OTRA COSA QUE los medios no van a resaltar, precisamente ahora que interesaría poder disponer de todo el contexto para poder valorar las bravatas del pirado Ahmadinejad, es que las celebraciones del 27º aniversario de la revolución iraní fueron un sonoro fracaso:

Millions of Iranians inflicted another heavy slap to the face of the shaky and unpopular Islamic regime by boycotting its "27th anniversary revolution celebration" by staying home, or far from the official gatherings.

The regime's desperate leadership was hoping to bring millions in the streets by playing their nationalistic or religious feelings. But in Tehran, which was supposed to become a show room, the regime was unable to muster more than 70 or 80 thousand professional demonstrators and government employees and schools' students. Many of them, such as most governmental employees, are known to be forced to participate in official gatherings and others are fanatics or paid demonstrators. Hundreds of buses had transferred thousands of such demonstrators to the Capital.

Más información, y fotografías, en Gateway Pundit.

ACTUALIZACIÓN. Y es que en el Irán real, el que tiene lugar por debajo de las cara pública del régimen que es la que se transmite al exterior, están pasando muchas más cosas. Ya me he referido en muchísimas ocasiones a las protestas, manifestaciones de estudiantes, movimientos de malestar. Pues bien, hace tres semanas, ante el silencio innoble de la mayoría de medios de comunicación occidentales y, sobre todo, de los compañeros sindicalistas de todo el mundo civilizado, los conductores de autobús de Teherán están en huelga, manifestándose y siendo encarcelados por los ayatolás. Uno de los que no se calla ante la situación es Nick Cohen, en el diario izquierdista británico The Observer:

For three weeks, there have been demonstrations across the planet about a great injustice done to Muslims. After baton-wielding cops inflicted dozens of injuries, the fear of death is in the air. George W Bush's State Department has warned of 'systematic oppression', while secularists and fundamentalists have revealed their mutually incompatible values. Since you ask, I am not talking about the global menace of Scandinavian cartoonists that has so terrified our fearless free press, but mass arrests in Iran.

The media have barely mentioned the story, even though it cuts through the nonsense about a clash of civilisations between the 'West' and the 'Muslims'. The Muslims of Tehran are proving themselves to be anything but a monolithic bloc happy to follow the orders of the ayatollahs and their demented President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. There are huge class divisions to begin with, and close to the bottom of the heap are the city's bus drivers. The authorities refused to allow them an independent trade union and ruled that an 'Islamic council' in the offices of the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company would represent their interests. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the pious have not proved the doughtiest fighters for better pay and conditions. The bus drivers claimed that managers were stealing money from their pay packets. They formed their own union and threatened to strike at the end of January.

Ahmadinejad won the rigged Iranian elections last year with a promise to stand up for the little man against the Islamic Republic's corrupt elite. Faced with a choice between sticking to his word and carrying on with despotism, he showed his true colours by allowing the most ferocious crackdown Tehran has seen since the religious authorities crushed dissident journalists and students in 1999.

The company's managers and Islamic council called in the paramilitary police who arrested the union's six officers and beat workers until they agreed to renounce the strike. Bravely, the majority refused. The state's thugs then targeted their wives and children.

Mahdiye Salimi, the 12-year-old daughter of one of the strike leaders, told a reporter that they had poured into her home in the early hours of the morning trying to find her father. When his wife said she didn't know where he was, the assault began. 'They kicked my mum's heart with their boots and my mum had an enormous ache in her heart. They even wanted to spray something in my [two-year old] sister's mouth.'

No one knows how many people the authorities arrested. The highest figure the British TUC has heard is 1,300. International trade union federations and the British embassy in Tehran estimate that somewhere between 400 and 600 people are still in prison.

Leed el resto.