Freedom's on the march in Afghanistan—the freedom of fundamentalist fanatics to protect their faith from such blasphemous assaults as newspapers that condemn public stoning. From Reporters Without Borders, Oct. 24:

Reporters Without Borders today called on President Hamid Karzai to intercede after a Kabul court sentenced Ali Mohaqiq Nasab, the editor of the monthly publication Haqoq-e-Zan (Women's Rights), to two years in prison at the end of a summary trial on blasphemy charges on 22 October.

White House public relations chief Karen Hughes, already in hot water for numerous public-relations snafus on her recent tour of the Middle East, has done it again. Speaking before a group of students in Indonesia Oct. 21, just as Saddam Hussein's trial opened in Baghdad, she defended Washington’s decision to invade Iraq, claiming Saddam gassed to death "hundreds of thousands" of his own people.

Condoleeza Rice spilled the beans in Congressional testimony: there really is (as we always suspected) a White House plan to redesign the Middle East! Capitol Hill liberals like Barbara Boxer squawk about the administration's "unbelievable rewriting of history" in changing the justification for the Iraq invasion after the fact. But Republicans are unrepentant: its a new world war, deal with it. From the Washington Times, Oct. 20:

Well, Judith Miller is out of jail, has testified before the grand jury, and wrote up a story on her own testimony for the New York Times. She even expresses some contrition, admitting to error, if not wilful collaboration with a White House disinformation campaign. For those who care to wade through the barrage of bureaucratese obfuscation unleashed by this twisted affair, it does shed light on how the White House played the media in the prelude to the Iraq campaign, twisted the truth, and ultimately came to regard the Central fucking Intelligence Agency as a bunch of pussy-footing liberals for actually doing their job and providing accurate, um, intelligence. Via TruthOut:

The US Army is probing claims that its troops in Afghanistan burned the bodies of two Taliban fighters they had killed and used the smoldering corpses to taunt insurgents. An Australian TV show broadcast images Oct. 19 of US soldiers incinerating the corpses outside Gonbaz in southern Afghanistan (Faryab provicne) with the bodies facing west toward Mecca, the direction of Muslim daily prayers—in an apparent deliberate denigration of Islamic belief. Islam prohibits cremation and considers desecration of bodies to be blasphemous.

In what has become a yearly ritual, activists from the American Indian Movement (AIM) staged angry protests at the Columbus Day march in Denver, while the city's Italian-Americans intransigently refused to "get it." This from an AP account online at Indian Country Today:

As drums and chants echoed in the background, demonstrators briefly staged a mock death scene in the street Oct. 8 before a Columbus Day parade passed by.

A picture of the Noble Drew Ali, North Carolina-born Prophet of the Moorish Science Temple of America, adorns a page on the progressive Muslim Wake Up! website featuring a story by Laury Silvers, who has taken note of our contention that Moorish Science, a little-known but highly influential precursor to the Black Muslim movement, represents an indigenous American form of Islam (see Moorish Science in the news, Sept. 21). Silvers calls for a more inclusive view of this tradition on the part of "mainstream" or orthodox Islam, while acknowledging stark doctrinal divisions.

Nourished by the Waters of Indigenous Islam

By Laury Slivers

Simply said, American Indigenous Islam in all its forms should be properly honored and respected by the Muslim community as part of the history and life of Islam globally. I do not mean simply Indigenous American Islam in the sense of the Islam of the slaves. I mean all of Indigenous American Islam, even the forms that are difficult for the “mainstream

Evidence of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre continues to emerge from the earth of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the BBC reports Oct. 17. Of course our resident Chetniks will tell us this is all more imperialist lies, while their neo-Ustashe rivals (whom they mirror with perfect symmetry) meanwhile blast us for daring to suggest that maybe the Croats committed a few unpleasantries as well. Keep those rotten tomatoes coming, gang!