And you thought Sudan was primitive.

A charming vignette of life in Bangladesh . . . ..

Meet Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury. As these lines are being written, Mr. Choudhury, a gadfly Bangladeshi journalist, is running for his life. Assuming he survives till Thursday, he will face charges of blasphemy, sedition, treason and espionage in a Dhaka courtroom. His crime is to have tried to attend a writers' conference in Tel Aviv on how the media can foster world peace. If convicted, he could face the death penalty.

Welcome to Bangladesh, a country the State Department's Richard Boucher recently portrayed in congressional testimony as "a traditionally moderate and tolerant country" that shares America's "commitment to democracy, human rights and the rule of law." That's an interesting way to describe a country that is regularly ranked as the world's most corrupt by Transparency International . . . . The Ministry of Industries is in the hands of Motiur Rahman Nizami, a radical Islamist with a reputation of a violent past. . . . Seven other journalists have also been brought up on sedition charges by Ms. Zia's government, most of them for attempting to document Bangladesh's repression of religious minorities.

Mr. Boucher should be parking cars in the Foggy Bottom parking garage instead of spouting utter nonsense to our elected representatives. There's a so much more appropriate term for his product but we strive ever to be the class act.

"Darkness in Dhaka." By Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal Online, 10/10/06 (subscription; emphasis added).