http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=360933While definitely not my favorite website, this is definitely the best compilation of videos I've yet to find of the Riots in Iran.
So, what exact has been happening? I'll assume you live under a rock. Despite a certain element in America referring to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran as a dictator, he is not. That would be the Grand Ayatollah Khamenei. Iran is a Theocracy, governed by the Islamic council established by the Islamic Revolution against the Shah back in 1979. In name, though, they are a republic.
So what happened? Elections happened, between Conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Reformist, Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Mousavi started to gain a lot of traction toward the end of the campaign after televised debates in which he really confronted Ahmadinejad's explosive and insane rhetoric. A whole lot of traction, in fact. Young people, and women mostly were the cause of this. Record numbers of voters turned out and... Ahmadinejad won, by a humongous margin. An absolutely unbelieveable margin. Even his supporters were expecting it to be much closer. If true, all the polling was off... But then, well the videos in the link above explains what happened next.
Down with the dictatorship, they cry. Reformist politicians are being rounded up and arrested. The people will not stand for this, obviously. As we speak, the riots continue, with no intention of dying down. Recounts have been announced, but... Well,
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/06/recount-in-iran-coming.htmlPlenty of reasons why that doesn't even begin to matter.
For myself, I stand with the people in the streets, and I hope that everyone looking at those videos takes care to notice how they are dressed. Not the crude stereotype of the middle east, the white smock and cap, but almost universally dressed in ways that would make them fit in perfectly well in Chicago, or New York, or LA, or Austin, or anywhere else in America. Some of the women aren't even wearing scarves over their hair.
Iran is far from being a liberal democracy of the sort we know in North America, and Europe. There is a facade that is erected by the government there, by the Islamic council. The glorious Islamic revolution, they call it. A republic, they call it. Half truths perpetuated by the maintainers of the Revolution. But these people on the streets are not inner party members. Or outer party members.
If there is hope, it lies in the proles.