Iran is kicking off...

A woman was beaten to death by "morality police" (OK, the actual police but they were following a crackdown on women's rights and wearing of the hijab ordered by the president) for not wearing her hijab properly.

That was four days ago - protests from younger Iranians have begun and seem to be growing in strength. Cries of "death to the dictator!" are common at these. Protests have been largely peaceful so far but some have had clashes with the cops.

Some are saying this level of protest hasn't been seen since the Arab Spring.

https://crooksandliars.com/2022/09/iran-explodes-after-death-young-woman

The population of Iran is made up largely of people born after 1979. They’ve spent their entire lives living under religious rule and if they’re tired of the bullshit then it seems likely that things will change.

Been following this for a bit. One of my partners is at the protest in front of the UN right now.

https://twitter.com/a_worldhopper/status/1572621247665606657?s=46&t=TYbMHLVCwjz9jgTdMYFWQw

This weekend they shaved their head in solidarity. Since the regime is apparently terrified of femme folks’ hair to the point of killing them, then as a fuck you femmes are cutting off their hair.

https://twitter.com/a_worldhopper/status/1571887232029696003?s=46&t=TYbMHLVCwjz9jgTdMYFWQw

When I was woken up at 6am to ask about my scissors I had idea my bathroom would go viral on Farsi Twitter. At least it looks decent.

Let's not distract from all the western women who are catcalled sometimes. They're the real victims.

Some of us have the ability to oppose both.

And also middle aged doughy white men with nothing better to do than lazily troll.

We all already know you don’t give a shit about anyone not like you. No need to show your ass here and try and distract from the actual topic.

Who you calling doughy, tinkerbell?

The internet is being taken down in protest cities.

Cell phone network is fucked up. My partner asked me to try and reach their spouse (still in Tehran) and some weird shit is going on (copy/paste):


So the first time I called it didn’t even ring. It just went right to what just sounded like a pocket dial in crowded place. Lots of muted and unintelligible background noise.

Then for three times it went right to a ‘Your call cannot be completed as the number is no longer available’.

Then just now it went back to the muted background chatter.

I’m guessing between demand and the authorities limiting stuff the network is all messed up.

In such situations, text messages are the best option. They're more likely to get through due to the lower bandwidth demands and the automated resend attempts by the network.

REVERSE!!!

https://twitter.com/gh0lch0magh/status/1572602266464436225?s=46&t=TYbMHLVCwjz9jgTdMYFWQw

This is from yesterday but probably my favorite one so far:

https://twitter.com/inteldoge/status/1572396311537942530?s=46&t=TYbMHLVCwjz9jgTdMYFWQw

I think we should be cautious, Arab Spring didn't quite turn out like we thought it would. Good on them though.

The wild card here is Khamenei. A couple weeks back it was big news/rumor on Farsi Twitter and Telegram that the Guardian Council had been called to his residence. This usually only happens when something big is about to go down and/or he is really sick.

Dude is 83 years old. If he were to kick it in the middle of this who knows what could happen.

Well then the CIA needs to get their assets on the ball.

Gonna copy/paste something I wrote a couple years back:


Funny you should mention Egypt, Syria and Iraq. Syria wasn’t really regime change as the Assad regime is still in power, but I’ll run with it as it shares a similar history/system with Iraq and Egypt.

See, unlike Iran all three were (is in the case of Syria) Baathist regimes. Nasserism is a form of Baathism and in fact Egypt and Syria were unified into a single state, the United Arab Republic for a bit. Iraq was supposed to join but the egos of three leaders got in the way. Look at the flags of all three countries. Compare the flags (pre Gulf War Saddam era for Iraq) and notice how they are all the same except for central emblem and in fact the only difference between Syria and Iraq’s was two green stars and three.

Anyway, all three had/have the same Baathist system. Baathism is an Arab Socialist Unity philosophy and a single party command economy autocracy in terms of civic society/economics/government. Basically the strongman controls the party which is the state which controls civic society and the economy.

This is pretty much the opposite of the situation in Iran. It is basically a semi-mature parliamentary democracy with an autocratic theocracy spliced onto the top. The Supreme Leader, the clerics and the IRGC ultimately control the system, but more subtly than most Americans understand. Through the Council of Guardians the Supreme Leader does get to restrict who can and can't run for president but the guy he personally backs within those folks doesn't always win. There are multiple parties and regular transitions of power after elections. So in other words this wouldn't a situation where once you kick out the 'bad guys' everything goes to shit because the people have no experience with democracy and civic/political life in general.

It is really quite interesting the system they put in place. The mullahs wanted to be as a-political as possible so 95% of the running of the state has nothing to do with them. They don't even have a party (although some parties are quite supportive/sympathetic) much less is Iran some kind of one party state. The religious layer of government could dissappear tomorrow and practically speaking nothing would need immediate action. Only real things to do would be to select justices for a new Supreme/Constitutional Court and some kind of election commission to replace the Guardians Council. Scrap the Chamber of Experts and have the Majlis (parliament) be a unicameral legislature (already a defacto one since the Chamber of Experts only selects/dismisses the Supreme Leader).

Their economy is mixed market, not dominated by the state. It is also reasonably diversified. Especially compared to the other Gulf States. While Iran certainly has a lot of oil, it isn't a petrokingdom like many of its neighbors. It even has some pretty high tech manufacturing. I mean it is now building knock off versions (with upgrades) of 1960's era US jets. That might not sound like much but right now the only other countries capable of that kind of stuff are NATO countries, Russia, China, Japan, S. Korea, Taiwan and Brazil.

It has a fairly young, educated population. As mentioned the public is techsavy and plugged into the world. They already operate in the modern economy and in fact, the biggest hindrance currently is the sanctions on Iran. Regime change would HELP the economy in other words, not turn it upside down.

Now practically speaking regime change won’t be easy as the Supreme Leader/Islamic System does have its supporters, including some large political parties. Also, over the last 15 years or so the IRGC has increased its control over large segments of the economy. So even if you got them to lay down arms, they would still have significant influence. And considering their role is to safeguard the revolution, not the country/people or government (that is the regular Armed Forces' role, of which the IRGC is separate from) I don't see them going away without a fight. I don't expect the next revolution to be as (relatively) bloodless as the last. Will probably require some regular Armed Forces v IRGC confrontations.

So basically, any disruption from regime change wouldn’t come from the actual changing of the regime but from the regime fighting said change. If there isn’t much fighting then there won’t be much disruption and the people will be better off than before.


http://wordforge.net/index.php?thre...ffer-a-um-setback.119382/page-38#post-3211222

Contact has been made with the spouse in Tehran.

They went out today and while they got hit on a bit none of the blows were to the head so they are fine.

And they didn’t know any of the folks in their street/crowd that got shot so that is good.

What I am getting is that the protests are bigger and more widespread than the 2019 ones (due to cutting gasoline subsidies) but not as large as in 2009.

However 2009 was largely non-violent. Thousands were arrested but few shot. And it had just followed a presidency of the Reformer Khatami so folks still had faith in the system and so made it non-violent.

Now it seems there is no faith in reform and folks are getting froggy and the regime is getting jumpy.

Oh, for fuck's sake. Enough of this "as long as I can find something worse happening somewhere, you aren't allowed to complain about x" bullshit.

It is possible for more than one thing to be bad at a time.

Fascinating stuff. I visited my parents in Tehran the Christmas before It All Went to Shit. My parents lived upstairs from a fairly well off Iranian family. They had a lovely daughter who was about high school age and spoke some English. In other words, just the kind of bourgeois types that would have been targeted by the Mullahs. I certainly had no reason to believe after my visit that the shit was about to hit the fan. My folks did get out, but only just in time (Dad was working under contract for Lockheed) on one of the last PanAm(!) flights out, after a hair-raising ride through "Brick Alley" to the airport. The Shah and his Saavak managed to hold on to power only until enough people got fed up enough to take risk being shot/arrested/imprisoned/tortured to take up pitchforks, torches and the "modern" equivalent of guillotines to throw the bastard out in what is generally known as "The Islamic Revolution". Well, it was a revolution, but it was less a religious revolution than a secular one in religious robes. The Mullahs are making a classic mistake by trying to grasp power too tightly. Iranians have always struck me as "go along to get along" types--practical and slightly cynical, but everyone has their limits. It's going to be interesting to see if the Mullahs have squeezed too hard for too long. I would break out the popcorn emoji, but a lot of people could die very soon and I don't want to give even the slightest impression that I'm in any way making light of that.

There's a really good animated film about a girl growing up in Iran at the start of the revolution, its based on an autobiographical graphic novel.



That clip you see of the guy running and jumping? He's fleeing the Morality Police who caught him and some other kids dancing. Less than 10 years ago, this video resulted in jail time for some kids in Iran.

Sure. And they will be judged with proportionality and perspective.

Iranian cop gets the fuck beaten out of him by protesters. https://twitter.com/jake_hanrahan/status/1572925398022868993?s=46&t=vGbG9RF1I_HxF7wcLfYKSQ

I like the version I posted yesterday.

https://twitter.com/inteldoge/status/1572396311537942530?s=46&t=TYbMHLVCwjz9jgTdMYFWQw

(As UA)
You cop-hating leftist pieces of shit!! I hope you're happy!!
Anitfa!! You're all Antiiifaa-ha-ha-haa!!!

There was also a great vid (I think down from Anc's tweet post upthread) where some random Iranian twat thought he could march up to a woman and slap her, then walk away. Several more progressive chaps disabused him of this notion.

Iran’s arresting journalists to stop coverage of the protests. https://cpj.org/2022/09/iranian-sec...of-journalists-as-anti-state-protests-spread/

I mean, we know, so it isn't working.

Did you at some point make a conscious decision to become a parody of yourself or was it just a natural slide?

On the one hand, fuck the Iranian government and good on anyone helping the protesters.

On the other, there's a good chance that acts like these can actually act as propaganda fuel for the regime, letting them say the protests are being stirred up by Western parties.

They’ll certainly say that, but the young people apparently driving this uprising are probably sophisticated enough to know what Anonymous is all about.