From New Jersey Digest:
Jersey City Is No Longer a Stepping Stone to NYC: Realtors Say Buyers Are Staying Put
For years, Jersey City played a familiar role in the New York real estate ecosystem. It was the place people landed when Manhattan rents became unbearable—a temporary solution, a compromise, a few PATH stops away from where they actually wanted to be.
That framing no longer holds.
According to local realtors and market data, Jersey City has shifted from a stopgap into something more permanent. Buyers and renters aren’t just passing through on their way back to New York. Increasingly, they’re staying.
“Jersey City is definitely an endgame for most residents,” said Leilani Chin, Broker-Associate at Corcoran Sawyer Smith. “Once you get used to the amount of space and ‘little luxuries’ like in-unit washer/dryer, dishwasher, outdoor space and sometimes parking, it’s hard to give that up to live in NYC and pay even more.”
Space remains the clearest divider. At comparable price points, Jersey City apartments often offer 30 to 50 percent more square footage than similar units in Manhattan. That difference shows up in real ways: dining areas that aren’t multipurpose, home offices that don’t double as bedrooms, closets that actually store things, and appliances Manhattan renters still treat as upgrades.
For families, the gap widens further. Three-bedroom apartments that routinely cost $7,000 to $10,000 a month in Manhattan often land between $3,500 and $5,000 in Jersey City. The savings are substantial, but so is the tradeoff in livability.
Remote and hybrid work has only accelerated that calculation. With many professionals commuting into Manhattan two or three days a week instead of five, the PATH ride feels less like a burden and more like a manageable routine. Being close enough for work, but far enough to gain space, has become the sweet spot.
Stephen Colbert:
“Where are the Epstein Files? We were told there would be Epstein Files. You signed a law mandating you would have to release the Epstein Files by the middle of last month, but you still haven’t. It kind of makes you seem like a… pedophile protector!”
Prices in Manhattan are collapsing with rightwingers who hate Mandani moving to Oklahoma…. 🤣
“ For families, the gap widens further. Three-bedroom apartments that routinely cost $7,000 to $10,000 a month in Manhattan often land between $3,500 and $5,000 in Jersey City. The savings are substantial, but so is the tradeoff in livability.”
Tres
No vaccines, but yes to roundup
Supreme Court may block thousands of lawsuits over Monsanto’s weed killer https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2026-01-16/supreme-court-may-block-thousands-of-lawsuits-over-monsantos-weed-killer
North Jersey might be the best real estate to buy and hold in the country. I don’t trust holding real estate anywhere else (excluding beach properties because they will always be valuable and scarce) going into demographic headwinds next decades. NYC expansion and spillover has me comfy holding north jersey real estate.
with liberty, and justice, for all. 😜
Kitchen countertop workers are dying. Some lawmakers want to ban their lawsuits
https://www.npr.org/2026/01/14/nx-s1-5674884/kitchen-countertop-workers-are-dying-some-lawmakers-want-to-ban-their-lawsuits
Why wouldn’t Jersey City be an end game? It’s less time on the path to get to downtown and midtown Manhattan than most subway rides? Queens? Staten Island? I might as well live in fucking Union Beach.
Trump’s tariffs push Canada and China to strike a deal of their own.
Canada gets reliable BYD cars, America is stuck with Ford Ecoboom engines, RAM you in the wallet pickups, and shady dealerships where your fellow Americans try to rip you off from the second you walk in the door.
What the fucc is wrong with Americans? Tolerating the abuse and neglect from it’s own individuals, and hoping and counting on the parasitic, ineffective, and non functioning judicial system to get them “justice”, a refund, or almost any kind of recourse.
the cost to sue someone in america is more than you get from the lawsuit, and only the parasites win, it’s a feature of the system, not a bug.
US college rankings going down while China takes over.
https://www.boston.com/news/education/2026/01/15/chinese-universities-surge-in-global-rankings-as-u-s-schools-slip/
Leiden Ranking
A list from the Centre for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands has eight Chinese schools in the top 10.
1. Zhejiang University, China
2. Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China
3. Harvard University, United States
4. Sichuan University, China
5. Central South University, China
6. Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China
7. Sun Yat-sen University, China
8. Xi’an Jiaotong University, China
9. Tsinghua University, China
10. University of Toronto, Canada
Fast: Jersey City, Weehawken etc, all depend on NYC jobs, if that changes, it I should say when that changes it will be a different story.My brother lives in a luxury apartment building in JC, all sorts of amenities. Nice pool and legit gym, work study areas, sauna, coffee bars in various locations, including in the lobby so you can grab and go in the morning. The coffee is pretty good and “free”. Lots of delivery perks including refrigerators to hold food/grocery deliveries. Very impressive, but feels very cold, he is paying big bucks too, plus parking. Raised his kids in the suburbs on his own then moved to JC, but the money not an issue for him. I prefer my other brothers prewar apartment on the upper west side.
Perhaps US colleges need to refocus their efforts on education.
A quick Public Service Announcement for those global-warming believers vacationing in Florida where it’s been so cold lately that iguanas have been dropping out of trees:
Please watch your head, thank you.
Rent – China’s leadership has historically been dominated by engineers.
USA about 1/2 of congress today are lawyers.
But our kids just need to be plumbers and electricians – according to this administration.
I was talking to a scientist who started his own vaccine company made some money but is now stuck because there is zero new funding in the area. Another friend’s tenure is at risk because there are no grants. Think about all the kids who want to major in the sciences – there are so few pathways and more closing with every policy change. We are actively dumbing down the country and don’t want the educated immigrants either.
College rankings and stuff:
Our kids can’t make change, not even sure what US currency is, can’t write in whole sentences, are told men can have babies and are given edible crayons and coloring books to soothe their hurt feelings… why are our colleges failing? The bigger question is why did we let liberals out of the asylum?
I was talking to a scientist who started his own vaccine company…
LMAO!! Once again you have the uncanny timing of meeting someone who bolsters your narrative.
If an alien from Pluto descended upon us, you’d no doubt “talk” to someone who met the space creature. Lol.
>> are told men can have babies
If that’s your interpretation of liberal transgender policies, I think we have a problem with maga adults being stupid as well.
I’m going to try it:
“I was talking to a research scientist the other day who happens to be the foremost expert in liberal lying and progressive retardation and he said the only way to correct the course of the country is to neuter man children and ugly females.
But our kids just need to be plumbers and electricians – according to this administration.
And masons, painters, diesel mechanics, linemen, boiler makers, welders, pipefitters, repair managers and aircraft mechanics.
We are actively dumbing down the country…
By telling the kids there are multiple genders and men can menstruate.
Jason: Thanks for the heads up. We were going to look at booking a Fla trip
This weekend, will have to figure something else out or perhaps delay it.
You are proving what I said about stupid maga being the problem.
If you don’t play the long game and pull funding away from research we will pay.
It’s one thing to let a kid want to be a plumber vs forcing him/her to be a plumber.
Fast: All those jobs will also depend on the amount of white collar jobs left. It’s all connected. That said, the two young guys I know in the Elevator Construction Union I mentioned yesterday, are making massive amounts in overtime pay. No college loans, and they are living large.
…and pull funding away from research we will pay.
I’d pull funding too if 50% of the muppets don’t know what a woman is nor which bathroom to use.
A news link about ICE is so scandalous that it is stuck in moderation.
So here’s the headline.
ICE employee federally indicted in ‘Operation Creep’ s3x sting
Bloomberg article on colleges facing a demographic cliff. There are simply not enough young people going forward, or upcoming to fill all the classrooms and buildings throughout the country. So that, and AI, lots of real uncertainty going forward.
https://imgur.com/a/e0kvODF
Yup.
Just look how they did on the people who voted for a dictator.
3b says:
January 17, 2026 at 11:22 am
Perhaps US colleges need to refocus their efforts on education.
RentL0rd says:
Nick Fuentes is covering for this type, saying they aren’t actually pedos. Saying what happened on Epstein island wasn’t really pedophila.
the ol’ spin.
January 17, 2026 at 1:13 pm
A news link about ICE is so scandalous that it is stuck in moderation.
So here’s the headline.
ICE employee federally indicted in ‘Operation Creep’ s3x sting
Juice Box says:
January 17, 2026 at 12:10 pm
Rent – China’s leadership has historically been dominated by engineers.
USA about 1/2 of congress today are lawyers.
The other 1/2 of congress are the other L, liars.
Funny how boomers want the kids to be engineers and work 20 hour days when most of them got a cushy job in the town hall denying permits if not slipped a check, stopped off at the local watering hole for a burger and beer, then shoehorned themselves into the F350 trying to keep their pannus from getting a rub mark from the steering wheel.
Rent – Perhaps just a dead link?
It’s old news from November and it’s not a ERO Agent. Alexander Steven Back, a civilian auditor for the DHS/ICE.
Here is the news story from November.
Note during this child prostitution sting the local PoPO also picked up some illegal aliens and a state Senator!!
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2025/11/18/twin-cities-ice-employee-among-16-arrested-in-child-sex-trafficking-sting
https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/bloomington-sex-trafficking-sting/
RentL0rd says:
January 17, 2026 at 12:32 pm
“liberal transgender policies…”
Gotta feel sorry for any kid who’s father is all-in on ‘liberal trannie policies’ and thinks it’s necessary to have tampons in men’s bathrooms. Idiot!
1:46
I assume they were all trannies?
2:00 betcha ain’t talking about furries anymore are ya ??
>>It’s old news from November and it’s not a ERO Agent. Alexander Steven Back, a civilian auditor for the DHS/ICE.
Juice, your attempts to trivialize the gravity of the crimes and protect your owners is commendable.
2:00 – How is having tampons in men’s rooms discomforting you? And why does that trigger you that much? Have you seen a shrink on this matter?
Trivialize? You mentioned ICE and I mentioned a Legislator a State Senator caught up in the same sweeps for creeps a Republican no less.
Dark: Most Boomers want their kids to be engineers, etc etc etc, but most work in town hall and burgers and fat and whatever else you said. All due respect I don’t know where you get this stuff from.
All them engineering jobs are gone. Foreigners took em.
FlabMax regrets secondary schooling his family in North Jersey, when Chicago was readily available.
https://latinschoolchicagoinvestigation.com/news/
Define foreigner.
It’s time for Europe to join BRICS, Russia and China, put joint bases on Greenland, and just ignore the USA.
Trump’s Greenland tariff squeeze detonates Europe trade deal as NATO is pushed to breaking French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson all released statements after Trump promised to impose tariffs on their countries on Saturday.
The three condemned the threat, with Kristersson writing that Trump was attempting to blackmail the nations.
The three countries, alongside Germany, Denmark, Norway, Finland and the Netherlands will all face a 10 percent levy on ‘any and all goods’ entering the US from February 1, Trump said on Saturday.
Co-Ruption
Hours before U.S. Army Delta Force commandos captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife during a nighttime raid in Caracas, an anonymous trader, using a newly created account on the prediction market Polymarket, wagered more than $30,000 that Maduro would be out of office by Jan. 31, 2026. The trader walked away with more than $400,000 in profit.
Pry those keys from her hands
https://www.local3news.com/local-news/update-7-vehicle-crash-in-fort-oglethorpe-injures-4/article_00ba6dda-3b48-4861-958e-7381f8d8c64a.html
no time to find missing children, however
https://www.newsweek.com/midwest-mom-video-secret-service-visit-x-post-11376487
DP – The silence from the maggots here is deafening
If an elected guy goes rogue and starts acting like a king, what are the minions supposed to do? What’s the point of having different branches of govt if they are not effective? Are we doomed?
Revolt or comply?
The same guys who said “don’t tread on me” want to tread on everyone else.
Where Joe Biden is today🤣
https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/1qfvw60/man_calls_police_on_people_for_filming_outside/
To serve and protect. The types running our government.
Arizona County Attorney Paul Correa has found himself on the wrong side of the law. He’s accused of filming minor girls in a Target and then allegedly watching the video in his car with his “pants disheveled.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLXWolEZmyc
The silence from the maggots here is deafening
We were out checking liberals’ papers and getting toxic with women. What’s the issue now?
Give this woman her food. Can’t you see she is starving?
https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/1qfvnt5/karen_crashes_out_on_pizza_hut_employees/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Good luck against the Texans later today.
Patriot says:
January 17, 2026 at 3:46 pm
All them engineering jobs are gone. Foreigners took em.
Article in the WSJ today for those who have access to it. Tech guys in Silicon Valley despair that the time to make generational wealth is coming to an end. 2025 to 2030, and then that’s it. Automation will eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs, a universal basic income will have to be instituted, but not really sure if money will have any real value and Americans believe in the idea of work and pay, or something to that effect. Elon says forget about saving for retirement, or about health care. Kind of all over the place, but certainly not optimistic for the young people. Sounds like a gloomy cold world in the future.
No worries, we can up skill the next generation – by giving them plumbing jobs. /s
Regarding MN –
The pace of oppression outstrips our ability to understand it. And that is the real trick of the imperial thought machine. – Arundhati Roy, 2004
It’s easier to hide behind 40 atrocities than a single incident.
and Stephen Miller, the Nazi’s own quote: Flood the zone
Stephen Miller ain’t no Mitch Miller. I wan’t the latter back. Guy was good.
He’s not wrong…
https://x.com/tonyxtwo/status/2012645218013589992?s=46
Turnbull •
@cturnbull1968
Things that Republicans no longer believe in.
1. Limited government
2. Citizen rights to protect themselves from a tyrannical government
3. States’ rights
4. Free market capitalism
5. Independent banking system
6. Reducing the federal debt and deficit
7. Freedom of religion
8. The 19th amendment
9. No new wars
10. American soft power
11. Respect for the Judiciary
12. NATO
No, he is not. It’s madness now.
Minnesota’s national guard said in a statement that it had been “mobilized” by Democratic governor Tim Walz… Maj Andrea Tsuchiya, a spokesperson for the guard, said it was “staged and ready” but yet to be deployed.
So if the city starts burning again what will they do? Let it burn or stop the ritoers?
RentL0rd says:
January 18, 2026 at 11:57 am
1. Limited government –> DOGE cut ~300000 federal jobs; smaller govt is limited govt
2. Citizen rights to protect themselves from a tyrannical government –> illegal aliens aren’t citizens
3. States’ rights –> the southern slavery/jim crow states that pushed for states rights were Dem states, like the ones that are staging insurrections now
4. Free market capitalism –> DJT believes in free trade, but insists it’s also fair trade
5. Independent banking system –> the Fed was hardly independent when it shilled for SlowJoe by insisting that inflation was transitory, and then cutting rates one month before the 2024 election
6. Reducing the federal debt and deficit –> DOGE is a good start
7. Freedom of religion –> ???
8. The 19th amendment –> you either have voter id or you have sham elections like in 2020
9. No new wars –> masterfully executed military ops are not new wars
10. American soft power –> only Dem cucks like you are upset by the use of American hard power
11. Respect for the Judiciary –> radical Dem judges who help illegal alien criminals escape capture by escorting them out the back door don’t deserve respect
12. NATO –> our ‘allies’ are useless and as JD said to their faces, many no longer share our values
Small: This Greenland crap is madness on Trumps part. There is absolutely no reason for this. If he continues it will be an absolute disaster. He will have to be removed from office. Not only that, he is providing the leftist Democrats with all the ammunition they need to sweep the midterms and the Presidency in 2028. There is a scary cast of radical Dems just waiting.
I can respond to 1:03 with the truth and facts, but that would make no difference. You can only talk to someone with an open mind.
1:20 – as much as I wish it is true, I doubt we will ever have fair elections. Democrats will never get a fair chance.
3b,
Remember the psycho-social make up of Silicon Valley guys. They are intelligent, socially awkward, emotionally deficient, high pre-teen imagination pencil neck geeks.
That said, they really don’t have an idea of what/where/why things are heading because they are blinded by their overall childishness.
2023 – Elon Musk was genius humanity savior, CEO of the carmaker of future.
2026 – Elmo Ketamine, discredited misanthropic bs artist whose flagship car manufacturer business won’t be around in a decade.
More problematic for the country than their tech based prognostications and hallucinations are the endemic increase in corruption and destruction of rule of law.
Palantir could not find its mojo. I remember its CEO interview with Charlie Rose. Very cute and patriotic but it could not make it work,m stock was ~$7 share. Stock now in the ~$175+.
They found their mojo. Their mojo is to be the back office record keepers and data analyst to the thuggish police gestapo state that they wrote Blade Runner type zines around. Reality is that its magic is working now.
However, as corruption seeps institutionally and Palantir’s AI recommendations and orders are ignore by corrupt enforcers everything starts to be highly inefficient because of that multilevel corruption.
Two varied examples of different types of inefficient corruption.
One the Chinese knew that the western MRNA based COVID vaccine was better than their own. But they sacrifice their people for the CCP face saving and push for their own vaccine industry.
Look into any dictatorship and you’ll find multiple intelligent services all spying on each other to keep the top guys in power. Syria under Al-Assad had 7, just like the Arafat’s PLO. A few agencies are with the national police or gendarmerie, a few in the military, a few within the ministry of the interior. Compare that with any democracy.
The more likely future is different organize crime entities having influenced within the police state enforcers, just like Chicago and NYC mob cops in the past. Pre Pinnochio, t was estimated that 4% of the Border Patrol was on the take. Well make that 40% soon enough.
It’ll more like the movie Loopers, where the criminals ran the police department. Just like Mexico, where there were and are Municipal and State Police departments that everyone hired was/are Cartel cleared employees, with many also wiggling their way into the Federal police agencies. Our success was based on integrity and rule of law. That gone is a make me do it world.
Finally, realized that the NKVD with Stalin, the GRD Statsi, Cuban State Security, took years of fearsome brutality in the street to get people to fear them enough that a member could live in the community. Because people don’t want them in the community and they and their family are ostracized at best and worse did happen.
You can see that DHS and ICE’s behavior overall is to get people to be afraid of them enough to look the other way and down in the sidewalk and not make eye contact.
Before we see Tesla humanoid robots or actually trust worthy full self driving, we are going to see IED bombings and double tap bombings, we are going to see ICE goon employees houses burnt with their families being targeted.
“Iran report says 16,500 dead in ‘genocide under digital darkness’
Witnesses tell of the brutality inflicted on those taking part in anti-regime protests
January 17 2026, The Sunday Times
‘You have ten minutes to cry,” came the officer’s curt command to the couple as he revealed the corpse of their twentysomething daughter, gunned down in the historic streets of Isfahan.
After searching morgues and hospitals for days when she didn’t come home from the demonstrations, they paid 700 million tomans (£3,700) in so-called “bullet money” demanded by the security forces and were driven five hours to another town where her body had been thrown into an old grave.
Yet in one respect they were fortunate. A complete communications and internet shutdown for the past ten days has left tens of thousands of Iranians with no idea if their loved ones are alive or dead as the regime has tried to stifle protests with what one doctor has called “genocide under cover of digital darkness”.
Yesterday, for the first time, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, admitted that “several thousands” have been killed since the protests began three weeks ago.
In a broadcast to the nation on state TV, he blamed protesters themselves, describing them as “foot-soldiers of the United States” and claiming that “rioters were armed with live ammunition that was imported from abroad”.
But The Sunday Times has obtained a new report from doctors on the ground, which says at least 16,500 protesters have died and 330,000 have been injured, most of them in two days of utter slaughter in the most brutal crackdown by the clerical regime in its 47-year existence.
Most of the victims are thought to have been younger than 30. Heartbreaking Instagram posts record deaths of a female fashion designer of 23, three young footballers — including one who was just 17 years old and captained a youth team in Tehran — a champion basketball player of 21, a fledgling movie director and a student hoping to study for a doctorate at Bristol University, whose first protest was his last.
“This is a whole new level of brutality,” said Professor Amir Parasta, an Iranian-German eye surgeon and medical director of Munich MED, which treated many of those injured during the Women, Life, Freedom protests in 2022 and helped create a network of doctors across Iran that produced the report. “[In 2022] they were using rubber bullets and pellet guns taking out eyes. This time they are using military-grade weapons and what we are seeing are gunshot and shrapnel wounds in the head, neck and chest.
“I’ve spoken to dozens of doctors on the ground and they are really shocked and crying,” he added. “These are surgeons who have seen war.”
• Why is Iran protesting now? A timeline since the 1979 Islamic Revolution
The doctors spoke using Starlink — satellite technology produced by Elon Musk’s SpaceX that enables people to access the internet via terminals, bypassing traditional internet infrastructure. Starlink terminals have been smuggled into the country and have been the only way to communicate since 8pm on January 8 when the internet was turned off. Activists have taken about 50,000-60,000 terminals into Iran, but using them brings great personal risk as they are banned by the regime and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) forces have been out searching for dishes.
The doctors’ testimony, as well as graphic video, was provided to The Sunday Times by Parasta as it is too risky for people on the ground to speak to outsiders.
The Sunday Times was also able to reach a number of people who had fled Iran. One person, from Mashhad, said: “Tell the whole world that on Friday they sprayed everyone with gunfire. The IRGC forces were calmly trying to aim for people’s heads.”
Another from Karam said: “Snipers on rooftops were shooting people in the back of the head. We were walking when suddenly several people next to us would collapse to the ground, covered in blood. When we tried to go toward them to carry the bodies away, they opened fire on us.”
The accounts reflect the scenes in graphic videos that have emerged from Iran in recent days, as well as voicenotes, and descriptions by some witnesses crossing the border into Turkey. They tell of IRGC forces and its Basij militia on motorbikes using live ammunition from Kalashnikovs and even machineguns mounted on pick-up trucks to mow people down. There were reports, too, of Hashd al Shaabi, Shia militias from Iraq, being bussed in.
Figures compiled by staff in eight major eye hospitals and 16 emergency departments across the country reveal that at least 16,500-18,000 people have been killed and 330,00 to 360,000 injured, including children and pregnant women. At least 700 to 1,000 people have lost an eye. One eye hospital in Tehran alone, Noor Clinic, has documented 7,000 eye injuries. “There are so many shotgun-related eye injuries that we do not know whom to treat first,” said one ophthalmologist.
Another person, who managed to leave Rasht in Iran last week, said: “My brother works at Noor clinic. He said that in just one night, and only in Tehran, there were more than 800 cases of eye removal due to pellet-gun shots to the eyes. My brother also said that based on his conversations with other doctors in hospitals in other cities, the numbers are extremely high, possibly more than 8,000 people blinded by pellet gunfire across the country.”
Many have died because of a shortage of blood. Although medical staff in several hospitals were donating blood themselves to keep patients alive, in some cases security forces refused to allow blood transfusions.
“We fight for hours to save lives, only to lose patients because they are not allowed to receive blood transfusions,” said one surgeon in Tehran.
“This is genocide under the cover of digital darkness,” said Parasta. “They said they would kill until this stops and that’s what they are doing.
“These are deliberately cautious minimum numbers,” he added. Many of the wounded do not go to hospital, fearing being dragged from their hospital beds by security forces, as seen in some of the videos smuggled out.
• Will Ayatollah Khamenei step down? Iran protesters put him on the brink
One protester who came out of Iran yesterday told The Sunday Times that “injured people who were shot in the eyes and had their eyes removed were being immediately abducted from the operating theatres by security forces”.
Basij militia have been reportedly dragging bodies from the street and taking them to other cities for burial so there is no record, or demanding large sums — such as the one paid by the couple to see their dead daughter.
One person who has managed to get out of the country said: “They’ve set up checkpoints everywhere. They search everyone’s phones, go through their photo galleries, and physically inspect people’s bodies. If they find pellet wounds on someone, they assume they were at the protests and immediately arrest them.”
“It’s horrific, a real-life horror story, I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Saba Latif, 29, from Isfahan, currently studying in Chicago, who first protested at the age of 14 in the failed 2009 Green Revolution and is in touch with activists and eyewitnesses. “Entire families were shot dead in their cars.
“One nurse in Isfahan told me [that] every two hours 50 to 100 bodies were being taken out and that’s just one hospital,” she added. “Imagine the whole city, the whole country? Everyone I know has either lost someone or knows of people missing in their family circles — I’m dead worried about my own family.”
Among those whose fate was unknown was Toomaj Salehi, 34, a rapper whose songs have openly criticised the regime. He was arrested during the last protests in 2022 and held for 753 days.
“The day before the internet was cut off, he told us that IRGC agents were constantly following him, harassing him, and sending threats to force him into silence,” said his cousin Arezou Egbhali, who lives in France. “He is in Rasht — the same city where a world-champion bodybuilder was shot dead on Friday, January 9, and we knew he would be on the streets.”
For ten days they heard nothing. “We were all facing the same terrifying question: are Toomaj and our loved ones OK?” she added.
But yesterday Toomaj managed to get a message through to say he was all right. “It was a direct call and as phones are being monitored all he could say was he was OK,” said Negin Niknaam, a friend who works as his manager.
While the digital blackout means most stories are as yet untold, what is clear is the astonishing bravery of protesters — and the tragedy that so many are so young.
Although this movement started with merchants and shopkeepers in the bustling Grand Bazaar in Tehran closing their doors on December 28, in protest at hyperinflation and the weakening currency, they were quickly joined by university students and young people shouting “Death to Khamenei” and demanding regime change.
The protests spread across the country to cities and towns in all 31 provinces, and were stepped up from January 8 following a social media message from Reza Pahlavi, son of the late Shah of Iran, calling for Iranians to take to the streets en masse. Many of his countrymen had long dismissed the self-styled crown prince as irrelevant. But this time his call seemed to resonate, even among former critics. “Everyone came out, from toddlers to old people,” said a flower shop owner in Tehran. And it was young people at the forefront, including his own son, who was then arrested.
“This is effectively a Gen Z uprising,” said Holly Dagres, senior fellow at the Washington Institute and author of the Iranist newsletter. It follows on from what she described as “the world’s first Gen Z revolution”, the Woman, Life, Freedom movement that started in September 2022 following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, 22, who had been arrested for “bad hijab” — falling foul of stringent clothing rules.
Young people found ways round censorship and surveillance, gathering in small cells and communicating using chat rooms on gaming sites. Although a massive crackdown eventually saw people leave the streets, in some ways it was a victory, with many women refusing to cover their heads. In November a video went viral of a group of young people on a street corner in Tehran jamming to Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes, not a hijab in sight.
“The Iranian Gen Z is part of a globalised Gen Z, the first to be born with internet at their fingertips, even if they have to use VPNs to access things,” said Dagres. “Young Iranians see how the rest of world live and feel left behind.
“They wear western clothes, use English slang in their Persian, watch the same films and music as western youth so have created this subculture. They want a normal life and the regime is not prepared to give it. When you see them not wearing hijab or jamming on street corners, that’s not because of reforms from the Islamic regime, it’s because these kids don’t bow to pressure from the Islamic regime.”
The latest mass protests are the fourth wave since the 2009 Green Revolution: people came out on the streets in 2017 over the economy and in 2019 over hikes in fuel prices. Each time the regime’s response was swift and brutal: round-ups by security forces and the killing or maiming of unarmed civilians.
This time around, the day after the streets filled with crowds responding to Pahlavi’s call, vans of plainclothes guards and women in burqas appeared with loudspeakers warning anyone on the streets would be considered a terrorist. Then the killing started.
One person who managed to leave Tehran and get out of the country said: “Every day, large trucks arrive carrying piles of bodies stacked on top of each other, and families have to search for their loved ones. The streets here smell of blood. All day long, IRGC forces patrol the city with weapons and masks on their faces, threatening people.”
For now, these protests too may have been smothered but many believe that this time, it’s different. “Something has shifted fundamentally,” said Burcu Ozcelik, senior research fellow for Middle East security at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), the London-based think tank. “The mood has changed domestically and there are cracks in the system we have never seen before.
“It’s premature to say the regime will collapse but I do think some kind of change is inevitable.”
A voice message from a woman calling herself Fatima, who said her father is a high-level commander who beat her when she went out to protest, claimed that regime officials have suitcases of dollars and fake passports ready to flee.
The protests are not just over decades of repression by the clerical regime, particularly of women’s rights, but also economic collapse exacerbated by corruption and international isolation, affecting all those who are not part of the regime.
“I went to a top private school in Isfahan and not a single one of my schoolfriends have jobs,” said Saba Latifi. “They just spend all day driving around the streets, or watching TV, very depressed.”
“The fear is gone,” said Omid Shams, an Iranian writer and human rights activist in exile in London. “Partly because of the 12-day war with Israel last June when people saw the regime is not invincible, and partly because people have no hope. It’s either go to the streets and die or stay home and die slowly.”
“There is nothing else to lose,” posted a novelist on her Instagram feed before going out to protest, even though she was imprisoned during the last.
Parasta said he is seeing the same thing. “I still have 40 patients we got out here to Germany in the last protests who I have operated on and they want to go back, even though they would be detained at the airport. And the doctors on the ground I speak to say the wounded they treat want to go back.”
For now, the streets are almost empty. Some protesters may be taking a break to regroup, Shams said, but there is also disappointment that Donald Trump’s promise last week that “help is coming” has not been followed through. Instead, on Thursday, Trump thanked the regime for not carrying out 800 executions. “I greatly respect the fact that all scheduled hangings, which were to take place yesterday (over 800 of them), have been cancelled by the leadership of Iran,” he posted on Truth Social. “Thank you!” It is unclear where the number of 800 has come from.
Protesters are hoping this is only a ruse by the mercurial US president. Shams said the uprising is unarmed and few believe change can come without help from outside. “If it doesn’t come, I fear what will happen,” he added.
On Friday, Pahlavi made a public call for the US to carry out “surgical strikes” against IRGC targets to bring down the regime. “It’s a matter of if not when” the regime falls, he said.
If there is change it will come too late for Yasin Mirzaei, 28, who was home from college in Italy and preparing for an interview at the British embassy in Tehran ahead of a planned doctorate in structural engineering at Bristol University.
On January 8, the night before his appointment, he joined his friends in an anti-regime demonstration in Kermanshah, western Iran, his first ever protest, his uncle, Bahman Mirzaei, said. Security forces fired live ammunition into the crowd, killing at least five people, including Yasin. “They shot him in the head, he died on the spot” Mirzaei said from Turkey.
“Afterwards someone called me from Iran and said that before Yasin went out, he seemed to somehow know he might be killed,” Mirzaei added. “He said, ‘If they kill me, tell everyone I became a martyr in the path of freedom.’”
Additional reporting by Fatemeh Jamalpour and Roxana Saberi”
Guess who is doing this now??
[In 2022] they were using rubber bullets and pellet guns taking out eyes.
Well, it rhymes with Lice.
Long names, this is sounding pretty dark indeed. How do we get out of this mess?
None of this is a surprise. Just shocking how fast we are going down. It was all documented in Project 2025.
now this is cool:
The assembly of the ‘Great Wall of Energy’ has commenced in the desert, which will consist of a mind-boggling eight million panels and 100 GW. The country’s entire energy landscape has been transformed, setting global benchmarks that some can only dream of.
IB classmate from MBA owned prewar building co-op with multiple units on single floor. First purchased two bedroom and bought one bedroom on left then added studio on right. Shocked me by selling about 6-7 years ago. He said natural buyers are the up and coming corporate law partners and IB SVP’s. He said these millennials et al. want the sterile full service condos with concierge, on site gym and parking. He bailed. I think your tastes are outmoded. Not wrong, but out of style.
3b says:
January 17, 2026 at 11:21 am
Very impressive, but feels very cold, he is paying big bucks too, plus parking. I prefer my other brothers prewar apartment on the upper west side.
Chicago:My brother in JC likes the perks as you note, does not care about the aesthetics of the building. His furniture style tends to that same modern. He like the location to midtown, and his Son in Hoboken. To your point a lot of millennials in his building, but also older, a lot older. My upper west side brother, much more into the aesthetics and apartment lay out, high ceilings etc. I much prefer his area .
Forgot. IB friend was UES walking distance to Met, Lex IRT & 2nd Ave Subway.
I hate restaurants north of 59th. Living UES & UWS would be a waste for me. But point taken.
That said, I want to shock my high schooler and take her here on a whim for tea.
https://www.lowellhotel.com/uploads/documents/GeneralDocuments/Lily_of_the_Valley_Afternoon_Tea_Menu.pdf