Dana Milbank
Barry Rubin
Iranian Street Protests:
“Our shame, our shame, our idiot leader!”
“Oh, Montazeri, your path will be followed even if the dictator shoots us all!”
The government is wisely laying pretty low, letting the overwhelming crowds blow off steam in mourning the death of the Grand Ayatollah. The only ugly incidents seem to have been played out by those followers of Satan, the Basij, who tore down posters and wreaths at the family home of Montazeri in Qom. I know that the Chinese Army is given a speed cocktail before deploying, and Thai boxers use speed before going into the ring, so I wouldn't be surprised if the Basij didn't get cranked up on some kind of methamphetamine to give them false courage to beat people up and destroy property.
One reader of the NY Times had an interesting point, on the significance of the protests shifting over to the holy city of Qom: "One point I would like to make about today’s protests that I have not seen discussed in the media was its location: Qom is in many ways the heart of the last Revolution (how it ended up anyway) and its aftermath. Until now, the regime has tried very very hard to isolate Qom from the protest movement. The security presence there has always been reported as very high to prevent any protests. [...] With today’s protests in Qom, and the clergy’s close-up view of it (perhaps for the first time for some of them) it will be interesting to see what the Qom clergy does in the days and weeks to come."
The Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei spoke before a live audience at Montazeri's funeral. whenever he would say something there were shouts of "Death to the dictator" in the background, and for some reason the surly crowd reminded me of a Firesign theater skit from many years ago. It was at a high school rally at More Science High and the principal was getting ready to give a pep talk before the students.
From the bleachers came cries of "Eat it!" and "Eat it raw!" both common utterances when I was in high school. The principal picked up and expanded with "Yes, Raw, Raw, Raw! That's the spirit we have here!" I think that the reigning clerics are having the same amount of impact on the crowds right now, there are more people shouting God is Great! from their rooftops at night than ever before. It was a signal used back in 1979 that you were a supporter of the Revolution that brought the clerics into power, one that they now wish they could suppress. Which shows that life is full of ironic twists, no matter how many Gestapo tactics the Satanistic Basij use against their fellow citizens...
One of the dirty secrets of the Islamic world is the brutal, sadistic streak that runs rampant through out the region, and they don't even have alcohol abuse to use as an excuse. Husbands beat the crap out of their wives and children. Husbands and wives beat up their overseas hired help, take away their passports, and make them live like slaves. And members of of the royal families routinely beat and torture those individuals they don't like. It's a trickle-down mentality.
A videotape surfaced recently, made in 2004, that shows a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family torturing an Afghan grain merchant with the help of policemen. This isn't some shaky film taken by an iphone, but a 45 minute tape that the sheik wanted made for his own sick pleasure: "The 45-minute videotape shows Sheik Issa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, assisted by uniformed police officers, torturing the merchant with whips, cattle prods and a wooden plank with a protruding nail, and finally driving over him with an S.U.V." Pretty through job, and well planned out in advance...
And, there are other tapes that also show torture, a recurring pattern: "Mr. Buzbee says he has two additional videos showing Sheik Issa torturing other men, including Sudanese immigrants. In those tapes, 15 to 20 Abu Dhabi police officers can be seen assisting in the torture, he says.
“These videotapes capture behavior that went on for some time and was well known to Sheik Issa’s brothers,” who include the president, interior minister and foreign minister of the Emirates as well as other high-ranking officials"
The sheik may thank God for being able to use the Rush Limbaugh addicted to painkiller defense: "Sheik Issa, a half brother of the Emirati president, has pleaded not guilty. A forensics expert testified Monday that he was taking a combination of dozens of drugs, including medicine for heart and back conditions." We may soon be seeing more stories of drug addled royals and their co-dependent families, if their are consequences from this story, but they are all a smokescreen hiding the vilest secret, of having so much money and power that you own another human being, oh sadistic dogs following the path of Satan... you are no better than the lowliest of Basiji... In the original reports this story threatened some kind of nuclear deal between the US and the UAE. I can't find out more on what that deal is, but is it wise to sell nuclear technology to another friend of Iran? Friend in the sense that the UAE is a waystation for all illegal things being shipped and smuggled in and out of the region...
Back here at home the most toadying suckup comes from John Bolton, who named his old friend from the Bush administration as Conservative of the Year. Oh yeah, that would be Dick Cheney. Mr Bolton has become Mr Cheney's personal fluffer and single-handedly strokes the Cheney swollen ego: "How is it, therefore, that someone who has no political ambitions can cause so much angst at the White House and in the mainstream news media?...Cheney gave a vigorous defense of “enhanced-interrogation techniques... So befuddled were the administration and its media surrogates by Cheney... to have a former Vice President willing to go on the record once he leaves office is a huge service to us and our nation... If, at the end of eight years, the staff relationships were not as close as at the beginning, that was hardly Cheney’s fault... Obama and his supporters are simply unable to match him in the substantive policy debate... Americans see him for exactly what he is: a very experienced, very dedicated patriot... Of course he is the conservative of the year!
Josh Bolton is known for his abuse and belittling of his employees, and his angry diatribes as our ambassador to the UN, a position he got through Cheney's influence. So I guess this is payback time, in a good way; I just wondered if John swallowed...
No comments:
Post a Comment
Hi! Thanks for commenting. I always try to respond...