Iran Elections protests around the world and in cyberspace

Many Iranians overseas sent in absentee ballots, and the overwhelming sentiment among the demonstrators was their votes had not been counted.

Protests in Washington; London, England; Toronto, Canada; Berlin, Germany; and Los Angeles, California, each drew several hundred people. All of them were seemingly anti-Ahmadinejad.

In Westwood, protesters waved red, green and white Iranian flags and chanted, "Where are our votes, where are our votes?"

The crowd gathered not far from the Little Tehran neighborhood, a strip of Westwood Boulevard that has become a retail center for Iranians in Los Angeles, Beverly Hills and the San Fernando Valley.

The protesters, mainly students from the local Iranian community of some 9,000 people, continued their march along a road outside the UN building.

“The very serious doubts that have been raised about the free and fair nature of the election counting process are obviously of major concern to many people in Iran,” British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said.

“Falsifying the results is the easiest of tasks for a religious-security regime that does not believe in leaving to chance what it considers to be its right,” said the Saudi daily Asharq al-Awsat.

“Most of us are here because of the (1979 Islamic) revolution. All the people you see on the streets in Iran are our age. If I had not left Iran, I would be on the streets and fighting for my rights.”

“You have an entire nation of youth who are highly educated and suppressed. The green (campaign) now represents what Obama brought to the States – that change (and) momentum that they’ve been waiting 30 years for.”

“(Mousavi) may not have all the answers, but he came forward and said, ‘I want to improve relations with the West and create equality for women.’ It ignited a spirit within the youth that hasn’t happened in 30 years.”

In one link, Tweeters are being urged to set their location to Tehran and reset their time zone accordingly because it's harder to find the information gatherers if everyone becomes an Iranian.

“No reporting activities should take place without coordination and permission of this office,” the Culture Ministry’s office for the foreign media said today in a faxed statement in Tehran. “Reporters should not take part in news events that have not been announced by this office.” Reporters should avoid being present at or covering “illegal protests” without the permission of the Interior Ministry, it added.

It’s more likely now that the government will use force on demonstrators, Geneive Abdo, an Iran expert at the Century Foundation, a New York-based research group, said in an interview.

“They prefer to kill people if necessary and calm the situation,” Abdo said. “If it continues like this, it will turn into a serious rebellion.”