Freedom's on the march. From BBC, March 6:

Amnesty International has said that thousands of detainees held by the multinational forces in Iraq are still being denied their basic rights.

The group said the lessons of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal appeared to have been ignored and reports of torture continued to "pour out of Iraq".

From Bloomberg, March 5:

U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Peter Pace said Iraq isn't on the brink of civil war and that there isn't any deadline for withdrawing American and coalition troops from the country.

On the subject of free speech. From The Telegraph, March 5:

Shia musicians in Iraq are raising sectarian tensions by producing "gangsta-rap" songs in which they call for Shias to kill Sunnis.

We recently noted that Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has blamed the US and Israel for the Samarra mosque attack. Now, right on cue, the Iranian armed opposition group Mujadedeen Khalq issues a statement (in the name of its ostensibly civilian wing, the National Council of Resistance) blaming the Iranian regime for the attack! The press release says the group's "president-elect" Maryam Rajavi "strongly condemned Iranian regime's meddling in Iraq and described the Samarra bombing, planned attacks on Sunni mosques, killing of religious leaders, political figures, journalists and others as part of a war that the ruling mullahs in Iran have initiated in Iraq against its people."

I know some of you out there think "Islam is the problem." But stupidity, it appears, is an equal-opportunity employer. From AP, March 2:

NAZARETH, Israel, March 3 - A distraught Israeli couple entered one of Christianity's holiest sites on Friday and set off a series of small explosions, witnesses said, sparking a large riot that left six people wounded in this Arab town in northern Israel...

From the BBC, March 3:

Pakistan telecom authorities have blocked several websites inviting people to draw cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, it has emerged.

Once again this year, joyous rituals traditionally held at the celebration of Phagwah, the Hindu Festival of Colors, in the Queens neighborhood of Richmond Hill were proscribed by official paranoia over anthrax attack. From Newsday, March 2:

Anthrax fears have forced organizers of the Phagwah Parade in Queens to curtail the use of powder and water during the festive Hindu celebration in Richmond Hill.

Pejman Akbarzadeh, a member of the Tehran chapter of Artists Without Frontiers and the author of a two-volume work on Persian music, writes in response to Melody Zagami's review in our March issue of Nasrin Alavi's book We Are Iran: The Persian Blogs. Akbarzadeh takes issue with Zagami's use of the word "Farsi" rather than "Persian" to denote the language of Iran. He points us to a piece he wrote in December for the Iranian news and culture website Payvand.com entitled "Farsi" or "Persian"?: