The Goings-Ons in Iran

Are any of you as concerned for the protesters in Iran as I am? Having problems finding first-hand accounts from the witnesses of the slaughter of the people? Click here to go to a webpage for more information about Khiaban, 'The Street', which is a paper started June 19th that is apparently circulating among the protesters. The translation (below) is found on a site with many great articles/entries- take a minute after reading the translation to fish around the site...

Finally, if you're feeling a call to action, this site might give you some ideas... I've just started to look at this site. Let me know if you have suggestions for other resources!

The Street

Issue 1 – 29 Khordad 1388 (June 19, 2009)

Aiming to negate students’ impact on the current developments: University dormitories ordered closed

Iran in a bloodbath

Workers of [car maker] Iran Khodro on Strike

Tens of thousands protesters march from Tupkhaneh Square to Haft Tir

In the provinces, coup-makers practice violent oppression

Media and the streets. A bloody page in Iran’s modern history seems to be turning in the events we are witnessing. In past days and nights, Tehran and many Iranian cities have not stayed calm as peoples’ burning rage has thrown daily life into flux. The people in the streets are playing a game of cat and mouse with violent thugs; youth are in revolt, and the elderly rack their memories for re-learned lessons of the calamitous events of the 1979 revolution to pass on to the young.

Again, after thirty years, people are leaving the doors of their homes open [to give refuge] to courageous youth, and we hear from many how great people are, and how quickly they can change. Over the past days’ witness to events, we were different people, different slogans. During the campaign until election day, the huge crowds of people that had taken to the street with the green wave were spirited, the bliss of unawareness reigning over them. Yet since the results were announced, the situation changed and people became angry, and sought the crest of the wave to propel them beyond the ignorance, repression and hundreds of lies. During recent days and nights, the tide has again turned.

Like Azar of 1953 [CIA-backed anti-Mossadegh coup] and Tir of 1999 [reformist protests and regime crackdown], and – according to many present at the time – even like the protests of the revolutionary years and 1963 [clergy-led anti-shah protests]!!! Yes, we are seeing the naked face of repression. We see the green wave of reformism in its entire expanse, as it brings us into a shared arena with the existing system

Killing us and calls for calm have only made the situation more acute. Now we have more questions; more than just issues with vote counting. We want a different voice. We do not want to be sacrificed to corruption and graft again, for the nth time, so that our interests are ignored. We do not want a slaughterhouse that would set society back thirty years. We do not want a repeat of the fraud of 1979. We do not have any media but the world has gotten smaller so we no longer experience one thing on the streets yet read something different in world media. We do not want the next generation to be ignorant about what happened on the streets of Tehran, Esfahan, Tabriz, Shiraz, Mashhad, Ahvaz, Kermanshah, and the rest of the cities, large and small. We will represent a new voice in this power play: the voice of the people crying out in the streets. The people who have no delusions about colors and who demand change. Khiaban Newspaper