An Iranian student's account of the recent protests in Tehran and the retaliation by pro-government vigilantes with an attack on a dormitory: "They got shields from the police and entered the dormitory. There were about 600-700 of them — armed with swords, sticks, daggers, iron chains, and tear-gas guns — to 700 of us students, mostly in pajamas. We had run out of stones to resist any longer…". For more first hand accounts see Buzzmachine's list of Iranian bloggers.
posted by Quinn on Jun 17, 2003 - 46 comments

Reactions from the Arab world Meanwhile Israel gets more financial aid from the US further angering Muslims and contributing to Zionist/US conspiracy theories. Sadly, Bush seems to have found how to pay for this war by not supporting the troops.
posted by skallas on Mar 21, 2003 - 34 comments

Media covers massive D.C. (and world) Anti-War protests, discounts numbers - Backflash: NPR and the NYT later issued apologies for their drastic undercounting of the Oct. 26 D.C. Anti-War protest - later admitted to be between 100,000 and 200,000 in size "...It was not as large as the organizers of the protest had predicted. They had said there would be 100,000 people here. I'd say there are fewer than 10,000"(NPR's Nancy Marshall) Last saturday's D.C. AntiWar protest received far more media coverage but a similar discounting of the numbers. IndyMedia (above link) provided numbers more in line with D.C. Police statements. Many media outlets ran the same AP news feed. [NYT, NPR , CNN, ABC, AP] and claimed..."Thousands" or "tens of thousands" of protesters. But in the words of those who witnessed it (as I did - 2.5 times size of Oct. 26 protest, from what I saw): 'D.C. police chief Charles Ramsey said, "It's one of the biggest ones we've had, certainly in recent times." U.S. Capitol Police chief Terrance Gainer said, "I know everyone is skittish about saying a number, but this was big. An impressive number." A C-SPAN cameraman I spoke to spent the entire protest on the roof of a cargo truck just to the side of the stage. He told me that he had covered dozens of protests in his time, and that the crowd on Saturday was the biggest he had ever seen.' (story) and organizers claimed 500,000 marched in DC meanwhile, a new poll shows support for a war on Iraq is slipping in the US and also dropping at the UN
posted by troutfishing on Jan 20, 2003 - 105 comments

Eight peace activists were shot and wounded by Israeli soldiers. The soldiers apparently (and I could be wrong) fired without provocation -- the activists were unarmed, and were marching peacefully. Israel's Justice Minister was quoted in the Miami Herald today (no web link available, sorry) as saying, "A person playing with fire should not yell when he gets burned." Essentially, what is being said here is that being a protestor is sufficient reason to be shot. The Israeli army claims to be hunting down "terrorists", but if this is how they define the word I don't feel too inclined to trust them.
posted by tweebiscuit on Apr 2, 2002 - 48 comments