Month: December 2009

Andrew Sprung ponders the meaning of the protests in Iran:

[It seems] as if the line between participating and recording is disappearing.  How long before someone documents his own murder?

The video above shows a crowd commandeering a baseej vehicle and removing the cop. We’re seeing more and more seizure of the instruments of control – burned baseej buildings, rescued prisoners, stolen helmets, burnt motorbikes. This is no longer the peaceful demos of June. Saeed Valadbaygi III is live-blogging. He reports:

The number of participants in demonstrations has reached over hundreds of thousands. These protests have largely been concentrated in the central, southern and northern parts of Tehran. People are also preparing for extensive demonstrations at Sham-e Ghariban ceremonies tonight. They have resisted the violent attacks by government forces and a large number have become injured or lost their lives.

Some of the chants heard on the streets today have included: “Ya Mahdi! Eradicate the roots of oppression!”, “This is the month of blood! Seyed Ali [Khamenei] is going down!”, “Down with the Dictator!”, “We are not from ‘Koofeh’ to support Yazid!”, “Rape, Murder, Down with the Jurisprudence!”, “Dictator should know, he will be toppled very soon!”, and “Death to Khamenei”, among others.

He also passes on some chilling new developments:

Streets leading to Mohseni Sq, where Sham-e Ghariban ceremonies are expected to take place, have been blocked by security forces. At the moment, the number of security forces exceeds that of the people.

Some sources and eye witnesses have reported that the bodies of victims of the clashes today have been transferred to a government office in Taleqani Street. A Jeep has been seen entering the building, while desperately trying to cover up the bodies in the back of the car with jackets.

Moments later, a Peugeot carrying bodies in the back was also seen going into the building and taking off when the bodies were removed from the car.

From Enduring America, one of the most diligent and popular Green Revolution sites. Money quotes:

I must note that, in your column on Friday, “2009: The Year of Living Fecklessly”, you ostensibly recognised the post-election demonstrations in Iran as a “new birth of freedom”. I am not sure exactly what a “new birth” is — I have found that most Iranians with whom I communicate have a long-held desire for freedom — but any acknowledgement of the public calls for justice and rights is to be welcomed. So, thank you.

And now a request: Go Away.

Please go away now and do not return to Iran as the setting for your political assaults. For — and let this be acknowledged widely, if not by you than by others — the “Iranian people” whom you supposedly praise are merely pawn for your political games, which have little to do with their aspirations, their fears, and their contests…

Let us recognise that your own supposed defence of the Iranian people is propelled by your own nuclear conceptions, bolstered by your emphasis on Israel: “Iran will dominate 2010. Either there will be an Israeli attack or Iran will arrive at — or cross — the nuclear threshold.” For, if this piece was completely honest, you would have informed your readers, and the Iranian people, that you have supported Israeli airstrikes. In the columns offering that support, you made no reference to how “a new birth of freedom” would be affected by missiles fired upon Iran. Your frame of vision was limited, as if this was a journalistic smart bomb, to the target of the Iranian regime.

Let us recognise that, if there is a context for you beyond this nuclear arena, it is a supposed geopolitical struggle in which an “Iran” confronts the American presence in the Middle East and Central Asia and participates in the regional battle with Israel. Thus, your support of a “revolution” is not for what it brings Iran’s people — who, incidentally, may not be protesting for a “revolution” or, more specifically, a “counter-revolution” against all the ideals of 1979 — but for “ripple effects [which] would extend from Afghanistan to Iraq (in both conflicts, Iran actively supports insurgents who have long been killing Americans and their allies) to Lebanon and Gaza where Iran’s proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, are arming for war”.

From the streets of Iran, more and more radical chants and passion:

This simply astonishing video leaves me slack-jawed. In Sirjan, two men sentenced to hang are actually rescued by a mob who are then shot at by the regime police. This event allegedly occurred on December 22, and reveals the simmering unrest under the surface before the explosion of Ashura. NCR-Iran noted:

During the clashes yesterday morning, people took advantage of the chaos and removed the prisoners from the scene set up for their hangings. According to earlier reports on Tuesday, one of the prisoners was thought to have been killed. Having lost the control of the situation, the suppressive forces mobilized more of their agents across the city and re-captured the two prisoners and brought them back to the hanging ropes.

Local residents were angered by the regime’s henchmen and became more fierce in their protest against the hangings. In fear of the escalation of unrest, the suppressive forces opened fire on defenseless people killing at least five and dozens more were wounded. A number of the wounded were taken to hospitals in Kerman, the provincial capital. Some of the wounded are in critical state. A group of local residents and families of the two have been arrested. During the clashes, a number of vehicles belonging to the suppressive forces were set on fire.

(Hat tip: GatewayPundit.)

From Tehran24, which has many more photographs from today.

Again, this is hard for the Dish to confirm. But you can see a protester actually wearing a baseej helmet as s/he takes a photo of the building in flames. The Newest Deal writes:

As numerous videos have now shown, protesters been have directly confronting security forces in the streets of Tehran today. In many cases, cornered Revolutionary Guard or Basij are disarmed and stripped before they are released. As this uprising grows more radical, one has to wonder the fate of those arms. As those who were alive for or have studied the events of 1979 know, the moment when mobs began raiding military garrisons was a turning point in the revolution. It was not long after that the army stood down and the revolution became a reality.

A reader writes:

Of all the photos I've seen of the Green Revolution, none has been more powerful than the one you posted today. The Baseej, cowering behind a wall of flames, their instruments of oppression fencing them in as the oppressed rain rocks upon them.

This feels like the tipping point, at least one of them.

Via IranNewsNow, the abyss, it seems to me. How does the regime control or police or prevent the burial and the mourning period from becoming a way in which Mousavi becomes personally associated with martyrdom? Or is Mousavi's and Khatami's and Karroubi's fate now sealed as well? But wouldn't that lead to an explosion of rage?

If you are a regime like Khamenei's, you never want things to degenerate to this point: when you are actually murdering the families of the election winners in the streets in the face of massive violence. It speaks to me of desperation, of a failure to get a grip on any kind of authority after the fatal June elections. And so the regime increasingly has to wage war on its own people to survive.