MANY IRANIAN UNIVERSITIES BAR WOMEN FROM TAKING COURSES

This is an outrageous day for women's education in Iran.  Today, rules prohibiting women from taking over 80 courses take effect in many Iranian universities.

Prohibited classes include English literature and nuclear physics.

Fariba Sahraebi writes in today's BBC online:

"With the start of the new Iranian academic year, a raft of restrictions on courses open to female students has been introduced, raising questions about the rights of women to education in Iran - and the long-term impact such exclusions might have.

More than 30 universities have introduced new rules banning female students from almost 80 different degree courses.

These include a bewildering variety of subjects from engineering, nuclear physics and computer science, to English literature, archaeology and business."

U.S. ARMY'S ACCUSATION OF IRAN JUST SO MUCH SPIN

I have been long suspicious of the Bush/Cheney claim that Iran is supplying powerful IED's and shaped charges to Iraqi "insurgents" used to kill U.S. troops. There has been absolutely no evidence, not one piece of evidence that would hold up to scrutiny in any court of law. These unfounded assertions just seem like so much spin, to back up Bush/Cheney mistrust of Islamic Iran, and to provide the basis for preparing American people for an attack against Iran and Iranians.

So this morning's post by Juan Cole shows this spin from recent events involving the killing of the governor and police chief of Qadisiya Province. Both died as a result of a powerful roadside bomb. Both were members of the Badr organization, originally founded in Teheran in the 1980's.

Writes Juan Cole:

"Gov. Khalil Jalil Hamza, of the Badr Organization and police chief Maj-Gen Khaled Hassan were returning to Diwaniyah from a funeral. This kind of incident is one reason for which I am very suspicious the Pentagon story that Iran is providing roadside bombs to militias in Iraq. Look, the Badr Corps, the paramilitary of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, was formed in Tehran in the 1980s, trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and may still be in some part on the Iranian payroll. So Iran is sitting pretty, with a Badr commander as governor of Qadisiya province. And having gotten their guy into power, they would kill him in cooperation with scruffy anti-Persian Mahdi Army goons--- why? That roadside bomb did not come from Iran; if Iran was going to give such bombs to anyone, it would be the Badr Corps itself, not the enemies of Badr."