The anti-cartoon protests in Pakistan seem to be mounting towards a national revolutionary movement. The government has banned the latest march in Islamabad, arrested some 200 followeres of the organization that called it, and placed its leader under house arrest. But the organizers pledge defiance, even as army troops have been called to the streets. Note that even the government spokesman feels obliged to diss the protests as part of a Jewish conspiracy to defame Islam. From Pakistan's Dawn, Feb. 19:

On Feb. 14, some 1,500 immigrants and supporters rallied at Philadelphia's Independence Mall to protest HR 4437, a harsh anti-immigrant bill passed by the House of Representatives last Dec. 16 and due to be considered by the Senate in March. (News Journal, Wilmington, DE, Feb. 15) The Philadelphia Spanish-language weekly newspaper El Dia described the rally as the largest immigrant rights mobilization in the city's history. The action was part of "A Day Without an Immigrant," a regional Valentine's Day labor strike by immigrant workers.

Immigrant rights advocates rallied in New York and Philadelphia on Feb. 14 to protest the treatment of a Chinese woman, three months pregnant, who miscarried twins while immigration authorities tried to deport her from JFK airport in New York on Feb. 7. Zhenxing Jiang has lived in Philadelphia for 11 years; she and her husband have two US-born sons, ages four and seven.

On Feb. 9, Palestinian immigrant Waheed Saleh filed a lawsuit against the city of New York in US District Court in Manhattan, charging that police reported him to immigration authorities in retaliation for his complaints about police discrimination. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages, alleging that Saleh's constitutional rights including free speech were violated and that he suffered extreme pain and hardship as a result of his improper arrest, detention and deportation proceedings. Saleh is represented by attorney Tushar Sheth of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF).

From the New York Times, emphasis added. We say it is a credit to New York's tolerant (some would say blasé) atmosphere that the city's anti-cartoon protest was peaceful and the attitude of its leaders openly humanistic—although there were, as the Times puts it, a small group of "provocateurs." In the print edition, the story was accompanied by a photo of protesters holding up printed signs. One urged "READ HISTORY TO KNOW MUHAMMAD (pbuh)," a recommendation that WW4 REPORT heartily seconds. Frustratingly, the most critical sign was cropped just above the most critical word: "RESPONSIBLE EDITORS MUST BE..." Must be what? Educated? Punished? Fired? Beheaded? If anybody was at the protest and saw this sign, please contact us and let us know!

As we recently noted in the case of Iran, the Bush administration seems divided between Pentagon hardliners who seek a military solution and State Department pragmatists who would pursue a peaceful "regime change" scenario in Syria. But these are not mutually exclusive options, of course. In most recent cases of Washington effecting a power transfer in a targeted country—from Nicaragua in 1989 to Yugoslavia in 2000—a combination of external military pressure and internal political support was brought to bear.

Its amazing how much the New York Times can say without directly saying it. In today's edition are twin front-page stories on Darfur and Chad. Read together they convey much more about US interests in the Sahel than either states explicitly.

While the world media have largely ignored it, readers of WW4 REPORT will be aware that since last spring NATO has been providing air support for the African Union "peacekeepers" in Darfur. Now, the Times reports, Bush is calling for an expansion of NATO's role in the conflict:

The Niger Delta, in Nigeria's south, has long been beset by ethnic struggles over distribution of the region's oil wealth. Now the north, where Muslim-Christian tensions have long simmered, is boiling over—ostensibly over the cartoon controversy, but one wonders what local Nigerian Christians have to do with Danish cartoonists.