Now that Ayman al-Zawahiri, or rather the stand-in we are told is Ayman al-Zawahiri, has sanctioned Hezbollah's resistance against Israel's invasion of Lebanon, we can expect the corporate media to have a field day, connecting Hezbollah to "al-Qaeda" and its crazed Sunni beheaders.
As we know, al-Zawahiri has verified links to the Pentagon, as he served as commander of the Mujahedeen forces in the Balkans.
"The role of the Pentagon in airlifting the Mujahedeen terrorists into Bosnia and Kosovo between 1992 to 1995 has been well documented and widely reported in the European and Canadian media, but almost completely ignored in the United States," writes Tim Howells for Online Journal.
Another bit of information, long ago flushed down the memory hole (reconstituted here), reveals how al-Zawahiri was sponsored by FBI operative and failed CIA agent Ali Mohamed, who brought him to San Francisco on a "covert fund-raising mission" during the Pentagon's recruitment of "al-Qaeda," sent to Bosnia (see this congressional press release, dated 16 January 1997).
"The war with Israel does not depend on cease-fires.... It is a Jihad for the sake of God and will last until (our) religion prevails ... from Spain to Iraq," the Pentagon operative al-Zawahiri told the world through al-Jazeera television, never mind that al-Zawahiri's violent version of Wahabbi Sunni Islam is at odds with Shi'a Islam, the sect Hezbollah's follows.
"Zawahiri's comments indicated that Al-Qaeda, which is made up of Sunni Islamist extremists, was prepared to help Hezbollah despite differences with the Shia sect," adds the Khaleej Times.
If we are to buy the official version of events, "al-Qaeda" has spent a lot of time and money in Iraq slaughtering Shi'a Muslims, deemed infidels deserving little more than an ignoble death. But both have put aside their differences-for instance, the bloody Shi'a-Sunni sectarian violence in Iraq-and are now happily collaborating.
In an effort to iron out this inconsistency, the neocons have flipped into overdrive. "If the Lebanese conflict drags on, it would be likely that al Qaeda would try to work again with its occasional ally in an alliance of convenience that could benefit both groups," writes Douglas Farah, a former "investigative journalist" for the CIA's favorite newspaper, the Washington Post. "The chaos in the region benefits all the non-state armed groups, and such circumstances often give rise to transitory (or perhaps permanent) alliances between groups that share the same goals and resources. While Zarqawi fanned the flames of the Sunni-Shi'ite divide inside Iraq, it was in part a tactical decision to weaken the government and cause a civil war, rather than a theological decision."
Those silly Muslims didn't really mean it and they are as amoral and Machiavellian as their sponsors, a rotating lazy Susan of usual suspects, including the Pentagon, CIA, ISI, MI6, and of course Mossad.
"The shells and rockets ripping apart Muslim bodies in Gaza and Lebanon are not only Israeli (weapons), but are supplied by all the countries of the crusader coalition. Therefore, every participant in the crime will pay the price." In other words, the CIA-ISI spawned "al-Qaeda," supposedly headed up by the dead Freddy Kruger Islamic nemesis Osama bin Laden, will attack the "crusader coalition" in the name of Hezbollah.
Of course, no demonization of a legitimate resistance movement would be complete without a cameo appearance by the Muslim Evil One himself. "Another new audio or video message from bin Laden was also expected in the coming days and was planned to deal with Gaza and Lebanon, according to IntelCenter. The U.S.-based independent group provides counterterrorism information to the U.S. government and media," that is to say it serves as a propaganda outfit dispensing scary campfire stories, designed in part to stampede Americans into supporting the neocon Crusade and total "clash of civilizations" war, promised by our rulers to last a hundred or more years.
Back in 2003, the scurrilous neocon, Iran-Contra criminal, PNAC and CFR member, Richard Armitage, told CBS' Sixty Minutes "Hezbollah may be the 'A-Team of Terrorists' and maybe al-Qaeda is actually the 'B' team. And they're on the list and their time will come.... There is no question about it-it's all in good time. And we're going to go after these problems just like a high school wrestler goes after a match. We're going to take them down one at a time."
Here in America, a semi-somnolent and easily distracted public, consumers of endless official lies and dissimulation wrapped in fancy computer graphics and delivered by vacuous anchors, will likely buy into the effort to churn Hezbollah into an "al-Qaeda" variant, or if neocons such as Armitage have their way, an ominous terrorist group eclipsing "al-Qaeda."
However, in Lebanon, this make-over is meaningless, as Hezbollah will continue to fight against the invading and marauding Israelis, regardless of Israeli and American propaganda.
Finally, Hezbollah's Hasan Nasrallah told CBS' Ed Bradley in 2003: "I believe the Americans are just saying what the Israelis want them to say. I consider this to be an Israeli accusation coming out of an American mouth and nothing more."
Indeed, this is the case every time one flips on Fox News and its imitators. Comment on this Editorial
On July 26, Aljazeerah reported a story headlined - "Israeli invasion of Lebanon planned by neocons in June (2006)." It was done at a June 17 and 18 meeting at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) conference in Beaver Creek, Colorado at which former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Likud Knesset member Natan Sharansky met with US Vice President Dick Cheney. The purpose was to discuss the planned and impending Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) invasions of Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. Cheney was thoroughly briefed and approved the coming assaults - before Hamas' capture of an IDF soldier on June 25 or Hezbollah's capturing of two others in an exchange first reported as occurring in Israel and now believed to have happened inside Lebanon after IDF forces illegally entered the country.
Following the Colorado meeting, Netanyahu returned to Israel for a special "Ex-Prime Ministers" meeting in which he conveyed the message of US support to carry out the "Clean Break" policy officially ending all past peace accords including Oslo. At the meeting in Israel in addition to Binyamin Netanyahu were current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Shimon Peres.
Aljazeerah also reported that after the Colorado AEI conference Natan Sharansky met with the right wing Heritage Foundation in Washington and then attended a June 29 seminar at Haverford College in suburban Philadelphia sponsored by the Middle East Forum led by US Israeli hawk Daniel Pipes. Sharansky appeared there with Republican Senator Rick Santorum who on July 20 was hawkishly advocating war against Syria, Iran, and "Islamo-fascism" in an inflamatory speech at the National Press Club attended by a cheering section of supporters composed of members of the neocon Israel Project, on whose Board Santorum serves along with Georgia Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss and Virginia Republican Representative Tom Davis.
Aljazeerah reported further that in a published interview in the Spanish newspaper ABC on July 23, Syrian Information Minister Moshen Bilal warned Israel that his country would enter the Lebanon conflict if Israel launched a major incursion into the country. He said: "If Israel makes a land entry into Lebanon, they can get to within 20 kilometers (12 miles) of Damascus. What will we do? Stand by with our arms folded? Absolutely not. Without any doubt Syria will intervene in the conflict." Bilal said his country wanted above all a ceasefire "as soon as possible" combined with a prisoner exchange and explained he was working with Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos with whom he had met in Madrid. Bilal also criticized the US saying it was "unjustifiable (that) the superpower is not working for a rapid ceasefire." He rejected claims by Washington that Syria had armed Hezbollah (which contradicted an earlier admission by the Syrian defense minister that his country did supply some arms to Hezbollah), saying it offered "moral support" but not financing for "any resistance."
The Aljazeerah report also cited the work of former intelligence officer and now author/writer James Bamford who wrote about "going after Syria (and then Iran) in accordance with the 'A Clean Break' war for Israel agenda" in his book A Pretext for War published in 2004 which concentrated on the abuse of the US's intelligence agencies to invent reasons to attack Iraq. If Bamford is right, Syria may soon be drawn into this conflict, and if so, will Iran be next?
Another Report Believes the "War With Iran is On"
Iran may indeed be next (and Syria too) according to UK political scientist, human rights activist and writer Nafeez Ahmed in an article published in OpEd News on July 23 titled: "UK Govt Sources Confirm War With Iran Is On." In it, Ahmed writes: "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.' "
Ahmed goes on to say that in similar fashion to the lead-up to the March, 2003 Iraq invasion, current war plans may change and the scheduled time for it be begin may be postponed. But he quoted Vice President Dick Cheney in an MSNBC interview over a year ago saying Iran is "right at the top of the list (of) rogue states (and) Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel (so) Israel might well decide to act first, and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards." What the Vice President claimed the Iranians said was false (the Iranian president was deliberately misquoted), and he neglected to mention the immediate mass death and destruction that would result from this "act," and the resulting calamity from destroying commercial nuclear reactor and facilities sites that would spread devastating irremediable toxic radiation over a vast area making those territories uninhabitable forever and eventually killing an unknown number of people living there from the cancers and other diseases they will eventually contract from the deadly contamination.
Ahmed goes on to discount the possibility of Israel taking the lead in an assault against Iran saying it prefers to be a "regional proxy force in a US-led campaign." And he reports that writer Seymour Hersh quotes a former high-level US intelligence official saying that despite the increasing disaster in Iraq, overall "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 we want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism." Hersh has been on and off in what his sources are telling him about the likelihood of war with Iran so it may be uncertain what conclusion he now has as of this article's publication. But whatever it is, it's clear it can change in an instant as things in the Middle East are so fluid.
Nafeez's article also reported an analysis of the Monterey Institute for International Studies on the likely consequences of a war against Iran in which, if it happens, the US said it would use "bunker-buster mini-nukes." The language is deceptive as these are powerful nuclear bombs. The Institute painted the dire possibility that an extended conflict with Iran could catastrophically spin out of control with irreversible consequences for the global political economy. It would affect energy security, relations with other nations like China and Russia concerned about their own access to energy supplies in the region, and the US "dollar-economy" that would be under pressure, greatly harmed and even potentially threatened with collapse.
If this scenario is possible, why then would US, UK, Israeli, and other Western leaders who see what's going on, be willing to take the risk? Ahmed states what a growing number of knowledgeable observers now believe - that the Western, mainly US, so-called neoliberal imperial freewheeling "free-market" model is failing and may collapse short of a desperate "Hail Mary" military solution to try to save it even though the chance for success at best would be uncertain and in some views unlikely. And if it fails, the result may be an unimaginable social, political and economic calamity.
The fate of the corrupted neoliberal model may be what's now at stake. That model is already unraveling in Latin America where Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is proving his alternate Bolivarian participatory democracy is overwhelmingly popular and working. It's based on a government serving the people by providing essential social services, especially to the poor and desperate ones most in need of it. Chavez's success has made him a symbol of hope and a hero in the region and beyond, it's allowed his form of governance to spread to Bolivia, and there's every reason to imagine and hope it will continue spreading unstoppably because people in other Latin countries are beginning to fight for it. It's all greatly alarmed the ruling authority in Washington that views Chavez as the threat it most fears, even above Iran - a powerful good example that will spread unless the US acts forcibly to stop it, which clearly is its plan.
Apparently though, with the conflict raging in the Middle East, including in Iraq, the US attention is focused there as well as on the upcoming mid-term elections in which Republicans fear they will lose their control of the Congress because of their geopolitical failures that have turned the public against them. Politicians never accept defeat without a determined fight to prevent it including assuming the added risk of expanding an already out-of-control conflict in the Middle East to one or more countries in it hoping to convince a doubting public it's only being done to protect our national security. Up to now, an unknowledgeable and naive public has bought the story, and with enough effective packaging of a new contrived Iranian and Syrian threat, likely may do it again. If it happens, the potential calamitous consequences may be enormous and unimaginable, and the likely disaster will only be worse if Iran is attacked with nuclear weapons. The world, indeed, is holding its collective breath with no clear idea yet what may unfold or what will result if the worst happens - a nuclear terror-war against Iran.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. Comment on this Editorial Editorial: Friends True and False
Israel Shamir
After two weeks, the war settled down comfortably in the Middle East, like an old aunt on a regular visit to her nephews. It came to stay for a while, and as the first shock of the battle for Lebanon is over, the picture clears up. First, the news. Despite the awesome, crushing might of the Israeli onslaught, despite its unprecedented viciousness and brutality, the steadfast warriors of Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah held their ground. The blitzkrieg planned by Tel Aviv strategists ground to a halt in the low hills of Maroun Ras, and came to naught in the streets of Bint Jbail. If in 1982, during the previous Israeli invasion, Jewish tanks crossed the Litani River in just 48 hours, now their advance is measured in single yards.
An old but fearsome weapon forged by the Russians in the days of their fateful struggle with the Germans, and given a girl's name, Katyusha, keeps fretting the always-so-safe Israeli hinterland all the way to Haifa. Israeli Apache gunships, navy's Saar warships, Israel's best Merkaba tanks were met with precise missiles. The frustrated invader covered the roads and villages of Lebanon with hundreds of charred bodies of Lebanese children; but remarkably few Hezbollah fighters were killed or taken prisoner. They wield a secret weapon: Hezbollah is the first-ever Arab body the Jews failed to infiltrate. Israeli intelligence did not know what weapons they had and what plans they had prepared. Hezbollah warriors did not oblige the Jews and did not commit suicide a-calling "Allah is Great": they fight, defeating the enemy and destroying the twin myths of Israeli invulnerability and Arab impotence.
The importance of their stand can't be overestimated: if Lebanon were overrun with little resistance, Israeli tanks would roll on to Damascus, and Israeli jets soar to Teheran. This is the wish of the American neocons (or should it be spelled neo-Cohns?). William Kristol speaks plainly: "For while Syria and Iran are enemies of Israel, they are also enemies of the United States. We might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained?" Michael Ledeen brings back Cold War rhetoric: "You cannot escape the mullahs. You must either defeat them or submit to their terrible vision."
Larry Kudlow is sure of victory: "It will take the U.S. and Israel about 35 minutes to knock out the entire Iranian navy and air force... Now is the time to really put the squeeze on Syria's dictator, Baby Assad." The neocons have a good reason to push for war now: their positions in the US administration have recently weakened, and the first signs of goy rebellion have materialised in a notorious critique of the Jewish Lobby. A "good war" would return them into full power in Washington.
The Israeli attack on Damascus and Teheran can still take place, but every day the Lebanese hold out diminishes the chances of a regional war. The troublesome word "defeat" is being noised on Israeli TV: "bogged down in Lebanon" is the old nightmare of Israelis who have already had this experience and do not cherish its repetition. A "defeat in Lebanon" would be quite a limited defeat: it will not lead the victor to Haifa, but it will teach the Israelis some modesty. That is why in this war, a real friend of Israel wishes its army a sound defeat in South Lebanon, a defeat that will return the boys home and will keep the generals from seeking new adventures for a good while. A false friend of Israel wishes an Israeli victory, a victory that will lead to Teheran, to nuclear war, to mass destruction and death. While the false friends, the organised US Jews, marched in support of the Lebanese adventure, the true friends, Israelis, marched the streets of Tel Aviv denouncing their leaders' war crimes.
As an Israeli I can't rejoice when Haifa is shelled and Tel Aviv is threatened. There are too many innocents who cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle. However, I can't condemn it either, for this bitter medicine can help where soft-spoken sermons have failed. The missiles of Hezbollah may yet sober up the Israeli minds and break their addiction to military might. Likewise, a good German would have prayed for his compatriots' defeat in Holland in 1940 for such a rout would have saved them from the tragedy of 1945.
The Germans were too strong for their own good. This excessive might led them to disaster. Now the same fate is prepared for Israel. Excessive might is no better than lack of it: might intoxicates and destroys. "The strong are never absolutely strong, nor are the weak absolutely weak. Those who have Might on loan from fate count on it too much and are destroyed. Might is as pitiless to the man who possesses it (or thinks he does) as it is to its victims. The second it crushes, the first it intoxicates", wrote Simone Weil, the French philosopher, referring to the Trojan War.
This war is a good illustration: a minor skirmish was turned into a great battle and massive destruction of nature and cities because of excessive military strength of Israel. Small border incidents occur all over the world, but they do not result in such excesses. If Israel were wiser, it would understand the predictable response to their brutality towards Gaza. If Israel were weaker, it would make a proportionate military response. But it is too stupid and too strong for its own good.
The Jews incessantly repeat their old errors. In AD 66, almost two thousand years ago, the Jews performed a mighty deed: they defeated the XII Legion of Cestius Gallus. It was as incredible as the Six Days War, for Roman legions were not an easy prey. The Jews were carried away by this feat, and rather vaingloriously thought that God would fight for them. But God had other plans, and by AD 70, Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed. Now, again, the Jews are intoxicated by their military prowess, by obedience of the US and EU, by their control over media. Their arrogance and brutality are leading them to disaster, for after this Rape of Gaza and Rape of Lebanon, even the most tolerant man of the Middle East will come to the conclusion the Romans came to 2000 years ago: there can be no peace in the area as long as the Jewish state exists. After experiencing neocon rule, this conclusion will be shared by the Americans.
Another error the Jews repeat is the error of mistreating native people. After the Hasmonean victory over Seleucids, the victory described in the biblical Books of Maccabees, they took over Palestine. Their first deed was expulsion of the native population of Caesarea and its repopulation by Jews. There was a Nakba even then. In those days, the natives of Palestine had no power plants, so the Jews had to be satisfied with destroying their temples. In order to become the Light Unto The Nations, the Jews had to put the Nations into complete Darkness, and so they did. A hundred years of Jewish absolute rule (168-68 BC) were the most horrible times for the country, and the Roman general Pompey the Great was met as a liberator when he subdued the Jews and limited their power to Jerusalem and a few other areas.
"This is not a war, but an anti-terrorist campaign; Israel is fighting the terrorists of Hezbollah", says the Jewish media. But hundreds of burned-out buildings, destroyed bridges and power stations, slain women and children, and strafed refugees refute this oldest PR trick. Napoleon claimed he was fighting the Mamluks, not the Porte, but the Empire sent its troops down to Palestine and he had to escape after deserting his soldiers. Adolf Hitler claimed he was fighting "communists", not Russia, but Russians united around Stalin and foiled the trick. George Bush claims he is fighting Saddam Hussein, not Iraq, and thousands of dead American soldiers disproved the lie. Now the Lebanese have rejected the line, saying: this is a Jewish war against Lebanon. A total war against its citizens; its motto expressed by Israeli Generalissimo Halutz: "For every rocket we shall destroy ten high rise buildings in Beirut". And the Lebanese understood it; they did not take the Jewish bait of condemning Hezbollah. They felt that Hezbollah represents them, is an integral part of Lebanon. The Lebanese army should take its place next to Hezbollah - this would completely derail the plans of the invader.
The Jews have bombed even Ashrafieh, the well-off Maronite suburb of Beirut, which led the movement for removal of the Syrian army from Lebanon. "Haram, ya Ashrafieh", sorry for you. Your folly was visited on you too soon. Weak and rude as they were, the Syrians would protect your heavens from the black vultures from South. You are like a lamb that rejected your nasty old shepherd and was then swiftly fleeced by a wolf. The dream of independent Lebanon was just an illusion produced by the Masters of Dreams. The concept of independence does not work: Lebanon would be better off as an integral and autonomous part of Syria; Syria would be better off in union with Iraq, Jordan, Palestine. The Ottoman Empire had to be transformed into a Commonwealth of the East, not destroyed, for united we stand, divided we fall.
France bears heavy responsibility for the destruction of Lebanon. It was France that forced the Syrians out of Lebanon. The US, this obvious enemy of Arabs, would not have been able to do it without the support of Paris. By removing the Syrian protector, France came under moral obligation to defend Beirut. "You are forever responsible for those you tamed", said the Fox to the Little Prince in Saint-Exupéry's story, and France tamed Lebanon. The sad and racist sight of the evacuation of foreign nationals should be replaced by another one: by landing French battle troops, not as UN or NATO peacekeepers, but as outright defenders of Lebanon. They know the way: in 1860, when the Druze ran amok, the French soldiers landed and restored peace by repelling the aggressor. They can repeat this deed; if the French would fight shoulder-to-shoulder with the Lebanese against the Jewish invader, it would bring peace to the Middle East and to France.
Some Arab countries have betrayed their brotherly duty. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan condemned - not the Jewish aggressor, but the resister, Hezbollah. The Gulf countries did nothing to save Lebanon. They should be ashamed for their treachery. Indeed, they could repeat the successful oil embargo of 1974 and force Europe to pull back the crazed Zionist pit bull. Hezbollah's brave and staunch resistance is a sign of honour for the fighters and a sign of shame for other Arab leaders. They should remember that those who betrayed Palestine were punished: King Faruk was overthrown, while King Abdullah was assassinated. The longer the war lasts, the bigger the chance for these leaders to be removed by their peoples. This is a strong reason against seeking cease-fire.
The Hezbollah are the true heroes of the Middle East. Not because of their might, but because of their compassion. They are the only ones who felt compassion for the plight of Palestinians. They did not remain indifferent observers at the Rape of Gaza - they tried to stop the violator with their modest means, just as England once protested the German conquest of Poland. Compassion and solidarity are more important than sovereignty.
For this reason we can't condemn the Hezbollah fighters or even "both sides". A Russian philosopher named Ivan Ilyin (1883-1954) made a clear distinction (in his Resistance to Evil By Force) between the violator and the resister.
«The Violator says to his victim: «you are given unto my power», while the Resister replies to the violator: «you destroy and will be destroyed, desist! Here I put the end to your tyranny".
Indeed, the Jews tried to dominate Palestinians so completely, they tortured them so freely and without remorse, that a Resister had to appear. In face of shameful obedience of the rest of Arabs, fighters of Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah deserve praise. They were the first opponents who challenged the Israeli rules of the game and took the war into Jewish territory, - up until now, the enemies of Israel have tacitly accepted its sanctity. Even in 1948 the armies of Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq did not cross the borders of the Jewish state, and were satisfied with securing the territories given by the UN to the Palestinian Arab State. In 1967-1971 Nasser's Egypt did not dare to send even one bomber jet to Tel Aviv, though Israeli air force bombed and strafed Egyptian cities. Thanks now to Sheikh Nasrallah, the cities of Israel experienced - though in homeopathic doses - the feelings of Gaza and Beirut.
Let us hope that this experience will destroy the Jewish superiority complex, so that the people of Israel will come out of it - more modest, more willing to compromise, more considerate to their neighbours. They should not push their luck too much, for the present Luck of Jews is a dangerous reminder a Friedrich Schiller's poem (based on a story by Herodotus) about the extremely lucky Polycrates. His guest was worried because such run of luck is likely to end in disaster. He begged Polycrates to take his most valuable ring and throw it in the sea, and so he did. But next morning, a fisherman came to his court to present him with a huge fish he had caught. When the fish was cut open, the precious ring was in its stomach. "The guest with terror turned away. "I cannot here, then, longer stay, The gods have willed that thou shouldst die Lest I, too, perish, I must fly" And indeed, Polycrates suffered a terrible reversal of fate and was crucified by the Persians.
Israel is too lucky by far. Her generals are guilty of the worst war crime, that of aggression. They kill with impunity and get hailed by their American vassals. Now they targeted the UN and killed some of peacekeepers, but not to worry, nobody will begrudge them. The Israeli Ambassador in the UN already demanded an apology from spineless Annan and I am sure he will get it. The Jews have nothing to fear - but the leading Orthodox churchmen, the Greek Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens and the Palestinian Archbishop Theodosios Atallah Hanna of Sebaste reminded them: "Fear God's wrath."
Just for the record, let's define the two most important terms in this manufactured crisis.
From the point of view of the small group of psychopaths running Israel's government and military "terrorism" is: any act that seeks to redress the long years of Israeli government repression and brutality against the Arab people and their aspirations.
A "terrorist": is anyone who supports the aspriations of the Arab people in the middle East, advocates resistance against Israeli brutality and believes that Israel should be called to account for its flagrant violation of the rights of Arab people.
View the below video and decide for yourself if Israel's "war" is simply a bloody free-for-all where Israeli jet and helicopters deliberately attack their civilian Lebanese "enemies".
50% of Americans today think that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the United States invaded the country in 2003.
64% Believe that Saddam Hussein had "strong ties" with al Qaeda.
Someone has obviously done a lousy job... the media or those who did the poll?
And how to explain the increase? (They were respectively at 35% and 62% a year ago.)
Translated by Signs of the Times Comment on this Editorial World Politicians Neutered Over Lebanon
Arab countries have expressed disappointment at the Rome talks' failure to demand a ceasefire in the Middle East, while Israel says the talks gave it "authorisation" to press its offensive in Lebanon.
Ahmed Abul Gheit, the Egyptian foreign minister, said the international conference in Rome "failed to meet Arab demands", the official Middle East News Agency reported on Thursday as Israel continued its attacks. Air attacks
Israeli warplanes carried out raids on suspected Hezbollah strongholds in south Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley east of Beirut on Thursday.
One policeman and two civilians died in the Bekaa, police said.
Warplanes also hit a Lebanese army base and a radio relay station, fired more than 400 missiles overnight at Khiam in the south, and destroyed several roads.
Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, had called for an "immediate cessation of hostilities" at the Rome talks, but Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, argued that Hezbollah needed to be disarmed first.
Abul Gheit acknowledged that despite the setback, the conference had been "a step forward in the direction of a ceasefire".
Israel, however, saw it differently.
Haim Ramon, the Israeli justice minister, told army radio on Thursday: "We received yesterday in the Rome conference permission, in effect, from the world - part of it gritting its teeth and part of it granting its blessing - to continue the operation, this war, until Hezbollah's presence is erased in Lebanon and it is disarmed."
Ramon also said that "everyone who is still in south Lebanon is linked to Hezbollah, we have called on all who are there to leave. Bint Jbeil is not a civilian location, we have to treat it like a military zone".
The minister was speaking before a security cabinet meeting on Thursday that was to decide whether to expand the offensive, now in its 16th day.
Israeli media said the cabinet wants "to step up air strikes and limit ground operations".
Israelis growing weary
But any decision to expand the campaign might give fuel to an increasing number of Israelis criticising their government.
Nine Israeli soldiers were killed and 22 wounded in bloody battles in the south Lebanon stronghold of Bint Jbeil on Wednesday alone, and the army has been unable to stop the rocket barrages on northern Israel that have killed 18 civilians in 15 days.
After Hezbollah fighters crossed the border on July 12, killing three soldiers and capturing two others, there was strong support for the government's decision to launch a large-scale offensive to crush the resistance group.
But that consensus is beginning to crack, and critics are starting to say the government launched the offensive hastily, with no exit strategy, and many fear the country is again entering a quagmire across its northern border.
"The war is leading us by the nose to sink deeper in the Lebanese mud. The Hezbollah wants to drag us into its territory. The moment the army will be in Lebanon for an extended period, it will be hell for us in there," said Ran Cohen, a dovish lawmaker and a colonel in the Israeli army reserves.
Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, tried to quell the criticism on Wednesday, warning of tougher times ahead and asking lawmakers to hold their tongues until the fighting ended.
But Danny Yatom, a retired general and Labour Party legislator, said the initial goals of the Israeli operation were too grandiose, and the government now realised that wiping out Hezbollah was no longer realistic.
A poll conducted before the announcement of the nine deaths on Wednesday showed that public support for pressing the offensive had begun to slip slightly, with 82% n favour, compared to 90% the previous week.
Fifty-one Israelis have been killed since July 12, including 33 soldiers and 18 civilians.
More than 405 people, many of them civilians, have been killed in Lebanon.
The United States blocked the UN Security Council on Wednesday from issuing a statement that would have condemned Israel's bombing of a UN post on the Lebanon border that killed four military observers overnight Tuesday.
US diplomats refused to comment, and US Ambassador John Bolton was in Washington preparing for a new confirmation hearing before the Senate; however, several diplomats said the United States objected to one paragraph, which said the council "condemns any deliberate attack against UN personnel and emphasizes that such attacks are unacceptable."
Comment: Note that the paragraph that Bolton and the US objected to was the statement that killing UN observers was wrong. Far from caring about Lebanese civilians, the US does not care even for the life of a citizen from any other country (from which the UN are pulled). Hence we deduce that the US government and the pyschopaths in control of it, care nothing for any human life other than their own. Leading us to further conclude that the US government would willingly sacrifice the lives of American citizens also, indeed as they did on 9/11.
KUALA LUMPUR, July 27 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice here on Thursday defended the U.S. administration's position on "a sustainable and stable cease-fire" in the Middle East.
Expressing her country's deep concern over the humanitarian situation in Lebanon, Rice said that she was ready to go back to the Middle East "at any time that I think we can move towards a sustainable ceasefire that can end the violence."
Rice, who arrived here Thursday afternoon for her first official visit to Malaysia, said the key to resolving the Israel-Lebanon conflict is extension of the Lebanese authorities throughout the country, the ability for the Lebanese government tocontrol all forces, all arms within the country.
She told a press conference at the end of the ASEAN-led Post Ministerial Conferences (PMC) here Thursday that reigning in the forces and arms in Lebanon as well as having a United Nations-mandated international troops in the country formed a basis for seeking an end to the crisis.
Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon have been battling the Israeli army for the past two weeks. And the bloody fightings have claimed about 400 lives on both sides so far.
The U.S. government is working urgently to try to make it possible to get aid supplies to reach the people in Lebanon, she said.
Earlier, Rice and her counterparts from the 10-member regional grouping witnessed the signing of the Framework Document for the Plan of Action to Implement the ASEAN-U.S. Enhanced Partnership, a framework aimed at boosting political, economic and security ties.
Rice is also scheduled to attend the 13th ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) on Friday and discuss common security concerns in the region with other ARF participants.
The ARF meeting is intended to intensify ASEAN's external dialogue in political and security matters as a means of building cooperative ties with states in the Asia-Pacific region.
Friday's meeting will bring together the 10 ASEAN members with representatives of Australia, Canada, China, the European Union, India, Japan, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, South Korea, Mongolia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Russia, East Timor and the United States.
The United States is a dialogue partner of ASEAN, which groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Rice flew in from Rome with two fellow diplomats, the European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, and Canadian Foreign Minister Peter McKay.
Prior to her visit to Malaysia, Rice has traveled to the Middle East and to Rome on July 26 to discuss the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
Comment: Let's be clear. Rice is not talking about a ceasefile. She is talking about the military defeat of Lebanon and the imposition of Israeli dictate upon that country.
Diplomats Back Troops, but Not Cease-fire, for Mideast
In the face of United States opposition, an international conference here today stopped short of calling for an immediate cease-fire in the Lebanon crisis. The conference instead adopted more nebulous language that reflected America's desire to give Israel time to continue its bombardment of Hezbollah targets.
In a statement, diplomats from the United States, Europe, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia expressed their "determination to work immediately to reach with the utmost urgency a cease-fire that puts an end to the current violence and hostilities."
The diplomats also called for an international military force to be deployed in southern Lebanon under the auspices of the United Nations, after NATO members said their alliance was already overstretched. And they called for a regional conference, including Syria and Iran, to discuss security issues.
The release of the diplomats' prepared statement was delayed by almost two hours by wrangling over its contents. The key sticking point was the phrase concerning a ceasefire, according to two European diplomats who were in the room.
Most of the officials in the room were seeking, at the very least, a phrase that said the group would "work towards an immediate ceasefire," one of the diplomats said. But Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice refused, and won, he said.
"She insisted it say 'work immediately to bring a ceasefire,' not 'work to bring an immediate ceasefire,'" the diplomat said. He said that the group argued about that for more than 30 minutes before ceding the point to the United States.
The change reflects the Bush administration's view that the conflict will not be settled in a lasting way unless Israel is given the leeway to diminish Hezbollah's military capabilities.
"This is a region that has had too many broken cease-fires," Ms. Rice said at the conference's conclusion.
Hanging over the discussion was the killing of four members of the United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon on Tuesday by Israeli artillery. On Tuesday night, Israel called the incident a mistake but United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said it was "apparently" deliberate.
Asked about the incident today, Mr. Annan said that while he accepted the apology of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, he wanted a separate U.N. investigation into the incident.
"Mr. Olmert definitely believes it was a mistake," Mr. Annan said. But, he added, "the shelling of the U.N. positions began early in the morning, and carried on all day" despite repeated calls to the Israelis from the United Nations that the posit, which Mr. Annan said was "long established and clearly marked" was being shelled.
"You can imagine the anguish of the" U.N. peackeepers over the death of their colleagues, said a clearly angry Mr. Annan.
The observers were from Austria, Canada, Finland and China. In Beijing today, officials said that President Hu Jintao had condemned the killings and demanded an investigation and an immediate cease-fire, Reuters reported.
The conference here did not reach a decision on the makeup of an international force that would be sent to occupy southern Lebanon once a ceasefire package is reached, but did agree that the force would fall under U.N. auspices, and not NATO. European envoys said that France and Germany both balked at the idea of using NATO forces because of its commitments elsewhere.
Ms. Rice said that the prime purpose of the force will be to support the Lebanese government in disarming Hezbollah, a position that Lebanon's prime minister, Fouad Siniora, said he supported.
While agreement was reached on the need for the international force and a follow-up conference on aid for repairing the damage done to Lebanon, perhaps the most stark aspects of the meeting were how isolated the United States appears, and the growing impatience, particularly in the Arab world, over the delay in calling for a ceasefire. While France and other European countries have delayed calling for an immediate ceasefire, in support of the U.S. position, some daylight is now starting to show between Europe and America.
A senior U.S. official denied that America stood alone on the issue, saying that "there was broad agreement in the room over the urgent need for a ceasefire."
In Washington, White House Tony Snow rejected a suggestion that the United States had blocked a desire by the other nations at the conference to push for cease-fire.
"If the talks broke down, they wouldn't have come out with a joint statement that showed they are knitted up on the key items," he said, The Associated Press reported.
During the closed door session, diplomats said, Mr. Siniora gave a heartrending speech which left many in the room calling for immediate action.
"Is the value of human life less in Lebanon than that of citizens elsewhere?" Mr. Siniora asked. "Are we children of a lesser God? Is an Israeli teardrop worth more than a drop of Lebanese blood?"
Mr. Siniora said Lebanese will begin "legal proceedings" against Israel, and appeared to accuse Israel of war crimes. He said he would "spare no avenue to make Israel compensate the Lebanese people for the barbaric destruction it has inflicted on us."
He ended his remarks with a quote from the Roman historian Tacitus, which he said describes well what Israel is doing to Lebanon and the region today.
"They created a desolation and call it peace," Mr. Siniora said.
Diplomats said there was visible emotion around the room after Mr. Siniora's comments.
During her remarks after the conference, Ms. Rice acknowledged Mr. Siniora's "very impassioned" speech, saying he had "put a human face" on the crisis.
While still pressing for an immediate halt to the fighting, Mr. Siniora in his remarks after the conference seemed to accept the prospect of negotiations over the conflict's end. He said that as part of any negotiations, he would press several conditions first put forward by Hezbollah: that Israel withdraw from a disputed slice of border territory it continues to occupy, that it release Lebanese prisoners, and that it turn over a map showing the locations of land mines it placed in southern Lebanon.
Ms. Rice called on Syia and Iran to do more to rein in Hezbollah, and said that Mr. Annan had pledged to use his "good offices" to reach out to Damascus and Tehran. The United States has no diplomatic ties with Iran and limited representation in Syria.
She singled out Syria in particular as needing to take action to end the crisis.
After she spoke, the senior administration said that the crux of the matter for the United States is making sure that any ceasefire will last, and that Hezbollah won't emerge after all still able to rain rockets down on Israel.
Exasperated, he said: "What's a ceasefire?"
A reporter answered: "People stopping killing each other."
"We're for people stopping killing each other," the official said. "but how do we do that? Do we do it by walking into a room and saying, 'everybody stop?' That's what happened before. What's going to make them stop?"
Helene Cooper reported for this article from Rome and John O'Neil from New York. Contributing reporting were: Greg Myre from Jerusalem, Jad Mouawad from Beirut, and Elaine Sciolino from Paris.
By Kim Murphy and Sebastian Rotella, Times Staff Writers
July 26, 2006
LONDON - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's calls this week for a deliberate approach to building "a new Middle East" are facing increased skepticism among many who ordinarily would be America's strongest backers in efforts to end the conflict in Lebanon.
U.S. allies in Europe and the Arab world are warning that without Washington's endorsement of an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon, the possibility of escalating violence could eclipse any hope to transform a region beset by autocracy and terrorism to one based on democracy.
"Now more than ever, we call for moderation, with the goal of a cessation of hostilities that are provoking enormous damage and a humanitarian tragedy," said Massimo D'Alema, foreign minister of Italy, which today will hold a meeting of Western and Arab leaders in an attempt to broker a resolution to the crisis.
Britain has continued to back President Bush's call for a "sustainable," if not immediate, cease-fire, and supported Israel's right to guarantee security on its borders.
France, which initially called for an immediate cease-fire and condemned Israel's campaign as "totally disproportionate," in recent days has eased closer to the U.S. position, blaming Syria and Iran >for inciting Hezbollah.
But Italy and Spain have pointedly criticized the United States' failure to halt the bloodletting.
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, whose Socialist government has had testy relations with Washington since coming to power a little more than a year ago, has also been critical of "abusive" force in the region, alluding to Israel.
"The silences of today in light of what is happening in the Mideast could become the regrets of tomorrow, because waiting for time to pass costs human lives," Zapatero said.
Germany, while recognizing Israel's right to defend itself, warned that Lebanon could be "further destabilized" under a prolonged bombing campaign.
Perhaps more worrisome for Washington, two of its strongest Arab allies, Saudi Arabia and Egypt - which had generally sided with the U.S. as the conflict began - on >Tuesday voiced strong misgivings over the severity of the Israeli airstrikes and echoed European calls for a speedy end to the crisis.
In an apparent reference to Rice's description of the turbulent "birth pangs" of a "new Middle East," Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak called for an immediate cease-fire and warned that "what is happening in the region is destructive chaos, not creative chaos."
Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah went further, warning that "no one can predict what will happen if things get out of control" in Lebanon. If peace options fail, he said, "there will be no other option but war."
A Saudi government advisor said that "America is doing a disservice to everyone by not reining in the Israelis."
Washington's closest Arab allies are entrenched, undemocratic regimes whose leaders support the Bush administration's stance on Lebanon in part because >they fear that the popular Islamic activism embodied by Hezbollah and Hamas could turn against them at home. Those governments now worry that the popular perception that the United States is standing behind Israel will undermine their credibility at home and invite new militancy.
"Yes, there is a new Middle East - in the worst sense, not in the sense the Americans would like it," said Nawaf Obaid, an analyst in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and an adjunct fellow with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
New rifts, Obaid said, may result in "a Shia world headed up by Iran vs. a Sunni world headed up by Saudi Arabia - and this is exactly what no one needs."
France, which headed European opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq, now looks to be almost allied with the U.S. over the conflict in Lebanon.
President Jacques Chirac had expressed >great concern about the destruction wrought by the Israeli bombardment and called for an immediate cease-fire. But he recently tempered that criticism of Israel with rebukes of Hezbollah that have hardened over time, narrowing the distance between French and U.S. viewpoints.
This week, Chirac referred to "initiatives taken by Hamas and Hezbollah which could not have been taken alone." This was, the French newspaper Liberation suggested, "an almost explicit allusion to Damascus and Tehran."
Many European countries now find themselves forced into a balancing act, not wanting to offend the U.S. or Israel, but mindful of public opinion that has tended to favor the underdog in Lebanon, said Italian analyst Furio Colombo, a former newspaper editor and a senator for the ruling Democratic Left party.
As a result, he predicted, the Europeans probably will not be able to act >with the determination necessary to find a solution, at least in the short term, such as during today's meeting in Rome.
"The results will be mild, watered down ... very European," he said.
Murphy reported from London and Rotella from Paris. Times staff writers Tracy Wilkinson in Rome and Christian Retzlaff in Berlin contributed to this report.
NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer declined Wednesday to rule out a role for the military alliance in an international peacekeeping force in Lebanon, but France immediately voiced skepticism.
French President Jacques Chirac dismissed the idea of NATO involvement in the violence-scarred country because the organisation "is perceived, if we like it or not, as the armed wing of the West in the region."
Israel has voiced support for a NATO role in such a force, a key agenda item at an international conference in Rome Wednesday on the Mideast crisis - and NATO's secretary general refused to rule out that option.
"I do not include or exclude anything, but at the moment
I will not speculate about any NATO role," de Hoop Scheffer told reporters in Brussels, when asked about a possible involvement by the 26-nation alliance.
Referring to the Rome conference of foreign ministers, including US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, he said: "Many suggestions are on the table including people, ministers...who talk about a NATO role."
But he said: "This is not the moment and that has nothing to do with being unenthusiastic," adding: "I see many suggestions ending with a question mark.
"I take the position that I hope the Rome conference will yield some results ...and begin to draw a common line."
On Sunday Israel said it was ready to back an international force led by NATO in south Lebanon to ease tensions.
"Israel supports the possibility of deploying a multi-national force with a strong mandate," possibly sponsored by NATO, Israeli Defence Minster Amir Peretz was quoted as saying in Jerusalem.
Chirac meanwhile, in an interview with French newspaper Le Monde, proposed that international peacekeepers could be sent to secure Lebanon's borders with Israel and Syria without NATO involvement.
The mission of the international force "would be to control the ceasefire and assure the respect of the borders, both the Israeli-Lebanese border and Syrian-Lebanese border of course," he said.
Sending troops is contingent on "a political agreement that assumes a ceasefire."
The agreement "must be negotiated partly by the Lebanese government and Hezbollah and partly between the international community, the Lebanese government and Israel," he said.
Last Updated Wed, 26 Jul 2006 20:32:38 EDT
CBC New
The family of a professor accused of being a Hezbollah spy says the Canadian government has abandoned them as they try to learn more about his fate.
Gahzi Falah, a professor at the University of Akron in Ohio who formerly taught at the University of Toronto, was arrested in northern Israel near the Lebanese border in early July. Falah has both Canadian and Israeli citizenship.
"He was taking pictures of Israeli installations along the northern border," said Nancy Goldfarb, spokeswoman for the Israeli Consulate General in Philadelphia to the Associated Press on Wednesday. "He was arrested on suspicion that his pictures were taken for intelligence purposes. Currently, he is still under investigation and I don't know whether he will be indicted."
An Israeli court extended Falah's detention through Sunday and an appeal is scheduled for Thursday in Haifa, according to his lawyer in Israel, Husein abu-Husein.
Falah's son, Naail, told CBC News that the family's daily calls to Foreign Affairs have been ignored.
"I've seen more effort done by the American government than I have from the Canadian government, and we are not American citizens," he said.
Alan Baker, Israel's ambassador to Canada, said he first heard about the case this week.
"I was approached by some members of Parliament yesterday, and I passed their request on to Jerusalem, and as soon as I get an answer I will be in a position to reply," Baker said on Wednesday.
A renowned Middle East geographer, Falah often takes pictures of landmarks for his work, according to his son.
"If he is detained on the basis of his academics, it's a sad situation for Israel, because academic freedom should be respected all around the world," Naail Falah said.
He said that his father considers himself pro-Palestinian and has written articles critical of Israeli policies in the past, but is not a security threat.
Abu-Husein said he was only able to visit his client for the first time on Wednesday.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad discussed the Israeli offensive in Lebanon and Iran's nuclear program with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Reuters news agency reported, quoting a release by the Kremlin press service.
"The crisis situation surrounding Lebanon was at the center of discussion," Kremlin press service said of the telephone conversation late on Tuesday. "Different aspects of resolving the Iranian nuclear program were also touched upon."
"On both topics, Vladimir Putin stated the fundamental position of the Russian side," it said.
Russia has called for a ceasefire in Lebanon and criticized the Israeli attacks, saying they went beyond the anti-Hizbollah military operation the Jewish state said it was conducting.
Russia is one of six powers that want Iran to respond to an offer of incentives in exchange for Tehran stopping uranium enrichment. Unlike the United States and some other Western powers, it says it is too early to talk about economic or other sanctions against Tehran.
The telephone exchange took place at Ahmadinejad's request.
Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday during a visit to Tajikistan that the conflict between Lebanon and Israel could sweep through the entire Middle East like a hurricane.
The United States and key European countries fear Iran's nuclear activity is a cover for bomb making. Tehran says it has a right to civilian nuclear power and that its nuclear program is aimed only at producing electricity.
PARIS - The families of two Israeli soldiers captured by Hizbollah guerrillas appealed to the French government on Wednesday to use its contacts with Lebanon to help bring their sons home.
"France is the first place we chose to come because we think here we've got our best chance," said Omri Avni whose son-in-law Ehud Goldwasser was captured in a raid by Hizbollah on July 12.
"Using diplomatic connections, formal or not formal, between France and the Lebanon government, they can help us to bring our sons back home," he told a news conference in Paris.
"You have the connections with the Lebanese nation," Malka Goldwasser, the soldier's mother, said.
France has criticized Israel's offensive on its former colony Lebanon, unleashed after the soldiers' capture, but it has also called on Hizbollah to release the two men immediately.
Members of the Goldwasser family and the family of Eldad Regev, who was taken in the same incident, are due to meet French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy and an official from President Jacques Chirac's office on Thursday.
The father of Gilad Shalit, who was taken in a separate incident by Hamas militants and who has French citizenship, may also be present, according to officials from the Jewish group Siona, which helped organize the families' visit to France.
"We have the feeling that here in France, we will be able to get support that we cannot get in Israel," Avni said. "We need to know if they are OK, if they are healthy and if anyone can help us to bring them back home because the army cannot do it."
Malka Goldwasser and the other families did not question the actions of the Israeli government and placed the blame for the 15-day-old crisis squarely with Hizbollah which has unleashed a stream of rocket attacks on northern Israel.
"We want to underline that those who are holding Eldad and Udi (Goldwasser's nickname) and Gilad Shalit as well have no respect for accepted conventions," said Eyal Regev, brother of Eldad Regev, speaking in Hebrew through a French interpreter.
"We have had no information on the condition of the soldiers or the state they're in, and that's why we're asking the French government and the international community to help us."
Qlaya, Southern Lebanon -- Is it possible - is it conceivable - that Israel is losing its war in Lebanon?
From this hill village in the south of the country, I am watching the clouds of brown and black smoke rising from its latest disaster in the Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil: up to 13 Israeli soldiers dead, and others surrounded, after a devastating ambush by Hizbollah guerrillas in what was supposed to be a successful Israeli military advance against a "terrorist centre".
To my left smoke rises too, over the town of Khiam, where a smashed United Nations outpost remains the only memorial to the four UN soldiers - most of them decapitated by an American-made missile on Tuesday - killed by the Israeli air force.
Indian soldiers of the UN army in southern Lebanon, visibly moved by the horror of bringing their Canadian, Fijian, Chinese and Austrian comrades back in at least 20 pieces from the clearly marked UN post next to Khiam prison, left their remains at Marjayoun hospital yesterday.
In past years, I have spent hours with their comrades in this UN position, which is clearly marked in white and blue paint, with the UN's pale blue flag opposite the Israeli frontier. Their duty was to report on all they saw: the ruthless Hizbollah missile fire out of Khiam and the brutal Israeli response against the civilians of Lebanon.
Is this why they had to die, after being targeted by the Israelis for eight hours, their officers pleading to the Israeli Defence Forces that they cease fire? An American-made Israeli helicopter saw to that.
In Bint Jbeil, meanwhile, another bloodbath was taking place. Claiming to "control" this southern Lebanese town, the Israelis chose to walk into a Hizbollah trap. The moment they reached the deserted marketplace, they were ambushed from three sides, their soldiers falling to the ground under sustained rifle fire. The remaining Israeli troops - surrounded by the "terrorists" they were supposed to liquidate - desperately appealed for help, but an Israeli Merkava tank and other vehicles sent to help them were also attacked and set on fire. Up to 17 Israeli soldiers may have died so far in this disastrous operation. During their occupation of Lebanon in 1983 more than 50 Israeli soldiers were killed in just one suicide attack.
The battle for southern Lebanon is on an epic scale but, from the heights above Khiam, the Israelis appear to be in deep trouble. Their F-16s turn in the high bright sun - small, silver fish whose whispers gain in volume as they dive - and their bombs burst over the old prison, where the Hizbollah are still holding out; beyond the frontier, I can see livid fires burning across the Israeli hillsides and the Jewish settlement of Metullah billowing smoke.
It was not meant to be like this, 15 days into Israel's assault on Lebanon. The Katyushas still streak in pairs out of southern Lebanon, clearly visible to the naked eye, white contrails that thump into Israeli's hillsides and border towns.
So is it frustration or revenge that keeps Israel's bombs falling on the innocent? In the early hours two days ago, a tremendous explosion woke me up, rattling the windows and shaking the trees outside, and a single flash suffused the western sky over Nabatiyeh.
The lives of an entire family of seven had just been extinguished.
And how come - since this now obsesses the humanitarian organisations working in Lebanon - that the Israelis bombed two ambulances in Qana, killing two of the three wounded inside. All the crews were injured - one with a piece of shrapnel in his neck - but what worried the Lebanese Red Cross was that the Israeli missiles had pierced the very centre of the red cross painted on the roof of each vehicle. Did the pious use the cross as their aiming point?
The bombardment of Khiam has set off its own brush fires on the hillsides below Qlaya, whose Maronite Christian inhabitants now stand on the high road above like spectators at a 19th century battle. Khiam is - or was - a pretty village of cut-stone doorways and tracery windows, but Israel's target, apart from the obviously marked UN position whose inhabitants they massacred, is the notorious prison in which - before its retreat from Lebanon in 2000 - hundreds of Hizbollah members and, in some cases, their families, were held and tortured with electricity by Israel's proxy militia, the South Lebanon Army.
This was the same prison complex - turned into a "museum of torture" by the Hizbollah after the Israeli retreat - that was visited by the late Edward Said shortly before his death. More important, however, is that many of the Hizbollah men originally held prisoner here were captives in cells deep underground the old French mandate fort. These same men are now fighting the Israelis, almost certainly sheltering from their fire in the same underground cells in which they languished, perhaps even storing some of their missiles there.
In Marjayoun, next to Qlaya, once the SLA's headquarters, Lebanese troops are trying to prevent Hizbollah guerrillas using the streets of the Greek Catholic town to fire yet more missiles at Israel. Seven-man Lebanese army patrols are moving through the darkened roads of both towns at night in case the Hizbollah brings yet more Israeli bombs down on our heads.
In Beirut, one observes the folly of Western nations with amusement as well as horror, but, sitting in these hill villages and listening to how the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, plans to reshape Lebanon is clearly a lesson in human self-delusion. According to US correspondents accompanying Ms Rice on her visit to the Middle East, she is proposing the intervention of a Nato-led force along the Lebanese-Israeli border for between 60 and 90 days to assure that a ceasefire exists, the deployment of an enlarged Nato force throughout Lebanon to disarm Hizbollah and then the retraining of the Lebanese army before its own deployment to the border.
This plan - which, like all American proposals on Lebanon, is exactly the same as Israel's demands - carries the same depth of conceit as that of the Israeli consul general in New York, who said last week that "most Lebanese appreciate what we are doing".
Does Ms Rice think the Hizbollah want to be disarmed? By Nato? Wasn't there a Nato force in Beirut which fled Lebanon after a group close to the Hizbollah bombed the US Marine base at Beirut airport in 1983, killing 241 US servicemen and dozens more French troops a few seconds later? Does anyone believe that Shia Muslim forces will not do the same again to any Nato "intervention" force? The Americans are talking about Egyptian and Turkish troops in southern Lebanon; Sunni Muslims ruling Shia territory.
The Hizbollah has been waiting and training and dreaming of this new war for years, however ruthless we may regard the actions. They are not going to surrender the territory they liberated from the Israeli army in an 18-year guerrilla war, least of all to Nato at Israel's bidding.
Yesterday's assault on the Israeli army in Bint Jbeil proved that. The problem is that the US sees this slaughterhouse as an "opportunity" rather than a tragedy, a chance to humble Hizbollah supporters in Tehran and help to shape the "new Middle East" of which Ms Rice spoke so blithely this week.
It is Israel which is running out of time in southern Lebanon. Its attacks have for the fifth time in 30 years placed it in the dock for war crimes in Lebanon. The toll of Lebanon's civilian casualties has reached 400. And still the US will not intervene to prevent the carnage, even to call for a 24-hour ceasefire to allow the 3,000 civilians still trapped between Qlaya and Bint Jbeil - who include a number of foreign nationals - to flee.
The only civilian walking those frightening roads to Qlaya was a goatherd, guiding his animals around the huge bomb craters in the tarmac. Talking to him, it emerged that he was almost stone deaf and obviously could not hear the bombs. In this, it seemed, he has a lot in common with Condoleezza Rice.
Israel says the decision by diplomats not to call for a halt to its Lebanon offensive at a Middle East summit has given it the green light to continue.
"We received yesterday at the Rome conference permission from the world... to continue the operation," Justice Minister Haim Ramon said.
His comments came ahead of an Israeli cabinet meeting to decide whether to intensify the military offensive.
There have been more Israeli air raids and fighting continues in the south.
At least 423 Lebanese and 51 Israelis have died in the violence since Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on 12 July.
Foreign ministers attending emergency talks on the crisis in Rome on Wednesday did not call for an immediate ceasefire, vowing instead to work with "utmost urgency" for a sustainable truce.
Speaking on Israeli army radio, Mr Ramon - a close confidant of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert - said "everyone understands that a victory for Hezbollah is a victory for world terror".
He said that in order to prevent casualties among Israeli soldiers battling Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon, villages should be flattened by the Israeli air force before ground troops move in.
'All southerners terrorists'
He added that Israel had given the civilians of southern Lebanon ample time to quit the area and therefore anyone still remaining there can be considered Hezbollah supporters.
"All those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah," Mr Ramon said.
Mr Ramon's call for the use of greater firepower came as the Israeli cabinet was set to decide whether to broaden its military offensive.
The chief of Israel's northern command, Maj Gen Udi Adam, has warned that he expects the fighting to "continue for several more weeks".
The head of political programmes at Hezbollah's TV station, al-Manar, Ibrahim Moussawi, says the organisation is determined to continue fighting:
"Israel is a mighty army. You're talking about a regional superpower with hi-tech weaponry," Mr Moussawi said. "But when you talk about resistance and determination and resolve to face and to confront this, yes, Hezbollah has the will and the determination to do it."
"The Israelis have tried this before since 1982, which culminated in the year 2000 with the defeat of the Israelis and their withdrawal from south Lebanon," he added.
In other developments:
* Following the deaths of four UN observers in an Israeli air strike, Australia withdraws 12 UN peacekeepers, describing the prospect of sending an international force to Lebanon right now as a 'suicide mission'
* UNHCR chief Antoni Guterres says 500,000 people have been displaced within Lebanon by the fighting and 200,000 have crossed the border
* A poll of Israelis published by Israel's Maariv daily newspaper suggests 82% back the continuing offensive and 95% say Israel's action is justified.
The BBC Jim Muir in Tyre says that the progress of Israeli ground troops has not been as fast as expected as they battle through the difficult terrain of southern Lebanon.
They still have not managed to capture the Hezbollah stronghold of Bint Jbeil, where they have suffered their worst losses.
An Israeli military official told the BBC that Israel has destroyed 50% of Hezbollah's weapons arsenal, but nonetheless the group's ability to inflict damage appears undiminished - on Wednesday they fired some 150 rockets into Israel, more than on any other day of the conflict.
Tyre exodus
Pursuing Mr Olmert's plan of pushing Hezbollah back from border areas, in order to prevent them continuing to fire rockets into Israeli territory, and establishing a "security zone" in the south will take many weeks, our correspondent adds.
Meanwhile, Israel's attacks on Lebanon have continued with air strikes on a Lebanese army base and a radio relay station north of Beirut.
Fighting is ongoing around the town of Bint Jbeil and in Tyre the bombing of nearby areas, combined with last night's raid on apartments right inside the city, has sparked a civilian exodus.
Agencies
Thursday July 27, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
Osama bin Laden's deputy issued a worldwide call today for Muslims to rise up in holy war against Israel and join the fighting in Lebanon and Gaza, until Islam reigns from "Spain to Iraq".
Ayman al-Zawahiri warned that al-Qaida would not stand "idly by, humiliated", as Israeli "shells burn our brothers".
In a video tape broadcast by al-Jazeera, the Egyptian terror leader said: "How can we remain silent while watching bombs raining on our people? Oh Muslims everywhere, I call on you to fight and become martyrs in the war against the Zionists and the Crusaders. "
He said that the weapons being used by the Israelis were from the "crusader coalition" and added that "every participant will pay the price".
Zawahiri, wearing a grey robe and white turban, and speaking in front of a picture of the World Trade Centre on fire, said al-Qaida now saw "all the world as a battlefield open in front of us".
He said: "The war with Israel does not depend on ceasefires ... . It is a jihad for God's sake and will last until [our] religion prevails ... from Spain to Iraq ... We will attack everywhere."
In another section of the tape, he said: "The shells and rockets ripping apart Muslim bodies in Gaza and Lebanon are not only Israeli [weapons], but are supplied by all the countries of the crusader coalition. Therefore, every participant in the crime will pay the price."
The Arab broadcaster appeared not to have transmitted the entire tape, using instead selected quotes interspersed with commentary from an anchor. There are long-standing fears that tapes from al-Qaida leaders might contain coded messages to followers.
In this latest tape, as well as the twin towers image there were also photographs of two militants behind Zawahiri. One appeared to be a bearded Mohammed Atta, the Egyptian ringleader of the September 11 attacks. The other was Mohammed Atef, also known as Abu Hafs al-Masri, a former top lieutenant of Bin Laden who was killed in a US airstrike in Afghanistan in November 2001.
Zawahiri, a medical doctor, is believed, like Bin Laden, to be hiding somewhere around the Afghan-Pakistan border.
A new audio or video message from Bin Laden about Lebanon and Gaza is expected to emerge in the coming days, according to IntelCenter, a US-based independent group that provides counterterrorism information to the US government and media.
Today's message was al-Zawahiri's tenth this year. Bin Laden has issued five messages in what has been a particularly active year in terms of messages from the al-Qaida leadership.
Al-Zawahiri last appeared in a video posted on an extremist website on July 7, the one-year anniversary of the train bombings in London. In that tape, he said two of the four suicide bombers in London spent time in an al-Qaida training camp, preparing themselves for a suicide mission.
An audio message, purporting to be from Bin Laden, was broadcast last month in which he eulogised the al-Qaida leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed by US airstrikes.
Comment: Ah yes, we were wondering when 'ol "al-Zawahiri" would speak up and help the US and Israel to demonise Hizb'allah by association. Isn't it always the way? This little ploy, stage-managed by the US or Israel, will now help to remind the world that Israeli and American murder of Lebanese civilians is all about the "war on terror". Remember 9/11! Remember the pain?! Let's kill the Arabs!! Just don't remember that the Israeli and US government's carried out 9/11.
UNITED NATIONS - The United Nations said on Wednesday it asked Israel a dozen times to stop bombing near a U.N. post in Lebanon in the hours before an Israeli air attack destroyed the position killing four peacekeepers.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan initially referred to Tuesday's deadly Israeli strike as the "apparently deliberate targeting" of the Khiam U.N. observer post.
But he softened his stance after talking with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who said he believed it was a mistake and would order an investigation.
"We await the end of the investigations, and I am grateful for the prime minister for what he has said, and we accept his words," Annan said in Rome, where he was attending a conference on the conflict between Israel and Hizbollah.
Jane Holl Lute, a deputy head of U.N. peacekeeping operations, told the Security Council behind closed doors there were 21 strikes within 300 meters (yards) of the observer post during the six hours before it was completely destroyed.
Twelve of the 21 struck within 100 meters (yards), including four which scored direct hits, Holl Lute said, according to a text of her remarks.
Firing continued during the rescue operation, "despite repeated requests to the Israeli Defense Forces for an abatement," she said. Another U.N. base came under Israeli fire on Wednesday as an artillery round fell 10 meters (yards) from its headquarters compound in Naqoura, she added.
While there was speculation Israel may have been targeting Hizbollah positions near the Khiam post, Holl Lute said there was no Hizbollah firing coming from near the outpost.
'LIVES MAY BE LOST'
An Irish army officer in south Lebanon warned Israeli forces six times that its strikes threatened the lives of the four observers, Ireland's Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.
Lieutenant Colonel John Molloy, the chief U.N. liaison officer with Israel in south Lebanon, told the Israelis on six separate occasions "that their bombardment was endangering the lives of U.N. staff in south Lebanon," a Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman said.
"He warned: 'You have to address this problem or lives may be lost,"' the spokesman said.
In New York, Holl Lute and U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown telephoned Israeli U.N. Ambassador Dan Gillerman and his deputy half a dozen times to convey the same message, U.N. officials said.
"The base is clearly marked, a well-known. well-established position for a generation," said a U.N, official, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity.
The United Nations still wanted a joint investigation, as Annan requested, despite Olmert's decision to conduct a solely Israeli inquiry, the U.N. official said.
Gillerman wrote the Security Council on Wednesday "to express Israel's deep sorrow" over the four deaths and to "categorically deny" the attack had been deliberate.
Separately, Israeli Brig. Gen. Udi Dekel wrote U.N. commanders that the deaths resulted from "a tragic operational mistake" and said an investigation was already under way.
Last Updated Thu, 27 Jul 2006 08:09:07 EDT
CBC News
Israeli government officials are expected to decide Thursday whether they will widen the military offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon after a summit of world leaders failed to reach a consensus on conditions for a ceasefire.
Military officials have told reporters they would like to expand the military campaign that includes air strikes, a naval blockade and ground operations.
An aide to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel should increase its air strikes on villages to destroy Hezbollah infrastructure.
Justice Minister Haim Ramon, an Israeli cabinet minister who is close to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said the failure at the summit in Rome to agree on the conditions necessary for a ceasefire is permission for Israel to push harder in its campaign to crush the Lebanese-based militant group.
Ramon said Israel interprets the lack of agreement as a signal that it can continue its offensive. "We received yesterday at the Rome conference permission from the world ... to continue the operation, this war, until Hezbollah won't be located in Lebanon and until it is disarmed," he told Israel Army Radio. "Everyone understands that a victory for Hezbollah is a victory for world terror."
As the offensive entered its 16th day on Thursday, Israel continued to pound Hezbollah positions across Lebanon. Its air strikes also hit a Lebanese army base and a radio relay station and damaged several roads. The series of raids in northern, eastern and southern Lebanon killed at least one person.
Meanwhile, Israel was recovering from its heaviest losses in its ground operations in southern Lebanon after nine soldiers were confirmed dead in fighting with Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon on Wednesday. The deaths are believed to have occurred in house-to-house fighting in Hezbollah strongholds.
At least 423 people in Lebanon and 51 people in Israel have been killed since the offensive began on July 12 after Hezbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid.
JERUSALEM - Top Israeli Cabinet ministers on Thursday decided not to expand the country's Lebanon offensive, Israel Radio reported. But they approved calling up three additional divisions of reserve soldiers.
During a meeting of the security Cabinet, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the goals of Israel's 17-day offensive are being met.
The decision came as the military pounded suspected Hezbollah positions across Lebanon on Thursday. The attacks extended the air campaign a day after the military suffered its highest one-day casualty toll since the offensive began.
An Israeli Cabinet minister said lack of agreement on a cease-fire gave Israel permission to press deeper to wipe out the Islamic militant group.
The airstrikes also hit a Lebanese army base and a radio relay station and destroyed several roads. The series of raids in northern, eastern and southern Lebanon killed at least one person and wounded others.
On Wednesday, a high-level Mideast conference in Rome ended in disagreement, with most European leaders urging an immediate cease-fire, but the U.S. willing to give Israel more time to punish the guerrilla group.
From mass targeting of mobile phones with voice and text messages to old-fashioned radio broadcasts warning of imminent attacks, Israel is deploying a range of old and new technologies in Lebanon as part of the psychological operations ("psyops") campaign supplementing its military attacks.
Israeli leaflet says: "People of Lebanon! Understand! A face like a brother, a back of the head like a snake."
Israel dropped leaflets over Beirut and elsewhere in Lebanon
According to US and UK media outlets, Israel has reactivated a radio station to broadcast messages urging residents of southern Lebanon to evacuate the region. [...]
According to an unconfirmed report by Egypt's Middle East News Agency, Israel managed on Sunday "to intercept the satellite transmissions of Hezbollah's al-Manar TV channel for the third successive day, replacing it with Israeli transmissions that reportedly showed Hezbollah command sites and rocket launching pads which Israel claimed it has raided".
Some reports have named the station as the Voice of the South.
The South Lebanon Army, a Christian militia backed by Israel, operated a radio station called Voice of the South from Kfar Killa in southern Lebanon in the 1980s and 1990s.
The station closed down in May 2000 when Israeli forces withdrew from southern Lebanon.
Cash for tip-offs
The Israeli newspaper Maariv on Sunday reported the appearance of a website called All 4 Lebanon which offered payment for tip-offs from Lebanese citizens "that could help Israel in the fight against Hezbollah".
Whoever is able and willing to help Lebanon eradicate Hezbollah's evil and get back its independence, freedom and prosperity is hereby invited to contact us
All 4 Lebanon website
According to Maariv, the site, with content in Arabic, English and French, had been set up by Israeli intelligence.
"We appeal to everyone who has the ability and the desire to uproot the sore called Hezbollah from your heart and from the heart of Lebanon," the paper quoted the website as saying in Arabic.
On its English-language page, the site says: "Whoever is able and willing to help Lebanon eradicate Hezbollah's evil and get back its independence, freedom and prosperity is hereby invited to contact us."
It adds: "For your own safety, please contact us from places where no-one knows you."
The Arabic wording is identical to that on leaflets which Israeli aircraft have been dropping over Beirut and the south of Lebanon.
The leaflets called on people to "remove the sore known as Hezbollah from the heart of Lebanon".
The rewards "could be a range of things, such as cash or a house", according to an Israel Defence Forces spokeswoman quoted by Reuters news agency.
It was not clear how such items would be delivered or exactly what information Israel wanted, Reuters noted.
Mobile aggression
On Friday, residents of southern Lebanon reported receiving recorded messages on their mobile phones from an unknown caller.
The speaker identified himself as an Israeli and warned people in the area to leave their homes and head north.
Dubai-based news channel al-Arabiya TV reported that the recorded messages also said they "held the Lebanese government responsible for the abduction of the two Israeli soldiers, and called on Lebanon to set them free".
Inquiries by Lebanon's communications ministry revealed that the calls had come from exchanges in Italy and Canada, but had originated in Israel.
According to US magazine Time, Israel has been targeting SMS text messages at local officials in southern Lebanon, urging them to move north of the Litani river before Israeli military operations intensified.
The UK's Guardian newspaper said mobile phone users in Lebanon were regularly receiving messages to their phones which purported to be news updates, attempting to discredit Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah or his party.
Satellite warfare next?
As Israel broadens its psyops activities, it also continues to attack media targets using conventional military means.
Air raids on Saturday hit transmission stations used by Hezbollah's al-Manar TV, Future TV and the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation (LBC). A technician working for LBC was reported to have been killed.
The next day, a convoy of journalists from Lebanese and pan-Arab TV channels was attacked by Israeli planes while on a tour of southern Lebanon; no injuries were reported.
According to an unconfirmed report by Egypt's Middle East News Agency, Israel managed on Sunday "to intercept the satellite transmissions of Hezbollah's al-Manar TV channel for the third successive day, replacing it with Israeli transmissions that reportedly showed Hezbollah command sites and rocket launching pads which Israel claimed it has raided".
Replacing a TV station's picture with output you want the audience to see is more difficult to achieve than jamming.
Al-Manar TV has three satellite signals, one on ArabSat 2B at 30.5 degrees east, one on Badr 3 at 26 degrees east and one on NileSat 102 at 7 degrees west.
On Badr 3 and NileSat, al-Manar is broadcast alongside other TV stations in a multiplexed or combined digital signal.
While it would be technically feasible to replace one station's output, all the other stations in the multiplex would be taken off the air too. The technical parameters of the original station would need to be exactly duplicated by the interloper.
Comment: Note the fact that Israel has transposed its own broadcast over Hizb'allah broadcasts. Didn't know this was possible? Wake up! And imagine all the possibilities...
Now more Israeli soldiers are on the way, including an armored unit being transferred from Gaza to Lebanon. They have been told civilians have left the region where they will fight.
"Over here, everybody is the army," one soldier said. "Everybody is Hezbollah. There's no kids, women, nothing."
Another [Israeli] soldier put it plainly: "We're going to shoot anything we see."
On the Israeli border today diplomacy meant very little as troops prepared to expand the war into southern Lebanon.
On one road in the north, we counted 20 tanks lining up and more on the way.
Israeli officials said they plan to form a security zone running the length of the border with Lebanon, while sending more forces along more crossing points.
They won't say how far into Lebanese territory they'll go, but some of the troops will remain until an international force is deployed and Hezbollah positions are destroyed.
"They really cannot be destroyed from the air," said Maj. Michael Oren of the Israeli Defense Forces. "There's really no alternative but to send in ground forces."
Soldiers Comment on Battle
There was jarring evidence of Hezbollah's tactics today when more than 80 rockets struck Israel, wounding dozens and killing a 15-year-old Israeli Arab girl. [Ed: an Israeli Arab? Doesn't matter then]
For Israeli troops deployed inside Lebanon, the fight is difficult and dangerous.
We spoke with a group of soldiers returning from 48 hours of intense fighting, including the rescue of soldiers from a tank destroyed in the fighting.
"They are attacking us in a very organized position," one soldier said. "They know where we are coming from. They know everything. They shoot us wherever they like. It's their country."
He added they are "very well armed."
Now more Israeli soldiers are on the way, including an armored unit being transferred from Gaza to Lebanon. They have been told civilians have left the region where they will fight.
"Over here, everybody is the army," one soldier said. "Everybody is Hezbollah. There's no kids, women, nothing."
Another soldier put it plainly: "We're going to shoot anything we see."
BOSTON - Israel's war with Hizbullah shows no sign of relenting, despite the extraordinary human and economic costs on both sides of the border.
More than 400 Lebanese have been killed, at least 17 Israeli civilians have been felled by rockets that threaten the northern third of Israel, Lebanon's infrastructure has been decimated, and many poor Lebanese (mostly Shiite Muslims) are now homeless. Both belligerents are attacking indiscriminately. Hizbullah's weapons are notoriously inaccurate and more likely to kill innocent civilians than soldiers. And Israel has targeted noncombatants in southern Lebanon as though the area were a free-fire zone. Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz as much as admitted his contempt for noncombatant immunity when, according to Israeli army radio on July 24, he ordered the destruction of 10 multistory buildings in the Shiite-inhabited suburbs of Beirut for every rocket hitting Haifa.
With the Bush administration providing diplomatic cover, Israel is playing for time. Israel's premise is that the longer its war continues, the more it will wear down Hizbullah. The Israeli military is fighting intense battles to capture border villages with a view to re-creating a buffer zone. Hizbullah fighters, honed by two decades of Israeli occupation, are defending their soil fiercely.
Despite international demands for a cease-fire, and the anguished pleas of Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice insists that conditions need to be "right" before the US will endorse one. But the idea that time favors Israel's goal of disarming Hizbullah is dubious for five reasons:
- Hizbullah is wellprovisioned with weapons, and it is unlikely that the group could be completely disarmed. Southern Lebanon is filled with hills, valleys, and caves, not to mention villages where weapons can easily be cached. Moreover, Hizbullah enjoys widespread support in the south. The Shiite Muslims who predominate there revere Hizbullah for pressuring Israel to withdraw in 2000.
- Hizbullah precipitated the war by crossing into Israel to capture two soldiers, and many Lebanese are furious that Hizbullah provoked Israel. Israel has hoped to reinforce Lebanese alienation from Hizbullah, but Israel's prolonged and vengeful response is fostering new hatred for Israel and its US protector. Recently, an-Nahar, the respected Beirut paper and no fan of Hizbullah, featured a cartoon showing Dr. Rice trying to quell Lebanon's war fires with an eye dropper.
- An international force is no magic solution whether it deploys independently or in conjunction with the Lebanese army. Many soldiers in the army are Shiites, and they are more likely to applaud Hizbullah than to disarm it. As for the international soldiers, what will happen when Israel, with a robust record for recidivism, raids Lebanon, kidnaps or kills Lebanese, or attempts to prevent Lebanese from returning to their homes in a unilaterally imposed buffer zone? Hizbullah draws many of its members from the south. Will they be excluded from their own villages? The record of intervention in Lebanon reveals that even the well-intentioned may become part of the problem.
- For both the US and Israel, Hizbullah is an extension of Iranian influence. Yet, it is likely that Iran is going to be a major beneficiary of Israel's new war in Lebanon. To the extent the Shiites feel they were singled out for attacks, Iran will be seen as a stalwart coreligionist ally. And given the extraordinary destruction in the Shiite suburbs of Beirut, Iran will have a further entree by providing materiel assistance and financial aid.
- Support for Hizbullah is growing in the Arab world with every day that it confronts Israel. In Iraq, the parliament has spoken out forcefully against Israel's campaign, and last week Ayatollah Ali Sistani issued a powerful fatwa (religious opinion) condemning the attacks on Lebanese civilians and infrastructure and calling on all Shiite clerics to take action. Rice had to scratch Egypt off her itinerary because of swelling support for Hizbullah there. In Arab countries with a large Shiite community, sectarian sentiment is being fueled by the fighting in Lebanon.
Rather than continuing dawdling diplomacy it would be prudent for the US to embrace a cease-fire. Demilitarizing Hizbullah, and perhaps integrating its militia wing into the Lebanese army, is a tough challenge with a cease-fire, but impossible if the war continues. Instead of the victory promised the White House by Israel, this war is fostering the results that it was supposed to defeat.
- Augustus Richard Norton is professor of international relations and anthropology at Boston University.
Comment: More American equating of Hezbollah's rockets with the Israeli army.
Rory McCarthy in Haifa, Suzanne Goldenberg in Tyre and Ian Black in Jerusalem
Thursday July 27, 2006
The Guardian
Growing evidence that the ground battle in Lebanon will be far tougher than Israel had expected emerged yesterday after firefights against Hizbullah in two border villages left Israeli troops counting their highest death toll in a single day since the conflict began.
Up to 13 Israeli soldiers were killed and many more wounded yesterday in the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil during the fiercest battle so far in the Middle East conflict. Nearby, in the village of Maroun el-Ras, which troops had entered at the weekend, an Israeli officer was reported killed.
Last night the city of Tyre was hit in a major Israeli air strike. Sixteen people, including six children, were injured when a seven-storey building that had been used as a Hizbullah community centre collapsed.
In Bint Jbeil, Israeli troops ran into large numbers of heavily armed Hizbullah fighters when they tried to sweep through the town, just two and a half miles from the Israeli border.
"We have got very intense fighting, house to house, room to room," a spokesman for the Israeli military said last night. He refused to give full casualty figures but said there were "many seriously injured Israelis". Reports put the number of dead and injured at 30.
Troops found a large cache of Hizbullah weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades, automatic assault rifles and ammunition. The spokesman said: "This indicates they were planning on holding out much longer." He said more than 200 Hizbullah fighters had been killed since the conflict began.
Israel's northern command chief said the offensive in Lebanon was still not nearing its end. "I assume it will continue for several more weeks and in a number of weeks we will be able to declare a victory," Major General Udi Adam said.
The heaviest fighting yesterday came as troops tried to capture an important hilltop at Bint Jbeil. Hizbullah said its fighters had ambushed an Israeli unit that was moving from a ridge towards the town. "Our men can hear the screams of their wounded calling for help," one Hizbullah source told Reuters.
Israeli troops had taken some areas in Bint Jbeil, but not the whole town. "The bodies of the soldiers remained on the ground amid the destroyed and burning vehicles," said an announcer on Hizbullah's television channel, al-Manar.
Many of the Israeli injured had to wait hours under heavy fire before they could be evacuated. Helicopters eventually flew them to hospital in Haifa.
"We knew well that we are entering a dangerous nest and the nest needs to be taken care of slowly," Major Tzvika Golan, an Israeli spokesman, told reporters.
Before the conflict erupted two weeks ago, Bint Jbeil was a small town of about 20,000 people but one regarded by Israeli commanders as symbolically crucial for Hizbullah. Its leader, the cleric Hassan Nasrullah, made an important speech in the town in 2000, shortly after the Israeli military withdrew from southern Lebanon. Israeli officers describe it as the "terror capital" and say it is an important logistics base for the militia.
But yesterday's fighting confirms an emerging sense within Israel that the ground battle is proving far tougher than expected. Before yesterday, 24 Israeli troops had been killed and 79 injured.
General Yiftah Ron-Tal, a former commander of Israeli land forces, told Israel Radio: "You can't fight a battle like that without taking losses. The question is whether the mission has been accomplished. We had no choice but to fight there. This kind of position can't be taken without using ground troops. The enemy is well trained and knows the terrain well."
One armoured brigade colonel told the Jerusalem Post that the operation to capture Bint Jbeil had been expected to last between 48 and 72 hours. It has now run for four days.
Early this morning Israel reportedly attacked a Lebanese army base at Aamchit, 30 miles north of Beirut. It was not clear whether the base had been attacked from the air or the sea. Hizbullah fired about 130 rockets into Israel yesterday, injuring at least 31 people.
At least 40 people, including two journalists and six people in a critical condition, were wounded by Israeli fire.
GAZA CITY - Being locked in die-hard battles against Hizbollah resistance fighters did not prevent Israeli occupation forces from killing fifteen Palestinians, including a child, in two air raids on the east of Gaza City on Wednesday, July 26.
Six Palestinians, including a three-year-old girl, were killed in a single Israeli strike on a group of Palestinians in eastern Gaza City, hospital officials said.
At least 40 people, including two journalists and six people in a critical condition, were wounded by Israeli fire.
The Israeli strikes targeted a building in the Gaza City used by a paramilitary force set up by the Palestinian government and a house in the Gaza-Egypt border town of Rafah that had already been hit a day earlier.
Late Tuesday, a 14-year-old Palestinian boy was killed by Israeli fire while in his house. Two family members were also wounded.
At least 134 Palestinians were killed since Israel launched a wide-scale offensive on Gaza on the pretext of seeking the release of an Israeli soldier taken prisoners by Palestinian resistance groups.
Wednesday's killings bring to 5,273 the number of people killed since the start of Al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000, most of them Palestinians, according to an AFP count.
Incursion
Dozens of Israeli tanks backed by helicopter gunships also pushed deep into eastern Gaza, eyewitnesses told IslamOnline.net.
Israeli troops clashed with Palestinian resistance fighters on the edge of the Jabalya refugees camp.
The military wing of Hamas said it had fired rocket-propelled grenades at Israeli tanks, leaving three damaged.
It also said it had fired two rocket attacks into Israel. The Israeli military reported no casualties and said three rockets landed in Israel.
During its incursion, Israeli troops destroyed the infrastructure, crooked agricultural lands and demolished several offices of the Palestinian government, eyewitnesses said.
The latest Israeli attacks came only hours after Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas called for an "immediate ceasefire" in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories after talks with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
"The aggression against the Gaza Strip and the West Bank must stop immediately, followed by a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks," he said.
The US top diplomat echoed a similar call.
"It is important to end the Gaza crisis. We need to be able to make progress because the Palestinian people have lived too long in violence and the daily humiliations that go along with the circumstances here."
Living conditions for the 1.4 million people in densely-packed Gaza Strip have badly deteriorated since the West suspended direct aid to the Hamas-led government, plunging the coastal territory deeper into financial crisis.
GAZA, July 26 (Xinhua) -- The death toll from Israeli air and ground operations in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday rose to 23, Palestinian medics said.
A Palestinian woman, identified as 40-year-old Amal Oukal who had been seriously wounded by an Israeli tank shell in northern Gaza earlier in the day, died of her wounds on Wednesday night, bringing to 23 the Palestinian death toll in Gaza on Wednesday, said medics.
Her two daughters-- two-year-old Shaf Oukal and nine-year-old Mary Oukal-- were also killed in the Israeli attack.
Amal's two other daughters-- 12-year-old Ibtisam and seven-year-old Sommaya, were injured.
So far, 23 people were killed across Gaza on Wednesday, including 10 militants, nine civilians and four children, according to Mouaweya Hassanein, a Palestinian Health Ministry official.
Earlier in the day, 20 Palestinians were killed and more than 50 others wounded when dozens of Israeli tanks and armored vehicles, backed by aircraft and unmanned drones, stormed northeast of Gaza City.
About 160 Palestinians have been killed and more than 500 wounded since the beginning of the massive Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip on June 28 in a bid to free a captive soldier and stop Palestinian rocket attacks.
Israeli shells killed five people and wounded several others in the Gaza Strip on Monday, including two members of the same family who were riding a donkey cart when they were hit, Palestinian witnesses said. The dead included a 60-year-old woman and her 12-year-old grandson, medics said. The three other Palestinians who were killed Monday were standing outside an apartment building in the northern Gaza neighborhood of Beit Lahiya.
By Luciana Bohne
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Jul 26, 2006
"The Israeli air force has been ordered to hit 10 [multi-storey] buildings in south Beirut - where Hezbollah has its headquarters - for every rocket the group fires at the Israeli port of Haifa" (reported by Al-Jazeera).
For collective punishment, that ratio has a precedent: the Nazi one. The most infamous of many such involving Nazi mass vengeance and retaliation against civilians is the massacre of 335 civilians in Rome's Fosse Ardeatine (24 March 1944) for the ambush and killing of 33 German troops (23 March 1944) -- the extra five having been thrown in the bargain "by mistake."
That military ethics have reached such a level of moral degradation in the 60 years after WW II makes you wonder who won the war: The liberal democracies or the fascist axis? That such massacres as the Nazi perpetrated against defenseless civilians in WW II should be replicated by Israel's erstwhile victims through its ersatz state proves that Nazi ideology endures and has been ironically internalized by their victims.
That the Israeli military establishment can proclaim "purity of arms" while ordering indiscriminate murder of civilians is a testament to the power of self-delusion in the pursuit of genocide and aggression. That the Israeli state continues to proclaim "never again" the subjugation and genocide of Jewish people by racist regimes while mimicking the genocidal policies of that criminal regime, which welcomed European Jews to Nazi death camps with the sneering motto that "work makes one free," is a truly astounding feat of the Israeli state's legitimization and identification with their would-be butchers.
Condoleezza Rice's claim that the savaging of Lebanon by the Israeli military is evidence of "birth pangs" of a new Middle East is likewise proof that Israel's sponsor is linked to Nazi ideology -- that death is the midwife of life.
They're murderously, certifiably crazy -- dangerous enemies of humankind. And they're right to ask if we are either with them or against them, because it's really high time that we decide whose side we're on before more innocent blood is spilled.
GAZA, July 26 (Xinhua) -- Israeli warplanes pounded a house in the Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip on late Wednesday, Palestinian witnesses said.
Meanwhile, sources in the Israeli army said that the house was believed to be a weapons warehouse used by Palestinian militants.
Local Palestinian residents said that the Israeli army had warned them to steer clear of the area before the air raid.
There was no immediate report of any casualties.
Israel launched a massive air and ground offensive into the Gaza Strip on June 28, three days after Palestinian militants killed two Israeli soldiers and kidnapped a third in a cross-border attack.
The Israeli army says the operation is aimed to bring home the abducted soldier and halt Palestinian rocket attacks.
JERUSALEM, July 26 (Xinhua) -- The Israeli army lifted the full closure on the West Bank on late Wednesday night, Israel's popular newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported on its website.
The report cited Israeli political sources as saying that the closure on the West Bank was lifted as of Wednesday night, but that on the Gaza Strip would continue.
The Israeli army put the West Bank under the closure a week ago, citing intelligence that Palestinian militants there might carryout a bomb attack inside Israel.
The Gaza Strip has been sealed since Palestinian militant skilled two Israeli soldiers and kidnapped a third during a cross-border attack on June 25.
But the report said that humanitarian deliveries would be permitted to go into Gaza.
Israel has continued an almost-one-month-old massive air and ground offensive in the Gaza Strip in a bid to rescue the abducted soldier and halt Palestinian rocket attacks.
A Lebanese civil defence member helps a civilian evacuating a young Lebanese girl injured in an air strike on her home in the southern port city of Tyre. Photo: AFP
Israel has launched a heavy air and artillery bombardments in Lebanon in response to the deaths of nine Israeli soldiers in the Jewish state's worst 24 hours for casualties in the 16-day-old conflict against Hezbollah.
Israeli warplanes reportedly hit a Lebanese army base and destroyed communication masts north of Beirut and attacked three trucks carrying medical and food supplies to the east, killing two drivers, security sources said.
A relay station belonging to Lebanese state radio was also reportedly bombed north of Beirut early today.It wasn't immediately apparent whether the attack was by air or sea.
The privately owned Lebanese Broadcasting Corp TV station said Israeli jets struck the army base at Aamchit, 50km along the Beirut-Tripoli highway north of the Lebanese capital near the coast and knocked down a relay tower in an adjacent field of antennas belonging to Radio Liban.
Other Israeli aircraft blasted targets in and around several villages and towns in the mainly Shi'ite Muslim south, and artillery batteries opened up from Israel's side of the border.
House-to-house fighting
Hezbollah guerrillas killed nine Israeli soldiers in house-to-house fighting in a border town and a nearby village yesterday, as senior international diplomats failed at a Rome conference to agree on calling for an immediate ceasefire.
An Israeli general said the offensive, which has killed 433 Lebanese, mostly civilians, would go on "for several more weeks". The fighting began on July 12 when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight in a cross-border raid.
A total of 51 Israelis (mostly Israeli soldiers) have been killed in Hezbollah attacks that have included rockets being fired into northern Israel.
Foreign ministers at the Rome conference pledged to work urgently for a "lasting, permanent and sustainable" ceasefire, but did not call for the fighting to stop now, as Lebanon and its Arab allies had demanded.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice cautioned Syria and Iran, Hezbollah's main allies, that they faced further isolation if they tried to scupper US-led attempts to get a ceasefire.
"This needs to be between Lebanon and Israel," Rice told reporters en route from Rome to Malaysia.
The United States has backed Israeli demands for Hezbollah to pull back from the border and ultimately disarm.
Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council and the country's chief nuclear negotiator, has flown to Damascus for talks with senior Syrian officials about the situation in the Middle East, diplomats said.
In stark contrast to Rice, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Iran and Syria should be included in efforts to halt the war. Rice blames Tehran and Damascus for stoking the conflict.
Israel, Iran and Syria were not invited to the Rome talks.
In the Gaza Strip, scene of another Israeli offensive, Israeli forces killed 24 Palestinians, including at least 12 militants, during fighting.
Israel has killed 141 Palestinians in a month-long campaign to recover a soldier captured by Palestinian militants and stop rocket fire from Gaza.
'Facing complete destruction'
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Lebanon and the Palestinian territories faced complete destruction.
"At the same time there is a refusal to reach a ceasefire that has been supported by European countries as well as Arab countries," Abbas told reporters on a visit to Algeria.
In the fighting in Lebanon, Lebanese security sources said Hezbollah guerrillas ambushed an Israeli force advancing on the town of Bint Jbeil, four km (2.5 miles) from the border.
The Israeli army said eight of its soldiers were killed at Bint Jbeil and 22 wounded. An Israeli officer was killed and three soldiers were wounded in a Hezbollah attack on the nearby village of Maroun al-Ras.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert strove to limit diplomatic damage from the killing of four UN observers in an air strike on their post in south Lebanon on Tuesday. He told Annan he was sorry about the deaths but expressed shock at the UN leader's suggestion the attack was deliberate.
An Irish army officer in south Lebanon warned Israel six times that air strikes threatened the lives of UN observers before Tuesday's deaths, Ireland's Foreign Ministry said.
Israeli bombing has forced an estimated 750,000 people in Lebanon to flee their homes. Many are trapped in areas where fighting is raging. [just where Israel wants them]
A large UN aid convoy reached the southern port of Tyre to distribute deliveries to an area devastated by Israeli bombing.
Did the American people see on CNN the
child whose face was burnt by Israeli phosphorous bombs in
Lebanon? Did they hear him screaming in pain at Sidon Hospital,
with his mother falling to pieces in agony beside him because of
the injury he sustained from the terrible bombs? How can the
American people accept their elected President George W. Bush's
rejection of a ceasefire?
The insanity of the Jewish State that is brutally attacking
families and children in South Lebanon and in Beirut's southern
suburb has almost become an everyday feature in the Palestinian
territories.
Can the disaster that has befallen Lebanon, in which fathers,
mothers and children have lost their homes and relatives, be a
solution for the US administration and the Jewish State?
Lebanon is grateful for the millions-of-dollars worth of
humanitarian aid from the US, but it will never forget that the
US administration gave Israel the green light to continue with
the shelling and destruction in this dirty war.
The US administration claims that it had asked Israel not to hit
Lebanon's infrastructure. But Israel has indiscriminately
destroyed everything: airports, bridges, seaports, roads and
houses. Israel's aim is to devastate and kill.
In Lebanon, as in the Palestinian territories, Israel's
soldiers, the grandsons of the victims of the Holocaust, have
demonstrated their inclination to use terrifying weapons, such
as phosphorus bombs. This is disgraceful for a people who had
suffered from torture and brutality.
Whatever the outcome of Israel's war on Lebanon, the Jewish
State has shown that it knows no solution except the use of
force. This solution leads to more violence, war and hatred.
Nobody in the world knows what the outcome of the balance of
power in the world will be. Nobody knows whether Israel has
weakened Hezbollah's military capabilities or defeated it.
Either way, the major victim is the Lebanese people, who are now
certain that they are paying for the war of others on their
soil. The US and its ally, Israel, are fighting Iran and Syria
on Lebanese soil, and are imposing a blockade on Lebanon, while
the world's superpower claims that it will ask Israel to lift
it.
Israel caused the closure Rafik Hariri Airport in Beirut under
the pretext that Hezbollah uses it for bringing in arms. Many
Lebanese people therefore went to Damascus, the only outlet to
the outside world. Israel shelled all the Lebanese seaports.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah's rockets continuously fall on several
Israeli cities. The US administration claims it wants to help
Prime Minister Fouad Seniora's government. But how? By
maintaining the blockade on Lebanon, or by continuing with the
dirty war?
Hezbollah, on the other hand, is held responsible for what it
has dragged Lebanon into. Israel is a well-known enemy, and its
tactics in Palestine are obvious. Does Hezbollah have the right
to bring destruction, misery, displacement and disaster to
Lebanon and its people? Does it have the right to turn Lebanese
soil into a battlefield for others? Can this be called
resistance? However, the answers to these questions have been
put back until the end of the war.
The best solution is that Resolution 1559 be implemented of
Lebanon's free will and that the State regain its role and
spread its control over all its territory. Lebanon needs a
national army that will not drag it into a venture that may end
its existence.
One of the greatest tragedies of war is the loss and suffering of innocent people.
In the Middle East, young children caught in the war zone are the most innocent of victims.
Since the warfare between Israel and Hezbollah militants started almost two weeks ago, approximately 600,000 people have become homeless in Lebanon.
Approximately 10,000 more lose their homes every day, U.N. officials say, and half of those displaced people are children.
Some remain in parks and playgrounds; others board ships to get out of the country. Yet other displaced children are injured and stuck in hospital beds, unable to leave.
"The first bomb hit my mother. The second hit the leg of my grandmother, and she died," a young girl in a hospital said to ABC News.
Suffering on Web Video
Children make up one-third of the population of Lebanon. You only have to look at their drawings to see their suffering.
A 15-year-old girl from Haifa, Israel, posted a video clip on the Internet, so people could see what her life was like every day.
Her video is set in Sania Park, a homeless camp in Beirut, Lebanon. It looks like a peaceful setting, but Sania Park is a homeless camp.
Children live there, playing in a bomb shelter, under daily threat from Hezbollah missiles.
In south Beirut, there is a playground in the parking garage of a mall. A thousand people live there, including hundreds of kids, hiding from Israel's bombs.
They ask simple questions, such as: Why is America's Army giving the Israeli army the weapons to kill us?
These children believe Israel and the United States are trying to kill them. They say Hezbollah, which runs the shelter, is there to help them.
"Because he help us and don't want us to die," one 10-year-old said.
Defence Minister Amir Peretz said: "We have no other option. We have to build a new security strip that will be a cover for our forces."
His comments came as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ended a regional tour before heading for talks in Rome.
Hostilities are continuing, with fresh explosions reported in Beirut and Hezbollah rocket attacks on Haifa.
More than 380 Lebanese and 42 Israelis (mostly Israeli soldiers) have died in nearly two weeks of conflict in Lebanon, which began after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on 12 July.
In the latest military action:
* Israeli warplanes have reportedly hit a UN observation post in south Lebanon. A UN spokesman quoted by Reuters news agency said a bomb hit the post in the Khiam area, but he would not confirm reports from Lebanese security sources that four peacekeepers were killed
* The Israeli army said it had killed a senior Hezbollah commander, Abu Jaafar, in fighting in southern Lebanon
* Earlier the UN had said Israeli forces were now in control of the town of Bint Jbeil after fierce fighting and were moving on the village of Yaroun to the south
* Israel resumed air raids on Beirut, with explosions heard in southern suburbs - a Hezbollah stronghold
* Hezbollah maintained fire of Katyusha rockets into Israel, killing a 15-year-old Arab-Israeli girl in the northern Israeli village of Maghar and striking Haifa with a large salvo
* Hezbollah said 27 of its fighters had been killed as of Monday, but the Israeli military said it had killed "some dozens".
Truce call
Mr Peretz said a zone in southern Lebanon would be maintained "under the control of our forces if there is not a multinational force".
He did not specify whether Israeli troops would remain there but insisted they would "continue to control [Hezbollah]" in their operations.
Israelis seek shelter after a rocket attack on Haifa
Hezbollah has maintained its rocket fire into Haifa
Israeli government sources have estimated the width of the zone at anything from three to 10km (1.9-6.2 miles).
An unnamed Israeli official quoted by Reuters news agency said between 10,000 and 20,000 international peacekeepers would be needed.
BBC defence and security correspondent Rob Watson says Israeli details on the zone - and how it will be secured - are far from clear.
He says it is possible Mr Peretz is trying to put pressure on the international community to deliver the peacekeeping force.
The idea of the multinational force is likely to be high on the agenda of a key international ministerial meeting on the crisis in Rome on Wednesday.
Israel is acting with tremendous restraint, were they targeting civilian populations there would be thousands upon thousands dead
Steve Gross, US
The UN has had a military force - Unifil - in Lebanon to patrol the border since 1978 and is currently 2,000 strong.
Earlier, Ms Rice had expressed concern for the suffering of "innocent people" in the fighting during her tour of the Middle East.
She met Israeli PM Ehud Olmert and later Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Mr Abbas called for an immediate end to "aggression against the Gaza Strip and the West Bank" and for an "immediate ceasefire" in Lebanon.
Ms Rice said the only solution was a sustainable and enduring peace.
Her words were reinforced later by US President George W Bush who said: "I support a sustainable ceasefire that will bring about an end to violence... Our mission and our goal is to have a lasting peace, not a temporary peace."
'New' Middle East
In his meeting with Ms Rice, Mr Olmert said he was "very conscious" of the humanitarian needs of Lebanon's civilians, but insisted Israel was defending itself against terrorism.
People in Tyre describe life under Israeli bombings
In pictures
Correspondents say that Ms Rice was unlikely to have called for an end to Israel's military offensive during her talks with the Israeli leader.
The BBC's World Affairs Editor John Simpson, in Jerusalem, says it was understood that Ms Rice would tell Israel that the US will allow it more time to continue its military operations.
Ms Rice has, however, also been highlighting the need for Israel to consider the humanitarian needs of both Lebanon and the Palestinian people and the need for a durable peace.
She said: "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."
Ms Rice arrived in Israel from Beirut, where she met Lebanon's Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.
As its own citizens are being killed, Israel is, yet again, inflicting death and destruction on Lebanon. It tries to portray this horror as necessary for its self-defence. Indeed, the casual observer might regard the rocket attacks on Israeli cities such as Haifa and my own home town, Nahariya, as justifying this claim.
While states should defend their citizens, states which fail this duty should be questioned and, if necessary, reconfigured. Israel is a state which, instead of defending its citizens, puts all of them, Jews as well as non-Jews, in danger.
What exactly is being defended by the violence in Gaze and Lebanon? Is it the citizens of Israel or the nature of the Israeli state? I suggest the latter. Israel's statehood is based on a fundamentally unjust ideology which causes indignity and suffering for those who are classified as non-Jewish by either a religious or ethnic test. To hide this primordial immorality, Israel fosters an image of victimhood. Provoking violence, consciously or unconsciously, against which one must defend oneself is a key feature of the victim-mentality. By perpetuating such a tragic cycle, Israel is a terrorist state like no other.
Many who wish to hide the immorality of the Israeli state do so by restricting attention to the horrors of the post-1967 occupation and talking about a two-state solution, since endorsing a Palestinian state implicitly endorses the ideology behind a Jewish one.
The very creation of Israel required an act of terror. In 1948, following years of creeping dispossession coupled to total lack of empathy, most of the non-Jewish indigenous people were ethnically cleansed from the part of Palestine which became Israel. This action was carefully planned. Without it, no state with a Jewish majority and character would have been possible.
Since 1948, the "Israeli Arabs", those Palestinians who avoided expulsion, have suffered continuous discrimination. Indeed, many have been internally displaced, ostensibly for "security reasons", but really to acquire their lands for Jews.
The ideology of the Jewish state means that all existing and future descendants of the Jewish people worldwide have more rights in Palestine than the indigenous Arabs. This makes Israel unique. What other state decrees that many of its own citizens have less stake than millions of potential immigrants? The colonization of Palestine is also unique: discussion of this past injustice is inadmissable lest it expose the current immoral statehood.
Israel is hailed as a paragon of democracy in the Middle East. How does Israel get away with its ethnocratic statehood despite its moral resemblance to apartheid-era South Africa? Surely Holocaust memory and Jewish longing for Eretz Israel would not be sufficient to justify ethnic cleansing and ethnocracy? To avoid the destabilisation that would result from ethical inquiry, the Israeli state must hide the core problem, by nourishing a victim mentality among Israeli Jews. Further, the narrative of Jewish victimhood must be fostered around the world. Many non-Israeli Jews, most of whom are perfectly happy as minorities in their respective states, willingly volunteer as missionaries of this narrative. When they are perceived as apologists for Israeli actions that are justified in the Jewish name, and encounter hostility, this reaction again helps to reinforce their victim narrative.
To sustain a victim mentality among its Jewish citizens, and to preserve an impression of victimhood among outsiders, Israel must breed conditions for violence. Whenever prospects of violence against it subside, Israel must do its utmost to regenerate them: the myth that it is a peace-seeking victim which has "no partner for peace" is a key panel in the screen with which Israel hides its primordial and continuing immorality.
Israel's successful campaign to silence criticism of its initial and continuing dispossession of the indigenous Palestinians leaves the latter no option but to resort to violent resistance. In the wake of electing Hamas - the only party which, in the eyes of Palestinians, has not yet given up their cause - the Palestinian population of Gaza and the West Bank were subjected to an Israeli campaign of starvation, humiliation and violence. The insincere "withdrawal" from Gaza, and the subsequent blockade, ensured a chronicle of violence which, so far, includes Palestinian firing of Kasem rockets, the capture of an Israeli soldier and the Israeli near re-occupation of Gaza. What we witness is more hatred, more violence from Palestinians, more humiliation and collective punishments from Israelis - all useful reinforcement for the Israeli victim mentality and for the sacred cow status of Israeli statehood.
The truth is that there never could have been a partition of Palestine by ethically acceptable means. Israel was created through terror and it needs terror to cover-up its core immorality. Whenever there is a glimmer of stability, the state orders a targeted assassination, such as that in Sidon which preceded the current Lebanon crisis, knowing well that this brings not security but more violence. Israel's unilateralism and the cycle of violence nourish one another.
Amidst the violence and despite the conventional discourse which hides the root of this violence, actuality calls upon us to think. The more we silence its voice, the more violently actuality is sure to speak. In Hebrew, the word ELEM (a stunned silence resulting from oppression or shock) is etymologically linked to the word ALIMUT (violence). Silence about the immoral core of Israeli statehood makes us all complicit in breeding the terrorism that threatens a catastrophe which could tear the world apart.
* Dr. Oren Ben-Dor grew up in Israel. He teaches the philosophy of law and political philosophy at the School of Law, University of Southampton. okbendor@yahoo.com
Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed on Tuesday that his country gives great care to develop the Syrian-Russian dialogue regarding the regional and international urgent issues.
" Russia has strong relations with Syria which is considered the most important country in the Arab world, and will establish an active cooperation with her in the field of confronting the international terrorism." Putin said during receiving credentials of the Syrian Ambassador to the Russian Federation Dr. Hassan Risha .
He added that "all this contribute to developing the cooperation in all fields according to the agreements reached during President Bashar al-Assad's visit to Moscow.
Russian President underlined that the current crisis in Lebanon has produced massive human consequences emphasizing the urgent necessity to increase the effectiveness of the United Nations Organization regarding the international issu
For his part . Dr. Risha conveyed President Asaad's regards , asserting the great importance Syria cares for her relations with Russia .
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Surrounded by yellow Hezbollah flags, more than 60 Iranian volunteers set off Wednesday to join what they called a holy war against Israeli forces in Lebanon.
The group - ranging from teenagers to grandfathers - plans to join about 200 other volunteers on the way to the Turkish border, which they hope to cross Thursday. They plan to reach Lebanon via Syria on the weekend.
Organizers said the volunteers are carrying no weapons, and it was not clear whether Turkey would allow them to pass.
A Turkish Foreign Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, would not say Wednesday if Turkey would allow them to cross. Iranians, however, can enter Turkey without a visa and stay for three months.
Iran says it will not send regular forces to aid Hezbollah, but apparently it will not attempt to stop volunteer guerrillas. Iran and Syria are Hezbollah's main sponsors.
"We are just the first wave of Islamic warriors from Iran," said Amir Jalilinejad, chairman of the Student Justice Movement, a nongovernment group that helped recruit the fighters. "More will come from here and other Muslim nations around the world. Hezbollah needs our help."
Military service is mandatory in Iran, and nearly every man has at least some basic training. Some hard-liners have more extensive drills as members of the Basiji corps, a paramilitary network linked to the powerful Revolutionary Guard.
Other volunteers, such as 72-year-old Hasan Honavi, have combat experience from the 1980-88 war with Iraq.
"God made this decision for me," said Honavi, a grandfather and one of the oldest volunteers. "I still have fight left in me for a holy war."
The group, chanting and marching in military-style formation, assembled Wednesday in a part of Tehran's main cemetery that is reserved for war dead and other "martyrs."
They prayed on Persian carpets and linked hands, with their shoes and bags piled alongside. Few had any battle-type gear and some arrived in dress shoes or plastic sandals.
Some bowed before a memorial to Hezbollah-linked suicide bombers who carried out the 1983 blast at Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. servicemen. An almost simultaneous bombing killed 56 French peacekeepers.
Speakers praised Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah and laid scorn on Muslim leaders - including their own government - for not sending battlefield assistance to Hezbollah since the battles erupted two weeks ago.
Even if the volunteers fail to reach Lebanon, their mobilization is an example of how Iranians are rallying to Hezbollah through organizations outside official circles.
Iran insists it is not directly involved in the conflict on the military side, but it remains the group's key pipeline for money. Iran has dismissed Israel's claims that Hezbollah has been supplied with upgraded Iranian missiles that have reached Haifa and other points across northern Israel.
"We cannot stand by and watch out Hezbollah brothers fight alone," said Komeil Baradaran, a 21-year-old Basiji member. "If we are to die in Lebanon, then we will go to heaven. It is our duty as Muslims to fight."
Comment: If a part of YOUR country was being invaded by a foreign power, and your countrymen and women and children murdered, would you not expect that at least a few of the citizens from other parts of your country would go and help the fight? Iran is not a part of Lebanon, but Iranians feel a deep kindred with the Lebanese, having been subjected to the same Israeli and American agression themselves.
Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday July 27, 2006
The Guardian
Once again the Bush administration is floating on a wave of euphoria. Israel's offensive against Hizbullah in Lebanon has liberated the utopian strain of neoconservatism that had been traduced by Iraq's sectarian civil war. And the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, has propelled herself forward as chief cheerleader. "What we're seeing here," she said, "are the birth pangs of a new Middle East." At every press conference she repeats the phrase "a new Middle East" as though its incantation is magical.
Her jaunt to the region is intended to lend the appearance of diplomacy in order to forestall it. As explained to me by several senior state department officials, Rice is entranced by a new "domino theory": Israel's attacks will demolish Hizbullah; the Lebanese will blame Hizbullah and destroy its influence; and the backlash will extend to Hamas, which will collapse. From the administration's point of view, this is a proxy war with Iran (and Syria) that will inexplicably help turn around Iraq. "We will prevail," Rice says.
The administration has traditionally engaged in promiscuous threat conflation - al-Qaida with Saddam Hussein, North Korea and Iran in "the axis of evil", and now implicitly the Shia Hizbullah with the Sunni Iraqi insurgency. By asserting "we" before "will prevail", Rice is engaging in national interest conflation.
According to the Rice doctrine, the US has deserted its historic role as ultimate guarantor of Israel's security by acting as honest broker among all parties. Rather than emphasising the importance of Lebanese sovereignty, presumably a matter of concern to an administration that had made it exhibit A in the spread of democracy in "a new Middle East", Rice has downplayed or ignored it in favour of uncritical endorsement of Israel's offensive. Rice's trip is calculated to interpose the influence of the US to prevent a ceasefire and to give Israel at least another week of unimpeded military action.
To the Bush administration, the conflagration has appeared as deus ex machina to rescue it from the Iraqi quagmire. That this is patently absurd does not dawn on those who remain in thrall to the same pattern of thought that imagined the invasion of Iraq would be greeted with flowers in the streets of Baghdad. Denial is the basis of repetition.
This week has seen the publication of Fiasco, by Thomas Ricks, the military correspondent of the Washington Post, devastating in its factual deconstruction. The Iraqi invasion, he writes, was "based on perhaps the worst war plan in American history". The policy-making at the Pentagon was a "black hole", and resistance by the staff of the joint chiefs to disinformation linking Iraq to 9/11 was dismissed. After the absence of a plan for postwar Iraq, blunder upon blunder fostered the insurgency.
In one of its most unintentionally ironic curiosities, the Bush White House has created an Office of Lessons Learned. But the thinking that made possible the catastrophe in Iraq is not a subject of this office. The delusional mindset went underground only to surface through the crack of the current crisis. There are no lessons learned about the blowback from Iraq; about Iraq's condemnation of Israel and its sympathy for Hizbullah; or about the US unwillingness to deal with the Palestinian Authority that made inevitable the rise of Hamas; or the counter-productive repudiation of direct contact with Syria and Iran.
Indeed, Rice is ushering in "a new Middle East", one in which the US is distrusted and even hated by traditional Arab allies, and its ability to restrain Israel while negotiating on behalf of its security is relinquished and diminished.
- Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Clinton, is the author of The Clinton Wars.
DALLAS - Exxon Mobil Corp. said Thursday it earned $10.36 billion in the second quarter, the second largest quarterly profit ever recorded by a publicly traded U.S. company.
The earnings figure was 36 percent above the profit it reported a year ago. High oil prices helped boost the company's revenue by 12 percent to a level just short of a quarterly record.
Exxon Mobil's report comes a day after another large U.S. oil company, ConocoPhillips, said it earned more than $5 billion in the quarter and at a time when many drivers in the U.S. are paying $3 for a gallon of gas - increasing the likelihood of further political backlash in Washington.
Exxon Mobil, the world's largest oil company by market capitalization, said earnings amounted to $1.72 per share in the April-June quarter compared with a profit of $7.64 billion, or $1.20 per share, a year ago.
The results topped Wall Street expectations but came in behind Exxon Mobil's record profit of $10.71 billion set in the fourth quarter of 2005.
Analysts polled by Thomson Financial expected the company to earn $1.64 per share.
Revenue rose to $99.03 billion from $88.57 billion in the prior-year quarter. That was short of Exxon Mobil's record third-quarter revenue of $100.72 billion _ which also stands as record revenue generated by any U.S. public company ever in a single quarter.
Its shares rose 85 cents to $67.45 in premarket trading. That would top its 52-week high of $67.18.
Exxon Mobil said it spent $4.9 billion on capital and exploration projects during the quarter, up 8 percent from a year ago, while distributing $7.9 billion to shareholders in the form of dividends and share repurchases. Congress has been urging the big oil companies to put more of their profits toward boosting the supply of energy for consumers.
By segment, exploration and production earnings rose sharply to $7.13 billion, up $2.23 billion from the second quarter of last year, a reflection of higher crude and natural gas prices. Production increased 6 percent from a year ago and 9 percent if the impact of divestments and entitlements are excluded.
The company's refining and marketing segment reported a $264 million earnings increase to $2.48 billion, the result of stronger refining margins, slightly offset by weaker marketing margins.
Exxon's chemical business saw earnings rise $26 million to $840 million.
Comment: Do you get it yet? It's not about the war on terror or the crisis in the Middle East; it's about psychopathic corporations bleeding the people dry simply because they can. They're gonna make a buck or two billion before the economy drops too much, and YOU are gonna foot the bill.
By TOBY STERLING
Associated Press
Thu Jul 27, 2006
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Europe's second-largest oil company, said Thursday its second-quarter earnings jumped 40 percent as high oil prices offset production difficulties in Nigeria and the Gulf of Mexico.
Net profit rose to $7.32 billion from $5.24 billion a year earlier. Sales rose less than 1 percent to $83.1 billion from $82.6 billion.
Chief Executive Jeroen van der Veer said in a statement the earnings were "underpinned by overall good operational performance and not simply high energy prices."
Still, the main reason for the increase was higher oil prices, with earnings at Shell's oil exploration and production arm leaping to $4 billion from $2.75 billion, despite an 8 percent drop in production to 3.25 million barrels a day.
Prices for benchmark North Sea Brent crude averaged $69.51 a barrel in the quarter, compared with $51.65 a barrel a year earlier.
That was in line with other major oil companies reporting results this week. BP PLC said its second-quarter profit rose 30 percent to $7.3 billion, while ConocoPhillips reported a 65 percent increase to $5.18 billion. Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's largest publicly traded oil company, is due to report its earnings later Thursday.
Keith Bowman, equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown Stockbrokers, said it was "good news" that Shell had beaten forecasts, in contrast to BP.
"But going forward, high oil prices will not continue to mask" if Shell's management makes mistakes, he said.
Shell said that excluding the damage caused by militant attacks on its operations in Nigeria and the fallout from hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the Gulf of Mexico, production would have been flat.
Shell is missing around 180,000 barrels per day in Nigeria because of recent attacks, and said Thursday it couldn't confidently predict when production will resume.
Van der Veer said that despite a pipeline rupture this week, possibly due to an attack by militants, the company has no intention of scaling back operations in the West African nation. "We are not afraid to invest in Nigeria," he said.
The Niger Delta region has been the scene of frequent disputes for years between oil companies and communities that demand a greater share of the wealth of Africa's largest crude producer. At least 31 expatriate workers have been held hostage by a variety of militant groups so far this year.
Shell's results Thursday beat earnings estimates compiled by Dow Jones, which had predicted a 17 percent rise in earnings, helped by strong refining margins. Shares rose 2.5 percent to 28.05 euros ($35.43) in Amsterdam trading.
At Shell's second-biggest division, which refines oil and sells it to consumers at the pump, profits increased 13 percent to $3.02 billion.
"Higher earnings due to stronger refining margins particularly in the United States, and increased trading profits from a positive trading environment were partially offset by the impact of lower retail marketing margins and reduced refinery utilization mainly in Europe," Shell said.
Shell's 2004-2005 accounting scandal, in which it was forced to repeatedly reduce the size of its proven oil reserves, continued to affect the company's earnings and prospects.
The company said Thursday it had reserved $500 million in the second quarter to pay shareholder class action lawsuits.
Shell has also been spending heavily to restore reserves, planning investments of $19 billion in 2006, and $21 billion in 2007, most of it in exploration and production.
But in 2005, the company pumped more oil than it added to proven reserves, and in Shell's 2005 annual report those reserves stood at around 11.5 billion barrels.
With Thursday's earnings, Shell said it has added "at least" 48 billion barrels of oil to unproven reserves via acquisitions in Canada in the first half of 2006, at a combined cost of some $2.6 billion.
In a conference call, Chief Financial Officer Peter Voser repeated that the company has a "fair prospect" to replace as much as it pumps between 2004-2008 as a whole.
"But we will not be shy to delay projects or even cancel projects because of the economic situation, cost inflation, and delay the recognition of proved reserves if that is the best economic outcome" for the company, he said.
While production in 2006 has been below analysts' expectations, he repeated that Shell's production is expected to rise to 3.5 million to 3.7 million barrels per day in 2007.
WASHINGTON -- The United States may be willing to cede at least some of its historic control of the Internet domain name system after all, a U.S. Commerce Department official said Wednesday.
Despite bold statements last year that seemed to indicate otherwise and ignited a worldwide debate, John Kneuer, the acting assistant secretary for communications and information, said the government "remains committed" to private management of the DNS.
"I think the fact that we're all gathered here today and we've undertaken this process is a clear indication that we are committed to this transition," Kneuer told an audience of about 80 people at an agency-sponsored public hearing in the Commerce Department auditorium here.
The hearing came as the agency contemplates whether to renew a memorandum of understanding, dating back to 1998, between the U.S. government and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, the nonprofit organization responsible for coordinating the allocation of domain names and Internet Protocol addresses. The agreement, which establishes guiding principles for management of the DNS, is set to expire on Sept. 30, but could be renewed, as has occurred in the past.
Kneuer said the government's continuing interest in privatization doesn't clash with a list of four principles issued last summer by the Commerce Department. That brief policy statement riled up some in the international community because it asserted the U.S. government's intention to retain control over the Internet's "root," the master file that lists which top-level domains are authorized. It also indicated plans to maintain its oversight over ICANN.
The Bush administration took that position all the way to a world Internet summit in Tunisia last November. It ultimately reported it had not relinquished its Net authority but instead forged a broad agreement with its international counterparts to create an "Internet Governance Forum" under the auspices of the United Nations, scheduled to meet this fall in Greece.
The focus in the Commerce Department principles is intended to be "extraordinarily technical in nature and tied to security and stability from a technological standpoint," Kneuer said. "It should not be read so expansively as to say we're going to retain all of our historic controls."
The public speaks
It remains unclear when or if the U.S. government will fully shift to private control of the Internet DNS. Meanwhile, nearly 700 written comments from the public have streamed in to the Commerce Department about how it should proceed.
A number of the responses consisted of a two-paragraph form letter that urged the United States to "work cooperatively with all stakeholders to complete the transition to a domain name system independent of U.S. governmental control."
"No single government should have a pre-eminent role in Internet governance," read the form letter, which came from commenters in about a dozen countries including Australia, Canada, Germany, Luxembourg, Morocco, Nigeria, Sweden, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United States.
A greater diversity of views emerged from about a dozen representatives selected to speak on panels at Wednesday afternoon's hearing. They came from a wide variety of sectors including Internet advocacy groups, domain registries, IP addressing organizations, root server operators, other businesses and the Canadian government.
Some panelists suggested the time has come to let the memorandum of understanding (MOU) lapse, effectively untethering ICANN from U.S. government control except in extraordinary circumstances.
"While we recognize and applaud the 'light hand' the U.S. government has always taken with respect to the Internet, we believe it is time to move to a minimal, transitional MOU where the U.S. government plays a 'backstop' role that would only come into play in the event of a serious organizational failure," said Lynn St. Amour of the Internet Society, a worldwide network of nonprofit public interest groups.
ICANN has room for improvement, but it has nonetheless "proven well-suited to the evolving structure of the global Internet community" and should be allowed to complete its transition to privatization, said Ray Plzak, CEO of the American Registry of Internet Numbers, one of the world's five regional IP addressing organizations.
Others said they didn't think ICANN is ready to function independently of governmental oversight. Tim Ruiz, a vice president of GoDaddy.com, which runs the world's largest domain name registrar, said it's "premature" for total privatization of ICANN because the organization hasn't yet proven it can be as transparent, open and accountable as outsiders would like.
The Center for Democracy and Technology's David McGuire suggested the current system is working reasonably well, so the U.S. government needs to be more certain of what would result from cutting its ties with ICANN before doing so. "We're very concerned that if ICANN becomes subsumed by some yet-to-be-named international body, that we'd see much more government involvement," as opposed to the "hands-off approach" the Commerce Department has taken, he said.
The event also featured an appearance from ICANN CEO Paul Twomey, who refrained in his 10-minute speech from suggesting what should happen next with the organization. "I do think the ICANN community has many reasons to be proud of the last eight years," he said, pointing to "introduction of competition in the top-level domain space" and the creation of country-code domain name organizations as examples of successes.
Borne from a secret meeting in Cambridge, Mass., in 1998, ICANN has been no stranger to controversy over the years. Critics in the past have dogged it for acting in secret and moving sluggishly to approve new top-level domain names. More recently, it has drawn fire on Capitol Hill and through court challenges for agreeing to what amounts to a perpetual contract with VeriSign to run the .com registry, which critics say would result in unnecessary price hikes and a veritable monopoly.
Kneuer emphasized that as the Commerce Department weighs its next steps, "we will take no actions that will call into question the stability and security of the Internet."
WASHINGTON - A dependence on no-bid contracts and inadequate oversight have contributed to extensive waste and misspending at the Department of Homeland Security, The Washington Post reported on Thursday, citing a congressional investigation.
In the latest report on the agency's spending, U.S. government investigators found problems involving "significant overcharges" or "mismanagement" in 32 DHS contracts worth a total of $34 billion, the Post said.
The findings were to be released on Thursday. The Washington Post said it had obtained a copy of the report.
According to the newspaper, the bipartisan congressional report says an explosion of no-bid deals and a critical shortage of government contract managers created a system prone to abuse.
Among the contracts that raised questions were deals for hiring airport screeners, securing borders and housing Hurricane Katrina evacuees, the newspaper said.
Investigators also found a surveillance system for monitoring activity on the borders with Mexico and Canada does not work because the cameras malfunction when exposed to snow, ice or humidity, the report said.
The Washington Post said the congressional report warns that DHS is setting itself up to make more mistakes by giving contractors too much latitude.
A report released July 19 by the Government Accountability Office faulted poor oversight for allowing DHS employees to make a wide range of questionable purchases during the response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
A separate GAO review last month found that roughly 16 percent, or $1 billion, of aid payments to hurricane victims were based on bogus claims or spent on questionable items like diamond rings and sex videos.
David Norquist, DHS's new chief financial officer, said the agency has approved tighter spending guidelines and vowed that incidents of possible fraud and abuse cited by GAO would be investigated.
Comment:
Investigators also found a surveillance system for monitoring activity on the borders with Mexico and Canada does not work because the cameras malfunction when exposed to snow, ice or humidity, the report said.
Do you get it yet? All this talk of security and fighting terrorism is designed to do two things: terrify you into submission, and rip you off.
The United States accused France Tuesday of causing the collapse of global trade talks because its stance on farm issues had prevented the European Union from making key concessions to trade partners.
In a statement, the US embassy in Geneva rejected remarks by EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson, who said Monday that Washington was responsible for the World Trade Organisation's (WTO) failure to reach agreement because it had refused to reduce subsidies to farmers in the United States.
According to the embassy, the "statement by the European Union alleging that the United States failed to show flexibility in the Doha agriculture negotiations and attempting to divert blame for the stalemate is false and misleading.
"Unable to endorse the US proposal given substantial opposition from France and a few other member states with strong farm interests, the EU attempted, alternately, to criticize the US proposal as too ambitious or too weak."
Referring to a European trade minister who had been quoted by the Financial Times, the statement repeated that "the fear from French farmers is stronger than the ambitions of European retailers."
On Monday, WTO chief Pascal Lamy recommended that the Doha round of trade talks be suspended after six key trading powers, including the EU and United States, were unable to bridge fundamental differences on agricultural aid, import tariffs and market access.
Deadlock had gripped the Doha Round almost since its launch in Qatar in 2001 in an effort to reduce barriers such as subsidies and customs duties, and improve the lot of developing nations.
France is the biggest beneficiary of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy and has steadfastly refused that Brussels, which negotiates at the WTO on behalf of all 25 EU members, give any ground on reducing import tariffs unless the United States and other trade partners also made concessions.
France says its position is supported by around 15 EU members.
Mandelson said that the United States had requested the talks be suspended on Monday, but according to the US embassy, the EU had taken its offer off the table, at which point "the United States reluctantly had to agree with (WTO) Director-General Lamy's assessment that the differences among G-6 members remained unbridgeable."
The embassy said the EU had insisted "on the right to lavish more than twice as much trade distorting subsidies on its farmers."
More adults in the United States are disappointed with the latest developments of the coalition effort in Iraq, according to a poll by Gallup released by USA Today. 56 per cent of respondents believe the U.S. made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq, up five points in a month.
The coalition effort against Saddam Hussein's regime was launched in March 2003. At least 2,567 American soldiers have died during the military operation, and more than 18,900 troops have been wounded in action.
In December 2005, Iraqi voters renewed their National Assembly. In May, Shiite United Iraqi Alliance member Nouri al-Maliki officially took over as prime minister.
NEW YORK - Americans generally approve of President Bush's handling of the current Mideast crisis, according to a CBS News/New York Times poll, but six in 10 say the president is not respected by foreign leaders.
The poll finds Americans are pessimistic about the prospects for Mideast peace and do not think the United States should involve itself in the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.
More than 60 percent think the conflict will lead to a larger war in the region, and a similar number doubt Israel and the Arab states will ever be able to live in peace.
Just 32 percent said U.S. troops should be sent to the Mideast as part of a United Nations peacekeeping force, although 60 percent favor such a force.
More Americans (47 percent) said they approve of how Mr. Bush has handled the conflict so far than disapprove (27 percent), but one in four said it's too early to form an opinion.
Mr. Bush's overall approval rating remains low - and in an additional diplomatic concern, most Americans (60 percent) now think he is not respected by foreign leaders.
That number is down significantly since just before the Iraq war began in 2003, when about half of Americans thought Mr. Bush was respected around the world.
Slightly more than half of Americans said they believe Mr. Bush respects foreign leaders, a number that's also down from 2003.
Most Americans do not think the United States should step up its diplomatic efforts in the latest Mideast crisis. Fifty-eight percent said solving conflicts between Israel and Mideast nations is not America's responsibility, while 33 percent said it is.
Comment: Unfortunately for that 58%, America's leaders obviously have no intention of ending their unquestioning military and political support of Israel.
By 59 percent to 31 percent, Americans said the United Nations and other countries, rather than the United States, should take the lead in solving international crises.
Pessimism about the Mideast extends to U.S. efforts in Iraq. Just 27 percent of Americans - the lowest number to date - now believe the United States is winning the war, compared with 13 percent who say the Iraqi resistance is winning and 58 percent who call it a stalemate.
Fifty-seven percent of Americans said the war was going badly, including 27 percent who said it's going very badly.
While a majority of Americans, 58 percent, still believe success in Iraq is at least somewhat likely, 53 percent think Iraq will never become a stable democracy, up 10 points from last month.
Forty-one percent said the U.S. presence in Iraq is making the region less stable, nearly double the number in March. Twenty-five percent said the U.S. presence in Iraq was making the region more stable.
Sixty-nine percent also said the U.S. presence in Iraq is hindering U.S. diplomatic efforts elsewhere in the Mideast. Nearly three in four said the war in Iraq has worsened America's image in the world.
Blame for the current Mideast crisis was split, with about half of those polled saying Israel's response in the conflict was about right, and a similar number saying both Israel and Hezbollah were at fault.
A separate CBS News/New York Times poll on Congress and the 2006 election (.pdf) found continued low approval ratings for lawmakers and the president translating into a Democratic lead in the midterm voting this fall.
If the midterm elections for the House of Representatives were held today, 45 percent of registered voters said they would support the Democratic candidate, while 35 percent would support the Republican.
A ballot measure in California calling for a 300% increase in the tobacco tax is the latest in a national trend to stamp out smoking by making it too costly.
California's tax increase would go further than other states by creating the highest levy on cigarettes in the nation.
Experts say tax increases in other states have reduced smoking and increased revenues. But they say the increases also bring problems such as smuggling, gang activity and the shuttering of small retailers.
"After significant tax increases, revenue rises, consumption falls, perhaps most among young people, and evasion increases," says Brian Stenson, deputy director of the Rockefeller Institute of Government in Albany, N.Y.
The California proposal, identified as Proposition 86 on the November ballot, would increase the tax on cigarettes to $3.47 a pack from the current 87 cents. Similar increases would apply to cigars and other tobacco products. That would send the average price of a pack of cigarettes from $4 to $6.55, says the California Department of Health Services.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger opposes the tax increase.
Paul Knepprath, lobbyist for the American Lung Association of California, says the goal is worthy. "Taxing tobacco will reduce smoking. That's been proved in every state that's raised tobacco taxes," he says. "It makes it more difficult for people to smoke and purchase cigarettes."
The initiative would also raise an estimated $2 billion or more a year in new revenue. That money would go toward health causes, including direct aid to hospitals.
Some say such estimates are usually wrong. "Evidence shows the revenue increase is not as much as you'd expect because of erosion in taxable sales," Stenson says.
That's because states often fail to fully take into account money lost from tax avoidance.
Since 2000, 42 states have raised cigarette taxes, according to the Washington-based Federation of Tax Administrators. The leaders now are Rhode Island at $2.46 a pack and New Jersey at $2.40.
The more important numbers for California are from its border states. In Nevada, the tax is 80 cents a pack. In Arizona and Oregon, it is $1.18 a pack. That means many of the state's 4 million smokers would be buying cigarettes over the state line. "People are always going to seek out low-cost cigarettes," says Patrick Fleenor, chief economist at the Tax Foundation in Washington.
That can hurt California retailers, says Charles Janigian, president of the California Association of Retail Tobacconists.
Janigian says the increase would force small retailers, particularly cigar and pipe shops, out of business. Smokers could save by going across the state line. On the Internet they could buy a 10-pack carton for $34.70 less than what they'd pay in California.
"I call it the doomsday scenario," he says.
"It would drive more and more business to the Internet and to mail-order companies outside the state of California who are not required to collect and pay tax," Janigian says.
There is another risk when one state's prices are much higher than others'.
A 2004 report by the agency then known as the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said tax increases on cigarettes open up a lucrative black market to nasty groups looking for ways to fund their activities.
"As cigarette taxes increase, so do the incentives for criminal organizations, including terrorist organizations, to smuggle cigarettes into and throughout the United States," the GAO report said.
Steve Remige, president of the union that represents Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies and investigators, says a big tax increase would allow cigarette smuggling to become a new profit source for violent gangs. That is why his organization opposes the tax increase.
"This is going to make tobacco products in general an avenue for crime," he says. "It will be another burden on law enforcement."
City officials have banned charitable groups from feeding homeless people in parks downtown, arguing that transients who gather for weekly meals create safety and sanitary problems for businesses.
The measure, approved Monday, prevents serving large groups in parks and other public property within two miles of City Hall without a permit. The American Civil Liberties Union vowed to sue, saying it's a superficial fix that ignores the city's homeless problem.
City commissioner Patty Sheehan pushed for the ordinance after complaints from business owners and residents that homeless people were causing problems at a downtown park popular with joggers and dog walkers.
A group called Food Not Bombs, which has served weekly vegetarian meals to homeless people for more than a year there, said it would continue illegally.
Robin Stotter, who is opening a restaurant downtown, said he would support homeless people by pledging money for food and shelter, but supported the ordinance.
"The homeless issue is not going to be solved today," he said. "It's a safety issue, and the public deserves a safe place to be."
Two of the city's five commissioners voted against the ordinance including Robert Stuart, the head of a homeless shelter.
Stuart said the city was moving to "criminalize goodhearted people."
Comment: A sign of the times if there ever was one. The US is set to implode in on itself through the sheer "weight" of utter self-interest on the part of most of its citizens, a situation that has, of course, beeen deliberately created by the psychopaths in power. It is, after all, their way.
WASHINGTON - A lack of staff, space and equipment hobbles the U.S. emergency medical system and almost no steps have been taken to improve things despite numerous warnings, emergency room professionals told Congress on Wednesday.
But emergency room physicians and members of Congress alike were at a loss about what to do to fix a system that almost everyone agrees is at a breaking point.
"It isn't too clear and that is because what is required is so big," Dr. Rick Blum, an emergency room doctor from West Virginia who is president of the American College of Emergency Physicians, said in an interview.
"These are really problems of the healthcare system overall. Our health care delivery system is flawed." he added. "There is no band-aid for this. What is required is major surgery."
A subcommittee of the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee held the hearing to ask if there was anything the federal government could do to address the problems raised by three Institute of Medicine reports issued in June that found severe problems in emergency rooms and other emergency medical services.
The reports found, for instance, that emergency medical services got only 4 percent of Department of Homeland Security first responder funding in 2002 and 2003.
The Institute committee also found that between 1993 and 2003 the number of emergency department visits grew by 26 percent, while the total number of emergency departments declined by 425 -- with 198,000 fewer beds.
"The message here is that the safety net is fraying," said Dr. Steven Krug, a Chicago emergency room doctor who testified on behalf of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
So what happens if pandemic influenza comes, or someone sets off a biological weapon, or giant earthquakes or hurricanes hit?
"We are neither prepared nor capable of responding," Washington Republican Rep. Dave Reichert, chairman of the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Preparedness, Science and Technology, told the hearing.
Hospitals that were flooded out and even destroyed when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast last August made headlines, but little has been done to help address the problem of what to do with the sick and frail in an emergency, Blum said.
"I can tell you without qualification that the emergency care system in this country in general ... is worse today than it was last year and if we don't change things by next year it will be worse than today," Blum told the hearing.
For instance, Blum said, he and colleagues were unable to go and pitch in for two weeks or so to relieve overworked emergency room doctors in New Orleans.
"I wanted to go help for a while. but the politics and bureaucracy of it was simply more than could be done," he said.
Emergency rooms are overfilled even on a quiet day because of the way doctors are paid, Blum noted.
"One of the side effects of managed care is that primary care practitioners are very, very tightly scheduled," he said. So outside of office hours, what should be a routine office visit is sent to the emergency room, he said.
Both for-profit and not-for-profit hospitals run on a budget, Blum said. "They often make the decision that they can't afford to lose the money that they are losing in the emergency department," he said.
On Feb. 6, 2006, Jessie Lee Williams, Jr., a 40-year-old black man in a Southern Mississippi jail, was allegedly hooded and hog-tied by police, beaten about the head and testicles and ultimately died from blunt injuries to the head.
The coroner determined the death was a homicide. The local sheriff indicated law enforcement agencies were investigating and that the individual targeted by the investigation is "no longer employed by the Harrison County Sheriff's Department."
Despite the fact that the beating was videotaped, no arrests have been made.
Williams' family has filed a $150 million civil suit for damages. Last Friday, the sheriff's attorney in the Williams case asked the court to halt the civil proceedings until the criminal investigation is complete in order to avoid self-incrimination.
The complaint documents numerous previous incidents of abuse in the Harrison County jail booking room where Williams died, including beatings, hooding, use of a restraint chair - called "the torture chair" or "the devil's chair" by inmates - and a technique similar to water-boarding where a sheet was wrapped tightly around the head of a man in the restraint chair and water was poured into the breathing hole.
In April, US Attorney Dunn Lampton told reporters, "We're moving at a good speed." Lampton told Harrison County Sheriff George Payne not to discuss the investigation with anyone and Payne has not returned RAW STORY's calls.
US Prisons the Training Ground for Military Detentions?
A recent Amnesty International report covered by RAW STORY revealed that nearly 200 African-American men in a Chicago prison have alleged torture between 1971 and 1991. The report concluded there are troubling similarities between detainee abuse allegations in US military prisons around the world and US prisons at home.
Williams' treatment, like that of many of those in the Chicago cases, is similar to reports of abuses at Abu Ghraib, the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other US detention facilities in the Middle East. The nurse's notes in Williams' case states that Williams was placed in a restraint chair, hooded, sprayed with pepper spray, and had blood coming from both ears. He was told by the restraining officer that the officer would kill him, after which the man choked him until he couldn't breathe.
Based on witness statements, the attorney for the Williams' estate commissioned an artist to create an illustration which shows Williams being carried hooded and hog-tied.
The caption reads, "This picture is a depiction made of the Harrison County Adult Detention Facility's booking room on the night of February 4, 2006, based upon witness statements, in which Jessie Lee Williams, Jr. was hog-tied, shackled (hands to feet), sack on his head, blood dripping from the beating, and carried like a human suitcase - soon to be slammed/dropped on his face - two times."
James Johnson, an Australian with a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and a Masters Degree in Psychology, who has been an advisor to the Australian government and has been researching the US penal system for eleven years for a book, says, "I believe that the principal method of torture applied in the prisons is psychological. However outright brutality is used quite regularly."
Johnson provides examples from letters inmates have written him: solitary confinement, rapes, beatings, use of restraint chairs, hooding, shackling to the floor, sleep deprivation, extreme air-conditioning, reduction of food allowance, refusal of medical treatment, electric cattle prods, TASERs and water-boarding. Williams suffered serious burns on his back from being shot with TASERs.
"Everything you have read about them using in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo is used in American prisons," Johnson avers. " That is where most of the torturers gain their experience."
The purpose, he says, is "to destroy the mind." Johnson notes that all these methods were used "before the official policy of the American administration became known to the public."
Human rights violations under international law
International human rights lawyer, Dr. Curtis F.J. Doebbler, who practices in the Middle East and teaches law at Tel Aviv University, told RAW STORY that if Williams was killed as the consequence of being beaten by law enforcement authorities, as alleged, "his right to life and right to humane treatment (prohibition of torture) would have been violated under both the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights and American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man."
"A case could be brought to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention or the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights," Doebbler adds.
After a recent Supreme Court ruling in which the court held that the military tribunals used on enemy combatants at Guantanamo violated the Geneva Conventions and laws of war, the Pentagon pledged to abide by Common Article 3 of the Conventions, which establishes minimum standards of humane treatment for detainees.
Joseph Margulies, the lead counsel in another Guantanamo case in which the Court decided last year that detainees have the right to due process, noted in a Washington Post editorial, "we know what the administration means by humane treatment."
"These are the same people who said it was humane to hold a prisoner in solitary confinement with no human contact except interrogators and guards until . . . he became delusional," Margulies wrote. "Then it was humane to subject the same prisoner to an eight-week series of interrogations that lasted 18 to 20 hours a day. Interrogators doused him with water if he fell asleep and forced him to stand at attention for hours at a time if he did not cooperate."
Even when a detainee's heartbeat had slowed to 35 beats per minute and he was placed in a doctor's care, loud music was played in his cell to prevent him from sleeping.
Margulies says, "If this interrogation was not cruel, humiliating and degrading, if it did not offend personal dignity, then the words have no meaning."
JAKARTA (Reuters) - An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.1 hit offshore the Indonesian island of Sumatra, the Indonesian Meteorology and Geophysics Agency said on Thursday.
The United States Geological Survey put the quake, which occurred at 1116 GMT, at a magnitude of 6.0.
Senior Indonesian seismologist Fauzi told Jakarta-based Radio Elshinta the earthquake appeared too small to trigger a tsunami.
BERLIN - A deadly heatwave gripping central Europe has raised fears of forest fires in Poland, sent electricity prices rocketing in Germany and caused the suspension of shipping on major rivers as water levels dwindle.
"This will probably be the hottest July for Germany since our nationwide records began in 1900," said German meteorologist Gerhard Mueller-Westermeier from national weather service DWD.
The service said Wednesday's forecast sweltering temperatures of 37 degrees Celsius (99 Farenheit) could be matched on Thursday, extending a heatwave which has continued since the soccer World Cup began early last month.
"It has been going on pretty much non-stop since June 10," said Mueller-Westermeier. "It's far too warm and too dry in a lot of parts of Germany."
Shipping on the river Elbe -- which also runs through the Czech Republic and Poland -- was stopped as water levels dropped nearly 1 meter (yard) to around 95 centimeters in Germany.
"No cargo shipping is possible," said Herbert Dorf, a senior official at the Water and Shipping Bureau in Magdeburg.
There is a similar situation with the Oder river, which forms a stretch of the border between Germany and Poland.
Some nuclear power plants operating with river water cooling systems had to cut electricity output by up to 40 percent said Ivo Banek, spokesman for energy firm Vattenfall.
In order to protect their fragile ecosystems, rivers in Germany have limits on how warm water returning from power stations can be. Hotter rivers also mean soaring electricity prices, Banek said.
"There is no danger of a physical lack of electricity in Germany, but prices on the wholesale market have rocketed by 500 percent over the past weeks," he said.
In neighboring Poland, fire and forest services said they had put 90 percent of the country on the top level of fire alert. Some southern districts have begun imposing limits on daily water usage, appealing to local residents to stop watering their gardens or washing cars.
"The suspicion is that some people are putting the welfare of their tomatoes first," one local mayor told the TVN news channel. "As a result in 10 days or so they may not have water to wash dishes or shower."
Experts also warned that food prices were set to rise as reports of crop failing amid the sweltering heat intensified.
A leading food industry group said Europe's shops and supermarkets are facing a shortage of vegetables later this year as a result of the current heatwave.
According to OEITFL, which represents Europe's fruit and vegetable processing industry, shop owners must prepare for the likelihood of empty shelves, fridges and freezers.
"The position is reminiscent of the catastrophic year 1976 when a comparable lack of rain was registered which now leaves them with less production than anticipated under normal weather conditions," said Susanne Meyer, OEITFL secretary general.
The heat wave has already taken its human toll. Some 40 people died over the past week in France and dozens more were killed by the scorching temperatures in the United States.
In the Netherlands, human resources firm Arbo Unie, which monitors 2.2 million workers in the country, said sick rates are 7.5 percent higher than last year due to the heat.
CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez appears to take pleasure in provoking the United States, lucky for him, because the idiosyncratic leader's latest world tour is not playing well in Washington.
The self-proclaimed socialist revolutionary turned up at a trade meeting with Cuba's Communist leader Fidel Castro last week, then announced an anti-imperialistic alliance with Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko -- another U.S. foe.
Chavez -- who regularly cracks jokes about the Bush administration in his criticisms of U.S. "imperialism" -- plans to buy $1 billion of arms from Russia and visit
Iran and Vietnam, the latter a country he refers to as "North Vietnam."
Chavez is expected to sign a deal in Moscow this week to seal the purchase of about two dozen Russian fighter jets, several helicopters and a license to build a Kalashnikov assault rifle factory.
Washington is fuming. Having tried to block Chavez from replacing aging military equipment, it has watched as Russia welcomed Chavez with opens arms into its munitions factories.
"We repeatedly talked to the Russian government that the arms purchases planned by Venezuela exceeded its defensive needs and are not helpful in terms of regional stability," State Department spokesman Tom Casey told reporters on Tuesday. "We certainly hope that Russia will reconsider."
Chavez spent the last few days in Belarus, touring Stalin-era military defenses and watching military parades with fellow maverick Lukashenko, who oversees a Soviet-style command economy.
More than just needling Washington with his controversial friends, Chavez is quite serious in his desire to build a bloc of nations willing to counter U.S. influence in the world, analysts say.
He is also trying to win a two-year seat on the United Nations Security Council to balance Washington's influence. Last year, Chavez courted an alliance with Iran just as the nation was facing international criticism over its nuclear program.
"Chavez has embarked on a vision of a multipolar world," Venezuelan political scientist Jose Vicente Carrasquero said. "He wants to generate the idea that the unipolarity represented by the United States can disappear."
The Venezuelan leader signed agreements on Tuesday to share military and oil technology with Lukashenko, who Washington says runs the last dictatorship in Europe.
Before that, Chavez visited the childhood home of iconic Argentine left-wing guerrilla Ernesto "Che" Guevara with Castro, and both men slammed U.S. "imperialism" during a meeting of the Mercosur Latin American trade bloc.
BLUSTER
But despite the grandstanding, for the moment Venezuela and the United States need each other since the South American country is the world's No. 5 oil exporter and the fourth largest supplier of oil to the U.S.
Chavez is hugely popular with the poor in Venezuela for channeling record oil dollar revenues into health, education and subsidized food schemes.
Flush with cash after several years of high oil prices, he has revived a project to unite Latin America as proposed by 19th century liberation hero Simon Bolivar, and has said the region should have a common currency and armed forces.
The Bush administration is backing a bid from Guatemala in the hope of keeping Chavez off the Security Council. But Chavez is using oil largesse on his world tour to try to drum up more support.
Beyond the rhetoric, Chavez seems to be serious about wanting to build on anti-U.S. sentiment in the world.
"I think it is part bluster, it always is with Chavez, but this is someone who could stir things up and cause a lot of mischief in the world. It would be serious mistake to ignore him," said Latin American analyst Michael Shifter from Washington think-tank Inter-American Dialogue.
MOGADISHU - A mystery plane delivered unknown cargo to Mogadishu's Islamist-held airport, raising fears of a new weapons shipment in violation of a UN embargo on arms sales to lawless Somalia.
The Somali government claimed the cargo, which was offloaded at Mogadishu International Airport under heavy security, was an assortment of weapons from Eritrea, but the Islamists refused to comment on the contents.
The Russian-made Ilyushin 76-cargo plane was met by two senior Islamic commanders, with another member of the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia (SICS) saying it had weapons from an undisclosed origin.
It was earlier thought that the plane's tail bore the Somali national flag -- a white star on a blue background -- but officials said it was the emblem of Kazakhstan, a former Soviet state that frequently charters its planes. The Kazakh flag has a gold emblem on a blue background.
The plane landed at about 8:00 am (0500 GMT) and left for an unknown destination two hours later after the cargo was offloaded, witnesses said. Journalists were chased away from the facility.
"Military supplies from Eritrea have reached Mogadishu -- they include explosives, mines, hand-propelled grenades, bazookas and anti-tank/aircraft missiles," deputy information minister Salad Ali Jeeley told reporters in Baidoa, the temporary base of the government, about 250 kilometres (155 miles) northwest of the capital.
"We call upon the international community including IGAD (Inter-Governmental Authority on Development) to witness what is happening in Somalia and Eritrea's intervention," he said. "The government condemns the Eritrean intervention."
But the SICS insisted that the airport was open for civilian use.
"The Mogadishu airport and all other airports are open and those who want to use the facility have the right to do so. I am not in charge of cargo and you have no right to ask me what was the shipment. I don't want to speculate," SICS security chief Sheikh Yusuf Mohamed Siad told reporters here.
Asked about the government claim that the cargo was weapons, he said: "Go and ask Eritrea if you want to say something about them. What I can say is that the plane has landed and taken off safely."
Earlier, a senior government official told AFP: "We know the plane is carrying weapons. We are very angry."
On July 13, the UN Security Council endorsed an easing of the 15-year-old UN arms embargo on Somalia to allow the possible deployment of foreign peacekeepers in a move aimed at bolstering the country's weak transitional federal government.
This drew an angry reaction from the Islamists, who are opposed to the deployment of peacekeepers.
The Islamists, who control much of southern Somalia including Mogadishu, are at loggerheads with the government over the deployment of Ethiopian troops to protect the fragile government.
The government and the largely Ethiopian Christian regime have rejected the incursion claims, arguing that the SICS was looking for an excuse to wage war and expand its territory.
On Tuesday, the SICS threatened to boycott Arab League-mediated peace talks in Khartoum with the government unless Ethiopian troops withdraw.
Washington has urged Somalia's neighbors, most of whom have been accused of violating the UN arms embargo, not to endanger the country's peace talks.
The United States, other Western countries and the
United Nations have all backed the Arab League initiative to bring the Islamists and the government to peace talks in a bid to prevent the country from plunging into deeper turmoil.
In the previous agreement signed on June 22, both sides vowed to recognize each other and refrain from provocative military or propaganda steps. But the Islamists, who routed US-backed warlords from the capital and surrounding townships, have been accused of violating the truce.
UN officials however have credited the Islamists with restoring order in Mogadishu, notably by dismantling roadblocks where civilians were being extorted.
The rise of the Islamists has caused concern in Washington, which says it fears a Taliban-style takeover of Somalia.
The Horn of African country, home to about 10 million people, has been without a functioning central authority since strongman Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted in 1991. Since then, more than 14 internationally backed peace initiatives have failed to restore a government here.
DUBLIN, Ireland - Irish archaeologists Tuesday heralded the discovery of an ancient book of psalms by a construction worker who spotted something while driving the shovel of his backhoe into a bog.
The approximately 20-page book has been dated to the years 800-1000. Trinity College manuscripts expert Bernard Meehan said it was the first discovery of an Irish early medieval document in two centuries.
"This is really a miracle find," said Pat Wallace, director of the National Museum of Ireland, which has the book stored in refrigeration and facing years of painstaking analysis before being put on public display.
"There's two sets of odds that make this discovery really way out. First of all, it's unlikely that something this fragile could survive buried in a bog at all, and then for it to be unearthed and spotted before it was destroyed is incalculably more amazing."
He said an engineer was digging up bogland last week to create commercial potting soil somewhere in Ireland's midlands when, "just beyond the bucket of his bulldozer, he spotted something." Wallace would not specify where the book was found because a team of archaeologists is still exploring the site.
"The owner of the bog has had dealings with us in past and is very much in favor of archaeological discovery and reporting it," Wallace said.
Crucially, he said, the bog owner covered up the book with damp soil. Had it been left exposed overnight, he said, "it could have dried out and just vanished, blown away."
The book was found open to a page describing, in Latin script, Psalm 83, in which God hears complaints of other nations' attempts to wipe out the name of
Israel.
Wallace said several experts spent Tuesday analyzing only that page - the number of letters on each line, lines on each page, size of page - and the book's binding and cover, which he described as "leather velum, very thick wallet in appearance."
It could take months of study, he said, just to identify the safest way to pry open the pages without damaging or destroying them. He ruled out the use of X-rays to investigate without moving the pages.
Ireland already has several other holy books from the early medieval period, including the ornately illustrated Book of Kells, which has been on display at Trinity College in Dublin since the 19th century.
Comment: "The book was found open to a page describing, in Latin script, Psalm 83, in which God hears complaints of other nations' attempts to wipe out the name of
Israel."
We find this more than a little coincidental coming at this particular time.
By BRIAN SKOLOFF
07/26/06 - -- WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) -
Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean on Wednesday called Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki an "anti-Semite" for failing to denounce Hezbollah for its attacks against Israel.
Al-Maliki has condemned Israel's offensive, prompting several Democrats to boycott his address to a joint meeting of Congress and others to criticize him. Dean's comments were the strongest to date.
"The Iraqi prime minister is an anti-Semite," the Democratic leader told a gathering of business leaders in Florida. "We don't need to spend $200 and $300 and $500 billion bringing democracy to Iraq to turn it over to people who believe that Israel doesn't have a right to defend itself and who refuse to condemn Hezbollah."
On Tuesday, leading Senate Democrats said in a sharply worded letter that Al-Maliki's "failure to condemn Hezbollah's aggression and recognize Israel's right to defend itself raises 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."
The Republican National Committee rejected Dean's criticism of Al-Maliki, saying, "It is incredibly troubling that Howard Dean would seek to score cheap political points by attacking the democratically elected prime minister of Iraq."
On Capitol Hill, Sen. John Warner, R-Va., the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said: "I dismiss Howard Dean. Really, he's a disappointment, even to Democrats. I don't care to deal with that."
Dean also used the Florida appearance to criticize President Bush, calling him "the most divisive president probably in our history" as he complained that Republican policies of deceit and finger-pointing are tearing the country apart.
"He's always talking about those people. It's always somebody else's fault. It's the gays' fault. It's the immigrants' fault. It's the liberals' fault. It's the Democrats' fault. It's Hollywood people," Dean said. "Americans are sick of that. Even if you win elections doing that, you drag down our country."
Dean spoke to about 240 business leaders in Palm Beach County at a gathering of the Democratic Professionals Forum. It is part of a nationwide grassroots campaign to get voters involved in politics on a local level ahead of the November elections.
Republicans welcomed Dean's appearance in Florida, criticizing him for the same divisiveness he accused Republicans of creating.
"Howard Dean's divisive rhetoric has done nothing more than drive the Democrat Party further to the extreme left of the political spectrum," said Carole Jean Jordan, head of the Republican Party of Florida.
Associated Press Writer Anne Plummer Flaherty in Washington contributed to this report.
NEW YORK - A jetliner carrying more than 250 people lost power in one of its two engines Wednesday but landed safely at a nearby airport, officials said.
The Boeing 777 plane landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport less than a half hour after the engine failed, said American Airlines spokesman Billy Sanez. Officials were investigating what caused the problem on Flight 134.
"The plane landed after the captain declared an emergency," Sanez said. "It's not a common incident, but the pilots are trained to deal with these situations."
The plane was en route to London from Los Angeles. Sanez said all the passengers would be put on another plane.
LONDON - Tour de France champion Floyd Landis tested positive for high levels of testosterone during the race, his Phonak team said Thursday on its Web site.
The statement came a day after the UCI, cycling's world governing body, said an unidentified rider had failed a drug test during the Tour.
And the statement came just four days after Landis stood on the victory podium on the Champs-Elysees, succeeding seven-time winner Lance Armstrong as an American winner in Paris.
The Swiss-based Phonak team said it was notified by the UCI on Wednesday that Landis' sample showed "an unusual level of testosterone/epitestosterone" when he was tested after stage 17 of the race last Thursday.
Landis made a remarkable comeback in that Alpine stage, racing far ahead of the field for a solo win that moved him from 11th to third in the overall standings. He regained the leader's yellow jersey two days later.
Landis rode the Tour with a degenerative hip condition that he has said will require surgery in the coming weeks or months.
Arlene Landis, his mother, said Thursday that she wouldn't blame her son if he was taking medication to treat the pain in his injured hip, but "if it's something worse than that, then he doesn't deserve to win."
"I didn't talk to him since that hit the fan, but I'm keeping things even keel until I know what the facts are," she said in a phone interview from her home in Farmersville, Pa. "I know that this is a temptation to every rider but I'm not going to jump to conclusions ... It disappoints me."
Phonak said Landis would ask for an analysis of his backup "B" sample "to prove either that this result is coming from a natural process or that this is resulting from a mistake."
"The team management and the rider were both totally surprised of this physiological result," the Phonak statement said.
Landis has been suspended by his team pending the results. If the second sample confirms the initial finding, he will be fired from the team, Phonak said.
USA Cycling spokesman Andy Lee said that organization could not comment on Landis.
"Because it's an anti-doping matter, it's USA Cycling's policy not to comment on that subject out of respect for the process and Floyd's rights," Lee said. "Right now, we have to let the process proceed and we can't comment on it."
Landis wrapped up his Tour de France win on Sunday, keeping the title in U.S. hands for the eighth straight year. Armstrong, long dogged by doping whispers and allegations, won the previous seven. Armstrong never has tested positive for drugs and vehemently has denied doping.
Speculation that Landis had tested positive spread earlier Thursday after he failed to show up for a one-day race in Denmark on Thursday. A day earlier, he missed a scheduled event in the Netherlands.
On the eve of the Tour's start, nine riders - including pre-race favorites Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso - were ousted, implicated in a Spanish doping investigation.
The names of Ullrich and Basso turned up on a list of 56 cyclists who allegedly had contact with Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes, who's at the center of the Spanish doping probe.
PARIS - French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday waved aside protests about the planned deportation of two Chinese students whose fight to stay in the country sparked a demonstration last week.
Fengxue Cai and Zhiyian Ni, both 19, are at the centre of a debate in France about the treatment of children of illegal immigrants who are enrolled in French schools.
Sarkozy, a right-wing frontrunner in French presidential elections next year, announced that the "two young Chinese, about which we have spoken a lot" would be deported.
"One of them entered France in 2004 at the age of 17 ... his parents' papers are not in order. They do not have any minors in school. They
do not have any strong attachment to our country," he said.
"There are 1.3 billion inhabitants of China. If we grant regularisation in this type of situation, then there are no limits."
Last Friday, a Paris court had freed the Chinese teenagers from a detention centre and allowed them to return to their parents until July 29. They are both students at a technical school in Paris.
On Wednesday, campaigners had gathered at Roissy airport in Paris to protest against their deportation.
In June, Sarkozy bowed to pressure about the deportation of children of illegal immigrants and told authorities to reconsider some cases based on new criteria, such as whether a child has "strong ties" to France.
Some illegal immigrants with children in French schools are to be given residency rights.
New requirements include showing that one of their children was born in France or arrived before the age of 13, has been at school in France for two years, or has no link with the country of his or her parents.
Sarkozy on Monday also defended the recent high-profile deportations of 19-year-olds Animata Diallo from Mali and Moroccan Abdallah Boujraf.
Perhaps now more than any other time in human history, objective media is desperately needed-media to inform the masses; to provide voice to the voiceless; and to function as the objective counterweight that scrutinizes the powers that be.
We currently live in an era that can only be described as the most volatile in contemporary history; a time when extremism and terrorism, with all their methods and motives, are on the rise; when human rights violation and political polarization are rampant, and when respect for the international law that protectes state sovereignty is systematically corroding, and mainstream media is increasingly betraying the very objective that inspired the founding fathers to have "freedom of press" prominently enshrined in the US constitution.
Can today's media guard the greater public interest and prevent the next 'Iraq', or worse, the next World War?
In his thought-provoking documentary Orwell Rolls in His Grave, producer Robert Kane Pappas, together with a lineup of media experts, activists, and academics make a compelling argument that clearly negates any claim of objectivity in most of what mainstream media does. Even more condemningly, they charge that media, by and large, has evolved as unconscionably biased enterprise that poses direct threat to the preservation of democracy (for it became demosticated and indeed coopted by the very powers that it was supposed to hold accountable in the first place).
At a time when media around the world, especially in least likely places such as the Middle East, are gradually reaching new heights in promoting unprecedented political openness, the quality of news coverage, programming, and the overall credibility of the American mainstream media is ironically ona declining trend as more and more media organizations are abandoning objective standards of journalistic ethos and becoming the "facilitators of venomous discourse" and the "purveyors of misinformation and propaganda".
And nowhere does media bias manifest itself more than in the slanted reporting of the Israeli/Palestinian conundrum where reporting is, unfortunately, single-minded in perspective and predictable in conclusion.
In its report released on July 19th, 2006, the media watchdog FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting) highlighted a closing editorial by (veteran media personality) Bob Schieffer of CBS Face the Nation three days ealier in which he did not even bother to project any semblance of objectivity. According to FAIR, Mr. Schieffer adapted a well-known fable "in an attempt to explain the causes of the current conflict-or rather, the lack of causes".
Here is how he summed up the whole crises and its root cause:
"...when the war broke out in the Middle East, the first thing I thought about was the old story of the frog and the scorpion who were trying to cross a river there. The scorpion couldn't swim, the frog was lost. So the scorpion proposed a deal, 'Give me a ride on your back, and I'll show you the way.' The frog agreed, and the trip went fine until they got to the middle of the river, and then suddenly the scorpion just stung the frog. As they were sinking, the frog asked, in his dying breath, 'Why would you do that?' To which the scorpion replied, 'Because this is the Middle East.'
In his one-sided editorial, Mr. Schieffer offered a metaphorical diatribe that erroneously labeles the Palestinian people as the "scorpion" in that tale of suicidal exploitation. To support his labeling, he echoed what FAIR refered to as "...the media's conventional wisdom in portraying the Palestinian raid that captured the Israeli soldier as an inexplicable provocation". In that groupthink mindset, the New York Times, in its June 29 editorial titled "Hamas Provokes a Fight", declared that "the responsibility for this latest escalation rests squarely with Hamas," adding that "an Israeli military response was inevitable." But neither Face The Nation nor the New York Times is alone in this crusade of disinformation.
The mainstream media seems to be credulously content with the official Israeli version which asserts that on September 2005 Israel unilaterally handed over "what the Palestinians supposedly wanted", as Mr. Schieffer put it...and that on June 25th, 2006 Israel was flagrantly provoked by an attack carried by a terrorist organization sworn to annihilate the state of Israel who killed two of its soldiers and abducted a third, hence Israel's legal and moral right to do what it did, and pledges to continue to do so till their soldier is returned.
While it is true that Hamas (also Hizballah) is in the State Department's list of terrorist organizations and that members of its armed wing have taken an Israeli soldier hostage while killing two others, that hardly gives the full picture. What's often omitted or underreported is that there are over 9000 (including 1/3 of the elected members of the Palestinian parliament) who, according to the Mandela Center for Human Rights, also include 342 juveniles are held by Israel.
In fairness to the mainstream media, the events they report are often accurate...however, the chronological sequence of these events (that often support one version of the narrative) and indeed the starting point are, at best, conveniently selective. Having said that, seldom (if at all) does mainstream media report the daily life of the average Palestinian man, woman, or child in West Bank and Gaza, and what Israel does in its freehand daily provocations that make life unbearable and often trigger knee-jerk, counter-productive reactions that only perpetuate the all too familiar violent tit-for-tat culture.
Among other forms of torture, terrorization, and provocation, the Israeli Air Force, for example routinely used the sonic boom torture in which they lower the altitude of their F16 fighter jets to fly close to the roofs of buildings and home. The Sydney Morning Herald and other media sources report a rise in miscarriages, premature births and stillbirths since the Israeli invasion of Gaza. The paper also reports that the sonic boom torture is also used at night when people are asleep to induce terror. "The sound is akin to that of a large bomb, and it can produce panic attacks, shock and nosebleeds (on children)" the report says. "The sonic booms, combined with all the other stress, have a bad effect on the health of pregnant women," added Dr Adnan Radi, a senior obstetrician of Shifa Hospital in Gaza.
The media failed to adequately scrutinize the wisdom in Israel's "inhumane" act to impose extra judiciary economic suffocation aimed to collectively punish the Palestinian people for electing Hamas. On January 2006, Israel decided to withhold the Palestinian monies they collect through taxation- $55 million a month essential to pay the salaries of civil servants. This, despite Hamas' dramatic change per its modus operandi since it finally decided to partake in the Palestinian elections and uphold a self-imposed cease-fire for 17 months...never mind the day before this new crises exploded, Hamas has signed an agreement with Fatah to form a joint government that recognizes Israel (implicitly).
Once again the media failed to prevent this whole escalation by turning a blind eye to the early reports that Israel was planning months earlier to deliberately provoke Hamas (also Hizballah) into a fatal military confrontation- something that Alex Fishman, an Israeli senior security analyst and Professor Tanya Reinhardt of Tel Aviv University, and others have charged.
On June 8th the Israeli Army assassinated Abu Samhadana, a senior appointee of the Hamas government, and intensified its shelling of civilians in the Gaza Strip. And according to Professor Reinhardt, "Governmental authorization for action on a larger scale was already given (to be carried) by 12 June, but it was postponed in the wake of the global reverberation caused by the killing of civilians in the air force bombing the next day (Israeli killing of seven members of a Palestinian family picnicking on a beach and wounding 30 others including 13 children)".
Could a similar manipulation of truth be underway vis a vis the invasion of Lebanon?
Well, according to Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, the current conflict was being cooked for several years. "Of all of Israel's wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared...By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we're seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it's been simulated and rehearsed across the board" he said. "More than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to U.S. and other diplomats, journalists and think tanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail. Under the ground rules of the briefings, the officer could not be identified," he added.
While ironically some media organizations in Israel continue to expose their government's mortal schemes, and set-up forums for rigorous debates on the reckless nature of their governments actions- how they threaten both Israel and world peace and whether or not her heavy-handed reaction and collective punishment would constitute "state terrorism" and "crimes against humanity"- the American media, except certain flashes of symbolic comments made in the passing, are too timid to report, analyze, and objectively debate what's at issue...
Abukar Arman is a freelance writer and a council member of the Interfaith Association of Central Ohio
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One of the really offensive aspect of the right-wing drumbeat of eliminationism is that so many of its purveyors -- notably Rush Limbaugh and his many imitators, including Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin -- try to slough off criticism of the nastiness of the things they say and write by pretending that it's just "entertainment," or merely a "joke".
The crude reality, of course, is that the things they say are not only deeply personal, they play out in the real world by poisoning our personal lives as well as our public discourse. Pretending afterward that it was all "just kidding" is palpable disingenuousness.
And the right-wing response -- claiming that liberals are responsible for the poisoning of the public well -- is especially offensive because it not only serves to disguise, but provides a positive justification for, the escalation of this kind of rhetoric into real action.
In southern California's Orange County, a left-leaning city councilwoman named Gail Soro is reaping the consequences of this kind of rhetoric:
The bent windshield wipers annoyed her. The sex toy glued to her windshield back in June made her furious. But finding a horse's head in her swimming pool yesterday hit Wawayanda Councilwoman Gail Soro right where she lives.
It left her angry and frightened last night, as state police scoured the Orange County town for suspects. They were treating it as a case of harassment and trespassing, at the very least.
Soro and her husband, Ed, were in the pool until about 8:30 p.m. Monday night. Yesterday morning, they noticed the water looked a bit dark. They thought that an animal might have died in the pool.
Ed Soro grabbed the skimmer, raised a dark object from a corner of the pool and called out to his wife as he dragged it to the surface: "That's a horse's head."
She quickly went back into their house. "I was hysterical," she recalled last night.
As the day went on, her hysterics gave way to anger. The stunt with the windshield wipers and the sex toy both happened at Wawayanda Town Hall, where Soro is the lone Democrat on the five-member Town Board.
But the horse's head was brought to their home, while they slept, where their grandchildren come over to swim.
Soro, to her credit, is not backing down:
Gail Soro sent her own message last night: She won't be chased out of office. She's up for re-election next year, and she's running. Soro's been right in the middle of tussles over growth and planning that are the hot-button issues in the town.
Still, she wondered if her story would discourage others from running for office.
"Who would want to put up with this?" she said.
Republican Councilman Dave Cole acknowledged that he's knocked heads with Soro, but he flatly condemned what was done to her yesterday.
"This isn't politics. This is beyond politics," Cole said. "This is beyond the pale."
Credit Councilman Cole with recognizing that this kind of thuggery has no place in American politics.
Too bad he doesn't also take the time to note that the conservative movement's chief figureheads are the folks most publicly fomenting it.
On March 16, conservative pundit Dick Morris told Sean Hannity things were going better than people thought in Iraq, arguing "what is going on is not a civil war."
Now, Morris believes that there is civil war in Iraq but argues that it's a good thing. Appearing on the O'Reilly Factor last night, Morris said "a civil war is progress, because it means it's no longer a war against us." Watch it:
A recent U.N. report found that over 14,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq during the first half of this year.
Transcript:
O'REILLY: It also knocked Iraq off the front page.
MORRIS: Yeah, well, that's true. But you know in Iraq, the casualties are dropping, the U.S. casualties are dropping.
O'REILLY: U.S. casualties, right. Civilians - because it's now a civil war. After Zarqawi was killed, the insurgency fell down.
MORRIS: What we don't understand is in Iraq, a civil war is progress, because it means it's no longer a war against us.
O'REILLY: I don't know, it's such a mess in there.
Comment: You see, certain people get it, certain people understand "counter-insurgency" strategies and that, when invading a country, a resistance is a given, and in order to defeat that resistance, divisions between the various unified factions of the resitance must be fomented. Such straegy usually involves attempts to "create" civil war articifically by hiring death squads to attack civilians and blame it on "ethnic tensions". This is what the US military has been doing in Iraq for the past 3 years.
This graphic comes from today's New York Timesonline, but I've seen similar graphics in many places practically every day, including in the paper I read (the San Jose Mercury News), but they don't put the graphics online.
I'm sure the point I want to make is immediately obvious. Look at a graphic like this and you'll think that Hizballah is firing 50% more weaponry at Israel than Israel is firing at Lebanon. Of course this is complete nonsense.
On a related subject, a friend pointed out a phrase that hadn't penetrated my brain, but which is quite telling. Over and over we hear and read about Hizballah "raining down" rockets on Israel. Has anyone here ever heard (from any corporate source, anyway) anyone talk or write about Israel "raining down" missiles on Lebanon? I sure haven't.
Update: Just a little more on the statistics themselves. The New York Times reports this today: "Hezbollah continued to strike at Israel, firing nearly 100 rockets as of Tuesday night, the Israeli military said." The Washington Post says: "Hezbollah fighters fired more than 90 rockets" (no attribution in the Post, but obviously the source is the Israeli military). Now ask yourself this -- how many missiles and rockets and bombs did the Israelis fire yesterday? Surely the Israeli military knows that a lot more accurately than they know how many Hizballah rockets were fired, and since they are the source of the information for the American media, why isn't that being reported? Search the Times or the Post for that information. Your search will be in vain.
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This graphic comes from today's New York Times online, but I've seen similar graphics in many places practically every day, including in the paper I read (the San Jose Mercury News), but they don't put the graphics online.