I Love That Word REFOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRMM!

      Now this is interesting. Goodness only knows how all of this will unfold, but such gestures remind me of the last-ditch efforts of the dying-guards in East Germany and Romania just over a decade ago. Problem, though: the same gestures have worked in spades in China and North Korea. So, who knows how this will turn out. My point, as much as I have one, is this: for all the current talk about establishing democracy in Iraq (yeah, right, that's exactly the Americans want in Iraq, especially if the populace votes for fundamentalist leaders), the real proof of any changes in the political air of the Middle East will come from Iran, the only country in the Middle East that has truly known theocratic government, and also the only country with a viable reformist movement. This is a Draconian gesture, and it will either prove a consolidation of power by the mullahs, or it will prove a desperate, and self-dooming, act by a group aware that its power base is eroding. Let us hope the latter; somehow, it would be appropriate if the Iranian theocratic hardliners met, er, shall we say, such a Farsical end. Oh, I know, that is a bad one. Forgive me.