First, you're convicted for being a crook. And then you buy yourself out of jail!

American justice on show - at its very worst!

"Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling - who spearheaded an epic $40 billion fraud that cost thousands of employees their jobs and retirement funds but who nonetheless famously claimed, "We’re the good guys. We are on the side of the angels” - has reportedly cut a deal with prosecutors to get out of jail a decade early in exchange for paying his victims a modest amount to shut up already. The deal, arranged after the sort of complex legal maneuvering only rich white men can afford to indulge in, calls for Skilling to stop suing everyone and agree to pay his victims $40 million, or 0.1% of what Enron stole in the first place. In a relative universe, the six years he's served is more than any of the current perps who trashed the economy. Then again, if he was a black guy who robbed the 7-11, he'd still be cleaning latrines for some time to come."

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Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives? In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t...

Palestinian children in irons. UK to investigate

Not for the first time does MPS wonder what sort of country it is when Israel so flagrently allows what can only be described as barbaric and inhuman behaviour to be undertaken by, amongst others, its IDF. No one has seemingly challenged Israel's actions. However, perhaps it's gone a bridge too far - as The Independent reports. The Foreign Office revealed last night that it would be challenging the Israelis over their treatment of Palestinian children after a report by a delegation of senior British lawyers revealed unconscionable practices, such as hooding and the use of leg irons. In the first investigation of its kind, a team of nine senior legal figures examined how Palestinians as young as 12 were treated when arrested. Their shocking report Children in Military Custody details claims that youngsters are dragged from their beds in the middle of the night, have their wrists bound behind their backs, and are blindfolded and made to kneel or lie face down in military vehi...

Mahler's Prodigal Son

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