The Associated Press reports that Mehdi Karroubi, another of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s rivals in the presidential race, issued a statement on his Web site that echoed Mr. Moussavi’s sentiments. "I don’t consider this government legitimate," Mr. Karroubi said. Mr. Moussavi’s continued defiance of the authorities has prompted the Basij militia to call for his prosecution on nine charges, including "disturbing the nation’s security," which carries a maximum 10-year prison sentence. http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/...

That's seriously brave of Mousavi considering the Basij is after his hide.

Iran's feared Basij militia asked the country's chief prosecutor Wednesday to investigate embattled opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi for his role in violent protests that it said undermined national security in the aftermath of last month's presidential election. The semiofficial Fars news agency said the militia - known as supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's street enforcers - sent the prosecutor a letter accusing Mousavi of taking part in nine offenses against the state, including "disturbing the nation's security," which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years' imprisonment. "Whether he wanted to or not, Mr. Mousavi in many areas supervised or assisted in punishable acts," said the Basij letter, which also accused Mousavi of bringing "pessimism" into the public sphere. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/...

pessimism?!? The dude's brought nothing but optimism you deranged A Jad mouthpiece.

Will Mousavi's defiant message be a rallying cry, the start of new protests perhaps? Is it even visible to the masses within Iran? dunno....One hopes it's a spark, but because Madman Mahmoud has arrested all the opposition leaders and has effectively clamped down on means of communication between dissenters that seems unlikely.

However, there seemed little prospect of any chance for organized and sustained action ...., political analysts said, in part because the arrests had starved the opposition of leadership, foot soldiers and an effective means to communicate. Reporters Without Borders, a press freedom organization, said that the concern extended beyond opposition leaders. Several witness accounts makes us fear that torture and ill treatment are being systematically inflicted on prisoners who have demonstrated against the regime, the group said in a statement. Several journalists and bloggers were brutally treated by the guards and by men employed by the state prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi. http://www.nytimes.com/...

Yes that's state prosecutor Mortazavi, also known as "the butcher".

As I diaried yesterday in, Amnesty International: Iran Political Prisoners May Face Torture , true reformist opposition leaders have been arrested and possibly tortured in Evin prison. Further reports have more mass arrests taking place of any and all vocal opposition. One prominent independent thinker was just arrested and he had not even taken part in the demonstrations.

Authorities continued to detain hundreds of journalists, former government officials, political activists and even independent researchers. The recent arrest of Bijan Khajehpour, an independent political economist, sent a chill deeper yet into Iran's civil society because he had not been involved in demonstrations, political analysts said. Khajehpour was detained at the airport coming into the country from Britain and, like many others, has disappeared into the notorious Evin prison, raising the prospect of a political purge, the analysts said. "Bijan was perhaps the last independent-minded analyst living in Tehran who continued to travel to Europe and the U.S. and give open lectures about Iran," said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "He always believed that if he was totally transparent, the government would understand he was not doing anything wrong." The government also has fired high-ranking officials who had supported Mir Hossein Mousavi, according to Iranian news reports. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/...

A purge of all dissenters within the gov't is underway . Those who did not support A Jad - now gone.

In addition, the propaganda campaign on gov't controlled media has ramped up.

Iran's state-controlled media are waging an all-out propaganda assault to cast post-election unrest in the Islamic Republic as a futile attempt by "the West" to interfere. From news stories alleging a British Embassy staffer was a ring-leader of the dramatic street protests, to editorial columns deriding a "West that imagined that supporting chaos in Iran would reduce the Islamic Republic's power," the message is clear. It has been a classic one-two punch from Iran's hard-line rulers: first they hit on the streets with batons, tear gas and arrests of opposition leaders. Now, in the newspapers and television broadcasts, they're striking with their own version of the truth. If their version is repeated often enough, and dissenting voices are kept silent, it will quickly become the accepted reality for many Iranians. In this manner, the Islamic establishment which has ruled the country for 30 years may be able to sweep this "revolution" under the carpet. http://www.cbsnews.com/...

So it remains to be seen what's simmering below the surface among Iran's disaffected masses. Will they have the will, the fortitude, let alone the means to continue their active campaign against Khamenei, Ahmadinejad , their Basij goons and basically the entire power structure of this corrupt, brutal, militant theocracy?

We'll see. Certainly, a great fissure runs deep between the gov't establishment and a great mass of Iranian people.

moon