The attempt to drown the protests in rivers of blood have reportedly led to a "massacre" in Baharestan Square, outside the Iranian majles, today. Tens of thousands of basiji reportedly surrounded hundreds of protesters in this small square, and battered them, then opened fire on them. It's not just basiji - multiple reports indicate that young men without uniforms were given batons and let loose. How much of this is true is obviously impossible to tell, but given that dozens have been killed so far, the worst would not be surprising. The regime probably believes it has this situation locked up, for now. And maybe it does: who would dare to guess that protesters will continue to keep putting themselves through this? But the fact of having to resort to this level of brutality is indicative of a state in deep crisis. Police have been nicking protesters and parading them on television with confessions blaming the Western media for leading them astray. This would imply that the Iranian state has roughly the same idea as US neoconservatives - that democracy and protest is somehow the a cultural peculiarity of the 'West', which can only be imposed on Iran from without.

Various statements of solidarity with the protesters are being circulated. The NPA are pledging to join protests to show solidarity with the people and travailleurs of Iran. On the anti-imperialism front, I would draw attention to this statement by Venezuelan socialists. There also is an intervention by Slavoj Zizek, which has been circulated by Iranian academics, and is published here. I don't need to restate my scepticism about Zizek's broader politics, nor do I agree with every last word or emphasis. However, I do think it makes some very important points, perhaps the most important of which is that anyone on the left who doesn't see an emancipatory dimension in the protests is politically defunct. The bloodless lack of enthusiasm for what is manifestly a democratic movement in some of the commentary reflects not anti-imperialist sensibilities so much as political timidity. The key here is universality: these protesters are no different from those who have been beaten or killed in Genoa, in London, in LA, in Athens, and everywhere that the state is challenged by a democratic movement and responds in this way. Their case for solidarity is not diminished by the fact that they live in a society that has been threatened by imperialism. On the contrary, it means we ought to redouble our efforts.

So, the former head of MI5 says that we are cruising toward a "police state" because of the unwieldy apparatus of surveillance and repression introduced during the 'war on terror'. What would a police state look like? How would it behave toward its citizens? I think it was Neal Ascherson who warned that we should always pay attention to how the state treats refugees, because that is eventually how they will treat us. Well, then.

Consider the fate of Binyam Mohammed. A refugee who had been living in Britain since 1994, kidnapped in 2002, deposited at various CIA 'ghost prisons', tortured with British complicity, subject to genital mutilation, eventually detained at Guantanamo under brutal conditions with no recourse to judicial review. Now, he may - under a deal negotiated between Washington and London - be returned to the UK. He might not be allowed to stay, however, as David Miliband has said that his status will be determined by 'security' tests applied to all foreign nationals. Take another example. In December 2001, about a dozen foreign nationals living in the UK as refugees were rounded up, taken to Belmarsh prison, and kept in indefinite detention, with no right to trial. They were never interviewed by a police officer or any security official prior to their arrest. They spent several years in these conditions, locked for much of the day in isolation cells. It was only when the House of Lords, in one of those 'awkward' moments that so annoyed the Blair administration, ruled that such internment was illegal in December 2004 that the men were released - and even then they were kept under control orders, whose provisions were laid out in the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005. They were arrested again after 7 July 2005 attacks, and the British government sought to deport the refugees. They have never been apprised of any evidence against them.

Now take the case of Mohamed Othman, aka Abu Qatada. He is a refugee born in the West Bank when it was under Jordanian control, who sought asylum in the UK in 1993. Like the other examples, he has never been charged with any crime. Like the others, he has been detained without trial. Like the others, the British would like to expel him, in this case to Jordan, where he will certainly be tortured. Of course, unlike the others, he has a public persona: he is what is commonly referred to as a 'radical cleric'. His fatwas and writings are supposedly read and appreciated by those 'combat fundamentalists' who, without such intellectual sustenance, would be smoking weed and indulging experimental sex in the Bay Area. With little evidence, it has also been asserted that he is involved in terrorist plots, is bin Laden's "right-hand man" in Europe, etc. The strength of those allegations can perhaps be judged by the fact that they have never resulted in a prosecution. If the Crown Prosecution Service declines to try Qatada for such serious crimes, how strong can the evidence be? Now, if you go away from this post thinking 'that boy lenin loves Abu Qatada and all his works', you'll be wrong. The point I wish to make in citing such an unpopular rogue is that the mystique generated about him in the media is being used to justify attacks on the very limited and basic civil liberties that we all claim. If the precedent is established that people may be subject to harrassment and unlawful detention, as well as vilified in the media, even with there being no crime prosecutable under law, then we have lost something important.

Surely, it cannot be long before such repressive legislation is turned toward internal dissidents. In fact, to be clear, it already has been. We have already had the arrests of antiwar protesters on ludicrous terrorism charges. Anti-terrorist legislation has been used against such harmless people as cyclists and photographers. The Viva Palestina convoy has already been subject to police harrassment on bogus suspicions of 'terrorism'. In the current global inferno, one can see it being used against strikers, anticapitalist protesters, student occupiers, and any other dissident groups that the police are charged with attacking.