“Historic” storm brings severe winds, heavy rain to Atlantic Canada, eastern Quebec

HALIFAX - Hundreds of thousands of customers are without power across Atlantic Canada as post-tropical storm Fiona makes landfall over Nova Scotia's eastern Guysborough County.

The Canadian Hurricane Centre said early Saturday that Fiona is expected to pass through Cape Breton Saturday morning, and then reach the Quebec Lower North Shore and Southeastern Labrador by late evening.

The agency says hurricane force wind gusts have already been recorded over eastern mainland Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, Prince Edward Island, Îles-de-la-Madeleine, and southwestern Newfoundland, and tropical storm force winds will spread into eastern Quebec, and southeastern Labrador Saturday.

The storm, characterized as "historic'' in its scope by meteorologists, is also forecasted to bring between 100 to 200 millimetres of rain across much of Atlantic Canada and eastern Quebec, with more than 200 millimetres expected to fall in areas closer to the storm's path.

Iran is a state run by a radical government victimizing its citizens and its neighbours. How do we change that? Any regime change that repeats the mistakes of the past is not a solution.

What went wrong in the past which led to the current regime? One answer is the U.K. and American aided coup which led to the ouster in 1953 of a democratically elected government headed at the time by Mohammad Mossadegh and its replacement with an American friendly autocrat, the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

The Shah imposed his rule through the Iranian National Intelligence and Security Organization — SAVAK, the acronym of its Persian name. SAVAK systematically inflicted torture, arbitrary killings and extra-judicial killings on perceived opponents of the regime. It was only a matter of time before repression of a regime directed to serving foreign interests would be overthrown.

What replaced the regime of the Shah, in 1979, the current regime of the mullahs, is a regime as intolerant and violent as the regime of the Shah and then some. That was not inevitable. But neither was it surprising. The vicious nature of the current regime, following the example set by the Shah, and its hatred for the United States, reacting to the U.S. aided imposition of the Shah, both echoes and reacts to the past. In 1979, the U.S. reaped what it sowed in 1953.