Another day, another slaughter. That's the latest news from the Middle East in a nutshell.
Over the weekend, Israel stepped up its attacks on Lebanon, killing who knows how many innocent people. Of course, the Zionists running Israel claim that they're battling terrorists and after George W. Bush popularized the infamous "pre-emptive strike", no one in the international community has the cajones to stand up tell Israel point-blank to back down. Besides, everyone knows that the US arrives loaded for bear at any and all UN gatherings and shoots down any ideas that Israel doesn't like; it's already happened over, and over, and over again.
But just who are these "evil terrorists" that Israel is pre-emptively attacking?
BEIRUT, Lebanon - At least 12 Lebanese villagers, including women and children, were killed Saturday in what appeared to be an Israeli airstrike on a convoy of vehicles fleeing a village near the border with Israel in southern Lebanon, a witness said.
The convoy was leaving the border village of Marwaheen, when it was attacked. An Associated Press photgrapher said he counted 12 bodies in two cars that were destroyed by the attack shortly after midday.
Several hours earlier, Israeli forces across the border told villagers by loudspeaker to leave the area or else the village would be destroyed. They did not give a reason for the ultimatum.
The convoy of several vehicles was hit near the border fence less than half a mile from the village.
The residents said they had first gone to a U.N. peacekeepers position manned by Ghanian forces to take refuge but they were turned down. There was no immediate confirmation from U.N. peacekeepers, who have a force in southern Lebanon.
And here's an AP photo of the aftermath of the convoy attack:
(AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Note the dead adult lying to the left of the wreckage. Also note the dead child lying in the foreground. It seems Hizbollah starts them out young these days!
"But wait!" you cry, "Israel wouldn't have to retaliate if those Evil Terrorists weren't constantly attacking them!"
The Israeli army said it had struck about 150 targets in Lebanon so far, fewer than a dozen of them linked directly to Hizbollah. Most have hit civilian installations.
Israel's leadership obviously isn't trying to shut down Hizbollah; they are trying to start a war.
And where are the Israeli people of conscience in all of this? Why, they're conveniently distracted by a sex scandal involving their president that has pushed news of the brewing Middle East war onto the back pages! There's another important aspect to the situation: Remember Hamas, that Evil Terrorist Organization that is so diabolical? You know, the one that has launched so many "suicide attacks" on Israel? In September 2004, Kurt Nimmo wrote:
Isn't it curious that right smack in the middle of an investigation of Israel spying on its best "friend," Hamas pulls off back-to-back suicide bombings - after a lull of nearly six months - in Beersheba? Hamas declares the bombing was revenge for Israel's assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi. Rantissi was assassinated on April 17 and Yassin on March 22.
Is there a reason Hamas waited so long to take revenge? Of course there is. Hamas is essentially an Israeli contrivance. It's used for effect when politically expedient.
Israel "aided Hamas directly - the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO," Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies, told the UPI's Richard Sale in 2002. Hamas is a descendant of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic organization long ago penetrated by the CIA. "There is a long historic alliance between the CIA and the Muslim Brotherhood," writes Peter Goodgame. "The entire Bin Laden-CIA created 'mujahideen' network came from the Muslim Brotherhood." As we now know, Prince Turki of Saudi intelligence, in cahoots with William Casey of the CIA and Pakistan's ISI, sent bin Laden to Afghanistan and bankrolled the Services Center (Makhtab al-Khidmat) of the Jordanian Palestinian Abdullah Azzam, in the offices of the World Muslim League and Muslim Brotherhood in Peshawar (see Rashid, Taliban, p.131). After Azzam was assassinated, Makhtab al-Khidmat became al-Qaeda, although bin Laden did not call his organization such.
It should be obvious by now that the CIA and Mossad manufactured a virulent strain of Islamic terrorism for their own purposes.
They're called false flag operations; you know, like 9/11.
At this point, you certainly have the option of labeling me an anti-Semite in a vain effort to ignore everything above. But just for a minute, carefully consider the implications of doing so.
The term "anti-Semitism" is generally used to shut up and shut down anyone who criticises Israel. The latest edition of Merriam-Webster's Unabridged Collegiate Thesaurus apparently includes a definition of anti-Semitism that reads, "opposition to Zionism: sympathy with opponents of the state of Israel".
Huh?!
Let's think about this for a minute. I can criticise George W. Bush and the American government all I want. Now, George seems to be - or at least pretends to be - a fundamentalist Christian. But if I call Georgie's policies murderous and fascist, I won't be branded "anti-Christian". So why are so many people immediately shut down when allegations of anti-Semitism are flung their way?
Opposing Fascist Zionism is not the same as opposing Judaism, just as opposing the Neocon Administration isn't the same as opposing Christianity - or America itself. Much of the world knows that Bush is a lunatic, but they don't hate Americans or other Christians. How do I know this? Because instead of believing everything I read in the newspapers, I actually TALK to people from around the world and ask them questions! Many Jews are against the policies of Israel's Zionist leadership in the same way that many Americans are against Bush. Why is it that in the case of any other country, people can separate the warped ideology of a nation's leaders from the ideology of that nation's people? Why CAN'T they do the same thing with Israel?
The short and obvious explanation is fear. Zionism appears to have an iron grip on much of the world - or at least on the secrets of the world's leaders. How else could so many world leaders be so well-controlled? Politics in much of the world heavily involve self-promotion and backstabbing. If world leaders are afraid of berating Israel's leaders for their current war on the rest of the Middle East, then there is probably a very good reason WHY.
There is, however, a bigger problem with the whole "anti-Semitic" schtick. The danger is that any group of people will only take so much. They will only allow themselves to be walked all over until they reach a breaking point. (Remember the American and French Revolutions? The Magna Carta?) What happens when the charges of anti-Semitism become stale? What happens if the US alters course on its unquestioning support of Israel? Better yet, what happens if the US becomes incapable of supporting Israel due to war, natural disasters, or other internal problems? Imagine the anger and frustration that will be applied full force against Israel if their current war on the Middle East continues. And don't fool yourself into thinking that it will just be a simple regime change. If the people and leaders of this world cannot now make the distinction between a government and its people, why would that change if the tables are turned on Israel? Furthermore, "I didn't know" didn't excuse Germans after WWII ended, and it won't be an acceptable excuse for ordinary Israelis - or Americans - in the future. If you truly believe that you live in a democracy, then it is your duty to know - and work for peaceful change if necessary .
What is most shocking to me is that so few people have entertained this notion of a turning of the tables. Jews are arguably one of the most persecuted peoples in history. Since the same types of forces that have attempted to engineer their demise are still around today in one form or another, then surely the current conflict in the Middle East will not be good for either Muslims or Jews.
So you see, no one can logically call me or anyone else an anti-Semite for opposing the policies of Israel's Zionist leadership, because I don't want to see any Jews or any Muslims or anyone else suffer or die for the petty, greedy interests of a handful of psychopathic leaders.
Rodrigue Tremblay
July 17, 2006
The New American Empire
"When Israel's interests are being considered, members of Congress act like trained poodles. They jump dutifully through hoops held by Israel's lobby."
George W. Ball (1909-1994), former U.S. Undersecretary of State
"The [Pro-Israel] Lobby has succeeded in redefining anti-Semitism to include any criticism of Israeli behavior, an inferred threat that prompts all major media to ignore or sanitize reports of Israeli violations."
Paul Findley, U.S. Republican Congressman, (1961-83)
"I've never seen a president-I don't care who he is-stand up to them [the Israelis]. It just boggles your mind. -They always get what they want. The Israelis know what's going on all the time. ... If the American people understood what grip those people have on our government, they would rise up in arms. Our citizens don't have any idea what goes on."
Admiral Thomas Moorer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, July 1970-June 1974
Dead children lying on the ground-that's the barbarous legacy left by the Israeli bombings of Lebanon, in early July 2006. In less than one month, the Israeli government willfully delivered two collective punishments against civilians, in direct violation of international law according to the1949 Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War; first, it was against Gaza's civilian Palestinian population; then, they extended this unquestionable policy to the civilian population of Beirut and other regions of Lebanon.
The government of Israel has been lighting fires in the Middle East for more than half a century. Incredibly, this nation of only six million people has decided to be a law unto itself, with the voluminous aid and active support of various American administrations. When bombs kill hundreds of civilians, among them many women and children, it cannot be argued that these victims are accidental "collateral damage", the euphemistic term used in such circumstances, not when the supposed target of those attacks, the Lebanon-based Hezbollah organization, suffered only three deaths as a result of the bombings.
Is there not a larger agenda involved here? Could it be that the real aim of these atrocities is to provoke and bait Syria into supporting Lebanon, providing the justification to attack Syria? Then, if Iran were to come to the rescue of the Lebanese Shiites, an attack could also be launched against that country. And, as is often the case historically, [see how World War I started] such a conflct could easily escalate into a larger conflagration.
This is a scenario that rabid neocon ideologues in Israel and in the U. S. have referred to publicly over the years. Theblueprintwas even published ten years ago, in 1996, by a group of well-known members of thepro-Israel Lobby(Richard Perle, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks Jr., Douglas Feith, Robert Loewenberg, David Wurmser, and Meyrav Wurmser). Their policy statement for then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, of the Likud Party, was entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm", and it called for a strategy of total war in the Middle East, using the military power of the United States.
Here is what they proposed in their grand neocon plan:
"An effective approach", [to break Israel's encirclement and isolation] "and one with which Americans can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon." ..."This effort can focus [first] on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq - an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right - as a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions."
The irresponsible haste with which George W. Bush approved of Israel's attack against Lebanon (on July 13, 2006), may be a clear indication that he has fully adopted the grandiose neocon plan for war in the Middle East. In fact, his March 20, 2003 illegal attack against Iraq was part of the overall plan.
In September 2000, a few weeks before the November elections, a similar plan for endless war in the Middle East was penned by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush and Lewis Libby, under the auspices of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), and called "Rebuilding America's Defenses". It was a plan whose main elements were initially outlined in 1992, when Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz were in charge of the Defense Department.
The plan called for the U. S. to take military control of the oil-rich Middle East, taking advantage of the demise of the Soviet Union. It says:
"The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." The plan called also for permanent military bases in the Middle East region "even should Saddam pass from the scene", because "Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has."
Therefore, the escalation of conflicts in the Middle East should be a surprise to no one, unless one has been asleep for the last fifteen years.
A bit of history.
The creation of the state of Israel was initially accepted by British politicians, after World War I. They had been pressured for years by Zionists to use Great Britain's hegemonic power in the Middle East in their favor. Indeed, it was thought after World War I, that the collapse of the Turkish Ottoman Empire and the transfer of many of its Middle East territories to the British Empire created a golden opportunity for establishing a Hebrew state in Palestine, the paramount goal of the Zionists. Lord Walter Baron de Rothchild, leader of the British Jewish community, persuaded the government of Prime Minister David Lloyd-George, to issue the famous Balfour Declaration, of November 2, 1917, offering European Jews a "national home" in Palestine, "with the condition that nothing should be done which might prejudice the rights of existing communities there." The Balfour letter, sent to Rothschild, was to be transmitted to the Zionist Federation, a private British Zionist organization.
It is well to remember that the British government of the time was not disinterested in this endeavor. In fact, the Lloyd-George government was anxious to persuade the American government, through American Jewish interests, to join the war in Europe against the Germans.
It is also of highly historical significance that the state of Israel, since its unilateral creation in 1948, has violated international law countless times, and with impunity, thanks mainly to the military and diplomatic protection it has enjoyed for decades from the United States.
Ever since its creation, the state of Israel has behaved in a provocative way. A recent example among thousands is the arrest, on June 29, 2006, by Israeli soldiers of most of the elected Hamas leadership in Palestine, including eight cabinet ministers, 25 members of parliament, and other Palestinian officials, claiming they were responsible for an assault against an Israeli military post. As with the above mentioned incidents in Gaza and Lebanon, such actions represent collective punishment reprisals and are unlawful under the 1949 Geneva Convention. On other occasions, the government of Israel has repeatedly issued threats to extra-judicially assassinate political leadersin different countries, and there are clues that it has carried out such threats.
On an even larger scale, the government of Israel could be accused of implementing a policy of genocide against the nearly 4 million Palestinians in the occupied territories of Palestine.
By refusing to seriously negotiate the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, as requested by the United Nationsand most of the international community, and by continuing to encroach on Palestinian lands with new and expanded settlements as well as erecting its "separation" wall, it is clear that Israel's real intent is to choke the Palestinian people by leaving them with only some isolated uneconomical and bantustan-like lands. So far, the Israeli leadership has never been held accountable for the sufferings it has imposed upon the Palestinian people.
Contrary to more even-handed American administrations, the Bush-Cheney administration has weighed in unconditionally in favor of Israel. Even though most American administrations since Harry Truman have often sided with Israel against its Muslim neighbors, and have empowered it with financial and military aid, they have been cautious enough to take a balanced diplomatic posture regarding the sempiternal Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Nevertheless, people all over the world are puzzled to see a relatively small country dictate its policies to the United States and to the world. Such a situation has a lot to do with the working of American domestic politics. Most Americans do not clearly realize how the arrival of George W. Bush in the White House, on January 20, 2001, represented a genuine victory for the powerfulpro-Israel lobby. As Israel's fifth column in America, it has the means to successfully "spin" the news coming from the Middle East in favor of Israel. -Bush II has gone as far as declaring Israel his only true ally in the Middle East. On March 20, 2006, for example, his message was unequivocal: "I made it clear, and I'll make it clear again, that we will use military might to protect our ally Israel."
That may be the most compelling reason why the government of Israel has steadfastly refused international mediation to resolve its conflict with the Palestinians, from whom it has taken lands, properties and thousands of lives. Supported covertly or openly by the United States, Israel has preferred a permanent state of war with its Palestinian 'citizens' to a negotiated settlement, and it has relied on a sophisticated brand of state terrorism to fulfill its political goals. Without this tacit complicity of the U.S. government, and sometimes, with the support of some European countries, the Israeli government could not do anything close to what it is doing in the Middle East.
It is a fact that Israel has used preemptive military aggression and systematic retaliation rather than mediation in the world court to solve its conflicts. This could be an indication that Israel realizes that its legal case is not very strong and that a military approach seems to be, in its view, less problematic and more rewarding than a court-imposed compromise. -It is a shame. And the United States government, through its one-sided military and diplomatic support, is an accomplice to the mess that prevails in that part of the globe and must accept much of the blame for the negative fall-out that this unresolved conflict creates in the entire Muslim world and even worldwide. The U. S. has imposed its veto dozens of times to prevent the United Nations from reigning in the illegal acts of Israel. This is truly the consequence of an Israel-United States Axis.
The war in Lebanon is due to the terrorist behavior and actions of Hizballah. One can imagine the terrorist bluntness of Hizballah that captured a couple of Israeli soldiers in purpose of freeing Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails. Why are these in Israeli jails? Because they attacked Israeli targets. Why did they do so? Because the Israelis are angels descending from heavens to spread love, peace and fraternity in the world.
There is so much that Westerners need to learn about the situation in the Middle East. Does any body in the West tell the people that there are more than five million Palestinian refugees who have been living under difficult conditions for around sixty years, and Israel doesnÂ’t allow them back to their homes and property? Does any body tell them that Israel has been occupying Arab land for around forty years, and, for any withdrawal to take place, it insists that its terms must be accepted by the Arabs?
Palestinians and Lebanese have been captured by the Israelis because they insist on their rights and have the will to resist. If Israel has the right to defend itself, the Arabs have the right to defend themselves; and if Israel has the justification to hold Arabs captives, the Arabs have the justification to hold Israelis captives.
Who on earth can tell that Israel has the right to hold 9,000 Arabs as prisoners, while Hizballah is breaching all human values in holding two Israelis? What makes it right for Israel to fight for the freedom of its soldiers? And what makes it wrong for hizballah to fight for the freedom of Arab resistance men and women?
Hizballah which has been in a state of war with Israel attacked a military target killing a number of soldiers and capturing two. What is wrong in this pure military action? Since then, Israel has been destroying the Lebanese infrastructure and killing civilians. I know that I am asking questions of an ethical nature that hardly can find answers in a world that believes in power.
George Galloway MP is the controversial British politician who has proved a thorn in the side of advocates of the Iraq war. He is a fierce advocate of the Palestinian state, and a redoubtable campaigner against oppression and injustice throughout the world. In 2005 he made a memorable appearance before the US Senate, successfully defending himself against claims that he benefited from the Iraqi oil-for-food program. I'm Not the Only One is his critically acclaimed book on the Middle East, and the US and British administrations approach to this troubled region.
MOORE: You've taken a close interest in the Palestinian issue. Are you surprised that the international community has not condemned Israel's consistently aggressive stance against Gaza?
GALLOWAY: I'm not at all surprised. I'm dismally reconciled to the gigantic double standard that lies at the heart of Western policy towards the Middle East and the Muslim world. I have long become inured to the double standard that allows Israel to have hundreds of nuclear weapons and refuse to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, yet be rewarded by the West, whilst Iran has no nuclear weapons, has joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty and is, according to Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker, facing a devastating war.
I am dismally aware of the extent to which the blood of Palestinians is not worth anything like the blood of Israelis, still less the blood of Westerners. A good case in point was on the BBC's Question Time when every single member of the panel knew the name of the Israeli occupation soldier 'kidnapped' by the resistance, and they felt they had to pay endless sympathies to his family.
I found myself screaming at the television: "Can any of you name a single Palestinian victim, just say in the last 12 days, when 24 Palestinians, mostly women and children were killed by Israel in bomb, shell and rocket attacks?" No one knows the names of these victims, no one describes the Palestinian leaders who were kidnapped and languish in Israeli dungeons. All were seized in exactly the same way as this Israeli solder was seized. This is a double standard that does not occur to most people, but is endlessly burrowing away in my mind.
MOORE: I guess you'd say that the lack of recognition for the democratically elected Hamas Government is another example of Western double standards.
GALLOWAY: That is just one of many contradictions. Palestine is the only Arab country in which there is a free vote, and in it the Islamist party won, and the response from external powers was that the party that won should immediately scrap the policy on which it won the election and adopt the policy of the party it defeated. When they refused to do this, an economic and political siege was imposed on the entire kidnapped Palestinian population, because of their temerity at electing politicians of whom the West does not approve.
MOORE: Why do you think the US administration is persisting with Guantanamo Bay despite damning criticism from the Supreme Court, among others?
GALLOWAY: It is a peculiarity of the current Washington regime that it cares nothing about international opinion, nothing about international law and diplomacy. These are all merely tactics to be picked up and put down according to the needs of the hour. It is interesting in the respect that the judges both in the UK and the US are practically the last bastions against overwhelming executive power. The legislature in both countries has completely failed to perform that role of checking and balancing the power of government.
One British minister, Harriet Harman, the Solicitor General, put it in a nutshell when she said: "If there's nothing wrong with what's going on at Guantanamo Bay, why isn't it in America?" To answer this, it is not in America because if it were it would be subject to due process. It is precisely because there has to be no legal norms that it has to be extra terrestrial.
GALLOWAY: I think so, and if you look at some of the work that is being done in the US about the accountability of the activities at Abu Graib, it is clear that Donald Rumsfeld took a personal hand, as nauseating as it is, in discussing which forms of physical punishment and retribution can be taken against helpless prisoners before it becomes too much like torture to be contemplated.
It is obvious that what was happening at Abu Graib was not the mindless aberrations of some trailer-trash US privates. These were dynamics unleashed from the very top of the US administration. And for what? Whatever information you are going to get out of behaving in that way is far outweighed by the opprobrium into which it brings your country when it inevitably leaks out. And the information you get is usually worthless, as people will say anything under torture.
MOORE: Torture is not usually a weapon employed by democracies.
GALLOWAY: I think the leaders of the United States and the United Kingdom know the limitations of democracy. My own father really believed that there was something special about Britain, that it was an especially free country. Were he alive, this epoch would come as a terrible blow because it turns out that we are only free as long as it doesn't really matter much. When it matters the freedoms are taken away. In other words the veneer that covers our society with the emblems of liberty, justice and democracy are very thin and can be dispensed with by the elected dictatorships that we now have on both sides of the Atlantic.
MOORE: Who's to blame for this situation?
GALLOWAY: I blame the Democrats. They have proved themselves to be an utterly spineless, unprincipled group of hucksters. They could have stopped all of this. They needn't have allowed Bush to become President. They could have whipped up a crisis over the brazen theft of the first election, but they didn't and they have been running ever since.
MOORE: The September 11 bombings exposed how certain groups feel about the United States and the West. Some say that since then an even more hard line approach from Washington has emerged. Do you think the current approach to terrorism has elevated or reduced the chances of another 9/11?
GALLOWAY: I said in Parliament just four days after 9/11 that if we handle this in the wrong way we will create 10,000 new Bin Ladens. I don't think that anyone doubts we did this. I use the metaphor that there is this swamp of hatred out there, and in it are festering all sorts of bad things. In time some will emerge to harm us. Instead of draining the swamp by dealing with the causes of it, we have engulfed it with new blood, making the swamp deeper, more toxic, and we will pay a price for it.
MOORE: Moving onto Iraq, do you think Nouri al Maliki is a credible leader of Iraq?
GALLOWAY: Not at all. He is not remotely credible. He is not even known by the Iraqi people.
MOORE: Is his appointment then an example of the imposition of Western-style democracy, necessary if an Iraqi civil war is to be avoided?
GALLOWAY: I believe the opposite is true. The most expedient way to civil war is for us to stay, and if we stay in Iraq will surely be a civil war, and one like none you've ever seen. We are talking about a Yugoslav-style war on top of the world's biggest oilfields, sucking in the Sunnis in neighboring states, Iranians buttressing the Shiite power-base, the Turks becoming involved in Kurdistan. So if you want a civil war, forget $60 a barrel, you won't be able to buy oil at $600 a barrel because there will be no oil as there will be no production of oil in the Gulf, Iran or Iraq. Most of the world's oil supply will be wiped out.
Our presence in the country is the main cause of the war. I'm not saying that if we now withdraw peace and harmony will immediately break out. I'm not saying that withdrawal is a sufficient condition, but it is a necessary condition. If we don't withdraw there will never be a solution. In any event the solution will not be what I or Bush wants. The outcome in Iraq will not be a return to a secular nationalist government. It will be a government of religious obscurantism, Shiite and Sunni, battling it out like what we see in Afghanistan. There will come a day, perhaps we are already there, when people will realize that there are worse things than Saddam Hussein.
GALLOWAY: It's a farce. It would have been much less demeaning to everyone if they had just shot him when they captured him. Everything about the trial is a farce. For a start it is being held not by the Iraqis but by the occupiers, with a few puppets who are put up front for the television cameras, albeit with a 60-minute time delay before we can see the pictures.
I know from my dealings with the Arab population that this trial has done more to rehabilitate Saddam Hussein's reputation in the Muslim world than anything anyone could have designed. He is seen as a lion and they are seen as monkeys.
MOORE: Tariq Aziz defended Saddam from the stand with the following words: "The president of the state of any country, if faced with an assassination attempt, should take procedures to punish those who conduct and help this operation. According to the law, people who support this assassination can also be convicted." Do you think Tariq Aziz was talking about Iraq now, as much as Iraq under Saddam?
GALLOWAY: First of all, when Clinton came into power, he launched a cruise missile attack on Baghdad. It killed some friends of mine. He did so because an Iraqi plot to murder George Bush Senior in Kuwait had been unmasked. Whether that plot was fabricated is another matter, but not only did Clinton execute my friends, without trial, the Kuwaitis executed the plotters because they were planning to kill a president. As it happens I am against capital punishment, at all times in all societies, so I wouldn't have executed any of them, but it is another example of the double standards that we are constantly grappling with here.
MOORE: Do you expect to be invited back to the US Senate?
GALLOWAY: No. I told them last September to put up or shut up, and they appear to have chosen to shut up.
MOORE: Why do you think the Senate and indeed the British Labour Party have been so keen to besmirch your name?
GALLOWAY: I am quite good at what I do, and am quite a dangerous enemy for them. If I were an ineffective, sandal-wearing, woolly jumper-wearing, ghettoized leftist they wouldn't have to worry about me at all. However, because by the grace of God I have the ability to rally together and persuade large numbers of people, and because I have been proved right, the people whom I am against have every reason to besmirch me.
The good news is that they have comprehensively failed. I have just been speaking at a school where a thousand children came to hear me speak. They say that young people are apathetic about politics, but I say they are apoplectic about the pathetic nature of the political class that we have. If someone emerges who speaks clearly, speaks the truth, and provides some kind of vision as to how we get out of this, people will respond.
MOORE: But certain politicians see this approach as threatening. . . .
GALLOWAY: Yes, of course, and they're right to. I'm not a joker. I'm not in this for a laugh. I'm really serious about defeating these people. So they are right to be afraid of me.
MOORE: Are you afraid of them, though?
GALLOWAY: No, not at all, and this is my great strength. As I said to Senator Coleman in Washington, "Do not make the mistake of imagining that I'm afraid of you. You have nothing that I want and I have nothing that you can take away from me. The only thing that matters to me is my reputation amongst the people who support me, and you're not in a position to take that away from me." So I'm not afraid of any of them, and this gives me a sense of power, conviction and courage that I might not otherwise have.
The main problem in the House of Commons is the toxic mix of cowardice and careerism in which most of these people are deeply imbibed. A political class like that deserves contempt, and is in receipt of almost bottomless contempt amongst the people.
MOORE: What you are saying doesn't bode well for those hoping to win the war on terror, does it?
GALLOWAY: There will never be a winner because terrorism isn't an adversary -- it is a tactic. Peter Ustinov, the great European intellectual, put it this way: "War is the terrorism of the rich and powerful, and terrorism is the war of the poor and powerless." This word terrorism has been distorted beyond any further usefulness. Terrorism is what the other guy does.
If you reduce Fallujah to ash, and kill thousands of people using white phosphorus and other banned weapons and overwhelming firepower, that's not terrorism, but if you blow yourself up outside an Iraqi police station, that is terrorism. No person with half a brain can accept that definition of terrorism. So there will be no end to the war on terrorism, because there is no end to the injustice that produced it.
MOORE: President Bush is in his last term of office, as is PM Blair, we are told. What steps will the next leaders of these countries take to heal the rift with nations such as Iran, Syria, and so on?
GALLOWAY: I think they'll do nothing different. I think that Gordon Brown and Blair are two cheeks of the same arse, and Bush and Hilary Clinton are two cheeks of the same arse. In fact, Clinton is demanding more forces to be sent to Iraq. Despite a brief flirtation some years ago with the idea of a modicum of justice for the Palestinians, she has now turned utterly against the Palestinians. She is as slavish in her support of Israel as Bush is.
I can tell you, from 30 years of intimate contact with Gordon Brown, that he will be no different from Tony Blair in the material aspects. If Brown and Clinton are not the next leaders, then it will be people of their ilk, as there is no one on the radar who will do anything differently.
MOORE: So, will the list of disgruntled countries keep growing?
GALLOWAY: Of course. In his majestic article for the New Yorker Seymour Hersh makes it very clear that they are not discussing whether to attack Iran, they are discussing which weapons to use when they attack. Even I was startled at the level of detail Hersh went into about the debate inside the administration about whether to use a tactical nuclear weapon on the Iranian nuclear sites, and only the threat of mutiny from top military brass persuaded Bush to take this proposal off the table. Who knows where he will train his sights on next?
I don't think that they are in a position to invade anyone else right now. If they were, then Hugo Chavez had better watch out, Syria had better watch out, Iran had better watch out. North Korea had better watch out, although if the Americans hear nothing else from me, hear this. Please do not attack North Korea -- that would be picking up a very spiky porcupine indeed.
MOORE: If the status quo is to prevail, what could any new leader do to improve matters?
GALLOWAY: For the purposes of this interview I'll deal only with the Muslim world, although there are many other issues of injustice that afflict much of the planet. The way to drain the swamp is this.
First of all, we have to recognize the centrality of the Palestine question to this big crisis. We have to recognize that the flaw at the heart of Western policy is the injustice suffered by the Palestinian people, and the endless insult added to injury over the past 50 years.
We have to make reparation to the Palestinian people and stop bankrolling and arming Israel. We have to force them to knock down the wall, force them to disgorge every inch of the territory that they illegally occupied in 1967, force them to allow a Palestinian state with an Arab border with Jerusalem as its capital and no Zionist settlements on its land. No control over the airspace, sea space, access and so on. None of that will be done, but it needs to be done.
The second thing that needs to be done is that we need to withdraw from occupied Muslim lands, get our forces out of their lands. The third thing we must do is to stop propping up these tyrants that rule the Muslim world. As I implied earlier on, the Muslim world laughs at the idea that we are for freedom and democracy, as they know that their tyrant is only in power because of our support. I'm not asking for anything to be done to bring these tyrants down, other than to withdraw our support and let their people deal with them.
MOORE: In I'm Not the Only One, you wrote of the Labour Party: "Many of my friends have placed their faith in a campaign to 'Reclaim the Party'. I wish them luck. They will need it. I believe they will not succeed, but I sincerely hope that they do." What, if anything could emerge to fill the void to the left of British politics, and you suggest there is a similar void in the United States?
GALLOWAY: With Respect - the Unity Coalition we are trying to fill the void in the UK, as a void is an unnatural thing, especially in politics. I think that no one is trying to fill the vacuum in the United States.
I would like to make something clear about what I am trying to do. I am not a Marxist, a Leninist, Trotskyist or any other kind of 'ist'. I am just labor. I just believe that every country needs a labor party. A party that will stand up for people who work, those who are too old to work, who are poor, marginalized, on the end of the lash of bigotry and prejudice. A party that will stand up for immigrants, minorities and so on. Every country needs such a party. Britain no longer has one, and we are trying to build one from scratch.
It sounds like a very big mountain to climb, but in 1894 in the East End of London a Scotsman called Keir Hardie became the first ever Labour MP. At the time people said he was splitting the vote and he would let the Conservatives in. From that one victory in 1894 in East London grew the great oak of Labour. All the good that was done by Labour has been abandoned, and we are putting ourselves forward as a true labor party.
Gold closed at 665.40 dollars an ounce Friday, up 5.4% from $631.10 for the week. The dollar closed at 0.7904 euros on Friday, up 1.3% from 0.7806 at the end of the week before. That put the euro at 1.2652 dollars compared to 1.2810 at the close of the previous week. Gold in euros would be 525.92 an ounce up 6.8% from 492.66 for the week. Oil closed at 76.80 dollars a barrel Friday, up 4.1% from 73.79 at the close of the previous Friday. Oil in euros would be 60.70 euros a barrel, up 5.4% from 57.60 for the week. The gold/oil ratio closed at 8.66 Friday, up 1.3% from 8.55 at the end of the previous week. In U.S. stocks, the Dow closed at 10,739.35, down 3.3% from 11,090.67 for the week. The NASDAQ closed at 2,037.35 Friday, down 4.6% from 2,130.06 at the close of the Friday before. In U.S. interest rates, the yield on the ten-year U.S. Treasury note closed at 5.06%, down seven basis points from 5.13 for the week.
Fears that Israel may have started World War III in the Middle East last week led to rises in gold, oil and a drop in U.S. stocks. The magnitude of the crimes being committed by Israel right now makes it hard to focus on the economy, but, since the economy is one front in this war of one human race (the psychopaths - those without a conscience) on the other human race (those with conscience), it may be worthwhile to pay some attention to it. The reality of this war can be seen in the year-later aftermath of Hurricane Katrina:
Saturday I joined some volunteers and helped gut the home of one of my best friends. Two months after she finished paying off her mortgage, her one-story brick home was engulfed in 7 feet of water. Because she was under-insured and remains worried about a repeat of the floods, my friend, a grandmother, has not yet decided if she is going to rebuild.
Though it is Saturday morning, on my friend's block no children play and no one is cutting the grass. Most of her neighbors' homes are still abandoned. Three older women neighbors have died since Katrina.
We are still finding dead bodies. Ten days ago, workers cleaning a house in New Orleans found a body of a man who died in the flood. He is the 23rd person found dead from the storm since March.
Over 200,000 people have not yet made it back to New Orleans. Vacant houses stretch mile after mile, neighborhood after neighborhood. Thousands of buildings remain marked with brown ribbons where floodwaters settled. Of the thousands of homes and businesses in eastern New Orleans, 13 percent have been re-connected to electricity.
The mass displacement of people has left New Orleans older, whiter and more affluent. African Americans, children and the poor have not made it back - primarily because of severe shortages of affordable housing.
Thousands of homes remain just as they were when the floodwaters receded - ghost-like houses with open doors, upturned furniture, and walls covered with growing mold.
Not a single dollar of federal housing repair or home reconstruction money has made it to New Orleans yet. Tens of thousands are waiting. Many wait because a full third of homeowners in the New Orleans area had no flood insurance. Others wait because the levees surrounding New Orleans are not yet as strong as they were before Katrina and fear re-building until flood protection is more likely. Fights over the federal housing money still loom because Louisiana refuses to clearly state a commitment to direct 50 percent of the billions to low and moderate income families.
Meanwhile, 70,000 families in Louisiana live in 240-square-foot FEMA trailers - three on my friend's street. As homeowners, their trailer is in front of their own battered home. Renters are not so fortunate and are placed in gravel strewn FEMA-villes across the state. With rents skyrocketing, thousands have moved into houses without electricity.
Meanwhile, privatization of public services continues to accelerate.
Public education in New Orleans is mostly demolished and what remains is being privatized. The city is now the nation's laboratory for charter schools - publicly funded schools run by private bodies. Before Katrina the local elected school board had control over 115 schools - they now control 4. The majority of the remaining schools are now charters.
The metro area public schools will get $213 million less next school year in state money because tens of thousands of public school students were displaced last year. At the same time, the federal government announced a special allocation of $23.9 million which can only be used for charter schools in Louisiana. The teachers union, the largest in the state, has been told there will be no collective bargaining because, as one board member stated, "I think we all realize the world has changed around us."
Public housing has been boarded up and fenced off as HUD announced plans to demolish 5,000 apartments - despite the greatest shortage of affordable housing in the region's history. HUD plans to let private companies develop the sites. In the meantime, the 4,000 families locked out since Katrina are not allowed to return.
The broken city water system is losing about 85 million gallons of water in leaks every day. That is not a typo, 85 million gallons of water a day, at a cost of $200,000 a day, are still leaking out of the system even after over 17,000 leaks have been plugged. Michelle Krupa of the Times-Picayune reports that the city pumps 135 million gallons a day through 80 miles of pipe in order for 50 million gallons to be used. We are losing more than we are using; the repair bill is estimated to be $1 billion - money the city does not have.
Public healthcare is in crisis. Our big public hospital has remained closed, and there are no serious plans to reopen it. A neighbor with cancer who has no car was told that she has to go 68 miles away to the closest public hospital for her chemotherapy.
Mental health may be worse. In the crumbling city and in the shelters of the displaced, depression and worse reign. Despite a suicide rate triple what it was a year ago, we have lost half of our psychiatrists, social workers, psychologists and other mental health care workers, the New York Times reports.
Mental health clinics remain closed. The psych unit of the big public hospital has not been replaced in the private sector as most are too poor to pay. The primary residence for people with mental health problems are our jails and prisons.
For children, the Washington Post reports, the trauma of the floods has not ended. A LSU mental health screening of nearly 5,000 children in schools and temporary housing in Louisiana found that 96 percent saw hurricane damage to their homes or neighborhoods, 22 percent had relatives or friends who were injured, 14 percent had relatives or friends who died, and 35 percent lost pets. Thirty-four percent were separated from their primary caregivers at some point; 9 percent still are. Little care is directed to the little ones.
The criminal justice system remains shattered. Six thousand cases await trial. There were no jury trials and only four public defenders for nine of the last 10 months. Many people in jail have not seen a lawyer since 2005. The Times-Picayune reported one defendant, jailed for possession of crack cocaine for almost two years, has not been inside a courtroom since August 2005 despite the fact that a key police witness against him committed suicide during the storm.
You may have seen on the news that we have some new neighbors - the National Guard. We could use the help of our military to set up hospitals and clinics. We could use their help in gutting and building houses or picking up the mountains of debris that remain. But instead they were sent to guard us from ourselves.
Crime certainly is a community problem. But many question the Guard helping local police dramatically increase stops of young Black males - who are spread out on the ground while they and their cars are searched. The relationship between crime and the collapse of all of these other systems is a one rarely brought up.
It has occurred to us that our New Orleans is looking more and more like Baghdad.
People in New Orleans wonder if this is the way the U.S. treats its own citizens, how on earth is the U.S. government treating people around the world? We know our nation could use its money and troops and power to help build up our community instead of trying to extend our economic and corporate reach around the globe. Why has it chosen not to?
We know that what is happening in New Orleans is just a more concentrated, more graphic version of what is going on all over our country. Every city in our country has some serious similarities to New Orleans. Every city has some abandoned neighborhoods. Every city in our country has abandoned some public education, public housing, public healthcare and criminal justice.
Those who do not support public education, healthcare, and housing will continue to turn all of our country into the Lower Ninth Ward unless we stop them. Why do we allow this?
There are signs of hope and resistance.
Neighborhood groups across the Gulf Coast are meeting and insisting that the voices and wishes of the residents be respected in the planning and rebuilding of their neighborhoods.
Public outrage forced FEMA to cancel the eviction of 3,000 families from trailers in Mississippi.
Country music artists Faith Hill and Tim McGraw blasted the failed federal rebuilding effort, saying, "When you have people dying because they're poor and Black or poor and white, or because of whatever they are - if that's a number on a political scale - then that is the most wrong thing. That erases everything that's great about our country."
There is a growing grassroots movement to save the 4,000-plus apartments of public housing HUD promises to bulldoze. Residents and allies held a big July 4 celebration of resistance.
Voluntary groups have continued their active charitable work on the Gulf Coast. Thousands of houses are being gutted and repaired and even built by Baptist, Catholic, Episcopal, Jewish, Mennonite, Methodist, Muslim, Presbyterian and other faith groups. The AFL-CIO announced plans to invest $700 million in housing in New Orleans.
Many ask what the future of New Orleans is going to be like? I always give the lawyer's answer, "It depends."
The future of New Orleans depends on whether our nation makes a commitment to those who have so far been shut out of the repair of New Orleans. Will the common good prompt the federal government to help the elderly, the children, the disabled and the working poor return to New Orleans? If so, we might get most of our city back. If not, and the signs so far are not so good, then the tens of thousands of people who were left behind when Katrina hit 10 months ago will again be left behind.
The future of New Orleans depends on those who are willing to fight for the right of every person to return. Many are fighting for that right. Please join in.
Some ask, what can people who care do to help New Orleans and the Gulf Coast? Help us rebuild our communities. Pair up your community, your business, school, church, professional or social organization with one on the Gulf Coast - and build a relationship where your organization can be a resource for one here and provide opportunities for your groups to come and help and for people here to come and tell their stories in your communities.
Most groups here have adopted the theme first used by Common Ground: "Solidarity not charity." Or, as aboriginal activist Lila Watson once said: "If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us struggle together."
For the sake of our nation and for our world, let us struggle together.
In the meantime, I will be joining other volunteers this Saturday, knocking out the mold-covered ceiling of my friend's home and putting it out on the street - 10 months after Katrina.
Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. You can reach Bill at Quigley@loyno.edu. For more information, see www.justiceforneworleans.org.
What can the normal people do? Know the enemy. Look at their works in New Orleans, Iraq, Gaza and Lebanon. Those are potential futures for all of us. Learn about psychopaths and how to spot them. They are a minority (some say 6%), so if identified, the rest of us can limit the damage they can cause by, among other things, not following their orders, not allowing them to have positions of power either collectively or personally. That can only be done if we know who they are AND how they operate.
BEIRUT - Israel killed at least 32 civilians on Saturday, including 15 children, in air strikes meant to punish Lebanon for letting Hizbollah guerrillas menace the Jewish state's northern border.
Israel's bombing of Lebanese roads, bridges, ports and airports, as well as Hizbollah targets, is its most destructive onslaught since its 1982 invasion to expel Palestinian forces.
An Israeli missile incinerated a van in south Lebanon, killing 20 people, among them 15 children, in the deadliest single attack of the four-day-old campaign launched by Israel after Hizbollah captured two of its soldiers and killed eight.
Police said the van was carrying two families fleeing the village of Marwaheen after Israeli loudspeaker warnings to leave their homes.
Raids on roads and petrol stations in north, east and south Lebanon killed 12 people and wounded 32, security sources said, bringing the death toll in four days of Israeli attacks to 99. All but three of the dead have been civilians.
Hizbollah rockets, meanwhile, struck deeper into Israel than ever before on Saturday, wounding eight people and damaging two buildings in the Sea of Galilee town of Tiberias, police said.
Altogether 10 Israelis were wounded throughout northern Israel as about 80 rockets rained down from Lebanon. A military spokesman said Israel had deployed Patriot missile batteries in the northern city of Haifa to intercept Hizbollah rockets.
Rocket attacks have killed four civilians, including a child, in northern Israel this week.
President George W. Bush, who has declined to urge Israel to curb its military operations, said Syria should tell Hizbollah, which is also backed by Iran, to stop cross-border attacks.
In strikes on Beirut, Israeli warplanes flattened Hizbollah's nine-storey headquarters and destroyed the office of a Hamas leader, Mohammed Nazzal. An official of the ruling Palestinian Islamist group said Nazzal had survived the attack.
For the first time, Israel bombarded the ports of Beirut and Tripoli in the north, security sources and witnesses said.
Shortly after, Israeli warships bombarded Beirut's lighthouse and two ports in Christian areas north of the capital, a Lebanese security source said.
SYRIAN-LEBANESE BORDER
Israel's campaign in Lebanon coincided with an offensive it launched in the Gaza Strip on June 28 to try to retrieve another captured soldier, halt Palestinian rocket fire and destroy institutions of the Hamas-led government.
Israeli planes fired rockets near a Lebanese-Syrian border crossing, heightening fears that it could extend its campaign to Syria, which along with Iran is Hizbollah's main ally.
Israel said it had attacked targets only in Lebanon. A Syrian official also said Israel had not attacked Syria.
The Israeli army said it had struck about 150 targets in Lebanon so far, fewer than a dozen of them linked directly to Hizbollah. Most have hit civilian installations.
The assault has choked Lebanon's economy.
Israel aims not just to force Hizbollah to free the soldiers, which the Shi'ite group wants to trade for prisoners in Israel, but to destroy its ability to launch rocket attacks on northern Israel.
"The best way to stop the violence is for Hizbollah to lay down its arms and to stop attacking. And therefore I call upon Syria to exert influence over Hizbollah," Bush told a joint news conference with President Vladimir Putin at a summit in Russia.
The European Union, in a statement at the G8 summit, said Israel's assault on Lebanon was disproportionate.
Israeli army chief Dan Halutz said on Friday more targets would be bombed as part of the effort to remove Hizbollah from the border and replace it with a force answering to the Lebanese government.
LACKS UNITY
The Beirut government, led by an anti-Syrian coalition, lacks the unity and firepower to disarm Hizbollah, the only Lebanese faction to keep its guns after the 1975-90 civil war.
After Israel quit Lebanon in 2000, Hizbollah confined its attacks mainly to a disputed border area, but Wednesday's bold raid shattered tacit rules that had limited frontier violence.
The Israeli military said it had recovered the body of one of four sailors missing from a warship struck by Hizbollah off Beirut on Friday evening. A military source said Hizbollah had fired an Iranian-made missile at the vessel.
Hizbollah announced one of its fighters had been killed, only the second such death it has announced this week.
In Gaza, Israeli aircraft attacked the Palestinian Economy Ministry and a house where a Hamas militant was killed and eight people were wounded. Israel has killed about 85 Palestinians, around half of them militants since the offensive was launched.
Comment:
The Israeli army said it had struck about 150 targets in Lebanon so far, fewer than a dozen of them linked directly to Hizbollah. Most have hit civilian installations.
That pretty much says it all, doesn't it? The assault on Lebanon has nothing to do with Hizbollah - that much is plainly obvious. In fact, it is SO glaringly obvious that we just have to ask why so many countries around the world are doing so little to stop Israel.
The London-based Arabic language newspaper Al-Hayat reported Saturday that "Washington has information according to which Israel gave Damascus 72 hours to stop Hizbullah's activity along the Lebanon-Israel border and bring about the release the two kidnapped IDF soldiers or it would launch an offensive with disastrous consequences."
The report said "a senior Pentagon source warned that should the Arab world and international community fail in the efforts to convince Syria to pressure Hizbullah into releasing the soldiers and halt the current escalation Israel may attack targets in the country." Al-Hayat quoted the source as saying that "the US cannot rule out the possibility of an Israeli strike in Syria," this despite the fact that the Bush administration has asked Israel to "refrain from any military activity that may result in civilian casualties."
'Hizbullah made the same mistake'
The report also mentioned that President George W. Bush has repeatedly put much of the blame for the recent escalation on Syria.
"It is no coincidence that the Hizbullah operation comes at a time when the international community is working to impose sanctions on Iran due to its nuclear program and settle the score with Syria by establishing an international court to try those behind the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri," the Pentagon source said.
According to the source, Hizbullah made the same mistake as Hamas when it did not predict the ramifications of its actions and ignored the regional and international changes since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
The source said that Israel has indicated that it "will not end its military activity until a new situation is created that will prevent Syria and Iran from using terror organizations, such as Hamas and Hizbullah, to threaten its security."
Comment: To better understand the mindset of the criminals who are perpetrating the crimes in Palestine and to see the propaganda that is used to dull minds and present Israel as the victim, we run articles from the Israeli press and their defenders. It should be clear that we in no way support these killers.
Summary: Key world leaders struggled to draft a response to the raging Middle East crisis as US President George W. Bush defended Israel and blamed militants backed by Iran and Syria.
But many G8 partners, notably Russian President Vladimir Putin and some European leaders, say the Israeli assaults, in response to Hezbollah rocket attacks on the Jewish state and the abduction of three Israeli soldiers, are disproportionate" and a waste of innocent life.
They have called for restraint by Israel which Putin said appeared to have "wider objectives" than simply retrieving its soldiers.
SAINT PETERSBURG - Key world leaders struggled to draft a response to the raging Middle East crisis as US President George W. Bush defended Israel and blamed militants backed by Iran and Syria.
In talks dominated by Israel's devastating offensives in Lebanon and Gaza, leaders of the select Group of Eight major industrialized nations jettisoned their original energy-focused agenda to grasp for consensus on the Middle East.
The United States pressed for a tough statement identifying the root cause of the violence as the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah and its allies Iran and Syria.
"As a sovereign nation, Israel has every right to defend itself against terrorist activity," Bush said after meeting British Prime Minister Tony Blair here.
He added: "Our message to Israel is defend yourself, but be mindful of the consequences. And so we've urged restraint."
But many G8 partners, notably Russian President
Vladimir Putin and some European leaders, say the Israeli assaults, in response to Hezbollah rocket attacks on the Jewish state and the abduction of three Israeli soldiers, are "disproportionate" and a waste of innocent life.
They have called for restraint by Israel which Putin said appeared to have "wider objectives" than simply retrieving its soldiers.
The Lebanon offensive has left more than 100 people dead on both sides -- Israeli warplanes bombed more targets Sunday while Hezbollah retaliated with rockets on Haifa, killing eight -- while scores have also died in Gaza where tanks rolled in again overnight.
Blair pointed his finger more directly at Damascus and Tehran. "The fact is there are people in that region, notably Iran and Syria, who do not want this process of democratisation and peace and negotiation to succeed," he said.
A French diplomatic source said senior G8 foreign ministry officials were working on a statement stopping short of an outright call for a ceasefire -- rejected by the United States -- but appealing for efforts to put in place the conditions for a truce.
The source said the statement would contain two other strands: protecting civilian lives and infrastructure, and shoring up the Lebanese government and Palestinian Authority.
The G8 countries -- as well as Britain, Russia and the United States, they are Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan -- are also due to discuss Iran's nuclear programme and North Korea's missiles during the summit, which runs to Monday.
One thing they did agree on Sunday was a joint statement on energy, vowing to promote "open, transparent" energy markets and develop alternative energy sources, including nuclear power, to counter soaring oil prices and declining fossil fuel reserves.
The statement may ease friction between Russia and European consumers after Moscow cut gas supplies to Ukraine in a price war earlier this year, resulting in disruption to markets in Europe.
Bush was due to have talks Sunday with Chinese President
Hu Jintao to map the way forward on North Korea after UN condemnation of its missile tests.
The presidents were expected to renew their call for Pyongyang to return to six-country talks on ending its nuclear weapons programme.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice thanked Beijing for its support in helping pass the "remarkable" unanimous resolution.
"We really now have a coalition," Rice told reporters, saying North Korea "will have no choice but to return to the talks and pursue denuclearization of the Korean peninsula."
On Monday, the G8 leaders will meet with counterparts from the five major emerging market economies -- Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa -- to try to rescue the floundering Doha round of trade liberalization talks.
Earlier, Russian and US negotiators failed despite intensive talks here to overcome lingering obstacles to a bilateral accord enabling Moscow to join the World Trade Organization, which sets global trade rules.
On the margins of the summit, Russian police halted an anti-G8 protest by some 50 activists in central Saint Petersburg and detained 37 of them, mostly foreigners, organisers said.
By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press
Sat Jul 15, 2006
UNITED NATIONS - Lebanon accused the United States on Saturday of blocking a U.N. Security Council statement calling for a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah, saying the impotence of the United Nations' most powerful body sent the wrong signal to small countries and the Arab world.
Israel has killed more than 100 people in a four-day bombardment of Lebanon. The offensive was triggered by a cross-border raid by Hezbollah guerrillas in which eight soldiers were killed and two others were captured. Fifteen Israelis have died in the fighting and the Shiite militant group has been raining rockets on northern Israel.
"It's unacceptable because people are still under shelling, bombardment and destruction is going on ... and people are dying," said Lebanese special envoy Nouhad Mahmoud.
Qatar, the only Arab nation on the council, received widespread support during closed council consultations late Saturday for a press statement calling for an immediate cease-fire, restraint in the use of force, and the protection of civilians caught in the conflict, council diplomats said.
But Argentina's U.N. Ambassador Cesar Mayoral said the United States objected to any statement and Britain opposed calling for a cease-fire.
The U.S. and Britain want to wait for the outcome of this weekend's Group of Eight meeting in Russia, an Arab League foreign ministers meeting, and a mission sent to the Middle East by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Mayoral and other diplomats said.
France's U.N. Ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere, the current council president, confirmed "there was no agreement on a text tonight, but we will meet on Monday."
"Many delegations would have liked to have a very prompt reaction," he said. "Others think the spotlight should be elsewhere, not here in the council. "
But Lebanon's Mahmoud protested, saying while innocent civilians are killed, "here we are impotent."
"It sends very wrong signals not only to the Lebanese people but to the Arab people, to all small nations that we are left to the might of Israel and nobody is doing anything," he said.
Lebanon's pro-Western government came to power following the February 2005 assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri, which led to Syria ending its 29-year occupation of its smaller neighbor. The Security Council has passed several resolutions promoting the full restoration of Lebanon's sovereignty and has urged it to deploy troops to the Hezbollah-dominated south to assert control there.
"We have many reasons to expect much more from the Security Council," said Mahmoud. And from the United States?
"They were always supportive in the last 1 1/2 years, but when it comes to Israel it seems things change," he said.
In another development, Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guehenno told reporters that Israel had rescinded a directive that would have restricted the movements of the 2,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, blocking it from carrying out its observer mission.
By URI DAN, Mideast Correspondent
The New York Post
July 16, 2006
JERUSALEM - Israeli airstrikes targeting Hezbollah strongholds pounded central Beirut yesterday as terrorist rockets continued to be fired back across the border - and Iranian involvement was exposed in the attack on an Israeli warship.
Israeli officials charged that elite Iranian troops operating in Lebanon were involved in the Hezbollah offensive, and were responsible for firing an Iranian-made, radar-guided C802 missile - not the unmanned bomb-laden drone originally reported - that struck the warship on Friday, killing four sailors.
"There are Iranian officers belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard among Hezbollah and they operated the missile," said Israeli Vice Prime Minister and elder statesman Shimon Peres.
Iran and Hezbollah both denied cooperation but Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad condemned Israel's military offensive in Lebanon, saying "the Zionist regime behaves like Hitler," Iranian state television reported.
Among yesterday's other developments:
* More than 100 rockets fired from Lebanon struck deeper and deeper into Israel, hitting apartment buildings in the tourist-packed resort town of Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee, 22 miles south of the border.
* Israel stepped up round-the-clock bombing raids in an effort to destroy Hezbollah rocket caches in Lebanon, but one attack struck a convoy of civilians fleeing the fighting, killing 18. In all, 35 Lebanese were killed yesterday.
* Israeli officials fear Hezbollah terrorists still possess rockets with ranges of 60 to 120 miles that could strike Tel Aviv.
Authorities issued a warning to the 1.4 million residents of northern Israel to stay close to bomb shelters for the time being, and deployed Patriot-missile batteries in Haifa for the first time since the Gulf War in 1991.
* The Israeli air force continued bombing Hezbollah compounds in southern Beirut, in a bid to kill the group's leadership.
Warplanes also took out gas stations, roads and bridges near the Syrian border in an effort to completely seal off Lebanon.
As the violence escalated, Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad expressed solidarity with Lebanon and pledged resources to help cope with Israeli attacks, threatening to plunge the region into further chaos.
* Israeli tanks also moved back into the northern Gaza strip, clashing with militants, killing two. The offensive is aimed at recovering a captured soldier and stopping armed groups.
Israeli tanks and armored personnel carriers, backed by helicopters firing machine guns, moved into farmland near Beit Hanoun, an area often used by militants for launching rockets.
* U.S. officials planned an airlift to evacuate the 25,000 American citizens believed trapped in Lebanon.
"As of the morning of July 15, we are looking at how we might transport Americans to Cyprus," the State Department said.
As the violence worsened, neither side appeared willing to back down on the fifth day of fighting since Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on Wednesday, and President Bush leveled stern warnings at Iran and Syria.
The guided-missile attack on the Israeli destroyer represented "a very profound fingerprint of Iranian involvement in Hezbollah," said Israeli Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan.
Iran denied involvement in a statement released by its embassy in Beirut. "These accusations by Israeli officials are baseless and constitute an attempt to escape reality and cover up the impotence of this regime in the face of resistance and the Lebanese people," the statement read.
Israel also claimed that the missile was fired using the Lebanese military's radar system, and used airstrikes to take out government radar sites along the coast.
In an emotional televised speech, Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora called on the United Nations to broker an immediate cease-fire to end Israel's land, sea and air offensive against Lebanon.
He also pledged to reassert government authority all over Lebanese territory. That would meet a repeated U.N. and U.S. demand.
Meanwhile, diplomatic efforts to resolve the dispute had yet to get off the ground.
Bush, at the G-8 summit in Russia, called on Hezbollah "to lay down its arms and to stop attacking."
Bush pointed the blame squarely at Hezbollah and Syria - the terror group's principal backer.
The violence, he said, was caused "because Hezbollah has been launching rocket attacks out of Lebanon into Israel and because Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers."
Since Palestine is occupied, we accept no less than its total liberation. It belongs to our people since time immemorial. Our ancestors, the Canaanites, have lived there thousands of years before the biblical stories came to existence without interruption until the present time. They were Arab tribes, and we are their descendents. Abraham and his descendents came from Ur of Chaldea, the Chaldeans originated from Arabia, and they spoke Aramaic like many Arabs did. Aramaic was an old Arabic language, which was replaced by the modern Arabic language of the tribe of Quraish, the tribe of Prophet Mohammad in which the Holy Qoran was revealed to humanity. The modern Jews have nothing to do with the old Hebrews who were from Ur of Chaldea. They are not the same; they have nothing in common, ethnically, culturally or otherwise.
No one has the right to Palestine except our ancestors who died long ago, our generations who are struggling to expel the occupiers and the generations who are not yet born.
Palestine was carved out of Syria, the Arab homeland was ripped apart and mini states were created. We lost our unity, our freedom and we became under the rules of tyrants and oppressors. Our beloved Palestine was taken away from us by the Western Powers and by the Stalinist Russia and given to the Zionists. Since then, the Palestinians are resisting the foreign usurpation of the homeland and they will keep resisting until justice prevails and the six millions go back to their homes.
The aggression against the Palestinians did not stop since the beginning of last century and the massacres of the Palestinians continue until this very day. The massacres at large scale are considered genocide and the Palestinians are the victims. The perpetrators are the Western Imperialist Zionists allies. The Zionist forces are destroying our refugee camps, our towns, cities, farms, and infrastructure and contaminating our waters in the Gaza Strip. They are killing our women, our children and our people and the Western governments are giving their blessings to the criminals on our land.
Forty-five year old, Mr. Mohammad Erheem, who lives in Al-Issraa' west of Beit Lahiya stated that the occupation Zionist forces killed the sheep in his farm by burying them alive and he was jailed in one room of his house with the rest of his family.
The Zionist soldiers who occupied his house were drinking liquor, shouting and laughing every time a sniper among them killed or wounded a Palestinian from the town. These immoral racist soldiers were celebrating and dancing on our bleeding wounds with no respect to human feeling, but the story did not stop there. One of the soldiers took the family Qoran, tore it and stepped on it.
Before withdrawing from the neighborhoods of Al Atatira, Al Salateen, and Al Issraa', the soldiers destroyed many houses, bulldozed hundreds of acres, and uprooted olive, orange and lemon trees. Vineyards also did not escape their ravaging and destruction. They bulldozed the main and side roads, pulled down the electric and telephone posts, The water pipes were blown up, the cemetery of Al Issraa' was desecrated and tombs were leveled. Then, two mosques, Al Huda and Faith were severely damaged. The Zionists now expanded their war of aggression against Lebanon and not a single Western State has the morality to put a stop of this continuous war of aggression against the Arabs.
"Israel" is a racist-settler-colonialist entity that has no legitimate right to exist on our land. It pauses danger to our existence as a nation and those who created it have no conscience.
The Anti-War Movement and the progressive organizations in the West should come to a conclusion that the racist settler-invaders do not belong to Palestine, they should go back to the country of their origin or to the Mohave Desert to make it fertile and blooming. The Land of Milk and Honey is not theirs. It is ours; this land belongs to our people, to our martyrs and to our future generations. It is about time to end the hypocrisy and injustice, and to put an end to the genocide and starvation against the Palestinians.
Moshe Dayan who once said: "The key of any city is no more than a piece of Iron put under the "Israeli" tank to take the shape of the key we want... to suit the door of the city we want to take over...." The gallant Gazans are fighting and facing the Zionist tanks, planes, missiles and the siege of the Western governments. The tanks of the Zionists that Dayan was speaking of are treading over the Zionist dreams, his dreams and the Zionist entity's dreams
We tell all the friends and supporters of the Zionist aggression that our people will keep fighting. The American tanks and missiles with all the heavy armaments, and the blockade and starvation policies imposed upon the Palestinians will not deter them. Their determination is the total liberation of their land that stretches from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 16, 2006; A15
Israel, with U.S. support, intends to resist calls for a cease-fire and continue a longer-term strategy of punishing Hezbollah, which is likely to include several weeks of precision bombing in Lebanon, according to senior Israeli and U.S. officials.
For Israel, the goal is to eliminate Hezbollah as a security threat -- or altogether, the sources said. A senior Israeli official confirmed that Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah is a target, on the calculation that the Shiite movement would be far less dynamic without him.
For the United States, the broader goal is to strangle the axis of Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran, which the Bush administration believes is pooling resources to change the strategic playing field in the Middle East, U.S. officials say.
Whatever the outrage on the Arab streets, Washington believes it has strong behind-the-scenes support among key Arab leaders also nervous about the populist militants -- with a tacit agreement that the timing is right to strike.
"What is out there is concern among conservative Arab allies that there is a hegemonic Persian threat [running] through Damascus, through the southern suburbs of Beirut and to the Palestinians in Hamas," said a senior U.S. official who requested anonymity because of sensitive diplomacy. "Regional leaders want to find a way to navigate unease on their streets and deal with the strategic threats to take down Hezbollah and Hamas, to come out of the crisis where they are not as ascendant."
Hezbollah's cross-border raid that captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others has provided a "unique moment" with a "convergence of interests" among Israel, some Arab regimes and even those in Lebanon who want to rein in the country's last private army, the senior Israeli official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing conflict.
Israel and the United States would like to hold out until Hezbollah is crippled.
"It seems like we will go to the end now," said Israeli Ambassador Daniel Ayalon. "We will not go part way and be held hostage again. We'll have to go for the kill -- Hezbollah neutralization."
White House officials said Friday that Bush has called on Israel to limit civilian casualties and avoid toppling the Lebanese government but has not pressured Israel to stop its military action. "He believes that the Israelis have a right to protect themselves," spokesman Tony Snow said in St. Petersburg, where Bush is attending the Group of Eight summit. "The president is not going to make military decisions for Israel."
Specifically, officials said, Israel and the United States are looking to create conditions for achieving one remaining goal of U.N. Resolution 1559, adopted in 2004, which calls for the dismantling and disarming of Lebanon's militias and expanding the state's control over all its territory.
"We think part of the solution to this is the implementation of 1559, which would eliminate that [armed group operating outside the government] and help Lebanon extend all of its authority throughout the whole country," national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley told reporters with Bush in Russia yesterday.
The other part of the resolution calls for the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, which was completed in April last year -- after the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri, which was widely linked to Syria.
If Lebanon as a first step takes over Hezbollah's stockpiles, which included more than 12,000 rockets and missiles before the current strife began, then cease-fire talks could begin, the Israeli official said.
"The only way a cease-fire will even be considered is if 1559 is fully implemented," said the senior Israeli official. Lebanese troops must be deployed to take over positions in Hezbollah's southern Lebanon strongholds to ensure that there are no more cross-border raids or rocket barrages into northern Israel.
There are no guarantees, however, that this strategy will work. Israeli airstrikes could backfire, experts warn.
"Hezbollah was risking alienating not only the Lebanese public at large but, incredibly, its very own Shiite constituency. But if Israel continues with its incessant targeting of exclusively civilian targets, and, as a result, life becomes increasingly difficult for the people, I would not be surprised if there is a groundswell of support for Hezbollah, exactly opposite of what Israel is trying to achieve," said Timur Goksel, an analyst and former spokesman for the U.N. force in Lebanon who lives in Beirut.
The Bush administration's position -- and diplomacy -- are the opposite of what happened during the Clinton administration.
The last Hezbollah-Israel cease-fire was just before dawn on April 27, 1996, after the United States brokered a deal to end a punishing 16-day Israeli offensive designed to end Hezbollah's rocket barrages. More than 150 Lebanese, mostly civilians, were killed; more than 60 Israelis were injured. Tens of thousands on both sides of the border had fled or gone into bunkers.
Then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher shuttled for a week between Jerusalem and Damascus to mediate a written agreement, a sequel to a similar oral deal he negotiated after skirmishes in 1993.
For now, that is not a viable option to end the current conflict, U.S. officials say. With its diplomacy redefined by the war on terrorism, the Bush administration has opted for a course that plays out on the battlefield.
Pressed on whether a cease-fire was possible soon, the Israeli official said it was "way, way premature" to consider an end to hostilities. "There is no sense to have a cease-fire without a fundamental change," he said. "That change is to make sure the explosiveness of the situation cannot carry over to the future. That means neutralizing Hezbollah's capabilities."
The Bush administration is also using Resolution 1559 as a barometer, U.S. officials say, acknowledging that the Lebanese government has shown neither the ability nor the willingness to deploy its fledgling army to the southern border.
U.S. officials have cautioned Israel to use restraint, particularly on collateral damage and destruction of infrastructure, which might undermine the fragile government. There was some U.S. concern about attacks on the Beirut airport, but otherwise Washington is prepared to step aside and defer diplomacy unless there is a dramatic break, U.S. officials say.
"They do have space to operate for a period of time," the U.S. official said about Israel. "There's a natural dynamic to these things. When the military starts, it may be that it has to run its course."
Israel and the United States believe that the Israeli strikes in Gaza, following the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, have undermined Hamas. "There is no Hamas government -- eight cabinet ministers or 30 percent of the government is in jail, another 30 percent is in hiding, and the other 30 percent is doing very little," said the senior U.S. official.
Jeff Blankfort Comments: The arguments being made to justify Israel's undeclared war on Lebanon are similar to those made in 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon, again with the applause of both Democrats and Republicans, as well as President Reagan, . At that time, Hizbullah did not exist and the target was the PLO. The notion that Israel's devastation of Lebanon is going to help further US goals in the region is more a cover-up to disguise the fact that the Jewish Zionist lobby, with the backing of the Christian Zionists, is dictating US policy as a miniature version of the Third Reich does as it wishes with its northern neighbor, or does not collectively punishing an entire country as punishment for the capture of two of its soldiers and the killing of a handful more, put it in that category? Those who fault Hizbollah for acting in solidarity with the Palestinians under siege in Gaza when Lebanon had not been attacked, must then fault the US for entering the war against Nazi Germany in 1941 when Germany has not attacked the US.
BEIRUT - Israel is keeping up its blistering offensive against Lebanon after Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah declared open war in a conflict that appears to be spiralling dangerously out of control despite international calls for restraint.
Combat jets bombarded Lebanon in a series of dawn raids, slamming missiles into bridges and petrol stations and killing four people on the fourth day of fighting that has so far claimed the lives of around 90 people on both sides.
Emerging unscathed after Israeli air strikes late Friday on his home and office in Hezbollah's southern suburbs, Nasrallah warned: "You wanted an open war, you will get an open war."
And in a dramatic new development, Nasrallah boasted that Hezbollah struck an Israeli warship patrolling off the coast of Lebanon, telling his supporters to "watch it burning"
Israel said four Israeli servicemen were missing after the attack on the vessel, which reports said was hit either by a rocket or an explosives-laden drone. Another civilian ship, believed to be Egyptian, was also hit and set ablaze, Israel said.
While the international community has issued urgent appeals for restraint, world powers appear divided over how to deal with the conflict, which erupted after Hezbollah guerrillas seized two Israeli soldiers in an attack on the volatile Lebanon-Israeli border on Wednesday.
The attack opened up a new battleground in the Middle East following the massive Israeli onslaught against Gaza launched after the capture of another soldier by Palestinian militants three weeks ago.
Israel is under fire from some members of the UN Security Council for using "disproportionate force" against Lebanon and Gaza.
But at an emergency Council debate on the crisis on Friday, the the United States stood alone in refusing to even caution restraint from Israel, instead laying the blame firmly at the feet of Iran and Syria, which both back Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamist movmement Hamas.
Lebanon is virtually cut off from the outside world after Israel imposed an air and sea blockade, launched repeated strikes on the country's only international airport and bombed the main highway to neighbouring Syria.
And in a sign that there would be no early easing of the crisis, Israel army chief Dan Halutz warned his forces would continue to strike Hezbollah and other infrastructure targets in Lebanon.
"Lebanon is paying a very heavy price because of Hezbollah: bridges, roads and airports destroyed -- and it could yet be deprived of other infrastructure," he said.
Northern Israel has been hit by a barrage of Hezbollah rocket fire from Lebanon, triggering the most intensive offensive by the Jewish state against its northern neighbour since its Grapes of Wrath operation in 1996.
Four people have been killed in towns in northern Israel, where panicked residents are spending much of their time in bomb shelters or reinforced rooms.
On Saturday, four civilians, including an Egyptian worker, were killed in a series of Israeli air raids across southern and easten Lebanon. War planes also struck the suburbs of Tripoli on Saturday, in the first such strike so far north by Israel.
"It's sparing nobody, in no area of Lebanon. Actually it is cutting the country into pieces, whereby more than 20 bridges in the country have been destroyed," Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora told CNN.
In a wave of strikes Friday, Israeli jets hit the main highway linking Beirut and Damascus and an airport hangar and fuel tanks, pounded Hezbollah's command headquarters in Beirut and a Palestinian guerrilla base in eastern Lebanon, as well as bridges and other roads.
A UN mission despatched to the region by Secretary General
Kofi Annan arrived in Egypt on Friday ahead of an emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers on the crisis.
But Friday's UN Security Council meeting ended with no action on the Beirut government's demand for a ceasefire and an immediate end to Israeli air strikes on its territory.
US Ambassador John Bolton laid sole blame for the escalating violence in the region on Israel's arch-foes Iran and Syria and their support Hezbollah and Hamas.
And US President George W. Bush, preparing to attend the Group of Eight summit which opens in Russia on Saturday, is not pressuring Israel to halt strikes on targets in Lebanon.
"The president is not going to make military decisions for Israel," spokesman Tony Snow said.
In one of the strongest statements from a world leader on the conflict, President Jacques Chirac of France, the former colonial power in Lebanon, said Israel appeared to "wish to destroy" Lebanon.
Lebanon has been mired in its own political crisis since the murder of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri in 2005 and is still rebuilding after the devastating 1975-1990 civil war.
The Western-backed Lebanese government -- which includes two Hezbollah ministers but is led by anti-Syrian politicians -- denied any involvement in the Hezbollah action and demanded a "complete and immediate ceasefire".
Israel also pressed on with its air assault on Gaza on Saturday, killing one Palestinian in a helicopter strike in the centre of the impoverished territory after the United States vetoed a UN resolution calling on Israel to halt its military operations there.
At least 77 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier have been killed since Israel launched its assault on Gaza, which the
United Nations has warned is causing a humanitarian crisis in one of the most densely populated areas on earth.
Both Hezbollah and the Palestinian militants holding the soldiers are demanding the release of prisoners being held in Israeli jails -- something Israel has rejected outright.
Army chief Halutz said Friday that all three captured servicemen were alive and in a "reasonable" state of health.
BEIRUT, July 16 (Xinhua) -- Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Hezbollah's al-Manar TV on Sunday that his group's fight against Israel just began.
"Our fight against the enemy is just a beginning," Nasrallah said in the video tape.
He said that Hezbollah's strength was not harmed by Israeli massive offensive in the past five days. "We are in full strength and we'll give them more surprise on the land."
He vowed to use all means to exercise the right of resistance." As long as the enemy has no limits, we will have no limits."
He declared that Hezbollah was not fighting a battle for the group or Lebanon only, but also for the whole Arab world.
It was Nasrallah's first television appearance since a wave of Israeli bombardments against his headquarters on Beirut's southern suburbs in the wake of Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers on Wednesday.
Amal Saad-Ghorayeb in Beirut
Saturday July 15, 2006
The Guardian
The capture of three Israeli soldiers by the Lebanese resistance movement, Hizbullah, to bargain for prisoner exchange should come as no surprise - least of all to Israel, which must bear its own responsibility for the abductions and is using this conflict to pursue its wider strategic aims.
The prisoners Hizbullah wants released are hostages who were taken on Lebanese soil. In the successful prisoner exchange in 2004, Israel held on to three Lebanese detainees as bargaining chips and to keep the battle front with Hizbullah open. These detentions have become a cause celebre in Lebanon. In a recent poll, efforts to effect their release attracted majority support, much more even than the liberation of Shebaa Farms, the disputed corridor of land between Syria and Lebanon still occupied by Israel.
The domestic significance of these hostages is ignored by those who choose to reduce the abductions to an act of solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. Indeed Israel's media are aware of recent attempts to capture soldiers, including a botched attempt a few months ago in which three Hizbullah fighters were killed. Hizbullah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, confirmed the attack took five months to plan. Its timing was probably a coincidence. It would seem, though, Hizbullah exerts some influence over the fighters in Gaza - those who captured Corporal Shalit were at the very least inspired by Hizbullah.
The regional significance of the abductions has also been misconstrued. To suggest Hizbullah attacked on the orders of Tehran and Damascus is to grossly oversimplify a strong strategic and ideological relationship. Historically there has been an overlap of interests between Syria, Iran, Hizbullah and Hamas. Together they form a strategic axis - the "axis of terror" to Israel - that confronts US-Israeli designs to redraw the map of the region.
But the nature of that relationship has changed much over the years. Since Syrian forces left Lebanon, Hizbullah has become the stronger party. It has never allowed any foreign power to dictate its military strategy.
It is ironic, given Israel's bombing of civilian targets in Beirut, that Hizbullah is often dismissed in the west as a terrorist organisation. In fact its military record is overwhelmingly one of conflict with Israeli forces inside Lebanese territory. This is just an example of the way that the west employs an entirely different definition of terrorism to the one used in the Arab world and elsewhere, where there is a recognition that terrorism can come in many forms.
The attempt to frame Hizbullah as a terrorist organisation is very far from political reality in Lebanon, from public opinion across the Arab and Islamic world, and from international law.
Israel's disproportionate response to the soldiers' capture will have an impact on Lebanese domestic policy. Hizbullah has recently proposed a comprehensive national defence strategy; the Lebanese government has yet to come up with anything similarly convincing. If demands for a prisoner exchange are successful then it shows that what Hizbullah would term the logic of resistance is the most effective defence strategy. Israel's escalation has been a poor PR exercise. Even if it succeeds in showing the Lebanese people that Hizbullah can be a liability, this may well be cancelled out by Israel's own aggression, which will only confirm Hizbullah's repeated warnings of the constant threat posed by Israel.
- Amal Saad-Ghorayeb is assistant professor of political science at the Lebanese-America University.
WASHINGTON - The State Department said Saturday it was trying to determine how it might evacuate Americans from besieged Lebanon to the neighboring Mediterranean island of Cyprus, where they could get on commercial planes.
The United States estimates 25,000 Americans live or work in Lebanon. Officials assume far fewer would choose to leave if they could.
The department said it was working with the Pentagon on a plan for helping American citizens depart Lebanon.
Israel imposed a sea, air and land blockade of Lebanon. It was targeting bridges, roads, the international airport and ports in response to a raid by Hezbollah militants into Israel that captured two soldiers and killed eight.
Witnesses said Saturday that Israeli aircraft attacked central Beirut for the first time in a four-day offensive.
The State Department said Friday that Americans in Lebanon should consider leaving when it was safe to do so, and officials made contingency plans for the evacuation of people who cannot leave on their own.
Family members and non-emergency American employees of the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon have been given permission to leave.
Pentagon officials have said they were monitoring the situation and studying options for removing Americans, in anticipation of the State Department requesting help soon with an evacuation. As of late Saturday afternoon, the Pentagon said it had not received such a request.
Last Updated Sun, 16 Jul 2006 15:00:15 EDT
CBC News
Seven Canadians - including four children - were killed in an Israeli air raid that hit a Lebanese town on the border with Israel on Sunday. Three Canadians were seriously injured.
Israel has acknowledged carrying out the attack and has apologized to Ottawa, CBC's Nahlah Ayed reported from Beirut.
Most of the dead were members of one extended Montreal family, on vacation in the village of Aitaroun at the time of the Israeli attack. Among those killed was Ali El-Akhras who came to Montreal from Lebanon 15 years ago. His wife, Saada El-Akhras, was among the injured.
The nephew of Ali El-Akhras, also named Ali, had accompanied his uncle and aunt on their annual summer vacation. His wife, Amira, and their four children, ages one, four, six and eight, were killed in the attack.
Reports from Lebanon say the victims were crushed in a collapsed house.
Hassan El-Akhras, the son of Ali El-Akhras, was not with his parents on the trip to Lebanon. He heard about his father's death while he was demonstrating against Israel's attacks on Lebanon in Montreal. Family and friends gathered at the El-Akhras apartment to comfort each other and await further news from Lebanon.
"It's not just us," Hassan El-Akhras told CBC news, "There are a lot of civilians who have been killed. The streets are closed. I am asking the international community to help and put pressure on Israel to stop the bombing."
Ottawa sends vessels to help evacuation
Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay said in Ottawa that plans were being drawn up for a co-ordinated rescue effort by land sea and air for Canadians who want to leave Lebanon.
Ottawa was working with other countries who were trying to get their citizens out of harm's way. Commercial ships were to be hired and sent to the eastern Mediterranean, MacKay said.
"We are securing these vessels. They will be in the region as soon as humanly possible," he told CBC Newsworld.
The Foreign Affairs Department says 16,000 Canadians have registered with the government to say they're in Lebanon, while estimating that there are likely two to three times that many in the country.
On Sunday, for the first time since fighting began, Israeli warplanes unleashed bombs on central Beirut, as well as pounding its suburbs and striking a major power station nearby.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah - which spurred the outbreak of violence with a cross-border raid on the Israeli military - carried out a deadly rocket attack on the northern Israeli port of Haifa.
About 150 Lebanese, most of them civilians, have died since the violence erupted on Wednesday. At least 24 Israelis, including 12 civilians, have died from Hezbollah rockets.
HAIFA, Israel - Eight people were killed in a Hezbollah rocket attack on Israel's third largest city as Israel pounded Lebanon on the fifth day of a spiralling conflict that has cost scores of lives but spurred little international action.
The United States maintained Israel had every right to defend itself but also urged restraint over a blistering offensive that has left much of Lebanon's infrastructure in tatters and raised fears of all-out regional war.
Israel's arch-foe Syria, blamed by the United States and the Jewish state for backing Islamist militants, warned that it would respond to any attack while Iran warned of "unimaginable losses" from any such action.
The Israeli military ordered residents to flee villages in southern Lebanon, warning of air and artillery operations after the rocket attack on the Mediterranean port of Haifa, the deadliest cross-border rocket attack on Israel in decades.
Israeli medics said eight people were killed and dozens wounded by the rocket attacks on Haifa, with most casualties at the main railway station.
Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz vowed Israel would attack all sources of fire in its offensive, regardless of location, issuing a veiled threat to civilians living in Hezbollah strongholds, such as south Beirut.
"All those who attacked Haifa and positions behind our lines will pay a very heavy price," Peretz told a news conference in Haifa.
We have given orders that "every source of identified fire will be struck no matter where it is," he added.
But despite the rocket attacks on Haifa and the northern coastal towns of Nahariya and Shavei Zion, Peretz said Israel had no plans to reoccupy Lebanon. "We do not want to get bogged down in the Lebanese quagmire," he told reporters in Haifa.
The attack on Haifa came as Israeli jets showed no sign of letting up with an ever-widening assault on Lebanon that has almost completely cut it off from the outside world with its airport shut and ports blockaded.
At least 16 Lebanese civilians were killed and 33 others wounded Sunday in air attacks on southern Lebanon, medics and police said.
Their deaths bring to 119 the number of people killed in the Israeli offensive which began last Wednesday, according to an AFP tally based on official and medical sources. Another 313 have been wounded.
The military wing of the Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah, whose leader Hassan Nasrallah has declared "open war" on the Jewish state, claimed it fired dozens of anti-tank missiles at the city and warned it would not spare Haifa if Israel retaliated.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who ordered the offensive against Lebanon after two soldiers were seized by Hezbollah, warned of the consequences of the attack.
"Our government is determined to do everything necessary to reach our objectives. Nothing will prevent us," he said. "There will be long-term consequences on the northern border and in Lebanon and in the entire region."
Governments worldwide were drawing up emergency plans to evacuate their nationals from Lebanon, but world powers appeared sharply divided on how to end the conflict and avoid all-out regional conflict.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora had called Saturday for an immediate UN-sponsored ceasefire to halt the fiercest Israeli assault on its northern neighbour in 10 years and to stop Israel's "collective punishment".
The offensive has put Lebanon under an air and sea blockade, with wave after wave of air strikes that have shut the international airport, destroyed bridges and roads.
Sunday's 16 deaths followed a deadly day of relentless air raids Saturday that blitzed the Beirut headquarters of Nasrallah and struck ports up and down the Mediterranean coast.
At least 18 people, half of them children, were also burnt to death Saturday when jets fired missiles on a convoy of villagers fleeing the assault.
Early Sunday, air strikes hit Hezbollah's television station in Beirut's southern suburbs and other targets across southern Lebanon, and also launched a new air raid and incursion into the Gaza Strip, another battlefront.
Siniora declared Lebanon a "disaster zone" and appealed for urgent international help for a country that was slowly rebuilding after a devastating 15-year civil war and the end of a three-decade Syrian military presence.
Israel says the aim of its operation is to destroy Hezbollah, which sparked the offensive by capturing two Israeli soldiers last week and was instrumental in Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 after a bloody 22-year occupation.
For the past few days, northern Israel has come under a barrage of rocket fire from across the border in Lebanon that has now killed a total of 20 people.
Hezbollah also claimed a rocket attack Friday on an Israeli warship enforcing the blockade that killed four sailors in another display of its military capabilities.
Israel has also put the commercial capital Tel Aviv and all towns further north on alert for rocket attacks.
US President George W. Bush said at the G8 summit in Russia that Israel had "every right to defend itself against terrorist activity" by militants backed by Iran and Syria, but it must be "mindful of the consequences".
Damascus warned that any Israeli attack "will provoke an unlimited, direct and firm response using all means necessary".
Iran also warned of "unimaginable losses" if Israel attacked Syria and accused the US of playing a "destructive role by vetoing resolutions and hence encouraging the Israeli crimes".
Israeli television meanwhile reported that Nasrallah had been injured in an attack on his stronghold in the southern suburbs of Beirut, but Hezbollah dismissed this as "Israeli propaganda".
Israel is now fighting on two fronts after it launched a similar deadly offensive against against Gaza over the capture of another soldier by Palestinian militants more than three weeks ago.
Foreign governments were drawing up plans to evacuate their nationals from Lebanon, either by land to Syria or by ferry to the island of Cyprus.
Air travel from Beirut was made impossible after the country's only international airport was shut down Thursday by Israeli air strikes on its runways.
Shell-shocked Beirut residents were stocking up on basic goods and making plans to flee to the relative safety of the mountains outside the capital.
Israel also pressed on with its assault on Gaza, killing four more Palestinians in air raids and a ground incursion on Sunday. At least 82 Palestinians and one Israeli have been killed.
Both Hezbollah and Palestinian militants holding the soldiers are demanding the release of prisoners from Israeli jails -- something Israel has rejected outright.
By SAMAR ASSAD
July 14 / 17, 2006
Executive Director of The Palestine Center
Arrangements for prisoner exchanges between Arab governments and Israel date back to 1948. During the early 1980s, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel exchanged prisoners, the most famous of which is known as the "Jibril Deal" in May 1985. Through third-party negotiations, Israel and Hizballah carried out three prisoner exchanges starting in 1996. Attempts to secure the release of Palestinian political prisoners through negotiations often failed because Israel regularly suspended talks over prisoners or renegotiated established criteria for their release. When negotiations resulted in an agreement, Israel ignored deadlines for the releases, released nonpolitical prisoners and claimed it had fulfilled its obligations, or simply dismissed agreements. Israeli-Hizballah Prisoner Exchanges
To date, there have been three prisoner exchange deals between Israel and Hizballah, the details of which follow.
In July 1996, Hizballah released the remains of two Israeli soldiers, Joseph Fink and Rahamim Alsheich, in exchange for the remains of 123 Lebanese soldiers. On the same day, Hizballah released 25 members of the South Lebanon Army (SLA), an army loyal to Israel. In exchange the SLA released 25 Lebanese prisoners from the Khima Prison in south Lebanon.
In June 1998, Hizballah returned the remains of Sergeant First Class Itamar Ilya in exchange for the remains of 40 Hizballah soldiers, among them the body of Hizballah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah's son who was killed in 1997. The deal also included the release of Lebanese prisoners. The bodies of the Hizballah soldiers were transported by a French aircraft.
In January 2004, in the largest prisoner exchange, Israel released a total of 436 prisoners including 400 Palestinians; 23 Lebanese; two Syrians; three Moroccans; three Sudanese; a Libyan; and a German Muslim. Israel also returned the remains of 59 Lebanese soldiers. Israel received the remains of three Israel soldiers and the release of Elhanan Tennenbaum who Hizballah claimed was an Israeli intelligence officer. Sheikh Abdel Kareem Obaid, who Israel kidnapped from Lebanese territory in 1989, and Sheikh Mustafa Dirani, kidnapped in 1994, were among those released by Israel in exchange for its three soldiers and intelligence officer.
Israeli-PLO Prisoner Exchanges
The most famous prisoner swap between Israel and the PLO was in May 1985. In exchange for three Israeli soldiers held by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Israel released 1,150 Palestinian political prisoners. Among them was Fateh activist Jibril Rajoub who, under the Oslo Accords with Israel, established and headed the powerful West Bank branch of the Palestinian Preventive Security force and forged strong security arrangements with Israel. The exchange was called the "Jibril Deal."
Jordanian and U.S. Intervention
In an assassination attempt on Hamas' Damascus-based Khaled Mashaal in September 1997, the Israeli Mossad, under orders from Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu injected Mashaal who was living in Jordan at the time with a toxic substance. Two Mossad agents were arrested and the Israeli covert action was revealed. Jordan's King Hussein demanded the antidote and Israel, after pressure from U.S. President Bill Clinton, provided the antidote. In exchange for the two Mossad agents, Israel released Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas who was serving a life sentence in Israel. Israel assassinated Yassin in the Gaza Strip in 2004.
Israel and Hamas
About twelve years before Hamas' 25 June 2006 capture of Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit in Gaza, Israeli soldier Nachshon Wachsman was taken prisoner in October 1994. Like today, Israel said it would not negotiate a release with Hamas. Then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin decided on a military option to free the Israeli soldier. The Israeli commando raid on a house in Bir Nabala near Jerusalem not only left the Hamas captors dead but with them Wachsman.
Hamas has demanded the release of all female and minor Palestinian prisoners held by Israel in exchange for Shalit.
Palestinian Political Prisoners
According to the Ramallah-based Mandela Institute for Human Rights, there are 9,600 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails and detention centers, among them 130 Palestinian women. Defense for Children International puts the number of Palestinian children in Israeli custody at 388.
According to a recent poll by the Jerusalem Media and Communication Center (JMCC), 69 percent of Palestinians insist on an exchange for Shalit's release. The high support for a prisoner exchange stems from the sensitivity of the prisoner issue within Palestinian society. The vast majority of Palestinians have been directly or indirectly affected by Israel's policy of arbitrary or blanket arrests and hold deep resentment for political violations of their leaders' authority and autonomy.
Israel's imprisonment and detention of Palestinians is an example of its failure to abide by international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention. Administrative detentions, imprisonment without due process and imprisonment inside Israel are both illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Furthermore, Palestinian prisoners are routinely tortured by Israel and held in detention centers and prisons that do not meet the minimum international standards and are routinely denied visitation rights by their legal representation and family members. The vast majority of Palestinian prisoners are held without trial. According to Amnesty International, the trials that do take place often fall short of international fair trial standards.
Israel's failure to release Palestinian political prisoners and its continued arbitrary arrest of Palestinian civilians serves only to highlight Israel's belief that it is above the law and that the Palestinians are beneath it.
Samar Assad is the Executive Director of The Palestine Center. This information brief may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the Center.
By Yoav Stern, Haaretz CorrespondentLast update - 00:35 17/07/2006
Al Jazeera said Israel Radio's Reshet Bet is inciting against the Qatar-based television network, after a team of its staff members was arrested Sunday morning in Acre.
Reshet Bet reported Sunday morning that the Al Jazeera network aired live footage of the scene of Hezbollah strikes on Haifa, which the station's broadcasters said helps Hezbollah adjust the aim of the rockets it fires on Israel.
Soon after the broadcast, Israel Police detained for questioning Al Jazeera correspondent Elias Karam and the team working with him. The team was released after an hour of questioning.
Al Jazeera manager Walid al-Omri wrote a letter to Israel Radio manager Yoni Ben Menachem in response, saying, "The incident had no basis... We view this incitement as very grave and demand it end."
Reshet Bet has not responded to Al Jazeera's allegations.
Al Jazeera, the most popular television station in the Arab world, has been working around the clock in recent days to provide coverage of the violence in Israel and Lebanon. Al Jazeera sources said on Sunday that the network strictly obeys all instructions it receives on what is permitted and forbidden to air.
"The same images [aired Sunday] were shown on other channels without any response," the sources said.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that the IDF's offensive in Lebanon showed that "the Zionist regime behaves like Hitler," Iranian state television reported on Sunday.
Ahmadinejad slammed Israel for attacking Lebanon as the Iranian embassy in Beirut denied Israeli claims Saturday that Iranian troops had been sent in support Hizbullah.
"The survival of this regime is not possible without oppression and aggression," he was quoted as saying.
A statement from the Islamic Republic's embassy in Beirut called the Israeli report "meaningless."
The claim was "an attempt to escape reality with the aim of covering up (Israel's) inability to confront the Lebanese nation and resistance," said the embassy's statement, which was published on the web site of the official Islamic Republic News Agency.
In light of Israel's ferocious response, it is worth noting that the capture of the two Israeli soldiers was a pure military operation and did not as much scratch an Israeli civilian. Israel's counter is exactly the opposite-collective punishment of the civilian population by destroying the country's infrastructure and committing ugly massacres against families and fleeing refugees as they did yesterday in the south. Who's the terrorist in this case, even by the self-serving definitions peddled in Washington. Not surprisingly the voice of Arabs on the ground, be they in Lebanon or Palestine, are not being heard.
Below is a report from Lebanon. Please distribute widely as the latest news indicates that Israel is going to probably do its heaviest bombing of South Lebanon soon. One family that did try to flee was brutally cut down by Israeli rockets. See pictures of the massacre at http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2006/07/i-have-just-received-these-pictures.html
If you work in the alternative media or can by some miracle convince the mainstream media to allow the voices of those on the ground in Lebanon to be heard, Bilal can be contacted at 011 961 303 1737...if you can get through.
With most of the governments of the world having abandoned the Palestinian and Lebanese people, it's important that people in the US and elsewhere continue to demonstrate, have teach-ins, speak outs, and even fundraisers because of the humanitarian crisis which has developed in Gaza and Lebanon will only be getting worse.
Hi everyone. First of all, I am fine as are family and friends. We're scattered in different places, some still in the south, some in Tyre, the rest in Beirut and its surroundings. Those who live in the southern suburbs where Hizbullah is based managed to leave before the latest strikes and are safe with relatives.
As most of you know, Hizbullah carried out a bold operation a few days ago and managed to capture two Israeli soldiers. The resistance has been saying for quite some time now that it intends to free the remaining Lebanese prisoners in Israel, most prominently Samir Qantar. Dubbed the "dean of the prisoners," Qantar is the longest serving Arab prisoner in Israel. He was to be released along with other Lebanese prisoners in a swap between Hizbullah and Israel. The Israeli government voted not to release him and two others and stupidly kept the prisoner file open.
The Hizbullah operation was an attempt to put an end to the matter. There were several previous unsuccessful attempts that were costly to the resistance. This operation according to Nasrallah, the general-secretary of Hizbullah, was months in planning and its timing, which has been endlessly criticized, may have been logistical more than anything else.
In light of Israel's ferocious response, it is worth noting that the capture of the two Israeli soldiers was a pure military operation and did not as much scratch an Israeli civilian. Israel's counter is exactly the opposite-collective punishment of the civilian population by destroying the country's infrastructure and committing ugly massacres against families and fleeing refugees as they did yesterday in the south. Who's the terrorist in this case, even by the self-serving definitions peddled in Washington.
Why did Hizbullah do this, did they not know that Israel would respond this way. I'm certain that they considered this scenario as one of several. But Hizbullah's two decades of experience in dealing with Israel have taught it one thing and that is Tel Aviv will never budge on any matter without threat of force. Israel was compelled to leave southern Lebanon in May 2000-after over 20 years of occupation-only after the resistance gained the upper hand militarily.
The consequent prisoner swap in which nearly all Lebanese prisoners in Israel were released was only possible once Hizbullah managed to capture Israeli soldiers and offer them in exchange. As Nasrallah put it, the recent operation was the only logical conclusion given Hizbullah long experience with Israel. To get the remaining prisoners out, Israeli soldiers must be captured-Israel simply offered no other option.
The current situation only confirms Hizbullah's experience. The whole world-and most painfully the Arab governments-have refused to lift a finger to restrain Israel. The UN met and decided to do nothing, yesterday the Arab League met and was even more insulting. The Lebanese government has yet to act, besides denouncing Hizbullah and distancing themselves from the resistance--not even providing the most basic services to the displaced and injured.
The Arab League meeting and statements by the Lebanese prime minister suggest that there is a convergence of interests between them and Israel over putting a halt to the Lebanese resistance by disarming Hizbullah and burying once and for all those forces in the region, including Hamas for example, that believe in a line of confrontation with Israel as the only road to get some semblance of justice. The Saudi royals and their slavish counterparts in Jordan and Egypt, want Arabs to submit and swallow the humiliation we are subjected to daily in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon, all in the name of stability and rational thinking.
Since 1993 and the signing of the Oslo Accords, the Arab leaders, the US and the UN have been saying that negotiations and normalization with Israel are the only way to peace. But we have yet to see Israel make the smallest concession, taking the opportunity to swallow up yet more land, butcher the Palestinian people and continue to imprison thousand. Hamas' election was but one indicator that ordinary Arabs have understood that successive peace accords have brought them nothing but further misery-only resistance, with all the suffering that comes with it, bears fruit.
Like the Palestinians, the Lebanese are all alone, abandoned to be taught a lesson by the regional and global powers. Hizbullah's incredible response (striking a war ship and bombing as far as Haifa) shows that they perhaps considered and prepared for Israel's ferocious response. Only their ability to strike back effectively can save Lebanon from complete destruction at the hands of Israel-the lunatics in Tel Aviv know no other language.
Bilal El-Amine __._,_.___
Bilal El-Amine is the former editor of Left Turn Magazine (www.leftturn.org) who returned to his native Lebanon last year. If you would like to contact Bilal you can reach him in Beirut at 011 961 303 1737 (Beirut is 10 hours ahead of PST)
Olmert's smashing of Gaza reveals his greatest fear: A viable Palestinian government he'd have to negotiate with.
On Thursday, Israeli tanks and troops invaded northern Gaza, encountering fierce small-arms fire and some rocket attacks from armed Gazans. Twenty-one Palestinians, mostly militants, and an Israeli soldier were killed. It was the largest Israeli troop presence in the territory since the unilateral Israeli withdrawal of August 2005. Late Thursday, Palestinian Interior Minister Said Siam called on Gazans to "prepare to repel the Israeli attack" -- the first time a Palestinian governmental official has called Palestinians to arms since the crisis erupted.
The day's battles continued the cycle of violence between the Israelis and the Palestinians that has simmered for months but exploded during the past two weeks. Israel's grossly disproportionate response to a tit-for-tat Palestinian guerrilla raid during which two Israeli soldiers were killed and a third abducted has pushed the impoverished Gaza Strip to the edge of a humanitarian crisis, smashed the barely functioning Palestinian Authority, and threatened the Middle East's fragile peace. Israel's failed-state strategyThis shortsighted "strategy," which both the United States and, to a slightly lesser degree, the strangely docile Europeans have signed off on, is a recipe for continued hatred, extremism, bloodshed, injustice and festering grievances. Unless Israel and its patron summon the wisdom to take the long view and hammer out an agreement that will give the Palestinians a viable state, rather than simply trying to smash them into submission, the world's most dangerous conflict will continue to rage, with dangerous consequences for all.
It would be one thing if Olmert, head of Israel's governing Kadima Party, ordered the Israeli Army (the IDF) to conduct simple, targeted search-and-destroy missions, the logical response to the kidnapping by Palestinian guerrillas of an Israeli soldier or the firing of small homemade rockets from Gaza into nearby Israeli towns. Instead, he has launched a wide-ranging attack on the Gaza Strip, sending tanks and troops over the border, destroying Gaza's only electricity plant, and firing missiles at militants without regard for innocent civilians in the area. He even ordered Israeli jets to create terrifying sonic booms throughout the night, as if 1.4 million persons, many of them children, were being subjected to the sleep deprivation techniques applied by U.S. interrogators at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. As Patrick O'Connor has pointed out, Olmert told his cabinet last Sunday that he wanted "no one to be able to sleep tonight in Gaza."
The destruction of the electricity plant has produced a humanitarian crisis of significant proportions. Hundreds of thousands of people have been plunged into darkness at night. It is impossible to operate hospitals and emergency rooms, refrigerate food, pump or purify water, or handle sewage in the cascading heat of midsummer.
Then, this past Wednesday, the Israelis struck at the offices of the Palestinian Ministry of the Interior in Gaza for the second time, wounding three persons. Why? The strike on the Interior Ministry building offers eloquent testimony to Kadima's goals, since that organization oversees police and security. At a time when Israeli spokesmen decry lawlessness in the Palestinian territories, which they say threatens Israel itself, they are actually destroying the only infrastructure -- Palestinian policing -- that has any hope of establishing law and order there.
As usual with outbursts of violence between Palestinians and Israelis, tracing the logic of attack and counterattack is like chasing the paradox of the chicken and the egg. The Israelis justify the invasion of Gaza as a response to the kidnapping of Cpl. Shalit, and as needed to stop the ramshackle homemade Qassam rockets (frankly, of the sort a teenager might construct with a science kit) fired from the Gaza Strip by Palestinian guerrillas of the Ezzedin Qassam Brigades at the nearby small Israeli town of Sderot. The rockets seldom do any real damage, though a few have harmed Israeli civilians. The Palestinians, for their part, counter that the Israelis have replied to the mostly ineffective Qassam attacks with hundreds of artillery strikes, which killed 30 Palestinian civilians in the weeks prior to the present crisis.
But as Jonathan Cook of Media Lens points out, the larger context for this violence is Palestinian grievances over Israeli attempts to isolate Gaza and cut its Hamas government off from monetary resources, moves that have harmed Gazan society and hurt healthcare and even nutrition. (Some 17 percent of children in Gaza suffer from malnutrition.)
The Israelis, along with the Americans and Europeans, have refused to have any dealings with Hamas, arguing that it is a terrorist organization. Hamas has declined to recognize Israel, and its military wing has carried out many terror attacks inside Israel on Israeli civilians. The Israelis and the Americans immediately cut the Hamas government off from monetary aid and even attempted to sidestep it in delivering the tax monies that run ministries and hospitals. Inevitably, and despite Israeli assurances to the contrary, the boycott of the Hamas government has harmed the quality of life of ordinary Palestinians, adding to the miseries of poor healthcare and unemployment, with many government employees suffering long arrears in the payment of their salaries. Government is among the biggest employment sectors in Gaza.
But from a Palestinian point of view, the fundamentalist Hamas Party is a legitimately elected government that had made a truce with the Israelis during the previous 18 months, and largely adhered to it. Some small guerrilla groups, such as the Qassam Brigades, as well as guerrillas loyal to Hamas' military leader in exile, Khalid al-Mashaal, did not share the civilian Hamas Party's commitment to the truce. They have been responsible for provocations, including the rocket attacks on Sderot.
In any case, Israel is itself largely responsible for the rise of Hamas. The Israelis withdrew from Gaza unilaterally, making no arrangements with any Palestinian negotiating party for security in the aftermath. Israel's then- Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had insisted that he had no one to talk to, despite the long-standing commitment of the Palestinian Authority, led primarily by the secular Fatah Party, to a negotiated peace. Fatah is weak in Gaza, however, where most Palestinians support the Islamist Hamas Party. Sharon had undermined Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, helping derail the Oslo peace accords, continuing to expand Israeli colonies on the West Bank, and attacking and weakening the P.A. security infrastructure. P.A. officials also behaved locally in a corrupt and arrogant manner, turning many voters against them.
It should not have been so surprising, then, that the Palestinian population, seeing the Israelis usurp Palestinian land on a grand scale and suffering from Israeli checkpoints and the carving up of the West Bank into small cantons, swung against the secular Fatah in this year's elections.
Sharon and Olmert's refusal to allow the development of a genuine Palestinian state, while desperately trying to avoid ruling as colonial masters over millions of Palestinians, has produced a dead end for Israeli policy. By unilaterally withdrawing from Gaza and unilaterally building a wall on Palestinian territory that usurped more Palestinian land, the Israelis during the past year have created a failed state all around them. The Hamas victory was as unacceptable to many Fatah supporters as it was to the Israelis, and there have been riots and gun battles between the two. The place is beginning to look like Somalia. While Israel may reap a temporary tactical advantage from the split between Palestinian factions, in the long run chaos and armed anarchy next door is not in its best interest.
If the Israelis had negotiated with the Palestinian Authority and built up its security capabilities -- and, above all, charted a clear path toward a viable future state -- they might have been entitled to expect it to police the territories and deal with groups such as the Qassam Brigades. As the Israeli analyst Aluf Benn recently pointed out in Haaretz, strong leaders and states with return addresses -- Hezbollah's Nasrallah, Syria's Assad -- have a much better track record of controlling militants than weak leaders. But as it is, the resentful Palestinians have neither the motivation nor the capability to provide security.
The paradoxes of Kadima policy created a powder keg, and it was set off on June 9 when an Israeli artillery barrage, replying to the Qassam rocket attacks, went astray and hit a Palestinian family picnicking on the beach. The image of the survivor, little Huda Galia, orphaned and weeping hysterically at the sight of her relatives' bloody remains, touched the entire world. (The Israeli military, as usual, denied responsibility, saying that the Palestinians themselves had mined their own beach, but Human Rights Watch and most European newspapers who looked into it did not find the Israeli denials plausible.) The Israeli newspaper Maariv buried the story. But it was front page news for weeks in the Arab press.
What happens in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank has consequences in the rest of the region and the world. On June 22, Al-Jazeera reported that an Iraqi guerrilla group attacked a U.S. Humvee in the name of Huda Galia. As the situation in Gaza becomes more explosive, the possibility for it to exacerbate tensions in Iraq and elsewhere only grows. On last Friday, 3,000 Egyptians demonstrated at al-Azhar square in Cairo after Friday prayers against the Israeli actions.
After the beach horror, passions ran high in Gaza and the West Bank. On June 25, a coalition of tiny guerrilla groups launched an attack on an Israeli military outpost on the Gaza-Israel border, killing two Israeli soldiers and capturing a third. There is no reason to think that the Hamas government was involved; its cabinet members were nearing an accord with President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah on a formula that would involve de facto recognition of Israel. One of the three guerrilla groups behind the attack was a splinter group from Hamas, but it is probably loyal to militant Hamas dissident Khalid al-Mashaal, in exile in Damascus, who rejects the civilian Hamas Party's willingness to adopt Abbas' formula for negotiating with Israel.
On Tuesday, June 27, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas announced his acceptance of the negotiating platform proposed by Abbas. The same day, another Palestinian guerrilla group kidnapped, and later killed, an Israeli colonist on the West Bank. On Wednesday last week, the Israelis made their first incursion into Gaza and destroyed the electricity plant. They have since struck at remaining generators. On Thursday they detained dozens of Palestinian lawmakers, cabinet members and activists. The lawmakers had been freely elected at the polls, and there is no obvious legal basis for Israel to detain them, nor is it likely that they were directly involved in any of the guerrilla actions. They were in essence kidnapped and held for ransom.
The only logical explanation for Olmert's actions, aside from tough-guy posturing, is that he wants to continue to degrade the Palestinian government and radicalize the population. The Israelis cannot get law and order in the territories this way, of course. Nor is there any reason to believe that these massive and disproportionate acts of violence against the Gazans will increase the chance that their captured soldier will be returned.
But Olmert clearly has something else on his mind. His actions indicate that his ultimate goal is to ensure that no Palestinian state emerges any time soon that can challenge Israeli plans to annex more of the West Bank and keep its stateless residents divided and weak, prone to outbursts of ineffectual violence and easy to label as "terrorists." If the elected Hamas government falls over the crisis, all the better. But the Israelis had a PLO government until this year and would not negotiate with it, either. The point is not to negotiate. The larger issue, that such a policy will prevent this terrible conflict from being solved, and will inevitably create blowback against Israel and the United States, does not seem to concern Olmert, the U.S. government or the U.S. media.
More than 3,000 pro-Israel evangelical Christians will be in town next week for a "Washington/Israel summit" to push the Bush administration toward stronger support for the Jewish state.
Starting with a banquet July 18 at the Hilton Washington and visits to Capitol Hill the next morning, the inaugural gathering of Christians United for Israel (CUFI) will showcase a deeper cooperation between evangelical Christians and Jews in the face of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's suggestion in October, often reiterated since, that Israel "be wiped off the map."
Organizers say Israeli Ambassador Daniel Ayalon, retired Israeli defense chief Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon and Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman -- all of whom are Jewish -- will be at the dinner. Several members of Congress also are scheduled to attend, including Republican Sens. Sam Brownback of Kansas and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, both Catholics. Leading evangelicals that have confirmed their invitations include the Rev. Jerry Falwell and Gary Bauer.
Their host will be Texas evangelist the Rev. John C. Hagee, pastor of the 18,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio and author of "Jerusalem Countdown," a 2006 book about a nuclear-armed Iran.
"There's a new Hitler in the Middle East," Mr. Hagee said in an interview. "He's talking about killing Jews. He will have the ability to do so with nuclear weapons.
"I believe that the president of Iran fully intends there to be a nuclear holocaust. The only way he will be stopped will be by a pre-emptive military strike in Iran."
The United Nations condemned Israel when it launched a pre-emptive strike in 1981 against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's nuclear program by bombing the Osirak nuclear reactor. Mr. Hagee said American evangelicals must provide cover for Israel in the case of a pre-emptive attack -- "as a last resort," he specified -- on Iran.
"We are not going to be silent," he said. "We are organizing Christians from coast to coast to express themselves in the support of Israel. I don't believe Congress has a clue how much grass-roots support for Israel exists in the evangelical community."
Building a bridge to the Jewish community
CUFI, a five-month-old Texas-based nonprofit mixing evangelical fervor with biblical literalism, is his organizational vehicle. Its political structure spreads across 50 states -- broken down by region, state and then city -- to recruit activists and lobby elected officials on Israel's behalf.
Mr. Hagee also is setting up an "Israel Rapid Response" network of e-mails, faxes and phone calls to mobilize voters. Such efforts have not gone unnoticed overseas. The Israeli daily Ha'aretz dispatched a reporter to San Antonio, who in a May 5 article labeled the effort "a magnificent evangelical industry."
This spring, the preacher hired David Brog, 39, former chief of staff for Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican, as his executive director.
"I'd admired him from afar," Mr. Brog said in an interview explaining why, as a Conservative Jew, he works for a Christian organization. "I believe this is the most important thing I could do not only for Israel but for Judeo-Christian civilization today, which is under threat from radical Islam.
"We're bringing into a pro-Israel camp millions of Christians who love Israel and giving them a political voice. Plus, Israel's enemies are our enemies, and this group instinctively understands that."
Moreover, converting Jews to Christianity, long a sore spot among Jews, is not an issue.
"All activities of CUFI are strictly non-conversionary," Mr. Brog said. "Christians who work with Jews in supporting Israel realize how sensitive we are in talking about conversion and talking about Jesus.
"So those who work with us tend not to talk about Jesus more, but talk about Jesus less. They realize it will interfere with what they are trying to do -- building a bridge to the Jewish community to insure the survival of Judeo-Christian civilization."
For much of his career, Mr. Hagee, 66, has circulated in Pentecostal circles as a pastor and TV evangelist appearing on 120 stations broadcast by five Christian TV networks. After the Osirak bombing, he began building contacts among the local Jewish community, starting with annual "Nights to Honor Israel" around Texas. Over the years, he has donated $8.5 million to Israeli hospitals and orphanages and has helped 12,000 Russian Jews move to Israel.
Now's the time, he said, to appear in Washington with backing by prominent Christians and Jews as the evangelical answer to AIPAC, the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobby.
"For me," Mr. Hagee admitted, "this will be reaching a new level."
"Reverend Hagee's organization is representative of the depth and breadth of American support of the U.S.-Israel relationship," said AIPAC spokeswoman Jennifer Cannata. "We definitely see this a positive sign."
One element fueling the current crisis in Gaza is the ongoing failure of US corporate media coverage of Israel/Palestine. US policy, public opinion and mainstream media coverage of Israel/Palestine are all dangerously biased towards Israel. Media coverage both reflects and influences policy and public opinion. Media coverage of events in Gaza again illustrates how the US mainstream media privileges the Israeli narrative, and frequently ignores both Palestinian experiences and international law, providing the US public and policymakers with only part of the story. On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert admitted that he intended to commit war crimes in Gaza, telling his cabinet that he wanted "no one to be able to sleep tonight in Gaza". Olmert thus officially acknowledged Israel's policy of collectively punishing 1.4 million Palestinians, a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. But none of the US' three leading newspapers - The New York Times, Washington Post and LA Times - reported Olmert's statement, even though it was widely quoted around the world.
In the last week, these three leading US papers all also published editorials strongly supporting Israel's right to "retaliate" after the capture of an Israeli soldier. Their editorials never mentioned a single element of Israel's brutal 10 month siege on Gaza. In a reminder of The Washington Post's editorial advocacy of the Iraq war, The Post took the most belligerent position, applauding Israeli "restraint" and approving an Israeli overthrow of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority. Although the major newspapers have published some good articles reporting Palestinians' views in the last days, their overall bias towards Israel has been glaring.
On July 2 Ehud Olmert told his cabinet that, "I want nobody to sleep at night in Gaza. I want them to know what it's like" in Israel's communities near Gaza that have been hit by Palestinian Qassam rockets. His statement referred directly to Israel's practices of waking Palestinians in the middle of the night by repeatedly flying jets overhead that create sonic booms, and of shelling Gaza at night. Additionally, Israel keeps Gazans awake at night with worry about poverty, siege, imminent attack, and lack of electricity, water, fuel and food. Olmert's statement was widely reported in the Israeli media, and by the Associated Press, The Chicago Tribune, The International Herald Tribune, and the UK's Guardian, among others. A google news search for his quote yields 279 articles, mostly from newspaper websites around the US. Some of these papers undoubtedly printed this story.
Yet there was no hint of Olmert's words in LA Times or Washington Post. The New York Times' coverage is more interesting. New York Times' correspondents Steven Erlanger and Ian Fisher reported the quote in an on-line article that was also published in the International Herald Tribune. However, the quote never appeared in the Times' print edition. The Times' editors seem to have decided that Olmert's words were not "fit to print," and deleted them from their journalists' report. The conspicuous absence of such a widely reported and telling quote raises the possibility that the leading US papers actively avoid printing information that makes Israel look too obviously bad.
What is certain is that the leading US papers generally omit the frameworks of human rights and international law as well as related concepts like collective punishment, and proportionality, all of which have been consistently violated by Israel. On July 3, the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem specifically criticized Olmert's statement, saying that, "The use of sonic booms flagrantly breaches a number of provisions of international humanitarian law. The most significant provision is the prohibition on collective punishment. Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention... categorically states that "Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited." In addition to criticizing sonic booms, Human Rights Watch noted on June 29 that "The laws of war prohibit attacks on "objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population." Israel's attack on Gaza's only power plant is in violation of its obligation to safeguard such objects from attack."
Though collective punishment of Palestinians has historically been a cornerstone of Israeli policy, and characterizes Israel's siege of Gaza, the US' three leading papers have used the phrase "collective punishment" just four times since heightened crisis began on June 25. Each paper cited the same statement by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas once, and The New York Times also quoted a Palestinian grocery store owner. These same newspapers printed the phrase "collective punishment" a combined total of only six other times this year in their reporting on Israel/Palestine. Since June 25 those papers used the words "terrorism" or "terrorist" 28 times to describe Palestinians, while using "occupation" only six times to describe Israeli actions. Citations of the illegality of Israeli settlements, the Wall, home demolitions, detention of Palestinians, and many other measures are similarly rare. While these newspapers do document the humanitarian crises that Palestinians endure, they generally avoid suggesting that Palestinians have rights like Israelis, or that there is an accepted body of law that should be applied not just to Palestinian attacks, but also to Israeli actions.
Similarly, in taking positions on the current crisis, these newspapers' editorial boards completely erased Israel's most recent human rights violations. All three papers blamed only Hamas. The New York Times June 29 editorial noted "reckless Hamas provocations," and The Washington Post's July 1 editorial "Hamas's War" highlighted Hamas' "acts of terrorism and war." Writing as if history began with the June 25 capture of the Israeli soldier and the Palestinian attack materialized from thin air, none of their editorials even hints at Israel's disproportionate violence - Israel's 39 year military occupation; the 176 Palestinians killed in 2006, many of them civilians and children, compared to 16 Israelis killed; 8300 Israeli shells launched into Gaza this year compared with 840 Palestinian rockets launched towards Israel; on-going Israeli land seizure; or Israel's tightening siege of Gaza. Only The New York Times mentioned that Hamas was now breaking a unilateral 16 month truce. Israeli newspaper editorials have been more nuanced and balanced than these US editorials.
None of the editorials noted that Palestinians killed and captured Israeli soldiers implementing a siege of Gaza. None noted the irony that Palestinians were holding a single Israeli soldier prisoner, while Israel is holding 9,000 Palestinian prisoners, many civilians held without due process, and some enduring torture. In a sentence that could have been drafted by an Israeli government PR firm, The Post's editors wrote that "the militants' demand that Israel release Palestinian prisoners it has legally arrested in exchange for a soldier who was attacked while guarding Israeli territory."
After rationalizing Israel's arrest of 60 Hamas leaders, many of them Palestinian Authority Ministers and elected members of the Palestinian parliament, The Post's editors then downplayed Israel's destruction of an electric plant that provides half of Gaza's power. In a final outrage that combined both blindness towards Israeli violence and complete disregard for international law, The Post's July 1 editorial recommended that the Arab States and the UN stop "fulminating about supposed Israeli war crimes."
Once again, Israeli government spin overpowers the Palestinian narrative, and human rights and international law are belittled. These examples illustrate how the US corporate media is actively shaping the information reported to the US public to Israel's advantage, and promoting the view that Hamas and Palestinian terrorism are the sole problem in Israel/Palestine. Without more balanced reporting from establishment media outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post and LA Times, US policy and public opinion on Israel/Palestine are also unlikely to become much more balanced. The need for media activism on Israel/Palestine is more vital than ever.
The Olmert government, Hizbullah and Hamas are tacitly united in rejection of any moves towards a compromise peace
Whatever else can be said for or against Israel's escalation of military action against Lebanon, there is little prospect that it will achieve its stated objectives. If Israel couldn't defeat Hizbullah after 18 years in which its army occupied large swaths of Lebanese territory, it is not going to succeed with air strikes and blockades, or even another occupation. The same point applies even more forcefully in the case of Gaza. Every time Israel applies the iron fist in an effort to beat the Palestinians into submission, their resistance simply re-emerges in a more extreme and rejectionist form. Far from fearing Israel's wrath, Hizbullah and Hamas must be rather pleased at their success in provoking it into the sort of over-reaction from which they have always benefited.
Nor does it seem plausible that military action will enable Israel to secure the release of its captured soldiers. The civilian victims of Israel's indiscriminate retaliation have no real influence over the militias that hold them, while the militias themselves are untroubled by the spectacle of public suffering. On the contrary, they thrive on it. In the case of Lebanon, it is possible that acts of collective punishment, such as the destruction of Beirut airport and yesterday's killing of yet more civilians, might divide Hizbullah and its supporters from the rest of the country, but only at the risk of triggering another civil war and creating a vacuum that Israel's enemies in Syria and Iran will find easier to exploit.
In view of all this, it is valid to ask what Israel thinks it is doing. Indeed, this question is implicit in the statements of world leaders at the G8 and elsewhere who have called on Israel to use force proportionately, avoid civilian casualties and refrain from acts that might strengthen Hamas or destabilise Lebanon's fragile political settlement. No one quibbles with Israel's right to defend itself, but doesn't it understand how irresponsible and immoral it is to deliberately escalate the conflict in this way?
The problem is that the premise of the question is false. It assumes that Israel shares our view that a de-escalation followed by negotiation is the best route to a settlement. It assumes, therefore, that when Israeli ministers complain of having "no partner for peace", they actually want one. A much more sensible approach would be to credit them with having the intelligence to know exactly what they are doing and to work backwards from there.
If so, it might become apparent that far from wanting a partner with which to negotiate, the Israeli government is acting with the specific intention of forestalling that possibility. There is nothing particularly new in this. The extremists on both sides have always formed a kind of tacit alliance, with the supporters of "greater Israel" and "no Israel" understanding their joint interest in preventing any moves towards a compromise peace. That is the main reason why Israel encouraged the growth of Hamas as it emerged in the 1980s. Unwilling to negotiate with the secular nationalists of Fatah, even as they were moving towards support for a two-state solution, the Israeli authorities thought it would be a clever idea to promote their Islamist rivals.
In the case of the current crisis, it is no accident that it occurred at precisely the moment when the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, was gaining the upper hand in the latest round of that struggle. By using the threat of a referendum to force Hamas to accept the existence of Israel as the basis for a final settlement, Abbas had created the most promising opening for peace in six years. Faced with internal division and the loss of political initiative, Hamas militants understood that the only way to prevent it would be to trigger another cycle of violence. In turn, the Israel government, whose interests were also threatened by the Abbas initiative, recognised that it had an equally good reason to oblige. The effect of Hizbullah's intervention and Israel's over-reaction has been to put peace even further down the agenda.
The plain truth is that Israel thinks that it can get more by imposing a solution through force than by negotiation and is not interested in any kind of peace process. The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, pays lip service to the road map, but he has already received American endorsement for his fallback position, artfully dubbed "unilateral convergence". George Bush has described it as a "bold idea". Armed with the knowledge that he will continue to enjoy American patronage if the road map fails, Olmert has set out to ensure that it does just that. Bush's diplomacy has been truly inept.
It's high time western governments grasped the fundamental truth that Israel is pursuing an agenda that conflicts directly with their own. In the context of the fight against terrorism and the need to promote international cooperation, the west's interest must be to remove the Palestinian question as a source of grievance among mainstream Muslims in a way that guarantees justice for the Palestinians and security for Israel. A settlement of this kind is perfectly feasible and has been outlined in countless documents and initiatives over the years, most recently in the Geneva accords. But the main reason it has proved illusive is that Israel is not, and never has been, prepared to make the territorial compromises required. It still believes that it is entitled to the victor's spoils by annexing large tracts of Palestinian land.
This situation will persist as long as the west remains in denial about the reasons for the ongoing conflict and until the Israeli political establishment is forced to pay a price for its obstinacy. Yet the US remains entirely complicit in its role as Israel's main strategic ally. In the midst of last Friday's onslaught, in which Israeli bombers killed dozens of Lebanese civilians, the Pentagon announced the export of $210m of aviation fuel to help Israel "keep peace and security in the region". Even Britain and other European countries indulge in a form of diplomatic misdirection by focusing one-sidedly on the roles played by Syria and Iran.
The key to resolving the situation in Lebanon lies, as it did throughout the 1970s and 1980s, in finding a solution to the Palestinian question. A viable and successful Palestinian state would rob Hizbullah and its sponsors of the conceit that they are defending helpless Muslims and make it easier for those in the region who oppose them to gain the upper hand. Mahmoud Abbas is the only leader currently working for the kind of negotiated two-state solution the Middle East and the wider world desperately need. But he is being let down by the west at the moment when he had earned the right to expect better. The Palestinian president needs a partner for peace. If Israel will not play that role, the international community must.
- David Clark is a former Labour special adviser at the Foreign Office
President Vladimir Putin said he thinks Israel is pursuing wider goals in its military campaign against Lebanon than the return of its two captured soldiers, the Associated Press news agency reports.
"However complicated the questions are, maximum efforts must be applied to resolve the situation in a peaceful way and I think all efforts have not been exhausted," Putin said early Sunday.
"However, it is our impression that aside from seeking to return the abducted soldiers, Israel is pursuing wider goals," he said at a midnight news conference after a dinner opening the summit of the Group of Eight industrialized nations. He did not elaborate.
Israel began military strikes against Lebanon on Wednesday, after Hezbollah militants captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid. As civilian deaths mount, diplomatic efforts to end the fighting have yet to get off the ground.
The issue is certain to dominate the G8 summit, and differences between the leaders began to appear even before the annual meeting began.
U.S. President Bush, who met Saturday with Putin, has been outspoken in defending Israel and accusing Hezbollah, backed by Syria and Iran, of igniting the crisis.
Putin agreed it was unacceptable to pursue goals using force, but said that "at the same time, we work under the assumption that the use of force should be balanced."
The G8 countries - the United States, Russia, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada - were expected to issue a declaration on the Lebanon crisis.
"We, the Russian side, regret... that on the eve of the G8... we see an escalation of the situation in the Middle East," Putin said Sunday.
On Iran, Putin indicated that Russia had not changed its opposition to sanctions, and he defended the country's right to pursue nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
"The question is not about toughening our stance, but about finding common approaches. This is actually the most difficult, but can prove to be the most effective in solving the Iranian nuclear problem," he said.
Turning to other issues, Putin said the summit would address conflicts in former Soviet states. He said he had discussed the issue with U.S. President Bush.
Putin said their talks focused mostly on Georgia, where tensions are rising over the separatist provinces of Abkhazia and most recently South Ossetia.
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, who visited Bush at the White House last week, has made it a priority to bring the two rebel regions back into the government fold. Russia, which has peacekeepers in the region, has provided support to the separatists in part by issuing passports to their citizens.
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
AP Economics Writer
July 17, 2006
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia - British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called Monday for the deployment of international forces to stop the bombardment of
Israel.
"The blunt reality is that this violence is not going to stop unless we create the conditions for the cessation of violence," Blair said after talks with Annan on the margins of the Group of Eight summit. "The only way is if we have a deployment of international forces that can stop bombardment coming into Israel."
Annan appealed to Israel to abide by international law, spare civilian lives and infrastructure.
He also said that the United Nations was considering evacuation plans for U.N. dependents from Lebanon, while Blair said Britain was looking at the possibility of creating an air bridge for its citizens.
Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israel's Foreign Ministry said that his country "would welcome a more energetic and decisive international effort to bring about immediate and full implementation of Security Council resolutions 1559 and 1680, which call for the disarmament of Hezbollah."
The comments by Blair and Annan came a day after world leaders forged a unified response at their G-8 summit to the crisis in the Middle East, blaming Hezbollah and Hamas for the escalating violence and recognizing Israel's right to defend itself - although they called on the Jewish state to show restraint.
"We cobbled together a very important statement,"
President Bush told reporters.
"I am most pleased that the leaders came together to say, look, we condemn violence. We honor innocent life," Bush said before heading into a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. "For the first time, we've really begun to address with clarity the root causes of the conflict ... and that is terrorist activity - namely Hezbollah, that's housed and encouraged by Syria."
Bush also asserted that the militant Islamic group is financed by Iran. However, the G-8 statement makes no mention of Syria or Iran. Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters that Russia blocked the effort to name Syria.
"If we don't have enough grounds to blame somebody, we cannot ... put them in documents on such a serious state level just based on assertions," Putin said.
The leaders of major industrialized countries - the United States, Russia, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada - convened Monday for their final sessions with seven leaders of the developing world. The nations represented include a trio of emerging economic powerhouses - China, India and Brazil.
Those talks focused on more traditional summit fare, such as restarting stalled global trade talks and implementing a major debt relief program for the world's poorest nations that was announced at last year's summit.
Bush, who also met individually with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio da Silva, said that the two would discuss "how we can move the Doha round forward," referring to the stalled trade talks being conducted by the 149 member nations of the World Trade Organization.
In his meeting with Singh, Bush called a recent agreement to share nuclear technology with India "a wonderful deal" despite criticism that the agreement could undermine efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.
The G-8 leaders had struggled to come up with a unified position on how to deal with the escalating warfare between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.
The leaders' statement said extremist groups cannot be allowed to plunge the Middle East into violence. It also urged Israel to exercise restraint in its military campaign.
The statement was a compromise between a U.S. position strongly supporting Israel's right to defend itself against terrorist attacks and the views of other G-8 countries that Israel was engaging in excessive force.
The statement was carefully written so that different countries could claim it said different things. French President Jacques Chirac said it was evident from the statement that the G-8 was calling for a cease-fire on both sides of the conflict.
But Nicholas Burns, undersecretary of state for political affairs, disagreed, saying, "There was no push by any country for a cease-fire."
The Bush administration insisted the call for halting Israeli airstrikes was conditioned on Hezbollah releasing captured Israeli soldiers and ending missile attacks on Israel, although the statement was not clear on these points.
The U.S. view was supported by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. She said the soldiers must be returned unharmed and attacks on Israel must stop. "Then, of course, also the Israeli military action must be ended," she said.
ST PETERSBURG, Russia - The United States and Russia announced on Saturday they would negotiate a landmark atomic cooperation deal and sought to disarm potential critics by vowing to redouble efforts to combat nuclear terrorism.
"We express our intent to develop bilateral cooperation in the peaceful use of nuclear energy," said a joint statement by
President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who met ahead of a Group of Eight summit.
"We have directed our governments to begin negotiations with the purpose of concluding an agreement between the United States and the Russian Federation on (nuclear) cooperation."
Russia's atomic energy chief Sergei Kiriyenko said the deal would include joint development of new nuclear technologies, including fourth-generation reactors.
It would also lift restrictions on Russian sales of uranium to the United States and enable Russia to take back and store Russian-produced spent fuel from reactors in the United States.
"I think this is a good idea," said David Albright, head of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a U.S.-based think-tank. "It's about time this happened."
He said it would require a greater degree of openness on Russia's part and would enable U.S. experts to get access to some sensitive nuclear facilities in Russia.
But he said the deal between the two states possessing most of the world's roughly 30,000 atom bombs would generate heated debate in the U.S. Congress because of what he said was Russia's undeserved reputation as the world's top proliferator.
The statement also pledged the creation of "a system of international centers to provide nuclear fuel services, including uranium enrichment, under IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) safeguards."
Putin told reporters the idea was to create a system giving all states access to nuclear power while guarding against proliferation of nuclear weapons.
The first center in eastern Siberia would be ready for operation under IAEA supervision next year, Kiriyenko said.
COMBATING NUCLEAR TERRORISM
At the same time as the nuclear deal was announced, Bush and Putin declared in a joint statement that they would step up efforts to combat nuclear terrorism, a threat it called "one of the most dangerous international security challenges we face."
It invited other countries to join the initiative and said participants would cooperate closely with the IAEA, the U.N.'s Vienna-based nuclear watchdog.
"Interacting closely with the IAEA, we will take steps to improve participants' capabilities to ensure accounting, control and physical protection of nuclear materials and radioactive substances, as well as security of nuclear facilities," it said.
They would also work to improve the ability of countries to "detect and suppress illicit trafficking" of nuclear materials.
Albright and several analysts from anti-nuclear lobby groups said this was likely an attempt to undercut the fierce attacks any Russia-U.S. deal will face when it reaches Congress.
"They know that the biggest argument against nuclear power is proliferation. It's almost as if they're trying to pre-empt that argument for why you shouldn't be doing this deal," said Alice Slater, president of the GRACE Policy Institute.
"Bush and Putin are about to turn Russia into the world's nuclear toilet," said Tobias Muenchmeyer, an analyst for environmental group Greenpeace.
ST PETERSBURG, Russia - President Bush backed away on Saturday from a public confrontation over Russia's democracy with President Vladimir Putin, adhering to a pledge not to lecture the Kremlin leader.
At a joint news conference, the two made clear they discussed their differences privately on what critics say are declining civil liberties in Russia, and stepped gingerly around the issue in their public comments.
With Bush needing Russia's help on pressuring Iran and North Korea to forswear nuclear weapons, and with Middle East violence surging, democracy issues did not appear to play as dominating role in their talks as when they met in Slovakia last year.
Bush said it came up at their social dinner on Friday night.
"I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world like Iraq, where there is a free press and free religion, and I told him that a lot of people in our country, you know, would hope that Russia would do the same thing," Bush said.
He quickly added: "I totally understand, however, that there will be a Russian-style democracy. I don't expect Russia to look like the United States. As Vladimir pointedly reminded me last night, 'We have a different history, different traditions."'
Putin pounced on the reference to Iraq. "We of course don't want to have a democracy like the one in Iraq, to be honest," he deadpanned, to laughter from Russian-speaking listeners.
Upon hearing the translation of Putin's remark, Bush interjected: "Just wait."
NEW LAW
Russian non-governmental organizations say their ability to operate free from state interference has been drastically curtailed by a Kremlin-sponsored law passed this year. Washington has joined criticism of the law.
Masha Lipman, editor of the Carnegie Moscow Center's Pro et Contra journal, wrote in The Washington Post Saturday that "the Russian government has resorted recently to police practices strongly reminiscent of those used some three decades ago in the Soviet Union."
Bush met a number of Russian rights campaigners on Friday and said he would relay their concerns about curbs on civil liberties to Putin.
"Look, he's willing to listen, but he also explains to me that he doesn't want anyone telling him how to run his government," Bush said on Saturday.
National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said Bush several times mentioned to Putin his meeting with the rights campaigners, including one or two specific issues they raised.
Putin told the news conference: "Nobody knows better than us how to strengthen our own state. We know very well that we cannot strengthen it without developing democracy. And of course we will do this. We will do it independently."
Ahead of Bush's talks, the U.S. Senate unanimously adopted a resolution that called on Bush and other G8 countries "to let President Putin know that his attempts to turn back the clock on democracy are unacceptable."
Comment: It's too bad the US Senate isn't as gung-ho about ensuring that the clock isn't turned back on democracy in their own country.
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia, July 15 (Xinhua) -- Russia's first international uranium enrichment center will be set up in Angarsk in southeast Siberia's Irkutsk Region, Russia's nuclear chief Sergei Kiriyenko said Saturday.
Kiriyenko said the center would have to be put under the control of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and that Russian legislation would be amended accordingly.
Kiriyenko described the center in Angarsk as "the first step to be taken by Russia in this direction."
However, he said it did not imply Russia had given up its idea to set up a joint venture for enriching Iranian uranium on its soil, adding that the Angarsk center would provide Iran with opportunities to develop its civilian nuclear industry.
On the same day, visiting U.S. President George W. Bush and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin announced here on Saturday that they have agreed on a plan to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons by setting up international enrichment centers.
The two leaders unveiled that initiative at a join press conference after their talks.
ANKARA - Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has signalled that his government was planning a tough response to mounting violence by Kurdish rebels after 13 members of the security forces were killed in the southeast over the past week.
"We have so far tried to handle this issue with patience... to resolve this problem with a democratic approach... (but) these are not acts that one can put up with," Erdogan said in a televised speech Sunday in the eastern city of Agri.
"I have to say that the cabinet meeting tomorrow (Monday) is poised for many things," he said.
He was speaking after officials said militants from the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) killed seven soldiers and one member of the village guard, a government-paid Kurdish militia supporting the army, in a clash overnight in the countryside in Siirt province.
The army launched a security operation at dawn, bombing the area to which the militants fled and deploying reinforcement, including elite commando teams, the CNN-Turk news channel reported.
The incident came after five soldiers died Thursday in a landmine explosion blamed on the PKK on a rural road in Bitlis province.
In nearby Bingol, meanwhile, a PKK militant was killed after rebels ignored calls to surrender during a security operation, the Anatolia news agency reported Sunday, citing the local governor.
In Ankara, the higher board for anti-terror struggle, comprised of senior ministers, generals and security officials, reviewed the situation at an emergency meeting, in an apparent preparation for Monday's cabinet meeting.
The board, chaired by Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, who is also a deputy prime minister, made no statement after the discussions.
The PKK, listed as terrorist group by Turkey, the European Union and the United States, has fought for Kurdish self-rule in the southeast since 1984 in a conflict that has claimed more than 37,000 lives.
Clashes in the region have been on the rise since 2004 when the PKK called off a five-year unilateral ceasefire.
Erdogan has repeatedly pledged to resolve the conflict with more democracy and prosperity for the Kurdish minority.
The government, however, rejects negotiating a settlement with the PKK and Erdogan said in April that he would also avoid dialogue with the main Kurdish political movement, the Democratic Society Party, until it openly denounces the PKK as a terrorist group.
At least 85 rebels and 49 members of the security forces have been killed this year in the southeast, according to an AFP count.
Kurdish militants have also claimed responsibility for 11 blasts in urban centres, in which nine people were killed and nearly 140 others injured.
In the spring, the army shifted thousands of troops to regions at the Iraqi border to stop what it described as increasing infiltration of PKK militants from safe havens in the mountains of neighbouring northern Iraq.
The rebels have found refuge in the Kurdish-controlled enclave since 1999 after they declared the unilateral truce.
Much to Ankara's frustration, both Baghdad and Washington have been reluctant to take military action against the PKK, arguing that their forces are swamped by violence in other parts in conflict-torn Iraq.
In late June, the parliament passed a new anti-terror law expanding the scope of crimes punishable as "terrorist" acts and introducing restrictions on the media for publications deemed as propaganda in favour of terrorist groups.
DOHA/CAIRO - Middle Eastern stock markets tumbled on Sunday as escalating violence in Israel and Lebanon hit investor sentiment in the region.
Egypt's stock market suspended trading after the benchmark index plummeted 9.5 percent early in the session while Qatar's main index closed 6.08 percent down.
Most bourses in the Gulf Arab region traded lower on Sunday. Saudi Arabia's market, the Arab world's largest, rebounded after plummeting more than 9 percent on Saturday.
The fall in Qatar's index was its biggest in at least two years, according to Reuters data.
"This follows what happened yesterday in Gulf markets over all the concern about what is happening in the Middle East," said Samer Al Jaouni of Ahli Bank in Qatar.
Israel launched an assault on Lebanon five days ago after Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas, backed by Iran and Syria, captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight.
Hizbollah rocket attacks killed eight people in the Israeli city of Haifa on Sunday. Israel's assault has killed 107 people in Lebanon, a country that has drawn billions of dollars in Gulf Arab investment over the past few years.
The crisis has spooked investors in the world's biggest oil exporting region, where stock markets posted some of their biggest losses since a region-wide crash earlier this year.
"These declines are due to the Lebanese situation and to fears that this could spread throughout the region and involve Iran. But markets could stabilize if the conflict doesn't spread," said Joe Kawkabani of Shuaa Capital in Dubai.
"Second quarter results have been strong and the Qatari economy is doing well, but if Iran and Syria get involved in this conflict, the fear is that missiles could fly over the Gulf and that is worrying investors. Everyone is playing it safe right now," he said.
By BRADLEY BROOKS
Associated Press
Sun Jul 16, 2006
NEW YORK - Iran's most prominent dissident said Sunday that the war in Iraq has hurt his country's reform movement by giving its regime an excuse to stifle dissent.
Journalist Akbar Ganji said in an interview that the West can best promote change in Iran by lending moral support to the country's democratic movement.
"We do not want the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran. However, this is our problem. Any intervention by any foreign power would bring charges of conspiracy against us," he said. "What has happened in Iraq did not support our movement in any significant way."
Instead, he said, it gave Iran's regime an excuse to crack down on dissidents, accusing them of colluding with the U.S. and promoting an invasion of the Islamic republic.
Ganji, 47, spoke with The Associated Press during a world tour to raise awareness of human rights violations in Iran. He joined protesters outside U.N. headquarters on a symbolic three-day hunger strike aimed at forcing the Iranian regime to release political prisoners.
Since his release, Ganji has toured Europe and collected the World Association of Newspapers' Gold Pen of Freedom award.
On Monday, he will collect an award for his fearless writing from the National Press Club in Washington.
Ganji said he plans to return to Iran, and expects to be jailed again, but is not afraid.
"My goal during my world tour is to show the world that there is an alternative, there is another voice in the region," he said. "That's the voice of peacefulness, liberty, human rights and a democratic Islam."
Ganji said that, until oil revenues are wrested from state hands, there will be virtually no democratic nations in the Middle East.
"Oil is the greatest factor that prevents democracy to take root in the region. Petroleum states have no need for their people," he said. "They do not depend on taxation and therefore there is no accountability to the people."
Ganji, who was imprisoned in 2000 after writing a series of articles accusing Intelligence Ministry agents of killing dissidents, said he was tortured repeatedly during six years in prison.
BAGHDAD - A British soldier was killed and three others wounded in two different attacks near Iraq's main southern city of Basra, while 17 people were killed in rebel violence across the country.
Two of the soldiers were part of a raid in the tribal area of Garmat Ali, north of the city, to "apprehend individuals involved in terrorist activities in Basra," British spokesman Major Charlie Burbridge said.
He said one soldier was killed in exchange of fire during the raid which resulted in the detention of two "suspected terrorists" while another soldier was wounded but was "not in a serious condition".
The soldier's death brought to 114 the British military's losses in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion.
Two other soldiers were wounded when a roadside bomb on the road to Al-Zubair, southwest of Basra, exploded next to their vehicle lightly wounding them.
The incidents are part of a pattern of increased instability in the south which had once been considered relatively calm compared with restive Sunni central and western Iraq.
British Major General John Cooper, head of coalition troops in southern Iraq, told AFP on Thursday that the coalition forces had to work "more on Basra", especially on the city's police.
British troops have often clashed with the Basra police. Commanders say they have been infiltrated by militiamen loyal to Shiite radical leader Moqtada al-Sadr.
Last month, British Defence Secretary Des Browne called for a security crackdown in Basra on the lines of one currently being implemented in the capital.
But the Baghdad operation has so far failed to stem raging violence.
Three people were killed and 32 wounded in a bomb attack in a tyre market in the city's Karrada district Sunday, police said.
The confessionally mixed province of Diyala, northeast of Baghdad, was the scene of a dramatic assault when a large group of insurgents stormed the main hospital of the provincial capital Baquba and freed several of their wounded comrades.
Four hospital guards were killed in the operation that targeted the third floor, which is reserved for detainees. As police arrived at the hospital the insurgents set off a bomb in the front of the building and in the ensuing confusion made their escape.
Elsewhere in Diyala, a former official of ousted president
Saddam Hussein's Baath party was killed in a drive-by shooting along with his son and a woman bystander. Two other civilians were killed in separate shootings in the province.
In the northern oil city of Kirkuk, gunmen killed two brothers who ran a barber shop for cutting hair in Western fashions, police said.
Two truck drivers were killed and a third was kidnapped in an ambush on a convoy on the road between Kirkuk and the central city of Tikrit.
South of Baghdad, an Iraqi soldier was killed while attempting to remove a bomb placed in a cafe in the town of Iskandiriyah.
Five corpses were also found across the country.
Gunmen who seized 29 people, including top sports officials, in a daylight raid on a Baghdad club Saturday released six of their hostages Sunday.
Those freed included Nashat Maher, former head of military sports and now an advisor to the Iraqi Olympic Committee, the committee's office manager Mohammed al-Habash told AFP.
"He (Maher) was found lying by the side of the road, blindfolded, in an eastern district of the capital," Habash said.
The coach of the Talaba football was also released, along with a driver and three other guards, he added.
Among those still held are the Olympic Committee's chairman Ahmed al-Hejea, its secretary general Amr Abdel Jabbar, the head of the Iraqi taekwondo federation, Jamal Abdel Karim, and the head of water sports, Saeb al-Hakim.
The committee had been holding a meeting at the time of Saturday's raid by gunmen dressed in military uniforms.
Last Updated Mon, 17 Jul 2006 05:44:22 EDT
CBC News
Insurgents attacked civilians Monday in an open air market south of Baghdad, leaving at least 41 people dead and injuring 42, according to police.
The incident occurred in Mahmoudiya, a town 30 kilometres south of Baghdad. It's in an area known as the "triangle of death" because it has been the scene of numerous shootings, bombings and attacks on U.S troops.
Police sources told Reuters that the town was first hit by a series of mortars, then gunmen armed with rifles made their way through the market, opening fire on civilians. The victims are reported to be mainly Shia Muslims. Iraqi police sealed off the area.
It's considered to be one the bloodiest raids in recent months and it came on the anniversary of a coup staged in 1968 by Saddam Hussein's Baath party.
Mahmoudiya is described as a religiously mixed area and is also the town where, in March, six Americans troops are alleged to have raped and murdered a 14-year-old girl and killed her parents and six-year-old sister. The troops have been charged in the incident.
Attack continues wave of sectarian violence
The raid is believed to be part of a sectarian wave of violence in Iraq between Sunnis and Shias, violence that has become the main security threat in the country. But it was unclear on Monday who carried out the attack.
The attack came one day after a suicide bomber set off explosives in a cafe in northern Iraq, leaving 26 people dead and 22 wounded. Also on Sunday, gunmen kidnapped a top oil ministry official.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez arrived in Baghdad Monday to meet with Iraqi officials.
U.S. President George W. Bush pledged to send more U.S. officials to Baghdad to help the Iraqi government promote the national economy. Bush said he believes developing the economy will help restore stability in the country.
Without realizing it, people will perceive things according to how they want to see them, a new study suggests.
"There is an age old hypothesis in psychology that a person's wishes, hopes and desires can influence what they see," said David Dunning, Cornell University psychologist and co-author of the study. "This theory had lay dormant for about 40 years, though, without any supporting evidence. We wanted to test the murky waters again."
In five separate tests conducted by Dunning and a graduate student, Emily Balcetis, 412 volunteers from Cornell were presented with an ambiguous picture that could be interpreted as two distinct figures�either a horse's head or the body of a seal, for example. They were told they would be assigned to a taste test of either fresh-squeezed orange juice or a gelatinous, clumpy and rather unappealing veggie smoothie, depending on whether they saw a farm animal or sea creature.
More often than not the participants chose the figure that would lead them to the juice.
The trick to making the study meaningful was making sure the test subjects didn't know what was going on, Dunning said, noting that the generally high IQ of Cornell students made cheating a real possibility.
"The figures we used were chosen so we knew the people weren't just lying or tricking us," Dunning told LiveScience. "We also tracked automatic, unconscious eye movements which were out of their control."
Not only did participants routinely see the figure that produced favorable results, their eye motions indicated that they were never aware of the alternate option being available.
Other scientists who have studied the connection between belief and physiological reactions in the eye, now supported by Dunning's research, point to its possibilities in the world of positive thinking and self-motivation.
"Determining whether a person walking towards you is smiling or smirking, how close the finish line seems in a race or how loud a partner - a wife, husband, lover - is yelling during an argument," Dunning gave as examples that could arise in life. "Could we interpret ambiguous situations towards our expectations and hopes and away from our fears? That is the ultimate question."
The study will be published later this year in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Comment: People see what they want to see and avoid seeing what they fear - and all without ever being aware of what is happening. Now, just think about the Iraqis, who are viewed as either terrorists or freedom fighters. Think about Bush, who is viewed as either a war criminal, or just a swell guy who couldn't possibly do anything illegal...
Staff and agencies
Monday July 17, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
No individual police officers will face criminal charges over the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian electrician shot dead by anti-terrorism officers a year ago, the Crown Prosecution Service confirmed today.
However, the Metropolitan Police will be prosecuted under health and safety laws in connection with the incident at Stockwell underground station in south London, according to sources.
The Guardian revealed on Saturday that the CPS, which spent more than six month examining a report by the Independent Police Complaints Commission report into the shooting, had concluded that no criminal offence had taken place that could be ascribed to an individual officer.
The decision - to be officially announced by the CPS at midday - is set to be greeted with dismay by the family of Mr De Menezes.
Speaking this morning, Asad Rehman from the Justice4Jean campaign group, said the family would be "very, very disappointed if no officers are held to account for their actions".
"The family do not think health and safety regulations are an appropriate way to hold the police accountable over this issue," he said.
"They will be considering all their legal options to ensure that somebody is answerable in a court of law."
Mr de Menezes, 27, was shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder at point blank range by officers from the Met's C019 firearms unit after he boarded a train at Stockwell station.
He had been watched by police and military surveillance officers leaving his flat in nearby Tulse Hill and followed on to a bus towards the station.
The IPCC report has yet to be released, but it is thought to list a series of mistakes made by police, starting with his identification as a suspect after he left his flat.
Earlier reports said the two officers who fired the fatal shots and Commander Cressida Dick, who was running the armed operation on July 22 last year, could face manslaughter charges.
MEXICO CITY, July 16 (Xinhua) -- More than 1 million supporters of left-wing presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador marched in the country's capital on Sunday, demanding a recount of the July 2 general election.
Protesting what they believed to be large-scale fraud in the election, supporters of the leftist candidate of the Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) Obrador came from across the country to demand a vote-by-vote manual recount of the ballot.
Hector Rozas, an engineer form Mexico state, demanded the government respect the poor, saying the protestors were only asking for transparency and openness about the election.
According to results published by Mexico's official electoral body, the Federal Electoral Agency (IFE), Obrador lost to the National Action Party (PAN) candidate Felipe Calderon by just 244,000 votes, or 0.58 percentage points.
However Obrador said that electoral authorities had counted many votes for him as null. In addition, Obrador's legal team had handed over boxes of videos, documents and recordings which he said proved that fraud had been involved in the election.
In addition, Obrador has submitted the case to the Federal Electoral Tribunal, the ultimate arbitrator in electoral disputes, which has to officially declare who will replace outgoing President Vicente Fox by Sept. 6.
Echoing Obrador's call to "struggle peacefully", his supporters have already launched a series of protests in Mexico City and several other cities since Wednesday, charging the IFE with fraud.
Accompanied by leftist leaders and his two sons, Obrador took part in the protest. He also invited singers, actors and intellectuals to participate, vowing to call for more protests if the Federal Electoral Tribunal didn't agree to the demand for a recount.
Meanwhile, PAN candidate Calderon called on his supporters to keep calm, saying he had gained his victory by votes, not by street protests.
The authorities deployed nearly 3,000 policemen to control the protests, during which there were no physical conflicts or casualties reported.
BEIJING - Twenty miners were killed and 55 others were trapped in two separate coal mine accidents in China, state media has reported, the latest in a never-ending series of disasters to hit the beleaguered industry.
An explosion occurred at around 4:00 pm Saturday at the Linjiazhuang coal mine in Jinzhong city, Shanxi province, when 64 miners were working underground. Twenty bodies have been recovered and 37 miners are thought trapped, Xinhua news agency said.
Six miners escaped after the blast and one worker, who suffered from carbon monoxide poisoning, was rescued early Sunday, it said.
Nearly 70 rescuers have been mobilized to rescue the trapped miners, Xinhua said.
Eighteen miners were trapped in a flooded coal mine in the southwestern province of Guizhou, Xinhua reported in a separate dispatch.
The accident occurred at around 11:00 pm Saturday in the Pianpoyuan coal mine in Ziyun Miao Buyi county, it said, without elaborating.
China's coal mines are regarded as the most dangerous in the world with 5,986 workers dying in the industry last year, according to official figures.
Labor rights groups, such as the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin, say the real number of mining deaths could be as high as 20,000 each year.
WASHINGTON - The first half of the year was the warmest on record for the United States.
The government reported Friday that the average temperature for the 48 contiguous United States from January through June was 51.8 degrees Fahrenheit, or 3.4 degrees above average for the 20th century.
That made it the warmest such period since recordkeeping began in the National Climatic Data Center reported.
No state was cooler than average and five states - Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri - experienced record warmth for the period.
While much of the Northeast experienced extreme rainfall and flooding at the end of June many other areas continued below normal rain and snowfall.
As of June, 45 percent of the contiguous U.S. was in moderate-to-extreme drought, an increase of 6 percent from May.
Dry conditions spawned more than 50,000 wildfires, burning more than 3 million acres in the continental U.S., according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
Worldwide, it was the sixth warmest year-to-date since record keeping began in 1880.
By CARLA K. JOHNSON
Associated Press
July 16, 2006
CHICAGO - Temperatures soared into the upper 90s and higher Sunday from coast to coast, bringing out heat warnings, wilting athletes and driving others into the shade.
The choking heat was expected to continue for the next few days, and the hot air was moving toward the East Coast, meteorologists said.
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich said Sunday that the state would make more than 130 office buildings available as cooling centers beginning Monday. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty had ordered the National Guard out to help firefighters as temperatures even in the normally cool northern part of the state pushed 100 degrees amid very dry conditions. The National Weather Service issued excessive heat warnings for Las Vegas, Chicago, St. Louis and Tulsa, Okla. Excessive heat watches were issued for the Philadelphia area and New Jersey, where thermometers made it into the 90s Sunday in a rehearsal for highs of 100 degrees Monday.
"I could use a pool out here," Doreen Venick, 36, said Sunday as she took shelter in the shade of a small tree with her two children and her sister at a children's festival in Brick, N.J.
Officials in Chicago, where a 1995 heat wave killed 700 people, opened 24-hour cooling centers and pleaded with people to check on elderly neighbors. No heat-related deaths were reported in the city by Sunday afternoon as temperatures approached 100 in parts of the state Sunday.
Organizers of Gay Games VII, a sporting event that has drawn about 12,000 gay and lesbian athletes to Chicago, said outdoor events were going ahead as planned with hydration stations, tents and medical teams ready if needed.
Chicago hit 92 by 1 p.m., with humidity of about 50 percent, but it didn't bother Frank Lee of Manoa, Hawaii, who was competing in the event's tennis matches and planned to drink plenty of water and eat bananas.
"Oh, I love it balmy," Lee said. "But maybe it's a little too hot."
A large high pressure area centered over much of the mountain states and extending into the Midwest was pumping hot air from Mexico across the desert Southwest and into the Midwest, said Rob Handel, a weather service meteorologist in Chicago.
Even the Colorado mountain town of Frazier, which sits at 8,550 feet and likes to claim that it is the nation's ice box, was in the upper 80s during the weekend.
"It's not supposed to be hot like this. Lately there have been evenings when you could sit outside at 10 p.m. without a coat. All my life I couldn't do that," said Connie Clayton, 58, a lifelong resident of Frazier.
The mile-high city of Denver hit a record high of 101 on Saturday.
South Dakota posted some of the nation's highest temperatures with a reading Saturday of 115 at Pierre, the state capital, and an unofficial report of 120 outside the town of Usta in the state's northwest corner.
"There's a lot of records that are falling across the state," said Todd Heitkamp, a weather service meteorologist in Sioux Falls.
In Arizona, Sunday's high was forecast at 110, not enough to rate an extreme heat advisory in the desert metropolis.
In Oklahoma, where temperatures also have been rising above 100, officials were investigating a possible heat-related death and reported more than 40 heat-related calls to emergency medical services in Oklahoma City and Tulsa.
Southern California joined in the heat wave, with temperatures over 100 degrees adding to the problems facing firefighters battling huge wildfires. Lancaster hit 109 on Saturday and Pasadena recorded 101, and Southern California Edison reported a record for weekend power use as air conditioners were cranked up.
In New Jersey, at the other end of the country, temperatures were expected to reach 100 degrees on Monday. An excessive heat warning was issued for several counties.
Hot, sticky air also covered parts of the Southeast. In Georgia, temperatures have soared to near-record highs, with six cities posting temperatures of 100 degrees or higher on Saturday.
MOUNT ALBION - University of Colorado biologists began installing an alarm system atop this craggy summit Friday, near the Continental Divide west of Boulder.
Like the alarm systems in your car or home, this one is designed to detect intruders.
But in this case, the invaders are tundra plants moving up from lower elevations in response to global warming. The alarm system is a cluster of mountaintop vegetation plots that will be monitored periodically for decades to come.
"They might be an early warning, an indicator of how natural systems will respond," said ecologist William Bowman, director of CU's Mountain Research Station at Niwot Ridge, northwest of Nederland.
To spot changes in tundra vegetation caused by warming, permanent monitoring plots are being established this summer atop three peaks within the city of Boulder watershed, along the Continental Divide.
The peaks - 12,609-foot Albion, 13,150-foot Arikaree and 13,276-foot Kiowa - were selected in part because the watershed is closed to the public, so summit-area vegetation is relatively untrammeled.
Sixteen one-square-meter plots will be staked out in the alpine tundra just below the summit of each peak - four in each of the four cardinal directions. Temperature and vegetation will be monitored periodically.
The National Science Foundation provided $7,000 this year to install the plots near Niwot Ridge.
Similar mountaintop plots will be set up this summer on peaks in southwestern Colorado's San Juan Mountains - possibly near Red Mountain Pass, said Chris Landry, executive director of the Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies in Silverton.
The Colorado peaks will be part of an international network of long-term alpine monitoring sites called GLORIA, which stands for Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments. Established in 2001, the program has grown to more than 30 sites around the world, from the poles to the tropics.
On Friday morning, Bowman and his research assistant, John Murgel, drove five miles on a rugged dirt road, then hiked three miles to the Albion summit. There they began the somewhat tedious task of counting, naming and recording every plant in their newly established tundra plots.
On Colorado's highest peaks, the alpine tundra community is a ground-hugging mix of some 350 species of grasses, sedge, wildflowers and other forbs, moss, lichen and low shrubs such as dwarf willow and birch.
Sixteen plant species were found in the first four one-meter-square Albion plots checked Friday. They included the buttercup-like alpine avens; the alpine fescue, a common grass; the nailwort, a moss-like "cushion" plant; dwarf sunspot, a miniature sunflower; Carex rupestris, sometimes known as the curly-leaf sedge; and alpine parsley, a forb.
The snows of Arapaho Glacier gleamed to the west. The Denver metropolitan area was lost in haze to the east. The only sounds were the roar of a waterfall, the chirp of pikas and birds, the buzz of black flies, the drone of distant airplanes, and Bowman's voice as he recited the Latin scientific name of each plant while Murgel recorded it in a notebook.
Climate models suggest that by 2100, Colorado could warm 3.6 to 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit, largely due to the buildup of heat-trapping "greenhouse" gases emitted when fossil fuels are burned.
In some parts of the West, conifer forests are expected to gradually move to higher elevations as the climate warms. But University of Wyoming tree line researcher William Baker said that's unlikely to happen in Colorado, unless the warmth is accompanied by additional moisture.
"Across most of that tree-line area, it's a pretty severe place for them, and they need more moisture to be able to regenerate and really grow, and particularly to move up into the alpine," Baker said.
Tundra plants will likely provide a better climate-warming red flag, Bowman said Friday.
Along the tundra-forest boundary in the Front Range, early indications of a response to warming could include upward migration of shrubs - various willows and blueberry, for example - and nonnative weeds such as dandelions.
The number of tundra species might increase initially, as intruders move into previously inaccessible areas. But as the decades pass, extinction of alpine plants is possible, accompanied by a decline in alpine species, Bowman said.
That decline, in turn, could affect wildlife that rely on tundra plants for sustenance.
Comment: An "early warning system"?! A little late, don't you think?
CHICAGO (AP) - Temperatures soared into the upper 90s and higher Sunday from coast to coast, bringing out heat warnings, wilting athletes and driving others into the shade.
The choking heat was expected to continue for the next few days, and the hot air was moving toward the East Coast, meteorologists said.
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich said Sunday the state would make more than 130 office buildings available as cooling centers beginning Monday. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty had ordered the National Guard out to help firefighters as temperatures even in the normally cool northern part of the state pushed 100 degrees amid very dry conditions.
The National Weather Service issued excessive heat warnings for Las Vegas, Chicago, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Tulsa, Okla., and parts of New Jersey, where thermometers made it into the 90s Sunday and were expected to reach 100 degrees Monday.
"I could use a pool out here," Doreen Venick, 36, said Sunday as she took shelter in the shade of a small tree with her two children and her sister at a children's festival in Brick, N.J.
Officials in Chicago, where a 1995 heat wave killed 700 people, opened 24-hour cooling centers and pleaded with people to check on elderly neighbors. No heat-related deaths were reported in the city by Sunday afternoon as temperatures approached 100 in parts of the state Sunday.
Organizers of Gay Games VII, a sporting event that has drawn about 12,000 gay and lesbian athletes to Chicago, said outdoor events were going ahead as planned with hydration stations, tents and medical teams. Two triathletes were treated for heat-related illnesses.
Chicago hit 94 by 3 p.m., but it didn't bother Frank Lee of Manoa, Hawaii, who was competing in the event's tennis matches and planned to drink plenty of water and eat bananas.
"Oh, I love it balmy," Lee said. "But maybe it's a little too hot."
A large high pressure area centered over much of the mountain states and extending into the Midwest was pumping hot air from Mexico across the desert Southwest and into the Midwest, said Rob Handel, a weather service meteorologist in Chicago.
Even the Colorado mountain town of Frazier, which sits at 8,550 feet and likes to claim that it is the nation's ice box, was in the upper 80s during the weekend.
"It's not supposed to be hot like this. Lately there have been evenings when you could sit outside at 10 p.m. without a coat. All my life I couldn't do that," said Connie Clayton, 58, a lifelong resident of Frazier.
The mile-high city of Denver had two straight days of record highs, hitting 103 on Sunday and 101 Saturday.
South Dakota posted some of the nation's highest temperatures with a reading Saturday of 115 at Pierre, the state capital, and an unofficial report of 120 outside the town of Usta in the state's northwest corner.
"There's a lot of records that are falling across the state," said Todd Heitkamp, a weather service meteorologist in Sioux Falls.
The mercury again topped 100 degrees Sunday across much of South Dakota, and in North Dakota, the temperature hit 106 degrees in Bismarck and 100 in Dickinson.
In Arizona, Sunday's high was 109, not enough to rate an extreme heat advisory in the desert metropolis.
In Oklahoma, where temperatures also have been rising above 100, officials were investigating a possible heat-related death and reported more than 40 heat-related calls to emergency medical services in Oklahoma City and Tulsa.
Southwest Oklahoma caught the worst of the heat Sunday: Lawton had a high temperature of 106 and Hobart and Frederick topped out at 104 degrees. The state's weeklong forecast calls for highs ranging from the mid 90s up to 106 degrees.
Several people were treated for heat-related illnesses Saturday at the St. Vincent Medical Center in Toledo, said Dr. Greg Hymel, an emergency room physician. The National Weather Service issued a heat advisory for the area Sunday, with temperatures reaching 91.
Officials with Middletown City Schools, halfway between Cincinnati and Dayton, Ohio, canceled the last week of elementary classes for the summer because of the heat. The two buildings where those classes are held lack air conditioning, district spokeswoman Debbie Alberico said.
California joined in the heat wave, with temperatures forecast to rise above 100 degrees Monday from the Mexican border to as far north as Redding and near the coast. State highs are expected to be 115 degrees near Barstow and 112 near Parkfield, said meteorologist Will Pi.
Power grid managers asked California residents to conserve electricity, predicting demand will spike for air conditioners.
Hot, sticky air also covered parts of the Southeast. In Georgia, temperatures have soared to near-record highs, with six cities posting temperatures of 100 degrees or higher on Saturday.
By Andrew Gorder, Journal Staff Writer
Monday, July 17, 2006
RAPID CITY -- Temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Saturday broke and tied all-time records throughout South Dakota.
The National Weather Service in Rapid City received reports of 120 degree temperatures in Usta in the northwest corner of the state, but the reports had not been officially confirmed by Saturday evening. If the reports are accurate, the temperature would tie the state record for high temperatures set in Gann Valley in 1936.
NWS meteorologist Jeff Johnson in Rapid City said temperatures reached 111 degrees at Rapid City Regional Airport, beating the previous record of 110 degrees set in 1989 and 1973.
Temperatures in downtown Rapid City missed the all-time record of 107 by one degree, Johnson said.
There were also record highs of 116 in Philip and 111 in Interior, and The Associated Press reported 115 degree temperatures in Pierre, 114 degrees in Mobridge and 108 in Mitchell.
"There were a few places where we didn't quite reach triple digits, but pretty much all of the prairie areas east river were well above the 100 degree mark," Johnson said.
Johnson said the sweltering temperatures and high winds will increase the already high level of fire danger. "We will still be at 'red flag' conditions tomorrow," Johnson said. "We probably won't see a cool down until the end of next week, so we still have several days of hot, dry weather ahead of us."
Although many opted to spend Saturday inside with the air-conditioner, the extreme temperatures did not deter thousands of people from attending the Hills Alive Christian music festival held in Memorial Park in Rapid City.
"I'm sure that there are some people that stayed away because of the heat, but I also know that people know what happens at this festival, and they'll come out to see the artists that they want to see," said Suzanne Happs, program director for KLMP radio and volunteer organizer at the festival.
Happs said about 30,000 people attended the festival in 108-degree heat last year, and they were hoping for more people at this year's event.
"It's been a progression," Happs said. "We had 22,000 the year before last, 30,000 last year, even in the stifling heat. We're hoping that it just keeps growing."
"It's going to take hotter temps than this to keep me away," Susan Keller of Chamberlain said.
Younger attendees opted to skip the music and cool off in Memorial Lake, and about 25 children chose to swim in the park's water fountain.
Despite the crowd's overall enthusiasm, the heat did take its toll on a few of the spectators.
Dr. Jeffrey Buckau, who was voluntarily manning the festival's first-aid tent, said they had at least four heat-related incidents on Saturday.
The most significant was a woman suffering from heat stroke. "Her temperature was going up, her blood pressure was dropping, her pulse rate was going up and she was throwing up," Buckau said.
Buckau was working with volunteer EMTs to treat patients suffering from the heat.
With only the slightest dip in temperatures in the forecast, Buckau recommended that those attending the festival today stay out of the sun, keep physical activity to a minimum and drink plenty of water.
By JEREMIAH MARQUEZ
Associated Press
Sun Jul 16, 2006
YUCCA VALLEY, Calif. - Gerald Guthrie was last heard from when he called a relative from his 10-acre property to say that a wildfire was close and he was preparing to evacuate. The body of the 57-year-old Guthrie was found by rescuters in a charred area less than a half mile from his home, said Cindy Beavers of the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department. His death appeared to have been fire-related, sheriff's Detective James Porter said.
As nearly 4,000 firefighters prepared for another day of battling a huge complex of fires in rugged wilderness, weather forecasters predicted a 30 percent chance of thunderstorms Sunday, accompanied by lightning that could start new blazes.
"We're definitely concerned," California Department of Forestry spokeswoman Karen Guillemin said.
Fire officials Saturday reported some progress in battling the blazes, which covered more than 110 square miles in Southern California about 100 miles east of Los Angeles.
A 60,000-acre fire was 50 percent contained, its eastern flank no longer a problem but its western side still a major concern. An evacuation remained in effect in one area, but were lifted in several others. Ignited by lightning a week ago it roared to life a few days later, destroying 58 desert homes.
An adjacent complex of fires that merged with the larger fire Friday grew to more than 15,572 acres but was 10 percent contained. Crews protected a handful of homes in a canyon, but there were no evacuations.
The fires were burning below the flanks of the San Bernardino Mountains, but as of Saturday were not considered immediate threats to resort communities in the Big Bear Lake region atop the range.
"There is no evacuation or potential evacuations at this time for Big Bear," said Wayne Barringer, a fire information officer for the California Department of Forestry.
Firefighters were being airlifted to the inaccessible western flank of the larger fire or were being driven in and hiking the rest of the way. Some crews were having to camp in remote locations.
Cate Baker-Hall, 55, an artist, said her three-story home burned to the ground. She lost a collection of more than 100 paintings, lithographs and other art, and a manuscript of a book she had just completed on the 1960s British band, The Zombies, she said.
The house "is just gone," she said. "I'm trying to take the Buddha approach and deal with today. There's only so many tears you can cry."
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who visited a command post at Yucca Valley High School with wife Maria Shriver, said their helicopter tour had flown close enough to see firefighters working on the ground.
"It is a huge fire. It is really extraordinary how quickly it has spread out," he said. "And that's why I say it is very dangerous and they have to contain it as quickly as possible."
Fire commander Rick Henson told the governor the threat to structures in Yucca Valley communities was over, but he noted that when the fires merged they began moving a bit north and west, toward the mountains.
"It's really not moving toward Big Bear right now but it is a threat," he said.
Elsewhere in Southern California, a 500-acre blaze in Redlands was 20 percent contained after destroying one building. It broke out Friday night and threatened 100 homes but there were no evacuations.
In San Diego County, a 260-acre fire in Cleveland National Forest was fully contained and hand crews were finishing off the remains of a 20-acre blaze that spread over both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border in Tecate, said state fire spokeswoman Audrey Hagen.
Meanwhile, in southern Montana, firefighters mostly east of Billings were battling major large fires that charred about 185,000 acres. About 125 homes were potentially threatened, officials said.
In Wyoming, a wind shift helped firefighters keep a wildfire from advancing toward Devils Tower National Monument. Four fires about 5 miles southwest of Devils Tower have burned about 13,700 acres - about 21 square miles - of mostly shrubs and ponderosa pine. About 10 percent of the fires were contained.
In northern Minnesota, a more than 1,400-acre fire in a wilderness area near was worrying authorities, who feared it could be fueled by millions of trees that blew down in a 1999 storm. Temperatures were near 100 in nearby Duluth.
QUITO, Ecuador - Thousands of Ecuadorean villagers have fled their homes on the slopes of the Tungurahua volcano since it began erupting lava and toxic gases, authorities said Saturday.
No injuries have been reported, but some 3,700 people have abandoned their homes in half a dozen hamlets since Friday, the Civil Defense said.
"There have been no victims, but all the vegetation has died and we have lost cattle," said Juan Salazar, mayor of Penipe County, which includes two villages where 300 families have been forced to evacuate.
In May, the volcano, located 85 miles south of the capital of Quito, began emitting its loudest and most frequent explosions since it rumbled back to life nearly seven years ago after being inactive for eight decades.
On Friday, the Geophysics Institute reported that the 16,550-foot-high volcano had changed its behavior drastically by expelling at least four lava flows - the first since activity resumed.
Hugo Yepes, director of the institute, said the wind was carrying ash from the explosions up to 75 miles west of the volcano.
On Saturday, the institute said the explosions had lessened in frequency to every half an hour, from every five minutes on Friday.
Banos, a city of 20,000 people at the foot of the volcano, appeared to be out of danger because it is on the eastern side.
The tsunami followed a 7.2-magnitude quake that struck deep beneath the Indian Ocean approximately 240 kilometers (150 miles) southwest of Java's western coast.
A powerful earthquake sent a two-meter (yard) high tsunami crashing into a beach resort on Indonesia's Java island Monday, killing at least five people and damaging hotels and houses. Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono confirmed the casualties in a radio broadcast.
People fled to a nearby hill to escape the wave on Pangandaran beach in west Java, a woman identified as Teti told el-Shinta radio station.
"All the houses are destroyed along the beach,'' she said, adding that at least three people were killed.
The tsunami followed a 7.2-magnitude quake that struck deep beneath the Indian Ocean approximately 240 kilometers (150 miles) southwest of Java's western coast at 3:24 p.m. (0824 GMT), causing tall buildings to sway in the capital Jakarta and at least one other city.
At least 160 people are now known to have died in southern China from tropical storm Bilis, according to state media reports.
Torrential rain hit the area in the wake of the storm, bringing floods and landslides and forcing millions to flee their homes.
Rescue teams are still wading through flooded streets to reach thousands of people stranded by the high water.
More heavy rains have been forecast in the area in the coming days.
Path of destruction
Hardest-hit was the inland province of Hunan, where at least 78 people were killed, the China Daily newspaper reported.
Thousands of homes have been swept away, and large areas of farmland have been destroyed.
In Guangdong province, where an estimated 33 people died, flooding cut the main Beijing-Guangzhou railway line, stranding 5,000 passengers.
In nearby Lechang, waters as deep as 3m (10ft) forced authorities to move 1,600 inmates from the local prison to higher ground.
Mudslides have also been reported in Zhangzhou, Fujian province, killing at least 10 people.
Forecasters are predicting that heavy rain will continue across southern China for several days.
Typhoon Bilis hit Philippines and Taiwan before landing on the Chinese mainland on Friday and being downgraded to a tropical storm.
The storm is the latest severe weather to affect China. At least 349 people died last month after storms and torrential rain battered parts of the country.
Seasonal heavy rains and typhoons causes hundreds of deaths in China each year. But meteorologists have predicted this summer will be particularly bad, with warm Pacific currents causing more typhoons than usual.
Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich says America is in World War III and President Bush should say so. In an interview in Bellevue this morning Gingrich said Bush should call a joint session of Congress the first week of September and talk about global military conflicts in much starker terms than have been heard from the president.
"We need to have the militancy that says 'We're not going to lose a city,' " Gingrich said. He talks about the need to recognize World War III as important for military strategy and political strategy.
Gingrich said he is "very worried" about Republicans facing fall elections and says the party must have the "nerve" to nationalize the elections and make the 2006 campaigns about a liberal Democratic agenda rather than about President Bush's record.
Gingrich says that as of now Republicans "are sailing into the wind" in congressional campaigns. He said that's in part because of the Iraq war, adding, "Iraq is hard and painful and we do not explain it very well."
But some of it is due to Republicans' congressional agenda. He said House and Senate Republicans "forgot the core principle" of the party and embraced Congressional pork. "Some of the guys," he said, have come down with a case of "incumbentitis."
Gingrich said in the coming days he plans to speak out publicly, and to the Administration, about the need to recognize that America is in World War III.
He lists wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, this week's bomb attacks in India, North Korean nuclear threats, terrorist arrests and investigations in Florida, Canada and Britain, and violence in Israel and Lebanon as evidence of World War III. He said Bush needs to deliver a speech to Congress and "connect all the dots" for Americans.
He said the reluctance to put those pieces together and see one global conflict is hurting America's interests. He said people, including some in the Bush Administration, who urge a restrained response from Israel are wrong "because they haven't crossed the bridge of realizing this is a war."
"This is World War III," Gingrich said. And once that's accepted, he said calls for restraint would fall away:
"Israel wouldn't leave southern Lebanon as long as there was a single missile there. I would go in and clean them all out and I would announce that any Iranian airplane trying to bring missiles to re-supply them would be shot down. This idea that we have this one-sided war where the other team gets to plan how to kill us and we get to talk, is nuts."
There is a public relations value, too. Gingrich said that public opinion can change "the minute you use the language" of World War III. The message then, he said, is "'OK, if we're in the third world war, which side do you think should win?"
An historian, Gingrich said he has been studying recently how Abraham Lincoln talked to Americans about the Civil War, and what turned out to be a much longer and deadlier war than Lincoln expected.
Gingrich is here for fund raisers for Congressman Dave Reichert, 2nd District GOP challenger Doug Roulstone, and the state party. I talked to him in a hotel suite with a few of his and Reichert's staff.
Any time his name comes up here it's said that he once called Washington state "ground zero for the Republican revolution." Republicans saw huge gains in Washington in the 1994 mid-term elections, though they have largely decayed away.
"I think there is a reform oriented populism that is a key a component of Washington State's, if you will, culture or personality," he said. Voters here also got caught up in the national, anti-incumbent, anti-Democratic wave. The other thing that was different here, he said, was "that there was no place in America where talk radio was more enthusiastically favorable to the idea that it was time to try something new."
(Speaking of talk radio, waiting to go in to see Gingrich as I was leaving were KVI's John Carlson and Kirby Wilbur and William Maurer, an attorney with the Institute for Justice who has been backing the talk show hosts in the legal challenge against their on-air championing of an anti-tax initiative.)
With Republicans in control of Washington, D.C., it's Democrats who this year are hoping for a reform wave to sweep them into office. Democrats want to nationalize the election and make each congressional race about Bush, the Iraq war and the Republican agenda. Republicans have been trying to localize each race, as in Reichert's challenge from political newcomer Darcy Burner, and make the race about the qualifications and personalities of the candidates, not about a national agenda.
Gingrich says that's a mistake. Republicans, he says, should nationalize the contest, too. He said that yesterday he saw polling that gave him some optimism for the first time about this year's elections. He didn't say what state it was from, but it showed that Democratic incumbents' poll numbers crashed when tagged with the record of House Democrats.
He said that as Democrats make the elections about George Bush, Republicans should make it about House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco. He said voters need to be told "how weirdly San Francisco these guys are voting" and Democrats will "collapse in defeat."
"The line I think every Republican should use is, 'X knows their record, they just hope you don't,' which is actually the line I used in my winning race in '78. I'm a historian. I don't do anything new. I just imitate. I guarantee you there are 60 or 70 Democrats, if their districts thoroughly understood their record, they'd lose this year even though people aren't happy with Bush. Because people aren't suicidal. ..."
"While people understand that while they may be irritated with Republicans, we at least broadly share their values and visions and the left is just out of touch with reality. I think then you have a totally different debate by October, if we have the nerve to do it. ... There's going to be a national conversation in October. The only question is whether it's the Republicans defining it or whether we have some nutty idea that we can run local races, and so the entire definition is on the left."
UPDATE: I tried to get a comment today from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee but no one ever got back to me. This evening, Kelly Steele, spokesman for the state party, did respond and sent this e-mail:
This is classic - that Gingrich's solution to Bush's failed leadership is a different "marketing strategy" shows the true extent to which Republicans cannot be trusted to win the war on terror. Democrats believe we need a "tough and smart" strategy that makes 2006 a year of transition in Iraq and aggressively takes the fight to the terrorists, while Gingrich and Bush seek to elect a new crop of loyal rubberstamps - McGavick, Reichert, and Roulstone included - to blindly support and extend their monopoly on their "tough and dumb" conduct of the war in Iraq and the larger battle against global terrorism.
BRUSSELS - NATO named U.S. General Bantz Craddock, the soldier who oversees the controversial Guantanamo prison for terror suspects, as its top commander of operations on Friday, replacing outgoing U.S. General James Jones.
Craddock, chief of U.S. Southern Command, was proposed by
President George W. Bush as Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), the alliance said.
"The NATO Defense Planning Committee, which takes this decision, agreed but also expressed to General Jones, in the name of NATO governments, their gratitude for his distinguished service," the alliance said in a statement released in Brussels.
The United States typically appoints the NATO top commander of operations. Its civilian secretary-general, at present the Dutchman Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, comes from Europe. Craddock's appointment must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
As head of Miami-based U.S. Southern Command, Craddock oversees operations at the detention facility for foreign terror suspects at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
European officials and human rights activists have expressed deep concerns over the treatment of prisoners at the camp, which Bush said last month he wanted eventually to shut.
Craddock's appointment could shine the spotlight on NATO detention policy in Afghanistan, already an area of concern for some allies, as it readies to expand military operations into the violent south of the country around the end of the month.
CONCERNS OVER PRISONERS
U.S. forces have been accused of aggressive search tactics and their image was hit by reports of detainee abuse, including some deaths, at U.S. military detention centers in Afghanistan.
The separate NATO-led ISAF force which currently operates in the capital Kabul, west and north has been perceived as a pure peacekeeping force. But it recognizes the expansion into the south will bring it into more regular contact with insurgents.
Craddock last year rejected a recommendation by military investigators to discipline a former commander of the Guantanamo jail for failing to monitor and limit the interrogation of a detainee who they found had been degraded and abused.
Earlier this year Craddock said Guantanamo officials had strapped some detainees taking part in a hunger strike into "restraint chairs" during force-feeding and isolated them after determining some had been purposely vomiting the liquid they had been fed.
Craddock said that some detainees subsequently decided that taking part in the strike had become "too much of a hassle."
Prior to taking in 2004 the Southern Command post, which oversees U.S. military interests in Latin America, Craddock served as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's senior military assistant.
As NATO SACEUR, Jones sought to drive its reform from a Cold War giant to a body more able to mount rapid reaction operations outside the alliance's traditional boundaries.
Comment: The grunts on the front line get thrown in prison for abusing prisoners while their commander gets a promotion!
Kevin Mayhood
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Homeland Security agents took to Ohio streets the past week, arresting 154 undocumented immigrants.
The agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices in Boston, Philadelphia, Buffalo and Detroit came heavily armed and loaded with files and warrants for deportation.
They took in immigrants from 30 countries and every continent save Antarctica. Among those arrested, 82 were from Mexico, followed by 19 from El Salvador and seven from Mauritania.
The men and women had been caught entering the country illegally and were ordered to court but never showed or had been ordered deported but never left, authorities said. Twenty had been charged with crimes. One was a reputed member of the Mexican street gang MS13.
No recent event spurred the sweep, government officials said.
"Sept. 11 showed us that, to have security, we have to have an immigration system with integrity," said Marc A. Raimondi, national spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Most of the Sept. 11 terrorists had taken advantage of lax enforcement, he said.
"You can't have integrity if there is no consequence for abusing the laws or ignoring a court order."
Among those taken were immigrants who had been in the U.S. for a decade or more. They must leave homes, jobs and maybe children born here who are U.S. citizens.
"If they had complied and left 10 or 15 years ago, that wouldn't be the case," said Rob Baker, field office director in charge of detention and removal for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Ohio and Michigan.
He noted that, by the end of September, seven agents will be based permanently in Cleveland to cover such operations throughout Ohio.
James E. Brown Jr., a deportation officer for the Immigration Fugitives Operation Unit in Boston, said agents received leads from other law-enforcement agencies and by running database searches against immigration court files.
Once in Ohio, the agents tapped local police and sheriffs to help confirm identities and homes of the immigrants.
Agents looking for a Mexican man found he had a barbershop in his basement. There they arrested several waiting men who had no proper documents. More came through the door, were questioned and taken in as well.
The agents can check names against an immigration database that lists who is in the country legally, who has overstayed a visa and more, Baker said.
In all, the agents arrested 68 they'd sought and 86 they came across.
The arrested were taken to the Seneca County jail; 72 Mexicans have already been flown home. Agents escorted them and handed them over to authorities in their homelands.
The agents were within their legal rights, said Baldemar Velasquez, president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee and a founder of the Network of Immigrant Organizations in Ohio. "People who enter the country illegally have committed a misdemeanor.
"The effectiveness of how we use the resources of this country is another matter."
A policy that would allow those seeking work to register and obtain a permit and the ability to travel would go a long way toward solving the perceived immigration problem, he said.
The vast majority of those who come here would register, allowing the border patrols and inland agents to concentrate on criminals, Velasquez said.
The government and immigrant study centers estimate that 9 million to 12 million undocumented immigrants are in the United States.
If the goal is to remove them all, "it will take some time," Raimondi said.
Velasquez said, "As many years it takes to find them all, more will come over the border."
ROCK HILL, S.C. - Democrats pulled an Internet ad that showed flag-draped coffins Friday after Republicans and at least two Democrats demanded it be taken down on grounds the image was insensitive and not fit for a political commercial.
The ad by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee called for a "new direction" and displayed a staccato of images, including war scenes, pollution and breached levees as well as a photograph of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay doctored to look like a police mug shot.
The campaign committee replaced the ad with a radio commercial that targets Rep. John Hostetler, R-Ind., for opposing an increase in the minimum wage. Democrats have made a minimum wage increase a central theme of this year's election.
Democrats had featured the video ad for nearly two weeks on the DCCC Web site where it had gone largely unnoticed until Republicans began objecting to it this week. On Thursday, more than a dozen Republicans, many with military backgrounds, called on DCCC Chairman Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., to apologize. Democratic Reps. John Spratt of South Carolina and Chet Edwards of Texas asked Emanuel to pull or alter the ad.
"We're moving to another major effort that we're highlighting on our Web site," DCCC spokesman Bill Burton said.
In South Carolina, Spratt's Republican challenger, state Rep. Ralph Norman, commended the removal. It was "the right thing to do for the state, country and especially the brave men and women who serve in our military," said Norman's spokesman, Nathan Hollifield.
WASHINGTON - The Department of Homeland Security said on Sunday it was urging stepped-up vigilance for possible spillover from mounting Middle East violence.
"We urge vigilance during this heightened state of tension in the Middle East," although there was no specific or credible information suggesting an imminent threat to the United States, the department said in a joint assessment with the FBI.
The assessment went to federal, state and local authorities late Friday as well as to private sector leaders, department spokeswoman Michelle Petrovich said.
Five days of Israeli air strikes in Lebanon, after Hizbollah fighters seized two Israeli soldiers, have killed 140 people, all but four of them civilians. Hizbollah rockets killed eight people in the Israeli city of Haifa on Sunday.
By Edmund Conway, Economics Editor
The Telegraph
14/07/2006
The United States is heading for bankruptcy, according to an extraordinary paper published by one of the key members of the country's central bank.
A ballooning budget deficit and a pensions and welfare timebomb could send the economic superpower into insolvency, according to research by Professor Laurence Kotlikoff for the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, a leading constituent of the US Federal Reserve.
Prof Kotlikoff said that, by some measures, the US is already bankrupt. "To paraphrase the Oxford English Dictionary, is the United States at the end of its resources, exhausted, stripped bare, destitute, bereft, wanting in property, or wrecked in consequence of failure to pay its creditors," he asked.
According to his central analysis, "the US government is, indeed, bankrupt, insofar as it will be unable to pay its creditors, who, in this context, are current and future generations to whom it has explicitly or implicitly promised future net payments of various kinds''.
The budget deficit in the US is not massive. The Bush administration this week cut its forecasts for the fiscal shortfall this year by almost a third, saying it will come in at 2.3pc of gross domestic product. This is smaller than most European countries - including the UK - which have deficits north of 3pc of GDP.
Prof Kotlikoff, who teaches at Boston University, says: "The proper way to consider a country's solvency is to examine the lifetime fiscal burdens facing current and future generations. If these burdens exceed the resources of those generations, get close to doing so, or simply get so high as to preclude their full collection, the country's policy will be unsustainable and can constitute or lead to national bankruptcy.
"Does the United States fit this bill? No one knows for sure, but there are strong reasons to believe the United States may be going broke."
Experts have calculated that the country's long-term "fiscal gap" between all future government spending and all future receipts will widen immensely as the Baby Boomer generation retires, and as the amount the state will have to spend on healthcare and pensions soars. The total fiscal gap could be an almost incomprehensible $65.9 trillion, according to a study by Professors Gokhale and Smetters.
The figure is massive because President George W Bush has made major tax cuts in recent years, and because the bill for Medicare, which provides health insurance for the elderly, and Medicaid, which does likewise for the poor, will increase greatly due to demographics.
Prof Kotlikoff said: "This figure is more than five times US GDP and almost twice the size of national wealth. One way to wrap one's head around $65.9 trillion is to ask what fiscal adjustments are needed to eliminate this red hole. The answers are terrifying. One solution is an immediate and permanent doubling of personal and corporate income taxes. Another is an immediate and permanent two-thirds cut in Social Security and Medicare benefits. A third alternative, were it feasible, would be to immediately and permanently cut all federal discretionary spending by 143pc."
The scenario has serious implications for the dollar. If investors lose confidence in the US's future, and suspect the country may at some point allow inflation to erode away its debts, they may reduce their holdings of US Treasury bonds.
Prof Kotlikoff said: "The United States has experienced high rates of inflation in the past and appears to be running the same type of fiscal policies that engendered hyperinflations in 20 countries over the past century."
Paul Ashworth, of Capital Economics, was more sanguine about the coming retirement of the Baby Boomer generation. "For a start, the expected deterioration in the Federal budget owes more to rising per capita spending on health care than to changing demographics," he said.
"This can be contained if the political will is there. Similarly, the expected increase in social security spending can be controlled by reducing the growth rate of benefits. Expecting a fix now is probably asking too much of short-sighted politicians who have no incentives to do so. But a fix, or at least a succession of patches, will come when the problem becomes more pressing."
By LESLIE MILLER
Associated Press
Sat Jul 15, 2006
WASHINGTON - Roads and bridges built by U.S. taxpayers are starting to be sold off, and so far foreign-owned companies are doing the buying.
On a single day in June, an Australian-Spanish partnership paid $3.8 billion to lease the Indiana Toll Road. An Australian company bought a 99-year lease on Virginia's Pocahontas Parkway, and Texas officials decided to let a Spanish-American partnership build and run a toll road from Austin to Seguin for 50 years.
Few people know that the tolls from the U.S. side of the tunnel between Detroit and Windsor, Canada, go to a subsidiary of an Australian company - which also owns a bridge in Alabama.
Some experts welcome the trend. Robert Poole, transportation director for the conservative think tank Reason Foundation, said private investors can raise more money than politicians to build new roads because these kind of owners are willing to raise tolls.
"They depoliticize the tolling decision," Poole said. Besides, he said, foreign companies have purchased infrastructure in Europe for years; only now are U.S. companies beginning to get into the business of buying roads and bridges.
Gas taxes and user fees have fueled the expansion of the nation's highway system. Thousands of miles of roads built since the 1950s changed the landscape, accelerating the growth of suburbia and creating a reliance on motor vehicles to move freight, get to work and take vacations.
In 1956, President Eisenhower pushed to create the interstate highway system for a different: to move troops and tanks and evacuate civilians.
The Bush administration's plan to let a foreign company manage U.S. ports met a storm of protest in February. But plans to sell or lease highways to companies outside the United States have not met such resistance.
John Foote, senior fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, said the government can take over a highway in an emergency. But he objects to selling roads to raise cash.
But that is just what Chicago has done.
Last year, the city sold a 99-year lease on the eight-mile Chicago Skyway for $1.83 billion. The buyer was the same consortium that leased the Indiana Toll Road - Macquarie Infrastructure Group of Sydney, Australia, and Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte of Madrid, Spain.
Chicago used the money to pay off debt and fund road projects. Skyway tolls rose 50 cents, to $2.50; By 2017, they will reach $5.
The Indiana Toll Road lease is a better deal, Foote thinks, because the proceeds will pay for urgent projects such as road and bridge improvements.
That need is precisely why cities and states have begun to look to foreign investors.
Between 1980 and 2004, people drove 94 percent more highway miles, according to Federal Highway Administration statistics. But the number of new highway lane miles rose by only 6 percent.
Washington is not likely to produce more money to build roads. The federal highway fund - which will have a balance of about $16 billion by the end of 2006 - will run out in 2009 or 2010, according to White House and congressional estimates.
About half the states now let companies build and operate roads. Many changed their laws recently to do so.
So Illinois lawmakers are examining privatizing the Illinois Tollway, New Jersey lawmakers are considering selling 49 percent of the state's two big toll roads and a gubernatorial candidate in Ohio wants to sell the turnpike.
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who championed his state's toll road deal, now wants investors to build and operate a toll road from Indianapolis to Evansville.
Patrick Bauer, the Indiana House's Democratic leader, says such deals are taxpayer rip-offs.
Bauer believes Macquarie-Cintra could make $133 billion over the 75-year life of the Indiana Toll Road lease - for which Indiana got $3.8 billion.
"In five, maybe 10 years, all that money is gone, and the tolls keep rising and the money keeps flowing into the foreign coffers," Bauer said.
Orange County, Calif., got burned by a toll-road lease for a different reason.
The road, part of state Route 91, was built and run for $130 million by California Private Transportation Company, partly owned by France-based Compagnie Financiere et Industrielle des Autoroutes. The toll road opened in 1995.
Seven years later, Orange County was looking at gridlock. But it could not build more roads because of a provision in the lease. So it bought back the lease - for $207.5 million.
To encourage more domestic investment in highways, former Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta made a pitch to Wall Street on May 23.
"The time is now for United States investors - including our financial, construction and engineering institutions - to get involved in transportation investments," said Mineta, who left office July 7.
U.S. companies are getting the message.
San Antonio-based Zachry Construction Co., along with Cintra, received approval on June 29 for a 50-year lease to build and run a toll road from Austin to Seguin for $1.3 billion.
That is part of Texas Gov. Rick Perry's vision to attract more than $80 billion in private funds for roads by 2030. He wants a new tollway from Oklahoma to Mexico and the Gulf Coast, and one from Shreveport, La., and Texarkana to Mexico. Cintra-Zachry reached a $7.2 billion deal last year to develop the project's first phase. The announcement of a $1.3 billion deal in June was part of that $7.2 billion agreement, said Perry's spokesman, Robert Black.
"In Texas, our population is going to double in the next 40 years and our current infrastructure can't handle that growth," Black said.
Not everyone in Texas buys the idea. Harris County officials recently voted against selling three toll roads. Also, independent gubernatorial candidate Carole Keeton Strayhorn opposes Perry's toll road plan.
"Texas freeways belong to Texans, not foreign companies," she said.
By STACEY PLAISANCE
Associated Press
Sat Jul 15, 2006
NEW ORLEANS - After two days of getting his first up-close look at post-Katrina New Orleans, Brad Pitt said Friday he was shocked at the devastation that remains almost a year later.
"I was not prepared," the actor said, describing how he drove for miles and saw street after street of devastation.
Pitt was in New Orleans to give an update on a project he's promoting - a competition to choose ecologically sound designs for rebuilding neighborhoods.
"There's a big opportunity here," he said, to rebuild the city using energy-efficient building materials and appliances that would improve quality of life, particularly in low-income communities.
Global Green USA, a national environmental organization, is working with Pitt on the design project. Pitt heads a jury of architects, city residents and others who decided Friday on the top five environmentally friendly designs out of more than 100 entries. The designs were submitted by individuals and architect firms.
He admits the new designs, which use energy-saving materials such as metal roofing and recycled textiles, might not reflect the historic architecture often found in New Orleans. But, he said, it's time to look to the future.
"It's impossible to replicate the past," Pitt said. "The original designs are really good. They're really efficient." But, he added, "we can do better."
Design project finalists are to be announced Monday.
Global Green USA is also providing technical assistance in green standards for 10,000 buildings in New Orleans. It opened a resource center in the city last month to give residents free design advice and information about environmentally friendly building products and strategies.
Pitt was not asked about his girlfriend or their three children. Personal questions were put off limits by a publicist for Global Green who said the news conference would be ended if such questions were asked.
"It wouldn't have ended it. It just wouldn't have been a question that we would have answered," Global Green communications director Ruben Aronin said later.
HILLSBORO, Ore. - A vintage British fighter jet crashed into a densely populated neighborhood near an airport during an air show Sunday afternoon, exploding, destroying a home and killing the pilot.
Fire officials said no residents or others on the ground were hurt.
The 1951 jet was taking off from the Hillsboro Airport to return to California when it went down, said Connie King, a spokeswoman for the Hillsboro Fire Department.
The jet slammed into a house at 4:28 p.m. and destroyed it, she said. No one was home at the time, she said. The pilot's name was not immediately released.
Another house with people inside sustained "significant damage," but no one was hurt, King said. The attic exterior of a third house was damaged, and there was fire damage in the yard of another, she said.
A firefighter was treated at a local hospital for heat exhaustion and released.
Ed Kerbs, a neighborhood resident, was hosting an air show party on his lawn when the plane went down.
"As it came in, it pitched up its nose and it looked like he was trying to stay afloat," Kerbs said. "I was talking to a buddy of mine and I said 'Hey, he's flying way too low; he's not going to make it.' And then there was a plume of smoke and a bang."
Diana Halvorson, who lives on the street where the plane crashed, said she and her family ran to a neighbor's house when they saw flames.
"It was a noise, a huge, huge, noise," she said. The flames "shot up like a bolt of lightning."
The plane crashed toward the end of the two-day Hillsboro International Air Show, where the plane had been on display, but did not perform, said Steve Callaway, an air show board member.
The Federal Aviation Administration provided a tail number that indicated the plane was registered to Robert Guilford, 73, an aviation attorney from Southern California.
According to information on his law firm's Web site, Guilford has been flying planes since 1961. But authorities would not say if he was piloting the plane Sunday. His law firm, Baum Hedlund, did not return a page Sunday.
Air show organizers canceled the show immediately after the crash. It was the first crash in the show's 19-year history.
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