an ‘interesting’ video on the rise of Social Media, and the shift in Paradigm that they are entailing.  I’m not sure i have an opinion on this yet:

If you want,subscribe to the Loopy RSS feed!

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…)

If you want,subscribe to the Loopy RSS feed!

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?

If you want,subscribe to the Loopy RSS feed!

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):

If you want,subscribe to the Loopy RSS feed!

“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):

If you want,subscribe to the Loopy RSS feed!

Here is an article about the plea from Makhmalbaf and Satrapi who “presented a document to Green Party MPs in the European parliament claiming to show that defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi had received over 19 million votes in the weekend election.”

Marjane Satrapi appelle le monde à rejeter le “coup d’Etat” d’Ahmadinejad.

“Nous sommes ici pour demander à la communauté internationale de ne pas reconnaître la légitimité de M. Ahmadinejad comme président. Le peuple iranien veut que la communauté internationale attende qu’il lui présente son vrai président”, Mir Hossein Moussavi, a déclaré Marjane Satrapi, lors d’une conférence de presse au Parlement européen, où elle était invitée par le Vert Daniel Cohn-Bendit.

A video of Makhmalbaf yesterday at the rally in Paris:

If you want,subscribe to the Loopy RSS feed!

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:

If you want,subscribe to the Loopy RSS feed!

UPDATE: Stunning video of the Basij (religious para-military) firing on the crowd with automatic weapons!!

A female protestor beign beaten with a stick for defending another:

A beautiful video of peace marching of tens of thousands in complete quiet:

If you want,subscribe to the Loopy RSS feed!

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)

If you want,subscribe to the Loopy RSS feed!

Well here is somethign new which certainly adds a whole new twist to things.

In a radio interview with RadioFarda, Mohsen Makhmalbaf – the celebrated Iranian Filmmaker – speaking as a spokesperson for the Moussavi camp, is saying that the night/morning after the elections, the moussavi headquarters were informed by the Interior ministry, that they’d won,  and that they should prepare their victory speach.  The supreme leader as well as several reformist papers were also informed of this.  Then at one point, suddenly, all mobile devices of the moussavi camp are disconnected, as well as a more widespread loss of connexion, and the next thing you know, we have the results of Ahmadinejad’s victory (winning exactly 66% percent in every single voting location, statistically odd, if not impossible as mentioned in teh previous blog post).

Now here is the actual interview (in persian):

To this point, the only newsource reporting in english, i’ve found is The Real News Network.
They also have an english translated transcript.  Read it all here. Here is an excerpt:

Behind the scenes the news changed! All the mobile phones belonging to Mousavi’s campaign got disconnected. Also from couple of days ago the SMS messaging were disabled for all the mobile phones. It was communicated to the Reformist [Eslah Talab] newspapers [the papers of Mousavi's political party] that they were the winners but were told that they must refrain from announcing the victory. The campaign’s communications headquarters was shutdown and the responsibility for campaign’s communications was given to me [Makhmalbaf]. This is as much as I know personally.

Until this point, I have personally received the information directly from campaign communications headquarters. From this point on, the only information I have, are through intermidatery sources.

For example Mrs. Nooshabeh Amiri informed me that Mr. Majidi has abandoned Mousavi. Majidi has said that I lost hope, and has gone home. He has announced that tomorrow there will be a coupe in Tehran.

Radio host:
Mr. Makhmalbaf, this news that you are reporting is very serious. Based on which facts are you making such a claim?

Makhmalbaf:
The second portion of the story [the plans for a coupe on Saturday] was conveyed to me through an intermedietary source. It would be better if you talk with Mrs Nooshabeh Amiri, who is the direct source of this news. The portion of story, before the coupe, should be accepted as the truth under my responsibility. I was assigned by Mousavi’s campaign, since the headquarters were closed, the responsibility of communications for the campaign was transferred to me. Because of this, I announced that the victor of the election is Mr Mousavi and even Mr. Khatami had announced that the victor is Mr Mousavi and any other vote that comes out of the ballot boxes is clear fraud. I think that there are two possible theories here, first it could be that they wanted to announce the news slowly, so that the society is not shocked. Secondly it is possible that the minorities and even Ahmadinejad and Sepah have even performed a coupe against Hashemi and Khamenei. This is a very critical situation, and critical times for Iran.

–//

• Reports say that many foreign news sources (eg. ABC, BBC, etc) have either had their cameras confiscated or have been ordered out of the country.
• A report on Javan-e Farda says that 120 members of the faculty at Sharif University have resigned in protestation.

If you want,subscribe to the Loopy RSS feed!