EDIT: POTENTIALLY NSFW (gore)
NPR: Death Reported Near Tehran Rally; State Dept. 'Deeply Troubled' By Events


Seems more solid than what was on Twitter.

dola,

I wish people would stop RT every last tweet they find interesting. It just gums up the works and makes it impossible to tell the source of anything.

Fair warning, there's one very graphic picture a bit down the page there, probably not suitable for the extremely squeamish.

Thanks, edited.

Uhhh, I'd say this pretty much "confirms" shootings. Warning... extremely graphic and disturbing content. NSFW.

Edit: Attachment removed. I couldn't figure out how to use the spoiler button. Apologies. Here is an html link if you so wish.

http://inapcache.boston.com/universa...1_19382207.jpg

please edit that.
kthx.

I don't think there was much doubt about the shooting, but that picture sure seems a lot different than the alleged confirmation that the protesters had basically kicked ass & took names at the militia headquarters.

Reporteldy there are leaked interior ministry statistics that say Ahmadinejad came in third... by a lot

Iran protest cancelled as leaked election results show Mahmoud Amadinejad came third - Telegraph

I think those leaked numbers are as bogus or worse than the ones the government gave out. I find it hard to believe almost any incumbent (unless arrested or other major scandal) would get less than 14% of the vote, much less one that had popularity as he did amongst certain voting blocs as well as one that had some questionable tools used to help him in the election (shutdown of the text messaging services for a few days through the election, word of voter intimidation).

If it were me, I'd say something along the lines of noting that the official complaint process had put the ball back in the Supreme Leader's court, and that the U.S. and indeed the rest of the world sincerely hopes that he will act positively on it and lead his country to a peaceful resolution.

Paints the U.S. as an objective observer (whether we are or not), implies that they've got a process and they should use their process, and puts responsibility on Khameni to run his country properly.

While I don't really disagree with your analysis/recommendation otherwise, that last bit has as much chance of happening as hell has of freezing over in July. Unless there's some serious revolutionary element that somehow needs to hear us say something in order to remain viable (and if that's the case, I question how viable they actually are), I think I'd prefer we just keep our mouths relatively shut instead of implying something that no one in their right mind could actually take seriously.

We could have a 50 post discussion over the word properly, but suffice to say that pols and actual people usually have vastly conflicting agendas. See just about any country/society ever for an example.

Well, quite.

Exactly how I think he should handle it as well. Their "supreme leader" is not a complete idiot, he has to realize at the very least some small reconciliation has to be made to keep the peace. The government can't just ignore millions and millions of angry people.

I doubt even Obama's detractors would expect him to go hard line against the Iranian government's internal politics without a plan. If he does make a harsh stance, the administration must have something up their sleeves.

Tell it to the Chinese.

China also had a better and much more impressive army presence in it's cities though. I should have probably said Iran specifically can't.

Plus, there's the very real possibility that Khatemi had nothing to do with the fraud that was perpetrated. As I said before, I really don't see the point of him perpetrating this fraud when he gets to pick the slate of candidates anyway. If he didn't want Mousavi, he could have kept him off the slate.

In which case you'd think Khatemi would want to come down hard on someone who felt arrogant enough to upend an electoral process that the ruling regime has gone out of their way to cast as "fair". Heck there's even a movie about it.

Depends on what you see as a possible motive. It is also to his benefit to have as many of those eligible to vote actually go out and do it. It looks good for their claims of "democracy" and their claim to legitimacy. So, in theory, they could put a candidate on there that they will not let win, but will inspire more people to participate. In that case, they are hoping to get the upside (more participation) without the downside (landslide for that candidate). An arrogant/naive/dumb idea, if they went that route, of course.

The thing is, though, I don't see Khatemi as arrogant, naive or dumb.

Yes, but I would have said the same thing about Deng Xiaoping in 1989.

Point being, there's a lot under the hood here that we have no chance of seeing.

definately not.

not naive, not dumb. maybe a tad bit arrogant, but the internal politics are such a mess it'd be hard to believe they can really be all that arrogant.

It would appear that they have miscalculated in some way, though, since they would prefer to not be dealing with street riots.

Here's a picture of the burning religious police base I mentioned in an earlier post.

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Being married to a South Korean and having served in the US Air Force and later for the US Government in the Intel field I find there being some distinct similarities in the Pro-Democracy revolution that began in South Korea in the 1980s and what is going on in Iran right now. I do not see this turning out well for the older conservative incumbent and his supporters. I am not naive enough to believe this will turn this country around to a Pro-US viewpoint but it sure seems like a even slightly more moderate Iran will benefit everyone.

Here's a different opinion on that:



Iran: Election Aftermath and World Reaction - washingtonpost.com

umm..


This says quite clearly that there is a car burning, not the base.

I saw that video of the religious policeman shooting into the crowd. Those are the kinds of images that can really whip the student opposition into a fury. The fact that the video got out for international consumption is amazing. It's hard for the international community to avoid that kind of evidence.

You underestimate how much they dislike him. You have to remember that during the boom in oil prices a couple years ago, Iran still had a horrible economy (while every other Middle East country thrived). Their financial problems are bad and have been going on for a long time.

It creeps me out how they're all on motorbikes for some reason. Gives it this feeling of lawless lawmen.

There's no feeling about it. It's exactly that.

As Nate Silver pointed out on 538, this doesn't disprove voter fraud, but it definitely doesn't prove it.

Typical 140 pound momma boy pussies who are a bad ass when they get a weeks of training, a bunch of riot gear, a batton and a gun and oh yeah 2000 of there friends behind. I love how they run around smacking woman and girls as they side step the men.:rant:

Man, I'm in the US military and they have yet to give me a motorcycle.

I feel screwed.


INCREASE THE US MILITARY BUDGET NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It may not turn the government policies around right away, but you'd be hard pressed to find more pro-American muslims than the Iranians. The Kurds and maybe the Lebanese. It's amazing what actually living under a religious government/police state does to change opinions of theocracies. And there are a ton of exiles, both in Europe and the US, that would love to go back.

I can't help but note that there are a ton of Europeans & Americans that wish they would, so it seems like a win-win.

not me. Persian girls are beautiful:D

It's you Jon, so I'm sure you have enough reasons to hate anybody ;), but I'm not sure if you're confusing them with many other Muslim emigres. Iranian/Persian exiles/emigrants (at least the ones I've known) are generally educated and attempt to integrate themselves - and often fled the country over protest of the Mullahs takeover. They're not the ones like the Muslims in Rotterdam or the outskirts of Paris refusing to integrate and attempting to implement Sharia.

I didn't say they weren't more welcome than some other alternatives, I merely pointed out in a fairly lighthearted/quick flip manner something that ought to be pretty obvious.

That you don't like brown people?

I think there's a danger in not knowing much of anything about Mousavi. It seems clear that he'd be better than Ahmadinejad, but we don't know to what extent. So far he's been setting himself up as defending the revolution. Would we get any better relations with him than with Khatami, who had nearly all of his reforms blocked by the clerics?

There's been a lot of discussion about what happens if the West strongly supports Mousavi and he loses, but there's also danger if he wins. If he isn't a great reformer haven't we given him the upper hand by touting him as the bringer of freedom to Iran?

I hope the protesters succeed, but I also hope Mousavi is worth the fight.

Devil you know...

or rather devil you don't can't be much worse.

Sarah Shahi..... yum.

There's a Persian woman named Sarah? What's that about?

hxxp://www.metacafe.com/watch/yt-j-PIsk7N6oc/persian_girls_selection_of_beautiful_iranian_girls/

SFW but a few modeling shots with some skin so i hxxp'd it anyways

1:35 and 1:48...WOW
3:47
4:46

yeahhhh...definately

Aahoo Jahansouz is her real name-She was the really hot chick who Tony was banging in the last season of the Sopranos. I think the one he flew out to see that was Chris's friend.

Golshifteh Farahani from Body of Lies was definitely a highlight of that film.

who's the girl in that video i posted at 1:35 and 1:48 - she is WOW. must be a supermodel of some sort?

She is a great-great-granddaughter of the 19th century Iranian king Fath Ali Shah Qajar.

hxxp://gearpatrol.com/images/sarah_shahi2.jpg

Probably less so after they get smacked around by baton-wielding thugs, I imagine.

Pretty big news concerning the possibility of a revolution. It appears the current regime has issues now with some members of the Revolutionary guard organizing to back the opposition. This creates a MUCH bigger threat to the regime than the protesters, though it is likely to bolster the protester as well.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblo...arrested-iran/

In addition, supporters of the current winner will be holding a rally at 3 PM in the same place that an opposition protest was already scheduled for 5 PM. Could be a collision of forces.

Large explosions have been reported at university dorms and police headquarters in northern Iran in the past few hours. No exact counts other than 'many dead'.

Should be another interesting day to watch.

when you say watch.....where can you 'watch'? Twitter?

I've been watching Andrew Sullivan's website along with the Huffington Post updates. Both sites are posting updates, video, and twitter info every 15-20 minutes throughout the day. They've done a great job providing a wealth of information. I know you're not a fan of getting information from partisan blogs, but I think it's been great thus far. I commend them for their coverage.

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Iran Updates (VIDEO): Live-Blogging The Uprising

I am very thankful that this thread has avoided the partisan sniping so far.

Pictures of scantily-clad Persians has that calming effect on people.

Anyone else notice that they delayed last night's Twitter update until this afternoon to allow the opposition to continue to communicate without interruption today? Even issued a press release noting that they were supporting the opposition's efforts with the delay. Shows the far reaching effect of technology.

yeah - i saw that. A+ to Twitter - and they've finally demonstrated a way in which they can actually be...useful

Not sure how this could turn partisan anyway.... It's not as if anyone here supports Ahmadinejad :)

Although I've seen some right-wing sites saying Obama is showing weakness in this situation.

In my opinion you're overestimating it. As I understand it, most of his support is in the rural areas of the country (they're busing people in from there to have rallies of their own). 75% of the country is considered rural. I don't doubt that his popularity is lowest in the big cities and especially Tehran, I don't doubt that he got less than 62% of the vote, but I find it hard to believe he would receive less than 14%.

I'd be curious to know how much his rural support has eroded as he's essentially been a populist that really hasn't delivered much. Just saw a documentary the other night (obviously slanted against him) that was based on this.

You might be surprised. On another board, the Iran thread has devolved into Obama's-not-doing-enough/Ahmanijad-is-not-much-worse-than-Bush/McCain-would-have-nuked-Iran-had-he-won bullshit.

As annoying as political threads here can be at times, it can be even worse.

Hopefully we'll have the chance to see a 'more legit' election and find that out.

http://twitter.com/BreakingNews

I have no idea who these guys are, but after following them for a few days they do get accurate information out quickly.

They're reporting that a pro-Ahmadinejad and a pro-Mousavi rally have gathered near each other.

Bear in mind that there are many layers to the government and power structure in Iran. I think it's possible some members of the Guardian Council helped rig the election (or turned a blind eye) without Khatemi's knowledge. Possible.

If they did, though, Lord help them. I can't imagine Khatemi is going to be happy with people who put him in the position of having to come out in public and sort this mess out.

The above is pure, pure speculation, though, and continues to be based mostly on the premise that I simply can't understand why Khatemi himself would see the need to rig an election that's already, for all intents and purposes, rigged.

+1

that's why he almost can't have rigged it. it makes zero sense

Successful revolution or not... heads will roll.

Sometimes people do things that don't make sense. Maybe he thought that a landslide for the incumbent would take the wind out of the sails of the reform movement. In hindsight, that is not at all what happened. But I could see someone who was out of touch with the people thinking that.

I have to imagine that, like most Supreme Leaders, he is surrounded by yes men and underestimates the numbers and passion of the people who are against his government.

All of this is, of course, speculation.

People make mistakes. Maybe the Supreme Leader selected Mousavi thinking he would be ineffectual as a candidate, later realized he was wrong but didn't want to back down from allowing him as a candidate (that would show he was afraid of the guy), and rigged the election as a result. The text messaging services that Mousavi + supporters were using that were down for days prior to the election is a system that's supposedly under the charge of the Supreme Commander.

The above is as much speculation as anything else in this thread though. In any case, Mousavi himself has pointed out that these protests are not because they think he's such a great guy.

Apparently I didn't need to write my last post. :)

It amuses me that MBBF ignores the facts even when there is photographic evidence that HE POSTS.

Yeah, they're more anti-opression or pro-rights than they are pro-Mousavi. The government is the ones that are painting them as pro-Mousavi to imply that they are sore losers.

Let's not do this dance. There was a station burned in Tehran. The twitter reports said the pictured station was the one that burned. A similar incident occured in Northern Iran. It happening, though very little is actual MSM reports. Most of what's being discussed here is second and third hand. Just take it as such. Andrew Sullivan has already retracted a couple of his reports, but that doesn't dimish what's being passed on in his blog.

This thread is still lacking in beautiful women. And I have tracked her down via the interweb (yes I should be working but I was on a conference call just listening) - courtesy of the Iranian Babe of the Day thread on bigsoccer.com - Claudia Lynx

Brutal video leaked out of Iran. This man was used as an example.

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Translation of video by one of Sullivan's readers:

Really?


So, first of all, apparently "confirmed" means "posted on twitter.


So is it some different base in Northern Iran that is burning, or is this the one you mentioned in your earlier post? This picture is CLEARLY of a building that has not been scratched with a burning car next to it. I just can't fathom how you can ignore the truth in SO MANY DIFFERENT WAYS on this board. You say "Here's a picture of the burning base" and post a picture of a BURNING CAR. You CONSTANTLY refer to "Facts" and "confirmed" information that are from blogs, etc. If it supports your cause, it's the MSM's fault. If it doesn't, where are the facts to back it?

Guess it's no longer treasonous for Congressmen to criticize the President's foreign policy during an international crisis. Oh, well.

Foreign Policy: CNN Embarrasses Itself On Iran : NPR

I noticed that as well. I thought elected officials were all supposed to rally round the president in public on foreign policy.

brutal video.

Right up until JPhillips brought it up. :D

Oh well. It went longer than I expected at least.

We'll just pretend that didn't happen. Perhaps he missed his morning cup of coffee.

I'm sure there's discussion surrounding that issue to be had, but hopefully this thread can stay focused on the real issue here.

agreed - save the discussion of what's going on here with regard to it for a post-mortem. we can't really make any judgement about it until then anyways.

+1 for trying to keep this thread non-partisan.

After this is all over I'll be interested in reading more about this:


It's from Michael Ledeen a notorious Iran hawk. I don't know how accurate he is, but I have been struck by the amount of women publicly protesting. How much of this is about gender?

FYI - we've moved the partisan sniping back to the Obama thread, where it belongs. Please redirect yourself there for your daily dose of unfounded MBBF assertions, Cam hit-and-runs, weird Flasch posts, sociopathic rantings by JiMGA and general unfocused vitriol.

:p

This has been a Public Service Announcement.

:D

you forgot to include "quasi-socialist propaganda and sniping by JPhillips and DaddyTorgo"

This just in (via bbcnews breaking alert):

Iranian opposition supporters are staging a mass rally in northern Tehran, witnesses have told the BBC.
It comes despite presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi urging supporters not to risk clashes with demonstrators backing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Hundreds of thousands turned up on Monday alleging fraud in the poll which returned Mr Ahmadinejad to office.
Tough new restrictions on the foreign media mean the BBC is unable to confirm reports of Tuesday's opposition rally.
The new restrictions have been imposed amid apparent surprise and concern among authorities at the scale of popular defiance over Friday's official election results.
Correspondents say crowds the size of those at Monday's opposition rally have not been seen in Tehran since the 1979 revolution.
An eyewitness told the BBC Tuesday's rally was even bigger than Monday's - though this cannot be independently confirmed.

FYI.....it should be noted that the rally was moved via Twitter communication to a different area. The Ahmini camp had decided to organize a protest right where the opposition was going to protest, so the opposition just switched the spot to avoid conflict and short-circuited the gov't attempt to create a conflict which could undermine the opposition.

We'll likely look back on this regardless of outcome and laugh at how a simple instant messaging program was used to subvert each and every attempt by a gov't to diffuse the situation. It's pretty comical at this point.

Huge crowds. Some pics.......

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

i can't follow the twitter-ing anymore - since everyone is setting their location to Tehran it's pulling in a bunch of noise in the geo-searching and you end up with just junk

hxxp://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/jan-june09/iran2_06-15.html
hxxp://garysick.tumblr.com/post/124278890/pbs-newshour-on-iran-with-karim-sadjadpour-and-gary

I take back my pseudocriticism of the US government's lack of overt involvement...

Perhaps it is this lack of involvement that is good for Iran, in that Ahmadinejad can't use it to spin the entire thing on the US interfering in national affairs.

Somehow, his denouncement of foreign media and the EU as being interventionist don't really have a leg to stand on at home, as compared to if the US admin had taken sides.

If you look at the 'pro-government' protesters, many of them are carrying signs that make varying 'Down with U.S' slogans. Without that message being supported by any direct message from the president, they don't have that crutch to lean on. They (Ahmini camp) are trying to stir a pot that has nothing to do with the issue at hand.

OMG. I think I'm agreeing with MBBF.

*HEAD EXPLODES*

I wonder if there is also a bit of the old self-reliance message going out to the reformists. Basically a "look, if this is going to happen, it has to come from you. The USA/UN is not going to send in troops to support you. You have to win your freedom with your blood and sweat--not just hold on long enough to wait for us. And good luck."

I wonder if searching other cities would get more useful info.

What is that code?