Iran used to be called Persia and was certainly not a democratic constitutional state even under Shah Reza Pahlavi. The Shah on the Peacock Throne ruled with an iron hand and his intelligence service, which was brutal beyond all measure.
But all hell broke loose when Khomeini came to Teheran 40 years ago.
The state of Iran went off the rails, and the US embassy staff was captured. For more than 400 days, the embassy staff were held hostage by a questionable regime. One wanted to blackmail the Shah from the USA. A rescue operation failed.
However, after the sect around the former Ayatollah Khomeini took power, Iran has become a terror for the world community. The "mother of all Islamic revolutions" was proclaimed, fatwas were pronounced on writers and intellectuals at home and abroad to suppress free opinion. Operations of the Iranian secret service became a power factor elsewhere.
Iran is no longer a reliable partner; it maintains an execution industry that is second to none. People who are strangled to death while wriggling on construction cranes are symbolic of a regime that has nothing else to say to the people.
Gays are hanged or forced to undergo gender reassignment. A Women's team consisted of former men who were forced by the regime to submit to this procedure. At the same time, prostitution and the consumption of alcohol are flourishing; there are countless secret places where whiskey is distilled and then distributed through real networks in Teheran. At the very least, this will bring work for the population that has been battered by the recession.
People, citizens of the state of Iran were kidnapped, tortured and subjected to draconian punishments. The modern women under the Shah were banished into unspeakable veils.
Those who did not adapt were released for hunting by guys like Ahmadineschad. Iran is a country of terror, of denial of the diversity of opinions. The clergy governs from the back room and enriches itself unilaterally with the economic benefits of the Gulf wars with Iraq and the sanctions that have lasted for years.
Teheran controls terror and is undoubtedly one of the masterminds behind international terrorism.
Iran is run-down and cannot give the increasingly rebellious youth any perspective.
The collapse of the system is only a matter of time. Then neither the almighty apparatus nor the marauding gangs of the Basidsch-e Mostaz'afin can't help.
So, nothing to celebrate in Teheran.
Suchergebnisse
WebergebnisseBasidsch-e Mostaz'afin militia can help. So no reason to celebrate instead mourns the mistakes of the decades that have passed.
A poem from Pietermaritzburg, from December 21, 1984
Where is freedom?
Did freedom ever exist?
Or was it just a trick, a strange, unknown promise
ready to break it at any time.
It's hot. Freedom melts in the crucible of power,
while the normal hero moves on, killing and laughing,
the South African people are awakening.
In the street, there is a dead man, a second bloody one next to him,
Flies swarm around the place without life,
this callous place,
Screaming and wailing, it was murder. It was murder!
The death of freedom goes around like a dark, unfathomable ghost,
is it the love of freedom that leads us to believe in it?
Kroonstad, Oranje Vrystaat, Republiek van Suid Afrika
Now I am sitting in this horrible hotel with thousands of mosquitoes on the road to Bloemfontein. Literally in the middle of nowhere. And I have to go further. The journey on the back of the pick-up yesterday was arduous.
I just called Harold at the office. Usually, the call went through the switchboard; probably the censor was listening. The line was cut several times. It's about 80 degrees Fahrenheit outside.
Harold told me to come right over. He can hardly believe I'm here. Harold's happy as a clam. If he even knows what a snow king is. Everyone speaks Afrikaans here; it's easy for me. Thank God, I learned. The coloureds speak isiXhosa, Bantu dialects and Fanagalo, which the whites here call KafferKitchen. That's pretty disrespectful. Subhuman is still the friendliest thing the hardliners here think and say about the majority of the population. Many locals seek shade under the trees along the road.
The Department van die Binnelandse Sake casts long shadows not only in the morning sun.
Moment of calm
I've never seen a breakfast like this morning in my life.
Must have been six eggs and a large sausage ring. It's called Boerewors. The meat was delicious, unlike in Europe. Better. Much better.
It was served with fried tomatoes, bacon, toast with salty butter, deliciously bitter jam, over which I drizzled a lime.
It can't be bitter enough.
The moon I saw last night is the same all over the world.
The black woman sat down with me, at the table by the kitchen. The black girl is alone; otherwise, it would not be possible. It is forbidden. Something like fraternizing, after the war. "Slegs vir Blanke!"
Whites only!
Because of Apartheid.
She comes from the town of Pietermaritzburg. In Natal on the Indian Ocean. The air conditioning hums and rattles. On the radio are ancient songs like Bert Lown - Loving You The Way I Do
Jambok
It's like a colony here. A pretty lovely but evil settlement. A bad colony. White men in blue uniforms are everywhere with their yellow emergency vehicles. There was sometimes the riding-whip pulled, but not against horses, but the black passers-by on the road.
In the night tanks rolled past in front of the window. Army for hours in earth brown cars until the dawn over the Kalahari. I listened to the radio, music, Springbok radio.
The woman who spoke Afrikaans, sometimes whole sentences in Fanakalo, with me, of which I understood only half, meant something like this:
"If you want to start a new life, you have to be strong." I was somewhat ashamed to have the right skin colour for South Africa from fate. It is a lousy dictatorship; I realized that after a few hours.
I probably drank a litre of lychee juice for breakfast and a large cup of very bitter, but delicious coffee. And this incredibly beautiful music, which is like honey in my ears.
After my adventure yesterday, I was quite happy that I could listen to music in the morning. This music from Jack Denny never goes out of my ears.
Yesterday I was still in Johannesburg, Egoli, city built on gold. Burning barricades on the road to Vanderbijlpark. Men lying in the street, dead. They were dead. They couldn't have been more dead. Brains and blood everywhere. Bone fragments. The Hiace's windshield shot out. There was a lot of ammunition and casings in the street. Poor guys' bodies were so twisted you'd think rubber men were lying around. Death is omnipresent here.
The almost hour-long approach to Johannesburg, to Germiston (Jan Smuts Lughawe), was gigantic. One could see the spoil heaps. Huge mountains, white and they shone in the sunlight—rays in the middle of the red, very sandy earth of Africa.
Now I am here. The fan buzzed in the same deep sound as the tank engines. It's a frightening noise in the middle of the night.
It is a frightening sound amid the silence.
And the song is in my ears again.
Tea in the shadow of Steve Biko
The editor took his time. He tells about the 1950s when he travelled across Europe. It's almost noon, we eat sandwiches with mayonnaise-chicken and drink coffee, lemonade, with lychee juice, which cures everything here. Then rooibos tea with milk and sugar. Nobody in the newsroom trusts anybody.
There's something in the air.
He spoke to me for a long time and gave me a phone number. A black woman served us tea with lemon afterwards.
A serious man who thought I should arrive first. The mistrust is all about Muldergate. -I'm supposed to call him in the next few days. He invites me to a Braai. And the Boerendans.
The Boer is a chain smoker of the worst kind. He smoked Lexington, 30 cigarettes was enough for half a day.
They say he's not getting on with the government in Pretoria.
There's a climate of fear. It's deliberate.
Which sane person can get along with Nazis who made skin colour the criterion of their politics?
He was arrested several times. I was warned that at any moment a jamboree unit could descend on the newsroom. Some wacko kept coming forward.
And, please?
My youthful recklessness amazes me. But it's an honour to fight against the Nazi edge.
SAP came and took away plenty of unpopular editors.
On the street, everything seems peaceful. SAP patrols.
Why not, thought the man with the riding-whip in his hand. The right hand was always sitting loosely on the holster of his pistol. Ever since the Potgieter Commission, the police's behaviour has been more like that of an informer.
"The murder of journalists is not unusual here when we think of Steven Biko."
I didn't know much about Biko. The editor gave me a folder with articles, Afrikaans and English.
Pieter Botha was like the bad man who came for you and nobody else.
I sit for hours at the Wawiel Bridge, reading, at the monument from the Anglo-Dutch Boer War.
There were concentration camps here that the British set up during the Boer War.
Here are still Nazis.
What do people do to themselves?
Living mummies are coming back from Angola. Soldiers who are only alive because they eat, breathe and drink and sleep, their eyes are blank. A few minutes ago, some of them passed me in a wheeled tank called "Casspir". Direction Welkom, Thabong, which sounds like a swearword to the soldiers.
It gets dark over the thorny bushes, which form the end of the Karoo at the edge of the city.
For a moment, Boris Johnson could rejoice, but only for a brief moment when he, the servant of money and disinformation, gave a bizarre speech to his fellow countrymen.
Johnson managed in his demagogic way to mock the opponents of the Brexit. No one has any hope that the building made of lies by alleged nationalists has got a solid foundation.
One should not make the mistake of confusing Johnson with a conservative like the "Iron Lady" Magret Thatcher. Or with the charisma of Edward Heath. Heath led Britain into the EU.
Johnson declared the secession of Europe with his verbal bullying Jacob Rees-Mogg. Like a maladjusted sandman, Johnson lectured about the Brexit "Get Brexit done".
Let us not forget: the spoiled snobs of the British upper class are concerned with money and not with the welfare of the population. Johnson has no idea what he's doing to the British. There will be poverty and social destitution at the expense of those who voted against the Brexit in a worthless poll, 2016. The "milkmaid's reckoning" of the almost-couping Conservatives will not work out. It will not work if guys like Farage make false promises about the future. Britain's future destiny will hold in check all those who want to break away from Europe. The EU should not get involved. On the contrary, Johnson left without reason.
Strengthen Scotland and Ireland
But Boris Johnson has done his calculations without Nicola Sturgeon. While things were already getting restless in Ireland days before the British withdrew from the EU, the first minister from Scotland is calling for another independence referendum. She said that "grief is tinged with anger and the Scots are striving for independence". A recent poll agrees with the Scottish head of government. Fifty-one per cent of voters would vote for independence and support a return to the EU. So Boris Johnson could only rejoice for a few hours. He didn't deserve any better. Ireland and Northern Ireland are striving for reunification, which should under all circumstances, be supported from Brussels. And so Boris Johnson will have the last laugh.
A treaty with Brussels should, therefore, be carefully considered so that the successors of the British Kingdom are not rewarded for their political incompetence and greed.
The Greek TV station Mega Channel put it in a nutshell. Erdogan had provided free transport to the border and threatened soon to send millions of refugees to the Greek border. According to Mega Channel, these are people who have nothing to do with Syria. According to Mega Channel, chemicals are dropped from drones. In the meantime, the action of Erdogan seems like a siege of Greece. According to various sources, Erdogan is using the refugees, some of whom, according to sources, have been brought to Turkey by Turkish smugglers from Bangladesh, Pakistan and other countries, as henchmen for his bizarre policy.
loading...
Source: Mega Channel
Meanwhile, the situation on Lesbos escalates, here are several reports about it.
loading...
Erdogan's cynical games
Overnight thousands of refugees had to spend the night on the ground, with temperatures around 0 degrees Celsius. Erdogan's cynical tactics seem to be working. Some film clips on this.
How could a man like Erdogan be given such power?
It was known that Erdogan is brutal in the assertion of his interests. Those who do not acknowledge this should reconsider the events surrounding the attempted coup in 2016. Erdogan's role in this game was to dismantle the opposition. There are quite a few claims that he perpetrated the coup to establish his dictatorship, which is similar to a sultanate.
Because Erdogan treats the refugees as hostages and not as refugees, he is personally responsible. He should be treated as such. Even if the refugees were encouraged to drive to the border, throwing stones and burning woods, as the Greek Mega channel reported. Apparently, according to a video, Turkish military vehicles accompany the refugees' march to the border.
Seventy-three refugees were detained on Saturday and arrested afterwards.
The refugees came from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia. Not from Syria. So far, breakthrough attempts have been prevented.
According to the semi-state Greek news agency ANA-MPA SA, a large group of youths tried a breakthrough in the Kastanies woods, where there are no border security installations, at about2 p.m local time today.
Now Europe is trapped. The policy of appeasement with a cunning dictator like Erdogan was wrong.
There will either be a humanitarian disaster or Erdogan will get his way. The NATO defence case in Syria and billions of euros for his ailing dictatorship-ridden economy. How are the refugees carted to the border between Greece and the EU supposed to protect themselves from cold and hunger in the open countryside? In the case of under-age children, Europe should make an exception for humanitarian reasons. The children should be handed over to the International Red Cross, which can also stay in no-man's-land between Turkey and the EU.
All those who thought that Erdogan was a stroke of luck now see that such a Turkey does not belong in the EU and cannot be a negotiating partner. Nor is it because Erdogan has accepted the calculation of the weakest border, the obvious 212 kilometres of the border.
Moreover, his henchmen in the Aegean are watching boats crossing over to Lesbos.
The bitter thing is that, in the end, Brussels will have to give in so as not to betray its human rights standards.
Koran nightingale
Erdogan has made on his long-announced threat to real and had thousands of refugees transported to the border, allegedly from the embattled area around Idlib in Syria. It is not clear to observers on the ground whether the refugees come from Syria. The Greek border posts are remaining closed.
The Turk Erdogan in Istanbul said: "We have opened the gates", but Erdogan was not interested in what could happen. In his addiction to grandeur, he, who was once called a "Koran nightingale" because of his religious attitude, is trying to blackmail the EU. It is not entirely clear what he wants since Erdogan only stated that the EU had not kept to the refugee deal. Erdogan continues to play his poker game, which he has long lost.
#Evros now : more than 3.000 migrants and refugees hoping to break through Greek block at Kastanies crossing: for those of us who lived it, the nightmare of #Idomeni has revived. Is it too much to ask from @EU_Commission and @Frontex to give Greece a helping hand ? pic.twitter.com/rrb3iGGnZ3
Meanwhile, dramatic scenes take place on the Greek-Turkish border, i.e. on the eastern border of the European Union. After refugees threw stones at border police officers, Greek border guards used tear gas. Independent Turkish media and Greek sources report that about 50,000 people are said to have arrived at the various border crossings. Few were able to cross them and were immediately arrested. This issue was reported by Greek News. There is considerable violence, and the refugees are rioting if they are not allowed to cross the border.
#Evros this morning: hundreds of migrants and refugees remain stuck at Kastanies crossing point Tear gas deterrence by Greek authorities continues when they get too close to police cordon Refugee who shot this video says they are afraid to go back, intend to stay pic.twitter.com/wwL32OIGD1
And "treating them like human beings" obviously includes using them as pawns by @MevlutCavusoglu and his government, boarding them in buses, lying they are free to cross and then busing more to the border https://t.co/RnfNVouEMf
Since the bombing of Idlib, nothing is the same as it once was in the war country Syria. The Sultan by his grace, Erdogan, has played poker and lost. He is personally responsible for the consequences, neither NATO, after which he is downright noisy, nor the EU. Tens of thousands of Syrians are on the run and in his simple-mindedness, Erdogan now, after the death of his soldiers, wants to resort to the NATO alliance case, which would result in a confrontation with Assad's ally, Russia.
Heaps of buses drive from Istanbul to the Macedonian border. There is nothing left of the refugee deal, except the threat potential of Erdogan - that he takes a few more hostages to get a better deal for him.
Erdogan is a cardsharper, a man who has outgrown the power he has seized. He should not, in his almost childish commander's manner, be given a chance to set Europe on fire. Erdogan has waged a war of aggression in Syria. Now he must answer for the consequences. At the Greek-Turkish border, thousands are trying to cross the demarcation line to flee to Europe. Greece reacts with tear gas. Dramatic scenes take place. Therefore, to maintain its internal peace, Europe must close its external borders.
