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Small Evils
The persistent cruelty of dead-hearted old god-bothering fools in robes:
(There is) a new wave of arrests of pet owners and seizures of their animals in the Iranian capital, Tehran.
Police there recently announced that walking dogs in parks was a crime. The ban was justified as a measure to “protect the safety of the public”.
At the same, the Iranian parliament could soon approve the Protection of the Public’s Rights Against Animals bill, which would restrict pet ownership across the board.
Dog ownership is a sign of Westernization. You almost wonder if that will make some people in the West turn against dogs, because now that they think of it, it’s a sign of hierarchical speciesism, remnant notions that justified slavery, late-stage capitalism (all those treats and doggy clothes).
Here the BBC treads up to the line of Islamophobia, and seems to be implying that the CIA-backed coup that ruined everything for everyone everywhere had an upside:
Keeping dogs has always been common in Iran’s rural areas, but the animals also became a symbol of urban life in the 20th Century.
Iran was one of the first countries in the Middle East to pass animal welfare laws, in 1948, and the government funded the first institution to enhance animal rights. Even the country’s royal family had dogs as pets.
But the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which saw Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi overthrown, changed many aspects of life for Iranians and their dogs.
The theocrats have been at this for a while:
“Debates around this bill started more than a decade ago, when a group of Iranian MPs tried to promote a law to confiscate all dogs and give them to zoos or leave them in deserts,” Dr Payam Mohebi, the president of the Iran Veterinary Association and an opponent of the bill, told the BBC.
“Over the years, they have changed this a couple of times and even discussed corporal punishment for dog owners. But their plan didn’t get anywhere.”
Confiscated dogs are currently sent to compounds where they’re treated like the Western Impurities they are. Granted, when the government is killing students, young women, for the sin of wanting to dress as they please, the fate of Fido is less important. Except that it’s all of a piece. To blazes with the lot of them.
It seems difficult to imagine a free Iran, doesn’t it? This could be the one, this could be the uprising that seals the mullah’s fate. But it never is.
Published in Islamist Terrorism
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That and, the elites have to stop flying on private jets and buying beach-front mansions.
Small, but definitely NOT evil!