You would think...

I was almost at the end of what I've come to call the "church translation," when I run into some very colloquial text in a document addressed to half the officials in the republic. You'd think that someone old enough to be a grandfather would have enough sense to refrain from indulging his own cheap shots (the scope of epithets he uses to describe the object of his ire is breathtaking), and frankly, from using the kind of language - even if it is in quotes - that's more appropriate to a teeny-bopping homie than to a mature member of the community.

Given what the man has been through, I don't begrudge him his apprehensions and his anger, but I truly have to wonder what the point of this document is: to get results or to satisfy that indulgence?

Cheers...

The real question...

It turns out a newspaper in Iran has kicked off a contest to find the "best" cartoon about... the Holocaust. Obviously, this would appear to be a tit-for-tat response to the publication, in many European countries, of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.

Whatever.

According to the daily paper, Hamshahri: "A serious question for Muslims ... is this: Does Western free speech allow working on issues like America and Israel's crimes or an incident like the Holocaust? Or is this freedom of speech only good for insulting the holy values of divine religions?"

I think the real question is this: Will the published entries be distinguishable from the paper's usual editorial content?

Cheers...