Testing, testing?

/
Foreign Policy In Focus | Gaza: Death's Laboratory
Erik Fosse, a Norwegian cardiologist, worked in Gaza hospitals during the recent war."It was as if they had stepped on a mine," he says of certain Palestinian patients he treated. "But there was no shrapnel in the wound. Some had lost their legs. It looked as though they had been sliced off. I have been to war zones for 30 years, but I have never seen such injuries before."

Dr. Fosse was describing the effects of a U.S. "focused lethality" weapon that minimizes explosive damage to structures while inflicting catastrophic wounds on its victims. But where did the Israelis get this weapon? And was their widespread use in the attack on Gaza a field test for a new generation of explosives?

This is truly shocking

/
Judges plead guilty in kickback scheme
Two Pennsylvania judges charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send youth offenders to privately run detention centers pleaded guilty to fraud Thursday in one of the most stunning cases of judicial corruption on record.

Prosecutors allege Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan took $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in lockups run by PA Child Care LLC and a sister company, possibly tainting the convictions of thousands of juvenile offenders.

The judges pleaded guilty in federal court in Scranton to honest services fraud and tax fraud. Their plea agreements call for sentences of more than seven years in prison. They were permitted to remain free pending sentencing.
Via Liberal England

Don't get too excited

/
Morgan Tsvangirai given a hero's welcome after being sworn in
After a decade of bloodshed, sacrifice and suffering, Zimbabweans erupted in joy and jubilation — emotions almost extinct after 29 years of President Mugabe's misrule — as Morgan Tsvangirai was sworn in as Prime Minister yesterday.
Not everyone joined in the celebrations:
Zimbabwean journalist Basildon Peta suggests that while yesterday's ceremony was a joyous moment for some, he saw no reason to join any parties. "After so many years in exile, I see nothing to suggest that I can now walk back into a free democratic Zimbabwe in which my rights as a citizen will be respected. "There was nothing historic or momentous about yesterday. Morgan Tsvangirai's oath merely threw a line to a heartless, reckless dictator who lost elections but shamelessly clung to power ... "What happened in Zimbabwe yesterday is a monumental tragedy. A travesty of justice. It isn't the delivery of a democratic outcome by the regional African leaders who mediated. It's the betrayal or prostitution of the basic tenets of democracy."

Meanwhile in the US...

/
No Tough Love for Wall Street
What an insipid anticlimax! Rising to “a challenge more complex than our financial system has ever faced,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner promised on Tuesday to give trillions more to the very folks who profited from that malignant complexity. For all the brave talk about transparency and accountability in the banking bailout, he gave the swindlers who got us into this mess yet another blank check to buy up the “toxic assets” they gleefully created.

According to the Congressional Oversight Panel created by Congress to monitor the bailout, the Bush Treasury Department overpaid by $78 billion of our money in the first 10 purchases of those assets. Yet Geithner tells us “Congress acted quickly and courageously” in throwing that money at Wall Street without requiring any accountability. At the same time, there is still no commitment to directly help what Geithner admits are the millions of homeowners already foreclosed out of their homes, with millions more to come. The leaks from Treasury promise that $50 billion will eventually be allocated directly to helping homeowners, which is a day late and a dollar short in chump change compared to the trillion dollars that Geithner on Tuesday committed to the purchase of more bad bank debt.

Gobby Jews

/
Christians in Jerusalem want Jews to stop spitting on them
A few weeks ago, a senior Greek Orthodox clergyman in Israel attended a meeting at a government office in Jerusalem's Givat Shaul quarter. When he returned to his car, an elderly man wearing a skullcap came and knocked on the window. When the clergyman let the window down, the passerby spat in his face.

The clergyman prefered not to lodge a complaint with the police and told an acquaintance that he was used to being spat at by Jews. Many Jerusalem clergy have been subjected to abuse of this kind. For the most part, they ignore it but sometimes they cannot.

On Sunday, a fracas developed when a yeshiva student spat at the cross being carried by the Armenian Archbishop during a procession near the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City. The archbishop's 17th-century cross was broken during the brawl and he slapped the yeshiva student.
Anti-Spittlism on the Rise
The curse of anti-Spittlism can be stopped if Christian leaders take firm action. They must pull their flock into line without delay. “Not all Jews are Spittlists and not all Spittlists are Jews. This brazen attempt to equate the two is hate speech – akin to a blood libel. These are shameful smears on the Jewish people” said an anonymous source. “To avoid putting inter-faith dialogue at risk, Christians must avoid using the word ‘Jew’ entirely, unless properly authorized by a qualified Rabbi” he added.
Via Jinjirrie

Jewish thug, nothing less

/
If not fascism, what is it? Without censure, a growing current in Israeli politics is calling for the outright killing of Palestinians
Many Israeli intellectuals dub Lieberman as the secular equivalent of Meir Kahana, the slain founder of the Kach terrorist group who advocated genocidal ethnic cleansing of non-Jews in Israel-Palestine. Kahana was assassinated in Manhattan, New York, in 1990 shortly after giving a speech in which he called for the annihilation and expulsion of Palestinians from "the Land of Israel".

A nightclub bouncer-turned-politician, Lieberman formed the Yisrael Beiteinu Party in 1999 when he was first elected to the Knesset. Without controversy, Lieberman's political and social ideas can be described as racist, even genocidal. In recent weeks, he was quoted as suggesting that Israel should use nuclear weapons against the Gaza Strip.

"The time has come to shock the Gaza population with actions thatuntil now have nauseated us -- actions such as killing the politicalleadership, causing hunger and thirst in Gaza, blocking off energysources, causing widespread destruction, and being less discriminatingin the killing of civilians. There is no other choice," he wrote.

In 2002, Lieberman called on the Israeli government, under Ariel Sharon, to blanket-bomb Palestinian population centres in order to force Palestinians to flee to Jordan. The Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot quoted Lieberman as saying during a cabinet meeting that the Palestinians should be given an ultimatum: "At 8am we'll bomb all the commercial centres... at noon we'll bomb their gas stations... at 2pm we'll bomb their banks... while keeping the bridges open."

In 1998, Lieberman called for flooding Egypt by bombing the Aswan Dam. In 2001, as minister of national infrastructure, Lieberman proposed that the West Bank be divided into four cantons, with no central Palestinian government and no possibility for Palestinians to travel between the cantons. In 2003, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Lieberman called for thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel to be drowned in the Dead Sea and offered to provide buses to take them there.

Further, Lieberman has proposed that a "loyalty test" be applied to those "Arabs" who desire to remain in Israel. Those committed to making Israel a state of all its citizens, including the Palestinian minority, would be stripped of their voting rights. In April 2002, Lieberman stated that there was "nothing undemocratic about transfer".