So I was hanging out on Main Street when a billionaire friend stopped by..
She had just gotten off the phone with the White House and she was totally pissed off.
A little background on my friend:
She was born in Persia, educated in Switzerland and England, and is a true Citizen of the World in every regard.
Her family was very much involved with the regime of the Shah and very successful in global commerce.
When Khomeini came to power, everyone in her family fled except for her because her husband (a nuclear physicist) had altered her passport and identification papers and left the country with his secretary.
When my friend got to the airport in Tehran she was immediately arrested and thrown into prison. And there she stayed until her father, who was in Belgium, was able to get in touch with Mehdi Bazargan, the acting Prime Minister.
Bazargan showed up at the prison, demanded her release, took her to the airport and put her on a plane to Paris.
She lost everything she had, tens of millions of dollars.
But she has more than made up for those losses.
So I am sitting at my usual perch on our town's little Main Street. Several of us (and all here would be greatly surprised at the makeup of our little group) meet there daily to solve the problems of the World. Obviously, we aren't doing an adequate job.
Here comes my friend and she is roiling boiling pissed off. I have never seen her angry, she is coolly unflappable.
But the Qana bombings have pushed her over the edge.
She has no dog in the fight, a total realist with incredible insight on Middle Eastern affairs.
So she called the White House. Knowing her like I do, I am sure she spoke to someone in the office of the Prez or Vice. She is not the kind to call a switchboard and has access to people at every level of any government that counts on a global level. Her husband's obit was a full page in the NY Times, if that makes my point any clearer.
I could go on and on, but I won't.
Here is the punch line:
She vowed to dedicate the rest of her life making sure that Bush, Cheney, Rice, Wolfowitz, Feith, et al, have nothing but misery for the rest of their lives after leaving office. She intends to insure that they will never be able to travel outside the States and she plans on funding a full-court press on the World Stage and Courts.
I have never heard her utter a political statement in all the time I have known her.
And now this.
Also, I have known many powerful, wealthy, and tough people in my life.
Of all of them, she is the last person I would want gunning for my ass.
= new reply since forum marked as read
