From the Times of India, Feb. 19: ISLAMABAD: Security forces put a cordon around the Pakistani capital and made hundreds of arrests, before using tear gas and gunfire to quash a banned protest Sunday against cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad,… Read moreTear gas and gunfire in Islamabad
The anti-cartoon protests in Pakistan seem to be mounting towards a national revolutionary movement. The government has banned the latest march in Islamabad, arrested some 200 followeres of the organization that called it, and placed its leader under house arrest…. Read moreProtests banned in Pakistan; opposition vows defiance
On Feb. 14, some 1,500 immigrants and supporters rallied at Philadelphia’s Independence Mall to protest HR 4437, a harsh anti-immigrant bill passed by the House of Representatives last Dec. 16 and due to be considered by the Senate in March…. Read moreValentine’s Day action for immigrants’ rights
Immigrant rights advocates rallied in New York and Philadelphia on Feb. 14 to protest the treatment of a Chinese woman, three months pregnant, who miscarried twins while immigration authorities tried to deport her from JFK airport in New York on… Read moreWoman miscarries during deportation
On Feb. 9, Palestinian immigrant Waheed Saleh filed a lawsuit against the city of New York in US District Court in Manhattan, charging that police reported him to immigration authorities in retaliation for his complaints about police discrimination. The lawsuit… Read morePalestinian immigrant sues NYC
From the New York Times, emphasis added. We say it is a credit to New York’s tolerant (some would say blasé) atmosphere that the city’s anti-cartoon protest was peaceful and the attitude of its leaders openly humanistic—although there were, as… Read moreNYC: anti-cartoon protest peaceful
As we recently noted in the case of Iran, the Bush administration seems divided between Pentagon hardliners who seek a military solution and State Department pragmatists who would pursue a peaceful “regime change” scenario in Syria. But these are not… Read moreUS to fund Syria “regime change”
Its amazing how much the New York Times can say without directly saying it. In today’s edition are twin front-page stories on Darfur and Chad. Read together they convey much more about US interests in the Sahel than either states… Read moreBush sees new NATO role in Darfur; Chad oil project in background
The Niger Delta, in Nigeria’s south, has long been beset by ethnic struggles over distribution of the region’s oil wealth. Now the north, where Muslim-Christian tensions have long simmered, is boiling over—ostensibly over the cartoon controversy, but one wonders what… Read moreNorthern Nigeria explodes
With the world’s attention distracted by some off-color cartoons, it looks like we’ve got a little domestic Abu Ghraib developing in Los Angeles. The official hand-wringing about “core values” is as nauseating as it is requisite. From the LA Times,… Read moreLA County gets “Abu Ghraib”?
Indonesia’s Environment Ministry is evidently caught between ecologists and nationalists demanding a tougher line on foreign corporate polluters and a judiciary that seems beholden to the corporate shadow government. The New York Times noted Feb. 17 that under the terms… Read moreIndonesians see “slap in face” in corporate pollution settlement
Readers will recall that this is the same James E. Hansen who was threatened with "dire consequences" from the Bush administration's ideological enforcers at NASA if he continued to call for action to cut emissions of greenhouse gases. From the… Read moreGreenland ice cap melting fast: satellite data
