This one is really funny. The ultra-conservative hyper-interventionist Islamophobes at the oddly named Human Events managed to score an interview with Reza Pahlavi, son of the late Shah of Iran and pretender to the throne. But this self-promoting monarchist restorationist, it turns out, is insufficiently bellicose and reactionary for the likes of his interviewers! They keep trying to goad him into supporting military action, and he (to his credit!) won't take the bait. Who'd have thought it would come to this—the scion of the Shah is more progressive (at least in word) than either the ruling mullahs or the beltway neocons who seek to overthrow them!

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.

Remember, if you're not with us you're with the terrorists. From the Newark Star-Ledger, May 21:

Family waits for answers in hit-run
Memorial grows for siblings killed in Roselle

By yesterday afternoon, the curbside memorial along St. Georges Avenue had grown thick with dozens of stuffed animals, fresh red roses, flickering candles and silvery balloons twisting in the wind.

Dubious reports circulate that a bill pending in Iran would force Jews and other religious minorties to wear identifying insignia—in an obvious echo of Nazi Germany. Predictably, the Iranian regime is calling the allegations a Jewish conspiracy. From the Financial Times:

Iranian officials and politicians have strongly condemned a Canadian newspaper report alleging that Iran had passed a law requiring Jews to wear yellow badges on their clothes.

More arrests of Syrian opposition activists, and it appears some of them are being roughed up. From Lebanon's Daily Star, May 20:

BEIRUT: A prominent Syrian human rights lawyer who was arrested this week is being subject to beatings, his brother said Friday, even as the European Union condemned Syria's latest crackdown on dissidents.

Israel is continuing "targetted assassinations" in supposedly unoccupied Gaza. But internecine Palestinian violence, alas, now seems equally efficient in killing off the Palestinian leadership.

An Israeli missile strike on a car in Gaza City May 20 killed a top Islamic Jihad commander, Mohammed Dahdouh. A Palestinian woman, Hanan Aman, her 4-year-old son Mohanad and a female relative Naima Aman were also killed in the attack, and three others wounded. (Al-Bawaba, May 20)

A front-page story in today's New York Times paints an even more desperate picture of the deteriorating situation in Darfur than usual. Lydia Polgreen reports from Tina, a village that was overrun April 19 and the residents forced to flee to the overstretched and over-crowded refugee camp at Tawila. Only this time the armed horsemen who swept through, burning, looting, shooting and raping, were not Janjaweed, but a faction of the Sudan Liberation Army, the major guerilla group resisting the Sudanese pro-government forces. The SLA has splintered, with the faction that signed the recent peace accord turning against the more intransigent faction which has held out, calling the accords a sham. The ostensibly pro-peace faction is now attacking civilian villages, mimicking the tactics of their Janjaweed enemies. Again, there is an ethnic dimension: the supposedly pro-peace faction is led by ethnic Zaghawa, who are traditionally semi-nomadic herdsmen, while the hold-out faction is led by sedentary, agricultural Fur, who are the big majority in Darfur ("Land of the Fur"). "It was the Zaghawa who did this," a Tina sheikh told Polgreen. "We used to fear the Arab janjaweed. Now we have another janjaweed."

From the London Times, May 20:

THE largest prisoner uprising yet at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre was reported by the US military yesterday as the UN watchdog on torture called for the camp to be shut down.