Demonstrators Tear-Gassed, Fired On
Hundreds of protesters braved tear gas and even some live fire to march toward Tehran University on Thursday, commemorating a crushed student protest movement of 1999 a s well as protesting the allegedly stolen elections of June 12. Police intervened to disperse them. A new and significant feature of this demonstration was that simultaneous rallies also occurred in cities all around the country. Although the crowds were relatively small, this national coordination suggests a national underground organization is emerging. The authorities cut off text messaging capabilities on Thursday in a vain attempt to thwart networking.
Nico Pitney is doing his usual superb job of live-blogging today's events in Iran.
Aljazeera English has a backgrounder on today's protests
Nico Pitney's interview with me at the Brave New Studios in Los Angeles on Wednesday:
You can also see it at Robert Greenwald's Brave New Studio site, a treasure trove of progressive, web-distributed documentary film-making.
End/ (Not Continued)
posted by Juan Cole @ 7/09/2009 12:51:00 PM
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6 Comments:
Some videos of today's demos:
http://www.mihan.net/y/1388/04/Mihan-04-122.htm
Hm, does protests on a significant anniversary imply underground coordination? Or does it imply that dissatisfaction has metastasized to the point where national protests are possible even without any coordination? I mean, is there any specific thing about the protests that would seem to imply the former possibility?
At what point does Khamenei throw Ahmedinejad overboard?
Ali Larijani, Hashemi Rafsanjani, Mehdi Karrubi, Mohammad Khatami, Mir Hussain Moosavi, Moshen Razeai, Mohammad Qalibaf, and every Marja not named Mesbah-Yazdi all oppose Ahmedinejad. Why is Khamenei still so attached to him?
The IRGC appears to be divided, and the basijis at some point will be overwhelmed.
And the holy month of Ramadan is only a little over a month away.
And smack dab in the middle of Ramadan is the annusl commemeration of the death of the most important Shi'ite saint, Imam Ali. This event is second only to Ashura on the Shia calender. And lots of people come out into the streets chanting in unison. (Shia people are very good at doing this :-)
If Khamenei tries to prevent people from assembling for the annual rites, the Islamic republic will certainly fall.
Khamenei knows this, and the easiest way out for him is to ditch Ahmedi.
It's only a matter of time. Khamenei won't mess with Imam Ali's shahadat.
Just taking a wild guess, it means you don't have to call people to tell them what day it's going to be on. People just show up.
The link Juan calls "a backgrounder" has been moved to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSITy_taD3E
I worry that the leaders of the Iranian hardliners have studied China's approach to the 1989 demonstrations, but that the people of Iran aren't students of this history and don't see what's possibly coming down the pipe. Which is the implementation of increased dedicated effort to round up even the most benign "dissidents" for even a hint of trying to exert their political will.
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