From Amnesty International, Feb. 28: The recent spate of killings of civilians is a serious and deliberate breach of international humanitarian law, Amnesty International said today in response to reports of killings of civilians attributed to the Revolutionary Armed Forces… Read moreColombia: Amnesty blasts FARC
The conventional wisdom is that Libya’s Mommar Qadaffi is defanged and domesticated. Recent events, however, indicate a strategic tilt back towards the bellicose on the part of the savvy despot. A cabinet shake-up favoring the hardliners comes on the heels… Read moreLibya tilts to hardliners, threatens Italy
From the London Times, March 5: THE war in Iraq is her father’s business but Elizabeth Cheney, the American vice-president’s daughter, has been given responsibility for bringing about a different type of regime change in Iran. Cheney, a 39-year-old mother… Read moreCheney daughter leads Iran “regime change” campaign
Freedom’s on the march. From BBC, March 6: Amnesty International has said that thousands of detainees held by the multinational forces in Iraq are still being denied their basic rights. The group said the lessons of the Abu Ghraib prison… Read moreIraq: Amnesty blasts continued torture and detention
From Bloomberg, March 5: U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Peter Pace said Iraq isn’t on the brink of civil war and that there isn’t any deadline for withdrawing American and coalition troops from the country. While acknowledging that Iraq… Read moreGen. Pace: no civil war in Iraq —but US troops not going anywhere
On the subject of free speech. From The Telegraph, March 5: Shia musicians in Iraq are raising sectarian tensions by producing “gangsta-rap” songs in which they call for Shias to kill Sunnis. The hate-filled lyrics of singers such as Riyadh… Read moreIraq: Islamo-gangsta rap promotes sectarian cleansing
We recently noted that Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has blamed the US and Israel for the Samarra mosque attack. Now, right on cue, the Iranian armed opposition group Mujadedeen Khalq issues a statement (in the name of its ostensibly civilian… Read morePropaganda and the Samarra blast
I know some of you out there think “Islam is the problem.” But stupidity, it appears, is an equal-opportunity employer. From AP, March 2: NAZARETH, Israel, March 3 – A distraught Israeli couple entered one of Christianity’s holiest sites on… Read moreIsraelis attack Christian shrine
From the BBC, March 3: Pakistan telecom authorities have blocked several websites inviting people to draw cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, it has emerged. Instructions were issued to internet service providers across Pakistan on 27 February to block about a… Read morePakistan blocks bloggers
Once again this year, joyous rituals traditionally held at the celebration of Phagwah, the Hindu Festival of Colors, in the Queens neighborhood of Richmond Hill were proscribed by official paranoia over anthrax attack. From Newsday, March 2: Anthrax fears have forced organizers… Read moreNYC: anthrax paranoia dims Hindu Festival of Colors
Pejman Akbarzadeh, a member of the Tehran chapter of Artists Without Frontiers and the author of a two-volume work on Persian music, writes in response to Melody Zagami’s review in our March issue of Nasrin Alavi’s book We Are Iran:… Read more“Farsi” or “Persian”?
From the Times of India, March 2: Britain’s far right British National Party (BNP) has handed out thousands of leaflets showing the controversial Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed, reports said on Thursday. According to reports, the BNP, a small… Read moreBritish xenophobes distribute Danish cartoons
