The Iranian people aren't going gently into that good night

from juan cole via al jazeera english...

Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iran's former president, has made his first public appearance since the country's disputed election, in which he backed opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi.

During a sermon at Tehran University, Rafsanjani said the country was "in crisis", and that all Iranians were the losers, following the election result.

As Al Jazeera's Roza Ibragimova reports, the speech came as thousands of opposition supporters staged more demonstrations outside.

professor cole also reports on the size of the public demonstrations, a sizeable number that reports from other media seem to be underestimating...

Borzou Daragahi in Beirut and Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran have just filed a summary of Friday afternoon's events in Tehran. They let slip about two-thirds down the article that opposition sources are claiming that a million protesters filled the capital's streets and that even their political foes admitted that the crowds were enormous. It is easy to over-estimate the size of crowds, but given the government's harsh crackdowns on demonstrators, even 500,000 would have been very impressive.

i sincerely wish that MY fellow citizens were half as tenacious...

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"We want reforms, we want kindness, we want friendship with the world"

ya know what i'd like to see...? i'd like to see this same thing happening in every country in the world with the same sentiments expressed... we all want kindness, we all want friendship with the world, we all want this world to be a better place... do ya s'pose maybe, just maybe, we're slowly approaching the day when a global "pandemic" of kindness and friendship will spontaneously erupt...? a guy can dream, can't he...?

Ayatollah Khamenei announced Saturday that the election results showing a landslide victory for Mr. Ahmadinejad were fair. But on Sunday he met with Mr. Moussavi, a moderate, to listen to his concerns. And on Monday, he promised the inquiry into the results.

Nevertheless, his announcement could not calm the anger of the people. There was so much distrust that some people said they believed the leader was just trying to buy time and to calm the crowds, rather than attempting to really investigate the outcome.

Hours later, a broad river of people in Tehran — young and old, dressed in traditional Islamic gowns and the latest Western fashions — marched slowly from Revolution Square to Freedom Square for more than three hours, many of them wearing the signature bright green ribbons of Mr. Moussavi’s campaign and holding up their hands in victory signs.

The silent march was a deliberate and striking contrast to the chaos of the past few days, when riot police officers sprayed tear gas and wielded clubs to disperse scattered bands of angry and frightened young people. When the occasional shout or chant went up, the crowd quickly hushed it, and some held up signs with the word silence.

“These people are not seeking a revolution,” said Ali Reza, a young actor in a brown T-shirt who stood for a moment watching on the rally’s sidelines. “We don’t want this regime to fall. We want our votes to be counted, because we want reforms, we want kindness, we want friendship with the world.”

i get chills just reading this... i don't think it's about one candidate as much as it's about people reclaiming their own power and standing up for what they want instead of bowing to old men whose sole concern is perpetuating their own power and control over others...

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