The news seems to illustrate a dying regime trying to retain some semblance of control as it slips away from them.

First this story:

Iranian police beat dozens of protesters with batons on Tuesday at a demonstration to call for the release of Iran’s most prominent jailed journalist.

About 150 people, mostly students, had gathered in front of Tehran University chanting “political prisoners must be freed” when dozens of police moved in to break up the protest.
…
A Reuters journalist saw police beat several protesters, including young women, in streets surrounding the university and was struck by batons several times himself.

What is it about radical Muslims and the beating of women? Why are they such insecure males?? Next this story:

Iran’s State Security Forces on Sunday opened fire at youths in the north-western volatile Kurdish town of Mahabad, leaving one young man dead and several others injured.

A group of friends were walking at an avenue in Freedom Square in Mahabad at 22:30, when they were approached and attacked by an SSF convoy, plain-clothed Islamic vigilantes, and a number of agents of Iran’s dreaded Ministry of Intelligence and Security (VEVAK), according to several eye-witnesses.

The SSF fatally shot a young man by the name of Shavaneh Qaderi and critically injured two other individuals.

The security forces then proceeded with tying Qaderi’s body to a Toyota jeep and while driving dragged it in streets, according to the witnesses.

These fanatical muslims are a classy lot, aren’t they? And people think we can appease them! hah. But at least the people of Iran see what these animals are made of.

Minutes after Qaderi’s body was dragged throughout the town, several hundred local angry residents gathered in nearby streets and started to chant anti-government slogans.

Anti-riot police were brought in from the neighbouring towns of Miandoab and Naqadeh to stop the escalation of protests.

Then there is this story

More than 100 university lecturers yesterday took part in a gathering in Ahwaz Chamran University, southwest Iran, to protest the destruction of parts of the campus by the authorities.

And then this one – where it appears the country is on the verge of martial law, possibly

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appointed a top commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as the country’s new police chief, the state-run news agency reported.

In a decree that was read out on the state radio, Ayatollah Khamenei said the police forces’ top priority was “to create security all over the country at a level worthy of the Islamic Republic”.

Brigadier General Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddam, the number two in the paramilitary Bassij and commander of the force in Greater Tehran, is a long-time ally of President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The two worked together closely in the military crackdown on Iran’s autonomy-seeking Kurds in the 1980s, when they were both Revolutionary Guards commanders based in Hamzeh Garrison near the north-western city of Orumieh.

The appointment of Ahmadi Moghaddam, who is among the top commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and a protégé of IRGC Commandant General Rahim Safavi, brings the country’s police force under the complete domination of the Revolutionary Guards and signals a readiness to crack down harder on what the ultra-conservatives see as “deviation” from the country’s rigid religious laws.