The Dish

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!

A reader writes:

While I appreciate your reader's insights, I completely disagree with his analysis.

This is not an unplanned, mindless resistance to dictatorship. This is an organized, grass-root uprising, with leaders and centers of command. Just considering the networks of information and organization, like the design, production and dissemination of fliers and notices, shows that this is not a random movement. I have heard this statement so many times, not just since the June election, but long before and these are primarily the words of those interested in re-establishing the pre-1979 leadership structure, i.e. monarchists, mojahedeen, toodeh, chapi, etc.

They are those who simply do not know or understand the context of the current movement; or those who favor reform, i.e. keeping the basic establishment, including the supreme leader, over a revolution, meaning a complete change of the governing system to a democracy.

Trust me, there are many leaders in Iran, despite the regime's best efforts to annihilate them; they either keep a low profile or the outside world knows very little about them until something happens to them.

A reader writes:

Ali was a seyyed … of the line of the Imam.

Western analysts do not actually understand the importance of the twin mantles of heredity and scholarship to the Shi'ia. This will start the martyrdom remembrance cycle … with Ali Mousavi as the Shaheed, the martyr. I predict this is the single event that will crush the tyrant regime of Khamenei and 'Nejad.

Killing a seyyed during Ashura? Gasoline on the fires of revolution. If Qom was not in the Green Wave before this will submerge them.

This is a martyrdom of far greater import than any killings so far….this is an exact parallel to the martyrdom of Imam Ali at the hands of Ummayyads. Husayn ibn Ali famously said he would prefer death to life under tyranny:

"… Don't you see that the truth is not put into action and the false is not prohibited? The believer should desire to meet his Lord while he is right. Thus I do not see death but as happiness, and living with tyrants but as sorrow."

And he pulls no punches:

“The sins that you have committed today cannot be forgiven by God. If you don’t have a belief in God, at least be a human.”

Kevin Sullivan thinks the coup regime is doing just fine, than you very much. And that today's uprising means nothing in the grand scheme of things. We'll see.

Marc Lynch looks at how the Christmas terrorist attack is playing in the Arab press:

The Arab media's indifference to the story speaks to a vitally important trend. Al-Qaeda's attempted acts of terrorism simply no longer carry the kind of persuasive political force with mass Arab or Muslim publics which they may have commanded in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.   Even as the microscopically small radicalized and mobilized base continues to plot and even to thrive in its isolated pockets, it has largely lost its ability to break out into mainstream public appeal.  I doubt this would have been any different even had the plot been successful — more attention and coverage, to be sure, but not sympathy or translation into political support.  It is just too far gone to resonate with Arab or Muslim publics at this point.