Riots in Iran - CNN and Al Jazeera (english) Breaking News

Riots in Iran - CNN and Al Jazeera (english) Breaking News

edition.cnn.com

Tehran, Iran (CNN) -- Fresh clashes broke out between demonstrators and security forces in Tehran on Sunday as large crowds gathered for Ashura, a major religious observance

(visit the link for the full news article)

CNN's Biased View

edition.cnn.com...

Al Jazeera's Biased View
english.aljazeera.net...

I wasn't there so I can't say that what CNN and Al Jazeera are reporting, is, or is not, accurate. WHAT I CAN SAY THOUGH IS they report what draws in the crowds. Ill be interested to see how this really happened when the real news starts breaking. lol

edition.cnn.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 27-12-2009 by ThePeoplesSoldier]

BBC news is reporting at least one dead and possibly four more.
They also have an amatuer video up at news.bbc.co.uk...
Here we go again!

The only and most desirable solution is a coupe d'etat. Other options will cause significant damage and hence, are not plausible.

For the Iranian people and for the world, it would be good if this would happen rather sooner than later, but then again the right moment has already passed, namely during the elections.

[edit on 27-12-2009 by Mdv2]

Twitter is going nuts again.
In the time it took to write this there were 1000 new tweets on #iranelection.

#iranelection

#ashura

#neda

#mousavi

Without guns the people of Iran won't change anything. You think we would have defeated the British and won our independence by throwing rocks and molotov cocktails? Hell no! Good for the Iranian people but things need to get a lot more serious before the dictators start fearing for their loss of power.

Originally posted by Mdv2
The only and most desirable solution is a coupe d'etat. Other options will cause significant damage and hence, are not plausible.

For the Iranian people and for the world, it would be good if this would happen rather sooner than later, but then again the right moment has already passed, namely during the elections.

[edit on 27-12-2009 by Mdv2]

Yes a cuope d'etat... You may eat those words if the next dictator is worse than the current one. The guy running Iran right now may say a lot of stuff but I don't see him pushing is military against Iraq and Afghanistan. Especially as destabilized and wealthy as Iraq is... Iran having the home advantage as well as numbers and they would be received warmly y their muslim brothers as REAL liberators... But Amedidajad keeps his military out of Iraq (Most of the time).

What hell it would be if some new dictator came along to free Iraq....

I'm really hoping these brave people will win in the end and get their regime change.

Four protesters killed in Tehran clashes

Security forces shot dead four protesters in Tehran Sunday in a crackdown on vast crowds of opposition supporters who turned a Shiite mourning event into a mass protest, a website and witnesses said.

"However a number of policemen have been injured in today's riots." Witnesses said that enraged protesters fought back at the security forces, pelting them ...

news.smh.com.au...

Iran Website Says Four Killed In Tehran Protests

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Four people were killed in clashes between pro-reform protesters and security forces in Tehran on Sunday in a second day of violence during a Shi'ite Muslim religious mourning ritual, an opposition website said

The Jaras website, in reports that could not immediately be independently verified, said police shot dead three pro-reform protesters in downtown Tehran. It later said another demonstrator was killed in clashes between opposition supporters and security forces in the capital, without giving details on how he died.

"Three people were killed and two others were wounded when police opened fire at protesters," it said.

The website later reported that police forces refused orders to shoot at protesters.

"Police forces are refusing their commanders' orders to shoot at demonstrators in central Tehran ... some of them try to shoot into air when pressured by their commanders," Jaras said.

Shooting was also heard elsewhere in the city center and security forces had fired tear gas to disperse opposition supporters, it said.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators had packed the streets of Tehran and clashes also erupted in Shiraz, Isfahan, Najafabad and Babol cities, Jaras said.

Jaras said protesters set one police motorbike on fire. A plume of black smoke could be seen above the city center as police blocked streets and clashes intensified.

www.nytimes.com...


Iran December 27 - photos from AFP - fair use

Young man with stone
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/b6f6c3d863fc.jpg[/atsimg]

Some of the security forces get in trouble.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/e17b68757847.jpg[/atsimg]


[edit on 27-12-2009 by Chevalerous]

Originally posted by makeitso
Twitter is going nuts again.
In the time it took to write this there were 1000 new tweets on #iranelection.
#iranelection
#ashura
#neda
#mousavi

I would be careful to not completely rely on Twitter for real coverage. Just last week I ran a thread which has details how Twitter was used as a propaganda weapon against Iran. I'll post the details relating to twitter here.

Post Election "Twitter" War against Iran

In the midst of the protests, the Iranian government cracked down on dissent, banning foreign reporters and blocking websites. As the Washington Times reported,

“Well-developed Twitter lists showed a constant stream of situation updates and links to photos and videos, all of which painted a portrait of the developing turmoil. Digital photos and videos proliferated and were picked up and reported in countless external sources safe from the regime's Net crackdown.”Naturally, all of this information came from the upper class Western students, who had access to this technology, which they were using in English.

On June 15, “a 27-year-old State Department official, Jared Cohen, e-mailed the social-networking site Twitter with an unusual request:

delay scheduled maintenance of its global network, which would have cut off service while Iranians were using Twitter to swap information and inform the outside world about the mushrooming protests around Tehran.

Further, the New York Times reported that,

Mr. Cohen, a Stanford University graduate who is the youngest member of the State Department’s policy planning staff, has been working with Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and other services to harness their reach for diplomatic initiatives.

It turned out only a small number of people in Iran actually used Twitter for organizational purposes; however, “Twitter did prove to be a crucial tool in the cat-and-mouse game between the opposition and the government over enlisting world opinion.” Twitter also took part in spreading disinformation during the protests, as the New York Times pointed out that, “some of the biggest errors on Twitter that were quickly repeated and amplified by bloggers:

that three million protested in Tehran last weekend (more like a few hundred thousand); that the opposition candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi was under house arrest (he was being watched); that the president of the election monitoring committee declared the election invalid last Saturday (not so).”

On the 28th of June, the Iranian Intelligence Minister blamed western powers, specifically the United States and Britain, for the post-election protests and violence. Iran even arrested British embassy staff in Tehran. On July 3, the head of Iran's Guardians Council said that, “British embassy staff would be put on trial for inciting violent protests.” Iran had arrested nine “British embassy employees it accused of playing a role in organising pro-democracy demonstrations,” but had released seven of them by July. However, one Embassy staff member had been accused of “a significant role” in the election riots.

What the Media failed to report:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told the United States to use Twitter and other social networking sites to fight against the leadership of arch-enemy Iran.

Source:Isra el urges use of Twitter against Iran

And here is the proof (hardly any MSM reported) how Twitter was used against Iran:

Thousands of tweets and retweets alleging that the election was a fraud, calling for protests in Iran, and even urging followers hack various Iranian news websites (which they did successfully). The Twitter popularity caught the eye of various blogs such as Mashable and TechCrunch and even made its way to mainstream news media sites.

Were these legitimate Iranian people or the works of a propaganda machine? I became curious and decided to investigate the origins of the information. In doing so, I narrowed it down to a handful of people who have accounted for 30,000 Iran related tweets in the past few days. Each of them had some striking similarities -

1. They each created their twitter accounts on Saturday June 13th.
2. Each had extremely high number of Tweets since creating their profiles.
3. “IranElection” was each of their most popular keyword
4. With some very small exceptions, each were posting in ENGLISH.
5. Half of them had the exact same profile photo
6. Each had thousands of followers, with only a few friends. Most of their friends were EACH OTHER.

Why were these tweets in English? Why were all of these profiles OBSESSED with Iran? It became obvious that this was the work of a team of people with an interest in destabilizing Iran. The profiles are phonies and were created with the sole intention of destabilizing Iran and effecting public opinion as to the legitimacy of Iran’s election.

I narrowed the spammers down to three of the most persistent – @StopAhmadi @IranRiggedElect @Change_For_Iran

I decided to do a google search for 2 of the 3 – @StopAhmadi and @IranRiggedElect. The first page to come up was JPost (Jerusalem Post) which is a right wing newspaper pro-Israeli newspaper.

JPost actually ran a story about 3 people “who joined the social network mere hours ago have already amassed thousands of followers.” Why would a news organization post a story about 3 people who JUST JOINED TWITTER hours earlier? Is that newsworthy? JPost was the first (and only to my knowledge) major news source that mentioned these 3 spammers.

Of course, Mousavi himself plays an important role in causing the social unrest within Iran. How often do you see a candidate declare himself the winner before any votes are counted and then, when faced with defeat, call the entire election process a fraud?

These twitting spammers began crying foul before the final votes were even counted, just as Mousavi had. The spammer @IranRiggedElect created his profile before a winner was announced and preformed the public service of informing us in the United States , in English and every 10 minutes, of the unfair election. He did so unselfishly, and without any regard for his fellow friends and citizens of Iran, who don’t speak English and don’t use Twitter!

Meet The Spammers

IranRiggedElect
3146 followers. 31 friends.
340 tweets in past 4 days. none before that.
Top 5 words - iranelection, cnnfail, mousavi, tehran,
All tweets in English
Time: Bulk between 12pm and 2pm eastern standard time
Most retweets: @StopAhmadi @IranElection09 @change_for_iran

Change_for_Iran
14,000 followers. 0 friends
117 tweets in 2 days. none before that.
All tweets in English
Time: Bulk between 8:00 pm and 11:00 pm eastern.
Top 5 words: iranelection, people, police, right, students
No retweets

IranElection09
800 followers. 9 friends.
196 tweets in 3 days. none before that.
185 in English. 11 in Farsi (Arabic appearing letters. Not sure if it’s Farsi)
Time: bulk between 2:00pm and 6:00pm eastern. Also 1:00am.
Top 5 words: iranelection, rt, mousavi, tehran, march
Most retweets: @IranRiggedElect @StopAhmadi

StopAhmadi
6199 followers. 53 friends.
1107 tweets in past 3 days. None before then.
top 5 words: iranelection, ppl, news, rt, iran.
All tweets in English
Time: bulk between 9:00am and 5:00pm eastern
Most retweets: @mohamadreza @mahdi

mohamadreza
1433 followers. 142 friends
(protected account. cant see data)

The following all have the same photo in their profile and are followed by the profiles previously mentioned.

whereismyvote_normal

twitter.com...
twitter.com...
twitter.com... (14,000 followers)
twitter.com...
twitter.com...
twitter.com... (800 followers. 9 friends.)

[Update 1] Reuter’s on Pre-election Polling: Ahmadinejad lead by a 2-to-1 ratio, greater than the announced results of the “contested” vote.

[Update 2] NBC foreign correspondent Richard Engel says Twitter and Facebook are helping Iranians organize a “revolution.

[Update 3] Wonder where all of the nasty comments are coming from? FYI- DDOS = distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is one in which a multitude of compromised systems attack a single target, thereby causing denial of service for users of the targeted system. (Recognize the avatar?) BUT….their latest spamming campaign (Against CS) is backfiring.

Spammers get a taste of their own medicine!: Block CS eh? It’s not us being blocked…..

[Update 4] The Guardian: Iran’s election result may not be fraudulent. Our polling suggests that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s victory is what voters wanted

[Update 5] Iran blocked access to twitter yesterday BUT that doesn’t stop the “Iranian Students” from continuing to tweet every 10 or so minutes.

[Update 6] Iranian intelligence arrested “Agents” within the country “who masterminded the recent post-election violence in Tehran.”

[Update 7] JPost removes the evidence and issues a response

[Update 8] Tehran- Riots orchestrated by enemies

[Update 9] Washington Post: “Twitter’s impact inside Iran is zero,” said Mehdi Yahyanejad, manager of a Farsi-language news site based in Los Angeles. "Here, there is lots of buzz, but once you look . . . you see most of it are Americans tweeting among themselves."

[Update 10] CIA Factbook: Languages spoken in Iran: Persian and Persian dialects 58%, Turkic and Turkic dialects 26%, Kurdish 9%, Luri 2%, Balochi 1%, Arabic 1%, Turkish 1%, other 2%. Sure, some of the more educated people (a small amount) do speak English but its not at all popular.

[Update 11] This post became one of the most followed, tweeted and retweeted stories regarding the #IranElection on the net yesterday. The 3 “Iranian Student” spammers specifically mentioned this post as did hundreds of others. So, um, where are the Iranians?? The screen shot below is of our traffic yesterday by country.

[Update 11] This post became one of the most followed, tweeted and retweeted stories regarding the #IranElection on the net yesterday. The 3 “Iranian Student” spammers specifically mentioned this post as did hundreds of others. So, um, where are the Iranians?? The screen shot below is of our traffic yesterday by country.

Proof: Israeli Effort to Destabilize Iran Via Twitter #IranElection

Other related sources:
1. Do We Really Care About Democracy? #IranElection
2. BBC Admits to Using Fake Photo in #IranElection Coverage
3. JPost Removes the Evidence and Issues a Response #IranElection
4. Iran’s Election; Early Results Indicate Landslide for Ahmadinejad
5. NEW! Follow Charting Stocks on Twitter!

reply to post by Flakey


The leaders of the opposition that instigated the riots during the elections this year are known to be conservative but nowhere close to the current regime. Additionally, they are in favor of strong ties with the west. Unless a junta seizes power, I do not see how a Western-backed, and perhaps more importantly, an Israeli-backed regime could be worse than the current extremists.

Unfortunately, we have no other solutions which are more peaceful and could solve this complex conflict, because one thing is sure: Israel is not going to allow Iran to build the bomb.

If we look at the comments that are coming in Twitter from "Iran", people are saying things like gunfire at a military academy, special forces refusing to fire at protesters, protesters taking control of several city blocks in Tehran and so on. There are also reports of protests spreading throughout the city of Tehran. We cannot say whether these reports are true or not, but it looks like the protesters are getting even more bold this time as compared to the immediate protests following the declaration of election results.

My personal opinion is that the election was stolen from the people, and there are now this story from a former Basij who describes exactly what happened in June 2009.

But of course! many people would now say he is an Israeli/US agent and part of the western propaganda machine!

Iran: Basij member describes election abuse

A defecting
member of the infamous Basij militia, the men who wounded and killed in the aftermath of the Iran elections in the summer, talks to Lindsey Hilsum about what he witnessed.

"I've lost my world and I've lost my religion" - the words of a former Iranian Basij militia member who says he witnessed killings and tried to stop rapes during the uprising that followed the disputed Presidential election in June.

He is now seeking refuge in the UK and has spoken exclusively to Channel 4 News about the orders the Basij were given to ensure President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the election.

---
Election orders

"In truth the orders didn't come after the election. The orders for all that you witnessed came before the election.

"We were prepared. But we didn't ever imagine that people’s actions would be so great. We had received orders regarding student activities.

"From three or four months before the election we had attended classes on ideological and political thought and crowd control.

"We knew what we had to do but nothing prepared us for what we saw. There were severe clashes in the first few days, and so new orders were given for forthcoming days."
---
"From three or four months before I had a social undertaking, preparing to see how people would encounter the elections, the level of attendance - would it be well received, do they believe in it, do they think something could still be done?

"It was going well even though they spoke of Khatami (reformist former president) coming, and then he wasn't coming. All this created excitement. People came with genuine enthusiasm.

"We got various statistics and analysed them. We wanted to get an idea of what the mode of clashes would be.

"When the campaigns began the excitement reached a new height.

"We had received orders a matter of months before that there is jurisprudence, that there is the jurisprudence of the Imam Zaman, (the 12th Imam, who is expected to return like a Messiah) whose incarnation is Ayatollah Khamenei, and that he had announced that for the advancement and development of Islam and the development of the revolution no-one could be more effective than Mr. Ahmadinejad.

"Therefore the order came that Mr Khamenei has him in mind, that Mr Khamenei has Mr Ahmadinejad in mind for the presidency and so he must be announced as the winner.

"It's he who is best suited to this revolution, order and Velayat Faqih (Iranian system of Islamic jurisdiction)"
´
Ballot box fraud

"The answers to your questions go back to before the elections. In the private meeting we had for those responsible for the ballot boxes, it was made clear.

"The orders were announced as to how everything would be conducted on the day of the election. We were among those responsible for the ballot boxes."

Role of the Basij - Election fraud

"For us who were responsible for the ballot boxes the order was this: that Aqa's [Khamenei's] wish is for Ahmadinejad to win.

"For illiterate people and those not able to complete their ballots, you must do so for them and complete them accordingly (for Ahmadinejad), no matter who their vote was intended for.

"Same with blank votes. In the counting the blank votes wouldn't be announced as void.

"They [the illiterate] were generally made up of elderly men and women - and they are great believers in the mosque community and religious matters and areas where there is a lower literacy rate like the villages or areas of the big cities."

Youth vote suppressed

"Our problem was the young people and university students, we had prepared for the others.

"Well they [the students] weren't around for the count. When they left, how can I say, I'm very ashamed now, but they just came up to the box and then left.

"After the voting was over it was only us who were there. We were honest in that the command was followed.

"When the voting was over, the boxes were opened, but not all of them.

"A few were opened and counted, then we received another order to send the boxes to the main centre."

"Because a reaction was expected, we had been ordered from before the election for all security forces to be ready for the following day.

"They told us to come early for group prayers. We went along with others who'd been invited. Prayers took place. This was followed by a short speech confirming Mr Ahmadinejad's victory and the congratulations in order.

www.channel4.com...



[edit on 27-12-2009 by Chevalerous]

reply to post by ThePeoplesSoldier


At least as op you know both sides of the media are biased, towards there sides, they sell too.

I would think the anglo american empire is at it again, and that means israel too, as israel belongs in the anglo american empire.

Shame, but we will not get the real stories as normal.

reply to post by Mdv2


And what is so earth shattering scary about Iran getting "the bomb"? North Korea has it as does Israel. India and Pakistan have nukes and animosity yet both have refrained from nuking one another. One more nation goes nuclear. Not a big deal in the world scheme of things, all things considered.

I think Iran should be dealt with a hands off approach. The current attempts at nation destabilization have only caused riots and unrest but Ahmed is still in charge. And from the look of things he treats his people better than Kim Jon Il treats his. Other nations should accept Iran for what it is rather then tinkering with their politics to affect desired outcomes. Some may not like Ahmed but, I think the devil we know is better then the devil we don't.

reply to post by andy1033


I like to use a technique I have learned from being a police officer. I take both stories and then find the middle ground, thats usualy your most truthfull story.

The video below shows large numbers of people marching through what is supposedly central Tehran chanting "Mir Hossein", in a gesture of support to the reformist leader who has become the central figure in Iran's oppositon movement.

In other footage, angry protestors are shouting fierce anti-government slogans. In the video below, which was supposedly shot in central Tehran today, crowds are shouting "Allah Akbar" and "Death to you" in a reference to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Here in the last video, demonstrators are seen fleeing what is thought to bPreviewe security forces.

Cue all the *Snip* saying the riots are CIA created. Idiots.

Mod Edit: Profanity/Circumvention Of Censors – Please Review This Link.

[edit on 12/27/2009 by semperfortis]

reply to post by jonny2410


lmfao I couldn't have said it better myself!

reply to post by ThePeoplesSoldier


Yeh, Yeh, Yeh.... whats new?

Riots in Iran.... bombs in Iraq... it's the same thing every day...

Originally posted by jonny2410
Cue all the assholes saying the riots are CIA created. Idiots.

Who is to say they are not?

Anglo american empire has a long history and they even admit to doing this stuff.

Americans even admit to destroying iran in past with created troubles there.

Your country has admitted it, fact.