"But at least let us have no more nonsense about defending liberty against Fascism. If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. The common people still vaguely subscribe to that doctrine and act on it... it is the liberals who fear liberty and the intellectuals who want to do dirt on the intellect..."This Preface was censored when the book came out in 1945 and it was only published in The Times Literary Supplement on 15 September 1972. Twenty seven years after Animal Farm was first published.
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Editorial: Annexation, ethnic cleansing continue amid Zen-like calm from Western media
Lenins Tomb
25/07/2006
You remember how quickly the driving out of the Lebanese population from the area south of the Litani and the annexation of the land became 'buffer zone'? Mark how rapidly the 'buffer zone' has become 'civil administration'. See the Jerusalem Post:
OC Northern Command Maj.-Gen. Udi Adam acknowledged in a briefing at Northern Command headquarters in Safed on Sunday afternoon that the commander of the IDF's civil administration unit had already begun preparations toward the possibility of instituting a military administration in areas captured by the IDF over the last week.
According to Adam, "certain units who will give us breathing space have been called up, including the commander of that unit." The unit's activation, however, would only take place following comprehensive consultations, he said.Yes, "comprehensive consultations" - now, which of the hundreds of thousands of people they've driven out of their homes in the latest episode of Zionist barbarism do you suppose they'll put the questionnaire to? Is it too late for a referendum on this?
In Israel itself, the very thought that they should Let Lebanon Live is a minority position held by cranks and peaceniks, especially since the hated UN is in town making obsequious pleas and expressing shock that "block after block" of civilian housing has simply been destroyed, blasted to simmering husks. The UN? The UN lets Syria in it, and other evil-doers, and don't they loathe the Jewish State? Is it not, in fact, part of the global conspiracy? As the commenters to this story say, isn't it time to blow up the UN?
So as the brutal destruction of Lebanon continues, Shin Bet warns of a mini-Lebanon in Gaza. This repellent warning comes from the state that tells the media: "don't count the dead", while claiming to have knocked out two rocket launchers in the repeatedly blitzed Tyre which, reporters on the ground have already confirmed, has no rocket launchers because it is too far to the north. This from the state that bombs convoys and fleeing vehicles and destroys main roads to block emergency vehicles while blowing up medicine facilities. Yet more fleeing people wasted. This from the state that drops leaflets on those who are soon to die, warning them that they must stay away from houses used to store weapons (in Gaza) and rocket installations (in Lebanon) or they will be bombed. There is already Lebanon in Gaza, and already Gaza in Lebanon.
***A case study in self-deception: Nick Cohen in today's Observer moaning about the demise of 'interventionism'. He wonders why liberals do not wish to send troops from surrounding countries, from the UK and US to Lebanon under UN auspices to "separate the two sides". He adds that there is a "powerful argument" from the Zionists, whom he once abhorred, that says that if they withdraw from occupied territory, it will be used by Hamas and Hezbollah to launch rocket attacks. Surely therefore and international force could sort them out and provide the model for a withdrawal from Gaza "in safety".
This is a curious sequence of arguments (I speak in the broadest possible terms): Israel attacks Lebanon so we must "separate the two sides" rather than stop providing financial, military and diplomatic support for one side; Israel claims it will be attacked if it ceases marauding and murdering and thieving in territories it occupies, as if rocket attacks from Hezbollah and Palestinian groups were not a response to Israeli crimes, and so since Israel must be right, Israel's backers must step in to secure those areas for it. One could spend hours picking apart the ideological knots that Cohen has tied himself up into, but I have some better things to do and no desire to free him from his self-imposed bondage. However, it is worth noting:
1) the extraoardinary lengths of circumlocution to which Cohen will go in order to avoid the reality that this is interventionism. Craig Murray, who has sat across a table from Cohen once or twice in the past, writes that British diplomats are working overtime to prevent a ceasefire - they are intervening, in other words, to ensure Israel's destruction of Lebanon continues;
2) the pungent racism involved, in which imperialist states must, instead of ceasing to engage in imperialism, instead of ceasing to prop up local bullies and thugs as extensions of their power, 'intervene' to suppress the inherent barbarism of the Middle East. Cohen reminds us of the multinational force that was driven out of Lebanon by Hezbollah and bemoans the fact that few international forces would want to go in and face that again, but the thought of what those forces did and why the Lebanese did not wish to be occupied by a multilateral mission force simply doesn't occur to him;
3) the deep trauma of Iraq in Cohen's conscience. Evidently at some loss to say something good about the occupation, he babbles about Iraqi democrats (by which he means the occupation's supporters), and avers that the reason no one will 'intervene' here is because of Iraq, and the awful stigma of mass murder, torture, rape, US death squads and so on that antiwar protesters have conferred on it. In Cohen's imagination, "Generals" resile from combat if Al Qaeda are involved, while "liberals" are insufficiently apprised of the threat of "barbarism" and too much apprised of the threat of Bushism. To put it another way, Generals are too soft to like smacking foreigners around any more, because they're too scared of Al Qaeda, and liberals are too soft to smack them around because they're too scared of Bush. If only the military men weren't so chicken shit and the antiwar protesters weren't so, well, antiwar, then all would be well in Palestine.
***
Speaking of racism, have a look at this BBC story:
The children's father paces the hospital corridor. His dress, language, beard and the fact that he was "elsewhere" when the attack occurred, all indicate he may be a member of Hezbollah.
This describes a father whose family has been attacked by Israeli fire in Rmeich, a Christian village where they had fled to in the hope of finding safety. They decided to travel back to Tyre by car when they found Rmeich being targeted as well - and the car was blown up. The odious insinuation of that quote, that the family was targeted because the father "may be" a member of Hezbollah - because he has a fucking beard and looks religious - is galling enough. But the other insinuation is that the father's absence is indicative of guilt, that being away from one's children for a period of time is unusual and must suggest that he is a fighter and - what? - that he stayed away from the car and let his kids cop it? What's next? "The man's bad bwoy looks, bling bling, ethnic mannerisms and the fact that he was 'elsewhere' when the police shot his family up suggested that he may be a yardie"?
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Editorial: That right-wing logic
Dave Neiwert
Orcinus
My dad is always sending me crappy e-mail jokes. You know the kind: dependent on stereotypes, often predicated on violent fantasies, and utterly devoid of wit or insight. I think everyone has someone in their family like this.
I love my dad, though, and am content to have him send me these things. It's kind of a way of staying in touch.
So last week he sends me this joke. It depends on the usual stereotypes (this time about rural hicks and professors), but ...
- Two South Texas farmers, Jim and Bob, are sitting at their favorite bar, drinking beer. Jim turns to Bob and says, "You know, I'm tired of going through life without an education. Tomorrow I think I'll go to the community college, and sign up for some classes."
Bob thinks it's a good idea, and the two leave.
The next day, Jim goes down to the college and meets Dean of Admissions, who signs him up for the four basic classes: Math, English, History, and Logic.
"Logic?" Jim says. "What's that?"
The dean says, "I'll show you. Do you own a weed eater?"
"Yeah."
"Then logically speaking, because you own a weedeater, I think that you would have a yard."
"That's true, I do have a yard."
"I'm not done," the dean says. "Because you have a yard, I think logically that you would have a house."
"Yes, I do have a house." "And because you have a house, I think that you might logically have a family."
"Yes, I have a family."
"I'm not done yet. Because you have a family, then logically you must have a wife."
"And because you have a wife, then logic tells me you must be a heterosexual."
"I am a heterosexual. That's amazing, you were able to find out all of that because I have a weed eater."
Excited to take the class now, Jim shakes the Dean's hand and leaves to go meet Bob at the bar.
He tells Bob about his classes, how he signed up for Math, English, History, and Logic.
"Logic?" Bob says, "What's that?"
Jim says, "I'll show you. Do you have a weed eater?"
"No."
"Then you're a queer."
OK, so I laughed at this one. Because this is what passes for logic not just among rural hicks, but nearly the entire right wing in this country.
[FWIW: In strictly logical terms, the joke illustrates a false syllogism, or more precisely, a failed enthymeme. A simple Venn diagram would make clear how it fails.]
This is true not just when it comes to sexual politics and cultural assumptions. It's also true of nearly every other issue that the American right confronts these days:
-- Worried about global warming? You're the same as the Nazis!
-- Opposed to the war in Iraq? You're "objectively pro-Saddam". Even if it turns out later you were right.
-- So you object to nativist scapegoating in the immigration debate? You must be part of the "open borders crowd" willing to surrender our national sovereignty to the "Reconquistas"!
-- You think Joe Lieberman is an out-of-touch Democrat who needs to be replaced? You must be an angry liberal blogger!
-- Think President Bush overstepped his constitutional bounds by ignoring the law and ordering surveillance of American citizens? You must by a traitor who wants to harm national security!
The list, and the beat, goes on and on.
And you were wondering why so much of our modern discourse resembles Bizarro World? Wonder no more.
Original
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Editorial: Lebanese Doctor Says 'Phosphorus Weapons' Cause Suffering
Signs of the Times
CNN Video
25/07/2006
CNN video correspondent, Karl Penhaul, follows a family that had been mistakenly caught in an Israeli air strike. The doctor treating the family says that there is phosphorus in the weapons that cause extremely painful burns on its victims.
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A Time to Speak
American media unquestioningly defends Israeli violence
By David Walsh
21 July 2006
Over the past week, the American mass media has obediently fallen into line in defense of Israeli violence and aggression. As hundreds of civilians have died in Lebanon and an estimated half a million been made homeless by Israeli bombs and shells, the US media has consistently painted the conflict as a defensive action by the Zionist regime against provocations by "terrorists."
The American public is deliberately being kept ignorant about the history and reality of the situation in the Middle East, as part of the combined effort by Washington and Tel Aviv to impose their brutal will on the people of the region.
The major television networks and cable channels, through which much of the population receives its information about world events, have played an especially foul role in concealing the real political and social questions. To watch the television news channels and network news programs for a single afternoon and evening is largely to bathe in ignorance and reaction.
This begins with the manner in which the Middle East conflict is portrayed. The language and phrases used are carefully calibrated to conform to the arguments of the Israeli government and its sponsors in the US.
The television news programs inevitably present the current conflict as a struggle between Israel and "terrorists." Right-winger and xenophobe Lou Dobbs of CNN, for example, on Wednesday evening, in the course of a one-hour program, repeats this thought no less than eight times: "Israel tonight is stepping up its offensive against terrorists in Gaza," "Israeli troops tonight are fighting Hezbollah terrorists in one of the biggest ground battles of this conflict," "Hezbollah terrorists tonight are firing a barrage of rockets at cities and towns in northern Israel," and so forth (from CNN transcripts).
Without fail, as well, any reference to the fighting must place the blame for its eruption on Hamas and Hezbollah, not long-term Israeli ambitions. Bob Schieffer, on the CBS Evening News Wednesday, for example, almost in passing, refers to Hezbollah as the group that "started the trouble in Lebanon." Tucker Carlson of MSNBC explains that Hezbollah "sparked the conflict." On CNN, Miles O'Brien comments, "At the same time, Israeli troops have moved into central Gaza. Six Palestinians killed in that offensive. That operation began last month after Palestinian militants kidnapped an Israeli soldier."
No hint emerges from any of the television news programs that underlying the massive Israeli operation might be geopolitical aims, that what we see unfolding is an operation that has been long in the planning and only waiting for a pretext. Such a possibility is not even suggested.
The news on American television is nothing but propaganda. It has, in fact, a totalitarian character. No effort is made to educate the public. The news is delivered for the most part by ignorant individuals, unaware of history and social reality, simply repeating lines fed to them.
When there is any question about the nature and scope of the current operation in Lebanon and Gaza, the television news programs simply turn to the State Department or the Israeli government itself for clarification.
For example, when is an invasion not an invasion? When the Tel Aviv regime says so. O'Brien of CNN, on the Israeli incursion into Lebanon, July 19: "Israeli troops are on that side. They say it's not an invasion, they say it's part of an effort to root-out Hezbollah bunkers, strongholds and those rockets which continue to besiege the northern part of Israel."
And when is the destruction of a country's infrastructure no such thing? Also when the Israelis say so. Israel is not responsible for the destruction of bridges, roads, tunnels, apartment complexes, port facilities, factories. The "terrorists" are responsible. Israeli hands could not be cleaner. A parade of Zionist government officials appears on American television: on Wednesday alone, Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres (to borrow a phrase from Philip Roth, speaking with "all the cold authority of that voice dipped in sludge"), former prime ministers Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, Israeli ambassador to the US, Dan Gillerman.
All the veteran Israeli leaders have blood on their hands. They bandy about the word "terrorist," but the state of Israel was formed through explicitly terrorist means and the various political figures have personally participated in or presided over deadly military operations against the Palestinian, Lebanese and Jordanian populations.
They are all well-trained practitioners of the Big Lie-that tiny Israel is under siege from its barbarous Arab neighbors. They know the "hot buttons" to push. They interact with their US interviewers like members of the same club. Israel, they seem to suggest, is "America in the Middle East," practically the 51st state.
Peres appears at least twice on US television Wednesday, on "Hardball with Chris Matthews" on MSNBC and "Larry King Live" on CNN. Both interviewers are deferential to the veteran war criminal. Peres claims to King, "Israel didn't start the war. Israel didn't attack anybody. We gave back to Lebanon all the land, all the water.... We were living for six years in total peace. We didn't hurt anybody."
Peres, of course, is lying. Israeli history in relation to Lebanon is one of provocation, violence and criminality. Before Israel's establishment, Zionist leaders envisioned a greater Israel that would include the southern portion of Lebanon as far as the Litani River (perhaps Israel's military goal today in any invasion). In the 1950s, the Israeli government considered the fracturing of Lebanon, the establishment of a Christian state and the annexation of the southern part of the country.
Between 1968 and 1974, the Lebanese army recorded more than 3,000 violations of Lebanese territory by Israeli armed forces; 880 Palestinians and Lebanese were killed in the attacks. Some 150 Palestinian camps and villages in southern Lebanon were razed and olive groves and crops destroyed.
In March 1978, Israel invaded Lebanon, killing more than 2,000 people and making some 250,000 homeless. In one of the most gruesome crimes of modern times, the Israelis allowed their allies in the fascist Southern Lebanon Army to enter the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla in September 1982, where the latter carried out the slaughter of an estimated 2,000 men, women and children. An Israeli inquiry later found that Defense Minister Ariel Sharon bore "personal responsibility" for the massacre. The Israeli military proceeded to occupy southern Lebanon for another 18 years, during which time countless Lebanese and Palestinians suffered at their hands.
For the American television networks, however, history began when Hamas guerrillas seized a single Israeli soldier on June 25.
Defense of civilian deaths
On Wednesday, Netanyahu, the extreme right-winger beloved of the neo-fascists in the Republican Party, defends the killing of civilians to MSNBC's Tucker Carlson. In keeping with the Zionist regime's line (and the line of every imperialist bully), civilian deaths are the fault of the "terrorists," who insist on mingling with the general population. "If you have to take out a rocket emplacement in a crowded neighborhood, you have to do it," explains Netanyahu, to which Carlson audibly adds, "That's right." Carlson is an empty-headed yuppie, formerly of CNN where he was most famous for his bow tie, who suggested in 2001 that torture "may be the lesser of two evils."
When Lebanese casualties are mentioned by the television news, they are inevitably balanced by reports of Israeli deaths and wounded, as though the figures were equivalent. On Wednesday afternoon, the Fox News Channel's John Gibson, a fanatical right-winger, intones, "Hezbollah attacked the holy city of Nazareth," where a rocket killed two Israeli Arabs. The various news commentators are astounded to learn that local residents blame Israel, first, for not providing bomb shelters for the predominantly Arab population, and, second, for launching its attacks on Gaza and Lebanon.
"Hundreds dead, more than a thousand wounded, half a million displaced" proclaim the various anchormen and women, not bothering to explain that the overwhelming majority of those suffering are Lebanese civilians. With a vast military preponderance, the Israelis are targeting a virtually defenseless population. Wednesday witnesses the highest daily toll of civilian casualties yet, with some 70 killed, and this fact is barely mentioned.
If the American television networks had the slightest honesty, they would have begun their news programs Wednesday with the fact that Louise Arbour of the UN High Commission on Human Rights suggested that Israel might be guilty of war crimes. She declared that the obligation to protect civilians during hostilities is entrenched in international law, "which defines war crimes and crimes against humanity." Moreover, she argued that individual political leaders could find themselves charged with war crimes, adding, "I think one must issue a sobering signal to those who are behind these initiatives to examine very closely their personal exposure," she told the BBC.
The International Red Cross, the enforcer of the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war, also declared Wednesday that Israel had violated the principle of proportionality provided for in the Conventions and their protocols.
US television reports none of this on Wednesday.
The fighting is invariably described as "fierce exchanges between Hezbollah guerillas and the Israelis," again, as though there were some sort of equivalence between the Islamic movement's Katyusha rockets and mortars, and the Zionist military's F-16 bombers, Apache helicopter gunships, artillery, tanks and armored personnel carriers.
Almost unavoidably, glimpses of the truth appear on American television news programs. Certain reporters on the spot in Lebanon, obviously affected by the mass suffering, provide some picture of what life is like under the Israeli siege.
Nic Robertson of CNN reports on the bombing of a food distribution warehouse in Beirut, which burns for hours. He warns of a "humanitarian crisis in the making," with half a million people out of a population of 4 million displaced, "airports bombed, ports blockaded." Cooking gas is difficult to find, he reports, and food will run out. CBS News carries a report from southern Lebanon-a father has lost two children to an Israeli bomb. Over the bomb crater, the father demands to know, "Do you see Hezbollah fighters here?" David Wright of ABC News notes, "Civilians have borne the weight of this war."
One of the most moving encounters appears on ABC, with an Ethiopian woman, who works as a maid in Beirut. The young woman is crying, obviously terrified, cowering in a doorway. The reporter notes, with sympathy, "No ship is coming for her."
The hostility of the Lebanese population to the Israeli war and the backing of the resistance cannot be entirely evaded. CBS News notes that Hezbollah is "drawing support from the war meant to destroy it." Even a Fox News report from a park in Beirut, where the homeless are camped out, has to admit that there are "no hard feelings toward Hezbollah." An aid worker tells the Fox reporter, "the refugees here adore Hezbollah."
A British ITN report on the devastation of Lebanon, shown on MSNBC, however, is the most forthright piece of reporting to appear on the US television networks Wednesday.
Genuine bloodthirstiness also raises its head. Carlson of MSNBC casually asks the former prime minister Netanyahu if the latter doesn't think it would be a good idea if Israel were to bomb Syria. Carlson likes the question so much, he asks it twice on his program.
Billionaire reactionary Steve Forbes, who sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, appears on Fox News to advocate "letting 'em fight" in the Middle East. Crushing Hezbollah will be good for stocks, we learn.
Brit Hume of Fox News somewhat mournfully asks his usual panel of Fred Barnes, Mort Kondracke and Mara Liasson "how long can the US hold out" against the pictures of refugees and devastation in Lebanon before it is forced to pressure Israel into considering a ceasefire. Not long, they regretfully reply.
The Israeli embassy, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the entire Zionist lobbying enterprise expend vast amount of time and money to intervene in and manipulate the US media. The lobbying in and of itself would not be successful if its aims did not coincide with American imperialist policy. Apart from that, the pro-Israel operation would simply be considered a criminal conspiracy.
How else to explain certain stories that suddenly appear on each television network and cable channel simultaneously? On Wednesday, for example, the various American news programs, as though on cue, run stories on the supposed threat posed by Hezbollah terrorist attacks in the US.
Each of the networks or channels treats the story with its own particular touch. Rupert Murdoch's Fox News pulls no punches. "Your World with Neil Cavuto," an afternoon program, asks Wednesday, "Are Hezbollah cells a bigger threat than Al-Qaeda?" Brian Levin, "terror analyst," and Wayne Simmons, a former CIA operative, unsurprisingly, answer in the affirmative. Simmons suggests, without providing a shred of evidence, that Hezbollah is "much more of a threat than Al-Qaeda." Fox subsequently runs a headline, "FBI hunts for Hezbollah sleeper cells inside US."
Not to be outdone, CNN asks its viewers, to most of whom the question has no doubt never occurred before: "How concerned are you about Hezbollah attacks in the US?" The cable channel's Wolf Blitzer, formerly the Jerusalem Post correspondent in Washington, warns of "fears that Hezbollah is going to hit the US."
The CBS Evening News with Bob Schieffer also introduces the allegation with a sensational headline, "Hezbollah in the US," only later to half-debunk the story by pointing out that Hezbollah supporters in the US have never been charged or suspected of any terrorist attacks.
Another carefully coordinated story appears on CNN and other channels Wednesday: about a group of American Jews emigrating to Israel. CNN reports, "For Jehuda Saar, a father of three, the fighting only strengthened his resolve to pick up his family and leave New Jersey." Saar comments, "Without shooting one bullet, without holding a gun, we're Israel's best weapon against any detractor, anyone that wants to destroy Israel." However, 22-year-old Steven Rubin is more than eager to "shoot bullets" and "hold a gun"; he plans to join the Israeli army.
Rubin tells CNN that the current fighting "only makes me want to go there more. And it validates everything I've been thinking for the existence of the state of Israel to see how important everything is at this point." More than a few of Israel's most fanatical settlers come from Brooklyn, Queens, New Jersey and Long Island.
Conveniently, Arye Mekel, Israeli Consul General is on hand for the departure of the group of émigrés at Kennedy Airport in New York. He tells CNN: "For us, for Israel, it's a huge boost to our morale, feeling that fellow Jews around the world are not deterred."
One afternoon, one evening of US television news...
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Schwarzenegger: All of California stands with Israel
Ynet News
25/07/2006
[...] The street was packed with people and it was difficult to see where it ended. Large police forces guarded the area and prevented a handful of Arab supporters of Hizbullah and Hamas from approaching the demonstration.
Speakers included California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Wiesenthal Institute Head Rabbi Marvin Hier, Israel's General Consul Ehud Danoch, rabbis from all streams of Judaism and heads of Christian churches.
The speakers harshly condemned Hizbullah, Hamas, Iran and Syria, and stressed Israel's right to self-defense.
Comment: Arnie, in a thick Austrian accent, was heard to say: "In the movies, I was the terminator, but now we must terminate the Lebanese!"
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Democrats blast Maliki on Israel statements
Tue Jul 25, 2006
Reuters
Congressional Democrats voiced alarm on Tuesday over Iraq's denunciation of Israel in the Mideast conflict, and some said Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's upcoming address to Congress should be canceled unless he apologizes.
A group of House of Representatives Democrats was circulating a letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert urging the Illinois Republican to secure an apology from Maliki or cancel the address on Wednesday to a joint meeting of Congress.
Ron Bonjean, Hastert's spokesman, said there was no intention to cancel Maliki's speech, and accused Democrats of "political gamesmanship during an election year."
Iraq's U.S.-backed government on Saturday denounced Israel's "criminal" raids on Lebanon and Gaza and warned that violence could escalate across the Middle East.
Senate Democrats in a letter to Maliki said his failure to condemn Hizbollah's "aggression and recognize Israel's right to defend itself raise serious questions about whether Iraq under your leadership can play a constructive role in resolving the current crisis and bringing stability to the Middle East."
With more than 2,500 U.S. service members killed in the Iraq conflict, more than 18,000 wounded and more than $300 billion in U.S. tax dollars spent, the Senate Democrats said, "Americans deserve to know whether Iraq in an ally in these fights."
Comment: Do you notice anything wrong with this article? "Democrats" denouncing a condemnation of Israel? Isn't that the Republican's job? But we forget, any semblance of a two-party political system in the US has long since been eradicated by the "war on terror" wherein all US politicians are mindless warmongers
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US Concerned Israel Not Hitting Hezbollah Hard Enough
July 24, 2006 4:00 p.m. EST
Ryan R. Jones - All Headline News Correspondent
(AHN) - Israel's offensive against Hezbollah is seriously lacking in the kind of "shock and awe" employed by US forces against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and threatens to end with a nominal victory for the Lebanese terror group.
President George W. Bush has stated his belief that the root cause of the current conflict must be dealt with in order to reach a lasting resolution, and has been seen to be giving Israel a free hand against Hezbollah in line with that premise. But senior American defense analysts feel Israel is squandering the opportunity.
World Tribune quoted one unnamed analyst as saying, "There's no shock and awe here. Hezbollah has been hurt but has managed to continue."
They noted that Israel appeared to be imitating the strategy used by US-led NATO forces against Serbia and the regime of Slobodan Milosovic in 1999, but warned that formula would not work against Hezbollah.
"I can't see this as a successful strategy. In Yugoslavia, NATO had all the time in the world. Israel can't count on more than two weeks," said another analyst.
Hezbollah is expected to declare victory if it survives this fight, regardless of the damage done to its infrastructure.
Comment: Let's deal with the "root cause of the conflict" then! Israel is occupying Arab land and is continuing to persecute Palestinian and now Lebanese civilians!!!!!!
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Rice holds talks with Israeli PM
Tuesday, 25 July 2006, 08:36 GMT 09:36 UK
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is holding talks in Jerusalem with Israeli PM Ehud Olmert as she seeks to ease Israel's conflict with Lebanon.
As the talks began, Mr Olmert declared there would be no let up in the campaign against Hezbollah.
Mr Olmert said he was "very conscious" of the humanitarian needs of Lebanon's civilians, but insisted Israel was defending itself against terrorism.
Israeli troops are battling Hezbollah militants in Bint Jbeil inside Lebanon.
Israeli army radio says its troops are preparing to complete their takeover of the border town, a stronghold of Hezbollah militants, which has been the scene of a fierce battle since the Israelis took the nearby village of Maroun al-Ras on Saturday.
The BBC's Martin Asser in Tyre, on the Lebanese coast, says there is heavy bombardment of the hills south of the city both from Israel and from the sea.
Overnight a Lebanese family of seven in Nabatiyeh was killed when an Israeli missile struck their house, Lebanese officials said.
Mr Olmert said Israel was not at war with the Lebanese people, but with Hezbollah, which he described as a terrorist organisation, insisting that Israel would take the "most severe measures" against it.
'Durable solution'
Israel has recently signalled that it would be prepared to see a strengthened international peacekeeping force sent into southern Lebanon.
But the BBC's Jonathan Beale in Jerusalem says there is still plenty of scepticism about whether such a force would have the mandate and the political backing to take on Hezbollah.
Ms Rice has also been highlighting the need for Israel to consider the humanitarian needs of both Lebanon and the Palestinian people.
"The people of this region, Israeli, Lebanese, indeed Palestinian have lived too long in fear and in terror and in violence," she said.
"A durable solution will be one that strengthens the forces of peace and democracy in this region. It is time for a new Middle East, it is time to say to those who do not want a different kind of Middle East that we will prevail; they will not."
'No outright criticism'
Following her surprise visit to Beirut on Monday, in which she held talks with Lebanon's Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, she has been stressing the importance that innocent civilians should not be harmed.
However, our correspondent says there is no suggestion that she will tell Mr Olmert that Israel must halt its military operations, or that she will make any public criticism of Israel's actions.
The BBC's World Affairs Editor John Simpson in Jerusalem says it is understood that Ms Rice is telling Israel that the US will allow it more time to continue its military operations against Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon.
Some 380 Lebanese and up to 40 Israelis have died in 14 days of conflict, which began after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on 12 July.
'Hezbollah cowardice'
The UN's aid chief Jan Egeland has accused Israel of using excessive force, but on Monday he accused of Hezbollah of contributing to the problem by what he called "cowardly blending in among women and children".
"I heard there was a statement they were proud they had lost very few fighters, and that it was the civilians bearing the brunt of this. I don't think you want to be proud of having many more children and women than armed men [killed]," Mr Egeland said, speaking in Beirut.
The UN has launched a $150m (£81m) aid appeal for Lebanon and the US has announced its own $30m package to ease the suffering of civilians.
Mr Egeland said the money was needed to help feed and shelter about 800,000 civilians caught up in the conflict.
About $24m was on behalf on Unicef for children who have been displaced inside Lebanon or who have fled to Syria.
Mr Egeland said he was asking the Israelis for safe passage for aid ships to enter the ports of Tripoli and Tyre.
A White House spokesperson said the US was also working with Israeli and Lebanese officials to open up humanitarian corridors in Lebanon, after President George W Bush promised ships and helicopters to provide aid to Lebanon.
The EU has already pledged $12.6m in aid while on Monday the UK increased its pledge to £5m.
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Annan, Rice intensify diplomatic efforts to end conflict in Lebanon
Last Updated Mon, 24 Jul 2006 10:32:05 EDT
CBC News
Diplomatic efforts to end hostilities in Lebanon intensified Monday with the UN secretary general saying he's going to Rome to try to broker a peace deal, and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice making a surprise visit to Beirut.
Kofi Annan said he will attend the international conference in Italy Wednesday where he hopes a peace plan will be established that includes a ceasefire, the release of two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah and the deployment of an international force in southern Lebanon.
"There are many ideas being put forward. I have my own ideas. The Americans have ideas. The Egyptians have put forward proposals and I'm sure by the time we get to Rome, others will come forward with ideas," Annan said.
Annan said it's important that "we don't walk away empty-handed and once again dash the hopes of those caught in this conflict."
Rice will also attend the summit in Rome, along with foreign ministers from Israel, Lebanon, the European Union, the United Nations and a number of Arab states.
Rice, who is on a diplomatic mission to the Mideast, was in Beirut to meet Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, who greeted her with a kiss on both cheeks.
Siniora said he was pleased Rice decided to visit Lebanon and his government would like to "put an end to the war that is being inflicted on Lebanon."
But he also told Rice that Israel's bombardment was taking his country "backwards 50 years" and called for a "swift ceasefire," his office said.
The area around Beirut and southern Lebanon has been pounded since July 12, when Israel began conducting air strikes, set up a naval blockade and sent troops and tanks across the border. The offensive began after Hezbollah militants - who are based in southern Lebanon and have long been launching periodic rocket attacks across the border into Israel - conducted a cross-border raid and attacked an Israeli army post, killing eight soldiers and capturing two others.
Yet even though the fighting had, as of Monday, killed 381 people in Lebanon and driven an estimated 600,000 people from their homes, the Lebanese government has ordered its military not to respond to Israeli military actions.
U.S. administration officials told the Associated Press that Rice's visit was designed to show U.S. support for the Lebanese government and its people.
President George W. Bush and his administration have repeatedly asserted that any ceasefire agreement must include an end to Hezbollah's rocket attacks against Israel, the disarmament of the militants and an assurance that they no longer pose a threat to Israel.
Washington has also made clear that it agrees with Israel's insistence that no ceasefire was possible until its military campaign against Hezbollah was complete.
Washington will work with Syria: Rice
While in Beirut, Rice said Washington was open to the idea of working with Syria to end the crisis - but also said it was up to Damascus to take action.
The Bush administration - and the leaders of a number of other Western countries - have long pointed the finger at Syria and Iran for encouraging Hezbollah's attacks on northern Israeli cities and towns.
The two Mideast countries have long been Hezbollah's key supporters, supplying money, weapons and shelter.
Some critics have accused Washington of exacerbating the crisis by refusing to talk with Damascus, but Rice dismissed the accusation as false.
"The problem isn't that people haven't talked to the Syrians: it's that the Syrians haven't acted," she said.
"I think this is simply just a kind of false hobby horse that somehow it's because we don't talk to the Syrians. It's not as if we don't have diplomatic relations," she told the Associated Press. "We do."
Rice pointed out that the United States has maintained a diplomatic mission in Syria, which gives Washington a direct "channel" to the country.
According to diplomats in Cairo, Egypt and Saudi Arabia have begun to put pressure on Syria to stop supporting Hezbollah, even though its other supporter, Iran, is believed to give it much of its money and weapons.
Syria, for its part, indicated on the weekend that it would be willing to enter talks with the United States to help forge a ceasefire. But it has said it would only participate in talks to end the violence if the conditions include the return of the Golan Heights.
Hope of ceasefire, says Blair
Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said a plan will emerge over the next few days that he hopes will lead to the end of hostilities in Lebanon.
"There have been, as you might expect over the past few days, enormous diplomatic efforts to get us to the point where I hope at some point within the next few days we can say very clearly what our plan is to bring about an immediate cessation of hostilities," Blair said during a news conference with Iraq's visiting Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
Blair said the plan stems from his proposal during the meeting of G8 leaders in Russia last week that calls for the end of hostilities, the return of the captured Israeli soldiers and an international peacekeeping force in south Lebanon to buffer both sides.
Blair also rejected calls by some for him to condemn Israel's military response in Lebanon. Some critics have complained Israel's response has been disproportionate.
"All of that means absolutely nothing but words unless there's a plan of action in place that can stop the hostilities and then address the long-term underlying causes of instability in that region."
While referring to the situation as a "catastrophe" and the loss of all civilian life as a "tragedy" he blamed Hezbollah for its "deliberate attempt" to destabilize the Israeli/ Lebanon border.
Blair said the only solution to the problems gripping the Mideast is to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
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Israel violating humanitarian law - EU aid chief
25 Jul 2006
Reuters
The European Commission's aid chief accused Israel on Tuesday of violating international humanitarian law in Lebanon, saying its right to self-defence did not allow it to destroy Beirut and key infrastructure.
"The right of Israel to self-defence does not allow it to raze Beirut and all of the country's vital infrastructure to the ground in the name of the fight against Hizbollah," EU aid commissioner Louis Michel told Reuters.
"The way it is happening is a violation of international humanitarian law," he said in a phone interview.
Michel's remarks are in contrast to more reserved statements by European Union member states, who have called for all parties to protect civilians and adhere to international law without specifically accusing Israel of abuses.
Michel said the Lebanese guerrilla group Hizbollah was also abusing international humanitarian law and urged both parties to protect safe corridors to deliver humanitarian aid.
Israel has launched daily air strikes on southern Lebanon, Beirut and other parts of the country. Hizbollah has fired rockets into northern Israel. A total of 411 people in Lebanon and 42 Israelis have been killed in the conflict.
Aid efforts have been hit by Israel's bombing of civilian infrastructure including roads and bridges and its targeting of commercial trucks, the United Nations said on Monday.
Israel announced on Tuesday that it will allow aid airlifts to land in Beirut airport, but Michel said it must go further.
"It is a first small positive point but it will not be enough," he said, adding that land routes must be opened to get the aid through.
The European Union is due to give a second 10 million euro ($12.7 million) tranche of aid in coming days to help people in Lebanon caught in the conflict, Michel said.
That aid comes on top of a first tranche of 10 million euros announced last week. Another 30 million euros might be added next month, Michel said.
The new EU cash comes after the United Nations appealed on Monday for $150 million in humanitarian aid for the Lebanese.
Comment: And Israel cares about International law? Since when? Excuse us for pointing it out, I mean, we are not "anti-semitic", but Israel has been in breach of international law for about 40 years.
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Editorial: Deploy UN force to calm Lebanon
Jul. 25, 2006. 09:53 AM
The Toronto Star
Editorial
The sheer ferocity of the Mideast crisis has caught the world by surprise. Just weeks ago, few could have foreseen Beirut, Haifa and other centres in Lebanon and Israel reeling from air strikes and rocket fire, some 400 civilians dead and 700,000 driven from their homes on both sides of the border amid scenes of intolerable suffering and devastation. Such is the speed with which the region can unravel when things go wrong.
And indeed there is no easy fix for Lebanon's current agony, caught between Hezbollah's unprovoked terror attacks on Israel and harrowing Israeli counterstrikes. But the shock and the complexity of the crisis must not paralyze the international community. It must step in to broker a humanitarian truce, provide aid for refugees and work to restore order.
Comment: How is the capture of two soldiers, on Lebanese territory, a "terror attack"? It was an act of war, a war started by Israel with its illegal invasion of Lebanon decades ago. But, because Hezbollah is an Arab party, it is "terrorist".
That is what United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan is hoping to accomplish in the next few days, armed with a UN Charter mandate to save innocents from the scourge of war. Talks open tomorrow in Rome.
At the same time, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice paid a surprise visit yesterday to Beirut, before flying to Jerusalem, in a diplomatic mission to create conditions for a ceasefire, which she says is urgently needed. Also yesterday, U.S. President George Bush ordered American helicopters and ships to Lebanon to start supplying humanitarian aid.
Comment: Get the sick bag! Rice doesn't want a ceasefire! She openly admits that she doesn't want a ceasefire. No, she wants "the conditions" for a ceasefire, that is, the destruction of Hezbollah and Lebanon so that Israel can dictate its conditions.
To help Annan in his efforts, Prime Minister Stephen Harper should give the UN secretary general every encouragement. Such support by Harper would reassure Canadians that Ottawa is alert not only to the fate of 50,000 Lebanese Canadians, but also to the well-being of everyone in the region who is threatened by this conflict.
With our military tied up in Afghanistan, Canada can afford to make only a modest material contribution to any peacemaking or peacekeeping effort in southern Lebanon, where the weak Beirut government has been not enforced a Security Council demand to disarm Hezbollah.
Moreover, Harper has shaken confidence in Canada as an impartial arbiter with his failure to balance his comments on Israel's right to defend itself with a caution for Israel to be as restrained as possible. And Ottawa has formally - and rightly - labelled Hezbollah a terror group. These factors limit our credibility as an effective arbiter in the current conflict.
Comment: So an "impartial arbiter" must defend Israel's brutal assualt under cover of syaing it is "defending itself"??? That's impartiality?!?!?! It has to be leavened with a throwaway line about Israel showing restraint?!?!
Even so, Harper can do some good for Lebanon's shell-shocked civilians and help restore Canada's once enviable name in the region. He can achieve that by placing Canadian diplomacy firmly behind Annan's scramble to broker a humanitarian truce. Annan then hopes to work on a durable ceasefire with the Lebanese and Israelis, plus Hezbollah's Syrian and Iranian sponsors. That would allow the deployment of a credible and effective force of UN "blue helmet" peacekeepers with a mandate and the firepower to help the Lebanese government disarm Hezbollah and defuse violence south of the Litani River on the Israel-Lebanon frontier.
Comment: How about getting Israel out of Lebanon, or, better yet, getting rid of the political regime there altogether and having one state, a secular state, where everyone has a vote?
In a clear policy shift over the weekend, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is starting to warm to the idea of a peacekeeping force, although one preferably led by European countries rather than the United Nations.
Comment: More lies and smoke from Israel, like their evacuation of Gaza last year. Israel does not want peace, have never wanted peace, and will never accept peace until it has wiped the Arabs out of Greater Israel. That should be clear from their action over the last fifty years.
While many Lebanese and Israelis who are cowering in their basements would no doubt welcome an international military presence of any sort, a broad UN-led force would have greater credibility with the Arab world than a narrower one led by Americans, Canadians and Europeans under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization banner.
Comment: Yeah, those poor Israelis cowering in their basements for a few Hezbollah rockets. Got to mention them because that is what "objective" reporting is all about. One country is bombed back to the stone age while the other continues on a usual.
Ideally, the Security Council should now broker a humanitarian truce, with an eye to putting UN blue helmets into place as quickly as possible, with support from NATO but also with troops from Russia and other guarantors of the frayed Mideast peace process.
That done, the United States and other power brokers in the region should press for a resolution of the wider Syria-Israel conflict, and for a just peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
Comment: Empty words. Israel does not want peace.
As Annan tries to salvage hope from cinders, he must have the Harper government's strong and public support. And if Canada cannot send many troops to Lebanon, we must heed the United Nation's appeal yesterday for $150 million in urgent humanitarian aid to those whose lives have been shattered by this spasm of violence.
Comment: Another wonderful example of the kind of thinking that passes for objective in the West. It is the "sheer ferocity of the Mideast crisis", not the sheer ferocity of Israel's attacks against an entire country for the capture of two of its soldiers on Lebanese territory. Right there, you see the bias.
And the reference to cities in both Lebanon and Israel would make you think that the horrors are somehow equally shared, the horrors of the few Hezbollah rockets versus the might of the Israeli Army. Even fight, right? The destruction of an entire country versus the occasional rocket. No difference.
Certainly, the leaders of Israel care as little for their own citizens as they do for their Arab neighbours or the Palestinians. They are setting up the final solution by rounding up as many Jews as possible into Israel so that they will all be killed when the region blows. They are only concerned with themselves and their psychopathic brethren elsewhere. People with conscience must be annihilated at all costs.
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Israel vows to keep up Lebanon campaign
James Sturcke and agencies
Tuesday July 25, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, warned today that there would be no let-up in his country's military campaign aimed at destroying Hizbullah in southern Lebanon.
With the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, standing at his side at a press conference in Jerusalem, a bullish Mr Olmert threatened Lebanese guerrillas with "severe measures".
Ms Rice reiterated the Bush administration's view that there would be no US push for an immediate ceasefire.
"We need to ensure that we will not return to the previous situation," Rice said. "We need to begin to really lay the groundwork for an enduring peace in this region."
After meeting with the Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora, and parliamentary speaker, Nabih Berri, in Beirut yesterday, Ms Rice will hold talks with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, in Ramallah later today.
She is understood to have proposed that the Lebanese army deploy along the southern border with Israel, backed up by an international force.
Israel has demanded that Hizbullah pull back from the Israel-Lebanon border and that the Lebanese army be deployed in its place, but it has indicated it would accept an international peacekeeping force in the area. The Lebanese government insists that there must be a truce before a longer-term deal is worked out.
"Israel is determined to continue on in the fight against Hizbullah. We will ... stop them," Mr Olmert said. "We will not hesitate to take severe measures against those who are aiming thousands of rockets and missiles against innocent civilians for the one purpose of killing them."
Mr Olmert acknowledged that the Israeli offensive had caused humanitarian problems and said he would work with the US to try to alleviate them. Up to a fifth of the Lebanese population is thought to have been displaced by the past two weeks' fighting.
"We are aware of the state of humanitarian affairs of the population of Lebanon as a result of the brutality of Hizbullah," he said. "I think I can say in complete sincerity that Lebanon and Israel are both victims of this brutal, terrorist, murderous organisation."
In southern Lebanon, Israeli troops tightened their grip on Bint Jbail, preparing to complete the takeover of the town after a day and a night of fierce fighting with Hizbullah guerrillas, military officials said.
Israeli troops began fighting before dawn yesterday in an attempt to take control of the area, considered by the army to be of symbolic significance to Hizbullah. By this morning, military officials said the forces had surrounded the village and seized some houses on the outskirts, but fighting was continuing.
"There is fighting from every direction, including from the air. We are hitting terrorists; we have also taken several prisoners in this fighting. The enemy has more than a few casualties and overall we are now stabilising the situation to completely take over the village," Lieutenant-Colonel Itzik Ronen, a deputy commander of a unit operating in the area, said in comments broadcast on Israel's Army Radio.
At least two Israeli soldiers have been killed in fighting in and around the village, which sits just over a mile from the Israeli border. An Israeli airstrike killed a family of seven, Lebanese security sources said. Hizbullah said five guerrillas have died in the past two days.
Elsewhere, Palestinians in Gaza fired homemade rockets at a southern Israeli town, wounding one person, police and rescue services said. The rockets landed in Ami-Oz, near the border with Gaza.
In Britain, an international security expert, Lord Garden, was sceptical about the chances of success of any international force in Lebanon.
"Who are they going to get to do the policing? The great trouble will be when Ms Rice goes to Rome [to meet US, European, Israeli and Arab officials]," he told Sky News.
"It looks as though the US has the vision of the Lebanese army acting as protectors of Israel and keeping Hizbullah under control. But if the Israelis cannot do this, the idea that the Lebanese can is optimistic."
Lord Garden also questioned which countries would be prepared to provide soldiers for an international force, with the US already ruling itself out and the British being stretched in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"France might be prepared and Turkey has indicated it might be. But it [an international force] will be difficult to put together in a way that does not make the situation worse."
Among proposals for an international force are an EU or Nato deployment with a clear UN mandate.
At least 390 people in Lebanon and 41 Israelis have been killed in the conflict, triggered by Hizbullah's capture of two Israeli soldiers on July 12.
Comment: So the groundwork for peace is laid by bombing the crap out of a country that did absolutely nothing. And the US isn't interested in a "ceasefire" because that would just put things back like they were before, the "previous situation" in Rice's words... except for all the dead and the ruined infrastructure of Labanon. That obviously doesn't count.
How about getting rid of Israel and allowing everyone in Palestine a vote on their future, regardless of who they are? How about one single secular state where everyone can worship the the god they wish? With no nukes and no standing army?
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Olmert vows to take "most severe measures" against Hezbollah
www.chinaview.cn 2006-07-25 15:21:14
JERUSALEM, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Israel is determined to keep on its fight against Hezbollah and will not hesitate to take the "most severe measures" against those firing rockets on Israel, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Tuesday.
"We are using the basic right of self-defense," Olmert told reporters before a meeting with visiting U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was on a visit to the Middle East region to defuse the escalating crisis in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.
The prime minister said that he noticed "humanitarian difficulties" caused by Israel's two-week military offensive in Lebanon, pledging to work with the U.S. to help solve it.
Rice again expressed the need to create conditions for a sustainable cease-fire.
She will also meet with Defense Minister Amir Peretz before going to Ramallah for a meeting with Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
On Monday night, Rice met with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni upon arriving in Jerusalem from Beirut, underlining the importance to prevent a humanitarian crisis in Lebanon.
"We are concerned about the humanitarian situation," she said. "And nobody wants to see when innocent civilians are harmed." "Any peace is going to have to be based on enduring principles and not on temporary solutions," said Rice.
Describing Rice's visit as "very important", Livni reiterated that Israel had the right to protect its citizens. Livni said that Israel would only agree to a cease-fire that included the release of two soldiers that Hezbollah kidnapped on July 12, the dismantling of Hezbollah and the deployment of the Lebanese army in southern Lebanon.
Rice arrived in Jerusalem on Monday night after she paid a surprise visit to Beirut for talks with Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.
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Israel bans reporting of use of "unique" weapons in Lebanon
Redress Information & Analysis
July 24, 2006
Israel has issued new censorship guidelines banning reporting of the "use of unique kinds of ammunition and weaponry" in Lebanon. This comes amid reports that Israel is using chemical weapons against civilians in Lebanon. Below is the text of the guidelines, sent to international and local news organizations by the chief Israeli military censor, Colonel Sima Vaknin-Gil, on 23 July.
Subject: Military Operations in the North -- Censorship Guidelines Regarding Ground Operations.
1. Following are the main censorship guidelines regarding the continuation of military operations in the north, with emphasis on ground warfare on the northern border.
2. The guidelines in this document are comprehensive and refer to the option of large-scale military activity. The relevant guidelines should also be applied to the current ground operations.
3. Please brief editors, producers, broadcasters, correspondents with emphasis on field correspondents and other network employees on these guidelines in order to avoid any misunderstanding.
4. Due to the frequent broadcasts and the many live updates considerable attention should be given to what is said by the correspondents in the field. Please make sure that any correspondent/analyst in the field knows the censorship guidelines. The potential error during a live update is very high and you are held responsible for everything broadcast during a live update.
5. This document has been sent to local news agencies as well.
6. This document is the follow-up to the former document "The Fighting In The Northern Arena".
Sincerely,
Col. Sima Vaknin-Gil
Chief Censor
The Censorship Guidelines Regarding Ground Operations In The North For Reports And Live Updates.
General
1. This document will detail the main guidelines regarding operations on the northern border by the Censor.
2. This document contains three main topics: general guidelines for news coverage, coverage of activity leading to the ground operation and the coverage of the combat itself.
3. Any news item that is not within these boundaries must be submitted to the Censorship before it is published.
General guidelines
4. Coverage of any kind, that states intent, specific/general abilities and/or any operational activity (in a live broadcast) is not authorized by the Censorship. In principle, analysis based on matters that were approved for publication is allowed.
5. In a case where a news item is not within the boundaries given by the Chief Censor, the issue should be dealt with by the two censorship bases either in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.
6. There is a special emphasis on matters regarding the activity of special forces and the use of unique kinds of ammunition and weaponry.
7. In principle, news items on the intelligence abilities / lack of abilities during the operation will not be authorized.
Coverage of activity leading to ground operation
The censorship does not approve any verbal information or visual photography that attest to:
8. The military order-of-battle.
9. The type of force, the forces' special abilities and warfare equipment.
10. Movement routes.
11. Assembly areas and deployments.
12. Information on forces transferring from one area to another (thinning of forces).
13. Locations of command posts.
14. It is strictly forbidden to mention the time and location in which the army forces might enter the enemy's territory.
15. The codename of the operation will be approved for publication only from the moment it begins.
16. Pictures of the army forces will be approved as long as the location in which they were taken is not disclosed.
The live coverage of the combat itself
17. It is strictly forbidden to show a picture of the full battle coverage, with an emphasis of identifying the location (long shot pictures).
18. It is strictly forbidden to mention military targets while these targets are being pursued.
19. It is strictly forbidden, until the information is cleared by the censorship, to publish information concerning missing personnel and captives (from both sides).
20. Coverage of aerial accidents in Israeli territory can only be approved by the censor. In hostile territory, this information will not be approved until the evacuation of the staff and equipment from that area is completed.
21. It is strictly forbidden to conduct real time coverage on visits of officials. Interviews and photography will be approved later, after the end of the visit.
22. During an incident authorization for coverage of the reasons for the incident will be given as long as there is no breach of Israeli security concerns (thus personal opinions and analyses for the reasons of the incident are allowed).
23. Coverage of an incident with casualties as always, must be submitted to the censorship.
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Syria not partner in diplomatic process: Israeli PM
www.chinaview.cn 2006-07-25 06:00:52
JERUSALEM, July 24 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Monday that Syria was not a partner in the diplomatic process to end the current conflict between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah guerillas.
According to an statement released by the prime minister's office, Olmert said that the Syrians could have risen to the occasion if they did not have their finger on the trigger on both the Lebanese and Gazan fronts.
In addition, Olmert said that Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah had "made a mistake."
"If he (Nasrallah) would have thought and would have known that this would be our reaction, he would have responded and acted differently," he said, referring to an ongoing Israeli onslaught in Lebanon.
"The international response and the changes in the Arab world will allow us to, within a reasonable timeframe, build a model solution that will significantly weaken and isolate Hezbollah," he added.
Syria, which supports the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, has condemned the Israeli attacks on Lebanon and called for a ceasefire as soon as possible.
Israel has been battling along its northern border with Hezbollah over the past 13 days in an effort to bring back its two soldiers taken hostage by Hezbollah guerillas and remove Hezbollah from the border area.
Olmert is scheduled to meet with visiting U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Jerusalem on Tuesday over the Lebanon crisis.
Rice has said that the United States would push for a "sustainable" ceasefire.
Comment: It's Syria that has their finger on the trigger in Lebanon and Gaza? Is Syria dropping chemical bombs on Gaza? Is Syria bombing Lebanon?
It is incredible what the psychopath can come up with as an excuse to justify his behaviour.
Remember, Israel's invasion was planned long ago. The Israel leaders were only looking for an excuse to launch this invasion and destruction of a sovereign country.
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A Time To Die
Red Cross ambulances destroyed in Israeli air strike on rescue mission
Suzanne Goldenberg in Tyre
Tuesday July 25, 2006
The Guardian
The ambulance headlamps were on, the blue light overhead was flashing, and another light illuminated the Red Cross flag when the first Israeli missile hit, shearing off the right leg of the man on the stretcher inside. As he lay screaming beneath fire and smoke, patients and ambulance workers scrambled for safety, crawling over glass in the dark. Then another missile hit the second ambulance.
Even in a war which has turned the roads of south Lebanon into killing zones, Israel's rocket strike on two clearly marked Red Cross ambulances on Sunday night set a deadly new milestone.
Six ambulance workers were wounded and three generations of the Fawaz family, being transported to hospital from Tibnin with what were originally minor injuries, were left fighting for their lives. Two ambulances were entirely destroyed, their roofs pierced by missiles.
The Lebanese Red Cross, whose ambulance service for south Lebanon is run entirely by volunteers, immediately announced it would cease all rescue missions unless Israel guaranteed their safety through the United Nations or the International Red Cross.
For the villages below the Litani river, the ambulances were their last link to the outside world. Yesterday, that too was gone, leaving the 100,000 people of Tyre district with no way of reaching hospital other than to take to the roads themselves, under the roar of Israeli war planes.
The fateful call to the Red Cross operations room came through at about 10pm - well after dark, a time when almost no Lebanese now dare venture out.
At the Red Cross office in Tyre, three volunteer medics dressed in their orange overalls, and got into their ambulance. The plan was to drive halfway, meet the local ambulance, and transfer the three patients to their vehicle to return to Tyre.
By Nader Joudi's reckoning, the ambulances had been stopped for barely two minutes. Two patients had been loaded: Ahmed Mustafa Fawaz, who had been hit by shrapnel in the stomach, and his son, Mohammed, 14. The volunteer attendant was just easing Jamila Fawaz, 80, inside and setting up a drip when the missile struck. He managed to get the old woman and the child outside, but there was no way to reach Mr Fawaz. "It was horrible," Mr Joudi said. "He was screaming, and we couldn't do anything."
One of the members of the three-man crew from Tibnin radioed for help when another missile plunged through the roof. Ambulance crew and patients retreated to the cellar of a nearby building, then waited to be rescued, trying as best as they could to help the injured. "Each of us treated ourselves. There was no light," said Kassem Shaalan, a medic from Tyre.
By the time patients and ambulance crew reached Tyre, Mr Fawaz was unconscious after losing one leg, and suffering severe fractures to the other. His son had lost part of a foot, and his mother's body was riddled with shrapnel. Mr Joudi had shrapnel wounds in his left arm, and Mr Shaalan cuts to the face and leg.
He was adamant that the ambulances, with their Red Cross insignia on the roof, were clearly visible from the air. "I don't think there can be a mistake in two bombings of two ambulances," he said.
Although the air strike marked the first time ambulances have been hit by Israel in this war, for Mr Shaalan and the other Red Cross volunteers it was only a matter of time. After two weeks of strikes designed to choke off possible supply lines to Hizbullah guerrillas, travel to many villages was just too dangerous. Coastal villages even within a few kilometers of Tyre are cut off. In some, corpses remain trapped in the rubble for days.
But nothing is more perilous than travelling by night, and no more so than just before midnight that Sunday when another Red Cross crew set off from Tyre to pick up their injured colleagues.
"I was trembling," said Ali Deeb, one of the volunteers on the mission. "It was too dangerous, and helicopters buzzing, and all through this, I am thinking one thing: the ambulance that left half an hour before you has already been injured, and you could be next." Later yesterday afternoon, two missiles landed in the building across the road from the Red Cross office.
The toll
Lebanese
Yesterday
Civilian deaths 8
Hizbullah deaths 0
Since outbreak
Military deaths 66
Civilian deaths 377
Wounded 1,550+
Israeli
Yesterday
Civilian deaths 0
Military deaths 4
Since outbreak
Military deaths 24
Civilian deaths 17
Wounded 360+
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Israeli missiles kill 7 in home
Last Updated Tue, 25 Jul 2006 00:32:14 EDT
The Associated Press
Israeli missiles struck a house in south Lebanon early Tuesday, killing seven people and wounding another, hospital and security officials said.
Israeli jets fired a missile at the house in the market town of Nabatiyeh, destroying it and killing its owner, Mohammed Ghandour, along with six other people, including his son, Hassan, the officials said.
It was not immediate clear if the five others killed were related. One woman was also wounded, according to the officials.
It was not immediately clear why the Israeli planes had targeted the house.
The attack, on the 14th day of fighting since eight Israeli soldiers were killed and two captured by Hezbollah fighters, came a day after Israeli troops battled their way to a key Hezbollah stronghold in south Lebanon, seizing a hilltop in heavy fighting and capturing two guerrillas, according to the Israeli army.
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Israeli Cluster Munitions Hit Civilians in Lebanon
Report, HRW
25/07/2006
Pallets of 155mm artillery projectiles including DPICM cluster munitions (center and right with yellow diamonds) in the arsenal of an IDF artillery unit on July 23 in northern Israel. Each DPICM shell contains 88 sub-munitions, which have a dud rate of up to 14 percent. (Human Rights Watch)
Israel has used artillery-fired cluster munitions in populated areas of Lebanon, Human Rights Watch said today. Researchers on the ground in Lebanon confirmed that a cluster munitions attack on the village of Blida on July 19 killed one and wounded at least 12 civilians, including seven children. Human Rights Watch researchers also photographed cluster munitions in the arsenal of Israeli artillery teams on the Israel-Lebanon border.
"Cluster munitions are unacceptably inaccurate and unreliable weapons when used around civilians," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "They should never be used in populated areas."
According to eyewitnesses and survivors of the attack interviewed by Human Rights Watch, Israel fired several artillery-fired cluster munitions at Blida around 3 p.m. on July 19. The witnesses described how the artillery shells dropped hundreds of cluster submunitions on the village. They clearly described the submunitions as smaller projectiles that emerged from their larger shells.
 |
| Close-up of a M483A1 DPICM artillery-delivered cluster munition present in the arsenal of an IDF unit in northern Israel. (Human Rights Watch) |
Human Rights Watch researchers photographed artillery-delivered cluster munitions among the arsenal of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) artillery teams stationed on the Israeli-Lebanese border during a research visit on July 23. The photographs show M483A1 Dual Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions, which are U.S.-produced and -supplied, artillery-delivered cluster munitions. The photographs contain the distinctive marks of such cluster munitions, including a diamond-shaped stamp, and a shape that is longer than ordinary artillery, according to a retired IDF commander who asked not to be identified.
The M483A1 artillery shells deliver 88 cluster submunitions per shell, and have an unacceptably high failure rate (dud rate) of 14 percent, leaving behind a serious unexploded ordnance problem that will further endanger civilians. The commander said that the IDF's operations manual warns soldiers that the use of such cluster munitions creates dangerous minefields due to the high dud rate.
Lebanese security forces, who to date have not engaged in the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, also accused Israel of using cluster munitions in its attacks on Blida and other Lebanese border villages. These sources also indicated they have evidence that Israel used cluster munitions earlier this year during fighting with Hezbollah around the contested Shebaa Farms area. Human Rights Watch is continuing to investigate these additional allegations.
Human Rights Watch believes that the use of cluster munitions in populated areas may violate the prohibition on indiscriminate attacks contained in international humanitarian law. The wide dispersal pattern of their submunitions makes it very difficult to avoid civilian casualties if civilians are in the area. Moreover, because of their high failure rate, cluster munitions leave large numbers of hazardous, explosive duds that injure and kill civilians even after the attack is over. Human Rights Watch believes that cluster munitions should never be used, even away from civilians, unless their dud rate is less than 1 percent.
Human Rights Watch conducted detailed analyses of the U.S. military's use of cluster bombs in the 1999 Yugoslavia war, the 2001-2002 Afghanistan war, and the 2003 Iraq war. Human Rights Watch research established that the use of cluster munitions in populated areas in Iraq caused more civilian casualties than any other factor in the U.S.-led coalition's conduct of major military operations in March and April 2003, killing and wounding more than 1,000 Iraqi civilians. Roughly a quarter of the 500 civilian deaths caused by NATO bombing in the 1999 Yugoslavia war were also due to cluster munitions.
"Our research in Iraq and Kosovo shows that cluster munitions cannot be used in populated areas without huge loss of civilian life," Roth said. "Israel must stop using cluster bombs in Lebanon at once."
Human Rights Watch called upon the Israel Defense Forces to immediately cease the use of indiscriminate weapons like cluster munitions in Lebanon.
Background
Israel used cluster munitions in Lebanon in 1978 and in the 1980s. At that time, the United States placed restrictions on their use and then a moratorium on the transfer of cluster munitions to Israel out of concern for civilian casualties. Those weapons used more than two decades ago continue to affect Lebanon.
Israel has in its arsenal cluster munitions delivered by aircraft, artillery and rockets. Israel is a major producer and exporter of cluster munitions, primarily artillery projectiles and rockets containing M85 DPICM (Dual Purpose Improved Conventional Munition) submunitions. Israeli Military Industries, an Israeli government-owned weapons manufacturer, has reportedly produced more than 60 million M85 DPICM submunitions. Israel also produces at least six different types of air-dropped cluster bombs, and has imported from the United States M26 rockets for its Multiple Launch Rocket Systems
There is growing international momentum to stop the use of cluster munitions. Belgium became the first country to ban cluster munitions in February 2006, and Norway announced a moratorium on the weapon in June 2006. Cluster munitions are increasingly the focus of discussion at the meetings of the Convention on Conventional Weapons, with ever more states calling for a new international instrument dealing with cluster munitions.
Human Rights Watch is a founding member, and a steering committee member, of the Cluster Munition Coalition.
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Israelis Kill Three Teenagers 'In Cold Blood Without Guilt or Reason'
umkahlil
July 24, 2006
Israel's Occupation Forces, representing a country that sits on ninety-two percent of land which it stole from the Palestinians in 1948, land to which Palestinians still have deeds, shot three kids in Jenin today: 16 year old Wael Ahmed, 16 year old Ala Farhanh, and 18 year old Husam Mahmoud Sa'adi.
Israel, which refuses to implement Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 13, Section 2, which states that "Every man may leave his home and return to his home," displaying their usual immorality and inhumanity did not let ambulances access the youths.
At Husam's funeral a relative eulogized him: "He was in the flower of youth, 18 years old, however, the Israelis killed him in cold blood without guilt or reason."
But they have their reasons. Dr.Harold Sternlicht, American, recently immigrated to Israel. He says: "I believe that Israel is God's gift to the Jews, and that's where we belong." And his God, evidently, believes Palestinians belong in their graves.
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3 Palestinians killed as Israel shells Gaza Strip
Last Updated Mon, 24 Jul 2006 11:41:32 EDT
CBC News
Three Palestinians died and eight were wounded on Monday after the Israeli military shelled a town in the Gaza Strip used by militants as a base to fire rockets.
The shelling hit Beit Lahiya, a town of about 40,000 in the northern Gaza Strip. Palestinians had just used the town to fire seven rockets at southern Israel, according to the Israeli army. The Palestinian rockets caused no deaths or injuries.
The Israeli army said it was aiming at Hamas militants behind the rocket attacks and it expressed regret at any civilian deaths.
Israeli officials had asked Palestinian officials to urge town residents to stay inside during the shelling.
One shell went off near an apartment building, while another exploded in an open space between two buildings. Some shattered windows, while others cracked walls.
Ahmed Obeid, 40, said that he was eating lunch with his wife and two children when the shelling began, causing damage to their apartment.
"If we had not moved to the hall, we would have been killed," he said.
Doctors said one of the dead was a 14-year-old boy.
Israel launched an offensive in the Gaza Strip on June 28 after Palestinian militants killed two Israeli soldiers and captured a third in an attack on a military outpost. The offensive killed more than 100 Palestinians, most of them armed men.
Israel launched an offensive against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon on July 12 after Hezbollah militants killed eight Israeli soldiers and captured two others in a raid on Israel.
Palestinians to protest Rice's Mideast visit
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Beirut on Monday as part of a diplomatic mission to the Middle East. She is expected to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank to discuss Palestinian issues.
Palestinians are getting ready to protest her visit by planning a general strike and "a day of rage" in Gaza City on Tuesday.
Omar Assaf, a member of a political action committee that organizes activities by Palestinian groups in Gaza and the West Bank, said stores in the Gaza Strip are being asked to close their doors that day.
"She is responsible for the killing of children in Lebanon and Gaza. She, her administration, and her policies are not welcome here," he said.
Comment: "The Israeli army said it was aiming at Hamas militants behind the rocket attacks and it expressed regret at any civilian deaths."
Sure, like they do every time they kill civilians. "Oops. Sorry." How many more civilians will have to die before people wake up to the fact that Israel wants to kill Palestinian and Lebanese civilians. That is the whole point: kill as many Arabs of any shape, size, age, or sex as possible. The leaders of Israel would kill them all if they could.
And if things continue as they are going, they will.
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Scale of the human crisis emerges
Brian Whitaker in Beirut
Tuesday July 25, 2006
The Guardian
The people of Lebanon are facing their "hour of greatest need", the UN said yesterday in launching an emergency appeal for $150m (£81m) to help an estimated 800,000 civilians whose lives have been disrupted by Israeli bombing of Lebanon.
The relief plan would focus on providing food, water, healthcare and other essential services, Jan Egeland, the UN emergency relief coordinator, said.
The situation in Lebanon is "very bad, and deteriorating by the day", said Mr Egeland. On Sunday he described the bombing of south Beirut as "a violation of humanitarian law".
But last night he had harsh words for Hizbullah as well, rebuking the Shi'ite group for cravenly using civilians as human shields. "Hizbullah must stop this cowardly blending ... among women and children," Mr Egeland said.
A UN report accompanying the appeal highlighted the scale of the devastation during 12 days of warfare, saying:
- The ongoing [Israeli] military operation has caused enormous damage to residential areas and key civilian infrastructure such as power plants, seaports and fuel depots.
- Hundreds of bridges and virtually all road networks have been systematically destroyed, leaving entire communities in the south inaccessible.
- Skyrocketing prices for basic goods (eg: the price of sugar has risen by 600% and cooking gas by 400%) further deplete the coping mechanisms of the Lebanese.
- The longer the hostilities last, the more dramatic the humanitarian situation will become. Food, water, health, fuel, and other basic needs will increase; so will the number of internally displaced persons.
- Reports indicate that there is a lack of essential goods, with needs particularly acute in villages along the Israeli-Lebanese border, which have been isolated by the conflict. There are reports that food supplies in some villages have been exhausted.
- The widespread destruction of public infrastructure ... as well as the targeting of commercial trucks, has seriously hampered relief operations.
- As many as 800 persons live in a school designed for 200 to 300 children. School water systems cannot cope with the extent of needs. Neither can sanitary facilities ... a resurgence of diarrhoea cases has been noted in some centres.
In addition to this list, Mr Egeland said there was one school housing 1,000 people which had only six toilets. He warned that fuel was becoming critical in many areas and power failure would affect water supplies and sewage, bringing increased health risks. Calling for an immediate ceasefire, he said: "Only cessation of hostilities can really make it safe for us [to deliver aid]." Failing that, the UN was hoping to arrange a "notification scheme" which would allow safe passage for humanitarian goods.
The UN already had 100 trucks contracted or on their way to deliver aid within Lebanon, Mr Egeland said. The first convoy could head south from Beirut to Sidon and Tyre as early as tomorrow, and the UN was working on details with the Israeli military, he said.
The UN is asking Israel for safe passage through three Lebanese ports. Initially, it hopes to have two ships ferrying supplies into Beirut from Cyprus, with the ports of Tripoli, in the north, and Tyre, in the south, to be added later.
It has also asked Israel to grant safe passage for convoys from Syria. Mr Egeland said the plan was to set up a staging area on the border to receive aid and prioritise it for distribution. "We are hopeful that in the course of this week you will see a real difference on the ground. By next week we will have a major operation really started," he said.
The White House said yesterday that George Bush had ordered helicopters and ships to Lebanon to give humanitarian aid. "Humanitarian supplies will start arriving in Lebanon tomorrow by helicopter and by ship," said White House spokesman Tony Snow. "We are working with Israel and Lebanon to open up humanitarian corridors." He described the move as "a significant US commitment".
Mr Bush still opposed the idea of an immediate ceasefire, he added, saying there was no reason to believe it would stop violence in the Middle East; instead the world should confront Hizbullah and its practice of using the Lebanese people as "human shields".
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Tales from a Lebanese hospital
Jul. 25, 2006. 09:44 AM
SANDRO CONTENTA
EUROPEAN BUREAU CHIEF
BEIRUT-Zakaria Alamiddine's face is heavily bandaged and badly burned, yet his youthful eyes beam bright and full of life.
There's relief in his 18-year-old voice when he describes surviving the Israeli bombing of the basement shelter in south Lebanon where he and his family - and 50 other civilians - had gathered to wait out the conflict.
It's the relief of a young man whose older sister has so far spared him the news that his father and 14-year-old brother were killed in the attack.
"I'm waiting until he gets better. It will hurt him so much," his sister Kawsar, 24, warned the Star before entering his room at the Beirut Government University Hospital.
There are many heartbreaking stories in a conflict that has killed at least 384 Lebanese, all but 30 of them civilians, and 40 Israelis, 23 of them soldiers.
But knowing a devastating secret about a survivor's life is all the more wrenching, especially when the person is so happy to be alive.
"When I get out of here, I'm going back to my studies to become a doctor," said Zakaria, speaking in French.
And his eyes light up again.
About a week ago, the Alamiddine family fled their village and took refuge in a basement used as a bomb shelter in the city of Tyre.
Zakaria was calling out to his mother when the bomb slammed into the shelter.
All he remembers is seeing the wall he was looking at explode.
Next thing he knew he woke up in hospital, his face badly burned and a deep wound in his thigh caused by shrapnel.
His mother, Mariam Atwi, a school principal, is in the burn unit of another hospital. She too is unaware that her husband Mohammed, a chemistry teacher, and her son Ali, a talented pianist, were killed in the bombings.
"I will never forgive those who did this to my father and little brother, who was really an angel," said Kawsar, who was in Beirut at the time of the attack, finishing her studies as a pediatrician.
"They're not fighting Hezbollah. They're fighting the population," she added.
Said Zakaria: "Tell the people of Canada that they (Israel) can destroy Lebanon, but they can't destroy its people."
There are 45 people wounded from the conflict at this Beirut hospital, and many of their stories bear witness to the growing criticism of Israel's bombing campaign as excessive and heedless of civilian casualties.
In one room, Radya Shaito, 54, was lying on a bed, her face burned and body covered in scars. She and 17 other members of her family were crammed into their white van Sunday and fleeing south Lebanon when an Israeli missile struck them just outside of Tyre.
Two members of the family died.
"They must have known the van was full of people. It's a crime, a crime. We are civilians; we are not fighting Israel," Shaito said.
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'10 buildings for every rocket'
07/24/06
Aljazeera
The Israeli air force has been ordered to hit 10 buildings in south Beirut - where Hezbollah has its headquarters - for every rocket the group fires at the Israeli port of Haifa.
"Army chief of staff Dan Halutz has given the order to the air force to destroy 10 multi-storey buildings in the Dahaya district (of Beirut) in response to every rocket fired on Haifa," a senior air force officer told army radio on Monday.
Hezbollah rockets killed two people in the northern Israeli city of Haifa on Sunday.
Seventeen Israelis have died in rocket attacks since the beginning of the conflict on July 12.
More than 2,200 Hezbollah rockets had hit northern Israel by Sunday. They have struck as far as Afula, 50km south of the border.
Large areas of predominantly Shia Muslim southern Beirut have been destroyed by Israeli raids. On Wednesday Israeli aircraft dropped 23 tons of explosives on the site of an alleged Hezbollah bunker in the south of the capital.
Jan Egeland, the United Nations humanitarian co-ordinator, on Sunday accused Israel of violating humanitarian law as he toured the destroyed suburbs of south Beirut.
"This is destruction of block after block of mainly residential areas. I would say it seems to be an excessive use of force in an area with so many citizens," he said.
Israel's offensive in Lebanon has claimed at least 365 lives, mostly civilians.
Comment: But Israel is "not targetting civilians". Blatant, barefaced lie anyone?
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Israel to get U.S. "bunker buster" bombs - report
July 24 2006
Reuters
DUBAI, - The United States will soon provide Israel with some 100 "bunker buster" bombs to kill the leader of Lebanon's Hizbollah guerrilla group and destroy its trenches, Asharq al-Awsat newspaper reported on Monday.
Quoting unidentified informed sources in both Washington and Tel Aviv, the Saudi-owned Arabic daily said the bombs, which can penetrate up to 40 metres (130 feet) under ground, would be shipped to Israel from a U.S. military base in Qatar.
Israel has been bombarding Lebanon since Hizbollah killed eight soldiers and abducted two others on July 12 and the guerrilla group has fought back. Some 320 people, almost all civilians, have been killed in Lebanon and 37 in Israel. On at least two occasions, the Israeli air force hit Beirut buildings in what media reports described as bids to assassinate Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and senior group officials.
Nasrallah emerged unscathed both times and said other top guerrillas were also unhurt. Some Israeli military experts blamed the missions' apparent failure on the absence of air force ordnance capable of cracking Hizbollah command bunkers.
Israel asked the United States in 2004 to sell it bunker busters. Pentagon approval for the sale of 100 GBU-28 bombs, capable of penetrating some 20 feet (7 metres) of concrete, came through last year but Israel's Defence Ministry, amid steep budget cuts, decided against making the purchase.
Citing U.S. officials, the New York Times reported on Saturday that the Bush administration was rushing a delivery of satellite- and laser-guided bombs to Israel in response to an Israeli request connected to the Lebanon offensive.
The report did not give details on the munitions in question but said they were part of a sale the Pentagon approved in 2005.
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Israelis 'will have to destroy half of Lebanon'
Globe and Mail
24/07/2006
SIDON, LEBANON -- As he mentally girds for war, the signs that things are grim in south Lebanon are all around Nasser Bahjat.
The 40-year-old butcher and Hezbollah reservist was standing next to a building that used to be the head office of an Islamic charity until it was transformed by an air strike yesterday morning into a smoking heap of concrete and metal. The nearby road north was packed with refugees -- sometimes crammed a dozen or more into a single car -- fleeing the slow advance of the Israeli army into Lebanese territory.
But rather than defeat, angry defiance was etched into the features of Mr. Bahjat's unshaven face as he spoke of what will come next for this already war-ravaged land. By starting its ground offensive, he says, Israel has begun a battle it cannot win. "They will have to destroy half of Lebanon to defeat Hezbollah because we're all with the resistance. We're all with Hezbollah and we will sacrifice anything for Hezbollah," he said.
A crowd gathered around him, nodded their heads iagreement. "The kids will pick up stones, and we will pick up Kalashnikovs," said a man, who refused to give his name.
The first 12 days of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, or the Party of God, has largely been a long-range exchange of fire, with Hezbollah lobbing hundreds of deadly rockets at Israeli cities and Israel responding with heavy artillery barrages and waves of air strikes. But with Israeli troops crossing into south Lebanon over the weekend and seizing the village of Marun al-Ras, the fight is about to get a lot more personal.
Military experts say that Hezbollah, which has about 5,000 full-time fighters, has another 10,000 reservists. Mr. Bahjat says he is one of them, and that he is ready to fight when the time comes.
"Hezbollah so far hasn't asked us for help, but we're ready the second they do. We all have hidden weapons," he said without elaborating.
Despite a growing humanitarian crisis -- Sidon's normal population of 100,000 has been swelled by 35,000 refugees from hard-hit villages farther south -- Hezbollah and its supporters say they have no intention of surrendering to Israel's demands that the group disarm and hand back two soldiers it kidnapped this month.
Instead, the militia says the battle is going well. The group acknowledged yesterday that the Israeli army was occupying Marun al-Ras, but tried to spin the loss as a victory.
"When the enemy tried to present the occupation of Marun al-Ras as a great military achievement, it was fooling its people and the world because an army which is fighting with elite troops and tanks, backed by air forces, could not enter a village on the border without days of fighting and huge losses," read a statement released yesterday by Hezbollah. Five Israeli soldiers died during several days of fierce clashes in the village, while Hezbollah says it lost three fighters.
But while the fighters bragged yesterday of their readiness for more bloodshed, south Lebanon's morgues and emergency wards continued to overflow with the civilian casualties of what so far has been a lopsided war.
In Sidon's Labib Medical Centre, Ikhlas Hamzeh and her seven-year-old son, Jaber, lay in neighbouring beds recovering after a missile exploded near their car as they tried to flee their town of Bint Jbeil.
The mother had a broken right leg, while Jaber had two broken legs and gauze bandages covering much of his face. In obvious pain, the boy stared at the ceiling, trying not to cry in front of strangers.
"Tell Israel and tell [Hezbollah] -- tell both sides -- that children are getting hurt, that children are dying," Ms. Hamzeh said.
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Olmert rules out halt to Lebanon offensive
by Yana Dlugy
AFP
July 25, 2006
JERUSALEM - Israel has vowed to press on with its war on Hezbollah as clashes raged on the border, effectively ruling out any chance of an early ceasefire in the two-week-old Lebanon conflict.
Despite a mission to the region by US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, the bloodshed continued. An entire family of seven was killed when an Israeli missile slammed into their home in southern Lebanon while troops besieged a key border town where Hezbollah has a military headquarters.
"Israel is determined to carry on the fight against Hezbollah," Olmert said at a press conference Rice, on the latest leg of her tour to discuss a conflict that has now left more than 380 people dead in Lebanon alone.
But Olmert said: "We are not fighting the Lebanese government or the Lebanese people. We are fighting against Hezbollah."
Rice, in Israel after making a surprise visit to bomb-scarred Beirut, said it was "time for a new Middle East" and underlined Washington's stance that an immediate ceasefire would only put off a long-term solution to the conflict.
"A durable solution will be one that strengthens the forces of peace and democracy in the region," she said. "The people of this region, Israelis, Lebanese, and the Palestinians have lived too long in fear, and in terror, and in violence."
In Lebanon Monday, Rice said she was "deeply concerned" about the plight of civilians and the government announced a 30 million dollar aid package, with US forces due to begin airlifting supplies Tuesday.
She also met Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, who appealed for a ceasefire to end Israel's similarly aggressive offensive on the Gaza Strip, where 114 people have been killed in an operation to free a captured soldier and halt rocket attacks.
"Rice, Rice, you are a crow, what misery you bring with you," a crowd of about 2,000 protestors chanted before her arrival in Ramallah.
On a visit to the Gaza Strip's main power plant which was bombed by Israel, leaving many of the area's 1.4 million residents without power, UN humanitarian coordinator Jan Egeland said it was a "clear" example of excessive force.
The United States has been unwavering in its support for Israel's war on Hezbollah and Hamas militants -- even sending in more weapons -- despite the heavy human cost of the conflict.
Hundreds of thousands in Lebanon have been forced to flee their homes, creating what the United Nations warns is a humanitarian catastrophe. Human Rights Watch accused Israel Monday of using artillery-fired cluster bombs in Lebanon and demanded the Jewish state immediately cease the practice.
Rice held talks with Lebanese leaders including Prime Minister Fuad Siniora on her trip to Beirut, where she reportedly outlined plans for a ceasefire that would involve creating an internationally-patrolled buffer zone in southern Lebanon for 60 to 90 days and a Hezbollah withdrawal from the border area.
Washington is under pressure from European and Arab allies to try to bring an end to the crisis amid charges it was dragging its feet to allow Israel time to attempt to wipe out the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hezbollah, which set off the conflict after seizing two soldiers on July 12.
But Lebanese parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri, who is acting as an intermediary for Hezbollah, rejected Rice's reported plan and said there must first be a ceasefire and a prisoner swap.
Israel is struggling to knock out Hezbollah despite its vastly superior military might and has now suggested it would accept some form of international force in southern Lebanon, currently in the grip of the Shiite militia.
A 15-year-old Arab Israeli girl was killed after a rocket hit her house in a village in northern Israel as more than a dozen rockets fired by Hezbollah from Lebanon pummelled the northern port of Haifa, wounding at least five people.
Israeli forces were also beseiging the border town of Bint Jbeil, a Hezbollah stronghold, amid fierce gunbattles as troops in tanks and bulldozers pushed even deeper into Lebanon.
"Beit Jbeil is in our hands," General Alon Friedman, one of Israel's top commanders for its northern region, told army radio. It was not confirmed if troops were actually inside the town.
Israel has massed troops on the border and warned residents of southern Lebanon to flee but says it has no plans for an all-out invasion -- for now.
But a senior army officer said the military would limit its incursions to southern Lebanon in its bid to annihilate Hezbollah.
Two soldiers were killed in fighting Monday, bringing to 41 -- 24 servicemen and 17 civilians -- the toll of Israelis killed since the crisis erupted.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Washington's closest ally, called the conflict a "catastrophe" that was damaging fledgling democracy in Lebanon, a country that had gradually been rebuilding since the 1975-90 civil war and the end of Syria's long military and political dominance last year.
He said he hoped a plan would be announced in the next few days to bring about an end to the worst cross-border conflict since Israel invaded its northern neighbour in 1982.
The offensive has left Lebanon virtually cut off from the world, made hundreds of thousands of people refugees in their own country and destroyed billions of dollars of infrastructure.
Siniora, who has issued several desperate appeals for a ceasefire, accused Israel of trying to set his country back 50 years in his meeting with Rice.
Israel launched a public relations offensive led by its best-known elder statesman Shimon Peres to tell the world why it was not yet silencing its guns.
"The free world is facing a threat, the goal of Hezbollah is to set the world aflame and we will not let them succeed," Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said.
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah remained defiant, vowing that deeper incursions would not stop the rocket fire, and ruling out any efforts for a negotiated settlement unless it involved a prisoner swap.
Egeland, issuing an urgent appeal for 150 million dollars for 800,000 people made homeless by Israel's onslaught, criticised both Israel and Hezbollah for attacking civilians.
He also branded the Shiite militants "cowards" for boasting that Lebanese civilians rather than their fighters were bearing the brunt of the Israeli bombardments.
Southeast Asian nations called for an immediate ceasefire and condemned Israel's "excessive" military operations, saying the situation threatened international peace and security.
As the bombardments continued, foreign governments have laid on flotillas of ships to evacuate stranded nationals, mainly to the nearby resort island of Cyprus which has been battling to find temporary accommodation and flights for the estimated 70,000 evacuees at peak summer holiday season.
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A Time For War
Sarah Whalen: Kidnapping? There Ought To Be A Law
Palestine Chronicle
25/07/2006
By Sarah Whalen
Palestinian militants, weary of beachside picnicking families getting killed by Israeli naval shelling and ground-based artillery, captured a very young Israeli soldier--bespectacled, deer-in-the- headlights-looking Corporal Gilad Shalit--and refuse to give him back until Israel meets their demands. Israel responded that the life of even one Israeli would be well worth the trouble it would take to murder every non-Jewish man, woman and child not only in Palestine, but in the region. It then undertook massive military retaliation.
Hezbollah, taking Israel's dare, captured two more Israeli soldiers.
U.S. President George W. Bush says the kidnappings are terrorist acts.
Is Bush right?
No, he's not.
Kidnapping is always vile.
But it's not uncommon. And in the United States, it's not even illegal anymore, as long as the kidnapped victim is accused (not proven guilty, but merely suspected) of committing some bad act.
The U.S. Supreme Court says so in its ruling in the notorious case of Dr. Humberto Alvarez-Machain, a Mexican obstetrician implicated in the kidnapping, torture and murder of Enrique "Kiki" Camarenas, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency agent. Although Mexico has an extradition treaty with the United States providing that Mexico decides whether sufficient evidence justifies forcibly sending someone in Mexico's sovereign jurisdiction to another state, the United States griped that extradition took too long.
So the DEA hired thugs to break into the obstetrician's house, clobber him, boink him on the head, inject him with drugs, and then tie him up and bundle him onto a plane flying to Texas, where he was arrested at the airport.
The federal court where the Mexican obstetrician was eventually tried was so horrified by the DEA's acts that they acquitted him.
Safely back in Mexico (where he likely won't be answering his own door anytime soon), Alvarez-Machain sued to recover damages from the government for his kidnapping. However, America's highest court said it really didn't care how mere suspects were brought into U.S. jurisdiction.
But Bush now says Israel can respond to kidnappings with unrestrained military force! Luckily for us here in the mighty United States, Mexico isn't a highly militarized state like Israel, or we'd be in big trouble.
Kidnapping is always vile. But not only the U.S. Supreme Court, but America's closest ally, Israel, says it's okay. In fact, so legendary are the Mossad's kidnappings of those it arbitrarily decides are "enemies of Israel" that Le Carre, the British spymaster-author, wrote a fictionalized best-selling book, "Little Drummer Girl," about the Mossad's kidnapping and murder of Palestinians, and Hollywood flipped that into a blockbuster movie. Israel's most famous kidnapping, that of Nazi Germany's notorious Adolf Eichmann, is often used to justify kidnapping as a normal policy. Indeed, there was little sympathy when Israelis broke into Eichmann's house, clobbered him and boinked him on the head, injected him with drugs, then tied him up and bundled him onto a plane flying to Israel, where he was arrested at the airport.
Few shed a tear when Israeli hanged him. After all, no matter how banal and harmless Hitler's SS aide seemed, he was a monster from a nation of monsters, and served an army of monsters. And Israel, with Gideon's terrible, swift sword, slayed that monster.
But in doing so, Israel violated Argentina's territorial state sovereignty, just as the United States violated Mexico's in kidnapping Alvarez-Machado.
Both Israel and the United States routinely misuse, at their own convenience, international laws Europe established safeguarding state sovereignty to prevent the prolonged, violent wars that plagued Europe for centuries. Why have such laws? Think about the innocent. Think about Chile's General Rene Schneider, who died resisting a botched kidnapping reportedly instigated by General Pinochet's supporters pursuant to CIA directives preceding the Allende regime's collapse. Think about Ahmed Bouchiki, the hardworking Moroccan waiter in Lillehammer, Norway, murdered by Mossad agents who mistook him for Ali Hassan Salameh, a Black September operative. When four years later the Mossad finally caught up with Salameh in Beirut, they allegedly murdered him with a remote-control car bomb, killing not only Salameh and the four bodyguards in his car, but also four utterly innocent people just strolling by, including an English student and a German nun, and injuring eighteen other bystanders.
And recent reports indicate that others murdered by the Mossad were not likely even involved in Munich. The message was vengeance. Author Aaron Klein claims to the Mossad, "one dead PLO operative was as good as another."
Shalit's family rightly fears for his life. For those who've kidnapped him, he's a monster from a nation of monsters who serves an army of monsters, and he's heir to a tradition that says kidnapping is a legal, justified, an act of state. But the kidnappers are heirs to a different tradition, and the time has come to prove Islam's infinite mercy. Let Shalit live. Please.
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Emergency depot lies empty as Lebanon begs for aid
From Daniel McGrory in BeirutJuly 24, 2006
A VAST auditorium being used to house emergency aid in Beirut lay empty last night as relief agencies criticised Britain and other Western countries for their lame response to Lebanon's worsening refugee crisis.
Lebanese officials told The Times yesterday they expected to have to cope with 1.2 million displaced people - a third of the country's population - as thousands more families fled their homes at the weekend.
The United Nations will make an urgent appeal today after a warning by Jan Egeland, the UN's emergency relief coordinator, that Lebanon needed $100 million immediately to avoid "a humanitarian catastrophe".
Fuel and emergency stockpiles of medicine are running low across the country.
At Beirut harbour, frustrated aid workers watched a flotilla of warships and chartered ferries sail in empty to pick up more stranded foreigners, lamenting that these ships could have carried drugs, blankets, tents and generators.
An Italian warship, the San Giorgio, delivered two ambulances, water purifying kits, protein biscuits and other supplies, and a French-chartered ferry Nato ration packs, but both still had acres of unused space on board.
Alexandre Giraud, who works for the French charity Première Urgence, said: "It's a shame these huge ships come in so lightly loaded. Aid is very, very slow and the coordination on the ground here is a tremendous problem."
Yesterday Israel rejected an ambitious plan sponsored by the UN to move thousands of tonnes of aid using three sea routes to the ports of Sidon, Tripoli and Beirut, a safe road corridor stretching from Syria in the north to Lebanon's southern border with Israel, and an air bridge.
Charities are finding it hard to hire truck drivers to carry the aid as they are scared that their convoys will be targeted by Israeli aircraft. The first Red Cross convoy to head to stricken towns in southern Lebanon at the weekend said that it had been fired upon.
Among those waiting on the dockside for the first trickle of aid to arrive was General Yahyeh Raad, the head of Lebanon's Relief High Commission. "I don't think the world has realised we need a lot of help and we need it now," he said. "We have bought what we could on the local market up to now, but supplies are running short."
Officials believe that fuel will run out in the next two weeks, medicine in the next three weeks and flour and wheat by September.
At an entertainment complex, built next to the city's docks, wealthy businessmen gathered with Lebanese ministers yesterday to try to speed up the relief operation. In the cavernous hall three in the Beirut Exhibition and Leisure Centre, a few dozen pallets of food and medical aid lay in one small corner, a testament to how little help Lebanon has received.
Yesterday Mr Egeland visited a makeshift refugee camp in Sanayeh Gardens, one of Beirut's biggest parks, and found that the conditions for the 1,200-plus people forced to sleep outside were squalid.
Many of the families complained that his 20-minute visit did little to ease their immediate suffering.
Hala Salloub, 21, sat on a pile of mattresses in the fierce sunshine shaking her head in despair as her two young children complained of feeling unwell in the scorching heat.
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IDF preparing for civil administration in Lebanon
By ANSHEL PFEFFER
Jul. 23, 2006 18:38
OC Northern Command Maj.-Gen. Udi Adam acknowledged in a briefing at Northern Command headquarters in Safed on Sunday afternoon that the commander of the IDF's civil administration unit had already begun preparations toward the possibility of instituting a military administration in areas captured by the IDF over the last week.
According to Adam, "certain units who will give us breathing space have been called up, including the commander of that unit." The unit's activation, however, would only take place following comprehensive consultations, he said.
Adam denied reports that there were plans to set up a large prison camp for captured Hizbullah fighters, saying the measure would not be needed.
Comment: No. Israel will kill them all.
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Israel, the Model
By William J. Bennett & Seth Leibsohn
July 25, 2006, 4:42 a.m.
From the precincts of the European Union to the United Nations to the editorial pages in the United States, it is being argued that Israel's response to Hezbollah's kidnapping of Israelis and firing of rockets into Israel is "disproportionate," a threat to the region, and could undo the U.S. democracy project in the Middle East. What is disproportion in the Middle East? How should one state respond to multi-state-sponsored terror?
Begin with the fundamentals. Hezbollah, once described as "the A-team of terrorists" by former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, is a terrorist group with a record of killing hundreds of Americans and Israelis (from Beirut to Saudi Arabia to Argentina to inside Israel). Hezbollah is of global reach and extent. It began with the fundamental goals of creating an Islamist state in Lebanon and the total annihilation of Israel. It is armed and supported by Syria and Iran, and it has branches in some 20 countries. It occupies 20 percent of the Lebanese parliament but that percentage does not give it sufficient due. Here is Amir Taheri in the London Times:
Hezbollah is a state within the Lebanese state. It controls some 25% of the national territory. Almost 400,000 of Lebanon's estimated 4 million inhabitants live under its control. It collects its own taxes with a 20% levy, known as "khoms", on all incomes. It runs its own schools, where a syllabus produced in Iran is taught at all levels. It also runs clinics, hospitals, social welfare networks and centres for orphans and widows.
The party controls the elected municipal councils and appoints local officials, who in theory should be selected by the central government in Beirut. To complete its status as a virtual state, the party maintains a number of unofficial "embassies": the one in Tehran is bigger and has a larger number of staff than that of Lebanon itself.
Hezbollah also has its own media including a satellite television channel, Al-Manar (the lighthouse), which is watched all over the Arab world, four radio stations, newspapers and magazines plus a book publishing venture. The party has its own system of justice based on sharia and operates its own police force, courts and prisons. Hezbollah runs youth clubs, several football teams and a number of matrimonial agencies.
In sum, it may very well have the run of Lebanon more than non-Hezbollah factions and institutions. Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, brags about this today.
Comment: Yet the area it supposedly controls only has 10% of the Labanese population....
As for Israel's disproportion, it is worth remembering that Israel is but one state - with a majority of Jews but a substantial Arab population.
Comment: Who are treated as second-class citizens.
The Arab states number 22. The land-mass comparison is some 10,000 square miles compared to over five million square miles. That does not include Iran. The Palestinian Authority, situated now in the southwest of Israel, is a Hamas entity - it is more lethal and Islamist than Arafat's PLO.
Comment: It was also democratically elected by the Palsetinian people.
President Bush, in articulating the post-9/11 doctrine, stated: "Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime."
In some respects it is unnecessary to ask whether Lebanon "harbors" or "harbored" Hezbollah; but one definition of "harbor" is "to provide refuge" and there is no question that at the bare minimum, Lebanon allowed Hezbollah to operate in its country - gave it ministerial portfolios in the cabinet and allowed the seating of its elected officials in parliament. It may, as a fragile, burgeoning, democracy have had no choice but to do this. But the question remains: Was that fragile democracy slowly moving to eradicate Hezbollah from its midst or was Hezbollah growing stronger and stronger?
We know this about terrorists groups: As nature abhors a vacuum, terrorists thrive in them - that is where they grow and empower themselves.
Comment: Exactly. With no one willing to stand up against the US and ISrael, the American and Israeli terrorists have filled the vacuum, doing what they want, where they want.
And at least since Israel left Lebanon six years ago, Hezbollah has not gotten weaker. Further, if Hezbollah had believed Lebanon was constricting it rather than allowing it to thrive, it would not have launched an incursion into Israel.
Nonetheless, Israel has not deliberately targeted the Lebanese government. Still, the question arises, however, that if the U.S. sides alone with Israel, would that not be a terrible message to send to the broader Middle East democracy initiative. This is the question that is the most lopsided of them all.
We have long believed that, paraphrasing former CIA director Jim Woolsey, democracy is not one vote, one time. Israel is in the Middle East and is a democracy that passes the Woolsey test and has done so for almost 60 years.
Comment: The ''Woolsey test"!!! From the intelligence organization that has never shown the slightest interest in democracy throughout its history!
Lebanon has had one election in recent times and it weaved Hezbollah into that democracy. The PA had an election and it put Hamas in charge. It seems to us that if one wants to further the Middle East democracy project - and not be cynical about it - the U.S. is doing precisely what it should: showing support for the established democracy, not the fragile and inept one that allows, tolerates or - at a minimum - turned a blind eye to Hezbollah in its midst.
Comment: We thought that democracy meant allowing the people to have their say. Then, if the elections don't go your way, you wait till the next election. Of course, given the last two stolen presidential elections in the US, we readily admit that our idea of democracy is different than that of the neocons.
At the end of the day, if Middle Eastern democracies are desired, and they are, does one not want models to point to? What model should the U.S. be pointing to to the Iranian dissidents, the Egyptian dissidents, the Saudi dissidents? Would we be right to say, "Vote and behave like they did in Lebanon, and erect a government like that (where 400,000 people live under Hezbollah control)," or "Look at Israel: It comes to the aid of others around the world, it has a minority population with full democratic rights that even serve in government, and its economy, free of oil, works."
It may be wishful thinking to assume Arab peoples will fully want Israel as their model, indeed it is probably naive. Nonetheless, if the U.S. is to be held accountable for initiating and supporting democracies, the one that is one year old and hosts Hezbollah is not the model we should be propagating. So the next time the question is asked about the Middle East democracy project in light of Israel, Lebanon, and the Middle East - the reminder needs to be made: Israel is a democracy and it is in the Middle East. And one final point: If Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran were to be victorious in their military actions and ideology, two things would not exist: 1) Israel and 2) Lebanese democracy of any kind.
- William Bennett is the Washington fellow of the Claremont Institute, the author of America: The Last Best Hope, and the host of Bill Bennett's Morning in America. Seth Leibsohn is a fellow of the Claremont Institute and the producer of Bill Bennett's Morning in America.
Comment: This article is a good look into the minds of the pro-Israel Lobby and the various paramoralisms they use to justify the wanton killing of Arabs.
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A war crime?
By Robert Fisk
06/24/07 "The Independent"
They are in the schools, in empty hospitals, in halls and mosques and in the streets. The Shia Muslim refugees of southern Lebanon, driven from their homes by the Israelis, are arriving in Sidon by the thousand, cared for by Sunni Muslims and then sent north to join the 600,000 displaced Lebanese in Beirut. More than 34,000 have passed through here in the past four days alone, a tide of misery and anger. It will take years to heal their wounds, and billions of dollars to repair their damaged property.
And who can blame them for their flight? For the second time in eight days, the Israelis committed a war crime yesterday. They ordered the villagers of Taire, near the border, to leave their homes and then - as their convoy of cars and minibuses obediently trailed northwards - the Israeli air force fired a missile into the rear minibus, killing three refugees and seriously wounding 13 other civilians. The rocket that killed them is believed to have been a Hellfire missile made by Lockheed Martin in Florida.
Nine days ago, the Israeli army ordered the inhabitants of a neighbouring village, Marwaheen, to leave their homes and then fired rockets into one of their evacuation trucks, blasting the women and children inside to their deaths. And this is the same Israeli air force which was praised last week by one of Israel's greatest defenders - Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz - because it "takes extraordinary steps to minimise civilian casualties".
Nor have the Israelis spared Sidon. A heap of rubble and pancaked walls is all that is left of the Fatima Zahra mosque, a Hizbollah institution in the centre of the city, its minaret crumbled and its dome now sitting on the concrete, a black flag still flying from its top. When Israeli warplanes came early yesterday morning, the 75-year-old caretaker had no time to run from the building; he died of his wounds hours later. His overturned white plastic chair still lies by the gate. The mosque is unlikely to have been used for military purposes; a school belonging to the Hariris, Sidon's all-powerful Sunni family, stands next door; they would never have allowed weapons into the building.
Not that Hizbollah - which killed two more Israeli civilians with their rockets in Haifa yesterday - have respected Sidon, whose population is 95 per cent Sunni. They tried to fire Iranian-made missiles at Israel from the seafront Corniche and from beside the city slaughterhouse last week. On both occasions, residents physically prevented them from opening fire.
The multimillion-dollar Hariri Foundation - created by the former prime minister, Rafik Hariri, who was assassinated last year - has helped 24,000 Shia refugees out of the south and on to Beirut but its generosity has not always been happily received. One group of refugees sheltering in a technical school in Meheniyeh punched and taunted Hariri workers. Elsewhere, the foundation's staff have been cursed by fleeing families. "They are telling us that we are working for the Americans and that this is why we are taking them out," said Ghena Hariri - Rafik's niece and a Georgetown graduate. "It is something that drains our energy. We are working 24 hours a day and at the end of the day they curse us. But I feel so sorry for them. Now they are being told by the Israelis to leave their villages on foot and they have to walk dozens of kilometres in this heat."
It's not difficult to see how this war can damage the delicate sectarian framework that exists in Lebanon. One group of Shia families - housed in a school in the Druze mountains of the Chouf - tried to put Hizbollah's yellow banners on the roof and members of Walid Jumblatt's Druze Popular Socialist Party had to tear them down. Their act may have saved the refugees' lives.
Yet many of the Shia in this beautiful Crusader port have learnt how kind their Sunni neighbours can be. "We are here - where else can we go?" Nazek Kadnah asked as she sat in the corner of a mosque which Rafik Hariri built and dedicated to his father, Haj Baha'udin Hariri. "But they look after us here as their brothers and sisters and now we are safe."
These sentiments provoke some dark questions. Why, for example, can't these poor people be shown the same compassion from Tony Blair as he supposedly felt for the Muslims of Kosovo when they were being driven from their homes by the Serbs? These thousands are as terrified and homeless as the Kosovo Albanians who fled to Macedonia in 1998 and for whom Mr Blair claimed he was waging a moral war. But for the Shia Muslims sleeping homeless in Sidon there is to be no such moral posturing - and no ceasefire suggestions from Mr Blair, who has aligned himself with the Israelis and the Americans.
And what exactly is the purpose of driving more than half a million people from their homes? Many of these poor people sit clutching their front-door keys, just as the Palestinians of Galilee did when they arrived in Lebanon 58 years ago to spend the rest of their lives as refugees. Yes, the Shia Muslims of Lebanon probably will go home. But to what? A war between the Hizbollah and a Western intervention force? Or further bombardment by the Israelis?
The Sidon refugees now have 36 schools in which they can shelter - but they are the lucky ones. Across southern Lebanon, the innocent continued to die. One was an eight-year-old boy who was killed in an Israeli air raid on a village close to Tyre. Eight more civilians were wounded when an Israeli missile hit a vehicle outside the Najem hospital in Tyre. And during the morning, one of Lebanon's journalists, Layal Nejib, a photographer for the magazine Al-Jaras whose pictures were also transmitted by Agence France Press, was killed in her taxi by an Israeli air strike near Qana, the same village in which 106 civilians were massacred in a UN base by Israeli artillery shells in 1996. She was only 23.
In her marble-walled home above Sidon, Bahia Hariri - Ghena's mother, the sister of the murdered former prime minister and a local member of parliament - sat grim-faced, scarcely controlling her fury. "We are in this terrible situation but we haven't any window to resolve this situation," she said. "Rafik Hariri is no longer with us. The international community is not with us. Who is with us? God. And the old Lebanese. And the Arab world, we hope, will help us. The only resistance we can show is to be a united Lebanon. But we have only a small margin in which to dream."
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Secret 2001 Pentagon Plan to Attack Lebanon
By A Concerned Citizen
"GlobalResearch"
07/24/06
"[The] Five-year campaign plan [includes]... a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan" (Pentagon official quoted by General Wesley Clark)"Winning Modern Wars" (page 130) General Clark states the following:
According to General Wesley Clark--the Pentagon, by late 2001, was Planning to Attack Lebanon
"As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan.Of course, this wholly consistent with the US Neocons' master plan, "Rebuilding America's Defenses," published in August 2000 by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC)
...He said it with reproach--with disbelief, almost--at the breadth of the vision. I moved the conversation away, for this was not something I wanted to hear. And it was not something I wanted to see moving forward, either. ...I left the Pentagon that afternoon deeply concerned."
And, as PNAC's website (http://www.newamericancentury.org) notes, that the lead author of that plan, Thomas Donnelly, was a top official of Lockheed Martin--a company well acquainted with war and its profit potential.
It's no surprise that Republicans are starting to talk about withdrawing troops from Iraq; the troops will be needed in Lebanon. And maybe Sudan and Syria?
Note:
More on General Clark--and his failure to mention all this in his pre-Iraq war commentary on CNN--is in Sydney Schanberg's 9/29/03 article "The Secrets Clark Kept: What the General Never Told Us About the Bush Plan for Serial War" at The Village Voice.
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Propaganda Alert: Iranian Suicide armies launched
UK Sun (crass rioght-wing tabloid)
25/07/2006
TEAMS of Iranian suicide bombers were heading for Lebanon's war zone last night in a terrifying bid to spark meltdown in the Middle East.
Twenty-seven martyrdom-seekers have been sent to Syria on their way to front line positions.
The mad fanatics, belonging to the Iranian Martyrs of Islam World Movement, have been training for months to wreak maximum havoc on military and soft civilian targets. Their aim is to spark terror which will detonate all-out war and suck Western nations into a final bloody showdown.
A spokesman for the martyrs group said yesterday: "Two teams of 18 and nine have gone to Syria separately.
"They have been deployed on a voluntary basis in order to get to the areas of conflict in any way they can."
The man, named only as Mohammadi, claimed the 27 were picked from 55,000 who registered in Iran. They were briefed and have completed the "relevant courses" so that they could perform both military services and helping the wounded.
Mohammadi added: "If Israel would decide to occupy Lebanon again, they will carry out martyrdom-seeking operations."
The would-be bombers are also trained to recruit local volunteers and create new cells of suicide attackers.
All of them are fluent in Persian and Arabic, and some speak English.
Mohammadi insisted that the MIWM group has no links with Lebanon's Hezbollah. Another Iranian source close to the group, named as Mohammad Ali Samadi declared: "The first two groups of esteshhadioun (volunteers of martyrdom) have already reached Lebanon.
"They have received adequate training to fight beside their Lebanese brothers. They will identify Zionist targets and attack them with actions of martyrdom."
The fanatics also aim to avenge deaths and injuries to people like those caught in the Israeli air strikes on the southern Lebanese city of Tyre.
The deployment of suicide squads will strengthen US claims that Iran is the power behind the current turmoil in Lebanon.
Security has been stepped up amid fears of suicide attacks on soft targets in Beirut and areas close to the Israeli border where fighting is raging. A Lebanese security official said: "It is the nightmare we've been dreading."
Israeli troops yesterday seized two Hezbollah guerrillas during fighting in Maroun al-Ras.
The death toll in the conflict continues to mount. At least three people died when Israeli warplanes struck a minibus carrying 16 villagers fleeing from Tairi in Lebanon.
Hezbollah continued rocket attacks across northern Israel. Two people died as more than a dozen missiles hit Haifa. One was killed in a factory - on the day residents returned to work after a week of sheltering from the bombing.
A total of 17 Israelis have been killed by Hezbollah rockets and 19 Israeli troops have died. And 381 Lebanese have been killed.
A UN observer was injured in the crossfire. Italian Capt Roberto Punzo was hit in the stomach by shrapnel. He was last night undergoing surgery.
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U.S. Iran Policy Irks Senior Commanders: The Military vs. Militaristic Civilian Leadership
July 24, 2006 at 12:57:27
by Ismael Hossein-zadeh
There is strong evidence that as the Bush administration is mulling over plans to bomb Iran, the simmering conflict between the high-ranking military professionals and the militaristic civilian leaders is bursting into open. The conflict, festering ever since the invasion of Iraq, has now been heightened over the administration's policy of an aerial military strike against Iran. While civilian militarists, headed by Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, are said to have drawn plans to bomb Iran, senior commanders are openly questioning the wisdom of such plans. [1]
The administration's recent statements that it is now willing to negotiate with Iran might appear as a change or modification of its plans to launch a military strike against that country. But a closer reading of those statements indicates otherwise: such pronouncements are premised on the condition that, as President Bush recently put it, "the Iranian regime fully and verifiably suspends its uranium enrichment." In light of the fact that suspension of uranium enrichment, which is nothing beyond Iran's legitimate rights under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), is supposed to be the main point of negotiation, Iran is asked, in effect, "to concede the main point of the negotiations before they started." [2]
Military professionals question the administration's plans of a bombing campaign against Iran on a number of grounds. For one thing, they doubt that, beyond a lot of death and destruction, the projected bombing raids can accomplish much, i.e., destroy Iran's nuclear program. For another, they caution that the bombing campaign could be very costly in terms of military, economic, and geopolitical interests of the United States in the region and beyond. More importantly, however, the professionals' opposition to the administration's bombing plans stems from the fact that, points out the renowned investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, "American and European intelligence agencies have not found specific evidence of clandestine [nuclear] activities or hidden facilities" in Iran. Hersh further writes, "A former senior intelligence official told me that people in the Pentagon were asking, 'What's the evidence? We've got a million tentacles out there, overt and covert, and these guys'-the Iranians-'have been working on this for eighteen years, and we have nothing? We're coming up with jack shit.'" [3]
So far, the jingoistic civilian leaders do not seem to have been swayed by the expert advice of their military experts. And the discord over Iran policy continues.
Some observers have attributed the conflict to Rumsfeld's uneasy relationship with the military hierarchy, arguing that his cavalier attitude and unwillingness to accept responsibility are the main reasons for the ongoing friction between the military and civilian leadership. While there are clear elements of truth to this explanation, it leaves out some more fundamental reasons for the discord. There is a deeper and more general historical pattern-often shaped by the economics of war-to the recurring disagreements between the military and militaristic civilian leaders over issues of war and peace. Let me elaborate on this point.
Evidence shows that business or economic beneficiaries of war, who do not have to face direct combat and death, tend to be more jingoistic than professional military personnel who will have to face the horrors of warfare. Furthermore, military professionals tend to care more about the outcome of a war and "military honor" than civilian leaders who often represent some powerful economic interests that benefit from the business of war. Calling such business and/or ideologically-driven war mongers "civilian militarists," military historian Alfred Vagts points to a number of historical instances of how civilian militarists' eagerness to use military force for their nefarious interests often led "to an intensification of the horrors of warfare." For example, he points out how in World War II "civilians not only anticipated war more eagerly than the professionals, but played a principal part in making combat . . . more terrible than was the current military wont or habit." [4]
The 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq serves as another blatant example of civilian militarists' instigation of war in pursuit of economic and geopolitical gains. A number of belatedly surfaced documents reveal that not only were the civilian militarists, representing powerful business and geopolitical interests, behind the invasion of Iraq, but that they also advocated a prolonged occupation of that country in order to avail their legal and economic "experts" the time needed to overhaul that country's economy according to a restructuring plan that they had drawn up long before the invasion. One such document, titled "Moving the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to Growth," was obtained from the State Department by the well-known investigative reporter Greg Palast. The document, also called the "Economy Plan," was part of a largely secret program called "The Iraq Strategy."
Here is how Palast describes the plan: "The Economy Plan goes boldly where no invasion plan has gone before: the complete rewrite, it says, of a conquered state's 'policies, laws and regulations.' Here's what you'll find in the Plan: a highly detailed program . . . for imposing a new regime of low taxes on big business, and quick sales of Iraq's banks and bridges-in fact, 'ALL state enterprises'-to foreign operators. . . . Beginning on page 73, the secret drafters emphasized that Iraq would have to 'privatize' (i.e., sell off) its 'oil and supporting industries.'" [5]
After a detailed account and analysis of the plan, Palast concludes, "If the Economy Plan reads like a Christmas wish-list drafted by U.S. corporate lobbyists, that's because it was. From slashing taxes to wiping away Iraq's tariffs (taxes on imports of U.S. and other foreign goods), the package carries the unmistakable fingerprints of the small, soft hands of Grover Norquist."
Grover Norquist, once registered as a lobbyist for Microsoft and American Express, is one of many corporate lobbyists who helped shape the Economy Plan for the "new" Iraq. In an interview with Palast, Norquist boasted of moving freely at the Treasury, Defense and State Departments, and in the White House, "shaping the post-conquest economic plans...."
The Economy Plan's "Annex D" laid out "a strict 360-day schedule for the free-market makeover of Iraq." But General Jay Garner, the initially-designated ruler of Iraq, had promised Iraqis they would have free and fair elections as soon as Saddam was toppled, preferably within 90 days. In the face of this conflict, civilian militarists of the Bush administration overruled General Garner: elections were postponed-as usual, on grounds that the local population and/or conditions were not yet ripe for elections. The real reason for the postponement, however, was that, as Palast points out, "It was simply inconceivable that any popularly elected government would let America write its laws and auction off the nation's crown jewel, its petroleum industry."
When Palast asked lobbyist Norquist about the postponement of the elections, he responded matter of factly: "The right to trade, property rights, these things are not to be determined by some democratic election." The troops would simply have to wait longer.
General Garner's resistance to the plan to postpone the elections was a major factor for his sudden replacement with Paul Bremmer who, having served as managing director of Kissinger Associates, better understood the corporate culture. Soon after assuming power in Saddam Hussein's old palace, Bremmer cancelled Garner's scheduled meeting of Iraq's tribal leaders that was called to plan national elections. Instead, he appointed the entire "government" himself. National elections, Bremmer pronounced, would have to wait until 2005. "The delay would, incidentally, provide," Palast notes, "time needed to lock in the laws, regulations and irreversible sales of assets in accordance with the Economy Plan. . . . Altogether, the leader of the Coalition Provisional Authority issued exactly 100 orders that remade Iraq in the image of the Economy Plan."
Palast's report is by no means an isolated or exceptional story. It is part of a historical pattern of how or why civilian militarists, often representing powerful interests of the beneficiaries of war, tend to be more belligerent than the professional military. The report also shows that, contrary to popular perceptions, the jingoistic neoconservative forces in and around the Bush administration are not simply a bunch of starry-eyed ideologues bent on "spreading U.S. values." More importantly, they represent influential economic and geopolitical interests that are camouflaged behind the façade of the neoconservatives' rhetoric and their alleged ideals of democracy.
There is clear evidence that the leading neoconservative figures have been long-time political activists who have worked through a network of war-mongering think tanks that are set up to serve either as the armaments lobby or the Israeli lobby or both. These corporate-backed militaristic think tanks include Project for the New American Century, the American Enterprise Institute, Center for Security Policy, Middle East Media Research Institute, Middle East Forum, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, and National Institute for Public Policy. Major components of the Bush administration's foreign policy, including the war on Iraq, have been designed largely at the drawing boards of these think thanks, often in collaboration, directly or indirectly, with the Pentagon and the arms lobby. [6]
Even a cursory look at the records of these militaristic think tanks-their membership, their financial sources, their institutional structures, and the like-shows that they are set up to essentially serve as institutional fronts to camouflage the dubious relationship between the Pentagon, its major contractors, and the Israeli lobby, on the one hand, and the war-mongering neoconservative politicians, on the other. More critically, this unsavory relationship also shows that powerful interests that benefit from war are also essentially the same powers that can-and indeed do-make war. Additionally, it explains why civilian militarists are so eager to foment war and international tensions.
By the same token, the incestuous relationship between war beneficiaries and war makers goes some way to explain the increasing tensions between the military and civilian militarists in and around the Bush administration, especially in the context of the administration's plans to bomb Iran. When contemplating war plans, military commanders make some critically important decisions that seem to be of no or very little significance to civilian leaders. Not only the military will have to face direct combat, death, and destruction, but perhaps more importantly, the commanders will have to think very carefully about the outcome of the war and the chances of victory, that is, the of honor and pride of the military.
By contrast, the primary concern and the measure of success for civilian militarists lie in the mere act or continuation of war, as this would ensure increased military spending and higher dividends for military industries and war-induced businesses. In other words, the standard of success for corporate beneficiaries of war, which operate from behind the façade of neoconservative forces in and around the Bush administration, is based more on business profitability than on the conventional military success on the battle field. This is a clear indication of the fact that, for example, while from a military point of view the war on Iraq has been a fiasco, from the standpoint of the powerful beneficiaries of the Pentagon budget it has been a boon and a huge success. This explains, perhaps more than anything ales, the ongoing tensions between the military and militaristic civilian leaders, or chicken hawks.
_________________________________________
References:
1. Seymour M. Hersh, "The military's problem with the President's Iran policy," The New Yorker (July 10, 2006): http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060710fa_fact
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Alfred Vagts, A History of Militarism: Civilian and Military (London: Hollis & Carter, 1959), P. 463.
5. Greg Palast, "Adventure Capitalism," TomPaine.com (October 26, 2004): http://www.tompaine.com/articles/adventure_capitalism.php
6. William Hartung and Michelle Ciarrocca, "The Military-Industrial-Think Tank Complex," International Monitor (January-February 2003): http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2003/03jan-feb/jan-feb03corp2.html#name
http://www.cbpa.drake.edu/hossein-zadeh
Ismael Hossein-zadeh is a professor of economics at Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa. He is the author of the newly published book, "The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism." His Web page is, http://www.cbpa.drake.edu/hossein-zadeh
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UK Govt Sources Confirm War With Iran Is On
July 23, 2006 at 16:21:12
by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
In the last few days, I learned from a credible and informed source that a former senior Labour government Minister, who continues to be well-connected to British military and security officials, confirms that Britain and the United States
"... will go to war with Iran before the end of the year."
As we now know from similar reporting prior to the invasion of Iraq, it's quite possible that the war planning may indeed change repeatedly, and the war may again be postponed. In any case, it's worth noting that the information from a former Labour Minister corroborates expert analyses suggesting that Israel, with US and British support, is deliberately escalating the cycle of retaliation to legitimize the imminent targeting of Iran before year's end. Let us remind ourselves, for instance, of US Vice President Cheney's assertions recorded on MSNBC over a year ago. He described Iran as being "right at the top of the list" of "rogue states". He continued: "One of the concerns people have is that Israel might do it without being asked... Given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel, the Israelis might well decide to act first, and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards."
But the emphasis on Israel's pre-eminent role in a prospective assault on Iran is not accurate. Israel would rather play the role of a regional proxy force in a US-led campaign. "Despite the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, the Bush Administration has not reconsidered its basic long-range policy goal in the Middle East..." reports Seymour Hersh. He quotes a former high-level US intelligence official as follows:
"This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone. Next, we're going to have the Iranian campaign. We've declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah-we've got four years, and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism."
Are these just the fanatical pipedreams of the neoconservative faction currently occupying (literally) the White House?
Unfortunately, no. The Iraq War was one such fanatical pipedream in the late 1990s, one that Bush administration officials were eagerly ruminating over when they were actively and directly involved in the Project for a New American Century. But that particular pipedream is now a terrible, gruelling reality for the Iraqi people. Despite the glaring failures of US efforts in that country, there appears to be a serious inability to recognize the futility of attempting the same in Iran.
The Monterey Institute for International Studies already showed nearly two years ago in a detailed analysis that the likely consequences of a strike on Iran by the US, Israel, or both, would be a regional conflagaration that could quickly turn nuclear, and spiral out of control. US and Israeli planners are no doubt aware of what could happen. Such a catastrophe would have irreversible ramifications for the global political economy. Energy security would be in tatters, precipitating the activation of long-standing contingency plans to invade and occupy all the major resource-rich areas of the Middle East and elsewhere (see my book published by Clairview, Behind the War on Terror for references and discussion). Such action could itself trigger responses from other major powers with fundamental interests in maintaining their own access to regional energy supplies, such as Russia and particularly China, which has huge interests in Iran. Simultaneously, the dollar-economy would be seriously undermined, most likely facing imminent collapse in the context of such crises.
Which raises pertinent questions about why Britain, the US and Israel are contemplating such a scenario as a viable way of securing their interests.
A glimpse of an answer lies in the fact that the post-9/11 military geostrategy of the "War on Terror" does not spring from a position of power, but rather from entirely the opposite. The global system has been crumbling under the weight of its own unsustainability for many years now, and we are fast approaching the convergence of multiple crises that are already interacting fatally as I write. The peak of world oil production, of which the Bush administration is well aware, either has already just happened, or is very close to happening. It is a pivotal event that signals the end of the Oil Age, for all intents and purposes, with escalating demand placing increasing pressure on dwindling supplies. Half the world's oil reserves are, more or less, depleted, which means that it will be technologically, geophysically, increasingly difficult to extract conventional oil. I had a chat last week with some scientists from the Omega Institute in Brighton, directed by my colleague and friend Graham Ennis, who told me eloquently and powerfully what I already knew, that while a number of climate "tipping-points" may or may not have yet been passed, we have about 10-15 years before the "tipping-point" is breached certainly and irreversibly. Breaching that point means plunging head-first into full-scale "climate catastrophe". Amidst this looming Armageddon of Nature, the dollar-denominated economy itself has been teetering on the edge of spiralling collapse for the last seven years or more. This is not idle speculation. A financial analyst as senior as Paul Volcker, Alan Greenspan's immediate predecessor as chairman of the Federal Reserve, recently confessed "that he thought there was a 75% chance of a currency crisis in the United States within five years."
There appears to have been a cold calculation made at senior levels within the Anglo-American policymaking establishment: that the system is dying, but the last remaining viable means of sustaining it remains a fundamentally military solution designed to reconfigure and rehabilitate the system to continue to meet the requirements of the interlocking circuits of military-corporate power and profit.
The highly respected US whistleblower, former RAND strategic analyst Daniel Ellsberg, who was Special Assistant to Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam conflict and became famous after leaking the Pentagon Papers, has already warned of his fears that in the event of "another 9/11 or a major war in the Middle-East involving a U.S. attack on Iran, I have no doubt that there will be, the day after or within days an equivalent of a Reichstag fire decree that will involve massive detentions in this country, detention camps for middle-easterners and their quote 'sympathizers', critics of the President's policy and essentially the wiping-out of the Bill of Rights."
So is that what all the "emergency preparedness" legislation, here in the UK as well as in the USA and in Europea, is all about? The US plans are bad enough, as Ellsberg notes, but the plans UK scene is hardly better, prompting The Guardian to describe the Civil Contingencies Bill (passed as an Act in 2004) as "the greatest threat to civil liberty that any parliament is ever likely to consider."
As global crises converge over the next few years, we the people are faced with an unprecedented opportunity to use the growing awareness of the inherent inhumanity and comprehensive destructiveness of the global imperial system to establish new, viable, sustainable and humane ways of living.
www.independentinquiry.co.uk
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is the author of The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry (London: Duckworth, 2006). He teaches courses in International Relations at the School of Social Sciences and Cultural Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, where he is doing his PhD studying imperialism and genocide. Since 9/11, he has authored three other books revealing the realpolitik behind the rhetoric of the "War on Terror", The War on Freedom, Behind the War on Terror and The War on Truth. In summer 2005, he testified as an expert witness in US Congress about his research on international terrorism
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UN Vexed as Russia Opposes Key Parts of Iran Nuclear Resolution
Created: 23.07.2006 10:48 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 10:49 MSK
MosNews
Russia is unexpectedly opposing key parts of a U.S.-backed Security Council draft resolution on Iran's nuclear program, threatening international unity on how to handle Tehran's defiance, UN diplomats quoted by AP said Saturday.
Particularly vexing to the United States and its allies is Moscow's refusal to endorse language demanding that Tehran freeze uranium enrichment or face potential sanctions. That refusal appears to contradict previous signals suggesting Russia was ready to support a tougher line against Iran.
As recently as July 12, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov delivered a veiled warning to Tehran on enrichment and its refusal to respond to an international offer to negotiate its nuclear program, saying the Security Council "will consider steps appropriate to the situation" if the Islamic republic does not comply.
The council has the power to impose political or economic sanctions.
Lavrov and his counterparts from the United States, China, Britain, France and Germany agreed that day to resume Security Council deliberations after Tehran refused requests to respond by that date to an international package of rewards in exchange for an enrichment freeze and other nuclear concessions.
Work on a resolution was suspended May 3 so the six powers could draw up a plan of perks for Iran to freeze enrichment and start talks meant to secure its agreement to a long-term moratorium on the activity, which can produce material for atomic weapons as well as fuel for reactors.
The incentives include advanced technology and the easing of U.S. sanctions on the sale of aircraft and aircraft parts.
While Iran argues it has a right under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to use the technology to generate power, there is increasing international concern that Tehran wants to enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels for use in the fissile core of nuclear warheads.
The United States, Britain and France are insisting on a freeze.
The diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the dispute, told The Associated Press there was no indication what was dictating the apparent change in Russian tactics.
But it could be as simple as Moscow's belief that Tehran would not give up its right to enrichment. If so, any resolution demanding it do so and threatening penalties if it does not would escalate the confrontation - something the Russians fear could lead to military action.
A draft resolution drawn up by Britain and France and circulated last week among most members of the 15-nation council demands that Tehran "suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities ... and suspend the construction" of its heavy water reactor, which can produce plutonium.
One of the diplomats said that demand reflected the agreement among Russia and the five other nations at the July 12 meeting in the French capital but Moscow now was "trying to distance itself from the Paris declaration."
"They now want to water down the text," the diplomat said.
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All Are Equal, Middle East Included
By Sonia Nettnin
24 July, 2006
Countercurrents.org
The fundamental problem behind the crises in the Middle East is that not all the people who live there are viewed as equal. The US-Israel political, military and financial alliance protects the human rights and dignity of Israeli-Jews, but qualifies and selects the human rights and dignity of the Middle East's indigenous and multifarious ethnic, religious and sectarian peoples.
The root-causes of violence in the Middle East are the devaluation of human life, oppression and occupation.
When US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice travels to the Middle East she should present, not dictate, a diplomatic package to all, not selective, Middle East parties involved directly and indirectly. In doing so she addresses the US-diplomatic crisis in the region. If the US selectively addresses the underlying causes of the violence and ignores the multifaceted, Anglo-involvement in Middle East history; and if the US does not acknowledge all Middle East peoples, there will not be peace in the Middle East.
There is a Middle East war on many fronts and no country or state is safe.
Media Coverage Absent from US Media Coverage
There are media reports claiming Israel has been allegedly interfering with Palestinian airwaves and that the world is apparently not receiving the complete story of what happened in Nazareth earlier this week. In Gaza, Palestinian photographer Mohammad Az Zanoun, was shot by Israeli forces in Gaza. Of course Americans do not see the gruesome images of the war in Lebanon. I have seen a few dozen images. Scorched pieces of torsos, with remnants of organs, legs, limbs. Here is an IMEMC link to a graphic, AP photo of a dead child. The mass destruction of high-level apartment buildings is unbelievable.
And yet the US media does not cover the devastated, civilian infrastructure for Palestinians, especially in Gaza, and the ramifications Israeli occupation has on the Palestinians and potentially the Palestinian Authority. Moreover the humanitarian crisis affects the medical situation within Palestinian hospitals, especially in Gaza.
Although Lebanon's Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has called for humanitarian assistance and an immediate cease-fire, I am not sure what humanitarian corridor Israel will provide considering the damage Israeli F16 warplanes have done to roads and bridges leading to Syria. Naval ships in Beirut ports are evacuating internationals, how that will help Lebanese citizens and Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon is another matter.
Washington has chosen to delay travel to the Middle East to prevent the appearance of "shuttling." Yet calls for an immediate cease-fire by political leaders, have gone unanswered.
Of course, Hezbollah's attacks on Northern Israel with Katyusha rockets continued throughout the week also.
Both Israel and Hezbollah may face war crimes-charges by the UN. Here is a link to a recent BBC interview with UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour.
Several US media sources have reported that Hezbollah used Iranian-made missiles in their attacks in Northern Israel, and that Syria enabled transport access to Lebanon. Stateside the Muslim American Society is pursuing potential legal action with respect to the United States Arms Export Control Act and Israel for "...using American weapons to attack Lebanon and Gaza's civilians and civilian infrastructure."
International media sources Aljazeera, Maan News Agency and the Palestine News Network, along with US media source the Wayne Madsen Report, which contains an interesting photo and detailed diagram, have reported that Israeli forces have allegedly used poison gas and depleted uranium in Southern Lebanon, and they have allegedly used chemical ammunition in Gaza.
US Congress and the American Public Minority
On Thursday, Congress passed H. Res. 921 and S. Res. 534. The bill's title, "Condemning the recent attacks against the State of Israel, holding terrorists and their state-sponsors accountable for such attacks, supporting Israel's right to defend itself, and for other purposes," passed with a staggering 410 yeas in the House and a unanimous voice vote in the Senate. Here is a link to H. Res. 921.
An ADC press release responded to Congress' vote by explaining, "These resolutions give unconditional American support to Israel's military siege on civilian populations in Lebanon and Gaza."
For the past, two weeks several demonstrations have taken place across major cities in the US, as reported by workers.org. Protesters called for the end of Israel's attacks in Gaza and Lebanon. In Chicago, the demonstration was met with a counterdemonstration.
More demonstrations in the US and worldwide are scheduled today and in the weeks ahead.
The World's Future
War brings social, economic and psychological devastation, as well as disintegrates society. It kills people and turns the world against its own humanity. Since power, greed and control is the master whatever gains the superpowers think they will have are short-term, including their potential plans for the region, but the destruction of civilization is the long-term consequence.
Iraq is the cradle of civilization and on its way to becoming the grave. What is happening to Iraqi women is heartbreaking. When Iraqi women toured the US in March 2005, they gave their first-hand accounts. Even though all Iraqis face grave danger on a daily basis and thousands of Iraqis have sought refuge in neighboring countries, the plight of the Assyrians has been for the most part, ignored by Western media. Media coverage of Iraqi suffering and devastation is absent from Western media.
One of the many challenges the public faces in relation to the Middle East crisis is the one-sided media coverage. Moreover, a lack of historical context exists, as war journalist Robert Fisk explained in his 2005 book tour in the US.
After listening to US media reports of the Middle East crisis there is a sidestepping of the non-Israeli narratives, as if the Middle East's indigenous people existed in a vacuum. When some Arab, Middle East experts are interviewed the line of questioning places interviewees in the defense position. At best, they are free to talk more during controversial discussions with pro-Israel, Middle East experts.
At the end of the day, everyone who inhabits the Middle East is equal. The fact that inequality exists and it has not been resolved will always breed conflict and violence. In the multiple equations that explain the Middle East, which show the effects of occupation, oppression, power, greed, the prospects for a diplomatic solution are grim.
Instead of destroying bridges we should be building them.
Sonia Nettnin writes about social, political, economic, and cultural issues. Her focus is the Middle East.
Comment: The problem with the good-hearted sentiments expressed in this article is a lack of understanding of the problem of psychopathy. It just isn't possible to build bridges with psychopaths. Until the world wakes up to the real problem the existence of such almost humans in our midst, we will continue to be subjected to their charm, their manipulation of our emotions and conscience, and their violence.
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Big Mama Ain't Happy
Fujian evacuating 435,000 people due to Typhoon Kaemi
www.chinaview.cn 2006-07-25 13:36:29
FUZHOU, July 25 (Xinhua) -- By 10 a.m. Tuesday, southeast China's Fujian Province had evacuated more than 435,000 people to safe places before Typhoon Kaemi comes.
More than 44,000 shipping vessels had been called back to harbor as of 9 a.m. Tuesday, according to the provincial fishery department.
Kaemi, the fifth typhoon of the year, was predicted to land on Fujian between Xiamen and Fuqing at noon or at dusk Tuesday after raking Taiwan with heavy rains and strong winds.
As of 10 a.m. Tuesday, the eye of Kaemi, was located at 135 km southeast of Xiamen and was moving northwestward at around 20 km per hour, according to the provincial observatory.
Heavy rain and winds with a speed of 117 km per hour are sweeping across the coastal province and the provincial flood control and drought relief office has sent a dozen of task forces to mountainous counties to organize anti-typhoon work.
Three thousand armed police have been stationed in Fujian, ready to launch rescue and relief operations when the typhoon comes.
Kaemi was estimated to linger in Fujian for about 24 hours before it enters the neighboring province of Jiangxi on Wednesday afternoon or night, said a local meteorologist.
China had been frequently stricken by typhoons since June this year, causing heavy casualties and huge economic losses. The bypast Typhoon Bilis alone has so far claimed more than 600 lives in Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan and Guangdong provinces and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
Comment: Too bad New Orleans isn't in China. The population might have gotten some help.
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Floods kill scores in North Korea
Jul. 25, 2006. 05:56 AM
ASSOCIATED PRESS
SEOUL - Floods that swept across parts of impoverished North Korea killed at least 121 people and left 127 missing according to figures reported so far by the government, an aid group operating in the communist country said Tuesday.
The acting head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies' office in Pyongyang also told The Associated Press that the North Korean government had no plans to launch an international appeal for help after the disaster caused by heavy rains earlier this month.
"The government has made it very clear that we are not allowed to make an international appeal for support," John Bales said by telephone from Pyongyang. "They feel they don't need it, that they can manage with what they've got themselves."
The casualty figures were only for counties where the International Red Cross is working along with its national counterpart and didn't cover all affected areas, Bales said, meaning the death toll was expected to rise.
North Korea's official media said last week that the disaster had left "hundreds" of people dead or missing, without giving exact casualty figures.
The high water left at least 12,585 families homeless, and the Red Cross is assisting 4,950 of those most in need by providing blankets, water containers, kitchen supplies and plastic sheeting, Bales said.
Comment: Did you notice the throwaway reference to "the communist country" in the first line? An example of the subtle way in which your impressions are formed by the media. Did they really have to include the fact that North Korea is "communist" in a report about floods?
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Major U.S. cities face more blackouts as power usage soars
Last Updated Mon, 24 Jul 2006 19:57:54 EDT
The Associated Press
Scorching heat pushed California's electricity supply to the brink Monday and threatened another round of blackouts as utility crews across the state struggled to restore power to tens of thousands of people left in the dark over the weekend.
Elsewhere, utilities in the St. Louis area and New York City also laboured to restore power to hundreds of thousands whose electricity has been knocked out by heat waves, storms and equipment failures.
California authorities warned that the eighth day of the heat wave could drive demand for electricity to an all-time high.
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger directed state agencies to reduce electricity use by 25 per cent and turn off unnecessary equipment. He urged local and municipal governments and universities to do the same.
Some businesses cut their power usage under a program that grants them lower rates if they agree to conserve during a crisis.
'Stage-one' emergency
State energy managers issued a "stage one" emergency, warning they were being forced to dip into reserve supplies to keep up with the demand for power.
"We're not sure we can go as high as the demand is looking like today," said Gregg Fishman, a spokesman for the California Independent System Operator, which manages the state's electrical grid. "It's going to be moment-to-moment through the afternoon."
Rolling blackouts were possible later in the day, said ISO president Yakout Mansour.
Monday's forecast called for high temperatures in central and Northern California of 43 C. In Southern California's Woodland Hills, the temperature was expected to reach 41 C. No relief was expected until at least midweek.
Authorities were looking into at least nine deaths in the scorched Central Valley that may have been related to the heat.
Heat-related stress
Among the victims was a Stockton nursing home patient who died from heat-related stress on Sunday after the Beverly Healthcare Center's air conditioning gave out, police spokesman Pete Smith said.
Tens of thousands of homes and businesses lost power in California on Sunday because of high temperatures and heavy electricity use that caused transformers and other equipment to overheat.
Some 50,000 customers in Northern California still were without electricity, including 35,000 in San Jose and the East Bay area around Oakland, according to Pacific Gas & Electric. About 20,000 Los Angeles customers also remained without electricity.
Two die in Phoenix
In Arizona, heat was believed to have contributed to the deaths of two homeless men over the weekend.
The deaths came during three days of record-breaking temperatures in Phoenix. The temperature soared to 45 C on Sunday, breaking the record of 44 C set in 1906.
In Missouri, more than 200,000 homes and businesses in St. Louis were still without electricity Monday, down from the more than a half-million that were left in the dark last week after strong storms knocked down homes, buildings and businesses.
Ameren Corp. vice-president Richard Mark said Monday that 90 per cent of those without power could have the lights back on by Tuesday, with the rest expected to be back up by Wednesday.
Customers frustrated
The power company has been running TV commercials asking people to be patient. Some 4,000 utility workers from as far away as Arizona are restoring power around the clock, but many customers expressed frustration.
"You're supposed to have a backup plan in case something like this happens," said Dana Moorhead, who had no power Monday. "All my food's gone bad. Just going home is depressing."
New Yorkers in the dark
In New York City, thousands of Queens residents were facing their second week without power because of a blackout that at one point affected 25,000 homes.
By Monday morning, electricity had been restored to about 22,000 of those homes, buildings and businesses, Consolidated Edison said.
The blackout has devastated the inventories of ice cream parlours, bodegas, groceries, butcher shops, fish mongers and restaurants. City officials estimated that at least 750 businesses were affected with losses that could reach into the millions of dollars.
Comment: Are these back-outs the result of the privatization of the energy industry in the US? When moving to profits as the basis of their business, rather than public services, it is clear that serving the end user is not a priority. Such are the results of the ponerization of society.
Of course, the grumpy and frustrated public need to be controlled after that. When stressed out by the heat, they could "go off". So what if the energy problems are then spun as the result of nasty Arab and Venezuelan manipulation of the oil market?
Think of the other lies they are telling and getting away with. This one should be easy.
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Gas Escaping From Ocean Floor May Drive Global Warming
by Staff Writers
Santa Barbara CA (SPX) Jul 25, 2006
Gas escaping from the ocean floor may provide some answers to understanding historical global warming cycles and provide information on current climate changes, according to a team of scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The findings are reported in the July 20 on-line version of the scientific journal, Global Biogeochemical Cycles.
Remarkable and unexpected support for this idea occurred when divers and scientists from UC Santa Barbara observed and videotaped a massive blowout of methane from the ocean floor. It happened in an area of gas and oil seepage coming out of small volcanoes in the ocean floor of the Santa Barbara channel -- called Shane Seep -- near an area known as the Coal Oil Point seep field. The blowout sounded like a freight train, according to the divers.
Atmospheric methane is at least 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide and is the most abundant organic compound in the atmosphere, according to the study's authors, all from UC Santa Barbara.
"Other people have reported this type of methane blowout, but no one has ever checked the numbers until now," said Ira Leifer, lead author and an associate researcher with UCSB's Marine Science Institute. "Ours is the first set of numbers associated with a seep blowout." Leifer was in a research boat on the surface at the time of the blowouts.
Aside from underwater measurements, a nearby meteorological station measured the methane "cloud" that emerged as being approximately 5,000 cubic feet, or equal to the volume of the entire first floor of a two-bedroom house. The research team also had a small plane in place, flown by the California Department of Conservation, shooting video of the event from the air.
Leifer explained that when this type of blowout event occurs, virtually all the gas from the seeps escapes into the atmosphere, unlike the emission of small bubbles from the ocean floor, which partially, or mostly, dissolve in the ocean water. Transporting this methane to the atmosphere affects climate, according to the researchers.
The methane blowout that the UCSB team witnessed reached the sea surface 60 feet above in just seven seconds. This was clear because the divers injected green food dye into the rising bubble plume.
Co-author Bruce Luyendyk, professor of marine geophysics and geological sciences, explained that, to understand the significance of this event (which occurred in 2002), the UCSB research team turned to a numerical, bubble-propagation model. With the model, they estimated methane loss to the ocean during the upward travel of the bubble plume.
The results showed that for this shallow seep, loss would have been approximately one percent. Virtually all the methane, 99 percent of it, was transported to the atmosphere from this shallow seep during the blowout. Next, the scientists used the model to estimate methane loss for a similar size blowout at much greater depth, 250 meters. Again, the model results showed that almost all the methane would be transported up to the atmosphere.
Over geologic time scales, global climate has cycled between warmer, interglacial periods and cooler, glacial periods. Many aspects of the forces underlying these dramatic changes remain unknown. Looking at past changes is highly relevant to understanding future climate changes, particularly given the large increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere due to historically recent human activities such as burning fossil fuels.
One hypothesis, called the "Clathrate Gun" hypothesis, developed by James Kennett, professor of geological sciences at UCSB, proposes that past shifts from glacial to interglacial periods were caused by a massive decomposition of the marine methane hydrate deposits.
Methane hydrate is a form of water ice that contains a large amount of methane within its crystal structure, called a clathrate hydrate. According to Kennett's hypothesis, climatic destabilization would cause a sharp increase in atmospheric methane -- thereby initiating a feedback cycle of abrupt atmospheric warming. This process may threaten the current climate, according to the researchers.
Warmer ocean temperatures from current global climate change is likely to release methane currently trapped in vast hydrate deposits on the continental shelves. However, consumption of methane by microbes in the deep sea prevents methane gas released from hydrates from reaching the ocean surface and affecting the atmosphere.
Bubbles provide a highly efficient mechanism for transporting methane and have been observed rising from many different hydrate deposits around the world. If these bubbles escape singly, most or all of their methane would dissolve into the deep-sea and never reach the atmosphere.
If instead, they escape in a dense bubble plume, or in catastrophic blowout plumes, such as the one studied by UCSB researchers, then much of the methane could reach the atmosphere. Blowout seepage could explain how methane from hydrates could reach the atmosphere, abruptly triggering global warming.
Thus, these first-ever quantitative measurements of a seep blowout and the results from the numerical model demonstrate a mechanism by which methane released from hydrates can reach the atmosphere. Studies of seabed seep features suggest such events are common in the area of the Coal Oil Point seep field and very likely occur elsewhere.
The authors explain that these results show that an important piece of the global climate puzzle may be explained by understanding bubble-plume processes during blowout events. The next important step is to measure the frequency and magnitude of these events. The UCSB seep group is working toward this goal through the development of a long-term, seep observatory in active seep areas.
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Climate change bad news for allergy sufferers
Last Updated: Monday, July 24, 2006 | 4:49 PM ET
CBC News
Allergy sufferers could be in for a prolonged period of suffering as climate change extends the season for itchy eyes and sneezing.
Health officials in Montreal say the growing period for ragweed - a chief cause of hay fever - is getting longer as a result of warm weather arriving earlier and lasting longer than normal.
Norman King, an epidemiologist with the Montreal Health Department, says ragweed's summertime reign used to last 40 days. It's now about 60.
"It [the allergy season] appears to be getting worse in terms of the length of the growing season," said King.
The Health Department estimates that 10 per cent of Quebec's population suffers from allergies caused by ragweed. The symptoms range from itchy, red eyes and a scratchy throat, to sneezing and breathing difficulties.
Many turn to antihistamines for relief, but the borough of Pierrefonds-Roxboro is opting for a more hands-on approach.
Officials organized a ragweed pulling event Monday in one of the community's most popular outdoor parks, Riverdale Parc. As an incentive, those willing to volunteer their time to pull weeds were eligible to win a prize.
"The people that would be coming in with ragweed in the bag, we'll ask them to register their name and then after that we'll raffle some door prizes," said Bert Ward, a city councillor for Pierrefonds-Roxboro.
The boroughs that make up Montreal are responsible for controlling ragweed on public property, but private property owners are also expected to do their bit and run the risk of being fined if they don't.
"We could send a warning ticket, then after that we send court papers and say, 'OK, fine now you have to pay a fine,'" Ward said.
The councillor said Pierrefonds-Roxboro will soon toughen its bylaw to crack down on the prolific ragweed problem.
Health officials say one ragweed plant can produce more than 3,000 seeds. Those seeds have the potential to create as many as 600 plants the next year.
Officials say pulling the plant out by its roots and burning it is the best way to control the problem.
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Rare ibis tagged in race to save bird of pharaohs
Reuters
Mon Jul 24, 2006
LONDON - Scientists have tagged three northern bald ibis, among the last survivors of a species of Middle Eastern bird once so revered that it had its own ancient Egyptian hieroglyph, in an effort to save them from extinction.
Only 13 of the birds remain in Syria, Britain's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the conservation agency BirdLife International said in a news release.
The birds, with their distinctive black Mohican-style plumage and long, downward-curved red bills, were once revered by pharaohs and were found throughout the Middle East, northern Africa and the European Alps.
They are now classified as critically endangered, the highest level of threat, by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.
Until four years ago the species was thought to be extinct in Syria. The only other wild population is in Morocco.
"Without this tracking project, the bird would have been consigned to history and hieroglyphics," Ibrahim Khader, head of BirdLife Middle East, said in the statement.
"We knew they were in Palmyra because of reports from Bedouin nomads and local hunters."
Scientists from BirdLife and the RSPB tagged the three ibis, named Zenobia, Sultan and Salam, in southeast Syria's Palmyra region, hoping to track them when they begin their annual migration this month to discover where they breed.
"Tracking the birds and finding their wintering sites may be the last chance to save them," RSPB scientist Ken Smith said. "We won't be able to help them until we know where they go and the threats and pressures they are facing."
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USUK Alliance
Stand up to US, voters tell Blair
Julian Glover and Ewen MacAskill
Tuesday July 25, 2006
The Guardian
Britain should take a much more robust and independent approach to the United States, according to a Guardian/ICM poll published today, which finds strong public opposition to Tony Blair's close working relationship with President Bush.
The wide-ranging survey of British attitudes to international affairs - the first since the conflict between Lebanon and Israel started- shows that a large majority of voters think Mr Blair has made the special relationship too special.
Just 30% think the prime minister has got the relationship about right, against 63% saying he has tied Britain too closely to the US.
Carried in the wake of the accidental broadcast of the prime minister's conversation with President Bush at the G8 summit, the poll finds opposition to this central element of the prime minister's foreign policy among supporters of all the main parties.
Even a majority of Labour supporters - traditionally more supportive of Mr Blair's foreign policy position - think he has misjudged the relationship, with 54% saying Britain is too close to the US. Conservatives - 68% - and Liberal Democrats - 83% - are even more critical.
And voters are strongly critical of the scale of Israel's military operations in Lebanon, with 61% believing the country has overreacted to the threats it faces.
As pressure grows for a change of strategy, the poll finds that only 22% of voters believe Israel has reacted proportionately to the kidnapping of soldiers and other attacks from militant groups in southern Lebanon. Israel has repeatedly sought to assure the world that its actions are a legitimate response to threats to its own territory, including missile attacks on the north of the country.
The finding follows more than a week in which Mr Blair has come under fire for echoing US caution about the practicality of an immediate ceasefire in the Middle East and for allying himself too closely to Israel.
At a press conference in London yesterday Mr Blair defended his position and expressed sympathy for the plight of the Lebanese. "What is occurring in Lebanon at the present time is a catastrophe. Anybody with any sense of humanity wants what is happening to stop and stop now," Mr Blair said. He added: "But if it is to stop, it must stop on both sides."
This did not amount to switch in policy but a change in emphasis, in part to answer critics who accuse him of being indifferent to the plight of the Lebanese. A British official said: "He wants to make it clear he has the same feelings as everyone else but the job of government is to find an answer. The proof of the pudding is if we are able to find a way through."
Unlike other international leaders, Mr has refused to describe the Israeli attacks on Lebanon as disproportionate. But the official said there was a difference between what Mr Blair said in public and what Mr Blair and other members of the government said to the Israelis in private.
Public unease about Israel's approach is reflected in public attitudes to the Iraq war, with support for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein falling to a record low since military action began in March 2003.
Although a solid core of Labour supporters - 48% - still think the war was justified, overall only 36% of voters agree - a seven-point drop since the Guardian last asked the question in October 2004.
Older voters, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats and people living in the south are particularly critical, suggesting the anti-war movement has a base of support well beyond student groups and the left.
Support for the war reached 63% in April 2003, in the wake of early military success. Now a narrow majority of voters - 51% - believe it was unjustified, the highest proportion for more than two years.
Amid fears that the armed forces are operating at the limit of their resources, voters also believe that British troops are doing more harm than good in Iraq and Afghanistan.
They are more concerned by the role of British forces in Iraq than Afghanistan, with 36% saying their presence is making the situation worse in Iraq against 29% who think this is true of Britain's more recent deployment in southern Afghanistan.
But both findings outweigh the proportion of voters who think British troops are improving the situation on the ground: just 19% of all those questioned think they are making progress in Iraq and 23% think this is the case in Afghanistan. Around a third of voters think that at best British forces are making no difference one way or the other in the two countries.
There is also minimal public appetite for fresh foreign policy commitments, such as a multinational force in Lebanon. An overwhelming proportion of voters think current deployments are already overstretching Britain's military resources: 69% agree; 19% do not.
Conservatives - 78% of whom believe the armed forces are overstretched - are especially concerned, despite David Cameron's support for an interventionist policy, symbolised by his visit to troops in Kandahar yesterday.
- ICM Research interviewed a random sample of 1,001 adults over 18 by telephone on July 21-23. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults. ICM is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules.
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Peace prize winner says she 'could kill' Bush, audience cheers
Annabelle McDonald
The Australian
July 25, 2006
NOBEL peace laureate Betty Williams displayed a flash of her feisty Irish spirit yesterday, lashing out at US President George W.Bush during a speech to hundreds of schoolchildren.
Campaigning on the rights of young people at the Earth Dialogues forum, being held in Brisbane, Ms Williams spoke passionately about the deaths of innocent children during wartime, particularly in the Middle East, and lambasted Mr Bush.
"I have a very hard time with this word 'non-violence', because I don't believe that I am non-violent," said Ms Williams, 64.
"Right now, I would love to kill George Bush." Her young audience at the Brisbane City Hall clapped and cheered.
"I don't know how I ever got a Nobel Peace Prize, because when I see children die the anger in me is just beyond belief. It's our duty as human beings, whatever age we are, to become the protectors of human life."
Ms Williams was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 30 years ago, when she circulated a petition to end violence in Northern Ireland after witnessing British soldiers shoot dead an IRA member who was driving a car. He veered on to the footpath, killing two children from one family instantly and fatally injuring a third.
Ms Williams's petition had tens of thousands of Protestant and Catholic women walking the streets together in protest. Now the former office receptionist heads the World Centres of Compassion for Children International, a non-profit group working to create a political voice for children.
"My job is to tell you their stories," Ms Williams said of a recent trip to Iraq.
"We went to a hospital where there were 200 children; they were beautiful, all of them, but they had cancers that the doctors couldn't even recognise. From the first Gulf War, the mothers' wombs were infected."
"As I was leaving the hospital, I said to the doctor, 'How many of these babies do you think are going to live?'
"He looked me straight in the eye and said, 'None, not one'. They needed five different kinds of medication to treat the cancers that the children had, and the embargoes laid on by the United States and the United Nations only allowed them three."
Wrapping up the three-day forum yesterday, delegates agreed to a 26-point action plan.
"There can be no sustainable peace while the majority of the world's population lives in poverty," they said.
"There can be no sustainable peace if we fail to rise to the global challenge presented by climate change."
"There can be no sustainable peace while military spending takes precedence over human development."
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Panel slams Bush for law challenges
Michael Abramowitz, Washington Post
Monday, July 24, 2006
(07-24) 04:00 PDT Washington -- A bipartisan panel of legal scholars and lawyers assembled by the American Bar Association is sharply criticizing the use of "signing statements" by President Bush that he applies as a means of ignoring or not enforcing laws passed by Congress.
In a report to be issued today, the ABA task force said Bush has lodged more challenges to provisions of laws than all previous presidents combined.
The panel members described the development as a serious threat to the Constitution's system of checks and balances, and they urged Congress to pass legislation permitting court review of such statements.
"The president is indicating that he will not either enforce part or the entirety of congressional bills," said ABA President Michael Greco, a Massachusetts attorney. "We will be close to a constitutional crisis if this issue, the president's use of signing statements, is left unchecked."
The report seemed likely to fuel the controversy over signing statements, which Bush has used to challenge laws ranging from a congressional ban on torture and a request for data on the Patriot Act, to whistle-blower protections and the banning of U.S. troops in fighting rebels in Colombia.
Administration officials describe them as a part of routine presidential practice.
"Presidents have issued signing statements since the early days of our country," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Sunday. "... He is exercising a legitimate power in a legitimate way."
Bush vetoed his first bill last week, a measure approved by Congress relaxing his limits on federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research. But he has on many occasions signed bills, then issued statements reserving the right not to enforce or execute parts of the new laws, on the grounds that they infringe on presidential authority or violate other constitutional provisions.
Determining the rarity of this approach is a matter of some dispute. The Justice Department has said Bush has issued 110 signing statements, compared with President Bill Clinton's 80.
The ABA task force, chaired by prominent Miami attorney Neil Sonnett, cites research that Bush in his signing statements has collectively lodged more than 800 challenges to provisions of laws passed by Congress.
The report will be considered by the full ABA at its meeting next month.
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Reporter 'Plants Bomb' on Nuke Train
Mirror.co.uk
25/07/2006
A MIRROR reporter planted a fake bomb on a train carrying a deadly cargo of nuclear waste.
Reporter Tom Parry plants a fake explosive device on a nuclear train
He exploited security lapses to wander up to the unattended wagons at a North West London depot.
A terrorist could have blown up the waste - sparking a vast toxic cloud that would have killed hundreds.
Expert Dr John Large said: "In a built-up area like this an attack would have an instantly disastrous impact."
IT looks like an ordinary freight train. Drab, workmanlike and uninteresting.
But it carries a lethal nuclear cargo that could cause untold deaths if targeted by terrorists. Once a week the diesel-powered locomotive goes unnoticed as it pulls four trailers hundreds of miles around our rail network.
Few are aware the train trundling from the Kent countryside to Cumbria carries radioactive flasks of spent uranium fuel rods.
After the July 7 terror bombings most would think such a vulnerable target would be under the tightest of security.
But a Daily Mirror investigation has revealed a series of astonishing flaws that will inspire horror and disbelief. Incredibly, I was able to place a device that could have been a bomb on the 12-ton cargo as the train sat in sidings at a North West London rail depot.
I approached in daylight after the wagons were left seemingly unattended for almost 10 minutes. The driver, who was taking a break nearby, even left the engine running while myself and a Mirror photographer stood beside the radioactive material.
For two months we had monitored the trains that carry waste from nuclear power stations to the Sellafield reprocessing plant.
We discovered the flasks are frequently open to a potential terror strike while the locomotives wait in a depot.
The vast North West London yard is just a short walk from a sports stadium, a large hospital and one of the capital's major roads. It is surrounded by housing estates. All in all, the perfect weak spot for a terror strike.
Nuclear transport expert Dr John Large has estimated an attack on containers of radioactive waste could kill 8,000 people in an instant.
Thousands more would become victims as a vast poisonous cloud of up to a hundred square miles drifted across Britain.
On Wednesday, the nuclear train pulled in to the depot on time at 7.54pm after leaving
Kent's Dungeness Power Station three hours earlier and travelling slowly through stations at Ashford, Sevenoaks, Tonbridge and South London. On arrival the crew of one man and one woman climbed from the cab and walked to a hut 100 yards away.
Two private security guards initially patrolled the train while it stood waiting for a replacement crew for the next leg of the journey north. But they were only visible for 15 minutes before disappearing.
Suddenly there was no one to see us. As we approached the train the four flasks, each containing enriched fuel pins, were clearly indicated by their radioactive warning signs.
We were able to take photographs for several minutes. Anyone with a basic knowledge of driving trains could have hijacked it. By the time we walked past the front of the train the replacement driver was in position, but he did not challenge us. Minutes later he pulled out, heading through Milton Keynes, Rugby, Crewe and Warrington, before arriving at Sellafield.
My only identification as a legitimate rail worker was a fluorescent orange jacket and hard hat, on sale at any builders' merchants.
And this was not a one-off. It was the tenth time I had wandered freely into the depot.
Not once was the main entrance gate shut. The security booth, containing a bank of blank screens for CCTV cameras that never appeared to be functioning, was always empty. Drivers and track maintenance workers who saw us walking between the rails nodded or said hello. I was never asked for a security pass, supposedly obligatory in a fenced-off area. Other trains arrive from Suffolk's Sizewell A power station. Some get there in the middle of the night and wait for long periods in the virtually unlit yard.
A rail insider said: "Security is a joke. All you need to do is find the gate and you can wander at will. If you wear an orange jacket no one will ever ask what you are doing."
Last night nuclear experts and politicians said they were horrified by the Mirror's findings. Dr Large said: "I'm appalled. Every one of these trains would be a potential target for terrorists. If you had an incident in London, I estimate that 190,000 people would have to be evacuated. Those flasks were designed to counter accidents. But they weren't designed to counter the likes of al-Qaeda."
Lib Dem environment spokesman Chris Huhne said: "This is a shocking revelation."
A spokeswoman for Direct Rail Services initially claimed it would not have been possible to get close to the nuclear flasks while the train is stationary at Brent yard.
But after seeing our evidence she said: "The entire journey is protected by very stringent security. However, having seen these pictures we will speak with our security people. A full investigation will be carried out."
Comment: "Terrorism"? What terrorism? Oh! No, you see, you miss the point. The point of "terror alerts" and clamp downs on civil rights is to frighten the public, it has nothing whatsoever to do with real terrorism, which sort of doesn't really exist.
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Bush's Big Mess
Iraqi PM admits failure to contain growing violence
Ewen MacAskill and Richard Norton-Taylor
Tuesday July 25, 2006
The Guardian
The Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, conceded yesterday that the country's security situation had worsened in the two months since he took office.
Speaking to journalists in London before meeting Tony Blair, Mr Maliki said he was planning a new security initiative for Baghdad. "The security situation has got worse since the government took control because the terrorists realise this is a government that can achieve security," Mr Maliki said. "All the groups involved in terrorism have escalated bombings, kidnappings and other actions."
Data compiled by the UN shows that an average of 100 civilians were killed each day during May and June. More than 60 were killed in car bombs in Baghdad and Kirkuk on Sunday.
Mr Maliki has already announced a clampdown on Baghdad, with additional checkpoints and troops to maintain a curfew. Yesterday he said it was time to move to the next stage and that the new security plan would involve the Iraqi army taking control of the neighbourhoods on the edge of Baghdad to stop insurgents using them as bases. He listed the neighbourhoods and said locals who had fled the violence would be encouraged to return and that Iraqi forces would be stationed there.
The US military revealed at the weekend that it is planning to send extra troops into Baghdad as part of this second phase.
The US and Iraq military know they have to establish control of Baghdad before they can attempt doing so with the rest of the country. Iraqi forces took over one of the country's 18 provinces this month but the prime minister refused to speculate on when the army will be in a position to replace the US and other international forces in the remaining 17.
Mr Maliki, who is scheduled to meet George Bush in Washington today, vehemently denied the country was heading towards civil war and eventual break-up.
Asked why the former dictator Saddam Hussein, who is on hunger strike, was not allowed to die, Mr Maliki said: "Because we want to put him on trial for the huge crimes he committed and to show the world the extent of his crimes."
Saddam was due in court yesterday but was taken to hospital at the weekend because of a deterioration in his condition. He was being fed through a tube after psychological counselling.
In Afghanistan, meanwhile, the British army will be provided with stronger armoured vehicles to withstand attacks from rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs, the defence secretary, Des Browne, said yesterday.
The vulnerability of existing vehicles, notably Land Rovers in which several British soldiers have died in southern Iraq, led commanders urgently to demand tougher equipment.
In a programme starting at the end of the year, the army will be provided with more than 300 new armoured vehicles, mainly German-designed Pinzgauers and US Cougars.
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Fourteen killed in Iraq attacks
AFP
Tue Jul 25, 2006
BAGHDAD - Six police and eight civilians have been killed in a series of attacks in and around Baghdad, police said.
As night fell on Monday, gunmen ambushed an Iraqi police unit in central Baghdad, triggering a gunbattle in which six officers were killed and 30 were wounded.
The clash took place on Haifa Street near the west bank of the Tigris River, north of the fortified Green Zone, the seat of the Iraqi government and the US embassy.
It underlined the failure of the Iraqi government's six-week-old operation to regain control of Baghdad's streets from anti-regime insurgents and sectarian militias.
On Tuesday, two roadside bombs exploded in the city, killing two civilians and wounding two bystanders and a policeman.
In another attack, a family of Shiite civilians who had been threatened by a sectarian death squad were ambushed by gunmen as they fled a mainly Sunni neighbourhood south of the city, medical and defence officials said.
Two of the family were killed and one was wounded when their removal van was sprayed with bullets.
Four other civilians were shot dead around the capital, two of them in drive-by shootings, while the corpses of two tortured murder victims were also found by the roadside, police said.
Iraq's embattled Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was due in Washington on Tuesday to discuss the situation with his main ally and talk up his government's plan to take full responsibility for security.
The Pentagon has confirmed that it is to redeploy US forces in Baghdad from outside the capital in a bid to halt the spiralling violence.
Last month, in a plan designed finally to ensure security in the capital, more than 50,000 troops were deployed in the city. The killing has shown no sign of easing.
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US seeks Baghdad security boost
Tuesday, 25 July 2006, 09:41 GMT 10:41 UK
The US is planning to deploy thousands of extra troops in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, in an attempt to combat the deteriorating security situation.
US President George W Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki are to meet at the White House to discuss details.
US officials said the extra troops would be sent from other areas of Iraq.
An average of more than 100 civilians per day were killed in violence in Iraq in May and June, according to a report by the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq.
White House spokesman Tony Snow admitted that a plan brought in six weeks ago to improve security in the Iraqi capital "has not achieved its objectives".
"It's pretty clear that there's an attempt in Baghdad to create as much chaos and havoc as possible," he said, quoted by AP news agency.
"And it's important to make sure that we address this."
When the two leaders met in Baghdad last month, President Bush offered support to a newly-formed government which had just been boosted by the killing of the insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
The mood then was unusually positive, reports the BBC's James Coomarasamy in Washington - but this latest meeting comes on the back of a failed security operation in Baghdad.
Mr Maliki has also pledged to convey his concerns to Washington about Israel's actions in Lebanon, arguing that images of suffering Lebanese civilians are a powerful recruiting tool for extremists.
Struggling security
Baghdad's current security plans, brought by the Iraqi government six weeks ago, have seen thousands of extra Iraqi troops on the streets, backed by US forces.
Extra checkpoints have been set up to search vehicles in many parts of the city, overnight curfews have been extended and raids conducted on suspected insurgent hideouts.
But a huge blast in the suburb of Sadr City early this month, forced the government to review its plan.
Some 66 people were killed and more than 100 others injured in the attack, prompting an emergency meeting of the cabinet's security committee.
Other attacks have been carried out every day in different parts of the city, including bombings, abductions and sectarian killings.
Last Friday, authorities extended a curfew banning traffic in the capital during Friday prayers in an attempt to stem the violence.
Mr Maliki's meeting with President Bush comes after a visit to London on Monday where he held talks with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
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Amerika
Suburban mayor charged with child porn
July 25, 2006
BY ART PETERSON News Sun
Thomas Adams, longtime Green Oaks mayor and former chairman of the Lake County Republican Central Committee, was charged Monday with possession and distribution of child pornography.
Adams, 67, faces 11 counts of disseminating child pornography and two counts of possession. Lake County Judge Victoria Rossetti set his bond at $100,000.
Prosecutor Patricia Fix said sheriff's and state's attorney's investigators first received tips on Adams' alleged illegal activities in March 2005. Adams allegedly sent child pornography, via attachments to e-mail, to undercover police in Clearwater, Fla.
The alleged pornography includes both still images and at least one explicit movie of a boy masturbating, Fix said.
Several phony names were used in his alleged pornography trading, she said, but all were tracked back to Adams' home in the 800 block of Anderson Drive in Green Oaks.
After being taken into custody, Adams acknowledged that all of the screen names were his and that no one else used his computer, Fix said, adding that Adams admitted he had "a problem with addiction."
Defense attorney Thomas Briscoe argued for a minimal bond, saying Adams "has no criminal record, and these are all images, there are no live victims." Briscoe added that Adams "has been involved with public service most of his life."
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High prices spur drilling in bucolic Texas towns
By Deepa Babington
Reuters
Sun Jul 23, 2006
NEW YORK - Standing tall amid sunflowers and bales of hay, a greasy drilling rig roared loudly, a recent addition to an otherwise idyllic ranch north of Dallas, Texas.
Other signs of change sweep across rolling green fields -- green-painted gas wells, large trucks trundling across narrow country roads and a mesh of pipes peeking out of bushes.
This is Ponder, Texas, population 507, one of many towns north of Dallas where a natural gas drilling boom is transforming the rural landscape.
Far beneath ranches and fields in North Texas lies the Barnett Shale, a geological formation that has quickly become one of the most sought-after energy exploration hot spots in the United States.
Just a few years ago, it was considered too expensive -- laughable even -- to extract the vast gas reserves trapped in the Barnett's dense black rock.
Thanks to a steep rise in energy prices and advances in drilling technology, the Barnett is now the nation's fastest growing natural gas field and the biggest in Texas.
"The amount of activity here is larger than anything I ever thought I would see" Jay Ewing, a Devon Energy Corp engineer who oversees some of its operations in the Barnett. "People have known that the Barnett's been here forever. But it was just thought too difficult to produce from."
The Barnett now produces 1.2 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day, and is estimated to hold as much as 36 trillion cubic feet of reserves that can be recovered -- enough to heat 540 million homes for a year.
Now, companies ranging from small private firms to the world's biggest oil producers are striking deals to grab a slice of its gas wealth, with Devon paying $2.2 billion in June to acquire Barnett Shale-focused Chief Holdings LLC.
CRACKING THE ROCK
The Barnett's rise began with Mitchell Energy, a Texas producer that drilled the first well in the shale 25 years ago, when the idea was considered off-the-wall at best.
"Some of our own employees were questioning if we were on the right track," says Ewing, who started out at Mitchell.
But Mitchell's persistence paid off, and in the 1990s, new technology that eliminated the need for expensive gels and chemicals brought drilling costs down. Mitchell was later acquired by Devon, now the biggest producer in the area.
Still, getting natural gas from the Barnett is a complicated process.
Under a scorching Texas sun one day in May, workers in grimy overalls and hard hats sat atop the Ponder drilling rig, monitoring pressure and the progress of a large pipe drilling thousands of feet into the ground to create a well.
At another site, workers pump sand and water at extremely high pressures to crack the rock, which in turn pushes the natural gas up the well. This so-called "frac" job is not cheap -- running as much as $300,000 a time -- but with gas prices at historic highs, the economics work fine.
HOTTEST PLAY AROUND
The Barnett is especially attractive to independent U.S. oil and gas producers who shun the risks of exploring overseas, but face limited access to energy-rich areas at home. Devon, for example, is among the most ambitious in the Barnett.
"With a lot of the political issues in other parts of the world, the U.S. is a safe place to look for oil and gas," said Devon Vice President Brad Foster.
Others have been beefing up their presence as well. Last month, Chesapeake Energy Corp. agreed to buy acreage for $845 million while Range Resources bought out another Barnett Shale player, Stroud Energy Inc., for roughly $456 million.
Larger players in the area include oil majors Royal Dutch Shell Plc and ConocoPhillips, which owns acreage in the Barnett through its recent acquisition of Burlington Resources Inc.
Their arrival has boosted local economies with new jobs, royalty checks and tax dollars that helped one town, for example, build a new high school football stadium that would have made any college proud.
But the companies are also learning to grapple with a growing community backlash as the drilling pushes rapidly into cities like Fort Worth, bringing gas wells and derricks to residential neighborhoods and backyards.
"We're losing more and more green space and we're gaining tons of new pollutants into the air," says Don Young, who leads Fort Worth Citizens Against Neighborhood Drilling Ordinance, which lobbies against drilling permits being awarded.
Still, analysts predict that won't stop the drilling and acquisition frenzy as companies expand from producing in the core region of the Barnett to outlying areas.
"It is the hottest play to be in right now," said Jefferies analyst David Tameron. "And the play is still in its infancy."
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23 sailors rescued from listing cargo ship
By RACHEL D'ORO
Associated Press
July 25, 2006
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Helicopters hoisted 23 crew members from a listing cargo ship to safety overnight, ending a daylong rescue effort as 10-foot waves slapped the ship's tilting deck hundreds of miles off Alaska's Aleutian Islands.
The Cougar Ace had been carrying nearly 5,000 cars from Japan to Canada when it began listing to its port side late Sunday night. The crew sent out an SOS, but the nearest Coast Guard ship was nearly a day's trip away.
By the time a Coast Guard aircraft arrived and was able to drop three life rafts for the crew Monday morning, the ship was at an 80 degree angle, nearly on its side, officials said. The roiling waters shoved the rafts underneath the dipping port side of the 654-foot ship before the crew could secure them.
Rescuers tossed another raft toward the higher starboard side, but it was a 150-foot drop to the water.
A merchant marine ship crew that was nearby was unable to rig a line to the cargo ship, and the Cougar Ace's crew was losing power in its hand-held radio.
The helicopters appeared to the crew's best chance for survival.
"We made the decision to cram in everybody," said Master Sgt. Sal Provenzano with the Alaska Rescue Coordination Center.
In a daring rescue, the crew members, who had donned survival suits aboard their troubled ship, were hoisted Monday night into two National Guard Pave Hawk helicopters and a Coast Guard helicopter, then flown 230 miles north to Adak Island. One crew member with a broken ankle was to be flown by plane to Anchorage, Provenzano said.
It wasn't clear Tuesday morning if their cargo ship was still afloat or what had caused it to list.
The Singapore-flagged Cougar Ace - owned by Tokyo-based Mitsui O.S.K. Lines - was carrying vehicles from Japan to Vancouver, British Columbia, said Greg Beuerman, a spokesman for the ship owner.
"Obviously, the primary concern for all involved is the safety of the crew on board," Beuerman said Monday. "The vessel is of critical importance as well, but the first priority is the health and the safety of the crew."
The ship had been caught in rain squalls and 8- to 10-foot seas when it began to list. From Coast Guard aircraft circling overhead, officers spotted a 2-mile oil sheen in the choppy water. The ship had been carrying 430 metric tons of fuel oil or 112 metric tons of diesel fuel, and it wasn't clear how much had spilled into the northern Pacific Ocean.
Early on, the Coast Guard had alerted the clinic at the small town of Adak - a former Naval air station on the island of the same name - to gear up for treating at least one broken ankle and possible hypothermia cases.
Nurse practitioner Michael Terry said residents hustled to set up cots and blankets at the community center, prepare food and coffee, gather donations of warm clothing. The clinic rounded up emergency medics and braced for action.
"We actually were preparing to have an air disaster drill at the airport (Tuesday) so we moved it up a day," Terry said.
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Around the World
U.S.-Foe Chavez Urges Belarus' Lukashenko to Build "Fighting Team"
Created: 24.07.2006 16:35 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 16:35 MSK
MosNews
Venezuela's firebrand leader Hugo Chavez has called for a "fighting team" with his Belarussian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko during his visit to the state dubbed "Europe's last dictatorship" by Washington, AFP reports.
"I have found another friend here and we should form a team. It will be a fighting team," Chavez said Monday at a meeting with Lukashenko in Minsk, the Belarussian capital. Lukashenko, who is fond of ice hockey, responded jokingly to Chavez's offer, saying: "We can form a team for football, hockey or basketball."
The two leaders are considered pariahs by the Washington, which has accused them of running hardline regimes and has hit both their countries with economic sanctions.
Chavez's visit was being seen mainly as a chance for closer relations between the two presidents, who are known for their eccentric leadership styles and their defiance against Washington.
Chavez is also looking to drum up international support on a world tour that will take in Iran, Russia and Vietnam to back Venezuela's bid to join the United Nations Security Council as a non-permanent member.
"Here we feel ourselves to be among our brothers," Chavez said after his arrival at Minsk airport on Sunday at the start of his three-day visit to Belarus.
"We see here a model social state like the one we are beginning to create," said Chavez, the first Venezuelan leader to visit the former Soviet republic lodged between Poland and Russia on the European Union's eastern border.
Commenting on the visit, Belarussian news website tut.by said Monday that Chavez and Lukashenko -- the first a former army lieutenant colonel, the second an ex-Soviet farm director -- would form a strong bond.
"There are no doubts that Lukashenko and Chavez will find a common language. Both presidents are charismatic public figures, even though the international community has labelled them dictators.
"Chavez has already affected almost the whole of Central America and the Caribbean states with his anti-Americanism... He will probably find a couple of interesting suggestions for Belarus too," the website said.
Washington frequently criticizes Chavez's democratic credentials and the Venezuelan leader in turn accuses Washington of plotting to invade his country, a major supplier of oil to the United States.
Following Lukashenko's controversial re-election in a landslide victory in March, Washington froze the Belarussian leader's assets and imposed a travel ban on top Belarussian officials.
Lukashenko responded with similar sanctions against U.S. officials.
After arriving in the Belarussian capital, Chavez said he wanted greater economic cooperation between Belarus and Venezuela, particularly in the sectors of energy, petrochemicals, machinery, education and science.
Belarus and Venezuela were set to sign accords on energy and agriculture, as well as science and technology, Lukashenko's press service said.
Belarus manufactures farm machines and trucks that are exported largely to former Soviet states, while Venezuela is one of the world's leading oil producers.
Later Monday, Chavez is set to take part in a World War II commemoration ceremony on Minsk's Victory Square and visit a network of Soviet-era fortresses outside the Belarussian capital.
The Venezuelan leader is then to visit a Belarussian military academy on Tuesday before flying to Russia on the next step of his world tour.
In Russia, Chavez will meet President Vladimir Putin and mark a deal under which Russia will supply 30 Su-30 fighter jets and 30 helicopters to Venezuela.
Washington has voiced worries about Russian arms sales to Venezuela, having banned such deals with Caracas for U.S. manufacturers.
Chavez said last month that his visit to Russia could see a deal on building a Kalashnikov assault rifle factory in Venezuela.
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Deadline on Ukraine PM Nomination Expired, President Yushchenko Remains Silent
Created: 25.07.2006 10:54 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 11:02 MSK
MosNews
Ukraine's new parliamentary majority missed a midnight deadline to form a new government, with President Viktor Yushchenko giving no indication he is ready yet to nominate his former Orange Revolution rival to be the next prime minister, The Associated Press reports.
Under the Constitution, the new lawmakers elected in the March parliamentary vote had 60 days from their first session to form a government - a deadline that expired at midnight. But the pro-Russian coalition, which has nominated Viktor Yanukovych to be prime minister, cannot act until the president gives formal approval to the nomination.
With the deadline passed, the president could legally dissolve the 450-seat parliament and call new elections. However, he said earlier that his authority to dissolve parliament is a right and not an obligation. Yushchenko said he also is entitled to time to consider a prime ministerial candidate, giving him until Aug. 2 to decide on Yanukovych's candidacy.
Yanukovych, whom Yushchenko defeated for the presidency in a court-ordered revote in 2004, suggested his party would be patient, up to a point. "We will wait as long as is specified under the law," Yanukovych said in televised remarks Monday. "But in my opinion, the question has been dragged out," he was also quoted as saying according to the Unian news agency.
Adam Martynyuk, first deputy parliament speaker and a member of the new coalition, accused Yushchenko of artificially delaying "to justify himself before society ... and to get more."
Some members of the coalition have said that parliament could go ahead and approve Yanukovych as prime minister, without the president. The president's office has warned that would be illegal.
This former Soviet nation has been embroiled in political crisis since Yanukovych trounced Yushchenko's party in March parliamentary elections and formed a parliamentary majority with the Communists and Socialists. The strong performance of the pro-Russian opposition reflected disillusionment at the sluggish economy and a split within the reformist pro-Western team that came to power after the 2004 mass protests over election fraud known as the Orange Revolution.
The new coalition, with its support base in the Russian-speaking east, could slow down Yushchenko's efforts to drag Kiev out of Moscow's shadow and into NATO and the European Union, some analysts say.
Some of Yushchenko's allies have called on the president to dissolve parliament and on Monday Yulia Tymoshenko, a key Orange Revolution figure, said all 125 lawmakers in her faction - the second biggest in parliament - were ready to surrender their seats.
Tymoshenko has said that if 151 lawmakers give up their seats, it would make parliament illegitimate and the president could dissolve it on that basis. Members of Yushchenko's Our Ukraine bloc, however, have said they don't support such a move.
Meanwhile, Ihor Markov, head of the Free Choice group, predicted that a new election could cost more than $1 billion and could leave the country even more polarized between the Russian-speaking east, which supports Yanukovych, and the more nationalistic, Ukrainian-speaking west, which backed the Orange Revolution.
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US calls on Pakistan not to use new nuclear reactor for bombs
by Staff Writers
Washington (AFP) Jul 24, 2006
The United States on Monday urged Pakistan not to use a powerful new atomic reactor under construction to bolster its nuclear weapons capability amid warnings of a new South Asia arms race.
The US administration confirmed it knew about the reactor at Pakistan's Khushab nuclear complex after satellite images were released by a US nuclear non-proliferation group.
The International Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) said the heavy water reactor could produce more than 200 kilogrammes (440 pounds) of weapons grade plutonium a year. This would be enough to make 40-50 nuclear weapons every year.
Pakistan is believed to currently have 30-50 uranium warheads in all, "which tend to be heavier and more difficult than plutonium warheads to mount on missiles," the Washington Post reported Monday.
"South Asia may be heading for a nuclear arms race that could lead to arsenals growing into the hundreds of nuclear weapons, or at a minimum vastly expanded stockpiles of military fissile material," the ISIS warned.
White House spokesman Tony Snow said: "We have been aware of these plans and we discourage any use of that facility for military purposes such as weapons development."
A US official, who asked not to be identified, said: "The US government has been tracking it for several years".
Neither Pakistan nor neighbouring India are signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and as the US Congress prepares to hold new debates on a proposed civilian nuclear cooperation deal with India, the ISIS report on Pakistan has set alarm bells ringing among some lawmakers who oppose the India deal.
Representative Ed Markey, the Democratic co-chairman of the Bipartisan Taskforce on Nonproliferation, said: "The nuclear arms race in South Asia is about to ignite, and instead of doing everything possible to stop this vicious cycle, the Bush Administration is throwing fuel on the fire.
"If either India or Pakistan starts increasing its nuclear arsenal, the other side will respond in kind; and the Bush Administration's proposed nuclear deal with India is making that much more likely."
He called on President George W. Bush to press India and Pakistan to suspend production of bomb-grade fissile materials while an international treaty limiting bomb-making material stockpiles is negotiated.
"Both Pakistan and India need to reverse their decisions to increase their nuclear arsenals, and take a step back from the brink," Markey said.
But Representative Tom Lantos, the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, said there should be no impact on the legislation on India going through the House.
"US and international exports to India's civilian energy programme are going to be under international safeguards to prevent their use in a military programme, so this agreement will not contribute to an arms race," said Lantos.
"Pakistan's newly-disclosed reach for more plutonium does not change the safeguards in the US-India deal; it makes them all the more relevant."
Khushab is in Pakistan's Punjab province. The new reactor is adjacent to Pakistan's only plutonium production reactor, a 50-megawatt unit that began operating in 1998.
The dimensions of the new reactor suggest a capacity of 1,000 megawatts or more, according to ISIS experts David Albright and Paul Brannan.
Pakistan would not confirm plans for the new reactor. In Islamabad, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said the existence of the Khushab nuclear facility "ought to be no revelation to anyone because Pakistan is a nuclear weapon state.
"I have no specific comments on Pakistan's facility or details of the facility and our programme in this sector."
The ISIS also called for accelerated efforts to reach agreement on halting production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons.
"Not only are such arsenals a waste of precious resources, they increase instability in the region and could needlessly provoke China to respond by increasing the size and lethality of its own nuclear capabilities," said the ISIS report.
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Last but not least
Doctor, I've got this little lump on my arm...Relax, that tells me everything
Times Online
25/07/2006
PREDICTIONS have a habit of not coming true. We don't holiday on Saturn. Jacques Cousteau claimed in the Sixties that we would soon live underwater, using surgically created gills. We still don't glide to work in personal, airborne pods. Come to think of it, wasn't it supposed to be leisure, not work, that was 24/7?
But one technology is crawling towards realisation - the idea of human beings being "chipped", or implanted with a microchip containing personal information. One of America's largest medical insurance companies is sponsoring a two-year trial in which chronically ill patients will be implanted with a chip containing their medical information.
The chip, inserted in the upper arm, is the size of a grain of rice and will reveal, when scanned, a 16-digit number that links to the patient's medical records. It could provide all the information needed in an emergency.
Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, an insurer, has invited members to participate in the project at Hackensack University Medical Centre. The company hopes that it will "save lives and provide a measure of comfort to our members with chronic conditions and to their families".
Laudable stuff - but in its wake trail issues of privacy, power and autonomy. Will future patients have to be chipped as a condition of insurance cover? Also, these chips, which can be read through clothing, are RFIDs - radiofrequency identification devices. The signals they emit can be picked up 30ft away without the "chippee" knowing; a delight for stalkers.
VeriChip, the company providing the chips, has already seen its products used by anxious parents wishing to track their kids, by employers who want their workers to have keyless access to secure areas and by Hurricane Katrina rescue workers, who chipped unidentified bodies.
Now consider that Scott Silverman, president of Verichip, recently suggested that the US Government use the RFIDs to track migrant workers coming from Mexico. Interestingly, Tommy Thompson, the former US Secretary for Health and Human Services, skipped over to VeriChip's board after leaving office, and then suggested that every American should be chipped. With ID cards in Britain on the verge of being scrapped, and Home Office hysteria over unwanted visitors, could identity chips take over as the fresh scourge of the civil libertarians?
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China to test its 'artificial sun'
UPI
July 24, 2006
BEIJING -- The first plasma discharge from China's experimental advanced superconducting research center -- the so-called "artificial sun" -- is set to occur next month.
The discharge, expected about Aug. 15, will be conducted at Science Island in Hefei, in east China's Anhui Province, the Peoples Daily reported Monday.
Scientists told the newspaper a successful test will mean the world's first nuclear fusion device of its kind will be ready to go into actual operation, the newspaper said.
The plasma discharge will draw international attention since some scientists are concerned with risks involved in such a process. But Chinese researchers involved in the project say any radiation will cease once the test is completed.
The experiment will take place in a structure made of reinforced concrete, with five-foot-thick walls and a three-foot-thick roof.
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Picture this: A sneakier kind of spam
By Jon Swartz
USA TODAY
Mon Jul 24, 2006
A new strain of spam popping up in e-mail boxes is confounding consumers and corporate security officials.
The spam contains images spouting everything from stock scams to Viagra, and its volume has more than doubled since April, according to analysis by anti-spam vendor IronPort Systems.
Image-based spam accounts for 21% of all spam, compared with just 1% in late 2005, IronPort says.
Marketers are deploying image-based spam because it is harder to detect than text-based spam, and consumers are more likely to read an e-mail with a picture or graphic, says Craig Sprosts of IronPort.
The newest spam uses technology that varies the content of individual messages - through colors, backgrounds, picture sizes or font types - so they appear to be distinct to spam filters. The spam is delivered to consumers and companies through millions of compromised PCs, called bots.
As a result, the messages are like snowflakes: No two are alike, says Julian Haight, founder of anti-spam organization SpamCop.
The surge in new spam has largely eluded software filters and eaten up space on e-mail systems because each message is more than seven times larger than regular spam, Sprosts says.
Most image-based spam comes in the form of stock scams, which contain the same basic language within a shaded box.
Much of it comes from spam gangs in the USA and Russia, Sprosts says.
Stock scams make up about 20% of spam - about twice the share at the start of the year, IronPort says.
Until last year, image spam was rare. Though it had been around for about four years, spammers lacked the technology to randomize images, says Dmitri Alperovitch of e-mail security company CipherTrust. Before, spammers included a link on e-mail spam to direct recipients to a site containing pictures.
Not anymore. The new spamming tactic is the latest salvo in the battle between junk e-mailers and filter developers. As software gets better at identifying and blocking spam, spammers get smarter at outfoxing software.
"It is a never-ending cat-and-mouse game," Alperovitch says.
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