Gathering Storm

"The Fall of the Rebel Angels" by Luca Giordano 1666, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

 

Is it time for Prozac to lift our gathering gloom? No wait, says the Washington Times, remembrance is a better cure. I say keep the lid on the Prozac bottle for rainier days, or try placebos. And if that doesn't work, think of the headache the CIA is facing when Hayden starts spring cleaning and radical downsizing.

Ah, but there is a distraction, the Da Vinci Code; try the critics. Or even better, what about this one: Shortly after Thug-In-Chief Ahmadinejad's surprise election last year, he read Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code and had an epiphany. Just when the West comes to terms with the fact that Christ was the Prophet he knew him to be all along, a mere man, not a God, our Thug-In-Chief would explode onto the world stage and proclaim the arrival of salvation for all through the return of the 12th Caliphat, the realization of the global Dar-al-Islam, the time when Islam has subjugated the whole world, the time when Islam will be 'tolerant' for there will be none left to oppose or differ.

And what are the moderates saying? Not the whole world at first; just a "Caliphat that would stretch from Indonesia to Morocco and contain more than 1.5 billion people". Not exactly what the neighbors have in mind.

Meanwhile Turkey is set to become the stage where all witness the undoing of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's legacy of a secular Islamic society.

Now if the Da Vinci Code hasn't inspired our Thug-In-Chief, we sure appreciate the revelation of his ancestry - miraculously separated from yours and mine of course.

There is something there with this ancestry story and our Thug-In-Chief's reaction: “They say they want to give the Iranians incentives. They are treating us like a four-year-old child who can be given nuts and chocolate in exchange for gold,” or was it Bananas...

[...] So how did a blacksmith's son from rural Iran manage to become an Islamic iconoclast who defied the West and the Iranian mullahocracy alike to deliver a highly controversial nuclear program to his country? How did an intensely pious war veteran manage to be elected in an poll marked by the absence of religious symbolism and accented by his rival's promise to continue the social liberalization characterized by the Mohammad Khatami era?

Naser and Saeed Hadian, two brothers who are childhood friends of the president, describe him as unchanged from the time they knew him. Still buddies, they all grew up together in the dusty streets of Narmak, a solidly middle-class neighborhood of east Tehran. Naser recalls playing soccer with the talented Ahmadinejad and other children.

He was as obstinate as a lad as he is now, said Naser. "[Now] everyone is against him," said Naser, who studied with Ahmadinejad at the Elm-o Sanat University. "From the super-secular elite to the super-religious elites, they have all turned against him. And he doesn't care. He says, 'Let them come, let them vote against me, I have the support of the people.'"

Typical of Ahmadinejad's temperament is the following anecdote, told by another acquaintance. In 1997, with newly elected president Khatami spearheading a rollback of hardliners, Ahmadinejad taught engineering classes at his alma mater, Elm-o Sanat University, proudly sporting a Palestinian kaffiyeh (scarf) around the campus. While kaffiyehs are standard symbols for the pro-Palestinian cause in the West, in Iran they also represent religiosity and a commitment to the hard right wing of the Islamic Republic.

To have worn one in the relative liberalism of a university environment at the peak of the reformist wave indicated his single-minded commitment to the founding principles of the Islamic Republic.

During the eight-year reformist period, Ahmadinejad worked his way up the provincial governorship ladder, eventually becoming mayor of Tehran. His tenure was marked by the improved organization of what is one of the world's most chaotic and traffic-choked cities.

In recognition, he was short-listed for an international Mayor of the Year competition in 2004, even as well-off Tehranis cracked jokes about how, if he could, Ahmadinejad's conservativeness would have extended to his instituting segregated male and female sidewalks, elevators and graveyards in Tehran.

For their part, upper-class Iranians sneer at his common looks and ordinary-Joe appearance, even as Ahmadinejad himself stresses it to appeal to large segments of the electorate.

But those who know him prefer to dwell on his "indefatigable habits of work" and "financial incorruptibility". A modest man, he inhabited an unpretentious home in the same neighborhood that he grew up in and drove a Paykan, Iran's cheapest, mass-produced car.

A talented soccer player and straight-A student, Ahmadinejad sailed through educational and professional hierarchies with great ease. When he inherited the president's office, he completed a process of donating all the lavish Persian rugs that used to decorate it to Tehran's carpet museum.

While Ahmadinejad's on-the-job performance has won him more fans since he became president, his threat to reform the system and root out corruption has created powerful enemies, including influential clerics.

Some believe that Ahmadinejad's systematic purge of the foreign service, provincial governorships and key economic posts - and his appointment of mostly former Revolutionary Guard comrades to those offices - is angering an older generation of clerics who see significant elements of their power base being eroded.

Further criticism is prompted by the fact that, whereas the time has probably come for the second revolutionary generation to start taking over, Ahmadinejad's abrupt manner in effecting this transition is ruffling too many feathers. [...]

Depressed or not depressed, the sniggering of the so called Iranian elite reminds me far too much of the arrogance with which German aristocrats and industrialist dismissed Herr Hitler. What are we to do? Wait until a nuclearized Iran alters the course of mankind?

True to form, especially ancient Islamic 'form' prior to waging warfare, Herr Ahmadinejad widens the net so as to not be restricted to killing Americans only, but Christians the world over - we can assume, that Allah will overlook such petty differentiations as Catholics and Protestants when choosing to address Pope Benedict XVI. No need to write to Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, he's already taken up Koranic studies.

More @ The Anchoress, Protein Wisdom, Liberty and Justice, Ninth State, Dinocrat, EL Frederick, The Dragon and the Phoenix, TigerHawk, Joshua Pundit, Blue Crab Boulevard, PunditGuy, Midtopia

UPDATE: Now what do you think Thug-In-Chief has to say to Kofi Annan's call for restraint - not that I ever care much for what Annan has to say either, but still: "There is also a need to lower the temperature, and refrain from actions and rhetoric that could further inflame the situation. Otherwise, we will see only an increase in global tensions."

Yeap, we are lunatics, "Those who get sad at the progress and happiness of others are suffering from mental and psychological problems, so they should find a way to cure themselves". Israel's progress and happiness excluded of course; nah, what am I saying, progress and happiness of all Infidels excluded. How dare we spoil his progress towards nuclear holocaust and his heartfelt happiness along the way.

Comments

[Michael Galien]

I find it to be hilarious on the one hand that Ahmadinejad is writing a letter to the Pope, but it makes one wonder as well; why does Ahmadinejad write a letter to the Pope, shortly after he has written a letter to the Pres. of the US?

I think that hot air might be on the right track. Ahmadinejad might very well be up to something, quickly.

[Neo]

The proper response to President Ahmadinejad would be for the Pope should invite him in for baked sheep.

[Freedom Fighter]

Thanks for the link...glad you found the article useful.

Even crazier is the wy Ahmadinejad has shored up support in the `moderate' Muslim world..including some of our so-called `allies':J O S H U A P U N D I T: Welcome to the new Caliphate: Muslim leaders issue statement of support for Iran nukes

Scary stuff. My guess is that if Bush doesn't do anything prior to the midterm elections in November, he will have decided to kick this particular problem down the road for his predecessor.

We'll find out, I guess....

Great blog, BTW.