Tunnel vision

Also known as Footnote to the preceding.

While the talking heads of the right wing prattle away at their talking points, screeching that the tragedy of London is left's fault and how this should push such stupid concerns as world poverty and global warming off the agenda in favor of "fighting terrorism," news of an anniversary has come via the BBC for Monday to remind us in our ethnocentric little worlds that the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II was not committed by Muslims - it was committed against them.

Tens of thousands of people have attended ceremonies marking the 10th anniversary of the massacre of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica.

Grieving relatives buried more than 600 newly identified dead, after prayers and words of support from international and local officials. ...

Muslim prayers echoed through the valley of the memorial site at Potocari, the site of the slaughter, as women in white headscarves wept beside the remains of their loved ones.

The green coffins were then passed from hand to hand through the crowd to the freshly dug grave sites, as announcers called out one by one the names of the 610 dead.

Each family buried its own dead, by hand or using shovels and buckets.

Over a period of five days in July, 1995, at least 7,800 Muslin men and boys were slaughtered by Bosnian Serb forces as NATO forces, which were supposedly protecting the enclave, dithered. (Dutch troops were those at the scene; in the wake of the massacre, the Dutch government called for an investigation. The resulting report, available here, caused the government to accept partial responsibility for the deaths and lead to some resignations. Would that we could be so honest about ourselves.)

As an indication of the ethnic tensions still present,

Serbia's parliament observed a minute silence for all victims of atrocities in and around Srebrenica, and also of last week's London bomb attacks.

But it failed to make specific reference to the Srebrenica massacre, and was boycotted by the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party.

And even though Bosnian Serb officials admitted to the truth of the massacre last year, many Serbs have continued to insist that the murders never happened. However, on June 2 a video emerged in the trial of Slobodan Milošević showing Serb soldiers killing six civilians during the massacre, something that has spurred outrage and, the BBC says, "national soul-searching among Serbs."

Which is something else of which we here could use a healthy dose.