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Peeve Farm
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Brian Tiemann
Silicon Valley-based purveyor of a confusing mixture of Apple punditry and political bile.

btman at grotto11 dot com

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Monday, December 29, 2003
14:01 - Gettin' some weird barometer readings here
http://www.daneshjoo.org/smccdinews/article/publish/article_4077.shtml

(top) link
So James is suggesting that the Bam earthquake may be "Iran's Chernobyl"-- the event that starts the wheels really turning, where everybody everywhere gets to see the good guys and the bad guys each doing what they do best, because cold hard reality won't let anyone keep confusing the one with the other.

My take on this was that since the imams in Riyadh, Jerusalem, Mecca, Damascus, and Cairo have been calling every Friday for the past couple of years for Allah to "shake the ground under the Americans' feet", the twin earthquakes in Bam and San Luis Obispo might make for an interesting object lesson for them to take to heart: namely, that if they saw both quakes as acts of God, and when it happens here it causes two deaths as opposed to twenty thousand (or more) in Iran, then maybe-- just maybe-- it means they should be more careful in what they wish for. How would they explain it? If the quakes are the doing of Allah, then he's deliberately being fair: striking with the same force both in America and in the heart of the Islamic world. And if the quake in Iran is that much more horrifically devastating, well... does that mean earthquakes have nothing to do with Allah after all? Or that he isn't, in fact, on the Islamic world's side?

But more alarming still, for a world which must be weeping into its espresso at seeing vindication after vindication for American policies over the past couple of years, has got to be this article from Iran:

The regime's plainclothes men and security agents have arrested in several cities, such as in Tehran and Esfahan, Iranians who angered by the situation had shouted publicly unprecedented slogans considered almost as a blasphemy by the ruling theocracy.

These unprecedented slogans were nothing else than "Long Live Israel !" and "Long Live America !" shouted during tens of popular Blood collect gatherings by Iranians welcoming the Israeli and American support of the quake's victims.

The popular anger has been boosted as the Islamic regime has banned any Israeli support of the quake's victims by rejecting this country's offer of aid. Many Iranians consider such rejection as another prove that the regime's leaders are more willing to let Iranians die by sacrifying them in order to keep their backwarded anti-Semite ideology.

Many also are cheering the US President for his constant support of Iranians and are qualifying the landing of US Aid planes as another "slap in the face of the regime".

There's only so much ideology you can build up in front of your face. There are some things that it cannot obscure.

Like, for instance, that America and Israel both pledged massive aid to the quake victims. Both countries are evil incarnate, as far as Iran's government is concerned, and neither officially feels particularly well-disposed to the regime. But they both pledged aid anyway.

Iran refused it. They'll take aid from anyone in the region except the one nation (Israel) best equipped to give it. Purely out of spite.

So Israel has been trying to funnel aid in on the sly. To the country that has repeatedly paraded missiles through its cities with "We will wipe Israel off the map" painted on them.

How long can any sane Iranian citizen blind himself to events like these? How long can the Islamic world keep convincing itself that we're the Great Satan, and ignoring the fact that America under Bush has been more humanitarian in its global endeavors than the United Nations ever has been?

I guess we have our answer. No more.


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