Now that's the way to prove the Pope is wrong and Islam is a religion of peace! Way to go, guys! From Reuters, Sept. 17:

Gunmen killed an Italian nun at a children's hospital in Mogadishu on Sunday in an attack that drew immediate speculation of links to Muslim anger over the Pope's recent remarks on Islam.

Yet more evidence that Central Asia, increasingly wary of US military designs in the region since 9-11, is radically tilting away from Washington. Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan all opened their territories to US forces after 9-11, and Tajikistan, with its 1,000-mile border with Afghanistan, was particularly critical as a staging ground for the October 2001 offensive against the Taliban. Today only Kyrgyzstan still hosts significant US forces—and Tajikistan is holding joint manoeuvres with China. But also note that despite all the supposed tension between the US and China, the preceived enemy and justification for flexing military muscle in the region is identical: radical Islam. From DPA, Sept. 15:

More grisly news from the amusingly eccentric despotism of Saparmurat "Turkmenbashi" Niyazov. It is good to see the outside world paying attention to what goes on in this hermetically-sealed dictatorship, but this case raises the usual dilemmas. Journalist Ogulsapar Muradova was affiliated with the US-funded Radio Liberty, and Turkmenbashi's defenders will doubtless portray this as being complicit with US designs to destabilize the regime, or at least pry it open for freer corporate access to its formbidable gas and oil resources. But should the penalty for this be death—and, more importantly, what option do independent journalists have in Turkmenistan? Have the Independent Media Centers attempted to give them any support? The IMCs don't appear to have a single outlet in all Central Asia. A search of the main IMC website turns up nothing on Muradova's case, although some affiliates, such Indymedia UK at least noted his arrest. From Al-Jazeera, Sept. 16:

We can feel George Bush cringing. Why did Sacha Baron Cohen have to pick on Kazakhstan of all places, which the US sees as a strategic bulwark against both Russian and Islamist influence in Central Asia, and which Dick Cheney and his pals hope to turn into the next Saudi Arabia? But which, ultimately, is worse: Cohen's politically incorrect humor, or the White House's accomodation of Kazakhstan's sleazy dictatorship? From the UK's Daily Mail, Sept. 12:

Perhaps this was an exercise in surrealist performance art. From RFE/RL, Sept. 13:

International rights organizations are criticizing UNESCO's decision to award Uzbek President Islam Karimov the Borobudur gold medal for "strengthening friendship and cooperation between the nations, development of cultural and religious dialogue, and supporting cultural diversity."

The political trajectory of Oriana Fallaci speaks to one of the funamental political dilemmas on the planet at this strange juncture. The daughter of an Italian anti-fascist militant, a veteran Vietnam war correspondent, a survivor of the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico, longtime lover of a martyred opponent of the Greek military dictatorship—she nonetheless joined the anti-Islam and anti-immigration chorus after 9-11. While large sections of what we call the "idiot left" rush into an "anti-imperialist" alliance with political Islam, others (especially in Europe) rush into the equally unsavory xenophobe and Islamophobe camp in the name of defending secularism and feminism. From The Guardian, Sept. 15:

The website "Haiti Xchange" recalled in September 2001:

Long before this year's tragedy, September 11 was already a date associated with terror for Haitians: on that day in 1988 a group of armed men linked to the military dictatorship attacked the church where then-priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide was holding mass. They murdered dozens, and burned the church to the ground; Aristide barely escaped. In 1990 Aristide ran for president in Haiti's first-ever democratic election, with radical promises to raise minimum wage, strengthen national industry, and tax the wealthy, who traditionally escaped this burden. He won two-thirds of the vote, but was never able to accomplish his mission as president: an elite-backed military coup ousted him in September 1991, after only seven months in office. In the following three years the military regime raped, tortured, and killed thousands of his supporters. Well over a hundred thousand Haitians fled by sea or crossed the border to the Dominican Republic.

The level of death squad activity in Iraq appears to far outstrip that in El Salvador 20 years ago, from which the so-called "Salvador Option" takes its name. But there was no equivcation about the fact that there was a civil war going on in El Salvador, while everyone seems intent on denying this obvious reality in Iraq. Why is that? From Reuters, Sept. 17:

Baghdad: Iraqi police found 47 more bodies of death squad victims dumped in Baghdad overnight, they said on Saturday, after Washington said it was diverting troops from other parts of Iraq to secure the embattled capital.