Jim Hopkins on his Gannett Blog is asking Gannett officials if the chain is considering another round of layoffs, this time numbering 4,500 people nationwide.
In a comment, one of Gannett Blog's best sources has told us the following:
1. Principal executive and Chief Financial Officer Gracia Martore has ordered layoffs across the board from U.S. Community Publishing to USA Today, Corporate and the Broadcasting division. 2. On top of layoffs, salary reductions will happen in the broadcast division: a 10% salary reduction. 3. No new furloughs for the rest of the year. 4. Layoffs are scheduled for July 8. Estimated to be 4,500 for U.S. Community Publishing.
My questions:
1. Is any of the above information incorrect? 2. If any of the above is incorrect, please provide, point-by-point, the accurate information.
So far, no reply; nor would I expect that he gets one before July 8.
That was the thrust of arguments the Justice Department presented Thursday, as it sought to prevent the release of an interview Cheney gave in 2004 to Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald as part of his investigation into the leak of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson.
A Justice Department lawyer said releasing the records could leave Cheney open to attack by his political enemies, including late night talk show hosts. That, in turn, would make it harder for investigators to get cooperation from future presidents and vice presidents.
U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan didn’t decide immediately whether the summary and notes of the Cheney interview should be made public, but the judge said a declaration from former Justice Department official Steven Bradbury was inadequate to justify withholding the records.
Patricia Murphy of Politics Daily had this little tidbit about how best to address Sen. Barbara Boxer:
At a sometimes contentious Capitol Hill hearing Tuesday, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee chairwoman, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), had a request for Army Corps of Engineers division leader, Brigadier General Michael Walsh.
During a terse exchange, as Boxer pressed Walsh on why key improvements have not been made by the Corps to the New Orleans levee system nearly four years after Hurricane Katrina, she asked, "Could you do me a favor? Could you say 'senator' instead of 'ma'am? It's just a thing. I worked so hard to get that title. I'd appreciate it."
The publisher of the Albany (N.Y.) Times Union says the newspaper has to trim up to 45 jobs from its payroll and cut 20 percent of the paper's operational costs.
Albany Newspaper Guild President Tim O’Brien said today the union fight the job cuts in court.
Kathy Bowen of the Schenectady (N.Y.) Daily Gazette reports:
Guild members overwhelmingly rejected the company’s contract proposal Monday, and Publisher George Hearst said the consequence of the action is an impasse.
“We made our best and final offer. We have to move forward now and try to make smart decisions in how to lean-up the cost of the business,” Hearst said.
The jobs to be cut would be union and nonunion positions, including editorial and advertising staffers, he said. The company has rejected the idea of cutting salaries or imposing unpaid furloughs and will instead cut positions.
“We are going to ask the people who are left to step up and do more work. It wouldn’t be fair to cut their salaries too,” he said.
O’Brien said the union is concerned for long-term employees who are at the top of the company pay scale and close to retirement.
“If someone is close to but not yet 55, they could lose half of their pension if they are laid off now,” he said.
Under the proposed three-year contract that was rejected by guild members by a vote of 125 to 35, the company would have been allowed to outsource any job and lay off workers without respect to seniority.
O’Brien said the disregard for seniority was unacceptable, and still is.
“We believe that legally we will have a strong case if they go forward,” he said.
The BBC said today that Iran has widened electronic jamming of its services, as the country's Revolutionary Guard ordered domestic websites and blogs to remove any material that might "create tension" amid post-election unrest. Reporters are not allowed to cover unauthorised gatherings or move around freely in Tehran - but there are no controls over what they can write or say, according to the BBC.
Both the BBC's World News and Persian TV channels are now being jammed by "ground-based interference" in what one senior corporation insider told MediaGuardian.co.uk was akin to "electronic warfare".
Iranian authorities also blocked access to Yahoo Messenger early today as the country intensified its crackdown on all means of communication following Friday's controversial presidential poll.
Menawhile, Reporters sans frontières said this afternoon in Paris that two more journalists have been arrested.
Saide Lylaz, a business reporter for the newspaper Sarmayeh, who had been very critical of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s policies, is arrested at his home in Tehran. His wife says she does not know where he has been taken.
It is reported that Mohamad Atryanfar, the publisher of several newspapers including Hamshary, Shargh and Shahrvand Emrouz, was arrested on 15 June and was taken to the security wing of Evin prison.
This brings the total number of Iranian journalists arrested to at least 13.
Reporters sans frontières announced it has established a hotline for Iranian journalists in danger. SOS Presse, a phone hotline for journalists - (33) 1 4777-7414 - is open every day round the clock and, with the help of American Express, a Reporters sans frontières official can be quickly reached. Collect/reverse-charge calls can be made.
Late last night, Aldolfatah Soltani, a lawyer who represents many imprisoned journalists and who is a member of the Human Rights Defenders Centre, was arrested on the orders of the Tehran revolutionary court and is probably taken to the security wing at Tehran’s Evin prison. Ten or so opposition activists, politicians and civil society figures have been arrested in the course of the day in Tehran and three other major cities – Tabriz, Ispahan, and Shiraz.
The Guardian also reports these details:
BBC's Persian website has also been blocked by filters, although the corporation said people were finding a way to unblock them manually and that use of the site had been "massive". It was receiving five videos a minute from people within Iran.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard, an elite body answering to the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said through the state news service that Iranian websites and bloggers must remove any materials that "create tension", or else they would face legal action.
This is the first public statement from what is the country's most powerful military force since the crisis erupted.
Iranian reformist websites, as well as blogs and Western social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, have been vital conduits for Iranians to inform the world about protests over the bitterly contested declaration of election victory for the hardline president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
At least 20 websites affiliated to the defeated reformist candidate, Mir Hussein Mousavi, have been blocked, although some users can still update their profiles by using proxy sites.
"Before this we could bypass filtering by using proxy websites, the links for which were distributed daily among friends by email. But now the Iranian communication ministry has also begun to tackle proxy websites too," one Iranian student said.
"But there is still a small number of people who update their Facebook and Twitter profiles by using special anti-filtering programmes installed on their PC rather than regular proxy websites. The problem is that many people don't know how to use this software."
President Barack Obama will unveil his proposal to further regulate the financial industry in his effort to avoid a repeat of the market meltdown we experienced last fall.
The New York Times has the 85-page proposal online. Stephen Labaton of the Times explains its reach:
The plan the president will formally announce on Wednesday would give the Federal Reserve greater supervisory authority over large financial institutions whose problems pose potential risks to the economic system. It would separately expand the reach of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to seize and break up troubled financial institutions. And it would create a council of regulators, led by the Treasury secretary, to fill in regulatory gaps.
In doing so, the plan seeks to give Washington the tools to police the shadow system of finance that has grown up outside the government’s purview, and to make it easier for regulators to head off problems at large, troubled institutions or take control of them if they fail.
The Fed is the big winner in this proposal, but blogger Matthew Goldstein asks, who will the Fed be accountable to in this new order?
Now this is not meant to knock the job the Fed has done in the current financial crisis. In many respects, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke should be applauded for showing a willingness to improvise and come up with creative solutions for trying to limit the damage to the banking system and the economy. But throughout the crisis, Benanke & Co. have shown an utter disdain for transparency and full disclosure.
A good illustration of this is the contracts the NY Fed signed last fall with investment advisor Blackrock to manage the distressed assets the Fed acquired from AIG, the hobbled insurance giant. The contract between the NY Fed and Blackrock for managing the CDOs that AIG insured and the Fed took off the banks’ hands is 37 pages. But a good number of those pages are blank –- some 13 page to be exact.
And what is spelled out on these blank pages? Oh, just a few minor details like the fees paid to Blackrock, the firm’s potential CDO conflicts and the firm’s key personnel managing the assets. To be clear, this information isn’t totally secret. All this information has been disclosed to the NY Fed. It’s just that Fed officials have seen fit to keep this information secret from the public.
But if you’re counting on this veil of secrecy to be lifted by the Obama administration when it unveils its regulatory overhaul plan on Wednesday —- think again. The architect of the financial regulatory overhaul is Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who just happened to head the NY Fed when these contracts with Blackrock were signed.
President Barack Obama, in an interview with CNBC’s John Harwood, acknowledged what he called "generally positive" coverage in the first six months of his administration, but took the opportunity to take a swing at FOX News.
“I’ve got one television station that is entirely devoted to attacking my administration. That’s a pretty big megaphone. You’d be hard pressed if you watched the entire day to find a positive story about me on that front,” Obama said.
“We welcome people who are asking us some tough questions. I think I’ve probably been as accessible as any president in the first six months…..I think that actually the reason people have been generally positive about what we’ve been trying to do is people feel as if I’m available and willing to answer questions and we haven’t been trying to hide the ball.”
The report expects print advertising to fall the most from $36.7 billion in 2008 to $24.3 billion in 2013. Online advertising revenue is anticipated to decline over the next two years. PWC expects online ad revenue to grow to $3.7 billion in 2013 -- a 2.5% increase when compounded annually from 2008.
The global entertainment and media market as a whole, including both consumer and advertising spending will grow by 2.7 percent compounded annually for the entire forecast period to $1.6 trillion in 2013. Initially, the report said, the industry should expect to see a 3.9 percent drop in 2009 and a mere 0.4 percent advance in 2010, with a period of much faster growth during the remaining period to 7.1 percent in 2013.
The report said PreicewaterhouseCoopers is expecting that this recession will last longer than previous ones because of a steeper downturn, and that the impact on consumer spending will be much steeper than in the past. However the economic downturn does not change the underlying drivers for digital migration and will more likely influence their pace and power and hence the timing of industry change. In short, making it more difficult to hide from the digital migration, the report said.
During the period under review, the switch to digital will drive divergences in revenue performance between different segments and geographies. Change will impact the managing of brands, characters, titles and talent across distribution platforms supported by new commercial models.
Marcel Fenez, global leader entertainment and media practice officer for PricewaterhouseCoopers, said, “In some ways this could be called 'the perfect storm.' Inside every cloud is a silver lining and in this case, a digital one. Companies who grasp the opportunities which are appearing in this fast changing marketplace and are agile enough to adapt their business models will be able to take full advantage of the potential and new revenue models as they emerge.
“In previous years we have talked about the Net Generation and how their demands are driving the industry towards new business models," Fenez said. "Interestingly, in this “income elastic” climate where spending power has to stretch even further than before, this younger generation is now exerting influence over older generations who are, in turn, taking a growing interest in new and emerging platforms. End-user spending through digital/ mobile platforms accounted for 23.4 percent of the overall consumer/end-user/ access market in 2008 and we expect this to account for 78 percent of total growth during the next five years.”
ABC News will broadcast "World News" from the Blue Room in the White House on June 24, sparking criticism on from the right that it gives the impression that President Barack Obama and white House officials will control the content of the nightly news.
Charles Gibson will anchor the telecast, which will focus on the president's health-care reform package.
Republican National Committee Chief of Staff Ken McKay wrote to David Westin, president of ABC News, and complained about the broadcast. The letter was posted on the Drudge Report:
Dear Mr. Westin:
As the national debate on health care reform intensifies, I am deeply concerned and disappointed with ABC's astonishing decision to exclude opposing voices on this critical issue on June 24, 2009. Next Wednesday, ABC News will air a primetime health care reform “town hall” at the White House with President Barack Obama. In addition, according to an ABC News report, GOOD MORNING AMERICA, WORLD NEWS, NIGHTLINE and ABC’s web news “will all feature special programming on the president’s health care agenda.” This does not include the promotion, over the next 9 days, the president’s health care agenda will receive on ABC News programming.
Today, the Republican National Committee requested an opportunity to add our Party's views to those of the President's to ensure that all sides of the health care reform debate are presented. Our request was rejected. I believe that the President should have the ability to speak directly to the America people. However, I find it outrageous that ABC would prohibit our Party's opposing thoughts and ideas from this national debate, which affects millions of ABC viewers.
In the absence of opposition, I am concerned this event will become a glorified infomercial to promote the Democrat agenda. If that is the case, this primetime infomercial should be paid for out of the DNC coffers. President Obama does not hold a monopoly on health care reform ideas or on free airtime. The President has stated time and time again that he wants a bipartisan debate. Therefore, the Republican Party should be included in this primetime event, or the DNC should pay for your airtime.
Respectfully, Ken McKay Republican National Committee Chief of Staff
ABC News Senior Vice President Kerry Smith on Tuesday responded to the RNC complaint, telling the Drudge Report that the complaint contained 'false premises':
"ABC News prides itself on covering all sides of important issues and asking direct questions of all newsmakers -- of all political persuasions -- even when others have taken a more partisan approach and even in the face of criticism from extremes on both ends of the political spectrum. ABCNEWS is looking for the most thoughtful and diverse voices on this issue.
"ABC News alone will select those who will be in the audience asking questions of the president. Like any programs we broadcast, ABC News will have complete editorial control. To suggest otherwise is quite unfair to both our journalists and our audience."
Iran's brutal crackdown on journalists and information that began after the announcement of the disputed presidential election results is continuing and getting worse as journalists are being rounded up and arrested, reports Reporters sans frontières, whose press release and report are the sources of this post. Additional censorship measures have been adopted as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tries to suppress media coverage of fraud allegations.
“Independent sources of news and information find it very hard to make their voice heard now in Iran because of the censorship,” Reporters sans frontières said. “The authorities are tightening their grip on all news media and means of communication that could be used to dispute Ahmadinejad reelection ‘victory’. They are doing everything possible to limit coverage of the consequences of the election fraud.”
The advocacy agency reiterates its appeal to the international community not to recognise the results of the presidential election first round held on June 12.
“A democratic election is one in which the media are free to monitor the electoral process and investigate fraud allegations but neither of these two conditions has been met for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s supposed reelection,” the agency said. “We urge the international community, especially European countries, not to recognise the results announced by the authorities as long as the electoral process is subject to censorship. An election won by means of censorship and arrests of journalists is not democratic.”
The security services have moved into the offices of newspapers where they are reading articles and censoring content. Mehdi Karoubi, one of the candidates, referred to the censorship in a press release. “I cannot even publish my release in my newspaper Etemad Meli,” he said.
The newspaper’s front page shows a photo of Ahmadinejad at a rally with columns left blank because of editing by the censors. The newspaper Velayat in the province of Qazvin (north of Tehran) has been suspended for publishing a cartoon of Ahmadinejad.
Even governmental news sources have been targeted in the crackdown. Four interior ministry officials have been arrested for given results that were different from those announced by Ahmadinejad’s allies, Reporters sans frontières said.
Four pro-reform newspapers have been closed or prevented from criticizing the official election results following a warning from Tehran prosecutor general Said Mortazavi. Kalameh Sabaz, a daily owned by opposition presidential candidate Mirhossein Mousavi, had its distribution blocked and it was forced to change a front page announcing Mousavi’s victory. It has not been able to publish any issue since June 13.
Eleven Iranian journalists have been arrested since June 12. Reza Alijani, Hoda Sabaer and Taghi Rahmani were arrested on June 13. Alijani and Rahmani were released yesterday evening. Freelancer Kivan Samimi Behbani, the former editor of Nameh (“The Letter”), an independent monthly closed in 2005, and Ahamad Zeydabadi were also arrested and then released.
Abdolreza Tajik was arrested at midday yesterday at the headquarters of the newspaper Farhikhtegan by three men in plain-clothes. A member of the Human Rights Defenders Centre, Tajik has worked for many Iranian publications that have been closed by the authorities, including Bahar (closed in 2001), Hambastegi (closed in 2003) and Shargh (closed in 2008).
Five of the journalists arrested in the past few days are still detained. They include Said Shariti, the editor of the news website Nooroz, who is being held by the police, and Mahssa Amrabadi of the daily Etemad Melli. She was arrested at her home yesterday by intelligence ministry agents who came with a warrant for the arrest of her husband, fellow-journalist Masoud Bastani. He was not at home at the time.
Two women journalists working at the Mousavi campaign headquarters were physically attacked on June 12. The Mousavi campaign news centre was ransacked on June 13 by Ahmadinejad supporters, who destroyed its computers. The Qalam News agency operated out of this centre.
There is no word of about 10 other journalists who have either been arrested or gone into hiding.
Iran is also fighting against the Internet, controlling and blocking all news websites likely to challenge Ahmadinejad’s announced victory. Ten or so pro-opposition websites have been censored. Most of the world is getting its news out of Iran from Twitter and other Internet sites.
The international websites YouTube and Facebook are hard to access, the journalism agency reports. The mobile phone network is being jammed. The service of the leading mobile phone operator, which is state controlled, has been suspended since 10 p.m. on 13 June. The SMS messaging network has been cut since the morning of June 12, preventing use of Twitter.
The blockage of the foreign media has been stepped up. In addition to the blocking of the BBC’s website, the Farsi-language satellite broadcasts of the VOA and BBC – which are very popular in Iran – have been partially jammed. The BBC reported that their Farsi broadcasts have been the target of significant jamming “coming from Iran” since 12:45 Greenwich Mean Time on June 12, and that the jamming has been getting steadily worse.
The authorities yesterday ordered the Tehran bureau of the Arab satellite TV news station Al-Arabiya closed for a week after it broadcast video of the first demonstration following the announcement of Ahmadinejad’s reelection.
Foreign journalists have been prevented from covering the demonstrations, some have been notified that their visas will not be renewed, and some have been the victims of police violence. A member of a TV crew working for the Italian station RAI and a Reuters reporter were beaten by police in the capital. A BBC TV crew was threatened by police at one point, but demonstrators chased the police away. The correspondents of the German TV stations ARD and ZDF were forbidden to leave their hotel on June 13. Reuters reports that its journalists are banned from leaving their office or taking pictures.
Two Dutch TV journalists working for Nederland 2 were arrested and expelled. Reporter Yolanda Alvarez of the Spanish television station TVE was deported together with her crew today.
Accused al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed testified at a 2007 hearing at Guantanamo Bay that interrogators tortured lies out of him, according to sections of government transcripts released Monday.
"I make up stories," Mohammed said during the hearing.
In broken English, he described an interrogation in which he was asked the location of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
"Where is he? I don't know," Mohammed said. "Then he torture me. Then I said, `Yes, he is in this area or this is al Qaeda which I don't know him.' I said no, they torture me."
During the same military tribunal hearing, Mohammed ticked off a list of 29 terror plots in which he said he participated.
The transcripts were released as part of a lawsuit in which the American Civil Liberties Union is seeking documents and details of the government's terror detainee programs.
Previous accounts of the military tribunal hearings had been made public, but the Obama administration went back and reviewed the still-secret sections and determined that more could be released.
ACLU lawyer Ben Wizner called on the Obama administration to disclose more details, saying the new materials "provide further evidence of brutal torture and abuse in the CIA's interrogation program and demonstrate beyond doubt that this information has been suppressed solely to avoid embarrassment and growing demands for accountability."
What started as an informational session turned into a negotiation as Boston Globe management and the Guild spent the evening bargaining over a proposed 23 percent wage cut.
Globe spokesman Robert Powers, as quoted by Robert Gavin in this morning's Boston Globe, described the discussions as substantive. Boston Newspaper Guild leaders expresed optimism that a deal could be reached.
"We discussed many issues during today's meeting with the Guild, but have not reached an agreement," Powers said early this morning.
"Talks are continuing," said Daniel Totten, president of the Boston Newspaper Guild.
The Guild came to the meeting with "offer of resolution" to management. That triggered an in-depth discussions over the $10 million in cuts demanded by The New York Times Co., which owns the newspaper.
About a week ago the Guild narrowly rejected a $10 million package of concessions. After the vote, management cut wages for the nearly 700 editorial, advertising, and business office employees represented by the Guild by 23 percent. Any new agreement must be ratified by the rank-and-file, but under Guild bylaws, the vote could not take place for at least 30 days.
The Seattle Times completed its sale yesterday of Blethen Maine Newspapers, a media holding firm that includes the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, to a company doing business as MaineToday Media Inc.
The chief executive officer of MainToday announced no immediate changes, at least for now.
"There are no immediate changes with the exception that I am guessing somewhere in the next week we will be adding back some news space. Exactly how much I don’t know,” said Richard L. Connor, chief executive officer of MaineToday Media Inc.
Connor will become editor and publisher of the Press Herald and Sunday Telegram, as well as the Kennebec Journal in Augusta and the Morning Sentinel in Waterville. Included in the sale is The MaineToday websites and niche print publications.
This is a turnaround from last week when Connor said the organization might cut 100 jobs when the sale is completed.
Albany (N.Y.) Times Union workers today voted down by 125 to 35 a contract offer that would have allowed management to outsource any and all jobs and lay off employees regardless of tenure.
Publisher George Hearst had pushed for the vote. The Guild's website reported the union's reaction:
“Had the membership approved the company’s proposal, we would have respected their decision and been bound by it,” said Guild President Tim O’Brien. “The publisher sought this vote, told members how important it was to him that they vote and he needs to respect their decision. Our members were quite clear on what they found unacceptable in the company’s offer and they have been telling us what changes would make it acceptable. We intend to seek new bargaining dates and to go forward with a renewed spirit of flexibility.”
The publisher should take a renewed look at the proposal, listen to the concerns of his employees and come back to the table ready to compromise. [the Guild urged on its website.]
“As a sign of our good faith, the Guild is suspending its advertising campaign so that we can go forward with a new spirit of collaboration,” O’Brien said. “We look forward to returning to the table, and we believe the parties can and should come together in a compromise that will reflect both the perilous nature of our times as well as the need to continue to produce a quality newspaper staffed by local employees.”
At least one person is dead after militia fired into a crowd of protesters in Tehran today.
An Associated Press photographer saw one person shot dead and several others who appear seriously wounded in Tehran's Azadi Square. The shooting came from a compound for volunteer militia linked to Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard.
The gunfire Monday came after more than 100,000 opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad streamed through Tehran. They were not challenged by security forces despite an earlier ban on rallies for reformist leader Mir Hossein Mousavi.
Disputes over alleged vote rigging in last week's elections have touched off days of rioting in Tehran.
There is still confusion over the election results in Iran, some of it coming from the United States.
Officially, the United States is recognizing the election results. Unofficially, Vice President Joe Biden didn't get the memo.
Biden said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he had doubts about whether Iran's presidential election was free and fair, though the United States must accept Teheran's claim that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won a resounding re-election.
U.S. officials are trying to understand whether the vote accurately reflected Iranians' response to President Barack Obama's effort to open a dialogue after a nearly 30-year diplomatic freeze, Biden said. "That's the question," Biden said, adding: "Is this the result of the Iranian people's wishes? The hope is that the Iranian people all their votes have been counted, they've been counted fairly. But look, we just don't know enough" since Friday's vote.
While Ahmadinejad insisted the results showing his landslide victory were fair and legitimate, Biden simply said, "You know I have doubts."
"It sure looks like the way they're suppressing speech, the way they're suppressing crowds, the way in which people are being treated, that there's some real doubt about that," Biden said.
Despite the fact that the vice president said the United States for now recognizes the election results, Major Garrett, reporting for FOX News, reports that an administration official, who did not want to be named, is more cautious:
A senior official, speaking without attribution, said the Obama administration would not describe the announced outcome of the Iranian election as legitimate or illegitimate.
It would also not describe a victory by Mir Hossein Mousavi as necessarily better than a victory - now claimed and endorsed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - by reigning Iranian President Mahmoud Ahamdinejad.
"We're not going to characterize what would have been a better or worse scenario," the official said. "We will deal with this as it is, not as we wish it to be. We have very serious foreign policy and national security issues at play here. That was the case yesterday. It is the case today."
The official said the White House and State Department will "follow closely" reports of voting irregularities and called the public statement by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on irregularities a "straight-forward" signal to the world about US concerns.
"We are continuing to follow and monitor developments, but we are not going to get ahead of the facts."
The senior official said there was legitimate reason to study complaints from Mousavi's camp that the former prime minister even lost in his own political base to Ahmadinejad, that cell phones and text messaging appeared to have been blocked, and that shortages in ballots may have denied millions a chance to vote.
Grand Ayatollah Sanei in Iran has declared Ahmadinejad's presidency illegitimate and cooperating with his government against Islam. There are strong rumors that his house and office are surrounded by the police and his website is filtered. He had previously issued a fatwa, against rigging of the elections in any form or shape, calling it a mortal sin.
On the streets, protests are continuing. Here is recent video of riot cops riding motorcycles directly into a crowd of protesters.
When asked about reports of arrests and the detention of opposition leaders, including that of his challenger Mir Hussein Moussavi, Ahmadinejad gave a cryptic response during a news conference. Here is CNN's translation:
"The situation in the country is in a very good condition. Iran is the most stable country in the world, and there's the rule of law in this country, and all the people are equal before the law. And the presidential election has witnessed people's massive turnout. As I said, even in a soccer match, people may become excited and that may lead to a confrontation between them and the police force. This is something natural. A person coming out of a stadium may violate the traffic regulations. He will be fined by the police no matter who he is, an ordinary person or even a minister.
"So these are not problems for the people of Iran. 40 million people have participated in the election and these 40 million people will safeguard the elections, based on the Iranian culture. There is no partisanship based on the Western concept. In fact, the people are friends with one another, and they're going to cast their votes in favor of any candidate they like, and of course, such a voting process will not lead to any hostility among the people. And you go to the streets you see that people are friends with one another, and in Iran, no one asks the other whom you're going to vote for.
"The situation is very good, and Iran is on the threshold of making considerable progress. And definitely in the next four years, the status of Iran in the world will be further promoted.
Here is video of the CNN's Christian Amanpour pressing Ahamdinejad for answers concerning the challenger's safety:
