Sunday, June 21, 2009

Lolagar Mosque

Seems the regime has retracted its comments about people dying in Lolagar mosque. Seems rather dubious, as they'd earlier claimed that protesters had set it on fire - despite the news coming out last night that Basiji had done it. I think we'll hear more about this.
Meanwhile, as I suspected, the stories about embassies taking in injured demonstrators also weren't true. CNN twitter reports:
Both UK & Dutch embassy said news of them taking in injured #iranelection protesters is not true. Desk here calling other embassies.


Guardian Liveblog has a very dodgy sounding quote from "a reader":
I think the mood Matthew after yesterday (I was there at the demo, where the atmosphere was very tense and eventually turned violent), is a feeling that "it's all over". There is a feeling that this opposition movement has now fizzled out. The shouts of 'Allah o Akbar' at night are expected to continue and sporadic violent clashes on the streets will persist for a while after sunset. However, the general consensus is that there will be no more mass demonstrations or any organized opposition. Most people have resigned themselves to this line of thinking.

Remarkably good English and in total contrast to everything else I'm hearing. There is no way someone with this level of English is a "normal person". I'd be near certain that this is a weak attempt at disinformation. But I'm not surprised the Guardian's fallen for it. Most of the mainstream media is way behind the curve on these events. BBC this morning was still reporting "it appears several protestors have been injured" despite news of many deaths already being widespread.
AP is currently reporting that State TV has said at least 20 died (Correction: that include the 7 official deaths last weekend). Quite unexpected for State TV to be saying this so openly. I suspect there's also a power struggle going on there - without knowing who's going to win, the State TV guys will want to be cautious - and of course some of the lower level journalists will be very sympathetic to the resistance.

Further, news that Faezeh Rafsanjani has been arrested. It seems that she's still being held - which can be taken as a direct challenge to Rafsanjani to publicly take sides. (He wasn't present at Friday prayers when Khamenei spoke, which was pretty damning in itself).

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