STAY INFORMED

If you aren't a regular visitor to Clear and Present you're probably not as well-informed as you should be. For example, there's this:

Gov. Rod Blagojevich named to his hate crimes commission a representative of the Nation of Islam, even though its leader, Louis Farrakhan, has been accused of anti-Semitic, anti-white and anti-gay speech.

Sister Claudette Marie Muhammad, chief of protocol for the Nation of Islam, is among appointees to The Governor's Commission on Discrimination and Hate Crimes.

Another member of the commission, Lonnie Nasatir, Midwest regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, said having a representative of the Nation of Islam on the commission raises eyebrows. The ADL has Farrakhan quotations on its Web site, www.ADL.org, under the heading "extremism."

"I'm not judging her," Nasatir said Thursday. "All I can judge is the institution from which she is being sent. That's a cause for concern, I think, on a commission to eradicate hate and discrimination."

And this:

A virulently anti-Semitic film about the Iraq war has provoked a storm of protest in Germany after it sold out to cheering audiences from the country's 2.5 million-strong Turkish community.

Valley of the Wolves, by the Turkish director Serdan Akar, shows crazed American GIs massacring innocent guests at a wedding party and scenes in which a Jewish surgeon removes organs from Iraqi prisoners in a style reminiscent of the Nazi death camp doctor Joseph Mengele.

Bavaria's interior minister admitted last week that he had dispatched intelligence service agents to cinemas showing the film to "gauge" audience reaction and identify potential radicals.

Edmund Stoiber, the state's conservative prime minister, has appealed to cinema operators to remove what he described as "this racist and anti-Western hate film" from their programmes.

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