holy shit. i know i am not the only one who is paying attention to this stuff. Incumbent president Ahmadinejad was officially announced as the winner of the election that was held there yesterday. Protesters, especially supporters of opponent Mousavi, have started riots in the streets and lit shit on fire and all of that great stuff that comes with riots. Here are some links for you:


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8098896.stm

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/06/13/iran.election/index.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/13/iran-election-results-ahm_0_n_215169.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/13/iran-demonstrations-viole_n_215189.html


Iran banned all independent agencies from monitoring voting in the country, cell phone service has been suspiciously down for a few days, Mousavi-supporting websites have been blocked, bbc.co.uk was blocked, and Ahmadinejad wins with 62.6% of the vote to Mousavi's 33.75: a much much larger gap than expected

brb i'm just watching this revolution unfold

I've not been following this as much as I should have. Quick question, who is counting the ballots?

The Interior Ministry - a government office

oh man I heard the elections were coming up but I didn't think anything this interesting would happen. Kudos to the protesters but if they start anything short of a civil war I don't see much coming from this.

if it came down to it though think about this:

we've got a country thats split with a good majority of the populace pro-western or maybe not pro-western but progressive and opposing to the anti-western bullshit so I don't see them forming any kind of resistance to an early US occupation under the current administration as long as we don't do anything too stupid. And then we've got Iran's administration and Iranian security forces. I think if the US actually decided to go to war with Iran and the progressives were pissed off enough at Ahmadinejad it would be over pretty quick.

But then if Israel were to get involved then shit would most def get messy even with the progressives. Right? And Israel would probably try to get involved because they hate Iran and they like killing shit.

yes, they will greet us with flowers and candy

yeah I thought about that too and I spoke to a dude from Yemen that told me muslims are especially sensitive to invading forces no matter what and thats a big part of the reason the US had so much trouble over there or any invading forces really.

Khamenei has ordered a vote rigging probe, pretty wild since he's stated twice so far that Mahmoud is the rightful president and the election was fair and should be recognized as legitimate. Of course, the probe will be conducted by officials within the "elected" government who will no doubt find that no irregularities took place. I can't imagine this is more than an effort to placate protestors!

good work khamenei. now dismantle the autocracy and home in time for tea

dont believe anything you hear in the news about what is going on outside of tehran

there are literally no western reporters anywhere else in the country and they have been kicking the rest out/confiscating cameras and other recording equipment in the last two days

in other words, big big shit is going to go down in the next two weeks. especially if they continue to jail reformist leaders and beat the shit out of students

also for anyone who is still concerned whether or not this election was rigged... consider this: mousavi did not win his hometown (tabriz) or by any margin within people of his own ethnic group (azeris). this would be like obama not getting the black vote. it just doest happen. And also there is the issue of Karroubi only getting .8% of the vote, and considering he consitently polled at around the 10% range for the entirety of the campaign, and also given his popularity among southern ethnic groups, especially the lurs, it just smacks of millions of votes either not being counted or just thrown away

so yeah its gonna be interesting. either way, its the worst unrest since the student protests in 1998 and possibly since the revolution. there was a demonstration today at azadi square that probably half a million people attended. the protests are starting to really spread and gain strength. if ahmadinejad is declared the winner by the guardian council, he will likely continue jailing reformists and possibly even attempt to jail mousavi (which would be hard to do for a lot of reasons, but still not out of the question).

I'm not going to make any firm declarations, but this is the shit major revolts and revolutions are made out of

welcome back

put some of those skills to good use and start translating farsi twitter feeds for us please

im not back I was checking up on steel and saw this topic

the twitter feeds are interesting, and also, most of them are in english btw

more interesting would be news articles from iranian newspapers and gooya.com but all of them are either not currently functioning or are completely sensationalized

so far only one protestor has been shot btw, but if the large demonstrations turn violent (which they have the capability to do so) and riot police start employing more than batons to contain the outbursts shit is going to get really fuckin ugly. once you start makin martyrs in iran you're opening up a pandoras box of processual cycles where huge mourning processions 40 days after the deaths of protestors will start and that will lead to more violence surely because the state will not want those going on, and then every time a number of people are killed 40 days later there will be a big demonstration in the streets and it just keeps happening over and over again until martial law is imposed basically. however I'm starting to sound rather sensational myself

btw the election was on friday. theres a considerable news lag coming from iran normally, but it is so fucking bad right now that like bbc was having trouble getting a radio signal through to interview some journalists and actually the most reliable big distribution news group has been al-jazeera lol

more than one person has been shot i think!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/13/iran-demonstrations-viole_n_215189.html

there was a pretty good segment on democracy now today about the election if anyone wants to check it out.

more than one person has been shot i think!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/13/iran-demonstrations-viole_n_215189.html

yeah like I said, there is a considerable time lag in the reporting.

news reports are coming in right now of a big clash between riot police and demonstrators that left at least 7 and as many as 20 dead at azadi square so yeah its lookin like its escalating

I'll take a look on gooya and see what the iranian press are currently saying