This is at least the third separate story I’ve linked recently about the amazing extent of the oppression lately in Iran, but the other two were in Headlines and I’m afraid people missed them. So here’s a proper link to the Times’s take on it published today. Spare five minutes for it. Something’s brewing over there but god only knows how it’s going to shake out. A taste:

Young men wearing T-shirts deemed too tight or haircuts seen as too Western have been paraded bleeding through Tehran’s streets by uniformed police officers who force them to suck on plastic jerrycans, a toilet item Iranians use to wash their bottoms. In case anyone misses the point, it is the official news agency Fars distributing the pictures of what it calls “riffraff.” Far bloodier photographs are circulating on blogs and on the Internet.

There’s a photo at the link. Elsewhere, Iran’s economic crisis explained.