Grabbed from Vulva from ontd_twatlight. Thanks bb!

Very Very brief breakdown of the situation in Iran.


On Friday, elections were held.

A mere 2 hours after the polls closed, an announcement was made declaring Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the re-elected president. This seemed impossible because of the 85% voter turn out.

Peculiarly, text messages weren't sending during this time. (They still do not work).

This meant over 10 million ballots. Which were counted by hand in less than 2 hours.


The projected winner was Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

What is important to know about Iran is that while the country does have a President, the Supreme Leader Iran is Ali Khamenei. Essentially he is the highest ranking religious and political leader in the country.

Grand Ayatollah Khamenei himself said that Ahmadinejad was the elected President.

Social Networking Internet sites like Facebook were blocked, and cellphone access was denied.

Protesters (mainly in Tehran) took to the streets. There, we saw police brutality and civilian uproar.

On Saturday, protests took place on the streets.

From here on out, protesters wear the colour green, which is Mousavi's campaign symbol.

Basijis, which are volunteer militants (armed yet dressed in plain clothes) took to the streets and began pouring in to Tehran by the bus loads.

Students at the local University were protesting, visibly upset. In the middle of the night, the Basijis forced their way into dormitories where they savagely beat students, destroyed computers, and furniture.

We have one confirmed death during this incident, but are hearing reports that up to 5 university students have lost their lives from one university campus.

On Sunday protesters once again took to the streets of Iran, and organized a protest that was to be held in Tehran on Monday. The Government (Ahmadinejad) forbade protests. Mousavi was to speak at this peaceful protest.

Sunday saw brutal beatings on the streets as riot police tried to take control of the situation.

At this point, the only source of information was coming from Twitter. Students and bloggers managed to find proxies that could help them access the site and tweet news to the Western World.

On Sunday night, cries of Allah o Akbar (God is great in Farzi) were shouted from rooftops and windows constantly throughout the night.

Monday, the protest took place. Mousavi showed up and talked to the people from a green car.


Things are still a blur to us right now. We have many unconfirmed reports.

There were shots fired into the 1-2 million strong crowd. People were shot, and we have reports of 7 casualties. Keep in mind that at this point, it is no longer the police who are killing or beating... it is the Basijis.

During this time, people are disappearing. Reports come from the Toronto Globe and Mail; one of their reporters gets caught up in Sunday's protests and is beaten and arrested and jailed.

Gosh, what a fucking joke.

I often don't think we realise how lucky we are to live where we do.

We really don't. :(

During this time, people are disappearing. Reports come from the Toronto Globe and Mail; one of their reporters gets caught up in Sunday's protests and is beaten and arrested and jailed.

This is our generation, boys and girls. Let's show them that we are a GLOBAL nation.

HERE ARE SOME LINKS

Andrew Sullivan's blog, nice and easy.

A Coup in 3 easy steps

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

Help to make a proxy

Huffington Post, a good source

PICTURES

PICTURES

Once again everyone, I can not stress how important it is that you GET INVOLVED!!

The forum keeps eating my text. -____- Full story on my diary.

i heard the death troll was up to 9 the other day, probably more now.

Iran needed Ahmadinejad as the counter part to US aggression.
fear of Bush calling Iran an aixs of evil, and what they might do.....is what put tough talking Ahmadinejad in power.

Now that Obama is here, and is being portrayed as different (even though he is not) the Iranians no longer feel they need a president as aggressive as Ahmadinejad. The sanctions he caused puts an economic strain on them. They want hope, just like teh US does. they voted for hope, like america did with Al Gore, who won! But teh court decided Bush will be president.
to bad more Americans didnt protest such outrage! Like the Iranianism are doing now.
Like america, Iran's only change is to have a true democracy. we dont like are imperialist warmonger our representatives act like. And neither to teh Iranians, all though their goal is protectionism from Israel/US

Iran is changing all on their own. good for them, they have been very a very long time, but it takes time. To bad the US doesnt lead by example.

I dunno how many are dead; I'd read so much the past half hour that it's just... crazy. Professors resigning and asking for the bodies of their students; ppl protesting peacefully and gunfire being shot into them....

It's utterly horrifying.

yes it is horrifying

especially considering what happened in 1979

just might happen again

Yes. =( I've been reading about this in the paper over the past few days now and it's worrying me. And the stories are so mixed. One source says he won it fair and square, another says they rigged the voting and counted the votes of dead people. Others say that even if the rigging of the votes was accounted for, Ahmadinejad would still have won. And apparently an independent poll was conducted that also projected Ahmadinejad as winner. But all the unrest over there definitely suggests that something else is going on.

Exactly. And the fact that there's a media blackout over there, ppl are dying... it's just quite scary. :(