From Reporters Without Borders, Dec. 8: The 2005 Reporters Without Borders/Fondation de France prize in the “cyberdissident” category was awarded on 7 December to Massoud Hamid. He was arrested in July 2004 and sentenced to three years in prison for… Read moreSyrian photojournalist wins “cyber-freedom” award
You can’t make this stuff up. From the Jerusalem Post, Dec. 8: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continued his anti-Israel rhetoric Thursday afternoon, denying the Holocaust and calling on Germany and Austria to create a Jewish State within their borders, Israel… Read moreTehran: send Jews back to Germany; Berlin: “totally unacceptable”
A Dec. 6 commentary by Jalal Ghazi on Pacific News Service notes that last month’s Jordan suicide attack killed a film director beloved throughout the Arab world—making Arab commentators more vocal and daring than ever in condemning terrorism. One month… Read moreFilm director’s death in Jordan terror sparks Arab outrage
The current (Dec. 1) issue of The Economist includes a profile of “China’s far west”—a region variously known as Xinjiang (to the Chinese), or East Turkestan or Uighurstan to its indigenous inhabitants, the Turkic and Muslim Uighurs. After providing some… Read moreChina builds pipeline through restive Uighurstan
The patrician wonks at the Council on Foreign Relations raise the alarm in a January report that Africa will be increasingly strategic to global energy security in the coming century—and that China is beating the US to the punch in… Read moreDarfur: pawn in US-China oil war?
From Amnesty International, Dec. 7: Eritrea: Government must end religious persecution “You will receive no visitors and you will rot here until you sign this paper.” The reported words of an Eritrean military commander to Helen Berhane, a well known… Read moreEritrea cracks down on gospel singers
From Amnesty International, Dec. 7: Rendition and ‘disappearances’ in the ‘war on terror’ 800 secret CIA flights into and out of Europe Amnesty International has revealed that six planes used by the CIA for renditions have made some 800 flights… Read moreAmnesty International documents CIA “rendition” flights
Nice sentiments. Now we wonder if the good king will abolish public flogging, as demanded by Amnesty International. Dec. 7: MECCA, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah appealed to Muslim leaders on Wednesday to unite and tackle extremists… Read moreKing Abdullah: Islam in crisis
We wrote in our last post on the Egyptian elections: The first-round results cast a dubious light on the apparent assumption of the neocons that a wave of democratic revolutions in the Arab and Islamic worlds will bring pro-West “moderates”… Read moreElectoral violence in Egypt
Perhaps some of our Eritrean readers could explain the logic of this decision: ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) – Eritrea has ordered the expulsion of U.S., Canadian and European staff of the U.N. peacekeeping mission that monitors the tense border with… Read moreEritrea expels UN troops
Similar dynamics on both sides of the Caspian Sea. We recently noted unrest over contested elections in Azerbaijan, where the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline has just opened. Now Kazakhstan—slated to be connected to the new pipeline by a link across the Caspian—seems… Read moreKazakhstan: “regime change” next?
Here’s the exact quote, as reported in the New York Times Dec. 7: “I am Saddam Hussein!” the former ruler said repeatedly, shaking his fist. “Like the path of Mussolini, to resist occupation to the end, that is Saddam Hussein,”… Read moreIts official: Ramsey Clark supports fascism
