Iran’s Dress Code Police Freak Out Over Mannequin Cleavage

Every summer as the weather gets warmer the Iranian government admonishes women about proper dress. But this year the police are arresting women and impounding their vehicles in the current dress code crackdown. Some clothing boutiques have even been sealed by the police, and others have been ordered to saw the breasts off their mannequins. This is just too weird.

But why would this be considered Islamic? Where are these injunctions in the Koran?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Related posts:
Ahmadinejad’s Creepy Kiss
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Al-Qaeda: Our New Ally Against Iranian Radicalism?

Remember when the answer to radical Islam used to be moderate Islam? Well, that’s changing. The new answer to radical Shiite Islam may be radical Sunni Islam. That’s right, al-Qaeda. We’ve come full circle since the CIA first created Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan all those years ago.

In a piece in this month’s The New Yorker, Seymour Hirsch describes the Iraqi conflict in terms of regional conflict involving not just the Sunnis and Shiites of Iraq, but of neighboring countries as well: Sunnis in Saudi Arabia and Jordan and the Iranian-backed Shiite Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria. Sunni countries fear runaway Iranian power in the region, now about to be backed by nuclear weapons. The only organization capable of withstanding the Iranians, the Iraqi army, has been disbanded by the U.S.

What’s more, the Bush administration policy towards Iran is changing as well.

In recent months, the former intelligence official told me, a special planning group has been established in the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, charged with creating a contingency bombing plan for Iran that can be implemented, upon orders from the President, within twenty-four hours.

In the past month, I was told by an Air Force adviser on targeting and the Pentagon consultant on terrorism, the Iran planning group has been handed a new assignment: to identify targets in Iran that may be involved in supplying or aiding militants in Iraq. Previously, the focus had been on the destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities and possible regime change.

Now imagine all of the power and money now being used for war in the region being used instead for peaceful purposes: schools, hospitals, cultural festivals, dancing the dubka and eating mansaf.

Imagine.

State of the Union: links to text of Monday night’s speeches

For anyone who had to be in class or at work last night, here is the text of President Bush’s State of the Union address released by the White House.

and here is the Democrat’s response.

Karla Faye Tucker revisited: How does Bush REALLY feel about executing Saddam?

Was Bush really so totally opposed to executing Saddam Hussein?

An American friend I met in the Middle East called over the holidays and reminded me of the Karla Faye Tucker case some years ago when Bush was governor of Texas. I sort of remembered it–murder committed under the influence of drugs, a born-again prison conversion, lots of last-minute publicity before the execution. At the time Bush made a public statement about it.

Bush said he was seeking “guidance through prayer,” and said “judgments about the heart and soul of an individual on death row are best left to a higher authority.” This led him to uphold the death penalty in this case as he had in the others.

So let me get this straight. Bush thinks we should just kill them all and let Allah sort them out.

Russian president Vladimir Putin once made a similar declaration that life-or-death judgments should be “left to the Almighty.” But Putin came to the opposite conclusion, that “such supposed judgments, even if they are believed to be divine, cannot properly be discerned and administered by flawed human agents.”

Bush is no stranger to capital punishment . During Bush’s tenure as governor of Texas 150 men and 2 women were executed. He upheld the death sentence in every case but one, which had attracted media attention when it was proved the accused was out of the state when the crime occurred.

Media spin continues to distance U.S. policy from Saddam’s execution. As respectable a source as the New York Times suggests it was the Iraqi government that rushed to execute Saddam in order to provide a sacrifice on the first day of the holiday. Eid al-Adha is a day commemorating Araham’s willingness to sacrifice his son that already flows with the sacrificial blood of sheep.

The trail of Saddam was about ordering a mass murder in a village. The exectuion should have been a lesson in abuse of power. But there is just too much of that going around. Every morning bodies of tortured Sunnis are found on Baghdad’s streets. Our Shiite allies appear to be abusing power every bit as much as Saddam did. Then there’s the torture at Abu Ghareeb. So far only a handful of low level soldiers have been convicted.

While the world press jumps to play the blame game, we are losing sight of something important. How do we hold those in power accountable for state-sponsored terror?

Who killed Cock Robbin?–Saddam, Bush, and Moktadr al-Sadr

“Moke-Ta-Door, Moke-Ta-Door.” You can clearly hear people chanting this on the bootleg cellphone version of the film only seconds before Saddam’s execution. It’s a reference to Moktadr al Sadr, who has been described as an extremist Shiite warlord.

The chanting reminded me of the part in George Orwell’s Animal Farm where the sheep are taught to bleat in unison, “Four legs good, Two legs bad.” Instead of dropping cluster bombs and depleted uranium on Iraq, we should have showered them with copies of Animal Farm, translated into Arabic. It’s not too late, if someone out there is looking for a winter project.

The pictures of Saddam on the gallows weren’t a surprise. Everyone sort of expected it, especially after the way the photos of Uday and Kusai, then Zarkawi, were released after their deaths. It’s a sort of visual proof of the event that transcends language barriers.

Also expected were the less tasteful bootleg cellphone versions of the event that swept the blogosphere afterwards. I suppose some were looking for a “war porn” online, but it was the sectarian nature of the execution that really surfaced on those films. It was hardly a somber state occasion. For some reason I had expected Saddam would be turned over to other Sunnis, but accounts are pretty clear the executioners, although hooded, could be identified as Shiite by their southern accents. From what happened at the execution, it looks more like Saddam was executed for being Sunni than for signing the order for a mass murder.

Speaking of sectarian feuds, what of the role of the Bush family in Saddam’s execution?

The Bush family has a long-standing family feud dating back to an assassination attempt on the older Bush attempted by Saddam when the 41st president was in Kuwait after the first gulf war. According to the New York Times:

“There’s no doubt his hatred is mainly directed at us,” the current president said, speaking to a Republican fund-raising crowd in Houston on Sept. 26, 2002. “This is the man who tried to kill my dad.”

For his part, Mr. Hussein referred to the younger Mr. Bush as “son of the viper.” He delivered a famous snub of the 41st president, constructing a mosaic of the elder Bush’s face on the floor of the Rashid Hotel, perfectly positioned to be repeatedly stepped on. After the American troops reached Baghdad, they crushed the mosaic.

The President’s press release following the execution begins, “Today, Saddam Hussein was executed after receiving a fair trial…”