First, two interesting articles:
The Iranian Election and the Revolution Test by George Friedman for Startfor
and
What Actually Happened in the Iranian Presidential Election? by Esam Al-Amin for Aimislam.com
Then, here is an excerpt from an email I got from a friend whom I asked to verify the “Iranian charge $3’000 for “bullet fee” story:
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That story has been blown out of proportion. Yes the Baseej has been a bit over zealous by attacking the protesters but there has been many incidents against them that has gone unreported for instance on Saturday the protesters put fire to the natural gas line going into an office of Baseej and blew it up completely killing 5-6 baseejis.
$3000 issue is bogus and Iran has never claimed such money nor they have denied the mourning rituals or ceremonies to happen. Yes they may have asked people to keep them low key to avoid public attention which then prompts the Western attention as in the case of Neda. CNN and BBC had a field day with that and this is what is being touted. If you notice that since the protesters have been clamped down on they have used this one case to win sympathy all over the world. People are reacting very emotionally and backing Mousavi due to their blind emotions. And this is due to the spin being added by the Media on this story too.
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Frankly, charging $3’000 for a China-style “bullet fee” would make getting killed unaffordable for most Iranians (except the Guccis I suppose). Seriously, when I read the WSJ “bullet fee” thing, immediately thought that this was a typical kind of propagandistic nonsense which US psyops have been feeding us since the election.
One more though: as far as I know, the government did not engage the Pasdaran to crush any riots, which tells me that the cop+Basij combination, combined with the *threat* of engaging the Pasdaran, was enough to deal with the riots. That, in turn, suggests to me that we might be getting a bloated image of the actual level of rioting and violence.
The Guccci coup d’etat might be loosing momentum
