Sincetheir attempt to get Denmark's Jyllands-Posten prosecuted for hate crimes or blasphemy failed, a group of 27 Muslim organizations have now launched a defamation suit against the newspaper over cartoons the paper printed back in ...   more »

Labour lawyer Thomas Geoghehan quite likes The Disposable American, by NYT economics writer Louis Uchitelle.

This BBC piece looks at the pressures on Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai as he wiggled Abdul Rahman off the hook of an apostasy charge by having the Muslim-turned-Christian declared mentally incompetent.

It's a decent general overview of the case at this point.

The fun fact: No one has ever been executed in Afghanistan for apostasy, even under the Taliban.

Here's a journo-centric bit of info:

In similar cases in recent years, two Afghan editors accused of blasphemy both faced the death sentence, but one claimed asylum abroad and the other was freed after a short spell in jail.

And here's a related story: Italy mulls Afghan convert asylum

What the hell, one more: What Islam says on religious freedom

Technology journalist Edward Tenner wonders if the brilliant technology behind Google has had a negative impact on the critical faculties of students, who used to have to work their brains to create a decent search query.

In addition, he criticizes Google for basing search results in part on links to a page, which he likens to citation analysis in the natural sciences -- a practice which could leave some very useful information buried.

The parliamentary vote in Ukraine on Sunday was billed as a contest between the blues of the pro-Russia, old skool forces led by Victor Yanukovych, and the orange, pro-Western reformists led by Viktor Yushchenko -- with the followers of former Yushchenko ally Yulia Tymoshenko thrown in.

The NYT has obtained a memo of a meeting between Dubya and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Snippets of that memo that made the rounds of the British media a few months ago. While not strictly new news, the NYT account does offer claim to offer much more detail.

The slow pace of reform and economic pressure by Russia has dampened the enthusiasm of some supporters of Ukraine's Orange Revolution, led by pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko. Voters there are going to the polls today, and the old-skool, pro-Russian forces led by Viktor Yanukovych are expected to make gains.

A new book by Louis Uchitelle, an economics writer for the NYT, is getting released on Tuesday: The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences -- a topic near and dear to my heart. :)

Here's an excerpt of an article based on that book entitled, "Retraining laid-off workers, but for what?":

A year ago, the corrupt government of Askar Akayev was peacefully replaced in the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan. However, the country's problems haven't exactly gone away.

Democracy Now! had some guests expand on the story I posted earlier this week about the Lincoln Group's public opinion manipulation efforts in Iraq on behalf of the Pentagon.

There were some late reports Friday that Abdul Rahman, the Afghanistan man who converted to Christianity from Islam, might be freed.

However, Muslim clerics in Afghanistan are still calling for his death, so if the state doesn't kill him, one could be forgiven for wondering if private parties will.

A March 23 NYT editorial on the Abdul Rahman case:

What's the point of the United States' propping up the government of Afghanistan if it's not even going to pretend to respect basic human rights? President Bush himself said it was "deeply troubling" that an Afghan man is facing the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity.

In fact, the case is more than deeply troubling; it's barbaric, and we were glad that Mr. Bush promised yesterday to press for religious freedom in Afghanistan. The Afghan man, Abdul Rahman, was arrested two weeks ago. His parents reported him to the police for converting to Christianity 16 years earlier while working for a Christian aid organization in Peshawar, Pakistan. He was hauled before a judge, where he said he had no regrets. "If he doesn't revert back to Islam, he's going to receive the death penalty, according to the law," an Afghan Supreme Court judge told Agence France-Presse.

And maybe Afghanistan should also return to stoning women to death for adultery? The United States, Britain and every other country helping the Afghan government should take a hard look at its legal institutions. Muslim leaders would also do well to condemn this strongly; those who continue to hold the teachings of Islam hostage to intolerance do grievous harm to their religion.

There appears to be a move afoot to declare Mr. Rahman mentally incompetent as a way to avoid the mess. That would be a cheap trick because the law would remain on the books. Afghanistan is not the only American ally that enforces cruel religious laws. But this is a country that was liberated from the Taliban by American troops and whose tenuous peace is enforced by those troops. If Afghanistan wants to return to the Taliban days, it can do so without the help of the United States.

According to a March 24 NYT story, the judge in the case of an Afghan Muslim charged with converting to Christianity isn't particularly concerned with international opinion. Abdul Rahman isn't necessarily out of the woods when it comes to facing the death penalty.

While Venezuela is seeing its fair share of high-profile visitors these days, some less luminous folk also want to be there for what they see as a changing point in history.

How Russians rebelled against the punishment handed out to an ordinary guy, who, through no fault of his own, was involved in the fatal car crash of a big shot.

The blurb from an NYT story about training the Iraqi army:

U.S. troops are trying to train Iraqi security forces to battle the Sunni-led insurgency without resorting to abductions, torture and murder.