2 Big Stories

Further outbreaks of violence in Tehran last night as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed victory crushes reform hopes in Iran.
Hossein Mousavi, the opposition candidate, is appealing against the results and has called on the international community not to recognise the official outcome. Western governments have expressed reservations about the poll but so far stopped short of outright rejection.

From the Times:

“Mehdi Karoubi, another reformist candidate, said he refused to recognise the “illegitimate” President, but Mr Ahmadinejad compared the protests to those of football supporters whose team has lost. “They are not important,” he said, adding that Iran’s form of democracy should be a model for the rest of the world to follow…

Mr Amadinejad told reporters it was absurd to question the legitimacy of an election in which 39 million voted, and he secured 63 per cent of the vote. He said the huge turnout, more than 80 per cent, showed Iran’s brand of religious democracy was better than Western liberal democracy. “Elections in Iran are the cleanest,” he said.”

Whitehall plans new cyber security centre to deter foreign hackers
From the Guardian:

Fears of co-ordinated cyber attacks by foreign powers and terrorists are to prompt the creation of a national cyber security centre to protect government departments and big businesses.

“The centre will be the main theme of a revised national security strategy paper from No 10 which will place much greater emphasis on tackling the threat.

The organisation will be similar to an agency being created by Barack Obama who is appointing a cyber tsar to fight what the US president referred to last month as ” weapons of mass disruption”.

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

Cicero’s Songs ponders the election result in Iran: a drift into despair:

“People who win elections by the margin suggested by officials in Iran do not usually need to arrest their opponents”

Replacing Labour in four easy steps
You want to be the Opposition party? Well Opposition costs, and right here’s where you start paying:
Costigan Quist has some home truths for Liberal Democrats who think they’d like to be the Opposition party after the next General Election.

So we need more than warm words if we’re to replace Labour as the main progressive party of British politics. We need lots more activists, lots more money, and stronger regional and national organisations. Nick suggests that if Labour could replace the Liberals a century ago, we can replace Labour now. Our task is much tougher – we don’t have millions of newly enfranchised trades unionists to count on.

But tough isn’t impossible. Clegg talks about a transition over a couple of decades. That might be realistic, but only if winning the war of ideas goes hand in hand with a well-funded step-change in the party’s organisation on the ground.

I know this post was on this very site yesterday, but I’m a great believer in repeating your key messages. And besides, Costigan links to it from Himmelgarten Cafe.