(click image)
Update: “Freedom isn’t free, but glass isn’t cheap.”

More sectarian bloodshed. Time to pull the armies of the Emperialist BushMcChimpyHitler Neo-Con Fascists out of Pakistan!

“I formally declare that Iran has joined the club of nuclear countries,” [Ahmadinejad] told an audience that included top military commanders and clerics in the northwestern holy city of Mashhad. The crowd broke into cheers of “Allahu akbar!” or “God is great!” Some stood and thrust their fists in the air.

Driving home the point the historically literate already understand – this isn’t “Bush’s war”. It’s Jimmy Carter’s.

Via private email;

The BCCLA has decided to intervene in two human rights complaints against publishers of words and images that are alleged to promote hatred. In Alberta, a complaint has been lodged against Ezra Levant and the Western Standard magazine for publishing the Muslim cartoons that have been the subject of so much controversy and violence in 2006.
The BCCLA will intervene in a complaint lodged with the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal against operators of an internet website. The complaint alleges that inflammatory comments and offensive ‘jokes’ that were posted to the bulletin board service discriminate against Italians, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Haitians, francophones, blacks, First Nations persons, East Asians, non-whites, and Jews and promote hatred and contempt.
The BCCLA takes the position that citizens and NGOs have a responsibility to censure offensive speech but that it can not be left to the state to censor speech. Freedom of expression is a democratic value no matter the colour of your skin, the country of your origin or the nature of your metaphysical beliefs.

You can read their statement on the initial controversy over publication of the Danish “Mohammed” cartoons here.

AP

An Afghan court on Sunday dismissed a case against a man who converted from Islam to Christianity because of a lack of evidence and he will be released soon, officials said.
The announcement came as U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai faced mounting foreign pressure to free Abdul Rahman, a move that risked angering Muslim clerics here who have called for him to be killed.
An official closely involved with the case told The Associated Press that it had been returned to the prosecutors for more investigation, but that in the meantime, Rahman would be released.
“The court dismissed today the case against Abdul Rahman for a lack of information and a lot of legal gaps in the case,” the official said Sunday, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
“The decision about his release will be taken possibly tomorrow,” the official added. “They don’t have to keep him in jail while the attorney general is looking into the case.”
Abdul Wakil Omeri, a spokesman for the Supreme Court, confirmed that the case had been dismissed because of “problems with the prosecutors’ evidence.”

Considering the death threats that have been made towards him, may I propose we offer refugee status to Rahman – and send back the Khadr family in exchange?
Update: Related reading. – ” If Islam is a religion one can only convert to not from, then in the long run it is a threat to every free person on the planet.”
Update 2: “Still, there were those who said this entire case is illustrative of how evil Islam is, and how awful the intervention there has been. What utter nonsense. Had this poor bast*rd been caught by the Taliban, he’d have been summarily executed by a kangaroo court. We likely wouldn’t even know his name, or we would have had to find it out through Amnesty International rather than the Associated Press.” Read it all.

France-Echos;

After destroying the Buddhas of Afghanistan, burning the Churches of Kosovo, Muslims are now destroying the Christian legacy of France.
[…]
Today (march 22, 2006) we learn that this government has let 1,000 years of cultural and religious legacy to become smoke and ashes.
Barbarians and savages entered in the library of �l�Ecole des Chartes� (100,000 books) in the Sorbonne, and destroyed writings of abbeys of �le-de-France containing all the official documents since the middle age.

In related news, Tim Blair notes an early start to Car-b-q season this year.
More at WaPo – “Paris Burning, Once Again”;

France is still in the grip of precisely the political mentality that has prevailed here since the Middle Ages. As the protesters themselves cheerfully declare: It’s the street that rules. Today’s mobs, like their predecessors, are notable for their poor grasp of economic principles and their hostility to the free market. Only wardrobe distinguishes these demonstrations from those that led to the invasion of the national convention in 1795, when first the mob protested that commodity prices were too high; when the government responded with price controls, it protested with equal vigor that goods had disappeared and black market prices had risen. Similarly, the students on the streets today espouse economic views entirely unpolluted by reality. If the CPE is enacted, said one young woman, “You’ll get a job knowing that you’ve got to do every single thing they ask you to do because otherwise you may get sacked.”
Imagine that.

(Via Instapundit)

Via the Corner;

An Afghan Christian facing possible execution for converting from Islam was likely to be released from jail “soon,” a senior government official said following huge Western pressure over the case.
“He is likely to be released soon,” the official said, adding there would be a top-level meeting on the matter Saturday.
Abdul Rahman was arrested two weeks ago under Islamic Sharia law and faced a possible death sentence in a case that has attracted widespread condemnation, especially from the United States.

If this comes to pass, then we can be satisfied that the series of events has transpired as it should – diplomacy and international pressure will have resulted in an innocent life saved.
I do not join with those, however, who have called for a withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan should the efforts to have Rahman freed fail. As much as I am troubled by the details of the case, I’m no more so than I have been by reports of corruption, honour killings, human rights abuses or any number of injustices perpetrated under, or tolerated by, regimes that enjoy various types of Canadian military and/or foreign aid. If the Rahman case is justification to pull Canadian troops from the theatre – in a country that was used as safe haven and launch point for Islamist terror attacks on the West – then surely the revelations of United Nations child porn rings should prompt the Canadian government to send back our blue helmets for a refund as well.
We might at least set a precedent by cutting off all foreign aid to China.
It’s disturbing to hear voices on talk radio and across the blogosphere suggest Canadian military support for the fledgling Afghan government be withdrawn as a mere consequence of the trial taking place at all – for none of them seem to have considered the obvious followup question – “and then what?”
As we are often reminded – democracy is a process, not a destination. One does not have to dig too deeply into the histories of our own Western democracies to realize that our modern protections of human rights and personal liberty did not congeal fully formed from the ether – they evolved over hundreds of years.
As the beneficiaries of that long and bloody process of democratic trial and error, living in societies more likely to face problems created by the excesses of liberalism than any shortage of it, we tend to view fledgling democracies like Afghanistan from the wrong end of the lens. Instead of comparing them to current Western democratic norms, it is probably more appropriate to measure events against that of Western democracies of the 1800 and 1900’s.
In that context, Afghanistan has come a very long way from the unspeakably repressive Taliban regime, and in an extraordinarily short time. But the process has only just begun, and progress is not likely to be plotted on a linear graph. Nor, needless to say, is the outcome assured.
It will be at least a generation before we can hope stories such as that of Abdul Rahman are consigned to Afghanistan’s dustbin of history – and that only if those forces helping sustain the progress of democracy and liberalization of Islamic governments stay the course. The alternative is to surrender Afghanistan back to the very forces that brought us there in the first place.
And then what?

For those who cannot understand how it is that the big-government, nanny-state “liberal” left finds kinship with fundamentalist Islam and fascist dictators – an interview with poet Ali Ahmad Sa’id, who is known by the pseudonym “Adonis”;

Interviewer: “What are the reasons for growing glorification of dictatorships – sometimes in the name of pan-Arabism, and other times in the name of rejecting foreigners? The glorification comes even from the elites, as can be seen, for example, in the Saddam Hussein trial, and in all the people who support him.”
Adonis: “This phenomenon is very dangerous, and I believe it has to do with the concept of ‘oneness,’ which is reflected – in practical or political terms – in the concept of the hero, the savior, or the leader. This concept offers an inner sense of security to people who are afraid of freedom. Some human beings are afraid of freedom.”
Interviewer: “Because it is synonymous with anarchy?”
Adonis: “No, because being free is a great burden. It is by no means easy.”
Interviewer: “You’ve got to have a boss…”
Adonis: “When you are free, you have to face reality, the world in its entirety. You have to deal with the world’s problems, with everything…”
Interviewer: “With all the issues…”
Adonis: “On the other hand, if we are slaves, we can be content and not have to deal with anything. Just as Allah solves all our problems, the dictator will solve all our problems.”
[…]
“I don’t understand what is happening in Arab society today. I don’t know how to interpret this situation, except by making the following hypothesis: When I look at the Arab world, with all its resources, the capacities of Arab individuals, especially abroad – you will find among them great philosophers, scientists, engineers, and doctors. In other words, the Arab individual is no less smart, no less a genius, than anyone else in the world. He can excel – but only outside his society. I have nothing against the individuals – only against the institutions and the regimes.
“If I look at the Arabs, with all their resources and great capacities, and I compare what they have achieved over the past century with what others have achieved in that period, I would have to say that we Arabs are in a phase of extinction, in the sense that we have no creative presence in the world.”
Interviewer: “Are we on the brink of extinction, or are we already extinct?”
Adonis: “We have become extinct. We have the quantity. We have the masses of people, but a people becomes extinct when it no longer has a creative capacity, and the capacity to change its world.”

(Emphasis mine.)
The only portion that puzzles is why Ali Ahmad Sa’id doesn’t quite make the connection to “understand what is happening in Arab society today”. The two traits he mentions in the quote I selected (dependency on “higher” authority and lack of creativity) are not simply related – the latter is the expected consequence of the former.
The rest at Memri.

The recent election of Hamas in Palestine has shown the world that democratic elections don’t always work out quite the way the western world might like. This article shows a similar issue with Afghanistan. Note also that this AP article is in Jamaican papers… I wonder why the Globe doesn’t see fit to include it as news? The Canadian papers I found carrying this were the Toronto Star (which is surprising me daily with Afganistan stories) and the Ottawa Citizen, behind a subscriber wall.

“AN AFGHAN man is being prosecuted in a Kabul court and could be sentenced to death after being charged with converting from Islam to Christianity, a crime under this country’s Islamic Shari’a laws, a judge said yesterday.
The trial is believed to be the first of its kind in Afghanistan and highlights a struggle between religious conservatives and reformists over what shape Islam will take here four years after the ouster of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime.”

So what can or should the Canadian government or military try to do about this? As the article points out, if the man is put to death it will be seen as a real win for the Taliban. However, according to the Afghan constitution, they follow Shari’a law which does NOT allow for conversion from Islam (although I find it interesting that if he re-converted back to Islam, all would be forgiven, and he has refused to do that).
h/t to molarmauler for finding this gem while posting on the media’s remarks around PMSH’s “cone of silence.” As MM points out, the media make decisions daily on what they think is worth reporting, yet get their knickers in a knot when the PMO does the same thing. Go figure.
UPDATE: Apparently the Globe DID carry this, but it didn’t appear in my online search, so maybe it’s just in the dead-tree version? *Here’s a link* (behind a subscription wall)
UPPERDATE: It has been suggested that an email campaign to the Afghan Ambassador might be in order. I’d recommend you also cc your MP and Peter MacKay. Following is contact info (I hope the Ambassador’s hotmail account is up to this):
Embassy of Afghanistan in Ottawa
246 Queen Street, Suite 400
Ottawa Ontario KIP 5E4
Email: contact@afghanemb-canada.net
Ambassador: H E Mr Abdul Jalil JAMILI
Peter MacKay
Minister of Foreign Affairs
E-Mail: Mackay.P@parl.gc.ca
UPUPDATE: Corrected email address for the Afghan Ambassador to Canada

Winston, the blogger behind The Spirit of Man, always has some interesting links.
He’s got pictures up from the rally in support of Denmark that was held yesterday (you’ll have to click to view as I have yet to figure out how to post pictures in WordPress and don’t have time to tackle that tonight), and a later post linking the G&M’s take on it (I dunno, doesn’t that look like more than 100-150 people?) My favorite sign of the bunch? “All we are saying is give speech a chance.”
He’s also got posts regarding the International Womens Day demonstration in Iran, complete with video links. They’re kind of grainy, but they go from a peaceful demonstration to people running away after some military-types show up.
Cross-posted at Waking Up On Planet X

As Torontonians we are citizens of our nation�s largest and most multiethnic city. That people of so varied cultures can coexist not merely in tolerance, but in a spirit of mutual respect where all are free to practice their customs without imposition on others, is a testament to the strengths of free expression and secularism.
We cannot expect Canadian soldiers to risk their lives securing secularism and liberty abroad if we are unwilling to make a modest effort at home. We support Denmark in an attempt to honour these values.

A rally is planned for noon to 1:30pm, March 11, at the Danish Consulate, 151 Bloor St. Help spread the word.

Mansoor Ijaz and Andrew C. McCarthy debate.
(link fixed – sorry!)