THIS IS A LOT BETTER THAN THE ARAFAT THING:

OSLO, Oct 10 – Iranian lawyer Shirin Ebadi became the first Muslim woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize Friday for a fearless defense of human rights in an award designed to spur wider democracy in the Islamic world. . . .

Ebadi had often defended controversial causes. In 2000, she was given a suspended sentence after a court convicted her and another human rights lawyer of producing a video tape alleging that prominent conservatives supported activities of violent vigilantes.

“This prize gives me the energy to continue my fight,” Ebadi told a news conference in Paris without the head scarf required under Islamic law. She said she would go to Oslo to receive the $1.3 million prize at the Dec. 10 ceremony.

Good.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

Your link to the Ebadi story reminds me of what the WaPo, NYT and the AP did after the fall in the Soviet Union. All of a sudden the most hard-line communists became, miraculously, “conservatives.” Now, in Iran, the WaPo uses “conservative” to refer to the mullahs, with the implication that “conservatives” are against freedom. Used out of an American context and left undefined this leaves the reader unaware that American conservatives were/are in the vanguard in supporting freedoms for people in the Soviet Union and in Iran.

Yes, and far too many “liberals” were astonishingly comfortable with the Soviet Union, just as too many seem to regard Fidel Castro as admirable even today.