Our contributor Mahmood Ketabchi offers another critique of the US left's reponse to the "cartoon controversy." Interestingly, he finds reflexive support for any forces ostensibly opposing the US to be a paradoxical form of nationalism, that places the United States at the center of the moral universe. He explains his term "left nationalism" in a footnote:

From China's The Standard, March 3:

US President George W Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Thursday sealed what they hailed as an "historic" nuclear deal, seen as the bedrock of a new strategic partnership.

Gee, that didn't take long, did it? CBS, March 2:

Police say at least one bomb near the U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, killed four people and injured 49 others early Thursday.

Nope, no imminent civil war in Iraq, Bush says. If this was anywhere else in the world, we would recognize it as already a civil war...

Armed expulsions of Shiites. Washington Post, March 1:

BAGHDAD, Feb. 28 -- Salim Rashid, 34, a Shiite laborer in an overwhelmingly Sunni Arab village 20 miles north of Baghdad, received his eviction notice Friday from a man at the door with a rocket launcher.

India's long and forgotten war with the Maoist Naxalite rebels in the impoverished east claims scores of lives in Chattisgarh state just as Bush arrives in the country. Note that the right-wing BJP is forming anti-guerilla paramilitary groups in the region—an ominous echo of the dialectic of terror that has engulfed neighboring Nepal. From GulfNews.com, March 1:

Great, just what we need—military incursions to provoke a general uprising in Pakistan's increasingly restive Tribal Areas. Just to give the teetering edifice of Musharraf's dictatorship a healthy shove towards the abyss. Then we can have a nuclear-armed Taliban in power. From VOA, March 1, via Global Security:

From AFP, March 1, via Middle East Times. A glimmer of hope, we suppose—but even Khatami equivocates on the numbers.

Iran's former reformist president Mohammad Khatami has described the Holocaust as a "historical reality" - a stinging attack on his controversial and revisionist successor Mahmud Ahmadinejad.

"We should speak out if even a single Jew is killed. Don't forget that one of the crimes of Hitler, Nazism and German national socialism was the massacre of innocent people, among them many Jews," the cleric said in comments carried in the Iranian press on Wednesday.

Amazing! Finally the light bulb goes on! Why, this man should be director of national intelligence! Oops, he already is! Of course we were warning before Bush went into Iraq that destabilization of the country could spark regional or even world war. But, hey, nobody ever listens to us! From AP, Feb. 28:

Spy Chief: Iraq May Spark Regional Battle
WASHINGTON — A civil war in Iraq could lead to a broader conflict in the Middle East, pitting the region's rival Islamic sects against each other, National Intelligence Director John Negroponte said in an unusually frank assessment Tuesday.