"If they [Israel] take any action, they will hand us an excuse to wipe them off the face of the earth."
Such a cutie-pie!
Not to be outdone by the military's threat against the Little Satan, Iran's parliament issued its own threat against the Great Satan. As reported by the Mehr News Agency:
"The Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee has put forward a proposal to block the strategic Strait of Hormuz to prevent the passage of tankers that carry oil for the countries that have imposed sanctions on Iran, an Iranian MP announced on Sunday.
Speaking to the Persian service of the Mehr News Agency, MP Ebrahim Aqa-Mohammadi said that the proposal had been signed by 100 MPs as of Sunday.
The measure would be a response to the European Union’s oil embargo on Iran that took effect on July 1 and a new U.S. law that penalizes countries that do business with the Central Bank of Iran by denying their banks access to the United States market. The law came into force on June 28.
The Strait of Hormuz is one of the world's most strategic shipping channels. It connects the vast majority of the world's countries with the crude oil that fuels their economies.
At its narrowest point, the strait is 21 miles wide, with a two-mile shipping lane on either side. On average, 14 supertankers sail through the strait every day.
MP Arsalan Fat’hipour said on Sunday that if Iran is unfairly targeted, it will not allow 'even one drop of oil' to pass through the Strait of Hormuz."
This should rouse even President Obama, the Procrastinator-in-Chief, from his pre-election torpor.
"This should rouse even President Obama, the Procrastinator-in-Chief, from his pre-election torpor."
ReplyDeleteIt probably will and he'll smile even more broadly on the principle: "I'll smile at you, you'll smile at me and there will peace in the world and we will all eat soy cheese cake ..." Something like that. I am not very good at parodying New Age, veganism, "pacifism" and similar idiocy. Maybe because I despise it sooo much.
Jeff,
ReplyDeletethe Iranian auto-endoscopic practice to which you referred in your illuminating blog may have evolved following the centuries-old practice of the Qanat diggers of the central Iranian desert between Yazd and Kerman.
As you well know, the difficulty of maintaining a steady 0.05% gradient in those underground water channels, that deliver the cool ice streams to parched cities of the desert plain, is but one of the two key challenges of the qanat-diggers. The other is the claustrophobic condition, of working in a very confined space, in the dark, for long periods on end. Hence the evolution of the practice, termed auto-stichmus by Prof. Doktor Theodor Sheismuller-Herzenfilter von Kakenwurst, whereby the qanat apprentice or "fresher" is encouraged to practice auto-endoscopy. This requires a level-head (hence the auto-stichmus appellation of von Kakenwurst) and the capacity to cope with crepuscular claustrophobia. Successful qanat apprentices show much pride in the masterpieces they are able to show.
The highly secretive union (or "flush" - to translate the accepted Persian term) of Qanat diggers of central Iran were first recorded in the post-Mongol era by the itinerant scholar period Giovanni Alimentus R. Sicus of Bologna, who mentions, in his travel diaries Dark Eastern Ways, in passing, "questionable feats of cranial dextrousness" he witnessed in his wanderings between Bam and Kashan. He comments, elliptically (see pp.467-9) on the resultant loss of appetite he experienced and a strengthening of his resolve to take the shortest route home. The marginal sketch in his published journals was, for over three centuries, assumed to be a literary gargoyle. Today we know that it is, in fact, a fair representation of a centuries-old Iranian practice.
I am intrigued that you, too, have come across a modern extension of that worthy tradition.