Bird flu found in migratory swans in Italy, Greece and Bulgaria. Poultry have been dying of H5N1 in Nigeria for a month. (Update: Slovenia, too.) (Update 2: Germany and Austria, too. Anyone feeling left out?)
Have a nice week.

What to do when you haven’t finished a book but find yourself with something to say about it?
Convention dictates that one should finish a book before reviewing it (although I have my doubts about any number of published reviews), but on the other hand, I’m not trying to sell a review of Grace and Power: [...]

While I’m still struggling to put my reaction to the cartoon row into appropriate writing, today’s Spiegel Online’s English edition features an interesting and important article about a different kind of culture clash. It’s a timely story about the fact that Islam the religion and Islam the cultural practice are often quite distinct. It’s a [...]

The German newspaper whose web site is now marginally better organized has two reporters based in the United States for its main news section. One, Matthias Rueb, is said to be one of the paper’s heavy hitters. They post him where they want to have an impact, certainly within German debate, and if possible at [...]

I cannot recommend highly enough Ken Macleod’s post (found via Crooked Timber) on how the “socialism of fools” - Engels’ description of anti-semitism - was accompanied by a sort of “liberalism of fools”, to wit, the anti-Catholicism of the pre-WWII era. Macleod, acknowledging that anti-Catholicism is rather passé these days, wonders if hatred of [...]

Iran newspaper Hamshahri came up with an original plan to counter the release of Danish cartoons making fun of the prophet Muhammad and decided to hold a little cartoon contest to test the limits of free speech:
The daily paper Hamshahri said the contest was designed to test the boundaries of free speech — the reason [...]

Alex, I agree. But to know what happened to the ideals when they became their respective opium can only serve as a reminder to be careful, and, that politics matters. In fact, my idea of “dealing with Islam” doesn’t necessarily include the CRS, but compulsory Europe-wide reading of the relevant articles on Wikipedia, for example. [...]

Maybe so. Most people arguing for this, though, aren’t the ones I’d want to take
sides with in a rerun of the 16th C. I doubt Freeborn John Lilburne would have
been lining up with Sarkozy, Berlusconi, Clarke, or Daniel Pipes.
When push comes to shove, I bet the Islamic Reformation boosters will be the
first to move up [...]

Alex,
a) I love the term „snack thinker“. She may well be, but her narrative lends a credibility most people do not have. She’s paying a high price being who she is and as such is probably entitles to being over-the-top at times. And, of course, there’s the Dutch history of pillarisation, which radicalises this debate [...]

Ayan Hirsi Ali: Snack thinker of the year.
Seriously, what is all this fuckbuggerage about an Islamic Reformation from non-Islamic people and Islamic people who have clearly forgotten, or never knew, just how terrible the Reformation was for any poor sod who had to live through it?