Another psycho doctor: Baruch Goldstein

Psycho psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan clearly didn't learn his lessons while he was specializing in preventive and disaster psychiatry. Or maybe he learned them too well.

The most damning info is laid out in this morning's WashPost, which reports that the Virginia mosque he attended in 2001 featured a hard-line, militaristic imam named Anwar al-Aulaqi, who lectured admiringly about the strategies of an al-Qaeda military leader.

Increasingly, Hasan sounds like another crazy, extremist doctor, Baruch Goldstein, who slaughtered 29 praying Muslims and wounded 150 more in a suicidal, homicidal attack at a Hebron mosque in February 1994. Goldstein was a devotee of nut case radical Jew Meir Kahane. See this 2001 article for more on the extremist ultra-Orthodox Jewish movement in America that helped fuel Goldstein.

U.S. extremist Jews continue financing terroristic Jews in Israel. Remember crook lobbyist and ultra-Orthodox Jew Jack Abramoff? As I pointed out in September 2005, he funneled some of his ill-gotten funds to Jewish extremists in Israel who hunt Arab "rats."

No doubt extremist Muslims in the U.S. are doing the same thing for terroristic Muslims overseas. Just something to keep in mind as Hasan's links to radical Muslims are explored.

In any case, one of the clues dug up about Hasan should have disqualified him from treating any soldier: He cared for a bird he owned "by placing it in his mouth and allowing it to eat masticated food," as the NYT notes this morning.

Anyone who has had extensive experience with psychiatrists (as I have) would have seen that as a clue that this guy should have had his doctorate yanked.

More bubble trouble: Market, reporters and company so optimistic that they can feel the earth move.

Caterpillar, the heavy-equipment company, reported monumental losses and plummeting sales, prompting the company and reporters to proclaim that the company is speeding along the road to "rapid" recovery.

The market certainly bought into it: Caterpillar's shares hit a 12-month high today and it was the Dow's top performer.

The WSJ's Bob Tita writes that Caterpillar's third-quarter report is "one of the most bullish assessments for a global economic recovery as the U.S. heavy-equipment maker exceeded third-quarter profit expectations by a wide margin."

The world's biggest bulldozer company sees enormous future profit in the housing market worldwide and even in the U.S.

A vital part of homebuilding in the U.S., Caterpillar is well-known in the rest of the world for erecting Israel's apartheid wall, bulldozing Palestinian homes in the West Bank, and various allegations of human-rights abuses. Oh, and for crushing to death peace activist Rachel Corrie with one of its big ol' D-9s.

The company's own profit expectations had been exceedingly low. But expectations that the Great Recession is finally over are absurdly high. And the market seems so eager to believe this that some observers are ignoring reality. While Caterpillar was the Dow darling today, figures from the U.S. housing market were gloomy.

Photo: Sameh Habeeb

Liquidity in the Middle East generally refers to something red, not green. But in the Gaza Strip, there's not much of either these days. Jews and Arabs are accidentally in some sort of detente at this exact second, so not a lot of blood is flowing.

The Gaza Strip, meanwhile, is almost permanently cut off from the flow of money, according to Sami Abu Shamalia's "Cash Flow in the Gaza Strip," on opendemocracy.net.

The banking system, with its seven hours' worth of reserves, is for all practical purposes defunct. There's no production, no exports, a deliberate shortage of currency enforced by the Israeli blockade of just about everything that people need to exist.

Instead of redevelopment in the aftermath of the Gaza War, the Strip is experiencing what the Guardian (U.K.) quotes a U.N. report as calling "de-development."