I wonder how angry this woman must have been to be this brave. I wonder if, despite my ranting and swearing at what are relatively small injustices in comparison to what Iranians have gone through, I will ever be angry enough to have done what she has done. I very much hope that this is Iran's Tiananmen moment, a gesture of unarmed defiance against tyranny that forms an image the world remembers for decades, perhaps forever, though I also hope it leads to much more much faster than in China. But even more I hope that this wonderful brave woman hasn't suffered the same fate as Neda Agha-Soltan, or indeed the nameless Chinese student who stood silently and defied a column of tanks, and may have been killed for it. The tree of liberty may need watering with blood from time to time, but while we should always hope for liberty we should also hope that the tree doesn't need blood today.
UPDATE: The thought's just occurred to me while leaving a comment at Shibby's that it might have been something other than bravery or rage. I'm sure they were both part of it, but maybe she'd just reached the point that without freedom or democracy or whatever it was that was driving her she simply didn't give a flying fuck anymore.
UPDATE 2: Looks like it's been Pshopped for a Western audience. I thought it looked genuine because of reflections in the metal above the car's rad grille, and it seems I was right about that. But the gesture has apparently been changed.
H/T Shibby.
Thank you for the H/T!
ReplyDeleteI must say, flipping that bastard "the bird" must come with a great sense of satisfaction.
The person in question might face someone storming their home in later days or something so I hope they can't identify them.
Although I must say from my coward side, I'd rather flip the guy off than face the brutal gun-armed, axe-wielding maniacs working for him at protests.
There's less he can get away with personally and so there'd be less likelihood of a beating/murder, whereas a faceless official can get away with much more when only his co-workers are looking.
In the comments on my post I left the URL to the source image (here).
ReplyDeleteI can't find any larger and it was linked directly from Reddit, so I don't think I can help you find a larger version.
Sorry.
I'd rather flip the guy off than face the brutal gun-armed, axe-wielding maniacs working for him at protests.
ReplyDeleteGood point, though still risky I imagine as Ahmadinejad might not have been happy to have been on the receiving end of such a Western gesture, one popularized by the Great Satan no less. And worse still, it was done by a woman, which must have thrilled the misogynistic cunt no end. Yep, I expect he'd have been farting sparks over it, so lets hope no bodyguard or loyal hanger-on took it upon themselves to follow her afterwards and 'explain things'.
The man's eyes are so close together he is Iran's own monocular moron.
ReplyDelete