The government and opposition protesters are sharply at odds in Uzbekistan days after the eastern city of Andijan exploded into violence. A May 15 AP report claimed some 500 bodies had been laid out in a school in Andijan for identification by relatives, "corroborating witness accounts of hundreds killed" when soldiers opened fire on street protests. Medical authorities also reported some 2,000 wounded in local hospitals. However, a May 18 account on Russia's MosNews.com quotes Uzbek officials denying this very death toll. “Not a single civilian was killed by government forces there," Prosecutor General Rashid Kadyrov said. According to him the overall death toll was 169 people, including 32 soldiers. Kadyrov claimed reports of 500 or even 700 dead are “deliberate attempts to deceive the international community." He assailed the protesters as "terrorists," "criminals" and "extremists."

Allegations in the May 9 Newsweek that U.S. military interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had abused a Koran, and even flushed one down a toilet, led to riots that left several dead in Afghanistan May 11. By the next day, protests had spread from Jalalabad (where they began) to Kabul, where a CARE office was ransacked, and several other cities across the country. Large, angry protests were also held in Pakistan, Indonesia, Gaza, Yemen and elsewhere around the Islamic world. (Reuters, May 13)

The following post was made after an excellent Gideon Levy commentary on Ha'aretz, which blames Israel for the widely expected next outbreak of violence.

I'm assuming the poster is authentic because Ha'aretz moderates its comments, and he posts a lot.

The fault lies in the mythical invincibility of our failure-prone IDF

Name: Aluf Mishne (Res) Elyakim Biton

City: Jerusalem State: Israel

Todays IDF is viewed by its General Staff as a mere stepping stone into politics and real riches, not as a responsibility for the safety and best interests of the state of Israel. After serving 30 years in the IDF I guarantee this statement is factual.

The ongoing protests in Uzbekistan's eastern city of Andijan exploded into violence yesterday as demonstrators stormed a jail in an effort to free 23 men accused of membership in an Islamist organization and soldiers responded by opening fire on the crowd of some 4,000, leaving a an initially confirmed nine dead and as many as 50 wounded. Reports indicate that at least some of the defendants were freed, and that protesters also attacked other official buildings. Some were reported firing back at soldiers from the crowd.

...the more they stay the same. Or, as Yogi Berra put it, its deja vu all over again. The recent arguing (on this blog and just about everywhere else) over Iraq and the neo-cons and the supposed hijacking of U.S. foreign policy by Israel--and particularly the inevitable invocation ofPat Buchanan in this context--has prompted me to dig out something I wrote back in the fall of 1990, in the prelude to Operation Desert Storm, the conflict that set the template for the current horrific world situation. Up until now, it has appeared nowhere in cyber-space--just in a crumbling hard copy in my personal files. I think it provides some useful insights to the origin of the current debate...

Well, Pat Buchanan (whose name came up in the recent unpleasantness over anti-Semitism on this blog) noted the 60th anniversary of VE Day in his own inimitable way: by asking in a May 11 opinion piece "Was WWII Worth It?" And, of course, by promptly answering his own question: "For Stalin, Yes." What is truly appalling is less that Buchanan has written this execrable piece of revisionism than that it was run (with no rebuttal) by AntiWar.com, which mysteriously continues to have credentials on the "left" even as it becomes more and more transparently linked to the populist right.

It is always a dilemma whether to risk legitimizing evil claptrap by stooping to argue with it. But given how Buchanan's poison is insidiously creeping into the supposed "left," a few responses are probably in order.

A new study by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) finds that crimes against Muslims in the U.S. jumped by more than 50% in 2004. The report outlines 1,522 cases of harassment, discrimination or violence against Muslims last year, including 141 hate crimes, compared with 1,019 cases and 93 hate crimes in 2003. "These disturbing figures come as no surprise given growing Islamophobic sentiments and a general misperception of Islam and Muslims," said Arsalan Iftikhar, CAIR legal director and the report's author. (Al-Jazeera, May 12)

Navy Petty Officer Pablo Paredes, a Bronx native who refused to board the USS Bonhomme Richard as it was preparing to sail from San Diego in December, was convicted by a Navy judge on a charge of missing his deployment to Iraq. He faces a maximum sentence of one year in prison, a bad conduct discharge, loss of two thirds of his pay and a demotion. Paredes reported to the Navy pier the morning of Dec. 6, but refused to board and was told to go away. After 45 minutes on the pier, he did. He surrendered to military authorities on Dec. 18 after applying for conscientious objector status. The Navy denied his request. That ruling is being appealed. Thomas Jefferson School of Law Professor Marjorie Cohn, an international law specialist, said Paredes had acted from principle. "He said, 'I don't want to be a war criminal,'" she recalled. "He was very concerned about the deaths of more than a thousand American servicemen and women, and of thousands of Iraqis." (Reuters, May 11)