by Patrick Appel
NIAC gets an eyewitness report from "a very close friend" in Iran:
Made my way down the west side of Laleh Park, large crowd was gathered around a radio listening to Rafi give the sermons, moved down to Keshavarz Blvd, where people had already started to taunt the bassijis who look like teenagers with Darth Vader helmets that was one size too big for them.
The main slogans were “Baradar’e basiji chera Baradr Koshi” (”Brother basiji, why do you kill your brother?”, the speaker after Rafi was urging people to shout “death to America” and “death to Israel” people responded in mass by shouting “death to Russia” and “death to the dictator”, things started getting messy in 16 Azar street, I never knew that you can defuse the effect of tear gas if you hold a cigarette close to your face, who cares about second hand smoke when you are fighting a dictatorship… Anyways, they chased and people ran away, they caught few poor fellows who probably are in hospital now, but overall the fear and terror seems to get less and less effective, unless they decided to bring the big guns out one day, even then I do not think they will able to defeat these people.