Pushback

Mahsa Amini at 22 years old

Yeah - she's like really dangerous,

what with her insistence on

making her own decisions and all.

Assholes

People will be free. Even if we vote ourselves into bondage, there's always a kernel of dissent - a small group who won't knuckle under - who won't be fooled, and who will eventually bring the others around.

When the size of that kernel is potentially half of your population, you'd best be paying attention.

I'll say it again: Women will save us from ourselves - if we can figure out how to get the fuck outa their way.

The story of Iran’s Mahsa Amini uprising told through its most iconic images

It was a movement that began with the death of a young Iranian woman from a small Kurdish town. Over the next year, it spread on social media and captured the attention of the world.

This is the story of Iran’s uprising through its most memorable images.

1 Mahsa Amini’s death

On Sept. 13, 2022, Mahsa Amini was visiting her brother in Tehran just days before her 23rd birthday when she was stopped and taken away by the country’s infamous “morality police,” for allegedly violating the country’s strict dress code for women.

View this post on Instagram

Within hours, Amini lay in a coma in a hospital bed, with Iranian police claiming that she had suffered a heart attack. Her family said she was beaten. The image of her shared on social media shook the country.

Three days later, she died.

2 Removing the headscarf

The protests began on Sept. 16, the day Amini died, with crowds gathering outside the Tehran hospital where she spent her final days.

As she was laid to rest in her hometown of Saqqez the following day, women took off their headscarves in protest. They chanted “woman, life, freedom” — a slogan that would soon be heard across the country.

پرچم مازنی‌ها ✌️👏
ساری، ۲۹ شهریور؛ مراسم روسری‌سوزان!#مهسا_امینی #مهساامینی pic.twitter.com/b2sAPJGIyV

— Pouria Zeraati (@pouriazeraati) September 20, 2022

translated:
Mazniha's flag ✌️👏
in Sari, 29 September; Burning scarf ceremony!
#Mehsa_Amini #MehsaAmini 

Some women took off their headscarves, waving them in the air or setting them on fire. Others cut their hair in public, openly defying the morality police.

کرمان، میدان آزادی#مهسا_امینی pic.twitter.com/wk535lhtr9

— Kayhan (@cosmos196196) September 20, 2022

translated:
Kerman, Azadi Square

3 Targeting images of Khamenei

Images of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are everywhere in Iran, a symbol of his unquestioned authority.

As anger rose, protesters tore down posters and burned billboards featuring his face. “Death to Khamenei” became a rallying cry.

Burning Khamenei's billboard in Yazd with a Molotov cocktail. One way to show how much he is hated inside Iran.
#MahsaAmini #مهسا_امینی #IranRevoIution pic.twitter.com/0Kv85GIo4k

— Omid Memarian (@Omid_M) November 8, 2022

4 Rising up in universities

Universities became hubs of protest as young people became leaders of the movement. Campuses were raided by security forces. The government cut off the internet. Some students were detained or forced to abandon their studies.

When Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, visited one university in an attempt to calm protests, he was greeted by angry students yelling “get lost.”

Students at Al-Zahra University—an all female uni in Iran—shout in protest upon President Ebrahim Raisi’s visit:

“Death to the oppressor, whether it is a king or a [supreme] leader”pic.twitter.com/PyoCPQIgr8

— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) October 8, 2022

In one clip, a group of young women can be seen singing the song “Baraye,” which became an anthem giving voice to protesters’ grievances and received a Grammy award for Best Song for Social Change.

5 Remembering Amini

In late October thousands of people made their way to Amini’s grave to mark the 40th day after her death — known as a “chehellom,” an especially important moment in the Iranian Shiite funerary tradition.

A photo of a young woman standing on a car without a headscarf became an iconic image.

6 Taking the protest to sports

Acts of protest weren’t confined to Iran. A number of Iranian athletes appeared to support the uprising on the world stage. Climber Elnaz Rekabi took part in a competition in South Korea without wearing a headscarf — mandatory for all women representing the country abroad.

Concerns for Rekabi’s welfare grew after a stilted message posted on her Instagram account claimed she was unintentionally not wearing a headscarf. She later returned home to crowds of supporters.

In November, members of Iran’s men’s soccer team at the World Cup refused to sing the national anthem during their first match against England, widely interpreted as a gesture of solidarity with the protesters back home.

Sardar Azmoun, a forward on the team, has been the most vocal champion of the uprising. “I don’t care if I’m sacked,” Azmoun wrote in a since-deleted post on Instagram last September. “Shame on you for killing people so easily. Viva Iranian women.” He later issued an apology on Instagram.

When the team was eliminated from the competition, protesters at home erupted in celebration over what they viewed as a symbolic defeat for the Islamic Republic.

سنندج شادی مردم پس از باخت تیم فوتبال جمهوری‌اسلامی.#مهسا_امینی pic.twitter.com/uCn7FWZ1E0

— +۱۵۰۰تصویر (@1500tasvir) November 30, 2022

translated:
People's happiness in Sanandaj after the defeat of the football team of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

7 Showing global solidarity

در مراسم خاکسپاری جواد حیدری، از کشته‌شدگان اعتراضات به قتل #مهسا_امینی، خواهر او موهایش را بر مزار برادرش کوتاه میکند. pic.twitter.com/g3lg4fUsqq

— +۱۵۰۰تصویر (@1500tasvir) September 25, 2022

translated:
At the funeral of Javad Heydari, one of the victims of the murder protests #مهسا_امینی , his sister cuts her hair at her brother's grave.

As the death toll rose during protests, a video shared on social media showed a woman cutting her hair over the grave of her brother, Javad Heydari, who was killed during the demonstrations. The gesture is found in ancient Persian literature as a sign of protest, anger or grief.

Women around the world, from members of the Iranian diaspora to politicians and celebrities, cut their hair in solidarity.

And BTW - "morality police"? How in the blue-eyed buck naked fuck does that make sense to somebody?

A Bit Of A Scuffle

Some Freedom Caucus congress critters were trying to do a little public gaslighting hold a press conference in DC when a guy named Jake Burdett - identified as a Medicare-4-All activist decided to disrupt it with some loud, combative questions.

Keep in mind, Burdett was just talking - not acting in a threatening manner - annoying to be sure, but in no way violent or dangerous. "Just asking questions".

So I don't know how exactly this kind of protesting should be done, but I do know that the Tea Party clowns in 2010 would show up at practically every gathering of Democrats and raise hell, shouting down any elected official who was trying to interact with their constituents.

And I know that no Democrat grabbed any protester and shoved him away from the proceedings.

I also know that the guy who is now Montana's governor assaulted a reporter in 2017 while campaigning for a seat in Congress:

Montana congressman-elect pleads guilty to assaulting a reporter

BOZEMAN, Mont., June 12 (Reuters) - A Montana congressman-elect pleaded guilty on Monday to a criminal charge of assaulting a reporter, and the Republican was ordered to perform community service and receive anger management training.

Greg Gianforte, a wealthy former technology executive who campaigned on his support for President Donald Trump, attacked a reporter on May 24, the day before he won a special election to fill Montana’s lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Gallatin County Judge Rick West sentenced Gianforte to 40 hours of community service and 20 hours of anger management classes.

The judge in Bozeman, Montana, also handed down a six-month deferred jail sentence, which Gianforte would avoid serving if he complies with the court’s orders.

Ben Jacobs, a political correspondent for the U.S. edition of The Guardian newspaper, said Gianforte “body-slammed” him, breaking his eyeglasses, when the reporter posed a question about healthcare during a campaign event in Bozeman.

- more -

GOP Rep. Clay Higgins Faces Calls for Arrest After Dispute With Activist

Social media users, including a retired U.S. Army general, are calling for Representative Clay Higgins to be arrested after a viral video shows the congressman physically removing an activist from a press conference.

A video of the altercation, which occurred during a news briefing on Wednesday with the Louisiana Republican and fellow GOP Representatives Paul Gosar of Arizona and Lauren Boebert of Colorado, shows Higgins pushing activist Jake Burdett, age 25.

Higgins can be heard telling the Medicare activist, "You're out," as he physically moves Burdett, who yells, "Get off me," as the lawmaker pushes him.

Burdett, a Medicare supporter, told Newsweek that he was there by coincidence for a Medicare for All event at 2 p.m., which featured independent Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Pramila Jayapal. He said that after the rally ended, he saw some GOP lawmakers he recognized and decided to stay to ask questions. Some of the questions mocked the lawmakers, including those aimed at Boebert regarding her divorce.

"Despite Rep. Higgins being the one putting his hands on me, dragging me without my consent, the cops all sprung down on me," Burdett said to Newsweek via text message. "They let Rep. Higgins walk away without having a word with the guy, but then told me to go walk across the street to the sidewalk opposite us, so that they could question me about what happened."

Higgins, in a statement to Newsweek, said Burdett was "Threatening. He was escorted out and turned over to Capitol Police."

As Burdett shouted questions to Gosar and Boebert, Higgins asked him to stop. Burdett said he was removed while Boebert was speaking at the podium.

"Higgins seemingly appointed himself to be the bodyguard/security of the press conference, to violently crack down on activists like myself who may dare to ask his extremist buddies tough questions," Burdett said.

Burdett also posted about the ordeal on Twitter earlier Wednesday, sharing that he had been questioned by police, but not arrested after being removed by Higgins.

"I am currently being detained by DC Police for asking tough questions to far right extremist Congressmen @RepGosar and @laurenboebert at a press conference. Rep Clay Higgins proceeded to assault/physically remove me from the press conference. For this, the cops detained me, not him," he tweeted, following up with another post asking if any attorneys would be willing to help him pursue legal action against Higgins.

A Twitter user, whose post garnered thousands of comments and retweets, shared video of Burdett being physically removed by Higgins and questioned the lawmaker's behavior.

"RepClayHiggins pushing an activist for asking tough questions is supposed to be normal," she said, adding in another tweet that she is a friend of the activist in the video.

The clip quickly went viral Wednesday evening, with prominent figures weighing in as Higgins became a trending topic on Twitter.

Retired U.S. Army General Mark Hertling responded to a video clip of the incident, saying he once "fired a junior officer for assaulting a soldier" and called for Higgins to be charged.

"The issue is the subordinate has little recourse when assaulted," he said on Twitter. "Had this guy fought back, he certainly would have been charged for assaulting a congressman. This is BS and @RepClayHiggins should be charged."

Twitter user Jon Cooper echoed Hertling's calls for Higgins to face legal action over the recordings, which show Burdett saying that the congressman is hurting him.

"Why hasn't @RepClayHiggins been arrested for criminal assault or battery," he tweeted.

In a follow-up text, Burdett told Newsweek that he is "consulting with legal counsel" and will file charges if there are solid grounds to do so.

Dissent In Russia

The beginning of the video shows the usual scenes of Ukrainians blowing up a bunch of Russian shit, but at about 1:34, a Man-On-The-Street interview shows us how Daddy State gaslighting doesn't stand up forever - people will find their way out of the darkness.

I just hope the guy doesn't get slammed too hard.

What If Peace Breaks Out?

Best be keepin' an eye on them pesky Georgians, Vlad.

Approaching Boiling Point

When one side always shows up at any given event dressed and equipped like they're looking for a fight, and the other side is there looking like they expect a day of hotdogs and slogans, there's likely to be a bad problem eventually.

People will get hurt and killed.

Not to get all Gandhi and shit about it, but:

You might end up killing my sorry old ass with your Emotional Support Weapon, but my death will strengthen my argument, while your murder conviction will weaken yours.

At Protests, Guns Are Doing the Talking

Armed Americans, often pushing a right-wing agenda, are increasingly using open-carry laws to intimidate opponents and shut down debate.

Across the country, openly carrying a gun in public is no longer just an exercise in self-defense — increasingly it is a soapbox for elevating one’s voice and, just as often, quieting someone else’s.

This month, armed protesters appeared outside an elections center in Phoenix, hurling baseless accusations that the election for governor had been stolen from the Republican, Kari Lake. In October, Proud Boys with guns joined a rally in Nashville where conservative lawmakers spoke against transgender medical treatments for minors.

In June, armed demonstrations around the United States amounted to nearly one a day. A group led by a former Republican state legislator protested a gay pride event in a public park in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Men with guns interrupted a Juneteenth festival in Franklin, Tenn., handing out fliers claiming that white people were being replaced. Among the others were rallies in support of gun rights in Delaware and abortion rights in Georgia.

Whether at the local library, in a park or on Main Street, most of these incidents happen where Republicans have fought to expand the ability to bear arms in public, a movement bolstered by a recent Supreme Court ruling on the right to carry firearms outside the home. The loosening of limits has occurred as violent political rhetoric rises and the police in some places fear bloodshed among an armed populace on a hair trigger.

But the effects of more guns in public spaces have not been evenly felt. A partisan divide — with Democrats largely eschewing firearms and Republicans embracing them — has warped civic discourse. Deploying the Second Amendment in service of the First has become a way to buttress a policy argument, a sort of silent, if intimidating, bullhorn.

“It’s disappointing we’ve gotten to that state in our country,” said Kevin Thompson, executive director of the Museum of Science & History in Memphis, Tenn., where armed protesters led to the cancellation of an L.G.B.T.Q. event in September. “What I saw was a group of folks who did not want to engage in any sort of dialogue and just wanted to impose their belief.”

A New York Times analysis of more than 700 armed demonstrations found that, at about 77 percent of them, people openly carrying guns represented right-wing views, such as opposition to L.G.B.T.Q. rights and abortion access, hostility to racial justice rallies and support for former President Donald J. Trump’s lie of winning the 2020 election.

The records, from January 2020 to last week, were compiled by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a nonprofit that tracks political violence around the world. The Times also interviewed witnesses to other, smaller-scale incidents not captured by the data, including encounters with armed people at indoor public meetings.

Anti-government militias and right-wing culture warriors like the Proud Boys attended a majority of the protests, the data showed. Violence broke out at more than 100 events and often involved fisticuffs with opposing groups, including left-wing activists such as antifa.

Republican politicians are generally more tolerant of openly armed supporters than are Democrats, who are more likely to be on the opposing side of people with guns, the records suggest. In July, for example, men wearing sidearms confronted Beto O’Rourke, then the Democratic candidate for Texas governor, at a campaign stop in Whitesboro and warned that he was “not welcome in this town.”

Republican officials or candidates appeared at 32 protests where they were on the same side as those with guns. Democratic politicians were identified at only two protests taking the same view as those armed.

Sometimes, the Republican officials carried weapons: Robert Sutherland, a Washington state representative, wore a pistol on his hip while protesting Covid-19 restrictions in Olympia in 2020. “Governor,” he said, speaking to a crowd, “you send men with guns after us for going fishing. We’ll see what a revolution looks like.”

The occasional appearance of armed civilians at demonstrations or governmental functions is not new. In the 1960s, the Black Panthers displayed guns in public when protesting police brutality. Militia groups, sometimes armed, rallied against federal agents involved in violent standoffs at Ruby Ridge and Waco in the 1990s.

But the frequency of these incidents exploded in 2020, with conservative pushback against public health measures to fight the coronavirus and response to the sometimes violent rallies after the murder of George Floyd. Today, in some parts of the country with permissive gun laws, it is not unusual to see people with handguns or military-style rifles at all types of protests.

For instance, at least 14 such incidents have occurred in and around Dallas and Phoenix since May, including outside an F.B.I. field office to condemn the search of Mr. Trump’s home and, elsewhere, in support of abortion rights. In New York and Washington, where gun laws are strict, there were none — even though numerous demonstrations took place during that same period.

Many conservatives and gun-rights advocates envision virtually no limits. When Democrats in Colorado and Washington State passed laws this year prohibiting firearms at polling places and government meetings, Republicans voted against them. Indeed, those bills were the exception.

Attempts by Democrats to impose limits in other states have mostly failed, and some form of open carry without a permit is now legal in 38 states, a number that is likely to expand as legislation advances in several more. In Michigan, where a Tea Party group recently advertised poll-watcher training using a photo of armed men in camouflage, judges have rejected efforts to prohibit guns at voting locations.

Gun rights advocates assert that banning guns from protests would violate the right to carry firearms for self-defense. Jordan Stein, a spokesman for Gun Owners of America, pointed to Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager acquitted last year in the shooting of three people during a chaotic demonstration in Kenosha, Wis., where he had walked the streets with a military-style rifle.

“At a time when protests often devolve into riots, honest people need a means to protect themselves,” he said.

Beyond self-defense, Mr. Stein said the freedom of speech and the right to have a gun are “bedrock principles” and that “Americans should be able to bear arms while exercising their First Amendment rights, whether that’s going to church or a peaceful assembly.”

Others argue that openly carrying firearms at public gatherings, particularly when there is no obvious self-defense reason, can have a corrosive effect, leading to curtailed activities, suppressed opinions or public servants who quit out of fear and frustration.

Concerned about armed protesters, local election officials in Arizona, Colorado and Oregon have requested bulletproofing for their offices.

Adam Searing, a lawyer and Georgetown University professor who helps families secure access to health care, said he saw the impact on free speech when people objecting to Covid restrictions used guns to make their point. In some states, disability rights advocates were afraid to show up to support mask mandates because of armed opposition, Mr. Searing said.

“What was really disturbing was the guns became kind of a signifier for political reasons,” he said, adding, “It was just about pure intimidation.”

Armed Speech

The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project has been tracking such incidents in the United States for the past few years. Events captured by the data are not assigned ideological labels but include descriptions, and are collected from news sources, social media and independent partners like the Network Contagion Research Institute, which monitors extremism and disinformation online.

The Times’s analysis found that the largest drivers of armed demonstrations have shifted since 2020. This year, protesters with guns are more likely to be motivated by abortion or L.G.B.T.Q. issues. Sam Jones, a spokesman for the nonpartisan data group, said that upticks in armed incidents tended to correspond to “different flash-point events and time periods, like the Roe v. Wade decision and Pride Month.”

In about a quarter of the cases, left-wing activists also were armed. Many times it was a response, they said, to right-wing intimidation. Other times it was not, such as when about 40 demonstrators, some with rifles, blocked city officials in Dallas from clearing a homeless encampment in July.

More than half of all armed protests occurred in 10 states with expansive open-carry laws: Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Washington. Three of them — Michigan, Oregon and Texas — allowed armed protesters to gather outside capitol buildings ahead of President Biden’s inauguration, and in Michigan, militia members carrying assault rifles were permitted inside the capitol during protests against Covid lockdowns.

Beyond the mass gatherings, there are everyday episodes of armed intimidation. Kimber Glidden had been director of the Boundary County Library in Northern Idaho for a couple of months when some parents began raising questions in February about books they believed were inappropriate for children.

It did not matter that the library did not have most of those books — largely dealing with gender, sexuality and race — or that those it did have were not in the children’s section. The issue became a cause célèbre for conservative activists, some of whom began showing up with guns to increasingly tense public meetings, Ms. Glidden said.

“How do you stand there and tell me you want to protect children when you’re in the children’s section of the library and you’re armed?” she asked.

In August, she resigned, decrying the “intimidation tactics and threatening behavior.”

A Growing Militancy

At a Second Amendment rally in June 2021 outside the statehouse in Harrisburg, Pa., where some people were armed, Republican speakers repeatedly connected the right to carry a gun to other social and cultural issues. Representative Scott Perry voiced a frequent conservative complaint about censorship, saying the First Amendment was “under assault.”

“And you know very well what protects the First,” he said. “Which is what we’re doing here today.”

Stephanie Borowicz, a state legislator, was more blunt, boasting to the crowd that “tyrannical governors” had been forced to ease coronavirus restrictions because “as long as we’re an armed population, the government fears us.”

Pennsylvania, like some other states with permissive open-carry laws, is home to right-wing militias that sometimes appear in public with firearms. They are often welcomed, or at least accepted, by Republican politicians.

When a dozen militia members, some wearing skull masks and body armor, joined a protest against Covid restrictions in Pittsburgh in April 2020, Jeff Neff, a Republican borough council president running for the state senate, posed for a photo with the group. In it, he is holding his campaign sign, surrounded by men with military-style rifles.

In an email, Mr. Neff said he had since left politics, and expressed regret over past news coverage of the photo, adding, “Please know that I do not condone any threats or action of violence by any person or groups.”

Across the country, there is evidence of increasing Republican involvement in militias. A membership list for the Oath Keepers, made public last year, includes 81 elected officials or candidates, according to a report by the Anti-Defamation League. Most of them appear to be Republicans.

Another nationwide militia, the American Patriots Three Percent, recently told prospective members that it worked to support “individuals seeking election to local G.O.P. boards,” according to an archived version of its website.

More than 25 members of the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters have been charged in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Those organizations, along with the Proud Boys and Boogaloo Boys, make up the bulk of organized groups in the armed-protest data, according to The Times’s analysis.

Shootings were rare, such as when a Proud Boy was shot in the foot while chasing antifa members during a protest over Covid lockdowns in Olympia last year. But Mr. Jones said the data, which also tracked unarmed demonstrations, showed that while armed protests accounted for less than 2 percent of the total, they were responsible for 10 percent of those where violence occurred, most often involving fights between rival groups.

“Armed groups or individuals might say they have no intention of intimidating anyone and are only participating in demonstrations to keep the peace,” said Mr. Jones, “but the evidence doesn’t back up the claim.”

Competing Rights

In a landmark 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment conveyed a basic right to bear arms for lawful purposes such as self-defense at home. It went further in a decision this June that struck down New York restrictions on concealed-pistol permits, effectively finding a right to carry firearms in public.

But the court in Heller also made clear that gun rights were not unlimited, and that its ruling did not invalidate laws prohibiting “the carrying of firearms in sensitive places.” That caveat was reiterated in a concurring opinion in the New York case.

Even some hard-line gun rights advocates are uncomfortable with armed people at public protests. Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, told The Washington Times in 2017 that “if you are carrying it to make a political point, we are not going to support that.”

“Firearms serve a purpose,” he said, “and the purpose is not a mouthpiece.”

But groups that embrace Second Amendment absolutism do not hesitate to criticize fellow advocates who stray from that orthodoxy.

After Dan Crenshaw, a Republican congressman from Texas and former Navy SEAL, lamented in 2020 that “guys dressing up in their Call of Duty outfits, marching through the streets,” were not advancing the cause of gun rights, he was knocked by the Firearms Policy Coalition for “being critical of people exercising their right to protest.” The coalition has fought state laws that it says force gun owners to choose between the rights to free speech and self-defense.

Regardless of whether there is a right to go armed in public for self-defense, early laws and court decisions made clear that the Constitution did not empower people, such as modern-day militia members, to gather with guns as a form of protest, said Michael C. Dorf, a constitutional law professor at Cornell University who has written about the tension between the rights to free speech and guns.

Mr. Dorf pointed to an 18th-century Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that a group of protesters with firearms had no right to rally in public against a government tax. Some states also adopted an old English law prohibiting “going armed to the terror of the people,” still on the books in some places, aimed at preventing the use of weapons to threaten or intimidate.

“Historically,” said Mr. Dorf, “there were such limits on armed gatherings, even assuming that there’s some right to be armed as individuals.”

More broadly, there is no evidence that the framers of the Constitution intended for Americans to take up arms during civic debate among themselves — or to intimidate those with differing opinions. That is what happened at the Memphis museum in September, when people with guns showed up to protest a scheduled dance party that capped a summer-long series on the history of the L.G.B.T.Q. community in the South.

While the party was billed as “family friendly,” conservatives on local talk radio claimed that children would be at risk (the museum said the planned activities were acceptable for all ages). As armed men wearing masks milled about outside, the panicked staff canceled all programs and evacuated the premises.

Mr. Thompson, the director, said he and his board were now grappling with the laws on carrying firearms, which were loosened last year by state legislators.

“It’s a different time,” he said, “and it’s something we have to learn to navigate.”

50 Days In Iran

People will be free. 

300 protesters have been killed
by Iranian security forces

Iranians defy crackdown with fresh protests, as president dismisses US vow to ‘free Iran’

Ebrahim Raisi declares streets ‘safe and sound’ while shopkeepers strike and student demonstrations sparked by Mahsa Amini’s death reach 50th day

Iranian students protested and shopkeepers went on strike despite a widening crackdown, according to reports on social media, as demonstrations that flared over Mahsa Amini’s death continued for a 50th day.

Saturday’s protests came as President Ebrahim Raisi said Iran’s cities were “safe and sound” after earlier dismissing a pledge from the US president, Joe Biden, to “free Iran”.

The Islamic Republic has been gripped by protests that erupted when Amini died in custody after her arrest for an alleged breach of the country’s dress code for women.

As the working week got under way, security forces adopted new measures to halt protests at universities in Tehran, searching students and forcing them to remove face masks, activists said.

But demonstrators were heard chanting “I am a free woman, you are the pervert” at Islamic Azad University of Mashhad, in north-eastern Iran, in a video published by BBC Persian.

“A student dies, but doesn’t accept humiliation,” sang students at Gilan University in the northern city of Rasht, in footage posted online by an activist.

In the north-western city of Qazvin, dozens chanted similar slogans at a mourning ceremony 40 days after the death of demonstrator Javad Heydari – a custom that has fuelled further protest flashpoints.

The Norway-based Hengaw rights group said people were observing a “widespread strike” in Amini’s home town of Saqez, in Kurdistan province, where shops were shuttered.

A video aired later by Manoto, a television channel based abroad and banned in Iran, appeared to show students locked inside Islamic Azad University in north Tehran.

The continuing unrest came as Iran’s powerful paramilitary Revolutionary Guard on Saturday launched a new satellite-carrying rocket, state TV reported.

Iranian state TV said the Guard successfully launched the solid-fuelled rocket it called a Ghaem-100 satellite carrier and aired dramatic footage of the rocket blasting off from a desert launch pad into a cloudy sky. The report did not reveal the location, which resembled Iran’s north-eastern Shahroud Desert.

The state-run IRNA news agency reported that the carrier would be able to put a satellite weighing 80kg into orbit about 500km from Earth.

The US state department called the launch “unhelpful and destabilising”. Washington fears the same long-range ballistic technology used to put satellites into orbit could also be used to launch nuclear warheads. Tehran has regularly denied having any such intention.

Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights said on Saturday that at least 186 people had been killed in the crackdown on protests, a rise of 10 from Wednesday.

It said another 118 people had lost their lives in separate protests since 30 September in Sistan-Baluchistan, a mainly Sunni Muslim province in the south-east, on the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan.

An official in Kerman province admitted the authorities were having trouble quelling the protests that erupted after Amini’s death on 16 September.

“The restrictions on the internet, the arrest of the leaders of the riots and the presence of the state in the streets always eliminated sedition, but this type of sedition and its audience are different,” Rahman Jalali, political and security deputy for the province, was quoted by ISNA news agency as saying.

Iran has sought to blame its arch-enemy the US for the protests, with Raisi on Saturday saying Washington had failed in its attempt to repeat the 2011 Arab uprisings in the Islamic Republic, Iranian media reported.

Raisi earlier dismissed Biden’s pledge to “free Iran”, retorting that Iran had already been freed by the overthrow of the western-backed shah in 1979.

“Our young men and young women are determined and we will never allow you to carry out your satanic desires,” he told a gathering commemorating the November 1979 seizure of the US embassy in Tehran by radical students.

Biden had said on Friday while campaigning in US midterm elections: “Don’t worry, we’re gonna free Iran. They’re gonna free themselves pretty soon.”

US national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, played down Biden’s remarks, saying: “The president was expressing our solidarity with the protesters as he’s been doing, quite frankly, from the very outset.”

On Friday, the world’s largest cryptocurrency platform, Binance, acknowledged funds belonging to or intended for Iranians had flowed through its service and may have run afoul of US sanctions.

That One Shitty Day

On The Lawn at UVa

Aug 17, 2017

5 years ago.

August 12, 2017 - "...very fine people..."

This one is restricted because of the footage showing the asshole James Fields running his car into a crowd of counter-protesters - viewer discretion is advised:

Hours of video at YouTube

Takin' It To The Streets

About this event

On May 2nd, we learned from a leaked draft opinion that SCOTUS is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, stripping the constitutional right to abortion in spite of fifty years of precedent.

The Supreme Court is making their official decision on abortion rights in June. Once that happens, 26 states could move quickly to ban abortion, meaning millions of people could live without local access to abortion care.

Roe has always been the floor, not the ceiling. Many Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other people of color experience barriers to accessing abortions. The people in your community and across the country deserve the power and freedom to make their own personal reproductive health care decisions.

We have to act NOW, all across the country. Together we will send a strong message that we're not backing down. Supporting abortion access must be protected and defended.

Ukraine & Russia

Ol' Doc Maddow with a look at how some Russians insist on their freedom to speak out against Mr Putin's war.

The A Block ends at about 6:20

And the culprit?

Artist Sasha Skochilenko glued anti-war price tags in stores. She faces up to 10 years in prison because of "fake news" about Russian army. "As a person with a conscience, she couldn't help but react"-her colleagues told. What a pity that such people are a tiny minority in Russia pic.twitter.com/TkyWKGSY5z

— Oleksandra Matviichuk (@avalaina) April 17, 2022

Here's another look at just how wide and deep Russian corruption is - the labels say "TNT".

The Ukrainians unwrap them and find nothing but wood.

Rachel

How do you protest when you're not allowed to protest?

Rachel Maddow - MSNBC 9pm weekdays

(until May 2nd, when she'll be on once a week, which is meant to free her up for other projects she's working on now)

Два слова

"Two words".

And very shortly after they arrested that woman, they arrested another woman who was simply commenting on what she had just witnessed.

IMO - Putin may be on his last legs. Unfortunately, that probably means he'll make things worse for everybody.

If there's any "good news" here, it's that Putin is now soliciting China for military help in Ukraine, which could signal he's worried about having the resources to handle the occupation of a country where the citizens are not amenable to his charms, while having to spend lots of time and energy and money trying to keep the lid from blowing off at home.

It could also be an old Cold War play to make it look like he's got more support than he actually does.

So far, I think Biden and NATO have done really well. The shooting is confined to one place, and while that's extremely shitty for Ukraine, it's something we need to continue to concentrate on.

There's always the danger that things could get a lot worse because an asshole bully like Putin will keep testing the west, pushing to see where we draw the line - if we draw the line - and we could eventually get a much wider shooting war anyway.

Everybody always points back to Chamberlain and Munich, and they always say you have to smack the bully in the face as hard as you can, or he'll just go on pushing, and by the time we wise up, we've lost the initiative and he's knocking on the door of world conquest and blah blah blah.

I've said this my own bad self, but here's the thing: weapons of mass destruction. Nukes. Bio. Chemical. Russia's got it all, and we know Putin is not exactly shy about using them. There's already some reports of white phosphorous munitions being used on Ukrainians

So yes, we have to smack the bully as hard as we can, but we have to do it in ways that don't 

give him anything concrete to justify escalating beyond anyone's ability to pull back and calm down.

Throw in the fact that Putin has already just made shit up and thrown a bunch of it in the air anyway, and it's easy to see how easy it'd be to stumble into a Dr Strangelove ending.

Suffice to say

1. We can all be glad it's not me having to make these decisions
2. It's good that we've got some real pros on hand to do this work for us

Today's Daddy State

When it serves their purpose, the Daddy State will not hesitate to put thoughts in your head, words in your mouth, and slogans on your sign.

It's illegal to criticize Putin's government. And while it's not much of a stretch to think this woman meant to do exactly that, she was exactly not doing that.

Слава Україні

Today's Daddy State

Even now, I won't make the sweeping generalization, but I will say that most of the bluster we get from Republicans about BLM and AntiFa, and how all those horrible protesters last summer were 'radical leftists' bent on destroying our beautiful dreams of (an all-white) America - all that shit - was made up in their own feverish little imaginations.

ABC News:

'Boogaloo Bois' member charged in attack on Minneapolis police precinct during George Floyd protests

He allegedly fired 13 rounds from an AK-47 style gun and helped set it on fire.

A self-described member of the 'Boogaloo Bois' has been charged with participating in a riot after he allegedly shot 13 rounds from an AK-47 style assault rifle into a Minneapolis Police Department building during the civil unrest following the death of George Floyd in late May.

Ivan Hunter, 26, is accused of traveling from Texas to Minneapolis to meet up with other members of the 'Boogaloo Bois' with the goal of carrying out acts of violence during the riots.

The FBI describes the 'Boogaloo Bois' as a loosely-connected group driven by militant anti-government sentiments. Members of the group regularly refer to the 'Boogaloo' as an impending civil war they expect will be incited by accelerationist acts of terror.

Federal investigators said they reviewed video of Hunter firing rounds with his AK-47 style assault rifle into the Third Precinct building while looters were still inside and that he also helped assist them in setting the building on fire.

According to an FBI affidavit, after shooting into the building Hunter hi-fived another individual and while walking towards the camera yelled, "Justice for Floyd!"

Boogaloo: The movement behind recent violent attacks

The affidavit additionally states that Hunter was pinned as the shooter by an unidentified cooperating defendant.

- more-

The Daddy State is a live and well. Be aware.

Two Down One To Go

Once is an anomaly.

Twice may be a coincidence - or maybe not.

Waiting now for the 3rd in order to prove the trend.

Why We Have To Fight

Professor Maureen Healy is the chair of the history department at Lewis & Clark College in Portland. (https://college.lclark.edu/live/profiles/152-maureen-healy)

She teaches Modern European History, with a specialization in the history of Germany and Eastern Europe (and the rise of fascism). She was shot in the head by federal agents on Monday night and is recovering from the injury and the concussion, but shared a statement of her experience, and gave permission to share this.

Statement by Maureen Healy, July 22, 2020 - For Immediate Release

Since June, I have been attending peaceful protests in Portland neighborhoods in support of Black Lives Matter. I have gone with family and friends.

I am a 52-year-old mother. I am a history professor.

I went downtown yesterday to express my opinion as a citizen of the United States, and as a resident of Portland. Of Oregon. This is my home. I was protesting peacefully. So why did federal troops shoot me in the head Monday night?

I was in a large crowd of ordinary folks. Adults, teens, students. Moms and dads. It looked to me like a cross-section of the City. Black Lives Matter voices led the crowd on a peaceful march from the Justice Center past the murals at the Apple store. The marchers were singing songs. We were chanting. We were saying names of Black people that have been killed by police. We observed a moment of silence in front of the George Floyd mural.

I wanted to, and will continue to, exercise my First Amendment right to speak. Federal troops have been sent to my city to extinguish these peaceful protests. I was not damaging federal property. I was in a crowd with at least a thousand other ordinary people. I was standing in a public space.

In addition to being a Portland resident, I am also a historian. My field is Modern European History, with specialization in the history of Germany and Eastern Europe. I teach my students about the rise of fascism in Europe.

By professional training and long years of teaching, I am knowledgeable about the historical slide by which seemingly vibrant democracies succumbed to authoritarian rule. Militarized federal troops are shooting indiscriminately into crowds of ordinary people in our country. We are on that slide.

It dawned on me when I was in the ER, and had a chance to catch my breath (post tear gas): my government did this to me. My own government. I was not shot by a random person in the street. A federal law enforcement officer pulled a trigger that sent an impact munition into my head.

After being hit I was assisted greatly by several volunteer medics. At least one of them was with Rosehip Medic Collective. To take shelter from the teargas I was hustled into a nearby van. Inside they bandaged my head and drove me several blocks away. From there my family took me to the ER. I am grateful for the assistance, skill, and incredibly kind care of these volunteer medics.

We must take this back to Black Lives Matter. Police brutality against Black people is the real subject of these peaceful protests that have been happening in my city and across the country. What happened to me is nothing. It is nothing compared to what happens to Black citizens at the hands of law enforcement, mostly local police, every day. And that is why we have been marching. That is why I will continue to march.

hat tip = FB pal P Murray

Flipping The Script

Grand Master Jay turned out his NFAC guys in Louisville yesterday.

Reuters:

A group of heavily armed Black protesters marched through Louisville, Kentucky on Saturday demanding justice for Breonna Taylor, a Black woman killed in March by police officers who burst into her apartment.

Scores of the demonstrators, carrying semi-automatic rifles and shotguns and clad in black paramilitary gear, walked in formation to a fenced off intersection where they were separated by police from a smaller group of armed counter-protesters.

The Black militia dubbed NFAC want justice for Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical technician who died in a hail of gunfire when drug investigators bearing a “no-knock” warrant entered her Louisville home four months ago.

To be clear, I can do without the macho bullshit with the Emotional Support Weapons.

But, 2 things:

First, ain't it funny how the cops don't wanna fuck with you when you're packin'?

I don't like that line of thinking, because it seems to lend a little credence to the 2A fetishists' arguments about needing guns to stand against the tyrannical gubmint. I don't believe that's a valid conclusion here, but it's worth thinking about.

Second, there is definitely a weird kind of Good Karma vibe about this. And a call back to the Black Panthers demonstration in California 50 years ago - which funnily enough prompted then-Gov Ronald Reagan to help hustle through a piece of legislation that put some limits on open carry at the time.

And that's always been pretty interesting - that white people can get pretty reasonable all of a sudden when black people stand up and push back, giving us a little taste of our our shit.

But back to the but - even if your main intent is simply a show of force, some jagoff yahoo is going to obsess on "An unused weapon is a useless weapon", and there will be blood.

If you believe in the power of prayer, now is another really good time to pray.

Today's Beau

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column

"Nobody's this wrong by accident." 

The Cult45 strategy seems to be to provoke the violence they say they're trying to quell.

Classic.

Our Descent

hat tip = J Gorman

Salon:

Let's have the decency not to pretend we weren't warned about this, shall we? Since virtually the day Donald Trump was elected, if not before that, people like journalist Masha Gessen and historian Timothy Snyder have told us that his presidency would be a sustained assault on democracy, and that America stood at a historical fork in the road, with at least one of the paths leading into darkness. We began to talk about "fascism" and "authoritarianism," and maybe those terms seemed metaphorical or melodramatic, for a while. Do they seem that way now?

It didn't feel like the end of democracy, did it? To use Gessen's language, did it feel like the dangerous moment between the "autocratic attempt" and the "autocratic breakthrough"? Not the way that alarming news reports from Hungary and Russia and Turkey and the Philippines do. The problem is, as history informs us, that we're not likely to notice such dangerous moments while they're happening. So the insults and outrages piled up and the news cycle grew ever more discordant and surreal, but there was still takeout and Netflix and Amazon. Life was about the same, for most people most of the time. Maybe it was all an "aberrant moment in time," in Joe Biden's immortal phrase. There was no Reichstag fire. There were no troops in the street. Not until now.

We can argue about whether Trump is simply the vector through which the authoritarian current flows — the Forrest Gump of fascism — or is, after his stupid-brilliant fashion, a very small Great Man of History. Both things can be true, which is effectively what Gessen argues in her new book "Surviving Autocracy." We can argue that this is all part of a larger global pattern of democratic crisis, which is clearly true, and that the United States had already become a degraded and dysfunctional pseudo-democracy in 2016, because only such a society could have allowed Trump to rise to power. Bernie Sanders literally went red in the face telling us that, over and over again, during his 2016 campaign. He sounded more like an Old Testament prophet than a presidential candidate, and made way too many normal people uncomfortable.

So, yes, a lot of us — probably all of us — should be called to account for how we got here. Because whatever we believe we did or didn't do, it wasn't enough, and here we are: Fourteen weeks before a presidential election, there are troops in the streets.

OK, we're not supposed to call them "troops." They're not members of the military. I don't think that improves matters. For the last week, armed men in camouflage uniforms marked as "POLICE," who do not seem to have recognizable insignias or badges, and do not have names on their uniforms, have been battling Black Lives Matter protesters in Portland, Oregon. But even the language we use to describe these events grows slippery — another consequence of encroaching authoritarianism, which drains the meaning out of ordinary words. These police are not real police, and the protesters in Portland (and many other places) have moved past the Black Lives Matter agenda to something much larger and more difficult to define. They are standing up against autocracy, I think we can say, while these so-called police are trying to enforce it.