Thursday, June 25, 2009

Unimaginable Horror In Tehran Today

From Threats Watch:

Iran has executed its Tiananmen Square. Baharestan Square has become synonymous with barbarity, cruelty, massacre and inhumanity.

An Iranian blogger (whose URL I will not publish) live blogging from Baharestan Square in central Tehran today captures but brief glimpses of the unimaginable horror that took place today. Bus loads of protesters were stopped and unloaded from their buses by "black-clad police" and literally herded. When the massing was sufficient, as the barely controllably distraught Tehran caller to CNN described first hand, hundreds of the regime's Basij thugs poured out of an adjoining mosque and commenced a massacre with axes, clubs, guns and gas.

From the live blogger's eyewitness account:

>More than 10.000 Bassij Milittias get position in Central Tehran, including Baharestan Sq.
>Army Helycopters flying over Baharestan and Vali Asr Sq.
>The streets, squares and around 
BAHARESTAN (Approx. South-eastern of Tehran) is swarming with military forces, civilian forces, the security motorists
>The croud have moved to the south of baharestan, the situation is bad, the shooting has started
>In Baharestan Sq. in the Police shooting, A girl is shot and the police is not allowing to let them help
>In Baharestan we saw militia with axe choping people like meat - blood everywhere - like butcher

This is the Iranian regime, wading into its own unarmed people and axing them to death, bludgeoning women (seen as the greatest threat to the regime) and throwing them to their deaths from pedestrian bridges. The same Iranian regime whose embassy officials are invited to American embassies around the world to celebrate on July 4th, of all things, a successful revolution.

This frantic phone call from a Tehran woman will break your heart as you consider our standard response has been "that there are sets of international norms and principles about violence" and that "the international community is watching." Part of yesterday's response by President Obama in a press conference included "that there is a peaceful path that will lead to stability and legitimacy (of the Iranian regime) and prosperity for the Iranian people. We hope they take it." The Iranian theocratic regime clearly is not interested.





There should not be - nor should have ever been - invitations to the ruthless Iranian regime's international ambassadors to celebrate anything with us, anywhere, unless it is an invitation to a tribunal on charges of crimes against humanity.

To my intelligent friends who have been arguing the logic of our president's near silence on the issue of Iran - and not without merit on certain points - you can disengage from me now. I will entertain none of it any longer.

This is an axe wound, just one, doled out by the regime's thug basiji animals on Saturday, June 20, 2009.

axe-wound.jpg

This was a brutal murder of an assuredly unarmed protester of the up-close-and-personal variety. 

An act, and one not isolated, which requires the presence of inhumane malice and aggression and the absence of humanity. 

The traits required for massacres upon the unarmed. 

There is no nuance, no logical approach, no deft explanation that covers near silence and inadequate, tepid condemnation of the meekest sort. 

To decline any mention of possible repercussions on the regime for these acts "because we don't know how this is going to turn out" is moral cowardice of the highest order. 

Look at the picture above and listen to the frantic woman calling in to CNN again. They seem to "know how this is going to turn out."

There is a way to condemn a regime axing its citizens in the streets of Tehran and other cities across Iran without "making this about the US." You, and our president, are intelligent men and women and lacking no gifts of speech and prose. Find what's missing. Each of you frustrate and sadden me. Argue your eloquent points elsewhere. My ears are deaf as of now.



RevereRidesAgain comments:

Responding to this by polishing the talking points of what effect statements will have on the Iranian regime's calibration of its savagery is not thinking, it's an evasion of thought.

Nobody I've spoken to off line about this knows anything whatever about Islam. They don't want to know. They want to be told what to think, preferably by Teh One. If they don't have to think about fanatical Islam, especially the apocalyptic Madhi-in-the-well Shiite version adhered to by the Iranian regime, then they don't have to worry about it. 

If they don't look too closely at Islam they won't see the butchery that's performed in its name every day -- the amputations, the stonings, the mutilation of little girls. They don't have to think about what that ideology plus nuclear weapons will lead to one day. Here.

6 comments:

Always On Watch said...

OMG!

Unknown said...

Is it a rhetorical question if I say ...where-the-fuck is Barry-O? Gloves-off moment has passed a long time ago.

revereridesagain said...

This is about people being too cowardly to think.

Responding to this by polishing the talking points of what effect statements will have on the Iranian regime's calibration of its savagery is not thinking, it's an evasion of thought.

Nobody I've spoken to off line about this knows anything whatever about Islam. They don't want to know. They want to be told what to think, preferably by Teh One. If they don't have to think about fanatical Islam, especially the apocalyptic Madhi-in-the-well Shiite version adhered to by the Iranian regime, then they don't have to worry about it. If they don't look too closely at Islam they won't see the butchery that's performed in its name every day -- the amputations, the stonings, the mutilation of little girls. They don't have to think about what that ideology plus nuclear weapons will lead to one day. Here.

They can resent anyone who reminds them. They can pontificate about how they are refraining from comment because it might make things worse for the protestors. They can scream, "What? And start another war?!" if you suggest condemnation might be in order. You are distracting them from their intense fascination with Jon & Kate, Gov. Sanford, Brangelina, or whoever else is on the cover of "People" this week. Something must be wrong with you for making a big deal of this.

Reacting the way we did after 9/11 got us into Iraq? Sticking our heads in the sand for 15 years prior to Pearl Harbor got us into World War II. Take your pick, folks. Because that's the way this parade is headed.

Pastorius said...

Great comment, RRA. I added it to the post.

Pastorius said...

Z-Lot,
Yes, that question can only be posed rhetorically when it comes to our President.

Christine said...

I have reading Steve's posts for a couple of years. He is a very well spoken writer,not taken to show emotion. This post brought tears to my eyes. If only more people outg here, including Obama would open their eyes & see the truth of the inhumanity that is and has played out in Iran & other countries, at the hands of muslims. Until then, there will never be peace in this world.