Here we go again. Israel's envoy to Norway complains that a cartoon goes "beyond free speech." What the hell does that mean? Beyond good taste? Beyond acceptable discourse? Beyond what should be permitted in a free society? Where are these lines to be drawn and by whom? Why can't the offended (Muslim or Israeli) protest offending images without calling for their censorship, either explicitly or (worse, because it is more insidious) implicitly? Maybe this kind of sloppy and censorious speech is worse than hate speech? From BBC News July 26:

The Srebrenica Genocide Blog notes the July 11 ceremony at the Bosnian town to commemorate the mass murder that took place there precisely 11 years ago—an anniversary largely overlooked by the world media, despite some important new developments in the survivors' ongoing search for justice:

With the world's eyes elsewhere, the still-unresolved status of Kosova is a major crisis just waiting to erupt. Kostunica delivered this speech outside a 14th-century monastery in the town of Gracanica rather than at the Plain of Blackbirds, the site of the famous Battle of Kosovo. But the allusions are obvious to Slobodan Milosevic's notorious June 28, 1989 speech at the Plain of Blackbirds which signaled the start of his long camapign against the province's Alabanian majority and also marked the beginning of Yugoslavia's self-destruction. It is amazing that the media accounts are not picking up on this. From AP, June 29:

Scotland Yard's anti-terror chief is awarded "Commander of the British Empire"—in the wake of a controvesial shooting of a young Muslim man in a police raid that turned up nothing. From The Telegraph, June 17:

There has been a storm of protest after it emerged that a senior police officer involved in a controversial anti-terror raid in which a suspect was shot was to be awarded a CBE.

Remember those innocent days when terrorists were radical leftists rather than Islamic fundamentalists? The Greeks do. From Ekathimerini, June 1 (links added):

Culture Minister Giorgos Voulgarakis had informed the heads of police and the Public Order Ministry about an increase in threats against him six days before Tuesday’s bomb attack, sources said yesterday as authorities suspect the involvement of far-left group Revolutionary Struggle.

For a second consecutive night yesterday, French police battled hundreds of Muslim youth in the Paris suburbs of Clichy-sous-Bois and Montfermeil. (Seattle Times, June 1) This makes headlines; the ongoing institutionalized racism that fuels these periodic eruptions does not. From Turkey's Zaman, June 1:

Half of those being detained in French prisons are said to be Muslims.
A Le Monde news article wrote that according to a poll run by Religions World magazine, although Muslims constitute 7-8 percent of the French population, 50 percent of all prisoners are Muslim immigrants.

How do they keep a straight face when they tell us we're fighting for freedom in Iraq? From Reuters, May 24:

LONDON: Police yesterday dismantled a long-running anti-war protest opposite the Houses of Parliament, carting away placards showing graphic images of dead and mutilated people in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a pre-dawn raid, officers invaded the makeshift camp of protester Brian Haw, who had been living on the lawn in Parliament Square for more than five years.

The vote for secession in Montenegro is being posed as the final chapter in the disintegration of Yugoslavia that began in 1990 with Slovenia's vote for seccession. Technically, "Yugoslavia" ceased to exist in 2003 when what was left of it was formally renamed "Serbia and Montenegro." But the salient point that most of the Western media is overlooking is the implications of Montenegro's secession for neighboring Kosova. Ironically, the destabilization of Yugoslavia began with the crisis over Kosova, which lost its constitutional autonomy in the first wave of Serb ethno-nationalism in 1989. Subsequent protests there were put down in a wave of repression. This was the first blow to the Yugoslav federal system, and led directly to the subsequent secessions. Yet Kosova's own status was never determined. It remains a de facto NATO protectorate while still officially part of Serbia. The Albanian majority there would like to formally secede; the Serb minority wants reunion with Serbia. The West has posed as the protector of the Albanians, but (as we have argued before) the actual motives in the NATO intervention were more likely to contain Albanian national apsirations in Kosova and head off the emergence of a new Muslim-led state in Europe. This is slyly (if unintentionally) revealed by the Western media's universal use of the Serbian spelling "Kosovo" instead of the Albanian "Kosova" to denote the province which is overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian.