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"?:

From the Times of India, March 2:

Britain's far right British National Party (BNP) has handed out thousands of leaflets showing the controversial Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed, reports said on Thursday.

Our contributor Mahmood Ketabchi offers another critique of the US left's reponse to the "cartoon controversy." Interestingly, he finds reflexive support for any forces ostensibly opposing the US to be a paradoxical form of nationalism, that places the United States at the center of the moral universe. He explains his term "left nationalism" in a footnote:

From China's The Standard, March 3:

US President George W Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Thursday sealed what they hailed as an "historic" nuclear deal, seen as the bedrock of a new strategic partnership.

Gee, that didn't take long, did it? CBS, March 2:

Police say at least one bomb near the U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, killed four people and injured 49 others early Thursday.

Nope, no imminent civil war in Iraq, Bush says. If this was anywhere else in the world, we would recognize it as already a civil war...

Armed expulsions of Shiites. Washington Post, March 1:

BAGHDAD, Feb. 28 -- Salim Rashid, 34, a Shiite laborer in an overwhelmingly Sunni Arab village 20 miles north of Baghdad, received his eviction notice Friday from a man at the door with a rocket launcher.

India's long and forgotten war with the Maoist Naxalite rebels in the impoverished east claims scores of lives in Chattisgarh state just as Bush arrives in the country. Note that the right-wing BJP is forming anti-guerilla paramilitary groups in the region—an ominous echo of the dialectic of terror that has engulfed neighboring Nepal. From GulfNews.com, March 1: