The Green Briefs Links

3rd Day - The Green Protest RallyImage by Hamed Saber via Flickr

What’s It All About?

In Iran, citizens are allowed to vote, choosing between several candidates who are approved by the Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei . A sane mind would conclude that in a system like that – since the candidates are chosen by the Supreme Leader – whoever wins, wins. It’s not much of a selection from where I sit, but it’s the law there and the Iranians have accepted it for 30 years. Except that this year, the guy who won didn’t really win.

What’s going on in Iran isn’t about the candidates. It’s about the fact that the Iranians realized en masse that their votes didn’t count. Then they realized that their Constitutional right to peaceful protest ( yes, in THEIR Constitution) was denied by the Supreme Leader, who stated that any protesters were acting against Allah.

In Islam, anyone acting against Allah can be killed. People have died. People are dying right now, just because they want to be heard.

What this is about is a nation of over 80 million well-educated folks suddenly realizing that their government did not care about them and would do anything – including murder – to retain their power. This is about a revolution, whether anybody wants to say so or not.

This is not about the end of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This may actually be the beginning of the real thing.

This is about the people regaining control of their lives. This is about a brave nation, most of them not even 30 years old, taking a stand for the rule of law, and against the tyranny of power-blinded old men too selfish to share a future they’ll never see and too foolish to step aside.

News From Iran

It’s damned near impossible to get any. Josh, aka NiteOwl has been producing The Green Brief for more than 2 weeks now. This is the best source of gathered sources which are verified as well as they can be, under the circumstances. Some of these things he reports I can somewhat verify, in that I have seen the same reports from very trusted sources. An extremely small set of sources. Josh is more connected to the #iranelection than I am. I trust him to be as accurate as is possible.

Below are links to the 1st 2 weeks of Green Briefs. This should present a reasonable timeline of events in Iran since the 2009 election results were announced in June.

Green Brief 1

Green Brief 2

Green Brief 3

Green Brief 4

Green Brief 5

Green Brief 6

Green Brief 7

Green Brief 8

Green Brief 9

Green Brief 10

Green Brief 11

Green Brief 12

Green Brief 13

Green Brief 14

Green Brief 15

Green Brief 16

Green Brief 17

Someone finally created a tracking page for the Green Briefs. Click THIS LINK to find them all.