Mowing somebody down with an SUV is certainly a rather decisive way to win an argument. Note how this charming incident uniquely merges the respective pathologies of the USA, with its automotive death cult, and the Balkans, with their endless ethno-historical grudges. Does anybody know exactly what they were arguing about? We are morbidly curious. From AP, Dec. 31:

On Jan. 11 a federal grand jury in El Paso, Texas, indicted Cuban-born Venezuelan national Luis Posada Carriles, a longtime "asset" of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), on one count of fraud and six counts of lying to government agents. Posada has been in the custody of US immigration authorities since May 17, 2005; he entered the US illegally in March 2005. The charges, which together carry a maximum sentence of 40 years, enable the US to continue to hold Posada; federal district judge Philip Martinez had given the government until Feb. 1 to justify holding Posada for deportation when it has apparently made no progress in arranging his removal from the US.

Ethiopian occupation troops in Somalia are reportedly hunting down Ethiopian Oromo refugees living in the country. Allied Somali militias are also said to be abducting Oromos and handing them over to Ethiopian troops for reward money. Ethiopian forces in Somalia are reportedly claiming that the refugees are all members of the Oromo rebel forces fighting the Ethiopian government.

Last week's US air raids in the Lower Juba region of southern Somalia near the Kenyan border, caused heavy civilian casualties, according to local reports. Some of the attacks apparently hit groups of nomadic herdsmen on their way to watering holes. Reports of civilian casualites run as high as 80 dead, with large numbers of cattle, goats and other livestock wiped out as well. Thousands of local residents are said to be fleeing towards the border. But with the border sealed, aid workers from Doctors Without Borders and other groups have been unable to cross into the region from Kenya to assist or verify the claims. The air strikes near the towns of Hagar, Bur Gabo, Banka Jiro, Bada Madow and Ras Kamboni areas are said to have continued for three days. (HornAfrik Radio via BBC Monitoring, Jan. 11)

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):