From AP, Feb. 9: A suicide bomber struck Thursday in Pakistan on the holiest festival for Shiite Muslims, triggering a riot that left a provincial town in flames and at least 27 people dead and more than 50 wounded. After… Read moreAshura violence in Pakistan, Afghanistan
An informative and insightful, if somewhat problematic, commentary from Egypt’s Al-Ahram Weekly. Anjali Kamat argues that the cartoons are not merely “offensive” but propagandistic, and that leaving racism out of the simplistic “free speech/Islamic intolerance” equation is to miss the… Read morePropaganda and the cartoon controversy, Pt. 2
An ominous juxtaposition of two news items. First, the anti-immigrant vigilante group known has the Minutemen rallied at the Capitol Building in Washington as the Senate debates a get-tough immigration bill already passed by the House. The Minuteman rally was… Read moreWar coming to Mexican border?
A victory for free speech and historical memory was declared last month when charges were dropped against Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, who had dared to invoke the World War I genocide of the Armenians, as well as more recent persecution… Read moreTurkey: free speech on trial —again
This is cute. Just as the cartoon controversy is being portrayed as evidence of Western values of “free speech” versus inherent Islamic intolerance, comes the conviction of Shiekh Abu Hamza al-Masri in Britain—on charges of, basically, expressing his opinions publicly. That he… Read moreAl-Masri conviction reveals “free speech” double standard
Brian Tokar reports for February’s Z Magazine on the recently-concluded Montreal talks on global climate change, aimed at implementing the Kyoto agreement. What’s really dangerous is that this agreement—which the Bush administration is refusing to join, of course—was already essentially… Read moreUS sidetracks Montreal climate talks
A round-up on the Feb. 7 BBC shows how the crisis over the anti-Islam cartoons published in Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten (and since reprinted in Norway and other European countries) is spinning out of control. The protests sweeping the Muslim world have… Read morePropaganda and the cartoon controversy
As we noted in November, Noam Chomsky appears to have utterly lost his moral compass in his advancing years, jumping on the Bosnia revisionism bandwagon and, in one unsavory incident, engaging in blatanly censorious behavior towards a writer who dared… Read moreOnce more into the breach: Chomsky and Bosnia
The ongoing White House attempt to politicize science makes the front page of the New York Times. Now let’s get this straight: Bush wants to go to Mars, but is so beholden to the anti-science religious right that he wants… Read moreNASA chief bucks White House on science suppression
Two Jordanian soldiers from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) were shot dead and another was injured on Jan. 17 in clashes with unidentified armed assailants in the Drouillard neighborhood of Port-au-Prince’s impoverished Cite Soleil section. One soldier… Read moreHaiti: UN troops killed
The Associated Press reports Jan. 24 the arrest of police officers in Basra by British troops. What is not reported is that move has prompted an official protest from the Basra Governate. First, from the AP: British troops launched a… Read moreBrits arrest Basra police; governate protests
The trial of Saddam Hussein continues to get more problematic. From the London Times, Jan. 24: THE court trying Saddam Hussein has replaced its chief judge a day before the former dictator returns to the dock. The Iraqi Special Tribunal… Read moreSaddam’s new judge from Halabja
