The Council of Guardians lifts ban on some candidates

Jan. 30 - The Council of Guardians has reversed their ban of about 1/3 of the candidates for next month's elections, but it doubtful that they will budge further on the remaining 2/3 although appeals has been filed. Although there has also been an appeal to postpone the elections, that postponement would also have to be approved by the Council.

I'm getting an increasingly bad feeling about the upcoming elections. President Khatami and the reformists are unwilling to break with the Ayatollah Khameini, and although I can understand it, I fear it is going to kill them especially given the tactics of the Hezbollah enforcers that we saw during last summer's student demonstrations.

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Hutton Inquiry Findings, Mugabe, Cheney on Iran, EU coruption

Jan. 25 - Hutton will clear Blair over Kelly death which is to say Blair will not be personally criticized, but Alistair Campbell and Andrew Gilligan are among those who will be. So a BBC reporter can misrepresent Dr. Kelly's statements (who should never have been speaking to the BBC to begin with) and thus violate every ethical standard of journalism to put forward his own point of view and Blair was put on the defensive? And Campbell did wrong . . . how? By standing up for the truth. No chastisement can be harsh enough for that crime.

And journalists complain that people don't watch the news or read the papers. Maybe because they don't trust big media? Hmm?

Mugabe flown to South Africa because he collapsed. Money quote:

"We were ordered not to give any details of the president's illness in case it brought people out on to the streets," a senior member of the 'Green Bombers', the notorious youth brigade created by Mr Mugabe, told The Telegraph.

Paul claims he's trying to resolve issues with his video card (or something like that) but I say he's been sacrificing chickens again. Good work! Today Mugabe, tomorrow . . . oh, kind of a big field there. I vote for Arafat, but I'll let Paul decide.

Dick Cheney is taking a hard line on Iran's Council of Guardians.

"Democracies do not breed the anger and the radicalism that drag down whole societies or export violence," he said. "Terrorists do not find fertile recruiting grounds in societies where young people have the right to guide their own destinies and to choose their own leaders."

Ineptitude in the EU?:

The report, by the parliament's budgetary control committee, notes that "no Commissioner has so far accepted political responsibility" for the fiasco at Eurostat, from which at least £3.5 million disappeared in slush funds and fictitious contracts, although some have admitted mistakes. Much of the fraud took place before the current commission took office in late 1999, but MEPs are furious that dubious contracts ran on, unchecked, until at least 2002.

Ever wonder where the UN learned its bookkeeping methodology? And these poor commissioners might receive a vote of censure! Oh, the humanity!

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The Meatriarchy on Iran

Jan. 24 - The Meatriarchy has linked back to an older post of his with some well thought-out points which concluded that Iraq might be the Wrong Domino and that Iran might have had better potential as a Mid-East country that could become run by consensual government. He's re-raised the question here (and be sure to follow the link to read Clifford Le May's article.)

I've read all three articles more than a few times today and tried to understand my reactions, and I'm suddenly wondering if perhaps I suffer from Tehran Embassy Syndrome, something akin to Somalia Syndrome and one which probably has similar roots.

I supported the removal of the Shah of Iran (he was regarded a butcher by his people,) but was shocked when the US Embassy in Tehran was seized and those within held as hostages. I've supported the movement to bring democratic reforms to Iran, but am leery of the US becoming directly involved or even supportive. I was genuinely glad that the US sent aid after the Bam earthquake, but feel myself stiffen whenever the question of re-opening diplomatic relations with Iran is raised. (I'm talking about how I feel here, not what I think.)

Sometimes memories sit in a quagmire of feelings. For example, I've never had the heart to attack former President Jimmy Carter and I think it's because I vividly remember his face and demeanor when he appeared on TV to inform the American people of the disasterous attempt to rescue the hostages. He hurt, and we all hurt with him. We had abandoned our dead, something we never do. A low point of history indeed.

In many ways, the embassy takeover spelled the end of my political innocence, and it taught me that good intentions and high-sounding, lofty ideals weren't adequate when it came to dealing with people who hate us. After all, they struck at us and called us Satan when someone as benign as Jimmy Carter was president. I knew I needed to do some re-evaluation.

Again, my evaluation of Carter is based on the personal, not the political. I lived in Georgia when Carter was governor, and he always struck me as being a good, well-meaning man. It was harsh learning that sometimes someone being good was inadequte and in fact was a detriment for a President. Ethics were important, but so was strength. I never quite got on the Reagan bandwagon (I voted Independent for years) but couldn't deny the reality that the hostages were let go as Reagan was inaugurated.

That experience may form part of the reason why a great many of us 60's radicals are solidly in support of the strong stance taken by President Bush, and why we grasped the reasons to make an intervention in the Mid-East long before the arguments were even laid out by the current Administration.

So maybe I harbor a bit of a grudge against Iran - although not Iranians - not because of what they did but because of what we didn't do, and I'm not sure I'm alone in this.

So the points laid out in The Meatriarchy's posts have dogged me a great part of today and made me do a lot of thinking (he does that a lot; if you don't read him regularly, you should!) Read it and see what you think.

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Al Qaeda in Fallujah?

Jan. 23 - Rantburg reports on the capture of a deputy, Husam al-Yemeni, of al Qaeda leader Abu Zarqawi and the suspicion that there is an al Qaeda cell in Fallujah.

Fox reports that another possible al Qaeda member, Hasan Ghul, was also detained in Iraq.

UPDATE: The Washington Times has more background on Ghul including his connection to Khalid Shaikh Mohammad.

Things are really getting sticky: the Iranian government has announced it plans to try 12 members of al Qaeda (although they won't release their names) but an allegation has been made by a witness that Iran was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks during proceedings in the German trial of Abdelghani Mzoudi who is being tried for as an accomplice in the attacks.

NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd has no problem with climbing out on a branch and sawing it off, but I've been rubbing my hands with anticipation since she trashed the Australians, and they are responding. Heh.

A Canadian citizen who lives in Minneapolis, Mohammed Abdullah Warsame has been indited for providing material support to al Qaeda.

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Elections in Iran

Jan. 23 - Mob leaves Iranian reformist leader injured:

A 200-strong gang of political radicals attacked a meeting of Iranian reformists yesterday in the first outbreak of serious violence since moderates were barred from forthcoming elections.

Members of the radical Islamic Hezbollah movement burst into a hall in Hamedan, western Iran. They disrupted a meeting called to discuss the disqualification of 3,605 predominantly reformist candidates from next month's general elections.

The violence erupted after a speaker accused the Guardian Council, the unelected clerical body that vetoed the candidates, of disregarding an order by the supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for the disqualifications to be reviewed.

"Some 200 people attacked the podium, broke the microphone and beat people," said one witness.

During the student demonstrations last summer, Hezbollah members were heavily involved in attacking demonstrators, including some in their dormitories.

It is noted at the end of the article that President Khatami does not intend to resign even though five of the vice-presidents and six cabinet ministers have done so.

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Elections in Iran

Jan. 21 - An unspecified number of Cabinet ministers and vice-presidents have resigned to protest the exclusion of thousands of candidates by the Council of Guardians in the upcoming national elections in Iran.

Iranian President Mohammed Khatami, who must approve the resignations, has also threatened to resign. He is is attending a conference in Switzerland at present.

According to Aljazeera, the ministers will continue to do their jobs awaiting the outcome of the Council's review of the ban.

The conservative political watchdog has barred 3605 of the 8157 people seeking to stand for the 20 February parliamentary polls.

"It is natural that they wait for the outcome of the work" of the Guardians Council, Abtahi said, without naming the cabinet members who had decided to resign.

Abtahi, an outspoken reformer who is also believed to be among those ready to step down, did not say whether the ministers and vice-presidents had set a deadline.

(Aljazeera links via Jack's Newswatch.)

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US Relationship with Saddam

Jan. 15 - This is Part II of Darren Kaplan's The U.S. Relationship With Saddam--Fantasy vs. Reality Part II.

(Part I is here.)

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Elections in Iran

Jan. 13 - It would appear that President Khatami is prepared to do the only principled thing left given the Council of Guardian's continued ban of hundreds of candidates from the upcoming national elections in Iran: Iran's cabinet may dissolve. If I'm reading between the lines at all accurately, Khatami recognizes that the upcoming elections will be a sham, and he and his supporters have decided not to provide window dressing to the conflict between the reformists and the Council any longer.

Khatami's reformist forces lost ground in last year's regional elections. There was reportedly a very low turnout, and many Western analysts felt that it was in reaction to the failure of the reformists to get meaningful legislation past the Council of Guardians.

For a little more background on the growing resistance to the Council's ban, read this and follow the links. Also, keep checking over at On the Third Hand for on-going analysis from someone who has been keeping on top of events in Iran.

I'd like to think that the Council is finding itself more and more isolated both within and without; recent events as the international response to the arrest of Iranian bloggers (which seemed to have surprised them) and their inadequate response to the horrendous earthquake of last month only heightened the growing discontent evidenced in last summer's student demonstrations.

I'm a deep-dyed in the wool cynic. When the Iranian government announced it would open its nuclear sites for inspection, I wanted to keep an eye on what the other hand was doing but didn't expect an internal move.

It would appear that thwarting the democratic process was the card they chose to play, but it does seem a desparate move given how successful they've been thus far at nullifying attempts at reform. I'm thinking there's a hidden piece of information for them to launch an attack on the democratic process in Iran, although it could also be good, old-fashioned hubris.

Or it could be the threat of democratic, consensual government in Iraq.

One suggestion: now would be a good time for the Canadian government to use some soft diplomacy to re-raise the issue of Zahra Kazemi's death and the laggardly investigation, and yes, I am quite serious. Soft diplomacy is but one tool among many, and doing something the Council doesn't expect (expecially from an unlikely source) would be one more pressure point on the beleaguered Council and would express international solidarity with Khatami's limited reform without being overly confrontational.

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Toronto aids Bam earthquake survivors

Jan. 3 - One of the things about living in a city like Toronto is that you always seem to know, within a few degrees of separation, someone who is directly affected by a disaster like Bam, so these catastrophes inevitably have a personal connection. GTA aid for Bam has been swift and enormous.

There's an onsite report on Canadian Red Cross activities in Iran here.

GTA residents can go to the David McAntony Gibson Foundation website, contact Rahul Singh at 416-998-7813, or telephone the Red Cross at 1-800-418-1111.

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