The results were announced mere hours after polls closed.
Millions of votes, hand-counted, in hours.
They announced that AckmadinnerJacket had won decisively, with 63% of the vote.
The next day, millions marched in Tehran.
The protests were not only about Mousavi losing.
They became about Iran’s government ignoring the will of the people, and lying to them.
Some suggested there would have been fewer protests if the results had been closer, or announced at an appropriate time.
But the evidence of cheating kept rolling in.
Many towns voted for the dinner jacket more times that they had in population.
Many ‘votes’ were signed with the same writing/signature.
Some towns, Mousavi received fewer votes than he had campaign workers.
[memedex: pollid#490497]
The song is yare dabestani-e man, translates to “My School Friend”.
The protests continued into the week, with shouts of “down with the dictator” and sometimes even “Death to Khomeini.
Iranian women are beautiful.
During that weekend, several web sites were integral in getting word out from Iran, as media were kicked out of the country, or confined – they were not allowed to report, on threat of arrest.
Youtube set up a site specifically for a videos being uploaded from Iran.
Google launched a beta version of their persian translator early.
Twitter (and/or their hosting company) delayed maintenance work.
Hackers set up denial of service attacks on Iranian government news sites, which had limits on how much truth they were allowed to show.
Regular joes set up proxies.
Over the next week, many protesters were killed or jailed.
The government’s hired goon’s, the Basiji attacked many in daylight, as well as attacking people in their homes (often by climbing to the roof where residents yelled out “Allaho Ackbar” in protest).
A girl named Neda Soltan was shot and killed by one of the Basiji.
Her death was recorded, and added to the uproar over the bloody crackdown.
Worldwide, symbolic protests were held in the spirit of solidarity with the people of Iran.
Entertainers collaborated.
U2 ended their concerts by going green for Sunday bloody sunday.
Iranian soccer players took a chance and many worse green wristbands in their world cup match.
Many say that Iran will not ever be the same after this stolen election.
The conservative rulers of the country should realize that progress will not be held back forever.
Around that time, Michael Jackson died and it became difficult to get news of Iran from traditional sources.
The thriller dancers
*images are not mine – most belong to tehranlive.org and Getty Images
Update – A better (more complete) telling of this story comes from here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/iran-liveblogging/2
[cnn-news name=”Middle East”]