Salman Rushdie, who went into hiding under threat of death after an Iranian fatwa, has been knighted by the Queen.

excellent Salman Rushdie is cool
and a stout democrat and a great writer

BBC NEWS | UK | Rushdie knighted in honours list

The Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas, says it has sent a message to the kidnappers of BBC journalist Alan Johnston, demanding his release.

A Hamas spokesman told reporters in Gaza - which is now controlled by the group - that it would not allow the BBC correspondent's captivity to continue.

a silver lining

BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Hamas demands BBC man's release

Today's global liberal democratic order faces a significant challenge from the rise of nondemocratic great powers - the West's old Cold War rivals, China and Russia, now operating under "authoritarian capitalist" rather than Communist regimes.

The return of Authoritarian Capitalists - International Herald Tribune

Absolutely the last thing Iraq needs right now is to have thousands of Turkish troops pour across the border into the country's one relatively peaceful region - the Kurdish-administered northeast. Turkey's government needs to know that it will reap nothing but disaster if that happens.

and then it started raining type it couldn't get worse thing

Turkey poses a new danger in Iraq - International Herald Tribune

The latest news-as-entertainment spectacular is the Paris Hilton criminal justice fiasco. She’s in! She’s out! She’s — whatever.

Far more disturbing (and much less entertaining) is the way school officials and the criminal justice system are criminalizing children and teenagers all over the country, arresting them and throwing them in jail for behavior that in years past would never have led to the intervention of law enforcement.

School to Prison Pipeline - New York Times

When the populist Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr emerged from 14 weeks of invisibility on May 25, it was hard not to focus on his typically passionate anti-Coalition rhetoric: "No, no to America; no, no to occupation," he thundered from the mosque at Kufa, Iraq, a ragged town a few miles north of rich holy city of Najaf.
...
Sadr is supporting what remains of hope in Iraq far more actively than it appears.
...
The real story about Moktada al-Sadr is not his exciting sermons but his broad underwriting, both passive and active, of the official project in Iraq.

An enemy Americans can work - International Herald Tribune

In an archipelago of safe houses here, part of a 21st-century Underground Railroad, I met groups of people who live every moment with sickening fear.

These are North Koreans who have escaped to the “free world” — China — and are now at constant risk of being captured by Chinese police. The Chinese government, in a disgraceful breach of its obligations under the 1951 Refugees Convention, hands these escapees back to North Korea, where they face beatings and imprisonment, occasionally even execution

Escape From North Korea - New York Times

Abu Taha, a portly, smiling man with two young children, lives a couple of blocks from our house in Baghdad. I arrived here to cover the war for ABC News last July, and one of the few pleasures I have found is sitting with him on his flat roof, where he keeps pigeons in a series of coops.

a lovely aricle
starting with a glimpse of serenity before confronting the madness
a taste of life
the sweet and the sour

Life in the Inferno of Baghdad - washingtonpost.com

It seems the more unpopular Pakistan’s military dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, becomes at home and the less he is willing to fight the Taliban, the more the Bush administration clings to him.
...
A succession of uniformed dictators has misruled Pakistan for more than half of its 60-year history. All have advertised themselves as great friends of Washington, but all have fanned extremism while discrediting America’s reputation among ordinary Pakistanis. There is no security with General Musharraf. The United States belongs on the side of Pakistani democracy.

Propping Up the General - New York Times

It is 66 days since BBC correspondent Alan Johnston was abducted by a group of armed men in Gaza. Thursday is his birthday.
...
Alan is one of more than 200 BBC correspondents - an extraordinary group of people who remain in the world's trouble spots just as everyone else is getting out.

For 75 years they have been eyewitnesses to history.

Required often to be brave, dedicated and courageous, they endure hardship and danger because they believe a story needs to be told.

But the bomb, the kidnap, the gunshot are the correspondent's worst nightmare. They are the foreign editor's too.

the quiet heroes (male and female) of truth

BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | To our own correspondent, Alan