Slap Shot
I had a run-in with some local toughs the other day (they didn’t like dogs, so they are more to be pitied than censured). I managed to hold my tongue, although they didn’t see the need to bother and spewed more f-bombs and s-bombs than I’ve heard outside a Quentin Tarantino movie (despite the presence of a nine-ish year old child—theirs).
If only I had had the presence of mind to employ this bon mot:
State-controlled PressTV quoted Ahmadinejad as renewing his allegations against Western countries of having sought to influence the June 12 election in which he was re-elected.
The English-language channel said he told a “huge” crowd in the city of Mashad that some countries had even set up satellite television channels in their efforts to spoil the election, which the opposition insists was rigged.
Ahmadinejad pledged that the new government he will form in coming weeks will have “10 times” the power of the outgoing team.
If any other country tries to interfere in Iran it will “slap the aggressor so hard they will lose their way back home,” PressTV reported the president as saying.
Take that, aggressors!
But other Iranians know how to talk a little smack, too:
A powerful cleric-politician, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, criticized Iran’s leadership Friday on one of the country’s most resonant political stages, the Islamic prayer sermon.
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“We believe in the Islamic Republic … they have to stand together,” he said. “If ‘Islamic’ doesn’t exist, we will go astray. And if ‘republic’ is not there, (our goals) won’t be achieved. Where people are not present or their vote is not considered, that government is not Islamic.”
He criticized the postelection crackdown and urged the release of those arrested and said the government reaction had split the nation’s clerics. “I hope this Friday prayer sermon will be the beginning of a development and will help us pass safely through this problem, which can be unfortunately called a crisis,” he said.
In your face!
Hey, throw them in a mudpit and let them fight it out, for all I care.
But maybe these people care a little more:
Iranian pro-opposition protesters clashed with police Friday on the streets of Tehran in the first major rally since the end of last-month’s post-election tensions.
Iranian police detained at least 15 people and used tear gas and batons to disperse opposition supporters outside Tehran University, a witness said.
Witnesses also said that a big crowd of Iran’s opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi’s supporters rallied in central Tehran after the Friday prayers sermon, a witness said.”
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Tens of thousands - mostly pro-opposition but also some government backers - packed the prayer hall and shouted competing slogans.