Anti-Ethiopia riots erupted in Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, Dec. 29, a day after Ethiopian troops and allied Somali militias took the city from Islamist forces. Hundreds took to the streets to hurl rocks at Ethiopian soldiers, set tires on fire and erect barricades at intersections to cries of "Get out of our country!" and "We hate you, Ethiopians!" The first armed resistance also emerged, with masked gunmen appeating on the streets in northern Mogadishu. "We’re going to turn this place into another Iraq," said one man, a construction worker who said he was part of a new underground movement to fight the Ethiopians. Ali Mohammed Gedi, the prime minister of the Ethiopia-backed transitional government, spoke to reporters from just outside the capital: "This country has been through a lot of anarchy, so to re-establish order we will have to have an iron hand."

Lest we forget. From the NY Daily News, Dec. 29:

Kiss before dying

As his father lay dying, crushed by a car that smashed into his Long Island house, Brian Calhoun gave him a final kiss.

On Dec. 15, a group of 18 former employees at Swift & Co. filed a $23 million lawsuit charging the company with conspiring to keep wages down by hiring undocumented workers. The plaintiffs are all naturalized US citizens or legal residents of Latin American origin who worked at the Swift plant in Cactus, Texas. (EFE, Dec. 21) The lawsuit uses the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO) in charging Swift with engaging in a racketeering conspiracy to manipulate commerce. "When the Swift plant opened in Cactus, wages were approximately $20 an hour," plaintiffs' attorney Michael Heygood told reporters in Texas. "Now, the average wage is approximately $12 to $13 an hour." (Washington Times, Dec. 19) Several union officials said Swift began improving its wages, benefits and bonuses in the weeks before the raids. "They're trying to staff up their plants and they've been raising their wages the past few weeks," said United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) spokesperson Jill Cashen. (AP, Dec. 19)

On Dec. 15, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested Mexican immigrant Martin Barrios on an outstanding deportation order at his home in the Chicago suburb of Berwyn, Illinois. A spokesperson from Centro Sin Fronteras, a Chicago-based immigrant rights group, said Barrios was arrested around 6:30 AM while still in his pajamas, in front of his US citizen wife and their three US-born children. Barrios has lived in the US for 18 years; he was ordered deported after a legal representative improperly filed an application to adjust his status.

A little more than a year ago, when the media noted a lesser milestone—2,000 US troops killed in Iraq—we pointed out that the media's habit of only counting the deaths of US troops as opposed to all US-led forces actually paints far too rosy a scenario. This September, when the media noted that combined US troop deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan had exceeded the 9-11 toll, we pointed out that Afghans killed in the US bombing campaign—overhwlemingly civilians—had surpassed the 9-11 vicitms in December 2001. Also note that a year ago, Congressional liberals were talking about reducing the US troop presence in Iraq to a still-hefty 100,000 by year's end. Today there are 130,000, with more apparently on the way. From AP, Dec. 26:

Predictable but depressing. Given the current popularity of "dual loyalty" insinuations against American Jews (even in supposedly progressive cricles), you'd think there'd be a little Jewish outrage over essentially identical arguments being used against American Muslims. This Dec. 28 column by Jonathan Tobin from Pennsylvania's Jewish Exponent (barely) pays lip service to such concerns, but ultimately (and idiotically) cannot contain its glee that the loyalty of a Muslim congressman is being questioned:

A potential opening for the kind of universalism that could go a long way towards chilling the planet out—and taking the wind out of al-Qaeda's Iberian franchise. But the local Catholic hierarchy isn't going for it. Maybe the Pope will exercise better judgement? From the Italian news agency AKI, Dec. 28:

The Bishop of the southern city of Cordoba, Juan Jose Asenjo, has turned down a request from its Muslim community to be allowed to pray with Christians in its cathedral - a former mosque. Asenjo was quoted as saying the joint use of consecrated places of worship would "generate confusion" and lead to "religious indifference".

A pretty astounding figure. But as we noted the last time it happened, in May: when resource hyper-exploitation co-exists with dire poverty, such incidents are absolutely inevitable. From IRIN, Dec. 28:

LAGOS - The Nigerian Red Cross has taken the lead in responding to the latest pipeline blast in Lagos on Tuesday that killed at least 269 people and left scores of others severely burned.