There are scattered reports being texted out of Iran that a massive police presence has blocked Mousavi-supporting protesters from entering the large square. Many reports of people shot — and many beatings. The basiji are using tear gas and reportedly gassed a crowd of 3000 people to make them disperse.
One of my colleagues at the New America Foundation’s Global Strategic Finance Initiative, Douglas Rediker, received this note from a friend abroad. It’s illuminating as to how a well-connected Iranian internationalist who has been in Tehran during much of the post-election unrest sees matters now.
Can all of these people, their emotions, their cries of “death to the dictator!” be stuffed back deep into Iran’s political status quo? Some powerful images at the art and culture site, Tehran Avenue.
Dispatches from Tehran — The Metro Ride — sent 11:27 am, 19 June 2009 The crowd pushes in. I think of those scenes from Tokyo of the metro officers, the ones with the white gloves squeezing and packing with all their might. We are all arms, legs, elbows.
This is a guest post written by “Shane M.” — an anonymous student in Tehran who has been writing dispatches from Tehran for The Washington Note over the last week. Shane M. has a major op-ed in today’s New York Times titled “A Different Iranian Revolution.
For the last several days, I have been running “dispatches” from an anonymous student in Tehran. Through The Washington Note, he has developed an enormous audience interested in his on-site, real time observations of the post-election convulsions in Iran.
My New America Foundation colleague and Wired Magazine editor Nick Thompson chats about the role of “twitter” and other new media in the post-Iran election protests.
For about a day, I have been quite worried about the “Anonymous Student in Tehran” who was sending important dispatches to us of what he was seeing convulsively unfold in Iran. He had been quiet all day. But we’ve just had a set of exchanges, and he’s OK.
(photo credit: Madyar in Iran — check out the other amazing photos at Madyar’s blog) This is a picture of a massive pro-Mousavi rally in Esfehan, Iran’s third largest city.
Along the lines of Iran President Ahmadinejad denying the Holocaust, the Ahmadinejad-appointed president of the University of Tehran stated today that there was no attack on university students and no students killed. Outrageous. Via Nico Pitney at Huffington Post, a video has now been posted from the beginning of one frightening attack (pasted above).
