From South Africa’s Mail & Guardian, from wire sources, Feb. 15: Italian minister to wear Muhammad cartoon T-shirt A prominent Italian government figure planned on Wednesday to wear a T-shirt sporting cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that have sparked violent… Read moreSartorial front in “cartoon jihad”?
Yet more evidence of the Western democracies’ sterling commitment to freedom of expression. From the Washington Post: LONDON, Feb. 15 — The House of Commons on Wednesday backed a bill that would make “glorification” of terrorism a criminal offense, a… Read moreUK: anti-free speech measure advances
Bosnian Muslims burned the Croatian flag in front of the country’s Sarajevo embassy Feb. 8, in a protest over the publication of the Danish cartoons in a Croatian weekly magazine. Hundreds of Bosnian Muslims also protested at the Danish, Norwegian… Read moreBosnia: Croatian flag burned in cartoon protest
Sent by Mahmood Ketabchi, an exiled follower of the Worker Communist Party of Iran now living in New Jersey and active in support work for workers’ and women’s movements in Iran and Iraq. Emphasis added. Defend Freedom of Press—and the… Read more“Defend the right to blasphemy”
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
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
From London News, Jan. 22: Kosovo president Ibrahim Rugova died on Saturday aged 61, after a long fight with lung cancer. Mr Rugova was a key player fighting for peace in the region for more than a decade. He took… Read moreKosova independence leader Ibrahim Rugova dead at 61
From The Scotsman, Jan. 12: A man armed with a knife wounded several people, including a rabbi, at a synagogue in Moscow yesterday. One Jewish official said the man called out as he burst into the building: “I will kill… Read moreMoscow: slasher attack at synagogue
As if the controversy over the Basque country wasn’t enough, now a Spanish general rattles the proverbial sabre over moves by Catalonia, Spain’s most industrialized region, to seek greater autonomy from Madrid. A lovely irony: as the world waits for… Read moreSpain: top general warns of war over Catalan autonomy
Tensions are mounting between Russia and Ukraine over the former’s massive hike in the price of natural gas it sells to the latter. Ukraine has until now received cut-price gas in return for allowing Russia to pipe fuel across its… Read moreMoscow-Kiev tensions escalate
From The Scotsman, Dec. 26: French police said about 100 vehicles were burned overnight, which marked an average weekend tally for urban violence and did not signify a flare-up of violence after riots last month. Some French regions have banned… Read moreFrance: car burnings back to “average”
From the BBC, Dec. 19: Spanish police have arrested 14 people suspected of being members of an Islamist extremist group, with links to al-Qaeda. The arrests were made in the southern towns of Malaga, Nerja and Seville. Spanish police say… Read moreSpain: more al-Qaeda busts?
