Degeneracy of Iranian Islamic Republic. Rape of Women in Iranian Prisons.

Under Iran's Islamic law a virgin cannot be executed. An ex prison guard has revealed how this problem is circumvented. The virgin is simply "married" to a guard who then rapes her legitimately as her "husband" on the eve of her execution. After he has raped his victim the "husband" can divorce his "wife" so that she can then be "married" raped and "divorced" by a succession of prison officials and their mates. Girls as young as nine have been dispatched in this way. This is not just gross misogeny, this is pure degeneracy.
The "marriage" and subsequent rape of women prisoners is of course not restricted to virgins. All women in Iranian prisons can be and are very often raped in this Islamic way.

Global Cooling and Increasing CO2 Concentrations.

Despite increasing atmospheric CO2, the global temperatures have recently shown a gentle decrease. Increasing CO2 is not without its problems such as acidification of the seas. It doesn't however seem to have had any upward pushing effect on world temperature .
The importance of the graph above lies in the fact that if CO2 was having a significant warming effect, the troposphere where it resides would have to show warming. It clearly does not.

Meanwhile, the possible prime controller of our temperature, the sun, continues to remain in an unusually quite state with a protracted absence of spots. The last time the sun had a period of inactivity of this duration was in the early nineteen tens. A century ago.

No spots means a reduced solar magnetic field reaching out to deflect from the earth deep space cosmic rays that seed clouds that in their turn cool the planet. The last time there was a major period of solar spotlessness ( the Maunder Minimum in the 17thC ) the Thames froze over.

Obama Makes a Calibrated Appeal to the Islamic World.

This is a bit late but as they say in France "jamais trop tard pour bien faire".

Qom and Gone.

Dream scenario. Mousavi's Qom fanatics gain enough strength to take on Ahmadinejad's fanatics. They come to blows. They wipe each other out. Iranian Islamic Republic: gone. Could happen.

Happy Birthday America

Still, and lets hope hope for a long while yet, Democracy's Arsenal.

Well, you haven't always behaved in an exemplary way. Like in Latin America. For all that though, the world would be a much grimmer place without you. 7/10.

Mousavi Biography

The avuncular looking "reformer" was born to a tea merchant in Kharmeneh east Iran on 29th September 1941. Student activist in Freedom Movement of Iran a nationalistic religious party. Got a master's degree in architecture 1969 at the National University of Teheran. After demise of Shah in 1979, he was a founding member of the Islamic Republic. For, amongst other demonstrations of loyalty, his support of Ayatollah Khomeni's execution of several thousand of the new regime's opponents, he was appointed prime minister in 1981. Held the post til the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1989.

In 1982 he was a founding member of Hezbollah and on it's leadership council. In 1984 he created, along the lines of the KGB, the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). MOIS is the principle organisation that powers and directs the ayatollah's reign of oppression and terror. It is responsible for the detention, torture and execution of dissidents at home, terror and the liquidation of opponents abroad. While he was still Prime Minister in 1989, a further at least six thousand dissidents according to Amnesty were murdered. The total toll of those put to death on his watch has yet to be established and will in time see his indictment in the Hague on crimes against humanity charges.

From 1989 to 2009, Mousavi was out of front stage politics, probably active behind the scene, passing his time officially as a teacher of architecture with painting as a hobby.