the city for about 12 hours before the riot police took back control. The protestors took to their cars and gridlocked the city, beeping their horns en masse in response. There appears to be no organisation to the protests and no central figure around which the opposition is gathering (although the leading opposing candidate seems to be trying to drum up support), so a full-blown revolution appears unlikely right now. If things continue for a few more days, maybe this will change.

No confirmation of any deaths from the BBC so far, but they showed lots of fires. Cars and news-stands were shown burning in different parts of Tehran.

Anyone got any links to John Simpson's stuff? Browsed the BBC website, but I couldn't easily find what was 'his'.

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Anyone got any links to John Simpson's stuff? Browsed the BBC website, but I couldn't easily find what was 'his'.

He's doing video reports on BBC News 24, the site for which informs me that non-Brits can't see it.

There is a short bit here though:

John Simpson

Reporting from Tehran A crowd of about 3,000 attacked the police, some of whom were on motorbikes, which they set on fire. The sky was thick with black smoke. Police attacked the crowd with sticks and maybe tear gas. I didn't expect to see people turning on the secret police. We were filming when we were surrounded by angry secret policemen. The crowd turned on them and chased them off.

I suspect we are not looking at a revolution but there is serious anger.

It all depends on how the government responds - if they use violence, that could inflame the situation.

Fantasy author Kate Elliott has some interesting thoughts and a list of links here.

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