Iran (again)

This is why Irani leadership is playing nuclear chicken with the United States:

Angered by unpaid salaries and generally low wages, workers in the northern Iranian provincial capital Rasht blocked streets and protested in front of government offices a fortnight ago brandishing banners that read: "We are hungry!" It wasn't the first time that thousands of employees at the country's largest state-owned textile factory had laid down their tools. But this time they were joined by dam workers in the western province of Elam and employees of a pharmaceutical factory in Tehran. Recently, workers have also gone on strike against harsh work conditions and impending layoffs in mines and petrochemical plants across the country, with hundreds of coal miners from the northern province of Gilan protesting the fact that they have not been paid for 13 months. Workers were also on strike in the car factories of the Iran-Khodro company, already the site of a massive work stoppage on last year's Day of Social Welfare and Securities (July 16), when strikers demanded the introduction of a minimum wage.

In Iran just like the rest of the world, people get pissed off by right wing neoliberal policies of their rulers. Money that should go to books and food or possibly breasts goes towards bombs. It is not like it is any different in Canada. Iran really needs a scary international situtation to distract people's attention from the homefront and denounce those who opposed their regime as traitors. -Sounds a little too familer eh? The mullahs are less popular than George Bush- if the West ignores them for a year and then takes a look we will wonder where they got to.