Month: December 2009

Who knows what is happening or about to happen in Iran? The Dish can merely provide instant information that history will need to explain some day. Is the Green Revolution doomed? Is it on the verge of success?

Here's what I took from today. In many photographs and videos in June, when the regime first cracked down, many of the people on the streets were wearing face-masks or bandanas to hide their identities for fear of the consequences.

Today, it was the baseej who were wearing the masks and bandanas.

Before you go to bed tonight, take a moment to listen to the voices above.

And know hope.

I’ll be passing the baton to Chris soon for overnight coverage as we wait to see what tomorrow holds. Stay tuned.

Today has been a momentous one in Iran, as expected. The Dish has been live-blogging it since 11 pm Saturday night. To get a sense of the day's events, try scrolling all the way down to this first post and click on forward through the posts. The forward chronology conveys the dynamic, unpredictable and simply jaw-dropping drama of a country on the edge of an abyss.

A reader examines the various photos and videos of this incident and persuasively concludes that they are all of the same event. Now think of what this foretells: a baseej is cornered, switches sides and is carried aloft in the streets triumphantly.

These people are not seeking revenge for the most part. They are seeking to coopt their fellows caught in the apparatus of dictatorial power. And we have evidence of it working once. What if it's happening out of sight?

This astonishing scene – perhaps the most astonishing scene we've yet seen from today's remarkable events – seems to show a bunch of baseej pinned and cornered against a wall by protestors, in some kind of grinding and at this point non-violent impasse.

Here's a translation:

People ask them 'why do you do this to your people?' and the riot guards ask for forgiveness, 'Bebakhshid' they can be heard to say.

'You are Yazid's – the Khalif against whom the Ashura uprising took place -forces', the woman shouts at them. One of the protesters then reassures them that they will not be beaten up, all they have to do is say Khamenei is a bastard. The woman can then be heard saying 'All you can do is kill your people is it?' and again they plead saying 'Please We are not killers'.

A reader adds:

What he leaves out is that the young woman who is heard towards the end yells "Are you only brave on your motorbike, you piece of shit?!" before apparently kicking him as a man tells her to stop.

It's funny as hell in a way. All this mayhem on the streets? It's all an MKO terrorist plot! From Press TV:

A source with the Iranian Intelligence Ministry has announced the arrest of a number of Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) terrorists in anti-government protests that occurred in central Tehran.

But they couldn't blame the Great Satan. Not as long as the neocons are out of power.

That seems to be what is happening in this clip. My previous interpretation has been challenged by several readers. Check out the 3 minute mark and you'll see a man in a face-mask, as many baseej are now wearing, raise his riot police helmet in the air and join the crowd to great cries of excitement. In these scenes of mayhem, interpretation is hard and it may be that this is a protestor who has grabbed a baseej helmet and is brandishing it as a trophy, as I first guessed.

But the mask suggests a more pivotal moment. Before the people were wearing them; now the brownshirts are. That, also, as a reader writes, seems like a critical sign:

I'm just really struck by the fact that so few of these folks have masks on today. In June, half of the people were hiding their faces — this Ashura, not so much. Between that and the fact that they're calling Khameini "Yazid"?

Something very real has changed in the last six months.

Then this photograph has popped up over the transom. It sure looks like a baseej switching sides:

 

Again, this is raw footage from a very recent event. Treat it with caution. The Dish is dedicated to providing as much data as we can, in context. But this is very raw; it's a draft of the first draft of history. It may be revised in time.

These are powerful, powerful words in a struggle with ever-rising stakes:

It’s now seven months since they so shamelessly violated the Constitution, principles of the Republic and Ayatollah Khomeini’s repeated mantra of: “the people’s vote is the last word” on the day of the election. During these months they responded to the peaceful protests of our nation by illegal mass arrests, show trials, horrific violence in custody and killings. […] Sadly these illegal actions were repeated in the last 10 days.

Last night, they attacked the very spot Ayatollah Khomeini gave his speeches from for years when former President Khatami was giving a speech.

And today from early in the morning, on the day of Ashura of all days, they acted with devastating violence, injuring many and killing a few of our fellow citizens.

Those who were at the forefront of the struggle against Shah’s regime, vividly remember the days of Ashoura in 1963, when even the Shah respected the sanctity of the holy day and only arrested the leaders of the opposition in the following days.

How is it that a regime born out of Ashura protests [like that of 1963] is now sending bunches of thugs to the streets and shedding people’s blood on the day of Ashura? …

I can only cry out Imam Hossein’s cry [killed in the day of Ashura in 7th century]:

“Even if you don’t have faith at least respect other’s freedom!”

"What is "grace"? It is God's own life, shared by us. God's life is Love. Deus caritas est. By grace we are able to share in the infinitely selfless love of Him Who is such pure actuality that He needs nothing and therefore cannot conceivably exploit anything for selfish ends. Indeed outside of Him there is nothing and whatever exists exists by His free gift of its being, so that one of the notions that is absolutely contradictory to the perfection of God is selfishness. It is metaphysically impossible for God to be selfish, because the existence of everything that is depends upon His gift, depends upon His unselfishness.

When a ray of light strikes a crystal, it gives a new quality to the crystal.

And when God's infinitely disinterested love plays upon a human soul, the same kind of thing takes place. And that is the life called sanctifying grace.

The soul of man, left to its own natural level, is a potentially lucid crystal left in darkness. It is perfect in its own nature, but it lacks something that it can only receive from outside itself. But when the light shines in it, it becomes in a manner transformed into light and seems to lose its nature in the splendor of a higher nature, the nature of the light that is in it," – Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain.

Check out Revolutionary Road's tireless live-blogging:

1:10 Clashes in Arak, at 7tir & Shoda Sq. and Rajayi St. Ppl set fire in Beheshti St.

1:00 Clashes b/w people & special units continue past midnight in Arak & has spread in other parts of town

24:45 people have started fire in front of the IRIB Headquarters. Encounters between civilians and the police is still being reported. Police is shooting in the air to disperse the masses.

24:15 Hundreds of plainclothes officers have taken over Mirdamad Blvd. since last hour, brutally beating people, according to Jaras News. Currently, the plainclothes officers are attempting to provoke fear in the protesters by yelling at the crowds and chanting "Heydar, Heydar!" and "Mashallah Hezbollah!