Rotating Floaty Bits

Hokay, I'm building a nifty crystalline staff for my avatar, and essentially it looks like the attached picture. The tricky part is this. The floaty bits are supposed to orbit around the long axis of the shaft. The bits I've painted green would go counterclockwise, and the bits I've painted red would go clockwise. Is there a way to script this, and how would it be done?

Any help that could be provided would be greatly appreciated.

I would put all the red bits as a texture on one prim and rotate the child prim.
and same with green bits...
if your bits are made up of many prims this will be harder to keep them together,
it would be best to work out a texture method on one rotating prim.
-LW