I'm surprised no one's started a thread on this yet, it's pretty big news. The two main candidates in this election were incumbent Ahmenidijad and Mousavi. Mousavi entered the race late, but was very popular since he is at least slightly more moderate than Ahmenidijad and wants normalized relations with the west.
(Granted, he's no angel, he presided over some pretty bad crack-downs in the 80's)
Turnout for the election was 85%. Absolutely huge. Unfortunately, there's accusations of a rigged election, since it was called for Ahmenidijad in a landslide barely after the last polls closed. According to official reports he even won by more than 2-1 in areas that would historically gone to Mousavi due to ethnic and religious ties.
Here's some pics of the marches and riots going on now and over the weekend:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/200..._election.html
This guy is a number cruncher and has some interesting analysis posted on his site: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/
Here's some BBC news on what's going on: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8099218.stm
An interesting development in all this is that while traditional media has been muzzled to a point (ABC, NBC and BBC reporters have had stuff confiscated from them or prevented from broadcasting), Twitter feeds have been bringing a lot of real time info and pics out to the world. Twitter seriously spanked CNN's coverage, they were about a day late and a dollar short on covering, although they're finally going now that there's live rounds being shot into crowds by the police.
Thoughts?
(Granted, he's no angel, he presided over some pretty bad crack-downs in the 80's)
Turnout for the election was 85%. Absolutely huge. Unfortunately, there's accusations of a rigged election, since it was called for Ahmenidijad in a landslide barely after the last polls closed. According to official reports he even won by more than 2-1 in areas that would historically gone to Mousavi due to ethnic and religious ties.
Here's some pics of the marches and riots going on now and over the weekend:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/200..._election.html
This guy is a number cruncher and has some interesting analysis posted on his site: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/
Here's some BBC news on what's going on: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8099218.stm
An interesting development in all this is that while traditional media has been muzzled to a point (ABC, NBC and BBC reporters have had stuff confiscated from them or prevented from broadcasting), Twitter feeds have been bringing a lot of real time info and pics out to the world. Twitter seriously spanked CNN's coverage, they were about a day late and a dollar short on covering, although they're finally going now that there's live rounds being shot into crowds by the police.
Thoughts?
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