In a letter to the Guardian published on January 6, Mr Rushdie wrote: "The continuing collapse of liberal, democratic, secular and humanist principles in the face of the increasingly strident demands of organised religions is perhaps the most worrying aspect of life in contemporary Britain."

In response, Ms Mactaggart wrote a letter to the Guardian in which she said: "Free speech is a crucial right for everyone, faith groups as well as artists. For many years the law has established that free speech rights do not licence people to stir up hatred of others on the basis of their race.

"Now we are seeking to offer the same protection to people targeted because of their faith. This is not religious appeasement, but a responsible reaction to the tactics of those, especially from the extreme right, who would foster community tension by stirring up hatred of members of a faith group.

A group promoting an anti-war rally was asked to leave a Broward County park Saturday morning after the park manager said political statements were prohibited on park property

"Eastern Ukraine is heavily ethnic Russian. The main industry is coal. The miners are rough, tough, and hate Yushchenko for wanting to take Ukraine away from Russia and toward the West," writes Wheeler. "It was arranged for more than a thousand of them to be taken from Donetsk, the capital of the coal-mining region, by bus and train to Kiev, where, armed with clubs and blunt tools, they would physically beat up the Orange Revolutionaries. Such mass violence was not only to disperse the demonstrators but serve as an excuse for the government to declare martial law, suspending the Ukrainian Parliament (the Rada) and elections indefinitely."

Now comes the secret weapon: vodka.

"When the miners got on their buses and trains, they found to their joy case after case of vodka – just for them. When they arrived in Kiev, trucks awaited them filled with more cases of vodka – all free provided by 'friends' of the Donetsk coal miners. Completely soused, they never made it to Independence Square. Too hammered blind to cause any violence at all, they had a merry time, passed out and were shipped back to Donetsk."

To the Point, Wheeler's column goes on to explain who provided the liquor: teams of Porter Goss' CIA working with their counterparts in British MI6 intelligence.

Writes the intel expert: "Just take a moment and reflect on how stone-cold brilliant this was. The forethought and planning it took, the innovative thinking. Bush doesn't send the Marines – he sends the vodka! – and achieves a democratic revolution. This is the sort of thinking, these are the sorts of tactics, that are going to be applied now for 'ending tyranny in our world.' Military force will be used only as a necessary resort."

Look around me - I can see my life before me
Running rings around the way it used to be
I am older now - I have more than what I wanted
But I wish that I had started long before I did
And there's so much time to make up everywhere you turn
Time we have wasted on the way
So much water moving underneath the bridge
Let the water come and carry us away
Oh, when you were young, did you question all the answers
Did you envy all the dancers who had all the nerve
Look around you now - you must go for what you wanted
Look at all my friends who did and got what they deserved
And there's so much time to make up everywhere you turn
Time we have wasted on the way
So much water moving underneath the bridge
Let the water come and carry us away
And there's so much love to make up everywhere you turn
Love we have wasted on the way
So much water moving underneath the bridge
Let the water come and carry us away
Let the water come and carry us away - Wasted On The Way by Graham Nash

After years of activism within AIM, Churchill was a ringleader of a breakaway "self-styled radical" faction that associated with extremists such as Noam Chomsky and Winona LaDuke, according to AIM records.

"They use publications like Houghton-Mifflin, Random House Publishers, South End Press and Speak Out Speakers Bureau, who allow Ward Churchill and others to perpetuate their literary, academic and Indian fraud on the unknowing public," said a 1999 AIM report.

Churchill was first expelled from the International Indian Treaty Council Sept. 23, 1986. Seven years later, on Nov. 24, 1993, he was expelled from AIM. Later, on Nov. 3, 1999, AIM leaders officially called for educators to remove his books from their curricula and libraries.

But AIM didn't stop there. Even more relevant, perhaps, to the current controversy was this recommendation from the group: "We request that organizations such as the National Indian Education Association and the American Indian Higher Education Consortium create a watchdog-type agency to review what books are being published by these literary, academic, and Indian frauds so that their revisionist writings are not finding their way into our education curriculum. This problem is of epidemic proportions, and must be stopped."

Most of the counter-protesters had signs urging free speech. There were at least two students who claimed to be College Republicans supporting Churchill. But the College Republican group told me they had discovered these people were actually members of the College Democrats who were posing as Republicans.

Isiah Lechowit of the College Republicans spoke to the crowd with a bullhorn. Since their group sponsored the protest, they received the bullhorn from the university. The majority of the time, the counter-protesters drowned out his words with their loud screams. He offered to answer any questions and did answer a few, but not many people asked questions. They yelled for him to hand over the bullhorn. But they were already louder than he was. Though they claimed to be for free speech, since they would not allow him to talk, they appeared to me to be for free speech only for themselves. A few of the counter-protesters got right in front of him, actually "in his face", interrupting Lechowit.

He meant it as a piece of religious satire, a playful look at the life of Jesus. But Gerhard Haderer's depiction of Christ as a binge-drinking friend of Jimi Hendrix and naked surfer high on cannabis has caused a furore that could potentially land the cartoonist in jail.
Haderer did not even know that his book, The Life of Jesus, had been published in Greece until he received a summons to appear in court in Athens in January charged with blasphemy.

"It is unbelievable that a person can write a book in his home country and be condemned and threatened with imprisonment by another," said Nikki Conrad, a human rights expert who organised yesterday's press conference. "But he is not going to just sit back and accept this injustice. He is prepared to take this to the European court of human rights. When Gerhard first got the summons he thought it was a joke. But now he is starting to get a bit nervous."

The Vatican on Saturday condemned the publication of cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammad which have outraged the Muslim world, saying freedom of speech did not mean freedom to offend a person's religion.

"The freedom of thought and expression, confirmed in the Declaration of Human Rights, can not include the right to offend religious feelings of the faithful. That principle obviously applies to any religion," the Vatican said.

"Any form of excessive criticism or derision of others denotes a lack of human sensitivity and can in some cases constitute an unacceptable provocation," it said in a statement issued in response to media demands for the Church's opinion.

Book 041, Number 6985:

Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.

The belief that Islam forbids portrayals of Muhammad is recently acquired. Back when Muslims created things, rather than blowing them up, they made paintings, frescoes, miniatures and prints of Muhammad.

But apparently the Quran is like the Constitution: It's a "living document," capable of sprouting all-new provisions at will. Muslims ought to start claiming the Quran also prohibits indoor plumbing, to explain their lack of it.

Other interpretations of the Quran forbid images of humans or animals, which makes even a child's coloring book blasphemous. That's why the Taliban blew up those priceless Buddhist statues, bless their innocent, peace-loving little hearts.

DAVID IRVING, the far-right British historian, sat stunned and open-mouthed yesterday when an Austrian court found him guilty of denying the Holocaust and sentenced him to three years in jail.....

“I made a mistake when I said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz,” he told the court.

But the judge and jury were unswayed. One hundred and fifty-eight people have been convicted of Holocaust denial in Austria between 1999 and 2004, but only a handful other than Irving have been imprisoned.

Lord Janner of Braunstone, chairman of the Holocaust Educational Trust, was pleased by the conviction.

He said: “It sends a clear message to the world that we must not tolerate the denial of the mass murderers of the Holocaust. The Nazis tried to wipe out an entire people . . . We must learn the lessons of the past to build a decent society for the future.”

The verdict came amid a furious debate in Europe over freedom of expression, with many defending the media’s right to publish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. The Arabic television station al-Jazeera broadcast the verdict to its Islamic audience.

Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party, was recently acquitted of making speeches inciting racial hatred. Abu Hamza, the radical Islamic cleric, was sentenced last week to seven years in prison for inciting racial hatred and soliciting murder.

In Britain there was alarm at the sentence. “Anyone who denies the Holocaust is off their rocker,” Gerald Howarth, Tory MP for Aldershot, said. “But to send a man to prison for three years for something that he said sixteen years ago and has since changed his view — what are we coming to?”

In its first religious freedom decision under Chief Justice John Roberts, the court said the government cannot hinder religious practices without proof of a "compelling" need to do so.....

Roberts, in writing the opinion for the court, said the government had failed to prove that federal drug laws should outweigh the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which Congress passed in 1993 to prohibit burdening a person's exercise of religion.

The Bush administration had argued that the drug in the tea not only violates a federal narcotics law but a treaty in which the United States promised to block the importation of drugs including dimethyltryptamine, also known as DMT

In Bawer's view, Western Europe is becoming a "house divided against itself." On the one hand, the educated European elite maintains an unshakable "belief in peace and reconciliation through dialogue," a faith (their only remaining faith) that every issue can be resolved without violence.

On the other hand, Europe's unassimilated Muslim communities are led in many cases, Bawer contends, by "fundamentalist Muslims" who seek "the establishment in Europe of a caliphate government according to sharia law." Such leaders, often imams and elders, see "Islamist terrorists as allies in a global jihad, or holy war, dedicated to that goal."

According to Bawer, liberals in Europe, even more than their American counterparts, want to believe that most Muslim immigrants share Western middle-class goals: a safe place to live, opportunities for their children, and the like. That accounts, Bawer argues, for the odd mix in their attitudes to Muslims: joy in the "multiculturalism" that makes their previously homogeneous societies more "colorful," and a nativist desire to keep Muslims in their place as exotica.

Bawer asserts that the reality - confirmed for him by the resistance of European Muslims to assimilation, and the marked presence in their communities of honor killings, homophobia, polygamy, marital rape, forced marriage, and intolerance of democracy and pluralism - is that European Muslim leaders, with demographics on their side, still harbor the millennial hope of taking power in Europe, and see the European attitude as both weak and hostile. It is "political correctness," Bawer writes, that has "gotten Europe into its current mess."

While Cuba played the Netherlands in the World Baseball Classic, a spectator in the stands raised a sign saying: "Down with Fidel," sparking an international incident that escalated Friday with the velocity of a major league fastball.

The image of the man holding the sign behind home plate was beamed live Thursday night to millions of TV viewers _ including those in Cuba. The top Cuban official at the game at Hiram Bithorn Stadium in San Juan rushed to confront the man.

Puerto Rican police quickly intervened and took the Cuban official _ Angel Iglesias, vice president of Cuba's National Institute of Sports _ to a nearby police station where they lectured him about free speech.

"We explained to him that here the constitutional right to free expression exists and that it is not a crime," police Col. Adalberto Mercado was quoted as saying in El Nuevo Dia, a San Juan daily.

The brouhaha gathered steam Friday when Cuba's Communist Party newspaper, Granma, called the sign-waving "a cowardly incident." Cuba's Revolutionary Sports Movement exhorted Cubans to demonstrate in Havana late Friday, saying U.S. and Puerto Rican authorities were involved in "the cynical counterrevolutionary provocations."

The Cuban Baseball Federation, in a statement released Friday in San Juan, said authorities failed to provide security and preserve the spirit of the sporting event, and "evidently had no intention of doing so."

The Cubans considered withdrawing from the tournament because of "the lack of security and respect" but decided to remain after Puerto Rican promoters made guarantees, the federation said in a statement without elaborating.

An anti-Castro Web site, therealcuba.com, identified the protester only as Enrique, and carried his own account of the incident.

Enrique said that during the warmup before the game, he flashed another sign denouncing Castro _ this one saying "Baseball players yes, Tyrants no" _ to the Cuban leader's son, Tony Castro. Tony Castro is the Cuban team doctor.

"He looked down and kept walking and I shouted 'Eso es para tu papa' (That is for your dad). ... I know he heard that," Enrique said, according to the account in the Web site.

Mercado said the spectator, and a second one who also waved signs, had tickets for the section behind home plate, but had moved out of their seats closer to the view of the TV cameras. Cuban state TV was showing the ESPN signal and the anti-Castro signs were briefly visible on television in Cuba.

Police later told the pair to return to their seats, Mercado said, adding that Iglesias was never under arrest.

"The Cubans were upset with the incident that happened last night, and they want to make sure it doesn't happen again," said John Blundell, spokesman of Major League Baseball, which helped establish the tournament. "We are doing everything that we can to ensure the safety of fans and the delegations."

After being forced into hiding by fascist killers, Ayaan Hirsi Ali found that the Dutch government and people were slightly embarrassed to have such a prominent "Third World" spokeswoman in their midst. She was first kept as a virtual prisoner, which made it almost impossible for her to do her job as an elected representative. When she complained in the press, she was eventually found an apartment in a protected building. Then the other residents of the block filed suit and complained that her presence exposed them to risk. In spite of testimony from the Dutch police, who assured the court that the building was now one of the safest in all Holland, a court has upheld the demand from her neighbors and fellow citizens that she be evicted from her home. In these circumstances, she is considering resigning from parliament and perhaps leaving her adopted country altogether. This is not the only example that I know of a supposedly liberal society collaborating in its own destruction, but I hope at least that it will shame us all into making The Caged Virgin a best seller.

For several days ultra-Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem and elsewhere have attacked police officers, burned rubbish bins and blocked off roads in an attempt to halt the parade. Six policemen have been injured and 60 rioters arrested in the past week.

On Sunday, police warned that the risk of violence was too great, but stopped short of calling for a ban. "We understand that the potential danger to life and bloodshed is greater than that to free speech," said police spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld

---

On Sunday night gangs of ultra-Orthodox Jews threw stones at buses in the town of Bet Shemesh because men and women were not separated on board. Ultra-Orthodox residents in the area want buses where men sit in the front and women at the back and the radio does not play.

There were riots at the weekend in Bnei Brak, an ultra-Orthodox town near the much more liberal city of Tel Aviv. Rioters blocked one of the country's main roads with burning tyres.

Organizers Thursday canceled Friday's Gay Pride parade in Jerusalem, and instead plan to hold a civil rights demonstration in a single location. They cited the 12,000 police needed for security —Ultra-Orthodox Jews had threatened a massive riot if the parade were held — when there are concrete terror threats. That provided "an honorable way to climb down from the tree," says Berger

States to provide, within their respective legal and constitutional systems, adequate protection against acts of hatred, discrimination, intimidation and coercion resulting from defamation of religions, to take all possible measures to promote tolerance and respect for all religions and their value systems and to complement legal systems with intellectual and moral strategies to combat religious hatred and intolerance.
The resolution, supported by the Organization of the Islamic Conference [official website], passed Tuesday by a vote of 108-51 [press release, see Annex X], with 25 abstentions. Many Western nations and other democracies opposed the resolution.

Mr Berlusconi, who owns Italy's three main commercial television channels and as Prime Minister also wields influence over RAI, the state broadcaster, has been accused by the Left of using his media power to muzzle critics and satirists.