Month: December 2009

As the martyrs mount, creating another wave of mourning and resistance …

… the baseej find themselves surrounded by the flames of their own motorcycles:

 

(Photos: AFP/Getty; confirmed for today's uprising.)

A moment to savor: the marching crowd manages to turn back the regime’s thugs, and as a riot cop helmet is grabbed, a roar of excitement spills out of the crowd.

I just can’t help but hear the confidence, the joy mixed with rage, in the voices of the people on the streets. One woman in her car is grinning widely as she passes the demo. Even in the midst of this carnage, they have the knowledge that history will acknowledge them, that any victory raw violence may have, it is Pyrrhic. But I also get a sense – totally subjective and maybe my own wishful thinking – that the confidence comes from a sense that they are winning this standoff, that today has rekindled into an even stronger flame, the sense that Iran’s people remain sovereign in their own land, that they have not been intimidated, and that they know they will soon win.

How does the regime survive this massive demonstration of its fragility? How does the clergy react to these scenes of total mayhem? How does Ahmadinejad blame all this on Obama, the Queen and the BBC?

And note how critical it is that Obama’s reticence removes from Ahmadinejad this convenient weapon of demonizing the protests as pawns of the Great Satan. The neoconservatives still seem to think this struggle is all about them. But in fact, it is all about the Iranian people’s utter independence of them and us and anyone but themselves. 

And that’s what makes this so powerful.

"It used to be said that journalism was the proverbial "first draft of history." Citizen journalists have supplanted the traditional media, though, during hours of tumult and crisis, and have become the authentic "first draft" narrators which the mainstream media then has to cite to be able to stay relevant at all," – Al Giordano.

(Photo: Kosoof.com, which is compiling a great many photopgraphs it claims to be from today. The Dish cannot independently confirm this, and ask our readers to treat all thius raw data with the appropriate skepticism.)

(Photo: Kosoof.com)

Josh Shahryar takes stock:

Protests in Mashhad can be confirmed now. Protesters gathered outside Grand Ayatollah Sane’i’s house and at Imam Reza’s Shrine. At least 17 people were arrested – most of them students. Many people were injured in clashes as well. Protests in Babol can be confirmed too now. Many protesters – including a young girl – were beaten badly by security forces here. […] So far, the protests could be confirmed in Tehran, Shiraz, Isfahan, Tabriz, Mashhad, Babol, Ardabil, Qom and Najafabad.

And the death toll mounts:

Reports coming in of continued clashes in Tabriz, where 4 people have been killed, according to Rouydad News. This brings the rough tally of people reported killed at 12 so far (if the hospital reports of 8 deaths are from Tehran only).

This has to be seen now as a crippling blow to the coup regime. This vivid demonstration that they simply cannot command the assent of the Iranian people except by brutal, raw, thuggish violence, and that resistance to the regime is clearly stronger, more impassioned and angrier than ever before is their death knell. They have lost any shred of legitimacy – and the Green Revolution is outlasting them in conviction and energy and might.

The significance of this day, Ashura, the day Khomeini regarded as the turning point against the Shah, cannot be under-estimated. Its symbolic power in Shia Islam, its themes of resistance to tyranny to the last drop of blood, its fusion of religious mourning and political revolt: this makes it lethal to the fascist thugs who dropped any pretense of ruling by even tacit consent last June.

We cannot know yet, but this might be it: the pivot on which our collective future hangs.

I want to thank Chris Bodenner who just tirelessly worked the night shift.

Fresh off YouTube:

A reader writes:

Greetings from Shanghai. I don't think you're on twitter, so I thought I'd give you a head's up on something pretty amazing. The hashtag #CN4Iran – designated by Chinese twitter users offering support to the Iranian uprising – is a trending topic on the twitter top 10  of trending topics. Ahead of Avatar, Singapore Idol, and Sezairi. Needless to say, twitter is blocked in China (though easy enough to get access to it). An absolutely incredible development.

IranNewsNow – which has tracked protest footage better than anyone this morning – passes along a heartbreaking clip. The footage – like everything we post off YouTube – should be viewed with skepticism. But here it is (viewer discretion advised):

Several well-sourced Dish readers are relaying the unverified news. One writes:

According to a Farsi source, Mousavi’s nephew (his sister’s son), Seyyed Ali Mousavi, has been killed in today’s events.

Another writes:

Mousavi’s 20 year old nephew , Ali Mousavi, was killed around noon. Mousavi is in the hospital himself right now.

Another:

friend watching BBC in Iran says they are reporting Mousavi’s nephew was among those killed today – possibly from opposition website

We will update with confirmed details. Update: the second reader adds:

BBC and ParlimanNews (the official website of minority reformists in the parliament) and Kalameh, the closest website to Mousavi. All reporting