From the New York Daily News, June 21:

Schoolgirl killed by SUV

A 5-year-old Brooklyn girl running to catch her school bus was rammed and killed by an SUV yesterday after darting out from behind two parked cars, police said.

The US, it seems, barely has control of its own proxy forces in Iraq. From AP, June 22:

Two California soldiers shot to death in Iraq were murdered by Iraqi civil-defense officers patrolling with them, military investigators have found.

The New York Sun (June 12) positively relishes in such reports, even as the federal judiciary contributes to the Muslim immigrant fears that fuel such a backlash. On May 27, days before these vandal attacks, the New York Times reported (online at World Wide Religious News) how revelations of police spies infiltrating Brooklyn's Muslim communities are leading to increased tensions.

Police have charged a 12-year-old boy with a Memorial Day graffiti attack in which the acronym for the Palestinian Liberation Organization was written on the homes of some Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, residents who were displaying American flags.

US troops carrying out an offensive against resurgent Taliban guerillas fought off an attack on their mountaintop camp in Helmand province's remote Baghran Valley today. Later, US warplanes were called in to bomb a Taliban hideout. An A-10 Warthog bomber strafed the position before a B-1 bomber dropped a 2,000 pound bomb. Local residents said an elderly couple was killed in the air raid.

The worst environmental practices of the Saddam dictatorship (themselves a result of sanctions) are being revived under US occupation in Iraq's oil industry. Thank goodness this report by James Glanz made the front page of the New York Times yesterday (online at Kurdish Aspect). But will it make any difference? In its inimitably annoying way, the Times buried some of the most salient facts deep in the story, or left them out completely. We have added emphasis and annotation.

On June 14, Assistant Secretary for ICE Julie Myers announced that ICE agents had apprehended 2,179 immigrants in a nationwide sweep between May 26 and June 13. Virtually every ICE field office in the US took part in "Operation Return to Sender," in collaboration with state and local law enforcement agencies. About half of the arrested immigrants had prior criminal records, and 367 were described by ICE as "members or associates of violent street gangs" (presumably without criminal records). Another 640 of the arrested immigrants were "fugitives" who had ignored final orders of removal issued by an immigration judge. The remaining arrestees were immigration status violators picked up during the raids. Most were arrested on administrative immigration violations and were placed in removal proceedings; ICE said on June 14 that 829 of them had already been removed. ICE agents also arrested 121 people on federal criminal charges ranging from felony re-entry after deportation to "illegal alien in possession of a firearm." (ICE News Release, June 14)

This man did not die in vain. He was a necessary sacrifice, just like the 2,500 servicemen in Iraq. If there is any rethinking whatsoever of our way of life predicated on profligate fossil fuel consumption, the terrorists win. From the New York Daily News, June 19:

Driver fixing bus killed as athletes watch

A group of Long Island Special Olympics athletes watched in horror yesterday as one of their drivers was killed when a truck slammed into their bus, which was stopped on the shoulder of the New York State Thruway, police said.

Another New York Times op-ed piece, "Dealing With the Devil in Darfur" by Julie Flint (IHT, June 17), warns of US support for Minni Arcua Minnawi, leader of the ethnic Zaghawa faction of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), who seems bent on his own campaign of ethnic cleansing. Minnawi's SLA faction even has its own imprisoned dissident, Suliman Gamous. It is predictable that the US has wound up backing the most reactionary faction of the SLA. But Flint, calling for a seat at the peace table for Darfur's Arabs (now officially represented by Sudan's government), has nothing to say about Darfur's majority Fur ethnicity, the Black African people who have now apparently been betrayed by the dominant faction of the SLA. There is the Fur-led SLA faction, as well as the rival (and smaller) Justice & Equality Movement (JEM). But do they speak for the Fur any more than Khartuom speaks for the Darfur Arabs?