FG

Iran's working class is almost ready to explode.  Workers go months without pay while union leaders who dare complain get the standard Khamenei treatment: holy arrests, holy beatings, holy torture and long, holy jail sentences. 

Suppose the opposition could count on the working class support for a general strike.   Suppose the regime lost in prime recruiting base for Basilj.  Alas the opposition will never be trusted by workers until it addresses bread and butter issues. 

In trouncing President Khatami five years ago, Ahmadinad and Khamenei showed how to play the class card ("Reformers don't care about you.  We do.")  So long as post-election brutality was directred at the "snotty" middle class, the working class wasn't much bothered. 

Khamenei's working class support began to drop off when he offended the pious by murdering Neda and ordering the rape of imprisoned protestors of both sexes--a tactic he had employed with great success a decade earlier.  Support dropped again when the regime's Flying Thug Squad beat up mourners and clerics, vandalized their homes and mosques and arrest their families. 

Even as their pockets are picked, many workers have yet to see through Khamenei and Ahmadinejad.  Too many still accept the Supreme Leader's self-proclaimed "virtues" at face value.  It's time to change that.

KHAMENEI'S "MAGIC SHOW" EXPOSED 

A bonanza has fallen into the opposition's hands and must not be squandered.  Defectors have revealed scandalous details of the Khamenei family lifestyle:

//homylafayette.blogspot.com/

What Suetonius did for Roman emperors in "Lives of the Twelve Ceasars," this expose does for the Islamic Republic. We see Khamenei acting in ways that are anything but holy, then sneering at believers when out of the limelight.  Sophisticat Iranians will say "Told you so!" but those who once fell for displays of public decorum should purchase smelling salts. 

Consider these examples:

--In public Khamenei and his hardline buddies put on a show of fury if any prominent figure merely touches the hand of a woman, even an old granny.  In private Khamenei drools over dirty jokes. 

--Insiders who also slurp down wealth at the Islamic Republic's trough get free admission into the family's lavish inner sanctum (estimated family wealth = $36 billion plus and growing daily).  However, naive and austere supporters are stopped at a designated point lest they be offended.  Anyone familiar with the special privileges held by the Soviet nomenklatura class may notice the parallels.

--In public Khamenei praises austere types as a model for all.  In private he and his wife mock them.  Stalin's attitude toward such followers was very similar.  He called them as "useful idiots."

In sum, the expose confirms a central opposition charge--that this regime and its top leaders have all exploited Islam for personal gain.  Now, to perpetuate these gains, they are unashamed to order the most horrific crimes.