Iranian Revolution

The recent Iranian protests in 2009 and 2010 were due to the disputed victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 2009 presidential elections and in support of the opposing candidates, Mir-Hossein and Mehdi Karroubi.  Many protests occurred in not only Iran, but around the world as well.  One of the major characteristics of this revolution was the use of many social media sites.  These cites were used by the citizens to communicate with others and to keep up with the news.  However, these cites were used frequently to attack the president and the Iranian government.  This made the government shut down all internet access for one hour during June, and establish filters for all internet sites.  The government also made it nearly impossible to communicate via mobile phones during this time.  Analyses declared that the 2009 presidential elections marked the end of the Islamic Republic and the beginning of the Islamic emirate.
There are many similarities and differences between the Iranian Revolution and the French Revolution in A Tale of Two Cities.  Both of the revolutions occurred because the citizens felt displeased with the government and the people who ran it.  However, one major difference is that the president in Iran was elected where as the leaders of France during the French revolution were born into their positions of prestige.  A similarity between the two is that during the Iranian Revolution the government censored internet access and other means of communication.  Although there were not as many means of communication during the French Revolution, the common people were still under the constant threat that anyone listening to them could report any unlawful things being said to the government.  This is why the revolutionaries in France all went by the names Jaques, so no one could know their true identity if they did get caught.  One other major similarity was the amount of violence in both revolutions.  During the French Revolution countless amounts of people would be guillotined at a time.  In the Iranian Revolution, military persons would fire gunshots into crowds of protestors to try and break them up which would result in many injuries.  One difference between the two was that in France the people's hunger drove them to overthrow the government, where as in Iran hunger was not a factor at all.  It was even stated that many Iranians would participate in hunger strikes to protest the government which shows how both means were used to prove the same point.  Lastly, the most significant similarity was that people stated the 2009 elections in Iran were the end to the Islamic Republic and marked the beginning of a new era.  This is true for the French Revolution as well because it marked the end to the Old Regime in Paris and the start of a new beginning for the inhabitants.
-sources: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/a-green-revolution-for-iran/     and
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2009/06/17/DI2009061702232.html

-Kaitlin Cunat