The Israeli troll-o-sphere appears to be abuzz with ghastly cheerleading for the Oslo attacks. J.J. Goldberg notes the phenomenon in a July 24 comment for The Forward: "Judging by the comments sections on the main Hebrew websites, the main questions under debate seem to be whether Norwegians deserve any sympathy from Israelis given the country’s pro-Palestinian policies, whether the killer deserves any sympathy given his self-declared intention of fighting Islamic extremism and, perhaps ironically, whether calling attention to this debate is in itself an anti-Israel or anti-Semitic act."

For all the endless paranoia about neocon conspiracies to destabilize the Syrian regime (and Arab regimes in general), there are still plenty of politicians in the West who fear instability more than they dislike dictators. Generally, these are the paleocons or "pragmatists" of the Old Right, but this tendency also infects some politicians of the left. NPR noted on June 29 that during a "fact-finding" trip to Syria, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) was quoted by Damascus' official news agency SANA saying:

Media reports have noted that accused Oslo bomber Anders Behring Breivik indicated through his online spewings that he is a fan of professional Islamophobe Pam Geller, who led the protests against New York's "Ground Zero Mosque" last Sept. 11. At the time, we noted the irony that the same pseudo-left hucksters (especially Workers World Party and its satellites) that organized the counter-protest against Geller's thugs ironically shared in demonization of the Muslims of Bosnia and Kosova with such right-wing mosque-opponents as Terry Jones and Glenn Beck. Now, as paranoid pseudo-left hucksters line up to charge (on no evidence) that Breivik is a Mossad agent, it emerges that he was actually motivated by... rage at NATO's bombardment of the Serbs! This from AP, July 25:

Gee, that didn't take long. Conspiranoid cranks claim (on no evidence) that Mossad was behind the Oslo terror attacks, providing an opportunity for the right-wing Israeli press to tar "anti-Zionists" as conspiranoid cranks. Arutz Sheva, far-right organ of the settler movement, swoops in on the kneejerk spewings of two perennial faves of the conspiracy set. The first is Wayne Madsen, a self-proclaimed former US military analyst, who plays an utterly specious connect-the-dots game to link accused Oslo bomber Anders Behring Breivik to Israeli intelligence...

The blood was not even dry from the July 22 coordinated bomb blast and shooting rampage in Oslo that left at least 94 dead before Britain's The Telegraph was asking in a headline, "Oslo explosion: Is al-Qaeda behind this?" Among their specious arguments was that jihadis are still miffed over the Danish cartoon affair and are too dumb to tell one Scandinavian country from another (perhaps in the same manner that Muslim-hating thugs in America beat up Sikhs). The screed remains live on The Telegraph's website despite the fact that the accused perpetrator, one Anders Behring Breivik, appears to be a homegrown right-wing extremist in the style of Timothy McVeigh—except, this being Europe in 2011, with a special Islamophobic twist...

Earlier this month, the House Homeland Security Committee's subcommittee on counterterrorism and intelligence held a hearing on the supposed Western Hemisphere operations of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shi'ite militia and political party which is on the State Department's list of "Foreign Terrorist Organizations." Those testifying included Roger F. Noriega, a senior fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, and Douglas Farah, a senior fellow of the International Assessment and Strategy Center. Fears of Hezbollah collaboration with Mexican drug cartels were raised by a 2010 internal memo from the Tucson Police Department, leaked by the hacker group LulzSec, which raided a trove of documents from the Arizona Department of Public Safety. The memo apparently warns that Hezbollah has established operations and a large arms stockpile in Mexico.

A year has now passed since the Israeli government announced its decision to "expand the civilian policy toward the [Gaza] Strip" and "ease" the closure. Perhaps concerned that the positive results of the "easing" aren't obvious enough, the IDF's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) has published a report, "Implementation of the Civil Policy Toward the Gaza Strip: One Year Since the Cabinet's Decision to Expand the Civil Policy." This document is analyzed by the Gisha Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, an Israeli human rights group that monitors the situation in the Strip, in a study humorously dubbed "Numbers, Meet Context"... .

Peru's populist president-elect is scheduled to take office in just one week, and ominous signs are mounting that (campaign promises aside) he will continue his predecessor's trajectory towards breakneck resource extraction, plunder of the environment, pauperization of the peasantry—and attendant bloody social conflicts. Or, as The Economist puts it, "Ollanta Humala has given strong signals that he will keep Peru's successful economic policies."