Half-Masked

Here is a devastating group of photos from the riots in Iran. Be forewarned: a few of them show the bloody results, the kind of thing CNN will never have the journalistic integrity to show you. We NEED those “packaged pieces on water-skiing squirrels”, you guys. That is more important to us as a species, or at least televised news stations seem to think so.

Of those photos, I found the most immediately striking to be the pictures of supporters of the “defeated” Mousavi not only trying to calm down their outraged fellow seekers of reform, but also helping blood-soaked and most likely injured police -escape harm and death- from a crowd that hates them. Even in that chaos, there are people who are not willing to be reduced to violent anger, even when they’ve got a whole lot to be violent and angry about. That was more affecting to me than even the burning buses, and the sea of raised, open, welcoming hands around the man they believe rightly won the election.

People are dying in Iran because of what looks to be a monstrous abuse of imaginary power, but here we are, and right-wingers are still comparing the Obama presidency to fascism. That is a breed of childish, unhinged selfishness that can only from a rich, white American with no concept of a universe existing outside of himself. Or perhaps a dictator.

END OF LINE

~A.H.

(EDIT: I’d like to make clear that I don’t think Mousavi would be a great, sweeping, progressive change for Iran. From what I’ve heard, the “choice” presented to the Iranian people was between Emperor Palpatine, and Emperor Palpatine with a Snidely Whiplash moustache. And you know that Snidely was always up to no good.)