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
From China’s The Standard, March 3: US President George W Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Thursday sealed what they hailed as an “historic” nuclear deal, seen as the bedrock of a new strategic partnership. Capping eight months of… Read moreUS signs nuclear pact with India
Gee, that didn’t take long, did it? CBS, March 2: Police say at least one bomb near the U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, killed four people and injured 49 others early Thursday. Explosions ripped through the parking lot of the… Read morePakistan: terror blast at US consulate
Nope, no imminent civil war in Iraq, Bush says. If this was anywhere else in the world, we would recognize it as already a civil war… Armed expulsions of Shiites. Washington Post, March 1: BAGHDAD, Feb. 28 — Salim Rashid,… Read moreIraq: “sectarian cleansing”
India’s long and forgotten war with the Maoist Naxalite rebels in the impoverished east claims scores of lives in Chattisgarh state just as Bush arrives in the country. Note that the right-wing BJP is forming anti-guerilla paramilitary groups in the… Read moreIndia: Maoists attack as Bush arrives
From AFP, March 1, via Middle East Times. A glimmer of hope, we suppose—but even Khatami equivocates on the numbers. Iran’s former reformist president Mohammad Khatami has described the Holocaust as a “historical reality” – a stinging attack on his… Read moreIran: Khatami dissents from Holocaust revisionism
