I am the Fianancial Times and I'm afraid of the mullahs...

It is not exactly lost to those who study the international impact of the mullahs' actions, that the Fianancial Times is in the vanguard of appeasement. In an editorial on December 19, 2006, "Theocratic democracy", it suggests the choosing of the chameleon akhond, Rafsanjani, as being essential to weakening of the "conservatives", ala the mock-president Mr. Ahmadi-nejad. You see, the FT sees Mr. Rafsanjani on the camp of the "reformers", ala the other mock-president, Mr. Khatami. Just what exactly these people are reforming, is not made clear.

This is what FT calls theocratic democracy, although this is not the first time the phrase has been used in describing the dysfunctional mullahs. So much for old phrases. We're reminded and remind that back in 1844, a certain Joseph Smith, the founder of the Morman church and the spiritial advisor to Mitt Romney, who wants to become the next president of the US, ran for the US presidency, on a platform of "theodemocracy". It sounds familiar, does it not?

It is not my Eid... so says the judge

Saddam Hussein was executed on Saturday, December 30, 2006 in the early Baghdad hours (6:10 am). The sentence came about quite swiftly, at least according to the American sense of justice. It is an entirelly different manner in the middle east. Saturday was, by most accounts, the day of Eid of Sacrifice- the time when the Hajj pilgrims, are required, by whom we do not know, to slaughter a sheep, a goat, a cow, a camal- in the name of the holy sacrifice. More than two million of them each year. The day is also a time of reflection for most ordinary moslims, but for the Middle Eastern dictators- and there are many- it is also a time to be jolly and release as many non-essential or accidental prisoners.

When Hussein was taken, one last time, to meet the judge on Saturday, his lawyer asked the judge why was he being hangged on the day of Eid. The judge replied that indeed he was not, and the Eid was on Sunday. The judge was a shiite. When it comes to such matters, another one is the start of the month of Ramadan, the shiites and the sunnis are separate by one day. This Shiite-Sunni thing has not gone missing from inspection: one sunni website has warned as to the danger of "the new enemy from the east". Iran, we think.

The other irony is that Hussein was tried, convicted and executed for only ONE crime- the mass killing of more than one hundred persons in 1982- in the aftermath of the start of the Iran-Iraq, in the Shiite town of Dujail. He was not tried or convicted for suppression of the Kurds- gassing in Halabjeh comes to mind. He was killed for killing the Shiites. This should not go missing on the kurds and their sense of justice.

It is not any wonder that the one foreign government most vocal and supportive of Hussein's execution was the Iranian government. The mullahs' television called Hussein the “enforcer of the most horrendous crimes against humanity.” More than 100,000 people who have perished, by torture, by burning alive, by stoning to death, and by execution, in the hands of the mullahs' henchmen, should by their definition, count the mullahs as the "most most horrenhous criminals in history."

Assembly of Terror Experts...

The international media (take your pick) have been tripping over each other, in casting yesterday's municipal and national elections in Iran as a referendum on mullahs' president, December 15, 2006. This is called ignorance in any other guise. The New York Times, Dec. 16, is predicting " Big Voter Turnout Seen in Iran, Giving Reformers a Boost". It is those elusive reformers again. Iran, per capita, has likely more elections that any other country on Earth. It is also on the very opposite end of democracy scale. The mullahs have a Supreme leader who has the final say, the Guardian Council (12 mullahs) who select who runs as a candidate, Assembly of Experts (82 mullahs and like-minded folks), the Parliamant, the President, the Cabinet, and the armed forces, and finally to circle the wagon, the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij, who, well are entities to themselves and report to no one other than the supreme leader. This is what the media cals a "complex power structure."

The one group that selects the Supreme Leader is the Assembly of Experts (Majlis e Khobregan). Its members are being elected as we write this. To get an insight into how these men, yes they're all men, think, here's what Ahmadi-nejad's choice from the city of Qom- the center of mullahs' learning- has put it, "The basis of a republic is people’s votes and people’s demands and views. However, in an Islamic state the basis is God’s rulings which are defined by jurisprudents and ulema [religious scholars/clerics]... If it (an Islamic system) is not popular, it does not lose its legitimacy... If people accept such a system, then legitimacy and popularity are together." (Mohsen Gharavian in the Financial Times, December 15, 2006). Got it?

Mr. Baker: Surely, you're joking...

It is official now; the Iraq Study Group, aka Baker-Hamilton Group, has released its report on how to disengage in Iraq and as an added bonus, appease (forgive us, engage) the mullahs in Iran, December 4, 2006. They call it a "diplomatic offensive". Yes, it is offensive. For the records, both Messers Baker and Hamilton were ardent supporters of the attack on Iraq.

Mr. Baker, in justifying an approach to the same mullahs who admittedly are the prime cause of havoc in Iraq, said in the ensuing press conference that "... for forty years, we were at war with the Soviets, and yet we talked to them." Fair enough. Let's us digest and decipher this for a moment. The US was at cold war, i. e. proxy wars in Europe, South America, and Asia and the Middle East at the heart of the East-West collision, for four decades, and yet maintained a level of dialogue with the Soviet Union. Now, fast forward to 2006: the United States is the occupier in Iraq and the sole military superpower in the world- a condition that has not existed, well since the beginning of time. The US is supposedly in charge of Iraq's affairs- we do understand that Iraq has an elected government, but that's for another day. Now, ISG is recommending that the US, as the occupier, talk with the same mischievers who engineer nearly all of the instability in Iraq, ala the Iranian mullahs.

We doubt, very seriously, that such a precedence has existed before.