From the BBC:

Thousands of people in Afghanistan have been protesting against the reprinting of cartoons in Danish newspapers they say are insults to Islam.

At the scene of the biggest protest, in the western city of Herat, police say more then 10,000 people took to the streets to denounce Denmark.

They also condemned the planned release of a Dutch film critical of the Koran.

They burned Dutch and Danish flags, and called for their troops to be removed from the Nato force in Afghanistan.

Saturday's protests have been the largest in the last two weeks in Afghanistan.

The crowd size estimate from an AP reporter was 5,000 in Herat. But still, that's five times bigger than the group of religious clerics and students who protested a week ago in Mazar-i-sharif.

Denmark and Netherlands have troops in Afghanistan, supposedly tasked with winning hearts and minds.

Both those countries are liberal democracies with free speech traditions. Some on the conservative side of the spectrum are using that freedom of speech in a way that alienates the very people that their troops are supposedly trying to help, thus making that task much more difficult to achieve -- and easing the burden for the Taliban.

Vast swaths of the Afghan population are socially and religiously conservative Muslims. Nothing ISAF does there will change that fact. During the Christian apostate controversy of a few years ago, journalists seemingly had no trouble finding people who felt the guy should be put to death for switching to Christianity from Islam.

While the "I may disagree with what you say, but I would defend to the death your right to say it" sentiment may play well in the secular West, I suspect it doesn't play at all in honour-based, post-medieval Afghanistan. It's more like, "I disagree with what you say, and I'll kill you for saying it."

My guess is that expecting the average Afghan to hear anything more than "Denmark," "Netherlands" and "blasphemy" in this particular conversation -- or to differentiate the actions of individuals from the state -- would be insanely optimistic.

As promised, Dubya said he will veto bill that would stop U.S. intelligence agencies from using techniques that have feathers like torture, webbed feet like torture and quack like torture -- although Dubya referred to them in his radio address as "specialized interrogation procedures."

Shelagh Rogers will be leaving as host of Sounds Like Canada after this season, reports CBC.ca.

In a Feb. 20 Globe and Mail story, about the recently cancelled Disc Drive with Jurgen Gothe, there was this snippet:

DiscDrive is produced in Vancouver, where rumours are swirling about Shelagh Rogers's Sounds Like Canada, also broadcast from the city. CBC Radio executive director Jennifer McGuire recently told staff that there were "concerns" about the program.

I have mixed feelings about what I'm about to say, because I've heard Ms. Rogers (whom I've never met) is a wonderful person. But I found her so nice as a radio host, so warm, so friendly, so supportive of her guests, that it made my skin crawl.

However, on Friday, I listened to some of her stuff from the Miramichi on the mill closings there (having worked in forestry once upon a time, the collapsing resource economy is a subject near and dear to my heart) and found it quite good.

I think her natural niceness worked better on Morningside when set against Peter Gzowski's rumpled voice. On its own, I found it cloying.

Rogers is a fine broadcaster, and I hope the CBC finds a show that will be a better fit for her, but SLC wasn't doing it for me. The CBC.ca story hints the show itself will not continue in its current form.

The old Morningside blended the hard and the soft, while The Current takes all the high-energy, hard stuff and leaves the soft for SLC. That may have been a strategic mistake. Ninety minutes of sucrose-bombing the listeners' ears may have been too much.