In an unusual move, the US State Department has protested the police sweeps of opposition politicians in Pakistan over the weekend. "Some of this is troubling and we've certainly told the Pakistanis," Condoleezza Rice told Reuters. The detainments come as Pakistan's Supreme Court is hearing challenges by critics of strongman Pervez Musharraf, who say he is not eligible to stand in scheduled presidential elections. Police clashed with protesters outside the court in Islamabad Sept. 24. (BBC, Sept. 24) That same day, high-level talks opened between Pakistan and Iran on an Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline to export natural gas from the Islamic Republic to the Subcontinent. (Tehran Times, Sept. 25)

Here's a rather perverse irony. Amid all the war hysteria over Iran's nuclear ambitions, a US utility has ordered a new nuclear plant for the first time since the 1979 Three Mile Island accident. Of course this time they are promising that "innovations" will avoid the cost overruns that plagued the industry in its last big thrust of development in the '70s. (They are not even particularly talking about the health and safety concerns, alarmingly.) But note that this time it is a utility in New Jersey which wants to build the reactors in Texas—a fruit of the deregulation regime imposed in the last 20 years, which effectively bars utilities from generating electricity for local consumption. As we argued after the 2006 Queens blackout, this new regime exaggerates the dangers of the system by eroding public accountability. And with all the horrors in the headlines these days, this summer's radiation leak at a commercial reactor in Niigata, Japan, barely registered a blip—although reporter Matthew Wald does, to his credit, at least work in a parenthetical reference to the Niigata accident in this New York Times account, Sept. 25:

Not for the first time. From AFP, Sept. 24:

UNITED NATIONS — Iranian pro-democracy activists strongly oppose any military attack on their country but want the world to condemn Tehran's human rights violations, Iranian dissident journalist Akbar Ganji said in a petition seen Monday.

Although the group says it disavows violence, more than one criminal case related to the San Diego Minutemen is now pending in the California courts. In one case now coming to trial, John Monti of Bellflower, a Los Angeles suburb, is charged with seven misdemeanors, including three counts each of battery and interfering with a person's civil rights, stemming from an incident linked to the Minutemen. Monti, who drove down to San Diego from the LA area for a Minutemen protest in November 2006, reportedly harassed, threatened and provoked a physical confrontation with a group of day laborers lined up at the intersection of Rancho Penasquitos Boulevard and Carmel Mountain Road. Monti told police the laborers threatened him when he started taking their photo with a digital camera. Jeff Schwilk, founder of the San Diego Minutemen, issued a statement saying Monti is not a member of any Minutemen groups. (KGTV, San Diego, Sept. 19)

From the New York Times, Sept. 19:

Settlements Do Not Deter 9/11 Plaintiffs Seeking Trials
Families of 14 of the people killed in the planes hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001, have settled their lawsuits, but relatives of other victims said yesterday that they would continue fighting in court to address their questions about how Islamic terrorists bypassed airport security, commandeered four jets and killed thousands of people.

Like the similar claims being made about Iran arming its Sunni-extremist deadly enemies in Iraq, this strikes us as utterly improbable. Recall that before 9-11, Iran was on the brink of war with Afghanistan, over the Taliban's ethnic cleansing of Shi'ites. There is also an Orwellian aspect to these claims given the now-forgotten reports of US-Iran cooperation in the 2001 campaign against the Taliban. But I guess we're not supposed to talk about that. From wire services, via the Baltimore Sun, Sept. 22:

From the front page of the New York Times, Sept. 22:

At State Deptartment, Blog Team Joins Muslim Debate
WASHINGTON — Walid Jawad was tired of all the chatter on Middle Eastern blogs and Internet forums in praise of gory attacks carried out by the "noble resistance" in Iraq.

Female genital mutilation—or "circumcision," as its apologists call it—has been banned even in Eritrea, as it faces US accusations of harboring Islamist terrorists. We recently noted the irony that the US has launched criminal prosecutions over the practice, even as it deports immigrant women who have fled it back to their native countries. Prestigious Islamic clerics have condemned the practice as a barbaric cultural tradition that is not sanctioned by Islam. Yet its apparent tenacity even in Egypt, among the most modernized countries in the Islamic world, is astonishing and frightening. From the Malta Star, Sept. 21: