New information on the violence in Tehran today has been slow to emerge. But here, via McClatchy, is a video of one of the shooting victims, who was apparently wounded in the arm. The AP has the latest on the incident that was the focus for the violence:
Later, a group of demonstrators with fuel canisters set a small fire at a compound of a volunteer militia linked to Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard as the crowd dispersed from the square. As some tried to storm the building, people on the roof could be seen firing directly at the demonstrators at the northern edge of the square, away from the heart of the rally.
An Associated Press photographer saw one person fatally shot and at least two others who appeared to be seriously wounded.
Late Update: We’ve compiled some of the other compelling videos to come out of iran in recent days.
As if it weren’t enough that a South Carolina Republican joked on Facebook that Michelle Obama’s ancestors were gorillas (he didn’t mean it in a pro-evolution kind of way), now we have a South Carolina GOP operative making his own racist Obama joke on Twitter.
They’re doing GOP Chairman Michael Steele proud, too, using the social networking intertubes to make the GOP more relevant in the digital age. Nice work.
So what’s the deal with the whole Murtha / PMA / Visclosky / Kucera scandal? TPMmuckraker’s Zack Roth takes a close look and brings us up to speed.
In these Internet chronicled events, there’s a flurry of web video of events on the streets in Tehran. Click here to see our page with some of the ‘best’ video we’ve found on the web.
Also, see our slideshow of today’s rally and rioting.
Recent events suggest that Twitter and the GOP may not be a good match after all.
We’ve got a full menu of news we’re trying to keep on top of today. But I wanted to let everyone know about some comings and goings here at TPM.
First, Associate Editor Lila Shapiro, who’s been TPMCafe editor and doing about a hundred different other things at TPM for the last year is off to a new job at Huffington Post. We thank her for all her hard work and wish her the very, very best. Here’s Lila’s sign off post at TPMCafe.
You can remember Lila from her going away bash at TPM HQ (pictured below) or just go over to Huffpo and check out her headlines and news layouts.
Second, we’ve promoted Brian Beutler to become our new Congressional Reporter-Blogger at TPMDC. Brian’s actually taken this week off which I guess makes sense to take a final breather before formally join the TPM reporting cult.
Third, we’ve hired former TPM intern Rachel Slajda to be our first of three new “news writers.” Rachel starts next week.
And finally, fourth, we’ve promoted former intern Versha Sharma to be our first TPM ‘Editorial Fellow.’
We expect to have several new hires to announce in the near future.
You’ve probably seen the reports of the shooting that took place at the rally at which Mr. Mousavi spoke in Tehran yesterday. Al Jazeera and al Arabiya are now reporting that Iranian state radio has announced that seven people were killed along with many others wounded.
It’s not immediately clear to me whether we should assume in this case that state radio would give artificially low estimates of the number who died.
Also of interest — President Ahmadinejad decided to make the trip to Russia which had originally been scheduled for Monday. He arrived in Yekaterinberg a short time ago. That certainly seems like a show of confidence that his supporters have the situation under control — at least on the immediate time horizon.