Here is a gallery of the photos from today’s Demonstrations at Paris, which took presence in the Presence of Mohsen Makhmalbaf, as well Jack Lang (former education minister and one of the heads of the Socialist Party in France), a representative of Bertrand Delanoe (mayor of Paris), Representative of the government’s UMP party, representatives from the Communist party, the Iranian students Union, the head of the french student union, as well as the Union of Jewish Students in france.

Here is a video of Makhmalbaf’s speech:

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Here is Hooman Majd on Bill Maher’s HBO show, Real Time:

Here is the rest of the show and the panel discussion (joel stein, paul begala, Kathy kay)

(more…)

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I received this screen capture in my email.  Compare the two photos taken of the Official State Television (click to enlarge):

According to these two Screen captures the count of Mohsen Rezai:

At 9.47 he has 633048 votes

At 13.53 he has 587913 votes

How does one lost about 45,000+ votes in a span of 4 hours?

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A great video, from JUST BEFORE THE ELECTIONS,  of Ahmadinejad coming out only to be greeted by a mob of Moussavi supporters, chanting at first “moussavi, moussavi”…and then “liar liar liar”…and finally “Ahmadi bye bye , Ahmadi Bye Bye!”.  (and according to election results…these guys all went and voted for Ahmadinejad right after!…)

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This is as Iranian as it gets, people in the subway breaking into an impromptu chanting, singing session.  The spirit is so positive:

Larry king discussing the protests in Iran (with Shiva rose and Christian Amanpour):

One of the more famous and powerful revolution songs of ’79 put to the images of the current struggle in Iran:

Mohsen Makhmalbaf & Marjane Satrapi at the European Parliament (english and persian):

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A good report with some impressive footage of the 6th day of massive peaceful marches across Iran’s Capital:

A WEB ALBUM of the havoc and destruction caused at the University Domitories in Tehran

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“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”   – Asimov

Another day went by in the unrest in Iran.   News came through early on about the results of the peaceful demonstrations of the night before and brutal violence of the security forces and Basijis, leading to the death – according to Tehran province governor – of 7 demonstrators, and 8 deaths according to medical staff and doctors at the hospital treating the victims (see video below).

Personally, before i go further i have some questions for Mr. Ahmadinejad (i dont doubt that there are a few million of us, each with our own questions).  First of all, i found his comment describing the protesters as ‘riff-raff’ ( i can’t find a link to the article/speech, would welcome if someone has it), oddly reminiscent not only of Sarkozy’s “racaille” comment, in 2005 sparking the paris riots, but also, of Shah’s similar comments, which in some ways sparked, or at least fed the revolution.  The Iranian people do not like being belittled or discarded with such epithets.

Secondly I would like to know, if you, Mr. Ahmadinejad, claim and believe this was a free and fair election, Why do you need to arrest opposition politicans (and here)?

Why do you need to arrest the country’s Human Rights Activists?

If you won then Why do you need to arrest the peaceful demonstrators?
If you won, then why do you need to shut down the country’s conventional and internet communication lines (and here and here)?
If you won then Why do you need to tell International media to shut up (and here)and kick them out or to arrest them and beat them up?

Why do you need to kill your own future, your own university students?
If you won, then Why do you need to kill your fellow countrymen who are protesting peacefully (also, see videos below?
Shouldn’t the president of a country LISTEN to its citizens, isnt that what democracy is about, and after all its YOU who said Iran has the healthiest democracy in the world?

—//   HERE ARE A LIST OF INTERESTING ARTICLES AND READING MATERIAL REGARDING THE CURRENT SITUATION

• Especially for the non-Iranian readers, here’s a great explanation of the security forces structure of the Islamic Republic (thanks once more to the NIAC blog and Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic).

• A curious and shocking document – if true – From Iran’s Interior Ministry (quite official looking)  giving the “true” results of the election showing Moussavi winning by a wide margin, followed by Karroubi, and Ahmadinejad a distant third.
• A very interesting development regarding the TWITTER phenomen of the ongoing situation in Iran. The US state department asks TWITTER to delay its scheduled downtime considering the HUGE role it has played and continues to play in the uprising in Iran.  I am going to hopefully get much more into the cyber side of the ongoign conflict, whcih is fascinating and precedent-setting.

• Speakign of the WEB aspect, if you’re not aware of it, there is a HUGE cyberwar going on as part of the current struggle in Iran.  Here is a page detailing a list of webpages to get onto inorder to help wiht the Denial of Service attacks agianst all government websites.

• Getting back to Andrew Sullivan, he has been one of the most active livebloggers of the situation in Iran, and at least personally i’m very thankful to him.  (i really would like to know what makes him tick).  But he has been so with the spirit of the Green revolution, that at one point yesterday he was citing Rumi on the liveblog!!!

• An article by (always interesting) Trita Parsi on the front page of Time magazine entitled “Who’s fighting who in Iran’s Struggle“.

• Another good source of western analysis of the situation i find is Laura Secor of the New Yorker “The supreme leader’s next move”.

• A interview celebrated Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi at the village voice “on Ahmadinejad’s repressive regime, the disputed election, and the Youth of Tehran”.

–// A COLLECTION OF VIDEOS FROM YESTERDAY AND TODAY (WARNING SOME FOOTAGE IS DISTURBING)

Another example of beautiful, peaceful, march of the protestors, in Tehran (jam-e jam):

Another (HD) video of the attack on the Basij base that had fired (and killed) some protestors:

SKYNEWS footage of yesterday’s demonstrations:

Doctors and nurses on protest:

Young protestor is shot in the stomach (disturbing video)

More violent attacks against protestors (disturbing):

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Here’s Jon Stewart Last nite on teh Daily Show commenting on what has been going on in Iran following the elections:

And here is the second part:

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Lotfan has just put up a very intersting site(anatomy of a coup), detailing the timeline of events which sources, from several days before the actual elections.

Very interesting reading.

——//

Follow the events on TWITTER.

Here you have a list of liveblogs doing continuous coverage and liveblogging of the events in Tehran and Iran, from various sources within the country.

• The Guardian’s live blog of events
• Andrew Sullivan’s “the daily dish” over at The Atlantic
• Nico Pitney over at The Huffington Post
• niacINsight (National Iranian American Council)
• Liberation (en francais)
• Le Monde (en francais)
• Memoire Vive (en francais)

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First watch this video:

Here is the New Yorker article “Preparing the Battlefield” mentioned.  Here is a brief excerpt:

ate last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year….

Furthermore, here is an interesting interview by teh New Yorker with Seymour Hersh:

There are several things which are interesting (which for example we see in the video), for example the fact that the Democrats are looking on purpose the other way, and accepting the money going to this operation.  Goes to show you how complicit the Democrats are with the war mongering republicans, possibly far worse, since they say one thing and give hope to people and then do the opposite.

on a possibly related news, or at least interesting at the same time as all this, is the Mujadeddin Khalgh demonstrations across Europe (who are proponenets of armed opposition to the current iranian regime), having already been removed from the “terrorist blacklist” by the UK, and well underway in other european countries such as france.

I know i’d said i didnt want to write any more politics, but with SO MUCH good news coming out all at once what can i do?

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