The opening next Tuesday of the world premiere of a work entitled Am Anfang ('In the Beginning') commemorating the 20th anniversary of Paris's Opéra Bastille was the occasion Friday for an article in the London Financial Times on German artist Anselm Kiefer.[1]  --  "The theme of In the Beginning, latent in all Kiefer’s art, is 'theodicy' — theological attempts to defend God’s goodness in the face of the existence of evil," wrote Jackie Wullschlager, the Financial Times's art critic.  “'Man is so badly constructed, there is a mistake in our brain,' Kiefer says.  'If you give man permission and reason, he will behave like that [like the Nazis] — not everybody, but yes, I think, the majority.'” ...

E.U. diplomatic unity has broken down over the response to Iran's arrest of British embassy staff in Tehran, the Times of London reported late Friday.[1]  --  "A British request for the mass withdrawal of E.U. ambassadors remains on the table, but in some capitals this measure is seen as too aggressive," David Charter said.  --  "The E.U. is Iran’s largest trading partner with exports worth 11 billion euros.  The two biggest opponents of sanctions have been Germany and Italy, which do the most business with Iran."  --  But a later piece in the Times said that a hardline sermon preached in Tehran on Friday saying that some of the British embassy employees would face trial had stiffened E.U. resolve.[2]  --  Dan Murphy of the Christian Science Monitor speculated that Iran's hardliners are "consciously pursuing increased isolation for themselves and their country to create an impression that dangerous outside forces — and not legitimate domestic grievances —were behind the outpouring of national anger at the election result.  They appear to believe such a course will make it easier to silence their opponents."[3]  --  But according to Babak Rahimi, an Iranian-American professor at the University of California San Diego, "The profound, great crisis of legitimacy for Iran's theocracy is not people jumping up and down calling for fair elections, it's the undermining of the theocracy's main claim:  its moral power.  In a lot of people's minds, the regime has been shown to be just another worldly power . . . that is no longer divinely ordained." ...

"Iranian leaders say they have obtained confessions from top reformist officials that they plotted to bring down the government with a 'velvet' revolution," the New York Times reported Friday evening.[1]  --  "The government has made it a practice to publicize confessions from political prisoners held without charge or legal representation, often subjected to pressure tactics like sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, and torture, according to human rights groups and former political prisoners," Michael Slackman said.  "Human rights groups . . . fear the confessions are part of a concerted effort to lay the groundwork for banning existing reformist political parties and preventing any organized reform movement in the future."  --  "Fars, a semiofficial news agency, reported the confession of a *Newsweek* reporter, Mazaiar Bahari, that he had done the bidding of foreign governments, as well as a confession by the editor of a newspaper run by Mir Hussein Moussavi, the opposition leader.  And at Friday Prayer, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said the government planned to put on trial several Iranian employees of the British Embassy — after confessions were extracted."  --  Slackman quoted post-confession testimony about how Iranian interrogators force confessions from Omid Memarian, a former Iranian journalist who was arrested and forced to issue his own confession in 2004, and Ali Afshari a student leader arrested in 2001.  --  "Reports on Iranian Web sites associated with prominent conservatives said that leading reformers have confessed to taking velvet revolution 'training courses' outside the country.  Atef, a Web site of a conservative member of Parliament, referred to a video of Mohammad Ali Abtahi, who served as vice president in the reform government of former President Mohammed Khatami, as showing that he tearfully 'welcomed being defrocked and has confessed to provoking people, causing tension, and creating media chaos.'  --  Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s representative to the Revolutionary Guards, Mojtaba Zolnour, said in a speech Thursday that almost everyone now detained had confessed — raising the prospect that more confessions will be made public." ...

Operation Khanjar, the U.S. military's largest offensive in five years, is unfolding, ironically, in a region that fifty years ago was dubbed "America-in-Asia" by historian Arnold Toynbee.  --  The operation has run into "stiff resistance in some areas" and Brigadier-General Larry Nicholson said "the 2nd Battalion of the 8th Marines had run into fierce opposition" in "the southern quarter of the sector" in Afghanistan's Helmand Provinice and that the Marines have taken casualties, with the death of a first soldier in combat, the Times of London reported late Wednesday.[1]  --  "About 4,000 Marines are involved in the operation over a 55-mile front," Tom Coghlan said.  "The Taliban has controlled the area for the past three years."  --  The AP noted that the offensive is taking place in "a remote area that is at the center of the country’s illegal opium cultivation, which helps finance the insurgency."[2]  --  Speaking in Calgary, Alberta, on Wednesday, Gen. David Petraeus, Commander, U.S. Central Command, said that more troops were on the way to Helmand:  "'The next group that deploys is a Stryker Brigade combat team — it's a very substantial force,' he said."[3]  --  But in a front-page story Friday, the New York Times reported that in Helmand Province, "much of the local population has accepted their rule and is watching the United States troop buildup with trepidation.  Villagers interviewed in late June said that they preferred to be left alone under Taliban rule and complained about artillery fire and airstrikes by foreign forces."[4]  --  "Thousands of people have already been displaced by fighting and taken refuge in the towns," said Carlotta Gall.  --  BACKGROUND:  In a background piece, the Christian Science Monitor reported Wednesday that "The area where U.S. Marines just launched one of their biggest operations in recent years was once known as 'little America.'  During much of the Cold War era, American expertise and money poured into Helmand Province, raising up towns from the desert through a massive irrigation project."[5]  --  The project was described in a 1961 volume by historian Arnold J. Toynbee, excerpted below;[6] also reproduced is his warning about the danger Afghanistan was running by accepting competing gifts from Cold War rivals.[7]  --  Toynbee's warning was a prescient one....

There are signs that a pattern of qualified diplomatic isolation is developing in the international community with regard to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, who was reelected last month in an election whose legitimacy many Iranians and international observers doubt, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.[1] ...

Given below is the schedule of books to be discussed in the month of July in UFPPC’s Monday evening book discussion group, Digging Deeper.[1]  --  Detailed synopses of many books discussed by the group in previous sessions are available online....

Reading Lester R. Brown’s Plan B 3.0 (2008) recently, we noted that his prescription for what to do about the climate crisis has nothing to say about money and finance.  --  But as Joshua Green writes in “The Elusive Green Economy,” an article in the new issue of the Atlantic, “The interplay of technology, policy, and finance has always determined the rate at which clean technologies advance.”[1]  --  Green uses “the lens of bankruptcy” to see more clearly what has driven the history of clean technology.  --  Ironically, the money-centered approach to fostering clean energy that the U.S. corporatocracy has taken has come a cropper in the recession.  --  “Congress seems never to have imagined that Wall Street might someday have no profits and need no tax equity.”  --  The Obama stimulus has been, among other things, “a way of rescuing the renewables industry from Wall Street’s collapse.”  --  No one knows what lies ahead.  --  As Sunil Paul, a founding partner of Spring Ventures, told Green: “Over the long haul, dramatic things happen to change the equation.  As I like to put it, the history of our future is filled with moon bases, jet packs, and 200-mph cars, but has no cell phones, no Internet, and no laptop computers.”  --  The point of departure of Joshua Green’s article is a 1977 essay by Amory Lovins in Foreign Affairs.  --  In that essay, Lovins described the U.S. as faced with a choice between a “hard path” of fossil-fuel and nuclear energy and a “soft path” of renewable energy.  --  Green thinks there is still a chance that the U.S. may be able to find its way back to the soft path from which it has strayed such a long, long way....

A firsthand account, translated below, of the violent beating of peaceful marchers in Tehran on June 20, the day after Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei announced that demonstrations would no longer be tolerated, was published on Monday in Libération (Paris)....

In a long analytical piece posted late Wednesday, the Washington Post surveyed a number of informed observers about the prospects for Iran's reformist movement:  Ahmad Sadri, a columnist for a reformist newspaper and chairman of Islamic world studies at Lake Forest College near Chicago, Farideh Farhi, an Iran expert at the Univ. of Hawaii, Trita Parsi, president of the D.C.-based National Iranian American Council and author of Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the U.S. (2007), Abbas Milani, director of Iranian studies at Stanford, and Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.[1]  --  There was little consensus on how the present crisis will evolve among the experts, who have been taken by surprise by the strength of the challenge to the hard-line establishment mounted by the reformist movement....

Analyzing Mir Hossein Mousavi's declaration Wednesday that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's new government is illegitimate, the London Guardian said that "Mousavi's language seemed chosen to suggest that the Islamic régime, which in the last two weeks has seen the worst unrest in 30 years, was betraying the basic principles of the 1979 revolution."[1]  --  Mousavi, a former prime minister, told his followers that "It is our historical responsibility to continue our protests and not to abandon our efforts to preserve the nation's rights."  --  "Mousavi also demanded an end to the régime's 'obsession' with security, the reform of electoral laws he believes were abused, the constitutional right to free political assembly, an end to restrictions on the media, and the right to set up independent television stations," Ian Black said.  --  But the strongest statement came from another defeated challenger, Mehdi Karroubi, who said:  "I don't consider this government legitimate.  I will continue the fight under any circumstances and using every means."  --  Analysts consulted by the Guardian were divided on whether the political élite could find a compromise solution to the crisis....

The Washington Post said late Wednesday that the three reformists' rejection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidency as illegitimate "appeared to dash the government's hopes of pressuring the opposition into accepting the disputed June 12 election."[1]  --  Thomas Erdbrink noted that Mir Hossein Mousavi is "risk[ing] arrest by urging followers to continue their protests," but also that the Iranian government is now "in a bind."  --  "If Iran's top leaders order the arrest of Mousavi and the political and religious figures who support him, they risk further undermining the country's complex system of religious and democratic governance."  --  "The three made clear that they do not oppose Iran's system of religious government, but they charged that the country is turning into a dictatorship," Erdbrink said.  --  The atmosphere in Tehran is tense:  "In Tehran late Wednesday, tens of thousands of residents shouted 'Allahu akbar!'  (God is great) from their balconies and rooftops, a form of protest supporting Mousavi and Karroubi.  But the only traffic on the capital's normally bustling streets appeared to be special police patrolling in black SUVs.  Main squares all over the city were empty, witnesses said, although Wednesday night is the traditional start of the Iranian weekend." ...

In an extraordinary and unexpected development, two days after the Guardian Council in Iran confirmed the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a coordinated series of statements and messages from reformists denounced him as lacking "political legitimacy," the Financial Times reported late Wednesday.[1]  --  In addition to a strong statement from Mir Hossein Mousavi, there were also statements from Mehdi Karroubi, the second reformist candidate, former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, and Mosharekat, Iran’s largest reformist party (whose leaders have been arrested).  --  "Mr. Mousavi on Wednesday urged his supporters to use their 'creativity' and find 'effective . . . ways' for continuing their protests," Najmeh Bozorgmehr reported....

Officials said the U.S. was taking a step toward leaving Iraq on Tuesday, June 30, 2009, pulling combat troops out of Iraqi cities in accordance with recently negotiated the Status of Forces Agreement (or SOFA) between Iraq and the U.S.  --  But AFP reported that the day was marred by a bomb that exploded in a market in the oil city of Kirkuk, killing 33 and wounding 92, and an announcement by the U.S. military that four more U.S. soldiers had been killed the previous day, bringing the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq to 4,321 in the more than six years since the 2003 invasion.[1]  --  Not that many people were paying attention.  --  Writing on the website of the Washington Post, Dan Balz marveled "that the transfer of power has been met almost with public indifference, overshadowed by everything from Michael Jackson's death to the fate of President Obama's domestic agenda."[2]  --  McClatchy News, bizareely, called the event "a rare if not unprecedented handoff of military sovereignty [sic] in an active war zone."[3]  --  The New York Times web site offered a sample of opinion, but the right-leaning mixture commentators resulted in comments tilting toward the sunnily optimistic.[4] ...

Writing in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens shed crocodile tears for Iran's persecuted demonstrators, complaining that Obama's Iran policy is timid, incoherent, and obsolete, and has achieved nothing.[1]  --  COMMENT:  What Stephens's article missed is that, as the Financial Times pointed out on Jun. 14, it is precisely the aspects of Obama's stance that the Journal's editorialists find so objectionable that have sown divisions inside the Iranian leadership and weakened the régime:  "The U.S. and its allies should remember it is engagement more than confrontation that unnerves the mullahs." ...

Despite his rhetoric, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is anything but a populist, Billy Wharton wrote on the website Dissident Voice on Sunday.  --  "Since his election in 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, under the guidance of the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, has overseen a régime dedicated to the privatization of state-controlled industries," he said, and documented his claim.[1]  --  Ahmadinejad has also "worked hand-in-hand with IMF privatizers" and has overseen "harsh restrictions on worker’s ability to organize."  --  In a response to reader, Wharton observed that "all too many leftists in the U.S. have developed a strange affinity for Ahmadinejad — seeing him as a progressive or anti-imperialist.  This is at time where the neoliberal policies he is carrying out are being disgraced globally."  --  NOTE:  Wharton is the editor of the bimonthly magazine The Socialist and the author of the March 15, 2009, Washington Post article "Obama Is No Socialist. I Should Know." ...

Right-wing zealot Daniel Pipes issued a "call for American boldness in Iran" on Thursday, reporting on his attendance at a Mujahedeen-e Khalq rally in Paris on Jun. 20 and urging "a stronger U.S. policy toward Tehran" to "stand up to the mullahs."[1]  --  COMMENT:  Pipes's approach would strengthen, not weaken, the repressive Iranian government.  --  UFPPC supports dialogue with Iran in spite of the current turmoil; such an approach fosters divisions within the theocratic Iranian leadership, whereas Pipes's helps solidify the régime's élite....

A student hoax won a 5,000-euro prize from Paris Match last week.  --  The popular magazine was taken in by a photo essay on student poverty in France, the London Independent reported Saturday.[1]  --  Guillaume Chauvin and Rémi Hubert of the École supérieure des arts décoratifs in Strasbourg revealed the hoax at the prize ceremony at the Sorbonne, reading a statement saying that they wanted to make a "powerful artistic gesture" attacking the "voyeurism" and gullibility of the press.  --  The jury gave them the trophy and the check anyway, but Paris Match later blocked payment.  --  A TV interview with the students has been posted on the France 3 website.[2]  --  In another interview, this one with L'Express, translated below, they said they were "look[ing] for a way of upsetting the supposed objectivity of photography."[3] ...

The Associated Press reported late Sunday that "Witnesses said riot police used tear gas and clubs to break up a crowd of up to 3,000 protesters who had gathered near north Tehran's Ghoba Mosque in the country's first major post-election unrest in four days."[1]  --  "Some described scenes of brutality, telling The Associated Press that some protesters suffered broken bones and alleging that police beat an elderly woman, prompting a screaming match with young demonstrators who then fought back," William J. Kole said.  --  "Sunday's clashes erupted at a rally that had been planned to coincide with a memorial held each year for Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, who came to be considered a martyr in the Islamic Republic after he was killed in a major anti-régime bombing in 1981."  --  "The Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights said its information suggests at least 2,000 arrests have been made — 'not just (people) arrested and later released, but who are locked up in prison,' the group's vice president, Abdol Karim Lahidji, told the AP."  --  Several posted on Sunday from Tehran show that there continue to be quite a few people chanting opposition slogans in streets where menacing security forces are a common sight, people are still being beaten bloody in the streets, and a tense atmosphere is palpable; video #4 is particularly interesting.[2,3,4,5] ...

"Iranian authorities arrested eight [later reports said nine] local employees of the British embassy in Tehran, accusing them of 'playing major parts' in the recent unrest over a presidential election, the semi-official Fars news agency reported today," the Los Angeles Times reported early Sunday.[1]  --  "All eight British embassy employees arrested were members of its political section," Borzou Daragahi said.  --  "Authorities with a search warrant detained at least one of the embassy staffers at his home Saturday morning.  Authorities brought him back to his apartment later in the evening and seized computers and documents."  --  At least one U.N. staffer has also been arrested in Tehran, Daragahi reported.  --  The Financial Times reported that by the end of Sunday in Tehran four of the nine had been released.[2] ...

Early Sunday, the first military coup in Central America since the end of the Cold War deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, who "flew into exile in Costa Rica," the New York Times reported.[1]  --  "Mr. Zelaya, who has the support of labor unions and the poor, is an ally of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela," Elisabeth Malkin said.  "During his three years in office, opposition to the president has mounted from the middle class and the wealthy business community who fear that he is planning to introduce Mr. Chávez’s brand of socialist populism into the country, one of Latin America’s poorest."  --  Like Chávez, Zelaya was attempting when he was overthrown to organize a referendum that would have permitted him to remain in power beyond the one-term limit imposed by the country's constitution.  --  "Last week, the Supreme Court and Congress both declared the referendum unconstitutional.  But on Thursday, the president led a group of protesters to an air force installation and seized the ballots, which the prosecutor’s office and the electoral tribunal had ordered confiscated.  --  After the armed forces commander, Romeo Vazquez, said that the military would not participate in the referendum, Mr. Zelaya fired him.  But the Supreme Court declared the firing illegal."  --  Stratfor called attention to the possibility of an imminent coup on Thursday, noting that "the armed forces appear to have the support of many governmental institutions."[2] ...

The youth who have demonstrated against the Iranian régime have not “gone home,” said the Los Angeles Times on Sunday.[1]  --  Rather they are “carefully weighing their options, balancing personal lives, economic well-being and political aspirations — and trying to determine whether they have any real leadership,” said Borzou Daragahi.  --  “Those caught up in the ‘green wave’ built on the presidential campaign of Mir Hossein Mousavi are still trying to understand what has happened to their country in the short space of a month.  According to conversations with dozens of analysts and ordinary people, most of whom did not want to be identified by their full names, their view of Iran and understanding of the rules that governed it for 30 years have changed dramatically.”  --  The New York Times said that even on the pro-Ahmadinejad side, “the sense of frustration, and despair, was palpable” in Tehran.[2]  --  Meanwhile, CNN said early Sunday that Amnesty International said Basijis have been rounded up wounded protesters from hospitals and taking them to undisclosed locations, and also that “Human Rights Watch, citing interviews with people in Iran, said Friday the Basij is carrying out brutal nighttime raids, destroying property in private homes and beating civilians in an attempt to stop nightly rooftop chants of ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is great).”[3] ...

Everybody has a theory about what’s really going on in Iran, and the theory usually matches the ideological proclivity of the rumormonger.  --  The Iranian ambassador to Mexico said Friday it was plausible that the CIA was responsible for the death of Neda Agha-Soltan.[1]  --  Meanwhile, the rumor is spreading in opposition circles “that 5,000 fighters from Lebanon had been brought in to suppress the demonstrations.  A Web site contributor recounted a conversation with a Basiji acknowledging their presence.”[2]  -- There is no hard evidence to support either hypothesis, but Tara Bahrampour of the Washington Post said that there is an “Iranian proclivity to believe that foreigners are behind major political events [that] goes back more than a century and has extended to the Russians, the Americans and, especially, the British.” ...

On Friday the London Guardian reported that Iranian opposition websites are claiming that “Jailed Iranian reformists have been tortured in an attempt to force them into TV ‘confessions’ of a foreign-led plot against the Islamic regime.”[1]  --  “Mostafa Tajzadeh, Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, and Mohsen Aminzadeh, all Mousavi supporters, are reported to have undergone ‘intensive interrogation’ sessions in Tehran's Evin prison since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election,” Robert Tait and Ian Black said.  --  “Prisoners reportedly heard screams from Tajzadeh and Ramezanzadeh in Evin's section 209, which is reserved for political prisoners and is run by the hardline intelligence ministry.  Aminzadeh, a former deputy foreign minister, was heard shouting:  ‘I am not going to give interviews.’”  --  “Amnesty International said the reports came from ‘very credible sources,’” Tait and Black said....

Chinese officials are instituting a campaign against internet pornography “that many China experts see as a harbinger of a broader crackdown on freedom of expression and dissent,” the New York Times reported Friday.[1]  --  “They have also forced Google to disable a function that lets the search engine suggest terms,” Keith Bradsher said.  --  “In addition, Chinese bloggers say they have detected evidence of a concerted effort to stain Google’s image.  They say that someone in Beijing manipulated Google’s software to make it more likely to suggest a pornographic search term during a state television broadcast.  --  At the same time, the government seems to have stepped up harassment of human rights advocates.”  --  “The same public security agencies charged with fighting pornography are responsible for suppressing illegal political activity, said Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher in Hong Kong for Human Rights Watch.”  --  In China, “Internet cafes must be wired to the nearest police station and provide a continuous, instantaneous record of who is using which computer,” Bradsher said.  “If an e-mail message from a cafe’s computer later catches the attention of investigators, the police can review the video records to see who was using the computer.” ...

As the June 30 deadline for withdrawing American combat forces from Iraqi cities draws near, the figure they set up in power, Nouri al-Maliki, is “calling the withdrawal of American combat troops from Iraq’s cities by next Tuesday a ‘great victory,’ a repulsion of foreign occupiers he compares to the rebellion against British troops in 1920,” and “the Americans are going along with it,” the New York Times reported in its lead story Friday.[1]  --  “With the deadline now only days away, a drastically reshaped American military posture has emerged, largely because of Mr. Maliki’s insistence.”  --  “More than 150 American bases or outposts have been closed in Iraqi cities this year — 85 percent of the total, an Iraqi official said — including some that commanders considered crucial.”  --  How much of this is just for show is hard to determine, Steven Lee Myers and Marc Santora suggested.  --  “Thousands of American troops will remain in Baghdad and other cities, merely shifting their role from combat to training and advising.  So far there are no restrictions yet on the American use of helicopters, a regular reminder overhead of remaining firepower.  --  The Americans have been strikingly sensitive to Mr. Maliki’s political position, emphasizing Iraqi primacy in all public remarks.”  --  Moreover, “Gen. Ray Odierno, the overall American commander in Iraq, has ordered that an increasing number of basic operations — transport and resupply convoys, for example — take place at night, when fewer Iraqis are likely to see that the American withdrawal is not total.”  --  Some believe the deadline is a prelude to a resumption of civil war in Iraq:  “’When the Americans get out of city centers, a big war will start,’ a woman who identified herself as Um Hussan said amid the wreckage of a bombing on Monday outside her house in the Ur neighborhood of Baghdad. . . . ‘We ask God to help us for what is coming,’ she said.” ...

Ahmad Khatami, a “senior Iranian cleric,” denounced anti-Ahmadinejad protesters as guilty of moharem, or waging war against God, “a crime in Islamic law, punishable by death,” Voice of America News reported Friday.[1]  --  “On Friday, Iran's Guardian Council rejected allegations of fraud, calling the disputed June 12 presidential election the cleanest vote the country has ever had.”  --  L.A. Times blogger Jeffrey Fleishman also quoted Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, as saying: “I want the judiciary to . . . punish leading rioters firmly and without showing any mercy to teach everyone a lesson."[2]  --  Reuters also quoted him:  “"Based on Islamic law, whoever confronts the Islamic state . . . should be convicted as mohareb,' he said in a speech broadcast live on state media.”[3]  --  NOTE: We may all be grateful to Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami for reminding us of what is wrong with the concept of theocracy.  --  We have the Enlightenment to thank for overthrowing the legitimacy of this political philosophy, and also to thank for the growth of an all too generous political correctness that ascribes too much respect to the theoretical foundations of the Islamic Repubic of Iran.  --  This is not a matter of the respect due to foreign cultures, however, as we see from the fact that the American tradition, too, has had its highly influential theocrats.  --  For example, the Puritan divine who was so enormously powerful that he was sometimes called “The Patriarch of New England,” John Cotton (1585-1652) said, in The Bloody Tenant Washed and Made White in the Blood of the Lamb (1647):  “Democracy, I do not conceive that ever God did ordain as a fit government either for church or commonwealth.  If the people be governors, who will be governed?  As for monarchy, and aristocracy, they are both for them clearly approved, and directed in Scripture, yet so as [God] referreth the sovereignty to Himself, and setteth up Theocracy in both, as the best form of government in the commonwealth, as well as in the church.”  --  Such doctrines empowered the Salem witch trials of 1692-1693, in which about two dozen people lost their lives and hundreds more were ostracized; the reaction to these injustices played an important role in discrediting theocracy in America....

Stratfor says it has learned that the death of Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) (which used to be called the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), is imminent.[1]  --  Long suffering from lung cancer, al-Hakim’s demise “comes at a very critical time, considering that he has been a key player in both U.S. and Iranian plans for post-Baathist Iraq.”  --  Since ISCI is “the largest and most pro-Iranian Shiite political party,” Stratfor opined, “[a] loss of a key foreign policy asset at a time of intense domestic turmoil limits the extent to which Tehran can counter Washington’s moves to finalize the security environment in Iraq.” ...