some general vaguely middle east stuff

Wrote too soon the other day when waxing enthusiastic about the new Palestinian government – four killed and many wounded in a massive suicide bombing in Tel Aviv yesterday, the first bombing targeting civilians since November 1. Hopefully a minor setback, as relationships have been slowly improving since Arafat’s death. Of course it was more or less inevitable that some suicide bombing would still occur, given the rage of so many Palestinians.
Through blogger, I’ve uncovered Baghdad Burning, apparently written by an Iraqi woman, clearly of the moderate persuasion, bemoaning the situation now that, apparently, the forces backed by al-Sistani are the big winners out of the election. A major turn towards Iran. And of course given the appalling Iranian crack-down on bloggers critical of the regime, blogs such as this become more heroic, and more essential.