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."

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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.

It's snowing in Toronto tonight. Started this afternoon.

Will probably snow some more tomorrow.

You might not have heard, so I thought I'd tell you.

Addendum

You might want to rent Last Night, if you're looking for a DVD this weekend. Seeing we're at the end of days and all.

I went fishing on Lake Simcoe today, bagging two big whitefish (I estimate five to six pounds each. I let them go).

The MNR officer told me I probably had the best day of anyone he checked to that point (woo-hoo!).

Alas, I didn't bag a lake trout, which would not have been returned to its watery home. Instead, it would have been moved to its new residence in my freezer.

The one downer about the fish cop's little visit was the 9mm semi-automatic handgun worn openly on his right hip.

Well, there's no reason al Qaeda-linked terrorists or Colombian drug lords couldn't also be out ice-fishing, I suppose.

While there might be times when MNR officers need to be armed (poaching investigations, for example), is checking fishing licences on a Friday afternoon one of them?

PS

I shudder to think what might have happened had I forgotten my fishing licence at home. :)

From the NYT:

It’s official: the networks no longer cover news, they slap it onto the bottom edge of their regular programming like Post-it notes.

There were crawls (“Huckabee drops out”) and brief updates, but viewers who wanted to immerse themselves in the speculation and suspense — and Tuesday night was arguably a more critical and dramatic election than Super Tuesday — were relegated to cable news.

Not that CNN and its brethren did a bad job. It’s just that Tuesday night’s showdown between Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton was momentous. Not having a prime-time election report on ABC, CBS or NBC was a little like celebrating an anniversary at an all-you-can-eat buffet instead of a fancy French restaurant: nobody leaves hungry, but it would have been nice to mark the event with a decent wine and starched linen napkins.

Some MPs in Afghanistan have lended their angry voices to protests about the Muhammad cartoons in Denmark and a right-wing Dutch politician's film about 'fascist' Islam.

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Ryerson University j-prof John Miller takes a contrarian stance on the recent court decision ordering the National Post to turn over a 'Shawinigate' scandal.

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Spectator is the name of the new blog.

As to its game, Douglas Bell describes his mission statement thusly:

If Spectator aspires to a voice, it’s that of Jedediah Leland: a smirking suggestion of ridicule in the face of towering egos. In this blog, I aspire to cast a gimlet eye on the stories of power—of money and media and influence. These days, conventional journalism is full to brimming with pompous windbaggery and is, as ever, in need of knocking down a peg or two. Here you will gain insight into the New York Times’ latest cave-in to vested interests, the Toronto Star’s latest bleeding heart lament, Chatelaine’s latest firing, Gerry Schwartz’s latest buyout, Heather Reisman’s latest faux pas and David Thomson’s latest… whatever.

(h/t to J-source)

The BBC's Barbara Plett had a Feb. 29 story on how Pakistan's army had success taming the Swat Valley.

She left out how many troops were involved. According to a Dec. 22, 2007 NYT story, there were 20,000 Pakistani soldiers involved in the Swat Valley operation.

According to Wikipedia, the Swat Valley is about 1,772 square kilometres in size.

Kandahar is about 54,000 square kilometres in size, and there are 2,500 Canadian troops there, according calculations I did in the post Afghanistan by the numbers.

The Pakistan army had 11,287 soldiers per 1,000 square kilometres in Swat.

In Kandahar, Canada has about 46 soldiers per 1,000 square km.

That's based on the full contingent. According to a weekend Globe and Mail article, only about 600 Canadian troops are involved in security operations "outside the wire" at any one time.

While Pakistan's army claimed success, on Saturday, a suicide bomber killed 38 people in Mingora, the Swat Valley's main centre.

Vanity Fair's David Friend about investigating the tale of JFK's now-adult love child.

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The Far Eastern Economic Review developed "cold feet" (its editor's phrase, not mine) about reviewing a book about its new proprietor, global media baron Rupert Murdoch. However, you can be assured it was purely an internal decision.

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From CP via CBC.ca:

Rachel Marsden, the right-wing pundit better known in Canada for a series of scandals in her personal life, has apparently had a messy breakup with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.

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His Blackness entered the Big House around noon local time today, and I don't mean his mansion in West Palm Beach, Fla.

(A small flub on CBC Radio One's The World At Six; The announcer described Conrad Black as a man who once ran "the third-largest newspaper country in the world"  )

Inmate number 18330-424 is now ensconced at the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex about 80 kilometres northwest of Orlando.

If Conrad Black doesn't win his appeal, scheduled for June, he'll likely be there for about 5½ years. He was sentenced in December to 6½ years on the four of 13 counts on which he was found guilty. However, under U.S. rules, he will have to serve about 85 per cent of that total before being eligible for parole.

By my earlier calculation, Black would have to be sentenced to nearly 14 years to serve that much time before likely getting full parole in Canada (most federal inmates get it after serving 40 per cent of their sentences, but one can apply for full parole after serving one-third).

Ironically, the jailing of David Radler and Black bookends the 12th anniversary of the downsizing of the Regina Leader-Post on March 2, 1996.

Karma, baby.

Of all the things he did in his life, I wonder if Black has the greatest regret about tossing his Canadian citizenship to accept an appointment to Britain's House of Lords.

Radler, a key if ineffectual witness against his long-time business partner, may well get a transfer to Canada and be eligible for day parole in as little as six months. That privilege is lost to Black, who is now a British citizen.

If Frank is correct, Radler was never big on the National Post, thinking it didn't make business sense.

Question: Of these two former Hollinger executives, which one has the better judgment? Which one is paying a higher price for his hubris?

And since you asked, itwas indeed a rhetorical question.

Alex Gibney won the Oscar for best feature documentary last weekend for his harrowing, essential film Taxi to the Dark Side. He tells Democracy Now! what the win means to him.

PS - From the March 1 Toronto Star:

Gibney answers questions at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, following a screening at 7:30 p.m. Monday, March 3, at Jackman Hall (Art Gallery of Ontario). The festival ends Wednesday. More details at humanrightsfilmfestival.ca and 416-968-3456. The film then goes on an extended run at the Carlton starting Friday, March 7.

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From an NYT editorial:

In the next few days President Bush is expected to again claim the right to order mistreatment of prisoners that any civilized person would regard as torture.

Mr. Bush is planning to veto a law that would require the C.I.A. and all the intelligence services to abide by the restrictions on holding and interrogating prisoners contained in the United States Army Field Manual. Mr. Bush says the Army rules are too restrictive.

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Here's a look-ahead I wrote for CTV.ca on the Alberta provincial election, which goes down tomorrow.

The Globe and Mail's Paul Koring and Graeme Smith have written a very sobering assessment of the situation on the ground in Afghanistan.

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