Iran: An Electoral Crisis! #iranelection – ARCHIVE

Main Post: Here Earlier posts Archive #1 and Archive#2, Archive #3, Archive 4, Archive 5

Time for a change – by Iranian-American hip-hop artist WeaponXEmcee

“My message to my Iranian people in the struggle. You are not alone. www.myspace.com/wxmc   “

List of Worldwide rallies, protests, demonstrations, and vigils in support of Iran http://docs.google.com/View?id=dgdt5wfz_3kgdw9gfc Christiane Amanpour analyzes speech Iran’s supreme leader rejects vote fraud claims CNN: Iran’s supreme leader rejects vote fraud claims, describing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election win as “definitive.”

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) — Iran’s supreme leader on Friday rejected opposition claims that last week’s presidential elections were rigged, describing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s win as “definitive” and calling for calm after days of protest.

Source:  CNN

10pm EDT: IRANs Supreme Leader to Speak at the Site of Crackdown

This will be interesting to see what he says and what issues he address. We will be keeping an eye out and looking to analysis of his words to see if the gives some indication of what direction this crisis may take.

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) — Iran’s supreme leader will deliver a sermon Friday at Tehran University, just days after a bloody crackdown at the school, according to a statement from the pro-government Basij militia.

Source: CNN

12:23 pm EDT:

Nico at Huffington Post has updated many new pictures on the front page of the post.  You can take a gander of them by cruising on over.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com

12:21 pm EDT:

From CNN:

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) — Iran’s supreme leader will deliver a sermon Friday at Tehran University, just days after a bloody crackdown at the school, according to a statement from the pro-government Basij militia.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will give his sermon during Friday prayers. It will be closely watched for a sign of how the government plans to resolve the stalemate over the country’s recent presidential elections.

Crowds of demonstrators have been protesting in the streets of Tehran, demanding that officials throw out election results that showed hardline incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defeated opposition leader Mir Hossein Moussavi.

http://cnn.site.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=Iran’s+supreme+leader+to+speak+at+site+of+crackdown+-+CNN.com&expire=-1&urlID=405150937&fb=Y&url=http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/06/18/iran.university/&partnerID=211911

Updated: Iran ‘investigating 646 poll protests’

Iran’s top legislative body says it is investigating 646 complaints from the three defeated presidential candidates over last week’s election.

The powerful Guardian Council said it had invited Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohsen Rezai to a meeting on Saturday to discuss the complaints.

Source: BBC

Breaking: Defeated candidates invited to meeting to discuss concerns.

BBC just stated on air, that the defeated candidates have been invited to a meeting on Saturday by Irans top legislative body to discuss their grievances. More info as they come. Trying to locate sources online now

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Many hundreds arrested and missing in Iran.

Is the regime trying to silence the protests by detaining leaders and organisers? What is quite disturbing is the number of reports of people going missing and being detained. If you have any information on the people missing please contact us and we will keep your details anonymouse.  We want to help get yours and their stories out.

For more information please refer to this excellent website: Source

Hillary Clinton in visual support for Iran protests?

Iranian Activist Pulled from Hospital Bed and Arrested.

(CNN) — A former Iranian deputy prime minister who headed a group supporting increased freedom and democracy was pulled from his hospital bed and arrested Wednesday in Tehran, his granddaughter told CNN.

Ibrahim Yazdi, who is about 76 years old, is secretary-general of the Freedom Movement of Iran, said Atefeh Yazdi of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He has suffered from prostate cancer, and his condition must be closely monitored, she said.

Source: CNN

Inside Iran:  The Election Fallout:

As the post-election crisis in Iran continues, authorities have barred all journalists working for foreign media from reporting on activities in the streets. And foreign reporters who went to Iran to cover last week’s elections are beginning to leave, as officials say their visas will not be extended.

Ali Arouzi, an NBC News Producer based in Tehran, discusses how difficult it is to report the story in the middle of a media blackout.

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/06/17/1968447.aspx

Wednesday Begins 5th Day of Civil Unrest!

Iran was braced for a fifth day of unrest today as the government intensified its crackdown on opposition figures with the arrest of dozens of leading critics and issued a further warning against reporting of the protest movement.

Saeed Laylaz, a leading journalist and a critic of government policy often quoted by foreign media, was among the latest to be detained, as protesters prepared for more demonstrations in Tehran.

“Iranian intelligence and security forces are using the public protests to engage in what appears to be a major purge of reform-oriented individuals whose situations in detention could be life-threatening,” said Aaron Rhodes, a spokesman for the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/17/fresh-iran-protests-planned1

Iran military targets Web

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) — As protesters planned to demonstrate for a fifth day against last week’s disputed presidential election, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard corps said Wednesday it will pursue legal action against Web sites that it said were inciting people to riot.

“We will very soon inform the public the details of these destructive Internet networks and we warn the people who want to use cyberspace to incite riot, threaten people and create rumors that legal action will be taken against them and the penalty they will pay is very heavy,” the Guard said in a statement carried by the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

Source: CNN

Journalist defies the crackdown on foreign media.

British reporter Robert Fisk witnesses a stunning scene in which Iranian soldiers keep a group of plainclothes paramilitaries away from Mousavi supporters.

From Huffington Post: Source

In fact at one point, Mousavi’s supporters were shouting ‘thank you, thank you’ to the soldiers.
One woman went up to the special forces men, who normally are very brutal with Mr Mousavi’s supporters, and said ‘can you protect us from the Basij?’ He said ‘with God’s help’.

It was quite extraordinary because it looked as if the military authorities in Tehran have either taken a decision not to go on supporting the very brutal militia – which is always associated with the presidency here – or individual soldiers have made up their own mind that they’re tired of being associated with the kind of brutality that left seven dead yesterday – buried, by the way secretly by the police – and indeed the seven or eight students who were killed on the university campus 24 hours earlier.

Quite a lot of policeman are beginning to smile towards the demonstrators of Mr Mousavi, who are insisting there must be a new election because Mr Ahmadinejad wasn’t really elected. Quite an extraordinary scene.

Aslan: Rafsanjani calls “emergency” meeting of Assembly of Experts.

Appearing on CNN last night, Iran expert Reza Aslan reported this:

There are very interesting things that are taking place right now. Some of my sources in Iran have told me that Ayatollah Rafsanjani, who is the head of the Assembly of Experts — the eighty-six member clerical body that decides who will be the next Supreme Leader, and is, by the way, the only group that is empowered to remove the Supreme Leader from power — that they have issued an emergency meeting in Qom.
Now, Anderson, I have to tell you, there’s only one reason for the Assembly of Experts to meet at this point, and that is to actually talk about what to do about Khamenei. So, this is what I’m saying, is that we’re talking about the very legitimacy, the very foundation of the Islamic Republic is up in the air right now. It’s hard to say what this is going to go.

McClatchy:  Iran Top Cleric:  RIGGED

TEHRAN, Iran — Supporters of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his main rival in the disputed presidential election, Mir Hossein Mousavi, massed in competing rallies Tuesday as the country’s most senior Islamic cleric threw his weight behind opposition charges that Ahmadinejad’s re-election was rigged.

“No one in their right mind can believe” the official results from Friday’s contest, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri said of the landslide victory claimed by Ahmadinejad. Montazeri accused the regime of handling Mousavi’s charges of fraud and the massive protests of his backers “in the worst way possible.”
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/iran/story/70155.html

The Guardian:

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, tonight dismissed post-election protests as the work of “tension seekers” and called for calm on national television.

As thousands of rival demonstrators filed through the streets of Tehran, promising further violence in days of unrest that have already killed seven people, the ayatollah called for “tolerance”, adding: “Everybody should be patient.

“The threshold of patience should be very high,” he told a room filled with supporters of all four candidates in Friday’s disputed election. “Tolerance is very difficult, whether for he who has won or the one who is defeated. Increase the capacity for defeat in yourself.”

He blamed Iran’s worst protests since the 1979 Islamic revolution on people seeking to “create destruction”.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/16/iran-elections-rally-tehran

3:12 PM:

(CNN) — Iranian presidential challenger Mir Hossein Moussavi’s hometown of Tabriz is Exhibit A for his supporters as they argue that last week’s election was rigged.

Official results from Friday’s polls show that the city and its surrounding province, dominated by ethnic Azeris like Moussavi, voted to re-elect hard-line incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It’s a result many observers of Iranian politics find incongruous but just one of the things that have raised eyebrows among Western analysts.

There were no exit polls conducted in Friday’s balloting and little polling before the election. Nate Silver, who runs the U.S. election Web site fivethirtyeight.com, said the official results were “ambiguous.”

“The fact that you had some areas where conservatives got only 20 percent of the vote in 2005 and got 70 percent of the vote this time — things like that have people who already had doubts about those numbers scratching their heads,” Silver said.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/06/16/iran.election.questions/

3:07 PM EDT:

New York Times:
TEHRAN — Tens of thousands of Iranians gathered in the streets here on Tuesday for a second day of mass demonstrations protesting the official results of Friday’s presidential election, unsatisfied by a top government panel’s agreement to conduct a partial recount.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/world/middleeast/17iran.html?_r=1&hp

3:04 PM EDT:

Open Letter To the World From Iran!

2:58 PM EDT:

Ann Curry has reposted her article on Iran from Twitter.

We’re in Iran, and as we make our way, we’re expecting what most Americans probably would expect.   A place of rage—-especially toward the West, which is increasingly concerned about Iran’s nuclear ambitions; where freedom of expression is non-existent. But we soon discover there is another side to this Islamic Republic beyond those chants of death to America. There is an Iran unknown to most Americans. Young people singing for joy at a rally for a presidential candidate.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31156949/ns/dateline_nbc-international/

2:43 PM EDT:

From Reuters:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Role in Twitter:

The U.S. State Department contacted the social networking service Twitter over the weekend to urge it to delay a planned upgrade that could have cut daytime service to Iranians, a U.S. official said on Tuesday.

“We highlighted to them that this was an important form of communication,” said the official of the conversation the department had with Twitter at the time of the disputed Iranian election. He declined further details.

1:20 pm EDT:

From the BBC:

Supporters of Iran’s defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi have again staged a mass rally in Tehran, witnesses told the BBC.

It comes despite Mr Mousavi’s urging his backers not to march, in case they risked clashing with supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Mr Ahmadinejad’s supporters earlier held a rally in central Tehran.

Tough new restrictions on the foreign media mean the BBC is unable to confirm the scale of either rally.

The new restrictions have been imposed amid apparent surprise and concern among the authorities at the scale of popular defiance over Friday’s official election results, correspondents say.

1:11 pm EDT It appears that journalists are now getting into trouble with their tweets.  This appeared on twitter just moments ago.

RT “A request from media and journalists: please do not include our usernames in your items. It can be a trouble later. #IranElection

– AC

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran’s top legislative body on Tuesday ruled out annulling a disputed presidential poll that has prompted the biggest street protests since the 1979 Islamic revolution, but said it was prepared for a partial recount.

(Editors’ note: Reuters coverage is now subject to an Iranian ban on foreign media leaving the office to report, film or take pictures in Tehran.)

In what appeared to be a first concession by authorities to the protest movement, the 12-man Guardian Council said it was ready to re-tally votes in the poll, in which hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the runaway winner.

But the powerful Council rejected reformist calls to annul Friday’s election, which set off swift-moving political turmoil, riveting attention on the world’s fifth-biggest oil exporter.

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSEVA14340720090616

Great Link To Use For Twitter:

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/06/16/cyberwar-guide-for-i.html

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