News from Iran? Good? Bad? Who knows?

[Valmy]

Edit:  Looks like they could be ready for a big crack down.  Human rights groups are reporting that hundreds of reformists were arrested yesterday.  Internet use is being more heavily restricted and the RG is warning people not to post provocative or tension building things on the internet or they'll face prosecution.

I don't understand this strategy.  They are going to poke the hornets nest by arresting a few hundred while thousands are marching?  It sounds to me like they are not being very forceful about this.

[KRonn]

Power plays going on of course, among the major leaders and groups, as you guys are saying and what the reporting seems to show. That has to be diluting and weakening efforts to contain the protests, and causing some of those in power to be looking for ways to just survive or cut their losses of power. This was only about the elections at first; the protests soon morphed into something much more significant, the Iranian people's disaffection at their ruling groups, and the desire, demand for change. I had earlier figured the various forces of government would crack down, contain this, as they had in the past. Now I think this is becoming a real game changer for Iran even if the crackdowns do occur. 

[jimmy olsen]

Ahmadinejad's rally was photoshopped to appear larger than it really was.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/17/743478/-Ahmadinejad-Rally-Photoshopped-to-Appear-Larger

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Ahmadinejad's rally was photoshopped to appear larger than it really was.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/17/743478/-Ahmadinejad-Rally-Photoshopped-to-Appear-Larger

that's a significant blunder when found out... which it has.

[Neil]

Ahmadinejad's rally was photoshopped to appear larger than it really was.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/17/743478/-Ahmadinejad-Rally-Photoshopped-to-Appear-Larger

Dailykos = lies.

[derspiess]

Dailykos = lies.

I gotta say though that some of those wacko leftie sites are doing a better job than mainstream media at covering the Iran thing.

[Neil]

Dailykos = lies.

I gotta say though that some of those wacko leftie sites are doing a better job than mainstream media at covering the Iran thing.

To some degree.  The analysis is pretty amusing, mind you.

[jimmy olsen]

 
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/06/17/2600571.htm

I've just been witnessing a confrontation, in dusk and into the night, between about 15,000 supporters of Ahmadinejad - supposedly the president of Iran - who are desperate to down the supporters of Mr Mousavi, who thinks he should be the president of Iran.

There were about 10,000 Mousavi men and women on the streets, with approximately 500 Iranian special forces, trying to keep them apart.

It was interesting that the special forces - who normally take the side of Ahmadinejad's Basij militia - were there with clubs and sticks in their camouflage trousers and their purity white shirts and on this occasion the Iranian military kept them away from Mousavi's men and women.

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.

There were a lot of stones thrown and quite a lot of bitter fighting, hand-to-hand but at the end of the day the special forces did keep them apart.

I haven't ever seen the Iranian security authorities behaving fairly before and it's quite impressive.

[PJL]

Either way Khameni is the big loser in this.  He will get rapped on the knuckles or worse by the reformers if they win, or he has to end up relying more on Ahmadejad and his forces if they win.

[The Minsky Moment]

Now we don't know the reasons that Mousavi threatened Khamenei so much. 
. . .
The other possibility is that Khameinei has next to no power and that this was done by Ahmadinejad and the IRG - though, as I say, they are the most difficult group in Iran to get any decent information on - in which case Khameinei can't make that choice anyway.

Possibility 2 is that Khamenei has power but does not fully control the IRGC and elements of the IRGC took the iniative to rig the election.  That put Khamenei in a tough spot - either reveal the fraud and denounce the IRGC which would be very destabilizing and an attack on a key part of his own support base, or try to save face and quickly ram through the results, hoping that the fallout could be contained.  Easy to see why the latter choice would be more palatable; it remains to be seen whether the calculation will pan out.

[jimmy olsen]

Today's march

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLo_6Qp1eTk

[Sheilbh]

Tim trying to take over my turf :p

I read a couple of things that I found good today.  One is that in another reference to 1979 Mousavi's calling for a mourning march with the families and friends of those killed by the Basij.  This was a technique used a lot in the earlier revolution.  Apparently some in the crowd had signs saying 'annulment of elections is our right' which is a witty play on Ahmedinejad's slogan 'nuclear power is our right'

At the football match - and there is no way Iran could cut coverage of that - six of the players including the captain were wearing green wristbands, they said this was religious not political (the joys of green) but weren't wearing them in the second half.  The crowd had signs saying 'death to the dictator' and so on.  The crowd also chanted 'compatriots we are with you to the end!'

I'm surprised how long this has lasted and I wonder how much longer it can last.  I still can't get over how amazing it is when I see the BBC images of thousands and hundreds of thousands of people and the anchor says 'this is Tehran'

[jimmy olsen]

A rebuttal of the idea that Ahmadinejad could have won on his strength in rural areas.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31409684/ns/world_news-the_new_york_times/

Update | 4:01 p.m. A reader, R.B., points us to this article on the Web site Tehran Bureau, "Iran's Rural Vote and Election Fraud." The article was written by Eric Hooglund, a professor of politics at Bates College and an expert of rural Iran. Here is how Mr. Hoogland begins his critique of the theory that Mr. Ahmadinejad won the election in Iran's rural heartland:

I just heard a CNN reporter in Tehran say that Ahmadinejad's support base was rural. Is it possible that rural Iran, where less than 35 percent of the country's population lives, provided Ahmadinejad the 63 percent of the vote he claims to have won? That would contradict my own research in Iran's villages over the past 30 years, including just recently. I do not carry out research in Iran's cities, as do foreign reporters who otherwise live in the metropolises of Europe and North America, and so I wonder how they can make such bold assertions about the allegedly extensive rural support for Ahmadinejad.

Take Bagh-e Iman, for example. It is a village of 850 households in the Zagros Mountains near the southwestern Iranian city of Shiraz. According to longtime, close friends who live there, the village is seething with moral outrage because at least two-thirds of all people over 18 years of age believe that the recent presidential election was stolen by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

When news spread on Saturday (June 13) morning that Ahmadinejad had won more than 60 percent of the vote cast the day before, the residents were in shock. The week before the vote had witnessed the most intense campaigning in the village's history, and it became evident that support for Mir-Hossein Mousavi's candidacy was overwhelming. Supporters of Ahmadinejad were even booed and mocked when they attempted rallies and had to endure scolding lectures from relatives at family gatherings. "No one would dare vote for that hypocrite," insisted Mrs. Ehsani, an elected member of the village council.

The president was very unpopular in Bagh-e Iman and in most of the other villages around Shiraz, primarily because of his failure to deliver on the reforms he promised in his successful 2005 presidential campaign.

[Queequeg]

Tim trying to take over my turf :p

The News has been Jimmy's territory forever.  He has a Deus Ex style neural implant feeding him MSNBC.com and
AP stories even when he is asleep.  If he doesn't post them, they burn themselves into his subconscious and cause nightmares. 

[jimmy olsen]

If he doesn't post them, they burn themselves into his subconscious and cause nightmares.