The Guardian a harrowing report from universities in several Iranian cities, where plainclothes and riot police have joined the basij in attacking dormitories, apparently indescriminately,

"At 3am they announced on loudspeakers: 'If you evacuate the building we won't harm you. Otherwise, you'll all be injured or killed.' All the students then came out of the building in lines, with their hands on their heads. The police hit them with batons and some started to shout that they had conquered the dorms. Eventually they let us go back to our rooms but at least 10 had been shot, some appeared to have been killed and hundreds were injured."

The Guardian understands that five students may also have died in clashes at Tehran University early on Sunday. The students — named as Fatemeh Barati, Kasra Sharafi, Mobina Ehterami, Kambiz Shoaee and Mohsen Imani — are believed to have been buried today in Behesht-e-Zahra, a famous cemetery in Tehran, reportedly without their families being informed.

So far, the Guardian is calling 12 student deaths. The regime clearly doesn't understand how the technology works—if you beat hundreds or thousands of students to shut them up, they'll be text messaging to the world, en masse, within minutes. You make them louder than they would've been had you just let them march. You've just handed them megaphones the whole world can hear.

Alternately, it opens the door for a new kind of propaganda for those who do understand the technology. If the revolution is to be Twittered, a well-falsified YouTube video or Twitter campaign could have the power to start a riot, a counter-riot, or maybe even take the fight out of already-rioting people before anybody has a chance to confirm its authenticity.

Not that it's happening in this case—"one person = one broadcaster" is working some world-historical magic right now—but it's going to happen someday soon.

UPDATE

Another sign of hope, from Robert Fisk's coverage of the demonstrations (which got a nod from Slog commenter Toe Tag):

They jostled and pushed and crowded through narrow laneways to reach the main highway and then found the riot police in steel helmets and batons lined on each side. The people ignored them all. And the cops, horribly outnumbered by these tens of thousands smiled sheepishly — and to our astonishment — and nodded their heads towards the men and women demanding freedom.

The military has announced neutrality—and who's to say that on the big day tomorrow (tonight for us), some police won't be showing up to work?