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Assholes:

An Associated Press photographer saw one person shot dead and several others who appear seriously wounded in Tehran’s Azadi Square. The shooting came from a compound for volunteer militia linked to Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard.

The gunfire Monday came after more than 100,000 opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad streamed through Tehran. They were not challenged by security forces despite an earlier ban on rallies for reformist leader Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Disputes over alleged vote rigging in last week’s elections have touched off days of rioting in Tehran.

Video of marchers after the jump:
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For those who miss the good old days (Republicans!) when America was great and Real American (Movie) Hero Ronald Reagan led our country by beating the Russians with his Star Wars light sabers, here are some dolls for you to play with!  Why worry about the current situation in Iran when you can dress up some paper dolls and recreate our old, tough-minded Iran policy of selling them weapons?  

First Family paperdolls set, features Ronald Reagan, Nancy Reagan, Patti and Ronald Jr., plus clothes, Jane Fonda and Mikhail Baryshnikov costumes, completely UNCUT, excellent, First Printing 1981.

I hear Rush Limbaugh plays with his set every night.  Though he usually waterboards the Jane Fonda doll for a little while before hatefucking it.

MisFit Toys via That’s Important

Iranian callers to Brian Lehrer’s show on WNYC this morning say friends and relatives in the country are telling them the violence is much worse than reported.  Tehranlive photoblog is here. Lehrer has more links here. This is in Tehran:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyssJGHsGyw

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Where the streets had no flame.

Iranians
65 million, roughly two-thirds under 30 years old — too young for the Revolution, too young to even remember the Iran-Iraq war. And while we tend to view Iran as a Shia nation in a region of Sunnis, locally they view themselves as Persians (51 percent), Azeris (24 percent, including Mousavi), and a half-dozen other ethnic groups, including Kurds (7 percent). But the nation can also be sliced into urban/rural groups, rich/poor, and other politically familiar divisions. All politics is local — until you rattle nukes at them.

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Although we didn’t explain it, our Sunday tweet — Allah O Akbar, or “God is Great” — is one of the legendary chants from the Iranian revolution. We ran it because we read reports that people were shouting it from Tehran rooftops last night, in a “deafening” chorus of protest. How deafening? Now we know.

(Update: No we don’t — video’s from June 9, as updated at niacINsight, and which we could have easily checked before posting. But while we’re here, latest reports have police going door to door and marking buildings where they hear the second night’s shouts.)

This is my favorite Warner Bros. cartoon EVAR. Post a link to yours in the comments. And yes – I am basically a big six-year-old. Deal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZLsiZtXsyA

artmousavirallyafpgiSully says Iran’s election commission calling for a do-over:

Yes, the president of Iran’s own election monitoring commission has declared the result invalid and called for a do-over. That is huge news: when a regime’s own electoral monitors beak ranks, what chance does the regime have of persuading anyone in the world or Iran that it has democratic legitimacy?

Stay tuned.

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