Here we go again. We take it for granted that Washington is pressuring Baghdad to execute these guys before they can be tried for the far greater crimes of the Kurdish genocide—because that would raise questions about US complicity. But it is also starting to look like someone is intentionally turning the executions into unseemly lynch-mob orgies, with the aim of exacerbating the sectarian conflict. And we do not believe this is what Washington wants. From the BBC News, Jan. 15 (emphasis added):

It's a sign of the times that this fringe sect is on the front page of the New York Times Metro section Jan. 15. This story makes clear that Neturei Karta is distinct from the Satmars, an Hasidic sect which likewise rejects Zionism as apostasy but wisely keeps its distance from the likes of Ahmadinejad. This is a point many are confused on—including ourselves before we were set straight. The group Jews Not Zionists seems to be a sort of ecumenical clearing-house for all Orthodox anti-Zionist tendencies. On the subject of the radical fringe, the ubiquitous Jewish Defense Organization referenced here is, for all its relentless noise, not an "organization" at all. It is one guy called Mordechai Levy. Writes Fernanda Santos:

A telling story by Marc Perelman for New York's Jewish weekly The Forward Jan. 12 (links and emphasis added):

A campaign to convince Iran’s 25,000 Jews to flee the country has stalled, with most opting to stay in their native homeland despite President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial and anti-Israeli speeches.

We've argued repeatedly that strategic imperatives related to global control of oil are propelling the US towards intervention in Iran. But it is looking more and more like Israel could throw the first punch. Tragically, the bellicose Israelis seem to believe that this will be in Israel's national interest—seemingly blind to the inevitable global backlash and escalation of nightmarish chaos throughout the Middle East. Worse still, pro-war Israeli commentators seem to view airstrikes against Iran as an assertion of Israeli independence from Washington—again blind to how they will merely be doing US imperialism's dirty work. Brigadier General (Res.) Oded Tira, the former Israeli Defense Forces chief artillery officer writes in a Dec. 30 commentary for Israel's YNet (emphasis added):

Scott Ritter is the latest to join the fast-growing chorus that would exculpate the petro-elites by blaming the Iraq adventure—and now the looming Iran intervention—on the Israel lobby. Supposed progressives like Democracy Now! are lapping it up. We will point out, even if nobody else does, that if Ritter's predictions were accurate, the US would have started bombing Iran in June 2005. A Dec. 29 book review by Nathan Guttman from New York's Jewish weekly The Forward:

In a Jan. 12 Washington Post opinion piece, the Trilateral Commission's ideological guru and Carter administration National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski comments on Bush's speech pitching an escalation (oops, we mean "surge") in Iraq:

The speech reflects a profound misunderstanding of our era. America is acting like a colonial power in Iraq. But the age of colonialism is over. Waging a colonial war in the post-colonial age is self-defeating. That is the fatal flaw of Bush's policy.

Impeaching George Bush is a damn good idea. But the full page ad in the Jan. 12 New York Times by ImpeachBush.org appears to be a bid by the unrepentantly Stalinist Workers World Party to garner mainstream liberal support, probably to keep pace with the Maoist competition. The ad reads "Articles of impeachment drafted by former Attorney General Ramsey Clark." We have repeatedly noted that Ramsey Clark is a totalitarian pseudo-left huckster who supports fascism. The ad also plugs the March 17 anti-war march in Washington sponsored by WWP's front group International ANSWER. Significantly, it does not plug the Jan. 27 march on Washington sponsored by the rival United for Peace & Justice—which has the usual problems with elitism and timidity, but is, at least, not crypto-fascist.

As we have noted, this is the latest in a wave of dangerously specious terror cases which have produced an atmosphere of paranoia in New York City. Now it seems the convict's entire family is to be deported. From the Washington Post, Jan. 11:

NEW YORK - A day after a man was sentenced to 30 years in prison for conspiring to bomb Manhattan's Herald Square, his parents and sister were detained by federal immigration officials seeking to deport them.