Human mind, that wondrous grey matter housed perspicacity, given time, has the uncanny flexibility to acclimate to almost any horror it encounters. It is a defense mechanism that the mind through rationalization, beguiling trivialization, begrudging justification or an outright denial preserves some semblance of sanity and avoids what is loosely termed ”loosing it”.

The operating factor for this innate mechanism is time. Ingrained value system need time to adjust and go though a series of steps. The fuse box of mind trips and reboots with a higher threshold for yet more horrendous events to be pacified- all along tweaking that which is the essence of what is generally labeled human values.

It is no revelation to those who care to know that the Islamic Republic of Iran is a systematic abuser of its subjects. It is well documented, physical evidence piled high, countless victim testimonials, third party witness accounts and more poignant of them all, the regime’s officials proudly fessing up to it. There is even a heart wrenching literary genre in the form of narratives by those who were abused.

It is also no secret that all the brutality meted out to the Iranians under the guise of Islamic penal code is nothing but an instrument of terrorizing the populace with the aim of securing their absolute subjugation. The problem is as the time passes, like addiction to narcotics, the mind needs larger and larger dosage to just maintain the effect, the so called maintenance level. And to achieve the desired therapeutic level exponentially larger dosages are required.

The Islamic Republic with all its innovative ways of abusing the people it controls has had to up the anti dramatically and do what it has been doing all along behind high walls of its many dungeons out in the open just to maintain the freight factor.

Stories of whipping prisoners, lashing the condemned prior to being executed, stoning the “adulterers” to death, raping and gouging out an eye or amputating limbs, all had that out of sight out of mind quality that made it easy to dismiss.

The news of occasional public hangings here and there or rumors of stoning carried by the questionable grapevine news agency even an occasional still photo of the deed made it all so surreal that one could either chalk it up to aberration or simply shrug off. Not any more, it is in your face out in the open.

It is routinely reported by the regime’s news agencies and footages of mass hangings are broadcast on the nationwide television channels. In a span of few months the various official news organs of the Islamic Republic have reported public hangings of groups as large as thirteen men and women together, stoning of accused adulterers after a self declared “moratorium” on carrying out this type of capital punishment.

Last summer the regime had a pumper crop of public hangings, back to back, keeping its cranes off construction sites only to be used as a mobile gallows. The January 6th 2008 news of amputating the right hand and left foots of five men in the impoverished south eastern Iran for the crime of being “corrupt on earth” had not fully been filed away in the obscurity that the fresh news overloads the senses. Two “convicted” rapists are to be done away with by being thrown down from a high place.

Those from the nuclear Armageddon preaching right to the lets give em time to mellow out center to the far left who in the name of anti-capitalism have hitched a ride on the Islamic Republic’s slogan mongering train should be particularly weary. For all its marvelous abilities to justify and come to terms with almost any horror, the mind is also burdened by conscience which eventually arbitrates one’s deeds.

All people of principle, especially those who cherish the inalienable dignity of human beings, in the absolute secrecy and solitude of their own conscience, have to ask themselves a simple question. What their silence in face of such Dantesque horror does to their own humanity.