I'd say this all seems depressingly familiar, but there was no Twitter back then in 1989... Will the Twitter Revolution help lift them over, or will the "Ahmadinejad Girl" go Youtube viral? A still from Supporters of Ahmadinejad in Tehran:
I'll admit she's drop-dead gorgeous, but her drop-dead politics are still ugly.
In fact, I'm skeptical it's for real. It seems to me that the Basij would slap her just for wearing that make-up even if she was an Ahmadinejad supporter.
On the other hand, despite a few incidents, I'm amazed at the relative restraint of the pro-reform and pro-Mousavi demonstrators in Iran in the face of repeated provocations and acts of brutality. In this video, you see members of the crowd saving a truncheon-wielding policeman from a lynching, or at least a further beating after he was knocked off his motorcycle.
Will it all eventually just fizzle out? I confess that sometimes I wonder about the efficacy of nonviolence despite my best efforts to believe... Maybe it's true that love is stronger than hate and that good triumphs over evil eventually. It's just that hate and evil seem so unbelievably powerful at times.
7 comments:
http://iran.whyweprotest.net/
there's one of the main sites for information. Also stuff people can do to help.
Cool site! Thanks, Jen.
You know what's one neat thing to come out of all of this? It's geeks and nerds sticking it to the bully. :)
I'm all for tucking it to bullies. Revenge of the Nerds. :)
I've seen a lot of better-looking Musavi supporters.
I am terribly worried at possibly brutal repression of these rallies. On the other hand, it's not clear at all that the army and the police will go along with it.
Hopefully these protests will have a long-lasting impact. It sure seems like there is plenty of energy there to make an impact. Only time will tell...
Liam,
"I've seen a lot of better-looking Musavi supporters."
Personality counts. Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes right to the bone. :)
From what I've been reading on Andrew Sullivan, it sounds like the army has inserted itself between the protestors and the Basij a few times. That's a good sign. Sullivan also takes it as a good sign that the Basij are going around masked now, which seems to indicate that they are running scared. I guess the worst ones of all are the plainclothes guys go around at night trashing people's homes, attacking the residents, and tearing up their satellite dishes.
Steve!
Amen to that. Time will tell. I have to remind myself that this is a lot bigger and a lot more widespread than the Tiananmen protests were.
Good you see you, and good to see you blogging again.
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