Kurt Westergaard was the man behind the most famous of the Danish cartoons of Mohammed. By virtue of this, he also lives under the constant threat that an Islamist militant will try to end his life. In January, a Somali Muslim broke into Westergaard's home wielding both an axe and a knife - Westergaard was able to hole up in a panic room until police arrived, and was luckily unharmed.

One would hope that this was the last time that someone would try to murder Kurt Westergaard. Indeed, one attempted killing would seem like a reasonable limit for any cartoonist. However, another attempt on Westergaard's life was foiled in Norway this September, as reported by Ahram Online: 

"Norwegian police have arrested a suspect who was preparing a deadly attack against a Danish cartoonist behind a controversial caricature of the Prophet Mohammed, a Norwegian newspaper reported Saturday. 

The suspect, who is in his 30s, was detained Tuesday after Norwegian intelligence discovered Kurt Westergaard was the target of an assassination plot involving automatic weapons and explosives, according to the Dagbladet daily.

Westergaard revealed earlier this week that he had cut short a visit to Norway after police caught wind of a possible attack against him.

He had been scheduled to attend the launch in Oslo Tuesday of a children's book for which he provided the illustrations, but he cancelled and returned to Denmark on Monday night."

It seems that Westergaard's nightmare will continue for now.

Bruce Bawer has more. H/t to Blazing Cat Fur.

Walker Morrow is a Contributing Writer for The Propagandist

After America: Get Ready for Armageddon
Mark Steyn
Regnery Publishing

After America: Get Ready for Armageddon is pretty much exactly what you would expect from the fellow who brought you America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It.

In After America we pick up where the end of the world left off in Steyn's last book: Europe and much of the rest of the Western world is still in demographic upheaval and financial crisis. America is fast joining its declining neighbors in a race to the bottom. 

In Steyn's words, "It starts with the money." As he lays it out, the United States is being buried under a mountain of debt that it has no hope of ever paying off, at least at the current rate it is spending money and maintaining its entitled, ever-growing, unaccountable bureaucratic class. What shrinking amount of working class America is left to pay the bills can't possibly hope to keep up. The border to the south is getting hazier every day, the education system is churning out dumber and dumber students, and things show no sign of getting better anytime soon.  Read more

The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal (BCHRT) is the quasi-judicial body that has become semi-famous for its one-week show trial of Macleans Magazine after it had the audacity to publish Mark Steyn in its pages, and for fining comic Guy Earle over $15,000 after getting into a tussle with some lesbian hecklers at an open mic. It is the living embodiment of everything that is wrong with government involvement in what we say and how we live our lives.

Last summer we learned that Heather MacNaughton, the head of the BCHRT at the time, and tribunal member Judy Parrack were not going to be re-appointed to their positions. Indeed, for a little while, there was even a little doubt as to the future purpose of the BCHRT itself. That didn't last long, however, and long-time bureaucrat Bernd Walter was appointed in MacNaughton's stead to carry on her, erm, fine work. 

But whatever became of Heather MacNaughton herself? Well, this May she was appointed, as of June 1st, by the province's lieutenant-governor as a BC Supreme Court master, which means that she'll be making decisions about procedural motions and pre-trial hearings. It also means that she will be making about as much as your average provincial judge in British Columbia, which, as of 2007, was around $200,000 a year.

Not bad for a government-appointed hack who, just a while ago, was holding hearings about magazine articles and McDonald's hygiene.

Walker Morrow is a Contributing Writer for The Propagandist

Courtesy of Michael Coren's new show for Sun TV, The Arena, here is Coren's interview last week with Danish Mohammed cartoonist Kurt Westergaard.

H/t to Blazing Cat Fur. 

Earlier this year, Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei was released from the clutches of the Chinese government after three months in jail. Apparently his stay in prison hasn't dampened his spirit, because late last month he published a scathing critique of the city of Beijing. Courtesy of The Daily Beast: 

This city is not about other people or buildings or streets but about your mental structure. If we remember what Kafka writes about his Castle, we get a sense of it. Cities really are mental conditions. Beijing is a nightmare. A constant nightmare.

H/t to Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing. Meanwhile, Shikha Dalmia at Reason Magazine's Hit & Run blog adds:

The plight of rural migrants in China is one of the most under-reported stories in the West—but also one that spells most trouble for China’s autocracy. During Mao’s reign, the country implemented something called hukou, an internal passport that went to draconian lengths to control the movement of Chinese people. Under hukou, every citizen is assigned a status—urban or rural—upon birth, creating a kind of locational apartheid. If people want to move outside their birth hukou, they need official permission, which was virtually impossible to get before liberalization. Now, thanks to the need for cheap labor in China’s urban factories, men can get permission by paying a fee. Women have to pay—and take a pregnancy test to prove that they are not moving to evade birth control restrictions!

H/t to Boing Boing for this story about Syrian satirical cartoonist Ali Farzat, who was forced out of his car and beaten by masked thugs as a "warning" for his work, which has been critical of the Syrian government regime. From the Committee to Protect Journalists:

New York, August 25, 2011--Ali Ferzat, a famous Syrian cartoonist critical of the government, was abducted and severely beaten by masked gunmen as he left his office early on Thursday in Damascus, international media reported. The attackers stomped on his hands and said the beating was a warning, the Associated Press said. He was dumped bleeding on a roadside several hours later.

The Associated Press has more, including a partial profile of Ali Farzat's brave work criticizing the Syrian government and the Assad regime. We wish him a speedy recovery from this act of brutality. 

Walker Morrow is a Contributing Writer for The Propagandist

Here are a couple of quick items that should give us a helpful glimpse into the state of freedom of speech in Australia. 

First, the story of Aussie broadcaster Michael Smith, who is in hot water over comments that he has made regarding the prophet Muhammad. Heath Aston of the Sydney Morning Herald reports:

THE radio presenter Michael Smith is being investigated by the media watchdog over his assertion that the prophet Muhammad ''married a nine-year-old and consummated it when she was 11''.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority confirmed in a letter dated July 21 that it was investigating the remarks by the 2UE afternoon host.

Adem Cetinay, a Muslim from Bossley Park, complained that Mr Smith was inciting hatred against Muslims through his July 5 broadcast.

Earlier this month, the website for the International Free Press Society was hacked by an unknown group. The hack has since been fixed, but below is a saved screenshot of the hacked page:

While this could simply be the work of pranksters, one hopes that this threat is being taken seriously.

Be careful, guys.

Mark Steyn, writer, polemicist, sometime-guest host for Rush Limbaugh, and all-around darling of the right, has a new book out that some of our more conservative Allies may be adding to their reading list.

After America: Get Ready for Armageddon - not to be confused with Mark Steyn's previous apocalyptic tome, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It - officially launched last week. Its topic? The collapse of Western society. In its own words: 

In his New York Times bestseller America Alone, Steyn warned of the impending collapse of just about every country in the western world except America. The good news is the rest of the west’s demise is still on schedule. The bad news is America has now signed up for the same program, supersized. And, unlike AIG, Fannie Mae, Detroit and Greece, the United States is big enough to fail, and spectacularly so. If, like Mark, you want to avoid that fate, then After America is the book for you. It starts with the money, because it always does - for Washington, as for London and Rome before it. But it ends with a ruined and reprimitivized planet - and even liberals won't like that as much as they think.

Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard's drawings of the prophet Mohammed were used as a pretext for global protests and boycotts against Denmark by Islamist-friendly nations. As well, Westergaard has had to live in hiding in his own country because of people like Lors Doukaev.

Courtesy of the Copenhagen Post:

Lors Doukaev will spend 12 years in a Danish prison for last September’s failed plan to send a letter bomb to the newspaper that published the Mohammed drawings, a court in Copenhagen announced today. Read more