The Fancy Bastard Forum

I realize this forum tends more towards light hearted discussion, but I feel this story has been going on so long that I want to know the Fancy Bastard's thoughts.


It's time this thing had it's own topic. I'm amazed how long the protests have been kept up.

I'll give a very short and un-detailed summary of the whole situation leading up to the latest bit of news.

There were two big candidates of four in this year's Iranian Presidential Election. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (the incumbent) and Mir-Hossein Mousavi (who's symbol color for his campaign is green). In Iran, the State run media makes it near impossible to get any message across. Candidates can't campaign till 2 months before the election. They have a handful of debates which is the best chance for any candidate to get notice. Of course in that debate Mousavi accused Ahmadinejad of lying about the state of Iran's economy, which Ahmadinejad countered by saying he could jail them at any time for such statements, and then compared them to Hitler.

Polling for the election is impossible to get accurately, because each news source would consistent give a favorable poll for their favorite candidate. But overall it did seem that it would be a close election.

The incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, won in a landslide with 66% of the vote compared to 33%. Analysts weren't surprised that Ahmadinejad won, whether with some rigging or not, but they were surprised how blatant the rigging was. The Iranian people began to protest the election results, calling for a new election. Despite Iran shutting down Facebook and blocking out international media, the Iranian people were able to use YouTube and Twitter to keep in contact with each other and tell the world about these stories. These protests gradually turned from supporting Mousavi to just overall protesting the government itself. Eventually, the protests turned violent

Now it's time to turn to Neda, an Iranian woman shot dead in the streets, with her death captured by a cellphone camera. That video has helped to drive politicians like Obama to give a harsher criticism of Iran, and also turned Neda into a martyr of sorts. Iran hasn't exactly enjoyed this. They have denied firing the bullet, and claim that one of the protestors did it on purpose to make the protests violent. They did not allow for a public burial, for fear of protests. They have also shoved her family out of their apartments.



Now the latest and rather... stupid piece of news. The Iranian Ambassador has heavily implied that the CIA was the one that shot Neda. Their state run media is running with the story that the whole thing was staged, a camera brought in just to try to make a martyr.