A magnitude 7.4 aftershock hit northeastern Japan April 7—raising fears of a deepening of the crisis at the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant. Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) reported no serious incidents as a result of the aftershock. But Ed Lyman, a nuclear safety expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists told the LA Times' Ecocentric blog: "The damage that has been done to date by the earthquake and tsunami has degraded the plant's ability to withstand ground motion, so you have more chance of a containment breach with the next earthquake. The conditions at the plant are so fragile, it can't really stand many more challenges."

The Independent reports April 3 eye-witness accounts that "Military and diplomatic operatives from the US and Western Europe—usually described as experts, consultants and advisers—turned up in the rebel capital, Benghazi. These include UK personnel, among them a former Royal Navy officer who had recently served as a diplomat in Afghanistan. He said he was in Libya as a consultant to the opposition administration." The word comes as Reuters reports that Tripoli has dispatched deputy foreign minister Abdelati Obeidi to Athens in a diplomatic initiative to end the conflict.

After backing off at last year's 9-11 anniversary, the wacky extremoid Christian fundi Terry Jones of Gainesville, Florida, apparently followed through on his threat to burn a Koran on March 20. This prompted wacky extremoid Muslim fundis in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, to storm a UN compound, killing as many as 20 employees and setting fire to several buildings today. (CSM, April 1) We really wish this was an April Fool's joke, but we don't think so.

Scottish prosecutors have requested an interview with defected Libyan foreign minister Moussa Koussa over the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, a move hailed by relatives of those killed in the air disaster. (Middle East Online, March 31) Koussa, former head of Libyan intelligence and until recently a member of Moammar Qaddafi's inner circle, arrived in the UK March 30 and said he was defecting. Popularly known as the "Envoy of Death," he was secretary of the Libyan People's Bureau in London—equivalent to Tripoli's ambassador—in the '80s. He was declared persona non grata by Britain after two Libyan opposition figures were murdered in London and he told the media that the policy of eliminating "stray dogs" would continue. Campaigners also hold him responsible in the 1984 slaying of Yvonne Fletcher, a London police officer who was apparently shot from inside the Libyan embassy while trying to control a crowd of anti-Qaddafi protesters (mostly Libyan ex-pats) who had gathered there. (The Guardian, March 31) Libyan rebels have arrested a man suspected in the Fletcher murder, one Omar Ahmed Sodani, who worked under Koussa at the embassy, and campaigners want him to face trial in UK. (The Guardian, March 25)

The anti-imperialist left is confused and divided on Libya—running a spectrum from vulgar responses that loan comfort to Qaddafi's propaganda, to more serious attempts to seek out a neither/nor position. But even commentaries in the latter category still dodge the question of what are the world's responsibilities to the Libyans as Qaddafi turns his guns on his own people. Especially since the West supplied much of that firepower, this question must concern us. Defense Industry Daily informed us March 3 that Libya has been notably armed by Franceover the past decade, while continuing to deal with its old mainstay Russia.

Three workers received burn lesions on their legs when they were exposed to highly radioactive water in the basement of the turbine building at reactor Number 3 at Japan's stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant March 26, but news accounts were typically confused. Various sources put the radiation level the three had been exposed to at anywhere between 170 and 6.000 millisieverts (per hour, presumably), with 250 being the permissible level for workers. Some sources also said the workers likely suffered "beta ray burns." Two of the workers have apparently been hospitalized after the three underwent examination at the National Institute of Radiological Sciences in Chiba Prefecture. White smoke was again seen over the plant that morning. Officials said new readings showed Tokyo’s tap water was back to radiaiton levels acceptable for infants, but elevated levels were now detected in the neighboring prefectures of Chiba and Saitama. (NHK World, NHK World, March 26; AP, WSJ, March 25; AP, March 24)

Republicans going in for the kill on public radio were notoriously dealt a coup by the secretly taped sting interview given by NPR top fundraiser Ronald Schiller to undercover conservatives posing as potential donors from a non-existent Muslim group. Both Ronald and NPR executive Vivian Schiller (no relation) stepped down in the aftermath—part of an almost uniformly craven response on the part of public broadcasters and liberals in general. Those who aren't retreating are merely crying foul. Among lefty commentators, Jason Linkins on Huffington Post March 14 charges that "deceptive editing" made Ron Schiller's comments seem worse than they really were. That strikes us as somewhat beside the point. It would also be a little beside the point to complain about how widespread this game of "gotcha" has become (the left having pulled off similar stings of Scott Walker and Sarah Palin), and the effect this is having on our intellectual climate—although it is pretty funny to watch right-wing websites and left-wing websites each complaining that the "biased" media are giving coverage to the other side's stings at the expense of their own. But there are some far more serious points here that nobody seems to get.

A Statement of Continued Resistance by the Moorish Orthodox Radio Crusade
 —in Exile

"Freedom of the press, if it means anything at all, means the freedom to criticize and oppose."
— George Orwell