Recently, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said:
"I believe this is a war which is fought by all the Jews," the Israeli prime minister said in a conference call and webcast Monday.
Let's face it,The State of Israel is fighting against the Iranians and the Syrians."
What is clear is that Olmert, (and Sharon before him) Bush, Rice and the members of their respective political parties and their corporate friends have no problem with murdering innocent children. But my question is: Do You? Does the ordinary American or Israeli Jews sanction the cold-blooded massacring of innocent people?
Seriously, I really want to know the answer.
Apparently Olmert and Bush want you to know that the conflict in Lebanon is YOUR conflict. You may know squat about the reality of why and how the war is being waged, but then, did you ever know the real reasons why ANY war was waged?
You see, your job, as a docile civilian, is to accept responsibility for the actions of your 'leaders'. When they commit crimes against humanity (the humanity that you allegedly share in) you also commit crimes against humanity.
You must understand, they are the "elite", you are not. The fact that they are the elite, is proof that they deserve to be the elite. If they did not deserve to be in their positions of almost complete control over you, they would simply not be there. Likewise, the fact that you are a dumbed-down mind-controlled idiot prooves that you deserve to be in that position. Got it?
I hope your ok with that.
If you're not, you might want to wake up and join the reality based community and realise that, like today's Lebanese and Palestinians (and the Vietnamese, Chileans, Africans, Japanese, Germans, Concentration camp Jews etc. etc. before them) the Zionists and Bushites don't give a rat's arse about Jews or Americans. You are all ultimately useless eaters, expendable idiots who, for now, are still useful. But probably not for long. On the day that you are deemd by your esteemed leaders to be no longer useful, I strongly suggest that you do not want to find yourself in the same delusional state as you are now.
It is surpassingly strange, is it not, that in a high percentage of the many wars that have been fought over the ages, soldiers on both sides, as well as the civilians left at home, fully believed that they were fighting for "freedom". If both sides in a conflict cherish the same ideal, why should they ever need to fight each other? It's not like "freedom" is a limited resource.
Take the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for but one example. Israeli citizens believe that Palestinians want to kill them, and Palestinians believe that Israeli citizens want to kill them, yet both peoples express the apparently genuine desire to live peaceful lives. All things being equal, it is hard to see how a bloody conflict could ever arise between two such peoples unless a conscious and deliberate effort was made by members of one or other society (by necessity in positions of power over the people) to manufacture one.
Logic would seem to dictate that it cannot be natural for normal, decent human beings to seek the annihilation of their fellow humans simply because they do not look, think or act in exactly the same way. Evolution or creationist, such a theory of human nature defies any explanation as to why or how human beings would ever have arisen or survived very long in the first place. How then to explain the fact that, more than any other aspect, war has come to define human history?
Is it us? Are we to blame? Are we, the ordinary people, uncurable war lovers? Do we revel in the blood of the enemy? Do you? Are you even awake enough to answer this question?
By George Galloway
Socialist Worker Online
August 5, 2006
"Expanding and strengthening" the onslaught against the people of Lebanon. That was Israel's response to the international outcry over the slaughter of 56 civilians, most of them children, in Qana.
And with the world's eyes turned to the increasingly savage offensive in southern Lebanon, Israel has tightened the noose of collective punishment around the Palestinians in Gaza.
Accompanying all this are the barely concealed calls in Washington for an assault on Iran and Syria.
No one should be in any doubt which way the chain of cause and effect runs. George Bush, with Tony Blair at his heel, is backing Israel to the hilt because the US wants Hizbollah's resistance in Lebanon smashed as a prelude to an attack on Iran. In Washington, Blair alluded to such a war.
Catastrophe
It is their perverse reaction to the catastrophe engulfing the occupation in Iraq, where the number of US forces is now increasing rather than being "drawn down" as was promised to military families earlier this year.
To the Iraq disaster we can add Afghanistan, where Britain lost three more soldiers on Monday.
Where two wars have failed, perhaps a wider one might succeed. Such is the logic that is tearing hundreds of Lebanese civilians to shreds and is bringing us to the brink of a gigantic conflagration.
That is also the reasoning behind US, British and Israeli talk of imposing a foreign force in southern Lebanon. This is not a plan for peace - it is a step to further war.
The belligerent forces - Israel, armed by the US, with Blair using British airports to act as quartermaster - are talking of sending troops as an alternative to a ceasefire.
They want the war to continue until Israel wins, and they want to deploy forces in southern Lebanon to help Israel win. They are becoming more anxious to get other countries to send those troops precisely because Israel is not winning.
Its generals have been shocked by the effectiveness of Hizbollah's military resistance. Politically, the invasion of Lebanon - for that is what it is - is already a disaster for Israel and the US.
It has strengthened the national resistance in Lebanon, with Hizbollah at its centre. Lebanon's pro-Western Government speaks of Hizbollah as resistance fighters.
Far from reopening sectarian and confessional divisions, which the US and Israel hoped would embroil Hizbollah in civil war, the assault on Lebanon has rallied huge numbers of Christians, Druze and Sunni Muslims behind the banner of Hizbollah.
Across the Middle East anger is boiling at Israel and the US certainly, but also at the corrupt kings and puppet presidents who are allowing the massacre of Lebanon to take place. Millions are taking inspiration from the Lebanese resistance. It is that resistance that could halt the wider war drive and bring some relief to the besieged Palestinians.
Make no mistake, if that resistance is broken, the result will be no kind of peace, but an even wider war.
If Israel, the US and Britain win in southern Lebanon, I warn you not to be Iranian; I warn you not to be Syrian; I warn you not to be an infant in Gaza; I warn you not to be old in Bint Jbeil; I warn you not to thirst for freedom in Egypt; I warn you not to cry out for justice in Jordan; I warn you not to demand democracy in Saudi Arabia - for if the imperialist forces win in Lebanon, more Middle Eastern countries will be dragged into the maw of war, and the hand of reaction will be strengthened everywhere.
But if they are defeated, if the resistance led by Hizbollah halts the invasion of Lebanon, if it refuses to kneel before imperial might, then a fire will be lit under every throne and in every corrupt chancellery from the Atlantic coast of North Africa to the banks of the Euphrates.
It will speed the day when the impoverished masses across the region take control of their destiny. It will give new hope to the Palestinians.
It will inspire those Israelis, currently few in number, who know the next six decades cannot be like the last and that there must be justice for Palestine. It will bring us closer to a durable peace.
The audience for Fox News' "Dayside" sank to a new low on Tuesday (August 8, 2006) during discussion of the fighting along the Israeli-Lebanese border.
Egged on by substitute host Steve Doocy (or Doocey as the chyron spelled it at one point), the audience literally laughed at the suffering of Lebanese civilians caught between Hezbollah and Israeli bombs.
Doocy was interviewing Tania Mehanna, a senior war correspondent for Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation, when he chided Lebanese civilians for not standing up to Hezbollah fighters whom he said are positioning rockets in front of their homes. 'I think I'd be angry as Hezbollah," Doocy said.
Listen to Mehanna's answer and to the audience response.
Later, a man in the audience claimed that Arabs have made up the idea that Israel is bombing Lebanon and that the buildings are not being bombed but are falling down because of "faulty construction".
These people are truly insane. FOX wants us to believe a nitwit, who comes on national tv pimping his POS book on Hizbullah (no doubt written and produced long before the war) and insisting that Hizbullah, a national resistance organization that has its hands full defending its country against a pack of rabid Zionists in the south, has time to set up shop in the US to swindle American consumers by selling fake baby formula and fake viagra? They must be on crack.
And when asked how much money he's talking about and how do they get the money out of the US, the moron says "we don't know for sure because it's against the law to send money to terrorist organizations like Hizbullah..."
In other words, he's making it up. What a joke. They're on the run and they're desperate.
70% of respondents believe 9/11 "conspiracy theories". This is the REALITY. Why isn't the mainstream press reporting it? Why is the mainstream press continuing to ridicule the rational beliefs of a majority of American citizens??
By Hesham Tillawi,PhD
tillawi@currentissues.tv
www.currentissues.tv
"What we're seeing here, in a sense, is the growing -- the birth pangs of a new Middle East and whatever we do we have to be certain that we're pushing forward to the new Middle East not going back to the old one." Condoleezza Rice in a Press Conference on July 21, 2006.
Madam Secretary, one question please: Will your country claim the newborn if it happens to be the wrong color?
I remember reading about the new Middle East in a document written back in 1996 called A Clean Break:A New Strategy for Securing the Real (ACB) . It was authored by a group of policy advisors to Israel. Subsequently, nearly all members ascended to influential policy making positions within US government, media, and academic circles and were instrumental in taking the US to war against Iraq under false pretenses. Many of the ACB policies, such as toppling the government of Iraq, are now in full implementation and present new challenges to the global community. The ACB contained six pages of policy recommendations for then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The authors of this policy paper included Richard Perle, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Douglas Feith, Robert Loewenberg, David Wurmser, and Meyrav Wurmser amongst others, who became known as the Neo-conservatives or Neocons for short.
The paper was an outline of what Israel should do to subjugate not just the Palestinians but also everyone else around it. It was written: "Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq � an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right." They also did not like the " Land for Peace" deal that Israel signed with the its neighbors including the Palestinians and suggested Israel should pursue a different formula based on "Peace for Peace". This means that they would create a situation on the ground that is so big, using Israel's military might in order to change the "Land for Peace" formula into a plea to "just please give us peace and take our piece", or so they thought. Therefore, they would be creating a "New Middle East" once they neutralized Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria by following the new formula for peace. They wrote about : "Efforts to salvage Israel's socialist institutions which include pursuing supranational over national sovereignty and pursuing a peace process that embraces the slogan, "New Middle East"
Aha, so this is where I heard what Rice murmured on July 12 2006. It was actually written 10 years before !!!
I believe we are watching these very painful birth pangs. I just don't think Israel and America will like, or even claim the baby, once it's delivered. Israel's attack on Lebanon has accomplished something the Lebanese have been trying to do for over a 100 years..... Unity. For 19 years, the Lebanese fought each other in one of the bloodiest conflicts witnessed in the 20th Century. The Phalanges Kataeb Party fought the people who have now belonged to the Hizbullah and Amal movements for years.
Last night, the Secretary General Karim Bakradoni of the Phalanges Party said that he supports the Government of Lebanon and the Lebanese Resistance, which is a term used solely to describe Hizbullah. We are witnessing a new Middle East, because the Phalanges is the same Party that lined itself up with the Israelis back in 1982 and was rewarded by Israel's making its Chief, the late Bashire Jumayel, the President of Lebanon. Things are different now. Hizbullah represents close to 35 percent of the population in Lebanon and is represented in all aspects of the government; the military, civil and social organizations in Lebanon. Before it�s all over, and no matter who wins this war, Hizbullah has already won, even if it looses. Its policies will end up making the next Lebanese government�s policy. This is something similar to what happened in Palestine with Hamas. Would the United States like to raise this baby? I think not.
This will strengthen relations between Syria and Lebanon to levels never seen before and, of course, will spill over to other countries in the Middle East who will put pressure on their governments to take a harder position towards Israel and the United States in particular, and the West in general. We will then see new alliances made with regional and continental powers other than the US. We already see a total sympathy with Hizbullah all over the Arab and Muslim worlds. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood offered to send 10,000 highly trained and equipped fighters to help Hizbullah in Lebanon. If the United States is having a hard time in Iraq, wait till you see Lebanon.
The United States somehow missed its bidding again when it bid on leaders such as the Arab leader who called Olmert, in the first days of fighting, and asked him to fight until Hizbullah is destroyed: Or like the Foreign Minister of an Arab country with no official relations with Israel, at least not public, cut his vacation in Tel-Aviv short because of the war and was forced three weeks later to send a private Jet to pick up his family, who was still vacationing in Tel-Aviv, because Hizbullah threatened to attack Tel-Aviv.
You want a new Middle East? You will get a New Middle East. You will have a Middle East, which sees Israel and the US as the enemy, an enemy to despise and fight, one that will one day be united in its struggle against the new invaders, and colonizers. This time around, Sykes-Picot will not be around to decide on whom rules the pieces. This time around, they will be faced with a New Middle East just like they wanted.
In Kuwait, people took to the streets; the same people who took to the streets in 1992 celebrating the liberation of their country by waving American flags and pictures of George Bush the father. However, today they were burning the American flag and chanting "death to Israel and America."
America has lost dearly in the Arab and Muslim worlds due to its policies in the Middle East that are biased towards Israel. American interests are being threatened due to this blind support for a state that cannot survive without state terrorism.
"I am in blood
stepp'd in so far that,
should I wade no more,
returning were as tedious
as go o'er."
Macbeth
Israel's capacity to shed Arab blood has remained undiminished since its creation, winning it territory but no real friends or security and promising it a violent and unrewarding existence. One main lesson of the past three weeks---the first Middle East conflict fought on Israeli rather than Arab lands---is that Israel's aggression can no longer be conducted with impunity.
The tragedies of Jewish history may explain Israel's leaders' actions, perhaps, their endemic paranoia and inability to deal with their neighbors in any other manner than aggressive superiority. What is hard to explain is why the United States and the United Kingdom, this latter newly and firmly in the pillory as Israel's second most loyal and uncritical supporter, and their media, for the most part, fail to ask most of the correct questions about the roots and nature of the horror that has been revisited on Lebanon, and to a much lesser extent on northern Israel (no false equivalence here).
It is not surprising the nascent UN Security Council resolution is being endlessly kicked around like a soggy medicine ball in a back alley. The Shapeless Thing will find itself added to the pile of similar failed discards that have been deployed to try to simultaneously evade, avoid and solve the Lebanese-Israel problem. One stands back in awe as at Balaclava while the French volunteer to lead this latest ride into the Valley of Death.
Consider UN SC 1559, of 2004, which called, inter alia, for "the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias." This unique interference by the Security Council in Lebanon's internal affairs, was jointly sponsored by the US, anxious to diminish Syria, and France, equally keen to reassert itself in an old possession it has never got out of its sentimental old post-colonial heart, to punish Syria for doing in Lebanon what France nor anyone else could, bring security, and to rejoin the top table of nations, as France saw it, after its spat with Washington over Iraq.
The Lebanese Government, Russia and China all opposed (but did not vote against) Resolution 1559, the Lebanese Foreign Ministry representative of the time pointing out presciently that if there were a threat to Lebanon it did not come from Syria. If UN Security Council resolutions are so sacrosanct, we might well ask why all the enthusiasm for 1559 and its successors when somehow interest in 242 and 338, of some 39 years vintage, calling for Israel's withdrawal from Arab territories occupied in 1967, and condemning the acquisition of territory by force, has waned to the point of vanishing?
Any new resolution acceptable to the US and therefore Israel, and which places foreign troops-especially the French, co-authors of 1559---on the Lebanese side of the border only, thus consolidating and promulgating gains Israel has made, will be unacceptable to Hezbollah. Hezbollah will remain after this Israeli onslaught the single biggest and best-armed construct in the fragile consensus of warlords and fiefdoms that holds Lebanon together at the best of times. These are not the best of times. If it does not wish the Lebanese Army to deploy south to the Israeli line, in collaboration with foreign forces there with an enemy's permission and co-operation, such deployment will not happen, certainly not to effect.
If it is tried, in the ensuing chaos Israel will tire of the arrangement and the clashes with Hezbollah will continue at some early future stage in among or over the heads of the unfortunate peacekeepers. Any army volunteering for this mission should dust off the 1983 files, when Hezbollah-inchoate blew the US Marines and the French paras to kingdom come.
Another question no-one asks: is Lebanon a nation-state in the sense the US , the UK and France would have us believe? Is it not rather a provenly frail arrangement that holds together when the going is good (as it was, mostly, under Syrian aegis between 1990 and 2005), with the reluctant co-operation of all the sectarian movements, interest groups and chiefs? And that as the most powerful players in this game, Syria and Hezbollah can build or wreck as they see fit? It may not be a Good Thing or a Nice Thing but it is a long, observable fact of the Levant. Long after Israel has decided to take a rest and/or hand over for a while to some unfortunate patsy of a peace force, Hezbollah and Syria, together and separately, will be at the heart of Lebanon's future.
More questions, rarely asked: we hear this one, a lot: why should Israel tolerate a burgeoning armed force with rockets on its northern approaches? We do not hear asked back, why should Arabs tolerate the most powerful state in the Middle East's history clanking its armor and peering through its intrusive lenses into their territory and sending over bombs, troops and jet-fighters at will?
It can be argued the Arabs have no choice in the matter, but they have now -- Lebanon has chosen how it wishes to resist Israel, quite effectively over the past 10 years or so, and the Arabs of the region are pleased that at last someone has registered with Israel that aggression is no longer dressed with impunity. The Arabs cannot win, they will suffer, but at last it is not without damaging retaliation.
More importantly, what business is it of anyone's how Lebanon defends itself, given its neighbor to the south and its record since 1948?
We hear, from such experts as Fergal Keane of the BBC, writing in The Spectator of August 4, that Iran and Syria "meddle" in Lebanon. Indeed they do, Fergal. The resistance that finally cleared Israel out of South Lebanon after 22 years would not have been formed without them, and would not be sustained today. Do not then the US in strident particular and the West in general "meddle" in the region, by sustaining Israel as the military master of the Middle East? Are we are right to castigate the indigenous peoples of the region for taking a lively interest in their own futures? Does anyone look at maps or read history?
Hezbollah miscalculated three weeks ago (so did Israel). It had not gauged the momentum that had built up behind 1559, especially after Syria so badly overplayed its hand in Lebanon, was deeply implicated in the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafiq Hariri, in February and was forced out of Lebanon. Weakness was perceived and the train of war was fired up and set in motion.
By the mid-2000s, Syria was overplaying its hand in Lebanon and it deserved its comeuppance; but anyone who thought Syria would or even could go away was staring into a mirror distorted by wishful thinking. Syria's role in Lebanon is crucial and everlasting, whether the rest of the world likes it or not; Hezbollah IS Lebanon, is OF Lebanon, and cannot be quelled or removed or subsumed: it is not an alien body, like the PLO, which was removed from Lebanon by Israel and Syria, which delivered the coup de grace to Yasir Arafat in 1983. Hezbollah fighters, even if reduced, and so far not much sign of that, grow in Lebanese homes on Lebanese soil. There are tens of thousands of boys now aged ten to fourteen who in five years time will make up numbers and will have been forged in the fury that Israel has so mistakenly and shortsightedly administered.
You do not have to support this view to know its truth and hope that American and British politicians might absorb it, if only in the pragmatic interests of their own citizenry.
Hezbollah and Hamas, beyond Lebanon, have become the voice of the Arab world in lieu of the nation states, kingdoms and republics who dropped the interests of their peoples long ago. Though these Arabs of the Street and their new heroes cannot turn soon the tide of American-Israeli-Western military and political pressure, they have put us and Israel on notice that for the first time in modern history the Middle East conflict is being fought on Israeli as well as Arab land, and that the highly mechanized delivery of death by machine that has been the fate of the Arabs since 1917 -- yes, 1917 -- comes no longer without cost, human and economic, for everyone.
Israel has made itself the least safe place in the world for a Jew to live, a terrible reflection on the calamity of Zionism for its own people and others.
Tim Llewellyn, a former BBC Middle East Correspondent, based in Beirut and Nicosia in the 70s,80s and early 90s, covered his first Middle East story in Southern Lebanon in May, 1974. Lebanese Shi'ite villagers were shrieking at Lebanese Army soldiers to protect them from Israeli shells,which were falling all around, and the PLO guerrillas who were provoking those attacks. They could not then and cannot in the future. The lesson of thirty-two years is that these people's only effective protectors were and will remain Hezbollah, whatever hasty arrangements the UN tries to make this week on Israel's behalf. Without Hezbollah, and without a solution to Israel's seemingly irreversible expansion across the region, there will be no solution in Southern Lebanon or anywhere else nearby. He can be reached at Timllew@aol.com Comment on this Editorial "Self-Defence"
Jonathan Steele in Tyre and Conal Urquhart in Metulla
Wednesday August 9, 2006
The Guardian
Israeli aircraft dropped leaflets over Tyre yesterday morning, warning people not to use vehicles south of the Litani river, heightening the city's sense of isolation.
All roads north and south of the port city have been cut by bombing in the last few days and Israeli authorities have refused permission for any ships to dock.
The travel ban had no time limit and mentioned no exceptions, even for ambulances and humanitarian convoys. Addressed to "Lebanese civilians south of the Litani River", it said: "Read this carefully and follow its instructions. The Israeli Defence Forces will escalate their operations and will strike with force against terrorist elements who are using you as human shields and firing rockets from inside your homes against Israel..." All vehicles would be bombed the letter said. It was signed "State of Israel".
The warning had an immediate effect. The city's streets virtually emptied yesterday. Most shops were shuttered, and there were few pedestrians on the pavements along the main roads. Only in the alleys of the medieval quarter was there an occasional group of people on chairs outside their front doors.
"I don't have any food for customers," said Abu Ali, a cafe owner. "My wife and children have gone to Beirut. No one's sleeping. They're constantly planning what to do if anything happens". He hinted that if the Israelis entered the town, he would fight them. "I'm a civilian who's ready for anything, day or night," he said. Asked if he had a gun, he repeated his comment.
Standing by his sandwich shop, Houssam Nasser said: "We normally get supplies of bread and meat every day. Now they've stopped. I'll keep my shop open but won't have anything to sell." But he was not planning to leave in spite of the siege.
At the police station, a detective said staff had not been able to move. The government had ordered all police to stay on their jobs, even if they sent their families away, but with the travel ban they could not work properly. "I don't how long this will last. It's the Israelis who decide," he said.
Local and international humanitarian organisations tried to get exemption from the travel ban by applying to the Israeli authorities for permission to go out on urgent missions. Yusuf Khairalla, Tyre's civil defence supervisor, said the city was isolated. "This is the first time this has happened," he said.
His team was denied permission to travel to Maroub, about 10 miles outside the city, to rescue five people from under the rubble of a bombed house.
At the clinic staffed by Médecins sans Frontières Dr Martial Ledecq, a surgeon, was sterilising equipment brought in from Beirut on Monday. The boxes had to be carried along a footbridge across the Litani river by volunteers because Israel destroyed the causeway on Sunday night, cutting Tyre off from road traffic.
"If there is fighting in town, we will be ready for operations. You will have noticed that the main hospitals are all on the eastern edge of town. We are the only one in the centre", Dr Ledecq said.
Jakob Kellenberger, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, was forced to walk across the footbridge on a visit to Tyre yesterday. Access for civilians was his major concern, he said, a point he would emphasise during meetings in Israel today.
With southern Lebanon now a virtual prison, the most fortunate people are the region's official prisoners. "We evacuated all 80 of them from Tibnin prison a week ago. They are safe now in Beirut," said a detective at the police station.
Israeli jets hit targets all over Lebanon yesterday and at least four Israeli soldiers were killed in fighting in two incidents near the Lebanese-Israeli border, where Hizbullah fighters remain entrenched.
Israeli soldiers said Hizbullah fighters were using classic guerrilla techniques to evade them and then hit them in the rear with anti-tank weapons. One soldier was killed in Bint Jbeil and three others killed in the coastal village of Labbouna.
Israel continued to shell and bomb the valleys near its border while it moved more armour from the south of Israel to the north. Aircraft bombed a village near Sidon which was burying 15 of its residents that were killed in airstrikes earlier in the week. The missile hit a building a few minutes after the funeral procession had passed causing panic but no injuries to the mourners. Lebanese officials said that 14 people were killed in the attack. Police in Beirut said they discovered a further 14 bodies in buildings bombed on Monday.
A spokeswoman for the Israeli army said its jets had bombed 99 targets in Lebanon yesterday while more than 165 rockets had landed in Israel which caused minor injuries. Many of the Hizbullah rockets landed in open fields creating bush fires all over the north of Israel. Both sides of the border were covered by cloud that merged with the rising smoke.
Two Israeli tanks returning to Israel from Lebanon ran into a minefield yesterday. It was not clear if the mines had been laid by Israel or Hizbullah. One tank was damaged and sappers had to create an escape route for it using explosives.
Casualties
Lebanon yesterday
Hizbullah: 5 killed
Civilians: 25 killed
To date
Hizbullah: 95 killed (IDF claim >400)
Civilians: 998 killed
Israel yesterday
Military: 3 killed
Wounded: 7
To date
Military: 63 killed
Civilians: 35 killed
All figures revised daily and based on Lebanon and Israel government estimates
Comment: Note that:
"The Israeli Defence Forces will escalate their operations and will strike with force against terrorist elements who are using you as human shields and firing rockets from inside your homes against Israel"
Apart from the fact that this claim made by Israel that Hizb'allah uses civilians as shields is entirely untrue because:
a) the Israeli government has already shown that a Lebanese civilian shield is useless against an Israeli military that kills civilians with impunity
b) Hizb'allah stays away from civilians because of the stark possibility of civilian informers for Israel would give their positions to the Israeli military.
The cold reality of the situation is that it is the Israeli military that is using Israeli Arabs as human shields. (See next article...)
The lawmaker saw the deployment of tanks at the entrances and centers of Arab towns as a sign of continued bias against Israeli Arabs.
CAIRO - An Israeli Arab Member of Knesset has accused the Israeli army of using villages and towns predominantly populated by Israeli Arabs as "shields" to escape the barrages of rockets fired by the Lebanese Hizbullah resistance group.
"During a short visit to offer condolences to the families of victims killed in Hizbullah's rocket attacks, I saw Israeli tanks shelling (south) Lebanon from the two towns of Arab Al-Aramisha and Tarshiha, which are predominantly populated Arabs," MK Sheikh Abbas Zako said in a statement, a copy of which was received by IslamOnline.net.
Zako stressed that the Israeli tanks are positioned just next to the houses of citizens.
"Hizbullah's rockets are only a response to shelling by tanks positioned inside the towns," he said.
Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah had apologized to Israeli Arab families at the very beginning of war for the collateral damage caused by the group's rockets, calling the victims "martyrs."
Israeli army has been accused of using Palestinian civilians as human shields in an operation in northern Gaza.
According to the Israeli human rights group, B'tselem, Israeli soldiers seized control of two buildings in the town of Beit Hanun and used six residents, two of them minors, as human shields.
It said they held them on the staircases of the two buildings and at the entrance to rooms, in which the soldiers positioned themselves, for some twelve hours.
During this time, there were intense exchanges of gunfire between the soldiers and Palestinian fighters.
Thicker
The Israeli lawmaker saw the deployment of tanks at the entrances and centers of Arab towns and villages as a sign of continued bias against Israeli Arabs by their government.
"This demonstrates the fact that the blood of Israeli Jews is thicker than that of Israeli Arabs," he fumed.
Zako called on Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz to immediately move these tanks from Arab towns and villages, and halt the Israeli aggressions on the Lebanese people.
Up to 1,000 Lebanese, mostly civilians, have been killed since the start of the war on July 12. A total of 98 Israelis, including 58 servicemen, have also been killed.
Last week, three Arab members of Knesset yelled out insults against Peretz, who was briefing the lawmakers on the war developments.
Among the insults heaped on Peretz was "Angel of Death".
Israeli Arabs, who make up nearly a fifth of the population, are descendants of those who stayed when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes by Zionist gangs in1948, when Israel was founded on the rubble of Palestine.
They accuse the government of failing to build bomb shelters in their towns and villages as it did in other areas.
Relations between Israel's Jews and Arabs have long been difficult, with Arabs complaining of discrimination at work place.
The Knesset has further made life unbearable for Israeli Arabs married to Palestinians by adopting a law denying the latter the right to get an Israeli residency to live with their spouses.
The Israeli High Court of Justice added insult to injury by upholding the controversial law, which has been dismissed by rights groups as racist and discriminatory.
"Regained Dignity"
Despite the fact that Arabs make up a third of the 48 people killed by rocket fire on northern Israel, the sympathies of some Israeli Arabs lie very much with Hizbullah.
"Hizbullah has raised up our heads and lifted our spirits", Ali Manna told Reuters as he mourned two nephews killed in a rocket attack by the Lebanese resistance group.
And they admire the fact that Hizbullah has proved a tenacious rival and is till holding out against the highly sophisticated Israeli military machine.
"For the first time there is a sense of regained dignity," said Rawda Atallah, head of the Arab Cultural Association in Haifa, a mixed Jewish-Arab city that has been one of the main targets of Hizbullah attacks.
"They feel for the first time a group is resisting and standing steadfast in the face of the Israeli army," she said.
"Hizbullah's popularity has increased immensely among the Arabs in Israel."
Israeli air raids killed 14 people and wounded 23 in the southern village of Ghaziyeh, rescue workers and hospital officials said. The bombs fell as mourners were burying 15 people killed by a raid there the previous day.
BEIRUT (AFP) - Prime Minister Fuad Siniora made a tearful plea for an end to the four-week conflict in Lebanon as 69 people were killed in a new blitz of air raids and
Israel warned of no limit to its offensive.
Diplomatic wrangling continued over a draft UN resolution urging a ceasefire, while the Lebanese government unanimously approved a plan to deploy 15,000 extra troops in southern Lebanon once Israeli troops leave the area.
Israel has sent thousands of ground forces into south Lebanon in an attempt to clear the area, a Hezbollah stronghold, of fighters from the Shiite militant group and prevent it from launching rockets across the border.
There was no end to the offensive in sight, as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed "no limits" had been imposed on the army.
"The majority of the country supports the operation and is ready to support the price," Olmert's office quoted him as saying during a visit to military headquarters in the north.
"I give you all the means that you need and all of my support. We will not stop," he said.
In a sign of a possible escalation, Israel's army warned Lebanese south of the Litani River not to go outdoors after 10:00 pm (1900 GMT).
Israel's border with Lebanon runs eastwards from the Mediterranean coast about 30 kilometers (19 miles) south of the Litani, but moves much closer to the river as it turns north about 30 kilometers inland.
According to official tolls, more than 1,000 Lebanese have been killed and around 3,500 wounded in the offensive, which has also forced more than 915,000 from their homes and left the economy in ruins since its launch on July 12.
Sixty-one Israeli soldiers have also been killed while 36 civilians have died in a barrage of Hezbollah rocket fire from across the border.
The Israeli military launched fresh strikes Monday evening on Beirut's southern suburbs, a Hezbollah hub, setting off explosions which echoed across the capital.
Earlier Monday, Israeli warplanes bombed houses, bridges and roads in southern and eastern Lebanon.
The Israeli army also said it had downed a Hezbollah drone -- the latest sign of the military capabilities of the Lebanese militia.
The new wave of deadly raids came as Washington urged the quick passage of a UN resolution calling for a full halt to the fighting, although there was little sign of international agreement on a peace plan.
The UN Security Council scheduled a public debate for Tuesday on the conflict, which was expected to draw envoys from several Arab countries at the ministerial level.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was also expected to be at the UN headquarters.
Siniora said he refused to let Lebanon be a "punch bag" for Israel and made an emotional appeal for an end to the killings, as Arab foreign ministers gathered in Beirut threw their support behind his plan for a ceasefire.
Siniora called for help in seeking "an immediate and unconditional ceasefire."
"We do not want the Lebanese state and the Lebanese people to remain the punch bag of Israel or anyone else."
Wiping away tears, he told them: "Your standing with us is a right and a duty. Arab security is interlinked."
The Security Council had been expected to adopt a resolution jointly drafted by France and the United States by Tuesday, but diplomats said they could no longer say when a vote would take place after Lebanon demanded revisions.
Siniora said the draft text fails to insist on an immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon, which had pulled out of the country in 2000 after a bloody 22-year occupation.
Iran, one of the major backers of Hezbollah along with
Syria, dismissed the draft as a "political operation against Lebanon" while Damascus warned it was a recipe for further strife.
The draft, which co-author France said was still a work in progress and should be amended by Lebanon, calls for a "full cessation of hostilities" and the deployment of an international force in a buffer zone in south Lebanon.
US
President George W. Bush said the UN resolution was needed "as quickly as possible," while Rice said it would "take a little time" to ease Israeli and Lebanese concerns.
Siniora's own plan calls for an Israeli withdrawal, the expansion of the UN peacekeeping force sent to the area after a previous invasion in 1978, the deployment of the Lebanese army to the border and the disarming of Hezbollah.
The Lebanese government, including two Hezbollah cabinet members, approved a plan to deploy 15,000 troops to the border once Israel left and called up reserve troops in preparation.
Siniora, who wants an immediate halt to the conflict, accused the Israeli air force of "a deliberate massacre" in the southern village of Hula, saying "more than 40 martyrs" had died there Monday.
He later retracted his statement, saying it turned out that only one person had been killed. A spokesman for the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) later said five people had died in Hula, according to their workers at the scene.
Warplanes struck houses in villages around Sidon, the main city in the south, bombed roads linking the region with Syria, including the highway leading to the main border crossing, and hit targets in the Bekaa Valley.
The road to Syria, one of the few ways out of Lebanon for people trying to flee, has been knocked out repeatedly as Israel maintains a blockade that has left the country almost completely isolated from the outside world.
The southern port city of Tyre, which like Sidon has been swollen by an influx of people fleeing from outlying villages, was cut off from the rest of the country by Israeli bombardments against roads and a makeshift bridge, witnesses said.
The Israeli army said three soldiers were killed in fighting with Hezbollah around the border town of Bint Jbeil -- the scene of the fiercest ground combat of the conflict, bringing to 61 the number of military personnel killed.
Five civilians were injured when a new volley of rockets landed in northern Israel.
Top Israeli military commanders have sought permission to expand the ground offensive, with up to 20,000 troops in Lebanon to try to create a buffer zone several kilometers (miles) across the border.
The Israeli military has denied permission for aid groups to move food and medicine to besieged villages in southern Lebanon for two days
Without guarantees of safe passage, the Red Cross has been unable to move supplies beyond the port city of Tyre to towns and villages south of the Litani River, where thousands of people are believed trapped, said Richard Huguenin, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The Litani runs roughly parallel to the Lebanese-Israeli border, about 20 miles to the north. The area between it and the border has been the site of the heaviest Israeli bombardment and ground fighting with Hezbollah guerrillas.
"It is now a question of the humanitarian consequences of what is looking like a blockade," Huguenin told The Associated Press in Tyre.
"At night we ask for permission and in the morning we get either a red light or a green light and for the past 48 hours it has been red," he said.
The Israeli army told the AP Monday that humanitarian agencies wishing to send convoys into the area should coordinate with the military in advance as they have in the past. The army said that in the past, it has been necessary to deny permission for military operational reasons, but no convoy had ever been hit.
A Greek ship loaded with Red Cross supplies had been due Monday but was denied permission to dock in Tyre and was diverted to Sidon, north of the Litani, Huguenin said. Israeli warships have blockaded ports since the conflict began, only letting aid ships into Beirut and occasionally into the southern ports.
"It seems the military buildup has really begun in the last two days. It has certainly been a lot noisier," he said of the aerial bombing of areas around Tyre and south on the road to Naqoura.
The Red Cross estimates there are still 100,000 people south of the Litani. Among them are 27,000 in Tyre, 40,000 Palestinian refugees living in four camps that surround the city and 33,000 in villages.
Huguenin said the Red Cross has distributed aid throughout Tyre and has some supplies meant for villages south and east of the city, but is unable to deliver them.
"What do we do next?" he said. "We are getting phone calls from isolated areas in the south close to the border from people who need food and medicines."
He said people who did not leave during last week's pause in Israeli air assaults were among the most vulnerable - the poor, sick and those without vehicles. He spoke to elderly "who said if they were going to die, they wanted to die in their homes."
The Red Cross said it was not seeking a halt to the fighting but asked that at least one route be designated safe to allow aid through.
"The lifeline must be made to this part of the country. It is under blockade, no ships coming in, and the roads are blocked," said Huguenin.
Sidon, Lebanon's third-largest city, is now home to some 50,000 refugees. Last weekend, Israel dropped leaflets warning residents to flee, but Huguenin said there have been no reports of people leaving Sidon.
Annick Bouvier of the ICRC said in Geneva the relief agency had planned to reach some villages in southern Lebanon, "but due to the level of hostilities, it's impossible for us to proceed."
A Red Cross convoy did bring supplies to Marjayoun from Beirut on Monday, but it was the only convoy able to reach cities south of Sidon, an ICRC statement said.
The World Health Organization warned that 60 percent of the hospitals in Lebanon would have to close unless fuel was delivered this week.
"We urge all parties to ensure safe passage of fuel supplies to hospitals," said Dr. Ala Alwan of WHO.
According to the UN, Israeli officials said the engineers would become a target if they attempted to repair the bridge.
Israel inflicted one of its deadliest attacks on Beirut last night when an air strike on a southern district killed at least 15 people, just hours after the departure of a delegation from the Arab League.
At least 30 were injured in the strike, which capped another day of violence in Lebanon in which more than 50 people died, including three Israeli soldiers.
As night fell, Israel declared a curfew in southern Lebanon, warning that all vehicles apart from humanitarian traffic would be at risk. Ground forces continued to run into fierce resistance in southern Lebanon. Hizbullah militants fired more than 100 rockets into northern Israel, wounding at least one.
But the Beirut attack was the day's bloodiest episode. Last night, local residents and rescue workers scrambled through the rubble and debris in the dark as the insides of an eight-storey building spilled out into a narrow street. Water from a burst pipe in a building opposite sprayed out a fine mist across the wreckage. Neighbouring residents, now stuck in teetering buildings, peered out of the back half of their sitting rooms as splintered furniture dangled out on the street below. A women in her nightdress on the sixth floor tried to retrieve something on what was left of her balcony as a chunk of her front room crashed down on to the street. An ambulance worker said he had counted 10 bodies so far. At least two were children.
Lebanese officials said there were many reports of other casualties throughout southern Lebanon but rescue workers were not able to reach the sites because of continued Israeli airstrikes. Israel also threatened to attack UN peacekeepers if they attempted to repair bomb-damaged bridges in southern Lebanon. UN officials contacted the Israeli army to inform them that a team of Chinese military engineers attached to the UN force in Lebanon intended to repair the bridge on the Beirut to Tyre road to enable the transport of humanitarian supplies.
According to the UN, Israeli officials said the engineers would become a target if they attempted to repair the bridge.
Senior UN officials reacted angrily to the destruction of a temporary causeway over the Litani river overnight. "We must be able to have movement throughout the country to deliver supplies. At this point we can't do that," said David Shearer, the humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon. "The deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure is a violation of international law."
International aid groups have blamed Israel for not providing security guarantees, thereby paralysing the delivery of aid to the south. Even when aid reaches Tyre, convoys have to apply on a case by case basis for permission to take it out to the villages. Most applications are refused.
A convoy run from Beirut to Tyre by Médecins sans Frontières yesterday was forced to stop at the ruins of the causeway. Boxes of medicine were carried over a footbridge by hand and loaded up into separate vehicles on the other side.
Car passengers had to do the same, driving to the footbridge and waiting for transport on the other side.
Israel's army warned residents in southern Lebanon to remain indoors after 10pm yesterday and said anyone moving after that would be at risk. "Anyone who does travel is taking a high risk. There is no end period," an Israeli military source said. "This will allow us to track anyone potentially trying to launch rockets."
The source said the restriction on movement applied anywhere south of the Litani river, which is roughly 13 miles from Israel's northern border. He did not specify how the warning had been delivered.
Israel also said it shot down a Hizbullah drone."We located it over Lebanon and tracked it over the Mediterranean where we shot it down. Naval vessels picked up the debris for investigation," an Israeli military spokesman said. The Israeli army said it could not immediately say if it was carrying explosives.
Tyre was rocked yesterday by fresh Israeli airstrikes. Four buildings on the northern outskirts were crushed in pinpoint strikes which left adjacent buildings standing. The four destroyed buildings included the flat where the Israeli commandos had killed the two alleged Hizbullah leaders on Saturday.
Last Updated Tue, 08 Aug 2006 13:20:35 EDT
CBC News
Israel replaced its top commander in the four-week-old attack aimed at stopping Hezbollah militants firing rockets into northern Israel late Tuesday.
The Israeli military appointed Maj.-Gen. Moshe Kaplinksi to run the Lebanese operation, effectively replacing the general who had been in charge of the campaign, Maj.-Gen. Udi Adam.
Israeli media speculated the change may be a prelude to further Israeli incursions into Lebanon. The Israeli security cabinet is expected to meet Wednesday to discuss a plan to send troops further into Lebanon, to the Litani River about 30 kilometres from the Israel-Lebanon border.
Israeli Defence Minster Amir Peretz said Israel wants to occupy more areas of southern Lebanon to prevent Hezbollah firing rockets.
But the command change might also have been prompted by the inability of the Israeli forces to stop the Hezbollah attacks, which have killed 36 civilians. About 160 rockets fell on Israeli towns on Tuesday. No one was killed.
The army issued a statement saying armed forces chief Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz appointed Kaplinksi, his deputy, to take over, even though Halutz retained "complete confidence" in Adam.
Adam told Israel Television that he would not resign while the fighting continued. "Soldiers are being killed. I don't think I can abandon them now."
Southern Lebanon a no-go zone
Early Tuesday, Israel dropped leaflets warning people in southern Lebanon that its forces planned to destroy any moving vehicles in an area south of the Litani River. The leaflets said Israeli forces will assume that moving vehicles in the area are transporting weapons for Hezbollah.
That ended traffic in the south, around the city of Tyre. Only pedestrians moved on roads and highways.
Although Israel said it would exempt relief convoys, the UN didn't attempt to move any supplies into the south because of the heavy shelling in the area, Christian Berthiaume of the World Food Program said. But supplies were arriving in other parts of the country.
Hezbollah, Israeli troops battle in south
Fighting on the ground continued on Tuesday, with Israeli forces attempting to gain control of villages and sites used by Hezbollah.
Israel pounded Hezbollah positions in south Lebanon. Israeli troops and Hezbollah exchanged gunfire near Bint Jbail, a village controlled by the militants that Israeli troops have been trying to capture for weeks.
The Israeli military said fighting near the village killed one of its soldiers and 15 Hezbollah militants. Hezbollah did not confirm the deaths.
Hezbollah TV reported that the militants attacked Israeli troops near the town of Naqoura, about three kilometres north of the Israeli-Lebanon border. The Israeli military said two of its reservists died in the attack.
UN meets over draft for ceasefire
Meanwhile, United Nations diplomats gathered in New York to discuss a draft resolution to end the fighting that entered its 28th day on Tuesday.
The UN Security Council is expected to vote on the resolution on Wednesday.
Lebanon and its Arab allies have indicated that they want Israeli forces to withdraw from the country immediately as part of a ceasefire deal.
The Guardian
By Jimmy Carter for Information clearing house
08/08/06
The Middle East is a tinderbox, with some key players on all sides waiting for every opportunity to destroy their enemies with bullets, bombs and missiles. One of the special vulnerabilities of Israel, and a repetitive cause of violence, is the holding of prisoners. Militant Palestinians and Lebanese know that a captured Israeli soldier or civilian is either a cause of conflict or a valuable bargaining chip for prisoner exchange. This assumption is based on a number of such trades, including 1,150 Arabs, mostly Palestinians, for three Israelis in 1985; 123 Lebanese for the remains of two Israeli soldiers in 1996; and 433 Palestinians and others for an Israeli businessman and the bodies of three soldiers in 2004.
This stratagem precipitated the renewed violence that erupted in June when Palestinians dug a tunnel under the barrier that surrounds Gaza and assaulted some Israeli soldiers, killing two and capturing one. They offered to exchange the soldier for the release of 95 women and 313 children who are among almost 10,000 Arabs in Israeli prisons, but this time Israel rejected a swap and attacked Gaza in an attempt to free the soldier and stop rocket fire into Israel. The resulting destruction brought reconciliation between warring Palestinian factions and support for them throughout the Arab world.
Hizbullah militants in south Lebanon then killed three Israeli soldiers and captured two others, and insisted on Israel's withdrawal from disputed territory and an exchange for some of the several thousand incarcerated Lebanese. With American backing, Israeli bombs and missiles rained down on Lebanon. Soon, Hizbullah rockets supplied by Syria and Iran were striking northern Israel.
It is inarguable that Israel has a right to defend itself against attacks on its citizens, but it is inhumane and counterproductive to punish civilian populations in the illogical hope that somehow they will blame Hamas and Hizbullah for provoking the devastating response. The result instead has been that broad Arab and worldwide support has been rallied for these groups, while condemnation of both Israel and the United States has intensified.
Israel belatedly announced, but did not carry out, a two-day cessation in bombing Lebanon, responding to the global condemnation of an air attack on the Lebanese village of Qana, where 57 civilians were killed and where 106 died from the same cause 10 years ago. As before there were expressions of "deep regret," a promise of "immediate investigation" and the explanation that dropped leaflets had warned families in the region to leave their homes.
The urgent need in Lebanon is that Israeli attacks stop, that Lebanon's regular military forces control the southern region of the country, that Hizbullah cease as a separate fighting force, and future attacks against Israel be prevented. Israel should withdraw from all Lebanese territory, including Shebaa Farms, and release the Lebanese prisoners. Yet Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has rejected such a cease-fire.
These are ambitious hopes, but even if the UN Security Council adopts and implements a resolution that would lead to such an eventual solution, it will provide just another band-aid and temporary relief. Tragically, the current conflict is part of the inevitably repetitive cycle of violence that results from the absence of a comprehensive settlement in the Middle East, exacerbated by the almost unprecedented six-year absence of any real effort to achieve such a goal.
Leaders on both sides ignore strong majorities that crave peace, allowing extremist-led violence to preempt all opportunities for building a political consensus. Traumatized Israelis cling to the false hope that their lives will be made safer by incremental unilateral withdrawals from occupied areas, while Palestinians see their remnant territories reduced to little more than human dumping grounds surrounded by a provocative "security barrier" that embarrasses Israel's friends and fails to bring safety or stability.
The general parameters of a long-term, two-state agreement are well known.
There will be no substantive and permanent peace for any peoples in this troubled region as long as Israel is violating key UN resolutions, official American policy and the international "road map" for peace by occupying Arab lands and oppressing the Palestinians. Except for mutually agreeable negotiated modifications, Israel's official pre-1967 borders must be honored. As were all previous administrations since the founding of Israel, US government leaders must be in the forefront of achieving this long-delayed goal.
A major impediment to progress is the US administration's strange policy that dialogue on controversial issues will be extended only as a reward for subservient behavior and will be withheld from those who reject US assertions. Direct engagement with the Palestine Liberation Organization or the Palestinian Authority and the government in Damascus will be necessary if secure negotiated settlements are to be achieved. Failure to address the issues and leaders involved risks the creation of an arc of even greater instability running from Jerusalem through Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad and Tehran.
The people of the Middle East deserve peace and justice, and we in the international community owe them our strong leadership and support.
BEIRUT, Aug. 9 (Xinhua) -- Israeli gunboats shelled the largest Palestinian refugee camp of Ain Al Hilweh in Lebanon early Wednesday, causing casualties, official sources said.
Media reports quoted Lebanese and Palestinian officials as saying that Israeli gunboats fired two shells, which killed at least one person and wounded three others.
But other reports quoted medics as saying that at least two people were killed and eight others, including five children, were wounded in the Israeli attack.
This is the first time Israel has bombarded the home to some 50,000 refugees since the start of the Israel-Lebanese Hezbollah conflict on July 12.
According to the sources, one Israeli gunboat shell landed in the Ain Al Hilweh camp, located on the outskirts of the southern port city of Sidon, and another one slammed into the city's amusement park.
The shells targeted the area around the home of Colonel Munir Maqdah, military chief of Palestinian Fatah movement in Lebanon,said the sources.
Violence between Israel and Hezbollah erupted on July 12 when Lebanon's Hezbollah guerillas kidnapped two Israeli soldiers and killed eight during cross-border attacks. It has left over 1,000 Lebanese and 100 Israelis dead.
The international community has stepped up calls for a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah to end the 28 days of fighting.
Almost two thirds of hospitals in Lebanon could "cease to function" this week because of fuel shortages, the World Health Organization has warned.
Other health facilities could also be affected, unless fuel is allowed through as a priority, the WHO said.
Damage to infrastructure in the ongoing conflict has left them relying on fuel to run generators, the WHO said.
The WHO says power is needed to operate services including theatres, babies' incubators and fridges for vaccines.
Lebanon has 12,000 hospital beds. The WHO estimates that about 80 litres of fuel is needed per bed each week for electric power.
Up until now, fuel deliveries have been severely hampered because of the ongoing military operations.
The WHO says one hospital in Marjayoun, in south Lebanon, has said it is due to run out of fuel by Wednesday.
'Fuel is key'
Dr Ala Alwan, a spokesman for the WHO Director-General for Health Action in Crises, said: "Based on available information, if there is no fuel delivered in the next few days, more than half of the hospitals will not be able to operate by the end of this week and the situation will be much worse next week.
"Fuel is key in any basic infrastructure. The provision of fuel is a matter of life or death in a hospital setting.
"We urge all parties to ensure safe passage of fuel supplies to hospitals."
The WHO says it has fuel shipments are ready to be sent to Lebanon as soon as the security situation allows.
Fuel tanks are also ready to be sent from Beirut to other areas in Lebanon in convoys, provided security is ensured, the WHO has said.
Fighters of the 51st Battalion of Golani received aid from an unusual source Tuesday.
A group of snipers hailing from states that had fought in battles in Chechnya and Afghanistan the joined the battalion as it entered Bint Jbeil for the second time after it suffered a serious blow two weeks ago when eight of its soldiers, including the deputy battalion commander, were killed. The snipers were called up in an emergency draft to the war.
The snipers, between 35 and 40 years old, immigrated to Israel at the beginning of the 90s and in the past few years have been considered excellent fighters. They were active in the past in operational activity in the Gaza division, but at a certain point finished their service in the division once the impression was created that they were "trigger happy."
The snipers were stationed Tuesday at one of the entrance points to Lebanon alongside Golani fighters. They displayed high motivation. They are soon expected to join the operations of the brigade inside Lebanon.
The Palestinian parliamentary speaker detained by Israel on Sunday has been taken to hospital with chest pains and dizziness, the Israeli army says.
A spokesman for Aziz Dweik said he was taken to hospital after being beaten by Israeli guards. The army, which is holding him, denied the claims.
Mr Dweik, who is a key member of the governing Hamas movement, was detained in a raid on his home in the West Bank.
The Israeli military said Mr Dweik was a legitimate target as a Hamas leader.
Israel has detained about 30 MPs and a third of the Palestinian cabinet in the past six weeks, following the capture of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian militants in June.
Palestinian officials have called on the international community to intervene to secure their release.
A Hamas spokesman in Gaza said that Mr Dweik was taken to hospital "after being severely beaten".
Tunisia's ambassador Samir Labidi submitted the request, seeking a special session "to take action on the gross human rights violations by Israel in Lebanon, including the Qana massacre, country-wide targeting of innocent civilians, and destruction of vital civilian infrastructure.
The meeting, expected to be held on Thursday or Friday in Geneva, is likely to hear denunciations of Israel over the conflict. The group's letter, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, was presented by Tunisia on behalf of 16 countries, the required one third of the Council's 47 member states needed to call a special session.
Tunisia's ambassador Samir Labidi submitted the request, seeking a special session "to take action on the gross human rights violations by Israel in Lebanon, including the Qana massacre, country-wide targeting of innocent civilians, and destruction of vital civilian infrastructure"
Los Angeles times
By Karin Laub, Associated Press Writer
08/09/06
JERUSALEM -- Israel's Security Cabinet on Wednesday approved a wider ground offensive in south Lebanon that was expected to take 30 days as part of a new push to badly damage Hezbollah, a Cabinet minister said.
The Security Cabinet authorized troops to push to the Litani River some 18 miles from the Israel-Lebanon border. Currently, some 10,000 soldiers are fighting Hezbollah in a four-mile stretch from the frontier.
The proposed operation was expected to take 30 days, Cabinet minister Eli Yishai said. However, an internationally backed cease-fire was expected to be imposed well before then.
"The assessment is it will last 30 days. I think it is wrong to make this assessment. I think it will take a lot longer," he said.
The decision, approved by nine ministers with three abstaining, gave authorization to Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to order the wider offensive and to decide its timing. However, it did not obligate them to act.
Such a decision is risky. Israel would set itself up for new criticism that it is sabotaging diplomatic efforts, particularly after Lebanon offered to deploy its own troops in the border area.
Meanwhile, Arab satellite TV Al-Jazeera reported Wednesday that 11 Israeli soldiers were killed in heavy fighting with Hezbollah guerrillas near the border in southern Lebanon.
More Hezbollah rockets were fired at northern Israeli towns -- including several medium-range missiles that landed near the West Bank town of Jenin and south of the Israeli city of Afula -- bringing the total during the conflict to 3,333, police said.
By mid-afternoon, the guerrillas had fired 132 rockets, but no casualties were immediately reported, said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.
Five of the rockets landed near a Palestinian town in the West Bank on Wednesday, Palestinian security officials said. There were no casualties.
The rockets landed near the village of Arabani, on the Israel-West Bank frontier, the officials said. Clouds of smoke from the rockets could be seen 12 miles away in the town of Jenin, witnesses said.
The Israeli army declined to comment on reports about the 11 soldiers' deaths but said earlier that 15 soldiers were wounded in overnight clashes.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in principle supports a wider offensive, but is hedging because of concern about rising Israeli casualties, his aides have said. However, stepping up the military campaign appeared to have strong support in the 12-member Security Cabinet.
The ministers met a day after the commander of Israeli forces in Lebanon was sidelined in an unusual mid-war shake-up -- another sign of the growing dissatisfaction with the military, which has been unable to stop Hezbollah's daily rocket barrages.
The army denied it was dissatisfied with Maj. Gen. Udi Adam, but military commentators said the commander was seen as too slow and cautious. The deputy chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky, was appointed to oversee the Lebanon fighting.
In attacks Wednesday, Israel's military struck Lebanon's largest Palestinian refugee camp, killing at least two people and wounding five. Lebanese and Palestinian officials said an Israeli gunship shelled the Ein el-Hilweh camp, but Israel's military said the attack was an airstrike that targeted a house used by Hezbollah guerrillas.
The camp is home to about 75,000 Palestinian refugees and their descendants who were displaced by the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
Israeli airstrikes also leveled a building in the Bekaa Valley town of Mashghara, trapping seven people from the same family under the rubble. Five bodies were pulled out and the remaining two relatives were feared dead, officials said.
Also Wednesday, Israeli warplanes dropped leaflets over Tyre again, and over Beirut proper for the first time. The flyers criticized Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, saying he was "playing with fire" and that the Lebanese people were "paying the price."
A Hezbollah statement said the group killed or wounded 10 Israeli soldiers Wednesday and destroyed a tank as it advanced toward the village of Qantara, north of the Israeli border. The Israeli army said 15 soldiers were wounded in overnight clashes.
The Israeli cabinet has approved an army plan to push deeper into Lebanon, to try to take control of areas used by Hezbollah to launch rockets on Israel.
An extra 30,000 troops could be needed for the advance, which aims to reach the Litani River, up to 30km (18 miles) inside Lebanon.
The offensive could take at least a month, one cabinet minister warned.
Israel has launched new strikes on southern Beirut, as about 100 more Hezbollah rockets were fired at Israel.
One report said four missiles were fired at Beirut from Israeli warships.
Diplomatic efforts to halt the crisis continued in New York, where French and US diplomats at the UN began re-drafting their ceasefire plan.
The Arab League wants the text to be amended to include a demand for an immediate Israeli pullout from Lebanon once the violence has ceased.
It made a formal request for the change to the UN Security Council on Tuesday, backing Lebanon's objections to the original draft resolution.
France and the US do not want major changes to their text and diplomats say prospects for an early vote are fading.
But French President Jacques Chirac said a workable resolution was essential and called for an immediate ceasefire.
"Our objective is to achieve cessation of hostilities so that... the thousands of deaths, suffering and destruction should be put to an end. This is our absolute priority," he said.
Veto-wielding Russia has said it will not vote for any resolution which did not have the backing of Lebanon.
As discussions continued in New York, US Assistant Secretary of State David Welch held talks in Beirut with Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.
Nine ministers voted in favour of the new offensive, and three abstained, news agencies reported.
Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz backed the deeper offensive, but reports in the Israeli media had suggested doubts on the part of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who was said to fear heavy Israeli casualties.
One of those who abstained, Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai, said after the meeting that weeks more conflict were anticipated.
"The assessment is it will last 30 days. I think it is wrong to make this assessment. I think it will take a lot longer," Mr Yishai said.
The 10,000 Israeli soldiers already in Lebanon are involved in fierce clashes with Hezbollah militants.
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Earlier, the Israeli military announced it was sending one of its most senior generals, Maj-Gen Moshe Kaplinsky, to co-ordinate the offensive.
Israeli media say this is a response to growing criticism of the conduct of the campaign.
Meanwhile, Israel's campaign continued, with 120 air strikes overnight and clashes with Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon.
At least six people were killed when a two-storey building in the Lebanese town of Mashghara in the eastern Bekaa Valley was hit and collapsed on top of them.
During these days of heavy casualties in Israel and Lebanon, the most outwardly peace-loving community here seems to be the Israeli Arab population.
Ask almost any Israeli Arab how he feels about the war between Israel and Hizbullah and he will likely tell you that he is against all wars and wants only peace.
"I think this war was unnecessary," Adnan Na'im, a cousin of Amir Na'im, 17, one of three youths killed by a Katyusha rocket on a lightly traveled road outside of Tarshiha last week. "We have to stop the war and hope for peace."
These sentiments are echoed by Assad Shanati, 50, the bereaved father of Shanati Shanati, who would have turned 20 in September. "I'll tell you the truth," he said. "I am against all the wars in the world. What are those who die for no reason guilty of?"
It is not hard to understand why so many Israeli Arabs maintain this neutral and politically correct stance. Minorities are usually caught between a rock and a hard place and try their best not to offend anyone.
Comment: Here's another idea: most Arabs actually DO want peace, and it has nothing to do with "political correctness".
And, truth be told, while they themselves are threatened by Katyushas and they may also have Jewish friends in the North or in the army whose lives are also in danger, many of them also have relatives in Lebanon, including Palestinians living in refugee camps in Beirut and southern Lebanon.
Nevertheless, if you scratch beneath the surface, it becomes apparent that a majority of Israeli Arabs side with Hizbullah and Hassan Nasrallah. Or so, at least, believes Hazar Fa'ur, 26, a resident of Tarshiha and cousin of the rocket's third victim, Muhammad Fa'ur, 17. "Most people won't dare say it aloud, but I can see it in their eyes and hear it in their private conversations that they support Nasrallah," he said.
He said he blamed both sides for the war, but mentioned only Israel's alleged faults. "Lebanon was only missing one piece of land, the Shaba farms," he told The Jerusalem Post. "Had Israel given it back, no one would have justified Nasrallah's actions." He added that Israel should have negotiated with Lebanon instead of withdrawing its forces unilaterally in 2000.
On the other hand, Fa'ur said he regarded both Hizbullah and Iran as his enemies and said he strongly opposed religious fundamentalism.
Mahmoud, who declined to give his family name, is a relative of Assad Shanati and has been spending his days in the mourning tent since last week's tragedy. He also blamed Israel for the war. "The mistake began in 2003, when no one in Israel took Nasrallah's threats seriously that he would kidnap more Israelis unless it released [Palestinian terrorist Samir Kuntar,"] he said. "If they had released him then, this would not have happened."
It was somewhat strange, after hearing these sentiments, to enter the home of Ahmed Fa'ur, father of Muhammad, the third victim. There, fastened to the gate leading into the courtyard of the Fa'ur home, is an Israeli flag. Fa'ur explained that Muhammad had placed the flag in honor of Independence Day. He was looking forward to the day he would enlist in the IDF, his father said.
Muhammad's cousin said that many members of the family, which is Muslim, had served in the army. One was killed in 1974, when he volunteered to storm an apartment building in Kiryat Shmona after Palestinian terrorists broke into the building, killed some of its occupants and took others hostage.
Fa'ur did not want to talk politics. Muhammad was the eldest of his six children and the apple of his eye. He said he had done everything to protect his family. Instead of building an above-ground safety room in accordance with the minimum requirements of the law since 1994, he built a proper underground bomb shelter. When the sirens sounded in Tarshiha, everyone in his family went to the shelter. Even the upper floors were built with reinforced concrete.
"We didn't believe such a thing could happen," he said. "We thought we were protected and safe. But when fate wants to take a life, even 100 bomb shelters won't help."
Muhammad, said his father, took the Katyushas seriously. "He was a smart boy. He always wanted to be in a protected area. He understood this was no game. But on that day, when I asked him where he was going, he told me, 'What am I going to do, stay buried in the shelter all the time?'"
There was a terrible irony in the death of Assad Shanati's son as well. "I didn't let him work outside the house," he said. "I made sure that he was by my side all the time."
In fact, Shanati was almost by his son's side when he died. He was working in his brother's olive orchard, where he raised vegetables and grazed goats, when the rockets fell. He was standing 50 meters above the road where his son was riding. He actually saw the car from where he was standing and heard the explosion, but did not believe anything was wrong.
To make sure, he called his son four times on his cellphone but did not get a reply. Then he called one of the two friends who were with him. When he again did not receive a reply, Shanati sent a younger son to run down and see what had happened. When the boy ran back crying, Assad understood immediately.
Hazar Fa'ur said he was angry at the fact that only one minister, Ya'acov Edri, visited the bereaved families in Tarshiha. Edri came for a few minutes before the funeral on Friday. No one else came, said Fa'ur because the victims were Arabs, and because of the general neglect of the North by the government.
"We have no hotels, no government offices and poor roads," he said. "I escaped to Jerusalem for two days and people there asked me if I have a blue identity card. It's like a different country, here."
About 35 percent of the population of Tarshiha has left the area for safe havens in the South. Those who stayed behind could not afford to leave, according to Adnan Na'im. He charged that officials of the Ma'alot-Tarshiha Municipality had promised to take residents away for a break from the danger and stress, but had failed to do so so far.
Last Updated Tue, 08 Aug 2006 23:03:14 EDT
CBC News
UN Security Council members were presented Tuesday with a new ceasefire plan that calls for the deployment of 15,000 Lebanese troops along the Israeli-Lebanon border - a proposal that Israel's prime minister is seriously considering.
Representatives of the Arab League introduced the new plan, made by the Lebanese government on Monday, to the Security Council in New York City on Tuesday afternoon.
Under the proposal, Lebanon would send 15,000 troops to take control of south Lebanon and Hezbollah strongholds, and Israel would withdraw from the region.
"There will be no authority, no one in command, no weapons other than those of the Lebanese state," Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said on Al-Arabiya television.
The new plan was unanimously backed by the Lebanese government, including the two Hezbollah members in Lebanon's cabinet.
The proposal differs from one drafted by the United States and France that demands a "full cessation of hostilities" on both sides, a buffer zone patrolled by Lebanese forces and UN troops, but does not specifically call for an Israeli withdrawal.
But Qatari Foreign Minister Hamad bin Jassem Al Thani, the head of a three-man Arab League delegation and representing the only Arab nation on the Security Council, said there would be negative repercussions of adopting what he called a "a non-enforceable resolution."
He said the U.S.-France draft text would "further complicate the situation on the ground and have grave ramifications for Lebanon, Arab countries and all the countries of the region."
Lebanon's acting Foreign Minister Tarek Mitri told the Security Council that the draft resolution "falls short" of his government's expectations.
While Israeli UN Ambassador Dan Gillerman didn't comment specifically on the new Arab League ceasefire proposal, he stressed what's most important is "whether the council and international community can adopt a course of action ... which will end the threat that Hezbollah and its sponsors pose to Israel and Lebanon."
Israel has called for the deployment of Lebanese troops in the region for some time but has indicated it wants Hezbollah to be removed as a threat to Israel first.
Gillerman told the council that any resolution package requires a "strong, robust and effective international force which will ensure the dismantling and disarming of all terrorist groups."
French and German officials have expressed optimism that there could be a compromise deal that would merge the U.S.-France text and the Arab League proposal, CBC's Neil Herland reported. French officials in Paris said a vote could come as early as Thursday.
Israel has about 10,000 soldiers battling hundreds of guerrillas with the militant group Hezbollah in south Lebanon.
Israel studying ceasefire plan: Olmert
Earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said his government is studying the proposal to end the conflict, which has entered its fourth week.
"The faster we leave south Lebanon, the happier we will be, especially if we have achieved our goals," he said.
Olmert said the proposal is "interesting," but must include the disarming of Hezbollah guerrillas.
"I'm not familiar yet with all the details," he said. "What would be the structure of the forces that will join the Lebanese army and what will be the strength of these forces and the makeup of these forces?"
By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press
August 9, 2006
UNITED NATIONS - The United States and France appeared at odds Wednesday over Arab demands to change a U.N. resolution they are co-sponsoring to call for a complete cessation of Israeli-Hezbollah hostilities and withdrawal of Israeli forces, diplomats said.
France proposed new language on a total cease-fire and Israeli pullout, but the Americans rejected it out of concern that without a robust international force, a vacuum would be created in southern Lebanon, a Hezbollah stronghold, the diplomats said.
While both countries welcomed Lebanon's announcement Monday that it will deploy 15,000 soldiers to the south when
Israel withdraws, the U.S. does not believe this force and U.N. peacekeepers can prevent a vacuum without the international force, the diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the negotiations are private.
U.S. and French diplomats had been hoping for a vote on the draft early this week. But the differences between the co-sponsors meant that a Security Council vote on the resolution to try to end the fighting would be delayed at least until Thursday.
France's U.N. Ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere said he still expects a vote this week.
"Our goal is to produce a text that will be helpful, which will help to have the hostilities ending, and a text which will help to a sustainable solution," he said. "The text will be improved, and I am working to improve the text."
U.S. Ambassador John Bolton refused to comment on specifics of the negotiations but acknowledged in an interview that differences remain.
"We're still pressing for a vote on a resolution as early as we can, but we've got to reach agreement, and there are still a lot of issues that need to be considered," Bolton told The Associated Press. "So, when will the vote be? It's hard to say at this point."
Bolton and de La Sabliere were expected to continue their negotiations on Wednesday and meet with three Arab envoys who flew to New York to address the Security Council and support the Lebanese government's seven-point plan, which it wants incorporated in the resolution.
The U.S.-French draft circulated Saturday calls for "a full cessation of hostilities," with Hezbollah immediately stopping all attacks and Israel ending offensive military operations. But Israel would still be allowed to take defensive action and there is no call for the withdrawal of its 10,000 troops from southern Lebanon.
Lebanon opposed the draft, saying it favored Israel. The Lebanese government demanded that the cessation of hostilities must be complete and said all Israeli troops must leave, warning that their presence would be viewed as a new occupation and citing Hezbollah's threat to shoot at any Israeli soldiers in the country.
De La Sabliere, asked about these two demands, said "we are trying to incorporate more to take into account the concerns they have expressed about the two issues."
Lebanon also wants the resolution to include a commitment to release Lebanese and Israeli prisoners, an agreement to put the disputed Chebaa Farms area on the Lebanon-Syria-Israel border under U.N. jurisdiction, an extension of Lebanese government authority throughout the country, a beefed-up U.N. force in southern Lebanon and international help to rebuild the country.
At an open Security Council meeting on Tuesday, Qatar's Foreign Minister Hamad bin Jassem Al Thani, speaking on behalf of the Arab delegation, warned Israel that continuing attacks on Lebanon will "sow the seeds of hatred and extremism in the area" rather than restore peace and stability.
PARIS, Aug. 9 (Xinhua) -- French President Jacques Chirac said on Wednesday that only dialogue can achieve peace and security in the Middle East, calling for an immediate end to fighting between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah group.
It would be "immoral" for the international community to give up efforts for an immediate ceasefire in the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, he added.
Chirac was speaking at a televised press conference in Toulon, after a meeting with Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie, Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy and Prime Minister Dominique De Villepin to discuss French efforts to win support for a draft ceasefire resolution on Lebanon in the United Nations.
The French leader also warned that the ongoing Israeli-Hezbollah conflict was a threat to the stability of the whole Middle East, but promised that "France is fully mobilized...to secure a ceasefire and reach a durable settlement of this crisis."
'French-US cooperation on Lebanon a long way from Iraq war tensions'
Copy editors may not have had too much call for the phrase 'French-US cooperation' over the last three years, but that was the headline of an AP wire story that made the rounds of the world's media outlets last week. The same headline appeared everywhere from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to The Hindu news update service.
The story quoted US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice saying "We're working with the French very closely.'' And then French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy chimed in: "We are working well with the Americans, working night and day.''
The upshot of the story is that the France and US are back to being more or less on the same diplomatic page in the latest Middle East conflict, although, granted, both sides tried to hold out for different wording on that page. The broader implication behind the headline was that France and the US are over their all-out feud and back to normal levels of bickering.
If you're a faithful Expatica reader, you knew all the way back in September that the 'misunderstanding' over the Iraq war was 'behind us'. So the US ambassador to France then declared to the French press in a story we picked up.
And this is all for the good if you're an American living in France as I am.
First, it is a lovely if fragile hope that Franco-American cooperation could actually help bring a halt to the current fighting in Lebanon.
And it's also just pleasant to imagine less future snarkiness between the two nations to which many of us devote our affections and our tax monies.
But I wonder...
The politicians
There is some evidence that Rice and Douste-Blazy's earnest declarations of nose-to-the-grindstone collaboration is a classic case of protesting too much.
Just to continue focusing on this one example of Franco-American cooperation on Lebanon, we may be a long way from the Iraqi war tensions. But perhaps not really all that far.
Diplomatic gossip would have it that the only thing that the two men chiefly responsible for that resolution - American ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, and his French counterpart, Jean-Marc de la Sablière - have in common is how much they despise each other.
One wag at the blog Wonkette described Bolton in the same photo used here: "This is the look that comes over your face when you're staring at the two people you hate most."
In more analytical detail, but with basically the same punchline, a story from Conflicts Forum co-directors Mark Perry and Alastair Crooke said the French-American ceasefire negotiations at the UN "nearly ended in disaster".
The authors argued that the semantic parrying over the UN draft resolution masks a much deeper and possibly irreconcilable differences on Israel. The apparent victory represented by the delivery of a document to the Security Council only "papered over a deepening rift between the United States and its European partners".
And, only days after Douste-Blazy confidently predicted that the Franco-American resolution would be quickly adopted by both sides, France finds itself the target of Lebanese charges of caving in to US pressure. This after France had long cultivated the role of mediator to Lebanon and the other Middle East states that are not Israel.
So, it may not take long for France to decide 'working night and day' with the Americans is just not worth the grief.
Real people
But let's say for the sake of argument that Franco-American political relations have indeed recovered from the dispute over the Iraq war. What about your average person on the street: are both sides tired of bashing each other yet?
Not according to SuperFrenchie, a popular blog site that reflects the view of a French expat living in the US and supplier of that must-have bumper sticker: "Annoy Bill O'Reilly. Buy French Products." SuperFrenchie would point to a discussion board posting seen in late July on the MSNBC website that advocated killing all French people.
Clearly, sadly, neither side has run short of venom yet.
But if you ignore the obvious crazies and sports-inspired hysteria (this above posting seemed inspired by the Floyd Landis doping scandal), public opinion had already started thawing to some extent, at least according to The Pew Global Attitudes Project.
It released a survey back in June 2005 that said 43 percent of French people have a 'favourable opinion' of the US. This figure was up slightly from 2004's 37 percent but still lower than in 2002 when 63 percent of French respondents looked favourably on the US. Interestingly, the percentage of 'favourable views of the US' is higher in France than in Germany and much higher than in Spain.
In the other direction, 46 percent of Americans surveyed in 2005 had a positive view of France. This was up from 33 percent in 2004 but still way down from a 79 percent positive response in 2002.
My point is that things are better, but too much damage has been done in the three short years since the American invasion of Iraq to recover from easily, even if French and American political interests do indeed again start to align.
French-bashing on the part of Bush policy-makers and discussion board blowhards is less an expression of opinion than a reflex, a habit they've gotten used to indulging. Likewise, anti-Americanism in France is less a reaction to where America is headed as to where France is headed; as long as the French feel uncomfortable about the second, there's no reason to veer from the first.
(And then there's John Bolton, who got his current job on the sly because Bush sneaked him the office keys during the legislative summer recess. He has since remained relatively muzzled, but who knows what verbal bombs he'll drop if he manages to face down a real Senate confirmation hearing come September.)
In other words, it's important to notice a headline with the words "French-US cooperation". You still may not read them again for a while.
UNITED NATIONS, Aug. 8 (Xinhua) -- A three-member Arab League team warned the UN Security Council on Tuesday that Lebanon would be bogged down in a civil war unless there was an immediate ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon.
Qatar's Foreign Minister Hamad bin Jassem Al-Thani, representing the Arab team here to press for changes to a draft resolution on Lebanon sponsored by France and the United States, told the council that adopting a non-enforceable resolution would have "grave ramifications" for Lebanon.
"If we adopt the resolution without fully considering the reality of Lebanon, we will face a civil war," he said, warning that by doing so the international community will "destroy Lebanon" instead of helping it.
The draft "requires a careful consideration that takes into account the Arab position" as expressed in a special meeting of the League of Arab States which adopted the seven-point plan drawn up by Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, Al-Thani said.
He warned the council against adopting the draft in its current form because it would only complicate the crisis.
"We draw the attention of the august council to the repercussions of adopting a non-enforceable resolution that would further complicate the situation on the ground and have grave ramification for Lebanon, Arab countries and all the countries of the region," Al-Thani said.
He urged the council to include in the draft a call for an immediate and comprehensive ceasefire and a withdrawal of the Israeli forces behind the Blue Line, the unofficial border drawn up by the UN between Lebanon and Israel.
Al-Thani called for a draft that would support the decision of the Lebanese government to extend its authority over all its territories by deploying the army.
The draft resolution calls for "a full cessation of hostilitiesbased upon, in particular, the immediate cessation by Hezbollah ofall attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensivemilitary operations."
It also asks Israel and Lebanon to reach consensus on a series of principles for a permanent ceasefire and a long-term solution before the Council could adopt a second resolution authorizing an international force to be deployed in Lebanon.
Lebanon has rejected the draft, accusing it of failing to call for a withdrawal of some 10,000 Israeli troops from its territory.
Israel has not formally commented on the draft. But a senior government official said his country sees it favorably, partly because it allows soldiers to stay in southern Lebanon before an international force can take over.
Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed-Hamid Albar said on Tuesday he was unhappy with the draft resolution, which he termed as a document in favor of "the aggressor."
Faced with strong Arab objections, Paris and Washington are revising the draft resolution. Both countries said that they might consider making changes to the draft resolution.
France's UN Ambassador Jean-Marc de la Sabliere on Monday promised to take into account Lebanon's concern that the draft does not seek the withdrawal of Israeli troops.
The U.S. also hinted changes would be possible. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said his country would consider changes only if they make sense.
"We're going to listen to those points of view. If they make sense, then we'll certainly consider them," the spokesman said.
No action is expected until Thursday at the earliest. The draftresolution has not yet been introduced to the 15-member Security Council, which usually happens 24 hours before a vote.
BEIRUT, Aug. 8 (Xinhua) -- Lebanese President Emile Lahoud on Tuesday refused the deployment of a multi-national force in southern Lebanon.
In an interview with a British TV channel, he said Lebanon wanted the UN peace-keeping troops currently stationed in Lebanon to be reinforced rather than the deployment of a multi-national force. He also said Lebanon would refuse to accept any force not sent under UN commander.
He demanded again Israel's immediate withdrawal, saying the Lebanon-Israel conflict would not stop as long as Israeli forces remained in Lebanon.
The root reason for the current crisis is that Israel has refused to return Shebaa Farms to Lebanon or put them under UN jurisdiction, he said.
The president criticized Washington for taking sides with Israel, saying the UN Security Council draft resolution, sponsored by the United States and France, was unfair.
Lahoud said any resolutions on the issue should include the seven-point proposal passed by the Lebanese government, adding that as long as the proposal was put into practice, the Lebanese people could reach an agreement on anything.
Shebaa Farms, a collection of 14 farms dotting the western slopes of Mount Hermon, cover an area of around 10 square kilometers. Israel occupied southern Lebanon for 18 years and partially withdrew its troops in 2000. But Israel remained in the Shebaa Farms area, which it seized in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora put forward the seven-point proposal at an international conference on the Israel-Lebanon issue in Rome on July 26, demanding Israel's immediate cease-fire and withdrawal. It also called for exchanges of prisoners of war and asked Israel to hand jurisdiction of Shebaa Farms to the United Nations.
The conflict between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah erupted on July 12 when Israel started a retaliatory military offensive after Hezbollah staged an incursion into Israeli territory, killing several soldiers and seizing two others.
Around 1,000 Lebanese and more than 100 Israelis have been killed in the conflict.
Lebanon will deploy its army in the south of the country after the Israel Defense Forces' withdrawal from the area, the Lebanese cabinet agreed Monday night, in a decision supported by all the ministers present, including the five Shi'ite ministers who represent Hezbollah and Amal.
Hezbollah's Al-Manar television station would dismiss as feminine and sentimental the view that peoples don't win wars. Like other Arab analysts, they regard attacking Israeli civilians and engaging the IDF in fierce battles as an Arab victory. But where's the victory for the 1,000 Lebanese the Israeli army has killed? Where's the victory in a million people fleeing homes that were bombed and destroyed? Are such losses worthwhile just to demonstrate that a guerrilla group can entangle a regular army and expose such an Israeli weakness?
On the other hand, the non-victory of the other side is not an Israeli victory, even if Israel triples the number of Hezbollah fighters and doubles the number of Lebanese mothers that it has killed so far. Even if the Israeli Air Force wipes out a thousand villages, it would still not bring back to life the Israelis who were killed.
The trauma and economic damages will continue to affect many people's lives. Even if the cease-fire agreement is closer to Israel's positions than to Lebanon's, it would still not be a victory. Israel's insistence to unilaterally lay down the rules in the region perpetuates and deepens its character as an alien element within it. Israel's future generations will continue to pay for this obstinacy.
It comes as no surprise that this war has not yet been finished in one fell swoop. For six years, the Israeli army has accustomed its soldiers to regard their assaults in the occupied territories as "fighting" and "battles." They fostered the myth that there was symmetry between the advanced regular Israeli army and groups of Palestinians armed with light weapons and homespun bombs, scurrying among the tanks and helicopters that are demolishing their houses and fields. Indeed, on a few occasions, the Palestinians succeeded in guerrilla operations that killed or wounded the troops. But these were the exception. The suicide attacks inside Israel attest to the "military" weakness of the Palestinian organizations.
Now the IDF has sent to Lebanon soldiers who have been taught to believe that warfare is running down refugees' homes with tanks and bulldozers; that a battle is firing from helicopters at fighters with Kalashnikov rifles who cannot even scratch the Israeli tank surfaces. These soldiers think that defending the homeland is preventing hundreds of thousands of people from living like human beings, by operating roadblocks in the territories.
By another twisted standard set by the Israeli army in recent years, homes in northern Israel whose occupants have left to escape the Katyushas are to be designated as "abandoned." This, after all, is how Israeli military spokesmen justified, initially, the fact that bulldozers systematically demolished the homes of civilians in Khan Yunis and Rafah - civilians who had fled massive Israeli fire.
Bulldozers will not raze the homes of Israelis in the North, but why should thieves, for example, not take from them whatever they can get their hands on? These are, after all, abandoned homes, the thieves will say in their defense, citing the precedents.
Why bring this up today? First, because the war - state cruelty - against the Palestinians is ongoing. Second, because Israel's double standard and basic contempt for anyone who isn't "us" explains better than the army's outdated equipment and faulty training why it has been receiving blows so far and will continue to receive them. Israel is convinced that in Lebanon, as in Gaza and the West Bank, its unlimited power to destroy is both a deterrent and spur to political change. It is ignoring the human factor - that the Palestinians and Lebanese' fortitude grows in lockstep with our strengthening powers of destruction.
We are justly concerned about the welfare of northern residents, proud of their fortitude, understand those who leave, are shocked by the death of each person and by every rocket hit, and identify with those suffering from anxiety. Take what the northern residents have been going through for a month, multiply it by 1,000, add an economic blockade, power and water cuts, and no wages. This is how the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been "living" for the past six years.
The Israelis allow their army to continue destroying, trampling and killing in the Palestinian territories. Here, like in Lebanon, the real intelligence and security failure is Israel's ignoring the extent of our uninhibited, unrestrained devastation and their amazing power of human endurance. This is why Israel has delusions of "victories." If the homemade rockets are still being fired at Sderot despite the Palestinians' extensive suffering, it is because they have concluded, correctly, that Israel's destruction power is not intended to stop Qassam rockets - or to free Gilad Shalit. It is intended to force them to accept a surrender arrangement, which they reject not with military victories but with their power of endurance.
The Bush administration has drafted amendments to a war crimes law that would eliminate the risk of prosecution for political appointees, CIA officers and former military personnel for humiliating or degrading war prisoners, according to U.S. officials and a copy of the amendments.
Officials say the amendments would alter a U.S. law passed in the mid-1990s that criminalized violations of the Geneva Conventions, a set of international treaties governing military conduct in wartime. The conventions generally bar the cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment of wartime prisoners without spelling out what all those terms mean.
The draft U.S. amendments to the War Crimes Act would narrow the scope of potential criminal prosecutions to 10 specific categories of illegal acts against detainees during a war, including torture, murder, rape and hostage-taking.
Left off the list would be what the Geneva Conventions refer to as "outrages upon [the] personal dignity" of a prisoner and deliberately humiliating acts -- such as the forced nakedness, use of dog leashes and wearing of women's underwear seen at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq -- that fall short of torture.
"People have gotten worried, thinking that it's quite likely they might be under a microscope," said a U.S. official. Foreigners are using accusations of unlawful U.S. behavior as a way to rein in American power, the official said, and the amendments are partly meant to fend this off.
The plan has provoked concern at the International Committee of the Red Cross, the entity responsible for safeguarding the Geneva Conventions. A U.S official confirmed that the group's lawyers visited the Pentagon and the State Department last week to discuss the issue but left without any expectation that their objections would be heeded.
The administration has not officially released the draft amendments. Although they are part of broader legislation on military courts still being discussed within the government, their substance has already been embraced by key officials and will not change, two government sources said.
No criminal prosecutions have been brought under the War Crimes Act, which Congress passed in 1996 and expanded in 1997. But 10 experts on the laws of war, who reviewed a draft of the amendments at the request of The Washington Post, said the changes could affect how those involved in detainee matters act and how other nations view Washington's respect for its treaty obligations.
"This removal of [any] reference to humiliating and degrading treatment will be perceived by experts and probably allies as 'rewriting' " the Geneva Conventions, said retired Army Lt. Col. Geoffrey S. Corn, who was recently chief of the war law branch of the Army's Office of the Judge Advocate General. Others said the changes could affect how foreigners treat U.S. soldiers.
The amendments would narrow the reach of the War Crimes Act, which now states in general terms that Americans can be prosecuted in federal criminal courts for violations of "Common Article 3" of the Geneva Conventions, which the United States ratified in 1949.
U.S. officials have long interpreted the War Crimes Act as applying to civilians, including CIA officers, and former U.S. military personnel. Misconduct by serving military personnel is handled by military courts, which enforce a prohibition on cruelty and mistreatment. The Army Field Manual, which is being revised, separately bars cruel and degrading treatment, corporal punishment, assault, and sensory deprivation.
Common Article 3 is considered the universal minimum standard of treatment for civilian detainees in wartime. It requires that they be treated humanely and bars "violence to life and person," including murder, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture. It further prohibits "outrages upon personal dignity" such as "humiliating and degrading treatment." And it prohibits sentencing or execution by courts that fail to provide "all the judicial guarantees . . . recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples."
The risk of possible prosecution of officials, CIA officers and former service personnel over alleged rough treatment of prisoners arises because the Bush administration, from January 2002 until June, maintained that the Geneva Conventions' protections did not apply to prisoners captured in Afghanistan.
As a result, the government authorized interrogations using methods that U.S. military lawyers have testified were in violation of Common Article 3; it also created a system of military courts not specifically authorized by Congress, which denied defendants many routine due process rights
The Supreme Court decided in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld on June 29, however, that the administration's policy of not honoring the Geneva Conventions was illegal, and that prisoners in the fight against al-Qaeda are entitled to such protections.
U.S. officials have since responded in three ways: They have asked Congress to pass legislation blocking the prisoners' right to sue for the enforcement of those protections. They have drafted legislation allowing the consideration of intelligence-gathering needs during interrogations, in place of an absolute human rights standard.
They also formulated the War Crimes Act amendments spelling out some serious crimes and omitting altogether some that U.S. officials describe as less serious. For example, two acts considered under international law as constituting "outrages" -- rape and sexual abuse -- are listed as prosecutable.
But humiliations, degrading treatment and other acts specifically deemed as "outrages" by the international tribunal prosecuting war crimes in the former Yugoslavia -- such as placing prisoners in "inappropriate conditions of confinement," forcing them to urinate or defecate in their clothes, and merely threatening prisoners with "physical, mental, or sexual violence" -- would not be among the listed U.S. crimes, officials said.
"It's plain that this proposal would abrogate portions of Common Article 3," said Derek P. Jinks, a University of Texas assistant professor of law and author of a forthcoming book on the Geneva Conventions. The "entire family of techniques" that military interrogators used to deliberately degrade and humiliate, and thus coerce, detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at Abu Ghraib "is not addressed in any way, shape or form" in the new language authorizing prosecutions, he said.
At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last Wednesday, however, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales complained repeatedly about the ambiguity and broad reach of the phrase "outrages upon personal dignity." He said that, "if left undefined, this provision will create an unacceptable degree of uncertainty for those who fight to defend us from terrorist attack."
Lawmakers from both parties expressed skepticism at the hearing. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said the military's top uniformed lawyers had told him they are training to comply with Common Article 3 and that complying would not impede operations.
If the underlying treaty provision is too vague, asked Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), then how could the Defense Department instruct its personnel in a July 7 memorandum to certify their compliance with it? Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, who had signed the memo, responded at the hearing that he was concerned that "degrading" and "humiliating" are relative terms.
"I mean, what is degrading in one society may not be degrading in another, or may be degrading in one religion, not in another religion," England said. "And since it does have an international interpretation, which is generally, frankly, different than our own, it becomes very, very relevant" to define the meaning in new legislation.
This viewpoint appears to have won over the top uniformed military lawyers, who have criticized other aspects of the administration's detainee policy but said that they support the thrust of these amendments. Maj. Gen. Scott C. Black, the Army's judge advocate general, said in testimony that the changes can "elevate" the War Crimes Act "from an aspiration to an instrument" by defining offenses that can be prosecuted instead of endorsing "the ideals of the laws of war."
Lawyer David Rivkin, formerly on the staff of the Justice Department and the White House counsel's office, said "it's not a question of being stingy but coming up with a well-defined statutory scheme that would withstand constitutional challenges and would lead to successful prosecutions." Former Justice Department lawyer John C. Yoo similarly said that U.S. soldiers and agents should "not be beholden to the definition of vague words by international or foreign courts, who often pursue nakedly political agendas at odds with the United States."
But Corn, the Army's former legal expert, said that Common Article 3 was, according to its written history, "left deliberately vague because efforts to define it would invariably lead to wrongdoers identifying 'exceptions,' and because the meaning was plain -- treat people like humans and not animals or objects." Eugene R. Fidell, president of the nonprofit National Institute of Military Justice, said that laws governing military conduct are filled with broadly described prohibitions that are nonetheless enforceable, including "dereliction of duty," "maltreatment" and "conduct unbecoming an officer."
Retired Rear Adm. John D. Hutson, the Navy's top uniformed lawyer from 1997 to 2000 and now dean of the Franklin Pierce Law Center, said his view is "don't trust the motives of any lawyer who changes a statutory provision that is short, clear, and to the point and replaces it with something that is much longer, more complicated, and includes exceptions within exceptions."
Summary: A US Navy sailor, Ariel J. Weinmann, is suspected of spying for Israel and has been held in prison for four months, according to an article published Monday in the Saudi daily Al-Watan. It reported that Weinmann is being held at a military base in Virginia on suspicion of espionage and desertion.
According to the navy, Weinmann was apprehended on March 26 "after it was learned that he had been listed as a deserter by his command." Though initial information released by the navy makes no mention of it, Al-Watan reported that he was returning from an undisclosed "foreign country." American sources close to the Defense Department told Al-Watan that Israel was the country in question.
Al-Watan speculated that if Weinmann spied on behalf of the Mossad, it would be the biggest espionage case since Jonathan Pollard's arrest. Pollard, who worked as a civilian intelligence analyst for the US Navy, was caught in 1985 and convicted of spying for Israel. He is currently serving a life sentence in the US.
A US Navy sailor, Ariel J. Weinmann, is suspected of spying for Israel and has been held in prison for four months, according to an article published Monday in the Saudi daily Al-Watan. It reported that Weinmann is being held at a military base in Virginia on suspicion of espionage and desertion.
According to the navy, Weinmann was apprehended on March 26 "after it was learned that he had been listed as a deserter by his command." Though initial information released by the navy makes no mention of it, Al-Watan reported that he was returning from an undisclosed "foreign country." American sources close to the Defense Department told Al-Watan that Israel was the country in question.
"The US Navy concluded Article 32 proceedings [a pretrial investigation] in the case of Fire Control Technician Third Class Ariel J. Weinmann on July 26, 2006," Ted Brown, a media relations officer at the US Fleet Forces Command, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday. The US Fleet Forces Command is the "convening authority of the case... and will make the decision with respect to what charges, if any, will be referred to a general court-martial."
The veracity of Al-Watan's claim that Weinmann is suspected of spying for Israel remains in question, and military and Pentagon spokesmen are remaining tightlipped. A public affairs officer at the Office of Naval Intelligence told the Post that he was unaware of the allegations against Weinmann.
Al-Watan speculated that if Weinmann spied on behalf of the Mossad, it would be the biggest espionage case since Jonathan Pollard's arrest. Pollard, who worked as a civilian intelligence analyst for the US Navy, was caught in 1985 and convicted of spying for Israel. He is currently serving a life sentence in the US.
According to the navy, "Weinmann was assigned to the USS Albuquerque (SSN 706) and had deserted on or about July 3, 2005." The Albuquerque is a Los Angeles-class attack submarine.
Though the navy's initial press release contained no reference to Israel, Brown stated that more detailed information about the case would be released shortly.
Wearing white and trusting that God will watch over him in a war zone, the American Christian Evangelical leader Pat Robertson is visiting Israel this week to offer his support for a country whose very existence he believes is threatened by Hizbullah in Lebanon.
Arriving on Monday for a three-day visit, he has since traveled up to the northern boarder where, in spite of the warning sirens and the constant thud of rocket explosions, he televised a segment of his evangelical TV show The 700 Club, which is produced five days a week and broadcast around the world.
"We are praying for Israel during this time of crisis," he told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday over coffee and tea before he left for the northern border.
"The Evangelical community is standing with this nation," said the founder and chairman of the Christian Broadcasting Network, who has received a number of awards recognizing his long time friendship to Israel. The strong US support for Israel in general is partially due to the Evangelical community, he told The Jerusalem Post.
Robertson added that he plans to express this support to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert when he meets with him on Wednesday. But in spite of the warm friendship he feels for Olmert, he will also tell him, diplomatically, that the Evangelical community is opposed to any plans to give up land and that it would be a mistake for Olmert to link his realignment plan to withdraw from areas of the West Bank with the fight against Hizbullah in Lebanon.
Was this a previously scheduled visit?
It was totally spur of the moment. I wanted to get over here before the war was over. I didn't know they [Hizbullah] were going to heat it up the way they they did in Haifa a couple of days ago.
Do you think the war is going to be over soon?
Those who would like to see Hizbullah eliminated would like to see the Israelis have the time that is necessary to finish the job.
Where do your sympathies lie?
Finishing the job.
How would you explain what is happening here within a religious framework?
It is self-defense [by Israel], which is cause for just war. Israel is the spear against what you would call the Islam-o-fascism that is threatening all of the free loving people of the western world. There is no question that Hizbullah is the proxy for the Iranians.
Is there a message from God that is being played out here? Do you put it in those terms?
The Jews are God's chosen people. Israel is a special nation that has a special place in God's heart. He will defend this nation. So Evangelical Christians stand with Israel. That is one of the reasons I am here.
Do you see the violence between Israel and Hizbullah as part of the US's struggle against Iran?
It is a struggle against Islamo-facism, which is a radical branch of Islam that is threatening democratic institutions everywhere. It is part of the struggle that we have in Iraq. The nexus of this one comes out Iran, which is ruled by a man who seems to be wild-eyed fanatic.
In the US, has evangelical support remained firmly behind Israel in the last few weeks, even with all the painful footage of the conflict from Lebanon being broadcast and even though there are many Christians who live in Lebanon?
The images that are being portrayed in the press and the United States are not deterring the Evangelicals from wholeheartedly supporting Israel.
I personally have had warm relations with the Christians in Lebanon for many years. They are our friends and brothers and sisters. It is tragic what is going on.
Lebanon was just a lovely, charming country, where they had peace between Christians and Muslims. When [Palestinian Authority head] Yasser Arafat came into the peace-loving country, he tore it all to pieces. There was a terrible civil war. It has continued to this day. The harmony that existed between the Christians and the Muslims has been tragically severed.
They (the Lebanese government) didn't deal with the PLO. They were too weak to do it. They haven't dealt with Hizbullah. They do not have an effective army. The Syrians came and abused the Lebanese terribly for a number of years.
Under the United Nations they (the Lebanese army) were suppose to come down and occupy that southern sector that Israel withdrew from. After Israel withdrew Hizbullah came into the gap. I think they persecuted the Christians. They made it difficult for them to exist. I am very familiar with the people and the situation. We ran a television station there for 18 years.
The only thing that dismays the Evangelicals is when Israel gives up territory that it should have and seems to cater to the whims of the world pressure.
What, then, of Prime Minister Olmert's convergence plan?
It's an absolute disaster. Can you imagine instead of Hamas in Gaza you would have Hamas all over the West Bank threatening Israel. Between the Kassam rockets and the Katyusha rockets and other more advanced rockets there would not be even one place in Israel that would be safe. I can not even conceive of anyone doing anything in light of what is happening today.
When you speak to the prime minister tomorrow are you going to tell him this?
I will do it in a diplomatic fashion. I just can't conceive of it, knowing the fragile nature of Israel, the lack of defensible borders... to give away that territory. I flew a helicopter along the wall and looked down. In one of the Arab villages on the West Bank you look right down to the main runway on Ben-Gurion airport, which means even a conventional mortar would interrupt any civilian air traffic from the major airport in Israel...
[Still,] Olmert has been elected as the leader of Israel. The Israelis have to be responsible for what their leaders do. It's up to them as a free society to determine the course of action of their nation. I would be surprised in light of the current military situation if the Israeli people favor convergence.
In the past you made comments that seemed to indicate that former prime minister Ariel Sharon's illness was divine retribution for his withdrawal from Gaza.
My comments frankly were distorted by the press. I was merely pointing to the Prophet Joel. In speaking for God, Joel calls this land God's land. There is a warning against those "who divide his land." I didn't say there was some judgment against Sharon. He was a friend of mine. I liked him very much. What angered people is not what I said but what was said that I said.
And if Olmert relinquishes land?
I don't think the holy God is going to be happy about someone giving up his land. But that would be between Mr. Olmert and his God. It isn't for me to say.
Ehud Olmert and I have been good friends. I got to know him when he was mayor of Jerusalem. I have been at a pro-Israel rally with him in Washington. He has been on my program on several occasions.
I made a speech to the Herzliya conference several years ago. I said, 'We stand with you but your evangelical friends make one request, please do not commit suicide.' I make the same request: I love you but please do not commit suicide...
We have been asking our audience on a daily basis to pray for Israel. We have been mobilizing support. People in at least 20 different nations around the world have been joining in prayer for Israel at this time.
Are there special prayers you are asking people to say?
Not specifically. Just, God stand with the people of Israel during this time of crisis. There are fervent prayers going up for Israel right now, all over the evangelical community all over the world.
Do you see this as the biggest crisis that Israel has faced?
Israel has had bigger crises than this one. But Israel is as vulnerable as it has ever been in its history.
Comment: Israel is "vulnerable" despite having the fourth most powerful military in the world and an estimated arsenal of 200 nuclear weapons...
This is the most dangerous time in the existence of the modern state of Israel. Just take for example the new Iranian rockets missiles that are now in the arsenal of Hizbullah.
What happens if they are tipped with chemical or biological weapons and dropped into Tel Aviv?
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has announced his goal is to destroy Israel and to establish chaos in the world. When you have an absolute fanatic in charge of a major country that is wealthy from oil it is a very dangerous situation. Not to mention the fact that nations of the earth have not been exactly friendly to Israel. The United States is her greatest supporter. That is partly due to the fact that so many of the evangelical Christians are in the US and support this country.
You weren't scared to come here?
Because of the missiles? This is like home. We trust the Lord, my wife does and I do.
Do you trust the Lord to stand on the side of Israel?
I think he will but we can not guarantee that God is going to rescue us from our own foolishness. It would be presumptuous of me or of anyone else to say, 'God, I am going to make foolish mistakes. Please protect me from them.'
In the long run, God will look after Israel. The prophecies of the Bible will come to pass. We just need to pray that there will be wise leadership for this nation and that they will make the appropriate moves to keep this country strong.
Do you worry that we could be on the verge of some of the apocalyptic visions that are portrayed in the scriptures?
There was a prophet Ezekiel in the time of the Bible who wrote that in the last days there would be an invasion of Israel by a coalition that would include Iran, Russia, Turkey and the Sudan and Libya. God himself is going to defeat that great army that had come against his people. That is a prophecy of one of the Jewish prophets that has yet to be fulfilled. It said that it would be in the later days when Israel has been brought from the nations of the earth and are living in peace in their land.
Are we on the verge of this apocalyptic vision?
Could be.
Do you think that what is happening now speaks to the fact that Israel's withdrawal from the south Lebanon buffer zone in 2000 was a mistake?
It has made it more difficult for the country. There was a great deal of public sentiment against staying in southern Lebanon. There were continuous killings. Hizbullah would plant road-side bombs and then they would go up to the hills with binoculars and watch till an Israeli convoy would come past that site. Then they would detonate the bombs.
I was there on the day or two after a terrible explosion took place just down the street from our studio. It was a particularly gruesome example of young soldiers screaming in pain after they had been blown up by a Hizbullah bomb. Israel public opinion was very strongly against staying there. But it's always a mistake to give up territory that is needed for your defense.
When Israel pulled out of southern Lebanon, Hizbullah rode tanks to the border shouting, 'On to Jerusalem.' They proclaimed that they had defeated the IDF. The Muslim world hailed it as a great triumph. It enhanced the prestige of Hizbullah dramatically.
Do you think the US should go to war against Iran?
No. I think the Iranian people favor the US. What ought to happen is some movement to cause a popular uprising against [the rulers of the] country. The people hate them. It is a repressive regime that has taken away the freedoms of those people. If the United States went to war, then that hatred would be turned against us. The vast majority of Iranians are under 30 years old and they think that America is great. So why would we go to war with them?
But the US went to war with Iraq?
If had been running the country I would have engineered a coup in Iraq that would have disposed of its leader Saddam Hussein. I would have gone to war against Hussein and not the Iraqi people. I have strong reservations against going to war in another country. But once there are troops in the field you have to support them.
Comment: This "Christian leader" would have engineered a coup to depose Saddam! Hallelujah! PRAISE THE LORD!!
But you support Israeli action in Lebanon?
It's a little bit different. Hizbullah is stronger and the Lebanese government is weak. I do hate to see this fledgling [Lebanese] democracy go down in flames [because of Hizbullah] and it is it is mortally wounded right now.
Comment: Of course the evangelicals are praying for Israel! The evangelicals believe that that the end-times are near. They also believe that when all is said and done, any Jews who don't convert to Christianity will perish. How's that for "supporting Israel"??
DECATUR, Ga. - Cynthia McKinney, the fiery Georgia congresswoman known for her conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11 attacks and the scuffle she had earlier this year with a U.S. Capitol police officer, lost a runoff election Tuesday for her district's Democratic nomination.
Attorney Hank Johnson, a former county commissioner, won the nomination with 59 percent of the vote, surpassing McKinney by more than 11,000 votes.
McKinney, her state's first black congresswoman, has long been controversial. Her suggestion that the Bush administration had advance knowledge of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks helped galvanize opposition and she lost her seat in 2002, but won it again two years ago.
In her latest brouhaha in March, she struck a Capitol police officer who did not recognize her and tried to stop her from entering a House office building.
A grand jury in Washington declined to indict her, but she was forced to apologize before the House. She drew less than 50 percent of the vote in last month's primary.
By John Whitesides
Reuters Political Correspondent
August 9, 2006
HARTFORD, Connecticut - Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman lost a Democratic Party showdown to a relative unknown on Tuesday, a casualty of voter anger over his support for the war in Iraq and President George W. Bush.
Six years after he was chosen the Democratic vice presidential nominee, Lieberman fell in a tight Senate primary battle to wealthy businessman Ned Lamont, who called him a cheerleader for Bush and urged voters to send an anti-war message to the country.
Lieberman conceded defeat but said he would file petitions on Wednesday to run as an independent in November.
"Tomorrow, we launch a new campaign to unite the people of Connecticut," he told cheering supporters at a downtown Hartford hotel. "If you're fed up with the nasty partisanship in Washington, then I ask your help."
Lamont's outsider bid to unseat the three-term senator in Democratic-leaning Connecticut offered a gauge of anti-war sentiment among voters before the election in November, when control of Congress will be up for grabs.
"Connecticut voters do not call for change lightly but today we called for change decisively. No more stay the course," Lamont told supporters at a victory celebration in Meriden, where he was flanked by black leaders
Jesse Jackson and
Al Sharpton.
"Stay the course is not a winning strategy in Iraq and it is not a winning strategy in America," said Lamont, who sent an e-mail to supporters asking them to contact Lieberman and urge him to reconsider his independent bid.
The Connecticut race attracted national attention as a referendum on the war and Democratic anger at Bush, with Lamont calling Lieberman a Bush "lapdog."
Lieberman fought back, emphasizing his experience and Democratic credentials and calling himself a reliable opponent of Bush's domestic agenda.
He argued a quick pullout of troops "would be a disaster for Iraqis and for us" but said the Bush administration had made mistakes in its conduct of the war.
LIEBERMAN TO RUN AS INDEPENDENT
Lieberman wrote a Wall Street Journal article last year headlined "Our Troops Must Stay" and warned Democrats about criticizing Bush on the war.
Lamont, whose last bid for public office was an unsuccessful 1990 state Senate race, will be the Democratic Senate nominee in November against Republican Alan Schlesinger, a former state legislator seen as little threat.
To run as an independent, Lieberman must file petitions with 7,500 valid signatures with the Connecticut Secretary of State by the end of the day on Wednesday.
Lieberman, who held a wide lead in polls over Lamont in May but trailed him by double digits in a poll last week, portrayed his loss by a spread of 52-48 percent as a sign of momentum and called it "a much closer race than all the pundits were predicting."
Polls show Lieberman, who draws support from independents and Republicans, leading in a three-way race with Lamont and Schlesinger but that could change after Lamont's primary win and months of heavy media coverage for the challenger.
His independent bid will also put pressure on congressional Democrats in Washington, who will have to choose between supporting Lamont, the choice of Democratic voters in Connecticut, or their colleague Lieberman.
Lamont's win offered vindication to the army of grass roots Internet activists who rallied around his campaign and provided volunteer muscle and energy for the cable television executive and political novice.
Lamont spent more than $3 million of his own money and a total of $5 million on the campaign, although he was still outspent by Lieberman's $7 million campaign.
More than 275,000 ballots were cast in the primary, in which about 27,000 newly registered Democrats were able to vote. Some towns in Connecticut were recording more than 50 percent turnout, officials said, high for a primary.
Last Updated Wed, 09 Aug 2006 00:05:31 EDT
CBC News
Ned Lamont has won the chance to take his anti-Iraq war position to voters in Connecticut this fall by beating a long-established politician in the race to represent the Democratic Party in the November senate election.
Lamont finished slightly ahead of Sen. Joe Lieberman in primary voting on Tuesday night. The challenger attacked Lieberman, who won his senate seat three times and was the Democrat's vice-presidential candidate in the 2000 election, for backing the Iraq war.
"Three years ago, President George Bush rushed our country to war in Iraq and Senator Lieberman has cheered him on every step of the way. No, there was no imminent threat to America, there were no weapons of mass destruction, and we were not greeted as liberators," Lamont said on his website.
"Today, America is no safer, Israel is no safer, Iran is more dangerous, Osama bin Laden is still at large, and our brave troops are stuck in the middle of a bloody civil war. I believe that those leaders who got us into this mess should be held accountable."
He proposes withdrawing U.S. combat soldiers in Iraq, while continuing to provide the Iraqi government with logistical and training support.
Lieberman was only the fourth incumbent senator since 1980 to lose a primary election.
Even before the votes were counted, Lamont was characterizing the race in terms of a vote on U.S. policy.
"A lot of people around the country are looking to Connecticut to see what course they want for this country," he said early Tuesday at a campaign stop.
"Tonight we voted for a big change," he told supporters after his victory.
Lamont won 52 per cent of the votes, or 144,005, to 48 per cent for Lieberman, with 134,026. In the U.S. system, a primary vote is held within a party - the Democrats in this case - to chose a candidate to represent the party in an election. Only party backers can vote in primaries.
Senator narrowed lead over challenger
Lieberman had struggled to explain his stance on Iraq in the days preceding the vote, saying that pulling out would be a "disaster," and succeeded in narrowing Lamont's lead in pre-vote polls, but conceded when it became clear that he was going to lose.
He cancelled campaign appearances Tuesday to drum up support from Democratic stalwarts. He had been criticized for supporting the war and being too close to the Republicans and Bush.
The contest drew intense interest, as 28,000 Connecticut citizens registered as Democrats so they could vote Tuesday. Turnout for the primary was predicted to hit 50 per cent, double the usual level.
Lamont is a millionaire and owner of a cable television company.
Lieberman told supporters he would run as an independent in the November election, even though Democratic Party officials were discouraging him.
His backers blamed Lamont supporters for website problems this week, filing official complaints.
When it comes to news we care about, we all have our preferences. Especially in this part of the world, which is renowned for its cultural contributions to the art of embroidering, embellishing, dancing around, and flat-out ignoring what may be called, for lack of a more cosmetic term, the truth.
In honor of this week's doctored photograph affair here are three of the more prominent variations. Take your pick: 1. The Muslim Lie Mode, or The Dead as Visual Aid
The variations are many, the form a recurrent theme. Stated differently:
When Arabs report what Israel has done
In most areas of the world, when buildings collapse or violence erupts in remote areas, the casualty count begins low, then climbs alarmingly for days and even weeks.
But in the Palestinian territories and in southern Lebanon, where thoroughly professional television and new media crews have given the expression Guerrilla Media an entirely new and oddly literal meaning, the death toll often as not begins alarmingly high, and only later - after the world has lost interest - is it adjusted to its true level.
So it was in April, 2002, when Saeb Erekat announced that more than 500 Palestinians had been killed in the IDF Operation Defensive Shield offensive in Jenin refugee camp. Another senior Palestinian official told reporters that the death toll could reach into the thousands. It was only the next month that a Palestinian Authority official, responding to witness accounts by international aid workers, quietly conceded that the actual number was 58, a large proportion of which were gunmen.
And so it was this week, when initial reports from an Israeli bombing in the south Lebanon border village of Houla placed the death toll at 60. An hour later, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, wiping tears from his eyes as he addressed an emergency meeting of Arab Foreign Ministers, announced "An hour ago, a horrific massacre took place in Houla village as a result of the intentional Israeli bombardment that resulted in more than 40 martyrs."
Still later in the day, Siniora told reporters that the "The massacre in Houla, it turned out that there was one person killed."
The drumbeat use of the terms massacre, "worse than Nazis," and "intentional mass murder" actually forms the background for the lies Israelis like to tell themselves and others about the conflict:
2. The Israeli Lie Mode, or The Dead as Enemy Weapon
Stated differently:
When Israelis report what Israel has done
All too often, Israelis, as well as their supporters abroad, view the damage their military has wrought, though the prism of How Little The World Understands What We're Going Through, and How Muslims Everywhere Now Hate Our Guts And Want Us All Dead Even More Than They Did Before.
There is obsessive coverage in Israel of how Al Jazeera suspends its regular broadcasts to air marathon footage of such incidents as the Qana bombing and parallel civilian deaths in the Palestinian territories, hours and hours of faces blown half away, bodies blown half away, endless loops of the shredded corpses of infants, the elderly and the handicapped.
For Israelis, the psychology is complex, the consequence relatively straightforward. The reality of terrible incidents is transformed through the hyperbole and unashamed bias of the Arab media, into something considerably less terrible for Israelis, and thus, a Lie We Can Live With.
It is this psychology that allows our spokespeople to say, with a straight face, that Israel is not a nation which kidnaps people, that in no way do we target civilian populations [though we are greatly pained at the deaths of civilians, the terrorists who operate in their midst bear the responsibility for their deaths], and that our army is the most moral fighting force in the world.
Then, of course, there is the supreme example of lying in the Middle East, as practiced by the very people who lie to themselves better than anyone:
The American Lie Mode, or The Dead as Nonexistent
Stated differently:
How Americans report what Americans have done
Since Vietnam, the old saw goes, war has been brought into everyone's living room.
Not even close.
In fact, as time goes on, the public is shielded more and more successfully from the realities of an Iraq war that is horrifying in the extreme. Pennsylvania Avenue learned something from Madison Avenue, and from Vietnam as well: Don't show funerals of servicemen. Don't show funerals of Iraqis.
Chances are that large numbers of Americans know that nearly 1,000 Lebanese have been killed in the war in the north. How many Americans have any idea how many Iraqis have died? Or a close approximation of the number of U.S. men and women killed in Iraq? Does anyone anywhere know how many Iraqi civilians were killed in U.S. bombings in the Gulf War of 1991?
This is, in fact, the clue to the magic of the modern era, the fully insulated lie: the wizardry of denial.
Perhaps the most unexpected element of a blog-blanketed, cable news-saturated, news-pictures-on-cell-phone era of information overload, is the extent to which the glut of media input lends itself to fostering denial.
Inundated with images, the reality of war recedes in the distance, reprocessed, played over a sound track, manipulated, plastered over, blue-screened.
In a word, doctored.
What have we learned? It may be nothing that we can use, but here it is. This is the lesson of Overmedia:
Denial is the ultimate dishonesty. And it's now available at the touch of any remote.
Claims that US troops shot dead up to six unarmed Afghan civilians two months ago in Kabul have been given added credibility with a series of photographs offering visual evidence of military misconduct.
The pictures were taken by an Afghan passer-by on 29 May in Khair Kane, a district of north Kabul. The 20 photographs appear to show a group of unarmed Afghan civilians being killed by gunfire from an American Humvee.
The allegations made in Kabul follow other recent incidents in which US troops are alleged to have used disproportionate or reckless force against civilians, most notably in Haditha, Iraq, on 19 November 2005 when US troops allegedly killed 15 civilians.
The Kabul pictures were taken as American vehicles fled the scene of an accident in which several Afghans were killed and injured after a US Army truck lost control and hit a number of civilian vehicles. Shot from a hillside above where the original accident took place, they show a crowd of Afghans throwing stones at the American vehicles.
A sequence of pictures show US vehicles leaving at high speed as the crowd stones them. In one sequence, a clearly unarmed Afghan man is seen with an American Humvee in the background, then as part of a group of men throwing stones towards the Americans. Two frames later his lifeless body is on the ground, having apparently been shot in the chest.
Another picture shows the body of an 18-year-old mechanic named Maiwan. His family said he was also hit by bullets fired from a US Humvee towards the crowd. His brother Jawad, 19, said Maiwan died from wounds to his knee and chest. "We are not the sort of people to do anything against US forces," said Jawad. "Maiwan was quiet and friendly. My father loved him too much, more than the rest of us."
The photographer, Atif Ahmadzai, 34, said: "I thought at first they were firing into the air. I was on the hill taking the pictures and, as they fired towards me, I ducked. One bullet grazed my thigh. Two people were killed behind me." He said he saw six bodies in total.
The day after the rioting he took the pictures to the US embassy. "I told them,'Just look at the people in the pictures, they are all unarmed'," he said. A statement released by the US military said a US Army truck had suffered a brake failure, causing it to lose control and hit up to 13 Afghan civilian vehicles, killing one person. The statement said: "There are indications that at least one coalition military vehicle fired warning shots over the crowd." US forces have launched an investigation into the incident, the results of which are due to be published next week.
All the witnesses to the incident reported at least one US vehicle opened fire on the civilians. "I saw with my own eyes that the soldier fired on the people," said Nazir Akhmad, 32, who owns a petrol station near where the accident occurred. "Her gun was pointed in the air but then she brought it down and started firing. The first bullet killed a boy called Khaled."
The US military declined to comment yesterday on its investigation. The US spokesman, Col Tom Collins, said: "I can't comment on the results of the investigation but there is no doubt that our soldiers thought there was fire emanating from the crowd."
Comment: "I can't comment on the results of the investigation but there is no doubt that our soldiers thought there was fire emanating from the crowd."
Nothing like making up a line of BS to cover your murdering ass
Michael Howard in Irbil
Wednesday August 9, 2006
The Guardian
Iraq's prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, has angrily charged American forces with undermining national reconciliation after a US-led raid in the eastern Baghdad stronghold of the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr reportedly caused the death of three people, including a woman and a child.
The forthright criticism of US tactics comes just days after the launch of a much-publicised American-Iraqi crackdown, supported by Mr Maliki, on sectarian Sunni-Shia violence in the capital. But in a statement on government television late on Monday night, Mr Maliki said he was "very angered and pained" by the latest operation, which involved air and ground forces in the volatile Sadr City area early in the morning.
"Reconciliation cannot go hand in hand with operations that violate the rights of citizens this way," Mr Maliki said.
The US military said the raid, which also involved Iraqi forces, had targeted "individuals involved in punishment and torture cell activities" and was part of an effort to stem the sectarian violence in Baghdad and avert a broader civil war.
The military said three people had been arrested but made no mention of fatalities. Residents reported a fierce firefight that lasted more than two hours.
"This operation used weapons that are unreasonable to detain someone, like using planes," Mr Maliki said. He apologised for the operation and vowed: "This won't happen again." He also sent an envoy to Sadr City to offer cash payments to families of the dead and wounded.
At the end of June, Mr Maliki unveiled a blueprint for national reconciliation. But neither that, nor a succession of security offensives, have halted the bloodshed in the capital. Four roadside bombs in Baghdad yesterday killed at least 19 people. The deadliest blast killed at least 10 and wounded 69 others in a central Baghdad market. Other bombs targeted police and a busy bus station. Two Iraqi journalists were reportedly killed in separate incidents in Baghdad.
The impoverished Sadr City district provides many of the footsoldiers for Mr Sadr's Mahdi army militia, which is widely suspected of conducting sectarian attacks against Sunnis.
Mr Maliki has vowed to restore security to the capital and rein in the militias but his task is complicated by the knowledge that some groups are linked to some of his main political allies. For example, since the Mahdi army staged two failed uprisings against coalition troops in 2004, supporters of the anti-western cleric have entered politics, forming a powerful bloc within Mr Maliki's ruling Shia alliance.
In an attempt to break up the death squads in Baghdad, US and Iraqi forces have staged a number of raids in Sadr City, but commanders have been at pains to point out the crackdown is not aimed at particular groups. With anger among Iraqi Shias already riding high owing to the Lebanon crisis Mr Maliki knows he can ill afford to further alienate Sadr supporters.
Abdul Jabbar, a political science professor at Baghdad University, said: "The prime minister is in a tricky position. He is under pressures from the Sadrists in his own alliance and at the same time from the Americans."
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A U.S. Army helicopter crashed in Iraq's western Anbar province, leaving two crew members missing and four injured, the U.S. military said Wednesday, as Iraqi and U.S. reinforcements move into the capital in a bid to stem sectarian violence that threatens civil war.
In Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, four people were killed and 16 wounded in a U.S. airstrike late Tuesday, police said. There was no immediate comment from U.S. officials, but a Shiite mosque and nearby houses in the city were heavily damaged in the blast.
Four U.S. service members were injured when the UH60 Blackhawk helicopter crashed Tuesday with six people on board during a routine flight to survey the area, the U.S. command said in a statement Wednesday. The four injured troops were in stable condition, and it did not appear the crash was due to hostile fire, the U.S. said.
The ongoing violence in Baghdad has prompted U.S. commanders to reinforce troop strength in the city. Over the past weeks, a force expected to number nearly 12,000 has been assembling here to try to take the streets back from Sunni and Shiite extremists.
A U.S. statement Tuesday said about 6,000 additional Iraqi troops were being sent to the Baghdad area, along with 3,500 soldiers of 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team and 2,000 troops from the U.S. 1st Armored Division, which has served as a reserve force since November.
"We must dramatically reduce the level of violence in Baghdad that is fueling sectarianism," said Maj. Gen. J.D. Thurman, commander of the coalition forces in Baghdad, where strife between Shiites and Sunnis runs the highest.
"Iraqi and U.S. forces will help the citizens of Baghdad by reducing the violence that has plagued this city since the Samarra bombing," Thurman said. "Iraqi and Multinational Division-Baghdad soldiers will not fail the Iraqi people."
Much of the violence has been blamed on sectarian militias that have stepped up a campaign of tit-for-tat killings since the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in the northern city of Samarra.
Some of the reinforcements have already been seen patrolling a mostly Sunni neighborhood in western Baghdad, scene of armed confrontations between Sunni and Shiite gunmen.
Many of the militias responsible for sectarian violence are linked to political parties that are part of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's national unity government, and they are reluctant to disband their armed wings unless others do the same.
The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said there were talks under way between various Sunni and Shiite groups to reach agreements and sign pledges to end sectarian fighting.
Also Wednesday, Romanian President Traian Basescu arrived in Baghdad to meet Iraqi and U.S. officials and visit some of the country's 890 troops stationed there. Basescu was received by President Jalal Talabani and will meet other key U.S. and Iraqi officials.
In June, Romanian Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu proposed withdrawing Romania's troops from Iraq, but Basescu and the country's top security body said the next day they would remain.
In Basra, the city council said it has decided not to cooperate with a committee sent by the prime minister to supervise an emergency plan for the city, according to councilman Aqil Talib. He said the council wanted to meet first with al-Maliki to determine the committee's role.
The decision shows the tension between the central government and the religious Shiite political leadership in Basra.
In other violence Wednesday, gunmen on two motorcycles assassinated Col. Qassim Abdel-Qadir, administrative head of an Iraqi army division in the southern city of Basra, said a police official who did not want to be named for security reasons.
A roadside bomb exploded near a U.S. patrol in eastern Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Habibiya, killing one bystander and injuring one U.S. soldier, said police Lt. Bilal Ali.
Police also found the bodies of three men who were shot in the head and dumped in two locations in southwestern Baghdad, said police Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razzaq said.
A policeman was killed and another wounded when they were trying to defuse a roadside bomb late Tuesday in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, police Capt. Laith Mohammed said.
In New Zealand, the Foreign Ministry said a Cook Islands national working as a driver in Iraq was killed in a bomb attack late Tuesday.
KABUL, Afghanistan - Suspected Taliban militants hanged a woman and her son from a tree after accusing them of spying for the government, while fighting between supporters of rival warlords in northwestern Afghanistan killed four people, officials said Wednesday.
The 70-year-old woman and her 30-year-old son were killed Monday in the village of Daigh, about five miles north of Musa Qala in the southern province of Helmand, said Amir Mohammad Akhunzada, the province's deputy governor.
Akhunzada did not identify the two but said the woman's son-in-law worked for the police. After the slaying, the militants threatened to kill anyone working for the government, he said.
"This hanging is totally against Islam," Akhunzada said. "They use the name of Islam to go against Islam."
The Taliban have stepped up attacks in southern Afghanistan this year. More than 900 people have died in violence since May, mostly militants killed in fighting with security forces.
The violence, the deadliest since the Taliban regime's ouster in late 2001, has underscored the weak grip of the government of U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai, particularly in the volatile south and east of the country.
Also in Musa Qala, British troops in a NATO-led security force accidentally shot and killed an armed Afghan policeman wearing civilian clothes after mistaking him for an insurgent outside a base on Tuesday, the British Ministry of Defense said.
Meanwhile, in the northwest of Afghanistan, some 400 militants were involved in clashes Monday in the Pashtun Kot district of Faryab province between forces loyal to rival ethnic Uzbek warlords Abdul Rashid Dostum and Abdul Malik, said Gen. Taj Mohammad, the Afghan National Army corps commander in northern Afghanistan.
Dostum is the current chief of staff of the Afghan Army's High Command.
At least one civilian was among the four people killed, and hundreds of others fled the fighting, Mohammad said.
The army and police sent hundreds of troops to restore calm and detained Khalem Salem, a Malik supporter who was involved in the fighting, Mohammad said.
It was not immediately clear what sparked the clashes, but the two groups had clashed 10 days earlier over a political dispute, leaving four dead.
Last Updated Tue, 08 Aug 2006 23:01:49 EDT
CBC News
The new chief of NATO forces in Afghanistan says he'll know within four months if plans to beat the Taliban are working, as he urged Canada not to waver in the battle.
Lt.-Gen. David Richards, the British general who took command of the NATO forces on July 31, said Tuesday that 8,000 NATO soldiers - including 2,200 Canadians - and Afghan units will be sent into six southern provinces over the next four to six weeks.
Richards urged Canadians to continue their contribution to the international forces that have been trying to help stabilize the country since a Taliban government was ousted in 2001.
The NATO commander said the Canadians who have died in Afghanistan have "died for as good a cause as I can think of."
"If ever there was a just war, this is it," Richards said.
Must improve life 'soon,' general warns
He estimated it would take three to five years to significantly improve the lives of Afghans, but noted that ordinary Afghans are already grumbling about a lack of security.
"If it doesn't visibly improve soon, people are going to say we'd rather have the certain security - albeit the rotten life that goes with it - of the Taliban than go on fighting forever," Richards said.
"Can they stick with us a bit longer as we give them the confidence or do they really want to go back to the Taliban?"
The Taliban is particularly active in southern Afghanistan, where last week four Canadian soldiers were killed in fighting and one died in an accident.
The body of the most recent casualty - Master Cpl. Raymond Arndt, 32, of Peers, Alta. - arrived in a military transport at Trenton, Ont., on Monday evening. Arndt was killed in a traffic accident near Kandahar airfield on Aug. 5.
Afghan fighters thanked for defeating Soviets
Richards said the West should be grateful to Afghanistan because its militants, predecessors of the Taliban who are now attacking NATO troops, helped bring down the former Soviet regime.
The Soviet Union sent soldiers to Afghanistan in 1979 to keep the country in the Soviet orbit. But the Soviets couldn't quell the mujahedeen fighters and they withdrew in 1989.
The stress caused by a decade of bitter fighting and thousands of casualties contributed to the collapse of the Soviet government in 1991, Richards said.
"The people of this country actually fought and led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, emancipating millions and millions of people throughout the old Soviet bloc," Richards said on a visit to the large NATO base at Kandahar airfield.
The fighters, including al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, were initially backed by the U.S. government, but it withdrew its support after the Russians retreated.
Al-Qaeda could have targeted Ottawa, Richards warns
The Taliban then came to power, holding on until American-led forces displaced it in 2001 after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.
"We can't risk the Taliban coming back in with Osama bin Laden," Richards said.
Al-Qaeda targeted Washington and New York, but "it could have been Ottawa. It could have been Toronto," Richards said.
Comment: They are going to know in four months whether the Taliban is defeated? Didn't they tell us the Taliban was defeated four years ago?
Swept up by a wave of patriotism after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Chris Magaoay joined the Marine Corps in November 2004.
The newly married Magaoay thought a military career would allow him to continue his college education, help his country and set his life on the right path.
Less than two years later, Magaoay became one of thousands of military deserters who have chosen a lifetime of exile or possible court-martial rather than fight in Iraq or Afghanistan.
"It wasn't something I did on the spur of the moment," said Magaoay, a native of Maui, Hawaii. "It took me a long time to realize what was going on. The war is illegal."
Magaoay said his disillusionment with the military began in boot camp in Twentynine Palms, Calif., where a superior officer joked about killing and mistreating Iraqis. When his unit was deployed to Iraq in March, Magaoay and his wife drove to Canada, joining a small group of deserters who are trying to win permission from the Canadian government to stay.
"We're like a tight-knit family," Magaoay said.
The Pentagon says deserters like Magaoay represent a tiny fraction of the nation's fighting forces.
"The vast majority of soldiers who desert do so for personal, family or financial problems, not for political or conscientious objector purposes," said Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, a spokesman for the Army.
Since 2000, about 40,000 troops from all branches of the military have deserted, the Pentagon says. More than half served in the Army. But the Army says numbers have decreased each year since the United States began its war on terror in Afghanistan.
Those who help war resisters say desertion is more prevalent than the military has admitted.
"They lied in Vietnam with the amount of opposition to the war and they're lying now," said Eric Seitz, an attorney who represents Army Lt. Ehren Watada, the first commissioned officer to refuse deployment to the war in Iraq.
Watada is under military custody in Fort Lewis, Wash., because he refused to join his Stryker brigade when it was sent to Iraq last month.
Watada said he doesn't object to war but considers the conflict in Iraq illegal. The Army has turned down his request to resign and plans to file charges against him.
Critics of the Iraq war have demonstrated on the lieutenant's behalf. Conservative bloggers call him a traitor and opportunist.
Joe Davis, spokesman for the Veterans of Foreign Wars, said deserters aren't traitors because they've done nothing to help America's enemies. But he rejects arguments that deserters have a moral right to refuse to fight wars they consider unjust.
"None of us can choose our wars. They're always a political decision," Davis said. "They're letting their buddies down and hurting morale - and morale is everything on the battlefront."
Because today's military is an all-volunteer force, troops seeking objector status must convince superior officers they've had an honest change of heart about the morality of war.
The last time the U.S. military executed a deserter was World War II. But hundreds face court-martials and imprisonment every year.
Members of the armed forces are considered absent without leave when they are unaccounted for. They become deserters after they've been AWOL for 30 days.
A 2002 Army report says desertion is fairly constant but tends to worsen during wartime, when there's an increased need for troops and enlistment standards are more lax. They also say deserters tend to be less educated and more likely to have engaged in delinquent behavior than other troops.
Army spokesman Hilferty said the Army doesn't try to find deserters. Instead, their names are given to civilian law enforcement officers who often nab them during routine traffic stops and turn them over to the military.
Commanders then decide whether to rehabilitate or court-martial the alleged deserter. There's an incentive to rehabilitate because it costs the military an average of $38,000 to recruit and train a replacement.
Jeffry House, an attorney in Toronto who represents Magaoay and other deserters, said there are about 200 deserters living in Canada. They have decided not to seek refugee status but instead are leading clandestine lives, he said.
Like many of the people helping today's war resisters, House fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War. About 50,000 Americans sought legal residency in Canada during the Vietnam era.
"You would apply at the border and if you didn't have a criminal record, you were in," House said.
He said changes in Canadian law make it harder for resisters to flee north. Now, potential immigrants must apply for Canadian residency in their home countries. Resisters say that exposes them to U.S. prosecution.
The Foreign Secretary spoke his mind on the Middle East - and became a target in Washington...
When Jack Straw was replaced by Margaret Beckett as Foreign Secretary, it seemed an almost inexplicable event. Mr Straw had been very competent - experienced, serious, moderate and always well briefed. Margaret Beckett is embarrassingly inexperienced. I made inquiries in Washington and was told that Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, had taken exception to Mr Straw's statement that it would be "nuts" to bomb Iran. The United States, it was said, had put pressure on Tony Blair to change his Foreign Secretary. Mr Straw had been fired at the request of the Bush Administration, particularly at the Pentagon.
Shortly before he was dismissed, Mr Straw went on his charming tour with Condoleezza Rice, in which they visited his Blackburn constituency. This had been given two explanations. One was that the US Secretary of State was hoping to protect Mr Straw, as a fellow foreign minister, against the undiplomatic attack from the Pentagon. She wanted to keep Mr Rumsfeld's tanks off her turf. She had found Mr Straw competent and effective. If that were so, Dr Rice lost that battle in the Washington turf war.
The alternative explanation was more recently given by Irwin Stelzer in The Spectator; he has remarkably good Washington contacts and is probably right. His account is that Mr Straw was indeed dismissed because of American anxieties, but that Dr Rice herself had become worried, on her visit to Blackburn, by Mr Straw's dependence on Muslim votes. About 20 per cent of the voters in Blackburn are Islamic; Mr Straw was dismissed only four weeks after Dr Rice's visit to his constituency. It may be that both explanations are correct. The first complaint may have been made by Mr Rumsfeld because of Iran; Dr Rice may have withdrawn her support after seeing the Islamic pressures in Blackburn. At any rate, Irwin Stelzer's account confirms that Mr Straw was fired because of American pressure.
Yesterday the Mail on Sunday went back for a second look at the story in the light of subsequent events, particularly the Israeli counter-attack on Lebanon. A US source told them that "Mr Straw's views did not find favour in the White House and its concerns were passed on to the British Government". That confirms that the Foreign Secretary was effectively dismissed by an American President.
Comment: Jack Straw said two things:
1) That he could not see any way in which an attack on Iran would ever be advisable.
2) That once the problems with Iran's nuclear ambitions were resolved, it would be time to move on and deal with the threat to Middle East peace posed by Israel's nuclear capability.
Naturally, these remarks were not in sync with US plans for the Middle East, but more importantly, they are not in sync with Israeli plans for the Middle East. So tell me, who really holds the reins of power in this world? Is it Zionism after all?
Matthew Tempest and agencies
Wednesday August 9, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
Britain is living through its most threatening time since the second world war, John Reid, the home secretary, will warn today.
In a speech to a London thinktank, the hyperactive home secretary - who will mark 100 days in the job this Friday - will confirm that a terrorist attack on the UK is "highly likely", as signalled by the current "severe" warning on official government websites.
The heavily-trailed speech will also call for a national debate on immigration levels - something the Labour party heavily attacked Michael Howard for demanding at the last general election.
In an address to Demos, Mr Reid will call for the public, especially ethnic minority communities, to help the police and intelligence services track potential terrorists, saying the professionals alone cannot "100% guarantee" to defeat the threat.
The home secretary will also say that the end of the cold war has been accompanied by the "reach and impact" of organised crime and international terrorism.
He is expected to say: "We are probably in the most sustained period of severe threat since the end of World War II.
"While I am confident that the security services and police will deliver 100% effort and 100% dedication, they cannot guarantee 100% success.
"Our security forces and the apparatus of the state provide a very necessary condition for defeating terrorism but can never be sufficient to do so on their own. Our common security will only be assured by a common effort from all sections of society."
As leaked to the weekend papers, Mr Reid will also say that mass migration in a globalised world is the "greatest challenge facing European governments".
While the mass movement of people provides the potential for greater wealth and opportunity, it also brings insecurity into the heart of communities, he will say.
The home secretary will say that the cold war "froze" the world into a static state in which migration was minimal, ethnic and religious tensions suppressed and national borders inviolable.
Twenty years after its end, Britons were now faced with a world in which insecurity has become "one of the highest concerns of daily living".
"That momentous scale of transition from static to mobile populations makes mass migration and the management of immigration the greatest challenge facing European governments, in my view," he will say.
The speech comes a week after the court of appeal said that control orders used to restrain the movements of six terror suspects broke human rights laws.
The court of appeal judges did not quash the system of control orders, which are used to restrain terror suspects where there is not enough evidence to prosecute them.
But they said that the orders applied to six suspects were so stringent that they broke European laws outlawing indefinite detention without trial.
Mr Reid has now issued new orders against the men which shorten their curfews from 18 hours to 14 hours a day and relax restrictions on who they are allowed to meet.
But he said that the orders were now not as restrictive as the security services believed necessary.
The Conservatives would still like to see a US-style minister for "homeland security" while both the Tories and the Liberal Democrats have urged the government to allow phone tap evidence in terrorist trials.
Comment: Of course they tell us an attack is likely. Of course they want you to be afraid. Of course, things are getting worse and worse. How else are they going to justify continuing this bogus war on terror?
But they need to be careful, because any thinking person would say, "Hey, things are worse since we started this 'war on terror' than they were before". So they have to be careful.
Then again, anyone with two neurons firing has already seen through the obvious manipulations.
THOUSANDS of would-be visitors to the United Kingdom are being illegally turned down for visas simply because they are from poor and repressive countries, according to an official immigration watchdog.
The Independent Monitor for Entry Clearance Refusals report also said that additional fees charged by private sector firms now processing half of all the 2.5 million visa applications are illegal.
Fiona Lindsley, the former monitor, estimated that 46,000 people have wrongly been refused a right of appeal against a decision to turn down their visa application since she took up her post three years ago.
In her annual report, produced in November and published last month, the immigration lawyer said she believes discrimination is operating in the issuing of visas.
Officials are making travellers from poverty-stricken and unstable states justify their need to journey to Britain beyond the requirements of immigration rules.
Ms Lindsley said that she believed that thousands of potential visitors to Britain are being discriminated against on the ground that they come from states with records of generating asylum-seekers and illegal migrants.
"Visa nationals from poor, unstable, politically repressive countries which are known to generate asylum-seekers and which are presumed to generate significant numbers of illegal workers will be required to justify their need to travel beyond the simple requirement of the immigration rules," her report said.
It added: "In effect they are required to satisfy a higher burden of proof to obtain a visa than others because they meet a socio-economic profile that is believed to indicate they are a risk and provide little economic benefit to the UK if granted leave to enter." The discrimination is unlawful because there are no ministerial authorisations allowing individuals from particular nationalities to be treated differently for entry clearance into the UK.
Ms Lindsley said that she knew of no research that supported the assumption that those living in modest circumstances in poor countries posed a higher statistical risk of breaking visa restrictions. Ms Lindsley, whose three-year term as monitor ended last November, pointed out that research in Australia indicated that the largest group of overstayers came from Britain.
She highlighted a number of cases to support her arguments. A Romanian woman was said not to be entitled to a visa because she "knew the advantages of living and working/studying in UK".
A large number of Indians were refused entry clearance to Britain because their circumstances were modest even by local standards and they were well aware of the economic advantages of living and working in Britain.
She said that the bleakest instance was discovered in Bangladesh, where officials refused an application because "you have no prospects for the future in Bangladesh".
Ms Lindsley said that while Britain had made possible the international travel rights of European pet animals, the consequences of the country's current visa policy was to prevent thousands joining an elite club.
"The majority of those living in poor, repressive and unstable countries are not allowed to join the privileged travelling club on the same terms as those from wealthy nations, even if they have the funds to do so," she said in her report on entry clearance in 2004-05.
Additional fees ranging from £3.60 in Bangladesh to £17.85 in Jordan are being charged by private sector firms who process half of all applications for UK Visas, part of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
These fees are on top of the standard visa charges, which are £85 for a student on a course lasting more than six months and £50 for a standard six-month visit.
Ms Lindsley's report found that a quarter of a sample of refusals were on the ground of allegations of forgery, with two thirds being refused on this ground in Accra, Ghana. However, 50 per cent of forgery allegations had no evidence to support them.
Ms Lindsley's report, which covers the operation of the visa system in 2004, shows that the overall refusal rate for applications has risen from 6.5 per cent in 2000 to 19 per cent. The refusal rate for students averages 35.4 per cent but is as high as 85.7 per cent in Accra.
Keith Best, chairman of the Immigration Advisory Service, said that the report disclosed a catalogue of failings. "It is clear that there are insufficiencies in entry clearance officers, their training and the way in which we treat applicants coming to Britain. The Government must not think that because these things are out of sight from the British public they are out of mind and can be neglected. The findings are disturbing."
A second video allegedly showing war crimes being committed against Serb civilians 11 years ago was broadcast in Serbia on Tuesday.
The footage shows a Bosnian commander, Atif Dudakovic, apparently ordering the burning of a Serb village.
The Serbian government has called for General Dudkovic to be prosecuted. He denies the accusations.
Last week another tape emerged, which apparently showed the murder of a surrendered Serb civilian.
It allegedly showed Croat paramilitaries and Bosnian soldiers harassing and attacking convoys of Serb refugees and shooting one of them who had his hands raised in the air.
Both videos were broadcast by the Serbia B92 television station.
'Burn it all'
Like the previous tape, Tuesday's video was apparently shot during Operation Storm in 1995, when Croatian soldiers recaptured parts of Croatia from ethnic Serbs who had declared independence.
As Serbs fled from the Croat offensive, General Dudkovic appears to order his troops to torch a village - apparently ordering them to "burn it all".
"It is true that I led the operation, but it is not true that war crimes were committed, and even if some had happened, those were individual cases," General Dudakovic told the Fena news agency.
The Serbian government called for the immediate arrest of General Dudakovic and "other war criminals".
"The recordings, which beyond any doubt testify about Dudakovic's misdeeds, represent evidence that must be taken as the basis for immediate action by police and judiciary," it said in a statement.
The republic of Serb Krajina was a self-proclaimed entity in Croatia, lasting from 1991 to 1995, until Operation Storm brought it under Croat control.
The military operation forced the exodus of about 200,000 Serbs who fled into Bosnia and Serbia.
Hundreds of Serb civilians were killed - mostly elderly people who stayed on after their families had left.
In 2001, General Ante Gotovina was indicted by the Hague tribunal for alleged crimes committed by Croatian forces during Operation Storm.
Former Croatian General Ante Gotovina, who led the offensive, is being tried at The Hague in relation to the killing and forced eviction of ethnic Serb civilians.
Xan Rice, east Africa correspondent
Wednesday August 9, 2006
The Guardian
The Darfur peace agreement is on the verge of collapse with fresh fighting displacing tens of thousands of people and violent attacks on relief workers forcing aid agencies to consider pulling out.
Clashes involving government forces, allied militia and guerrilla factions have forced more than 50,000 people from their homes since the deal was signed three months ago, aid workers said. Most have ended up in overcrowded refugee camps, which are becoming increasingly difficult for aid agencies to reach.
Eight Sudanese humanitarian workers were killed last month, more than in the previous two years. The crisis is so acute that at least one prominent aid agency has flown in a trauma team to counsel staff.
"There is extreme tension across Darfur," said Suliman Baldo, the Africa programme director for the International Crisis Group, who was in Sudan last week. "The peace deal is on the verge of collapse," he added.
The agreement, signed on May 5, was meant to end the violence that has left more than 180,000 dead and 2 million displaced since the Arab-dominated government began targeting African tribes in February 2003. It now seems clear the deal was deeply, and perhaps fatally, flawed.
Only one of Darfur's rebel groups signed up - a faction of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) led by Minnie Minnawi. Though commanding the strongest force, Mr Minnawi, who hails from the minority Zaghawa tribe, had little support on the ground. Most of the displaced in Darfur are Fur, and trust neither Mr Minnawi, who has been appointed as a special adviser to the president, Omar al-Bashir, nor the government.
Reports suggest Mr Minnawi's troops are receiving help from the government and its proxy Janjaweed militia in fighting rival rebel groups, most of which have splintered and formed new alliances since May. Abdel Wahid, who headed the SLA faction and enjoyed widespread support in the camps, appears to have been toppled by a coalition of field commanders.
The new National Redemption Front now appears the strongest and most active rebel movement. Made up of the Justice and Equality Movement, which also shunned the peace deal, and dissident fighters from both SLA factions, it controls much of north Darfur. On Monday it claimed to have shot down a government Antonov aircraft.
"There is much more violence than everyone expected and the situation has quickly become fluid and complicated again," said Eltayeb Hag Ateya, director of the peace research institute at Khartoum University. "We thought Darfur inter-dialogue may work, but it hasn't and it seems we are in trouble now."
The camps are awash with rumour and suspicion. On July 20, three water and sanitation workers were beaten to death in a camp near Zalingei. With banditry and rebel attacks on the increase, effective aid work is becoming near impossible. Tearfund, Care, Relief International and Oxfam have all had staff killed in recent weeks, and Médecins sans Frontières' vehicles have been repeatedly attacked.
"We cannot drive outside most main towns," said Alun McDonald, a spokesman for Oxfam. As soon as we do, our cars get stolen and our staff beaten up."
The government has become increasingly emboldened. Last week, even as the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, pushed for 18,600 troops to replace the toothless 7,000-strong African Union mission, the government issued several statements rejecting any intervention.
The status quo suits Khartoum, said Mr Baldo. "All along, the government has been very actively promoting ethnic divisions and splintering the rebel groups to try to vindicate its claim that the Darfur crisis was always just a tribal problem," he said. "It's really Machiavellian."
Main rebel groups: SLA (Minnawi) The only faction to have signed the peace deal. Leader Minnie Minnawi is special adviser to the government
SLA (Wahid) Opposed to the peace deal. Its former leader Abdel Wahid appears to have been toppled by field commanders. Strong support in refugee camps
National Redemption Front Comprises the Justice and Equality Movement, former commanders from both SLA factions, and the Sudan Federal Democratic Alliance. Against the peace deal
G19 Dissident rebels once under Wahid. Against the peace deal and aligned to National Redemption Front. Popular and active in north Darfur
Yahoo.com
By Linda Deutsch.Associated press
08/09/06
LOS ANGELES - Audio and video tapes of Mel Gibson's drunken driving arrest are exempt from the California Public Records Act and won't be released, authorities said, despite requests from a celebrity news Web site.
The Web site, TMZ, had asked Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca for tapes of the incident in which Gibson uttered obscenity-laced, anti-Semitic comments. TMZ argued the tapes should be seen and heard by the public to assess whether Gibson received preferential treatment from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
"The records you have requested are records of the investigation and part of the investigatory file in this matter," replied Gary P. Gross, principal deputy for the county counsel's office. That means they must remain sealed, Gross said.
Gibson was arrested early July 28 after he was stopped for driving 87 mph in a 45-mph zone. He was released on his own recognizance later that day.
The 50-year-old actor-director, charged with misdemeanor drunken driving and having an open container of alcohol in his car, is scheduled to be arraigned Sept. 28.
Questions have been raised about the fact that a Sheriff's Department spokesman initially said Gibson had been arrested "without incident" and made no mention of what Gibson himself latter called his "belligerent" and "despicable" behavior.
The arresting deputy's initial written report, which contained Gibson's statements, was also ordered modified and the comments placed in a supplemental report.
No decision has been made on whether to pursue further legal action, the Web site's attorney, Alonzo Wickers IV, said Tuesday.
Harvey Levin, who runs TMZ, said he would wait to see "how the case plays out."
"It could go to trial, and if it does, the tapes would become evidence," he said.
Meanwhile, California's Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, Tom McClintock, said he no longer will use a fundraising letter sent on his behalf by Gibson.
McClintock decided to pull the letter after the incident, his campaign spokesman, Stan Devereaux, said Tuesday.
"Tom saw the news and the situation as it was unfolding with Mel Gibson and made a conscious decision to direct people not to use the letter any further. He was disillusioned by the situation with Mr. Gibson," Devereaux said.
LEGASPI, Philippines - Despite being hampered by communist rebels and reluctant residents, Philippine troops have completed the evacuation of nearly 40,000 people from around the rumbling Mayon volcano.
A two-day drive by the military and local government has seen 39,422 people evacuated from villages around the country's most active volcano which is showing strong signs of erupting, the provincial disaster coordinating council said Wednesday.
President Gloria Arroyo late Wednesday declared the evacuation complete and successful, but warned residents against returning to their farms and homes until advised to do so by the government.
They must "heed the advice of experts and disaster officials to stay out of harm's way," she said, pledging that evacuees "will not be kept from their homes a minute longer than is necessary."
Officials said the main problem is dissuading residents from returning to their homes amid an apparent lull in the eruptive phase.
Throughout the day cloud shrouded the 8,070-foot (2,460-meter) volcano in the central Philippines as lava continued to flow slowly down its southeastern face.
The civil defense office in Manila said troops and police have set up checkpoints on Mayon's lower slopes to enforce a "No Human Activity" zone within eight kilometers (five miles) of the crater.
Farmers have been sneaking out of evacuation centers in the morning to work their farms on the fertile volcanic soil and guard their property.
Evacuation efforts were also complicated by communist guerrillas, who attacked an infantry unit evacuating residents near Daraga town close to the slopes of the volcano, the military said. Five soldiers were injured.
Relief agencies and residents are bracing for a long stay in makeshift evacuation centers, mainly schools.
"For the time being, food is not the problem," Legaspi City mayor Noel Rosal said, but appealed for help from the national government.
He said the effort could be sustained until the end of the week but if the evacuation drags on for weeks it will deplete the city's calamity fund.
It costs about 367,000 pesos (7,140 dollars) a day to feed and house the estimated 10,802 people sheltering in Legaspi's schools.
Arroyo on Wednesday ordered her budget department to prepare an extra 250 million pesos (4.86 million dollars) in calamity funds to augment the 76 million pesos earlier disbursed by the national government. She is expected to visit the area this weekend.
Schoolrooms are housing up to 30 evacuees who sleep on the cold concrete floor and are fed with tinned meat and instant noodles.
Local officials though are experienced in dealing with Mayon, which has erupted around 50 times in the past 400 years, most recently in 1993 when 77 people died.
The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said that after an upsurge of activity on Monday the volcano was quieter on Tuesday and Wednesday.
From 109 volcanic quakes on Monday, only 21 were recorded on Tuesday. The amount of sulphur dioxide expelled also fell by nearly half. It has been quietly belching out lava since July 15.
However, the institute said such swings in activity were an anomaly and warned that a hazardous eruption could still take place within days.
"Anything above 500 tonnes (of sulphur dioxide emissions) is an indication" of volcanic unrest, said Ernesto Corpuz, head of the volcano monitoring division.
He noted that despite lower readings of sulphur emissions, a column of black, steaming lava was still oozing from the crater and snaking down a channel on its slopes.
This indicates lava is still pushing out toward the crater, which has been largely obscured by clouds since Monday.
Renato Solidum, head of the institute, said such swings in readings were "typical of Mayon" and stressed that they would not lower the alert level until they see about a week of lower volcanic activity.
He also warned that the "gravitational pull" of the full moon this week could trigger an explosive eruption.
The mountains in Europe are growing taller and melting glaciers are partly responsible, scientists say.
Heavy glaciers cause the Earth's crust to flex inward slightly. When glaciers disappear, the crust springs back and the overlaying mountains are thrust skyward, albeit slowly.
The European Alps have been growing since the end of the last little Ice Age in 1850 when glaciers began shrinking as temperatures warmed, but the rate of uplift has accelerated in recent decades because global warming has sped up the rate of glacier melt, the researchers say.
The finding is detailed in the July Issue of Geophysical Research Letters. The fluid Earth
The conclusion is based on a new computer model that assumes that over timescales of a few years to thousands of years, the surface of the Earth behaves like a very thick fluid.
"Imagine honey or molasses, only a billion, billion times more viscous," said study leader Valentino Barletta of the University of Milan in Italy. If a heavy object is placed on the surface of such a fluid, it sinks until a balance is reached between the forces of gravity pulling it down and the buoyancy keeping it afloat.
"When you remove the weight, the viscous fluid takes some time to refill the depression that's left behind," Barletta told LiveScience.
This is happening in the Alps. As the glaciers melt and the mountains are freed of their heavy burdens, the surface of the Earth springs back very slowly. This effect is well studied and it occurs in North America, too.
The region where the most uplift is occurring is in the French Alps near Mount Blanc, the tallest mountain in Western Europe. The mountains in this region are growing at a rate of about .035 inches per year. In 50 years, they will be about 1.8 inches taller than today. The average maximum growth for the rest of the Alps is a more modest .013 inches per year.
Glacier shrinkage accounts for half of the observed increase, while other geological factors, such as active shifting of the Earth's tectonic plates, drainage and erosion, are responsible for the rest, the researchers say.
The effects of global warming
Glaciers have been shrinking almost continuously since 1850, but the process has sped up in recent decades because of global warming, Barletta said.
Other studies found that from 1850 to the 1970s, glaciers in the European Alps shrunk by 35 percent. In only the past 30 years, however, the rate of melting has accelerated to the point that the 5,150 glaciers now cover only 50 percent of the area they once did.
Some scientists estimate that if summer air temperatures warm by 5 degrees Fahrenheit (3 Celsius) by the end of the century, 80 percent of the Alps' glacial covering will be gone by 2100; if temperatures increase by 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 Celsius), the Alps will be almost completely ice-free by century's end.
Elsewhere, scientists have found that melting permafrost has caused portions of mountains to crumble and is making the ground sink right out from under buildings and railroads.
Whether the glaciers disappear or not, the Alps will continue to rise, pushed upwards by other geological forces until complete relaxation is reached, something that could take hundreds or thousands of years, Barletta said.
LONDON - Turkey is battling the largest recorded outbreak of Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever, which has killed at least 20 people this year, and experts said Tuesday more cases of the
Ebola-like disease are inevitable in coming months.
The fever is primarily an animal disease, but can also affect humans. It is endemic to parts of Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe and is transmitted by ticks, which thrive on sheep and cattle.
Infected people can transmit the virus by blood, saliva or droplets from sneezing. The disease causes a sharp drop in platelets, which allow the blood to clot. Without rapid treatment by antivirus drugs and replacement of platelets, victims can bleed to death.
"We will unfortunately keep seeing cases at least until September, when the virus starts to slow down because of the cold weather," said Dr. Onder Ergonul, an associate professor at Marmara University, who has been involved with the government's response to the outbreak.
Most of the cases have occurred in six provinces in the Black Sea and Central Anatolia region: Tokat, Sivas, Gumushane, Amasya, Yozagat and Corum.
Authorities at the World Health Organization are awaiting further information from the Turkish government, including where the other cases have arisen. Turkish authorities say no cases have been reported in the tourist areas along the Mediterranean coast.
By Aug. 4, there were 242 cases of the disease, including 20 deaths, making it the largest reported outbreak since it was first identified in 1944, authorities said.
Last week, a nurse treating Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever patients died after being infected accidentally by a needle. To date, four health care workers have been infected, though there have not been any reports of the virus spreading in hospitals.
"There have been large outbreaks of this virus before, but we are concerned about the size of this particular outbreak in Turkey," said Dr. Bernardus Ganter, the World Health Organization's Regional Adviser for Communicable Diseases in the European Region.
One of the reasons for the increased numbers, Ganter said, could be a more sophisticated detection system. Turkey's first outbreak of the disease was in 2002, and surveillance has strengthened considerably since.
"We are reassured that the outbreak appears limited to only one part of Turkey, in Anatolia," said Ergonul. More than 90 percent of cases have been reported in people who have had direct contact with animals, according to Ergonul.
In an attempt to control the outbreak, Turkish authorities have instituted stronger surveillance for the disease across the country, and are attempting to educate the population about how they can minimize the risks of contracting the disease by avoiding contact with ticks.
Veterinarians and entomologists are also looking at ways to control the tick population.
With several previous outbreaks of the disease in recent years, Turkey has considerable expertise in treating patients.
WHO has been in frequent contact with the Turkish Ministry of Health, and is ready to send teams to the region if requested to do so. Ganter said the transmission season was expected to last until October.
The type of ultrasound used to scan babies in the womb disturbs brain cells in mouse fetuses, say researchers. The finding fuels a debate about the safety of the technique for unborn babies.
Babies in the womb are routinely scanned using high-frequency sound waves. The scans allow doctors to check on growth rates and spot developmental abnormalities.
Pasko Rakic of Yale Medical School in New Haven, Connecticut and his team were similarly scanning experimental mice, to help inject dye into embryos. When later studying the brain development of these mice, the team noticed that certain neurons in the growing cortex were not behaving normally.
Rakic discussed his preliminary results at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in 2004 (see 'Ultrasound scans accused of disrupting brain development'). But he says he wanted more results to be convinced - now, 335 mice later, he is.
Long exposure
Rakic says that he has no evidence that ultrasound scanning disrupts the brains of human fetuses. The affected mice in his study were exposed to continuous ultrasound for 30 minutes or more; a baby's brain would be exposed for only a fraction of this time during a 30-minute scan of its entire body. And a narrow ultrasound beam will hit and affect far more of a small mouse brain than a larger human one.
Some studies have hinted that ultrasound causes subtle brain changes in humans that increases the chance of a child being left-handed or developing speech problems. Others suggest that the risk is minimal. A 2004 study found that fetuses exposed to five ultrasound sessions rather than one are more likely to grow poorly, but that this difference disappears after the first year1.
"We don't want to push the panic button," Rakic says. "It would be very wrong if women stopped having medically indicated ultrasounds because of this."
At the same time, Rakic says that it is sensible to avoid the lengthy ultrasound scans that some parents now choose in order to make videos of their baby. The US Food and Drug Administration and other medical groups also discourage unnecessary ultrasound scans.
Scattered migration
Neurons are born deep inside an embryo's brain cortex and then migrate to the outer edge. This migration creates a series of parallel zones running through the cortex, like rock strata, each of which has specific functions in communicating to other areas of the brain.
These layers are vital for the processes directed by the cortex such as memory and language. In animals, alcohol, cocaine and viral infections can also disrupt the neurons' migration and affect behaviour.
Rakic marked some of these migrating neurons with a dye and then exposed the growing mice to between 5 minutes and 7 hours of ultrasound over the final three days of gestation, using a machine identical to that used for humans. He then examined the brains of the young mice a few days after birth.
In those exposed to 30 minutes or more of ultrasound, not all of the neurons destined for the outer layers of the cortex completed their journey. Instead, some remained scattered in interior layers of cortex, or even in neighbouring white matter. The more ultrasound the mice received, the more scattered their neurons. The results are reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences2.
Bad vibrations
The team also found that neuronal migration was disrupted in a group of animals that went through the experimental procedures for 7 hours, but were not exposed to ultrasound. This suggests that the stress caused by an extended period of handling could also affect the brains of a mother's babies. But stress can't explain all the results, says Rakic's team.
The scientists are not sure how the ultrasound waves disrupt neuron migration. One idea is that they make the neurons vibrate, preventing them from sticking to adjacent cells.
Rakic is repeating his experiments in monkeys, and looking for behavioural changes in the offspring. He says he does not yet have results.
Alok Jha in Llano de Chajnantor, Chile
Wednesday August 9, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
It is freezing cold, the air is so thin that it is almost impossible to breathe and no life exists here. The rocky terrain looks more like Mars than anywhere on Earth and, with no road until last year, it is one of the remotest places on the planet.
All reasons why astronomers picked the Chajnantor plateau, 5,000 metres (16,400 feet) above sea level in the Chilean Andes, to build the largest and most expensive observatory in the world: the Atacama Large Millimetre Array (Alma).
Alma will open astronomers' eyes to the half of the universe that has, until now, been hidden to modern telescopes. When it is fully operational in 2012, the $1bn (£520m) observatory will discover a previously unseen galaxy every three minutes and study the formation of planets outside our solar system in the hope of understanding how the Earth was made.
After more than two decades of planning, astronomers have entered a critical phase in the construction of the observatory, with the imminent arrival of the first of 66 identical 12-metre diameter radio antennas that will eventually sit across the Chajnantor plateau.
"It turns out that half of the stars that form in the universe are obscured by dust," said John Richer, an astronomer at Cambridge University and the chair of Alma's science advisory committee. "If you want to study the universe and can't look through the dust, then you're missing a good deal of the universe with the optical and infrared telescopes."
Alma, Spanish for soul, will effectively see through the clouds of soot-like dust near stars. While this dust hides the stars, it also gets heated by them to a few degrees above absolute zero (-273C). The dust then emits radiation of its own at a wavelength of around one millimetre, 1,000 times smaller than the light we see with our eyes.
This radiation, from dust clouds all over the universe, will be picked up the 66 carbon-fibre dishes eventually sprawled across the Chajnantor plateau, allowing scientists to determine what stars lie behind the dust.
Astronomers chose the inhospitable Andean site because it is blessed with year-round clear skies and is one of the driest places in the world. Millimetre radiation is absorbed by water and there has been no rain in parts of the Atacama desert for several hundred years. The advantage of being so high up is the opportunity to capture images as sharp as anything the Hubble Space Telescope is capable of.
From a technical centre several thousand metres below the Chajnantor plateau, astronomers will control the movements of the antennas as they scan the skies for hitherto unseen galaxies and new stars.
The galaxies Alma will see are those in the early universe, which are still in the process of coming together but are so far away that their light has taken millions of years to reach us. Alma will witness these galaxies assembling themselves and forming vast spirals and ellipses of the kind we see in our part of the cosmos.
"You can start to put together a whole picture of how we got from the big bang, where everything was evenly distributed, to the more local set of galaxies we have today," said Dr Richer.
Astronomers will also study how the Earth was made. Five billion years ago, our planet formed out of a cloud of gas in the galaxy, but exactly how that happened is a mystery. "We fundamentally don't understand how planetary systems form. We don't know what a typical planetary system looks like - we don't know whether we are typical or atypical," said Dr Richer.
With Alma, astronomers will be able to look inside the dust clouds where planets and stars form with enough detail to study what is going on inside for the first time.
"What Alma will be able to do is look for many of these objects and see, through them, a sequence of different stages," said Massimo Tarenghi, the director of Alma.
"It will be able to study many stars and see the formation of these discs and the formation of proto-planets and maybe a planet."
He added that Alma would be able to analyse whether planets outside our solar system harbour the right conditions for life.
Alma is a collaboration between the 11 member countries of the European Southern Observatory with the US, Japan, Spain, Chile, Taiwan and Canada. The UK contribution, funded by the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, includes detectors and design input from Cambridge and Manchester Universities and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire.
The antennas are being built by American, Japanese and European manufacturers with the first 12-metre dish scheduled to arrive at Chajnantor in April next year.
Preliminary research using the antenna array can begin well before all the dishes are installed: Dr Tarenghi expects the first science results to be unveiled in 2009, three years before the construction is officially complete.
By MARY PEMBERTON
Associated Press
Wed Aug 9, 2006
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - BP's problem of corroding pipes is worsening as the nation's largest oil field ages and more water and less oil is produced during drilling.
"Really, we are a giant water field," said Bill Hedges, BP PLC's corrosion expert, explaining that what comes up now during drilling is three-quarters water.
Water contains carbon dioxide, ideally suited to corroding pipelines.
The shutdown this week of the Prudhoe Bay oil field because of severe corrosion found in transit lines is raising questions about the condition of the rest of the field. Oil first flowed at Prudhoe Bay on June 20, 1977.
The Prudhoe Bay oilfield, which accounts for 8 percent of domestic output, is very different now from what it was when it was first brought onstream, said ING Financial Markets analyst Jason Kenney.
"The changing quality of the crude that is being produced has presented an issue with the infrastructure that's in place and the development and that is what BP are battling against," Kenney said.
The world's second-largest oil company announced Sunday it was shutting down the oil field after a small leak was found in one of its three transit lines, which bring oil to the 800-mile trans-Alaska pipeline. BP has 22 miles of transit lines and will be replacing two of the lines, or 16 miles of pipe.
The Prudhoe Bay field produces about 400,000 barrels a day - about half of all North Slope production - with production divided equally between the eastern and western sides.
The phased shutdown began Sunday on the east side, where the leak was discovered. It will likely move to the west side, where in March corrosion in another transit line caused a spill of up to 270,000 gallons - the biggest spill in the history of the North Slope or portion of Alaska north of the Brooks Range mountains.
Company officials said Tuesday they hope to avoid a complete shutdown on the west side.
Bob Malone, chairman of BP North America who took over July 1, defended the company Tuesday.
"I'm not able to see a systemic issue," Malone told analysts. "These are very, very unfortunate incidents. I can say with comfort I'm seeing a high level of focus on safety and operation integrity."
The discovery of the corroded pipe is not the first major problem at Prudhoe Bay - BP is already facing a criminal investigation over a March spill of up to 270,000 gallons on the west side of the field. Both spills are being blamed on corroded transit pipes.
BP is spending $72 million this year on its anticorrosion program, with about half that money going for millions of gallons of corrosion inhibiting chemicals placed in the pipelines. The amount of inhibitor is roughly double what it was a decade ago.
The company uses a variety of techniques to detect corrosion, including X-raying the pipe and gauging thickness by ultrasound. Workers place gel on sections of pipe and move a transducer along it to detect thin spots. More than 100,000 points along roughly more than 1,000 miles of Prudhoe Bay pipe are checked annually.
Flow pipes - the ones that carry oil, water and gas - also are cleaned and scraped and "smart pigged," where an ultrasound device is put into the pipe to check for the thin places in the wall of the pipe.
It was that test, ordered by the Federal Department of Transportation following the huge March spill, that revealed problems in the transit line that leaked Sunday.
BP had relied mostly on exterior ultrasound to monitor the integrity of its three transit pipes in the belief that they were low-risk for corrosion because they carried market-ready crude oil, the processed oil with the water, gas, and solids removed.
On any given day, between 60 and 70 workers are doing tests on Prudhoe Bay's aging pipeline system, Hedges said.
BP now says it will use a maintenance pig to scrape and smart pig all its transit lines.
CSFB analyst Edward Westlake said the outage in Alaska confirms that some non-
OPEC production infrastructure is becoming old.
"These are not new fears," he said. "However, they are causing more concern to company managements."
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Tuesday that the corrosion in the Alaska pipeline could indicate other trouble in the U.S. system. He called on the Transportation Department to immediately survey the nation's pipeline network.
He urged the federal government to be more aggressive in seeking out and correcting flaws in the U.S. energy infrastructure.
"The bottom line is we cannot afford for this incident to be a canary in the mineshaft," Schumer said. "Now is the time to aggressively search for and fix any other problems before another disruption causes a national energy emergency."
Schumer said officials should review the inspection schedules companies file to determine whether pipeline operators are adhering to their required plans.
BP has said it determines how often to test its pipes depending on the particularities of the pipe and if it is likely to corrode.
The severe corrosion found in the pipe that leaked Sunday was a surprise.
"Others with operations with mature assets would no doubt be checking procedures for own infrastructure integrity," Kenney said.
Thomas J. Barrett, administrator of the Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, said his office has issued BP several compliance orders since the March 2 spill and will issue several more when the current onsite investigations are complete.
"Our goal is to restore the safe operations up there as quickly as we can. BP is doing the types of things we would like to have seen done sooner," he said.
A MAN who seriously injured a 14-month-old girl when he put her in a clothes dryer and turned it on was only trying to give her "a fun time", a Perth court has been told.
Samuel Marc Barnes Siddall, 21, of Beldon, today pleaded guilty in the Joondalup Magistrates Court to causing grievous bodily harm after he put his girlfriend's daughter, Mia Jade Jeffrey, in the dryer for about two minutes on May 25.
Mia's mother, Marnie Jowett, who had left the toddler in Siddall's care while she visited a gym, returned home to find the toddler shaking with pain from burns to her hands, feet and back, and bruises to her face and spine.
Siddall, who at the time of the incident was studying at university to become a teacher, had told Ms Jowett he had no idea how the girl was injured, before taking them both to hospital.
Hospital staff reported the case to police because they thought the injuries were suspicious.
The court today was told Siddall had subsequently admitted during a police interview that he had put the toddler in the dryer "just for fun".
Siddall's lawyer Ronald Smith said Siddall would often give Mia "wizzies", when he would hold her hands and spin her around.
Mr Smith said when Mia spilt some medicine on her top, he took her into the laundry to dry it.
"All of a sudden he had a thought: she likes wizzies, she would probably like a wizzy in the dryer," Mr Smith told the court.
"His only thought at that stage was to give the child a fun time."
Siddall, who has no criminal record, had not acted out of anger or malice, Mr Smith said.
"He did not think of the ramifications, all he was going to do was give the child a wizzy," Mr Smith said.
Siddall was deeply traumatised and embarrassed over the incident, Mr Smith said.
Siddall, who used to be outgoing, had left university, and had become withdrawn from society, as if he was "punishing himself" for his actions, he said.
Magistrate Richard Bayly said he believed the act had been one of "unbelievable stupidity", rather than of malice, but may still send Siddall to prison when he sentences him on August 30.
"They import foetuses from poverty stricken countries to treat vain Western women"
Clutching her Hermes holiday bag under her arm, Susan Barrington, a 52-year-old housewife from Buckinghamshire, can't help smiling as she leaves the exclusive clinic in London's Wimpole Street.
She has been given the final go-ahead to travel abroad for a cutting edge nonsurgical treatment that promises to make her look ten years younger.
She doesn't care if the treatment is expensive, involves babies and is so controversial that it is not allowed to be performed in this country - among her well-heeled friends, this is the ultimate new elixir of youth.
The attractive brunette has opted for a controversial stem- cell therapy where umbilical cord tissue from new-born babies will be injected into her body.
It may seem distasteful, but thousands of women have already done it and it is organised by a seemingly respectable British clinic then carried out in Rotterdam, Holland, where rules regarding stemcell therapies are not so strict.
Stem-cell therapy has been big business for beauty doctors since medics discovered the strong healing and rejuvenating potential of stem cells for medical conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. But there has also been a furious ethical debate.
In America, President Bush has denounced stem- cell therapy even for medical purposes as 'godless', vetoing any public funding, though controversially Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of California, one of the few U.S. states to allow stem-cell research, has allocated 80 million dollars to it. Tony Blair met him only last week to support the move.
So what is it about stem cells that has set tongues wagging in the beauty world? They are the building blocks of every human body but are far more plentiful in embryos, which are still growing, human foetuses, or newborn babies, than in adults.
They are immature but powerful cells that, once extracted, can be stimulated in a laboratory to develop into any type of body cell or organ, including bone, muscle and body tissue.
When injected, these powerful cells target the organs that are not functioning at their optimum and encourage them to produce new tissue.
But scientists agree that further research is required to substantiate the claim that injecting stem cells can diminish wrinkles or reverse the signs of ageing.
In Britain, stem-cell research is governed by strict ethical considerations - it is limited to registered institutions using cells from embryos up to 14 days old or aborted foetuses donated to science.
But it has proved difficult to police clinics abroad and it is here that many people go for a range of stem-cell treatments, with a whole industry happy to cater for their needs.
Such unregulated companies have mushroomed across the globe offering 'aesthetic stem-cell therapies' at exorbitant prices to anyone willing to pay. They claim that stem cells have the ability to rejuvenate the body and renew the cells, not just to produce younger, smoother skin, but increased sex drive and energy.
'By definition, what such clinics are doing is highly experimental and risks damaging the reputation of legitimate stem-cell research we are doing to help cure illnesses,' says leading UK stem-cell researcher Colin Blakemore.
'Because so many clinics are based in tourist spots and refuse to be members of the only recognised board to regulate ethical stem-cell research - The International Stem Cell Forum - there is much room for unethical and morally dubious treatment by unqualified doctors. And if anything goes wrong afterwards, it is hushed up to prevent damage to the business.
This week, posing as a 50-year-old, I went in search of the latest anti-ageing remedies that the world's top clinics have to offer.
My investigation threw up a worrying new trade across the globe in unregulated stemcell treatments costing anywhere between £150 and £20,000. Yet hundreds of British women are visiting such clinics desperate for the new elixirs of youth.
Here, The Mail names clinics at the forefront of this disturbing new beauty craze and reveals what really goes on.
Destination: Barbados:
The Institute for Regenerative Medicine
The Treatment: Anti-ageing stem-cell injections made from aborted foetal tissue, £15,000 The past 12 months have seen this popular holiday resort become the stem-cell capital of the developed world, treating hundreds of patients in a year.
The upmarket clinic opened last year in one of the island's most luxurious hotels - Villa Nova - after Ukrainian stem-cell researchers, who have been secretly pioneering stem-cell studies with aborted human foetuses for 20 years, teamed up with U.S. investors backed by the Caribbean tourist industry.
The aim was to attract wealthy British and American stem-cell tourists for treatment, avoiding the strict ethical barriers to such treatment enforced in Europe and America. The clinic is so busy it has a waiting list of more than 1,000 patients for cosmetic treatments and has treated dozens of British women. The promise: The clinic claims that the foetal tissue derived from elective abortions at six to 12 weeks is rich in regenerative stem cells. 'We inject the cells taken from the liver tissue of human foetuses directly into the vein in the back of your hand,' explains the well-spoken English consultant Jenny, who gives telephone consultations to potential patients.
'The results are incredible. You'll feel and look different after a month because these cells help the body to regenerate itself. The effects last for approximately a year before it needs to be "topped up'' '.
Despite criticism from Church leaders and religious groups on the Island, Barnett Suskind, chief executive of IRM, is unapologetic about the treatment he carries out. 'It is the most natural form of healing there is - in ten years, everyone will be doing this,' he says. 'You think better, sleep better, and look better. Your quality of life improves and your libido certainly improves.' The reality: 'The science behind the treatments on offer at IRM is based on the theory that stem cells from aborted foetuses may search out damaged and dead cells in the body and work to repair and replace them,' says Dr Stephen Minger, director of stem cell biology at King's College, London.
'But what this clinic is doing raises serious issues. For a start, it is not regulated by any medical board and there is no documented evidence or controlled clinical trials to back up their claims. More worryingly, there is no proof that the tissue is obtained from truly elective abortions rather than financially induced ones.
'Research shows that they openly import foetuses from poverty-stricken provinces in Ukraine and Russia, preying on the financially desperate to treat vain Western women.'
Destination: Moscow: The Cellulite Clinic.
The treatment: Anti-ageing injections of stem cells from aborted foetuses into thighs, buttocks and stomach -
£10,000 to £15,000 for a course of six.
More than 50 clinics, including this one, have sprung up in Russia's capital over the past three years to meet the demand from wealthy Russians and Westerners alike who flock to the global capital of cosmetic stem-cell therapy, where clinics use loopholes in the law to administer injections.
Nearby Ukraine is home to Emcell, the world's largest clinic that has openly experimented in stem-cell therapy for the past 15 years and administers hundreds of anti-ageing therapies a year.
The promise: Treatments range from the injection of stem cells from animals such as cows and pigs to injecting cells taken from the umbilical cords or livers of aborted human foetuses. 'Foetal tissue has been shown to be highly rich in regenerative stem cells which, when injected into adults, helps the body fight the ageing process,' says Dr Elena Bochkaryova.
'I have had patients who leave my clinic after a course of injections looking and feeling ten years younger than when they came in.' The reality: RUSSIA and the Ukraine currently top the world abortion league, with more of the operations carried out here than anywhere else on earth. Evidence gathered by the Moscow police department has shown a growing black market in aborted foetuses, which are smuggled into Russia from the Ukraine and Georgia.
Here, poverty-stricken young women are paid 200 U.S. dollars to carry babies up to the optimum eight to 12-week period - thought to be best for harvesting stem cells. They are then sold on to cosmetic clinics.
'The cavalier attitude of Russian cosmetic surgeons is grotesque,' says Dr Minger. 'The origin of the cells is ethically immoral. Furthermore, they don't bother to test for compatibility between the cells injected and the patient who receives them. Medical risks from complications can include infection, tumours and rejection of foreign tissue.'
Destination: Dominican Republic
Medra Clinic
The treatment: Foetal stem-cell injections from £15,000. Malibu psychiatrist William Rader, 67, previously owned a string of private clinics in LA dedicated to treating eating disorders. He recently founded Medra to offer stem-cell treatments to wealthy clients who wanted to combine a holiday on the exotic La Romana beach resort in the Dominican Republic with their stem-cell therapy.
He has arranged for hundreds of patients to be injected with cells taken from six to 12-week-old aborted foetuses since the clinic opened its doors. Initial consultations are done at Rader's LA surgery at Malibu beach. Arrangements are then made for patients to fly out to the luxury resort in the Dominican Republic to have the treatment administered. The promise: According to Medra's website, the foetal stem cell 'detects and then attempts to repair any damage or deficit discovered in the body, as well as releasing growth factors, which stimulate the body's own repair mechanisms.
'Stem-cell therapy is the future. It's just unfortunate that there is so much opposition to it in the West,' Rader says.
The reality: Debra Huff-Rader, director of physician and patient relations, is deliberately vague when I ask where the foetuses are sourced, saying only that they are from the former Soviet republic of Georgia. But she invites me to speak with Rader himself.
'Because Rader is acting outside America, his work falls outside U.S. regulations on stem-cell therapy,' says Dr Minger. 'Patients risk at best wasting a lot of money on a treatment that is not proven in clinical trials and at worst one that is putting their health at serious risk.'
Destination: Rotterdam
The PMC clinic
The treatment: Anti-ageing stem-cell injections composed of umbilical cord blood - £8,500. Consultations cost £150 per hour and take place in London's Wimpole Street with Dr Robert Trossell. His patients fly out to Holland, where treatment is carried out. Antiageing treatments involve being injected with stem cells extracted from the umbilical cords of babies who have had a natural birth to full term.
The promise: 'Umbilical cord stem cells are the youngest, safely available stem cells,' claims the website. 'We have never had any negative side-effects. Because of the purity of the stem cells, the body will not recognise them as invaders.'
I am reassured by Dr Trossell's Londonbased assistant that it is perfectly safe and easy to arrange, although they are so busy that I must wait over a month for my initial appointment and then a further three months before treatment.
The reality: 'There is no convincing evidence that what the PMC clinic is doing actually works or is safe,' says Dr Minger. 'To state that these cells cannot be rejected is false. This treatment runs the risk of serious infection, tumours and cancer.
'To inject cells from one human being into another, a range of checks must be made to make sure they genetically match each other. Without being properly regulated, you cannot trust that the clinic will do this. At the least you risk being ripped off, at most developing a serious illness.'
Destination: New York
The Nabi Medspa
The treatment: The Frozen in Time Stem-Cell Facial - £150. The latest beauty treatment to hit Manhattan's spa scene has, according to the owner, already drawn a host of customers from the UK and Europe as well as wealthy New Yorkers. The facial involves an exfoliation and steam. The face is then covered in a moisturiser composed of cells harvested from the embryonic fluid of pregnant cows. The result according to Nabi's owner Ivy Cho is ' biological supremacy over ageing skin'.
The promise: The spa claims that introducing live stem cells from cows helps your skin cells - which may be damaged by ' environmental factors' - restore and replicate themselves, creating healthier, stronger, more youthful-looking skin.
'The treatment is originally from France and has become popular with premium customers,' says a consultant at the spa who claims the cows are not hurt in any way during the process.
'We pat the liquid onto the face rather than rubbing it in, which breaks up the cells. It takes just an hour, but immediately afterwards your skin will feel hydrated, firmer and tighter, with a flawless glow. After six days your skin becomes radiant.' The reality: Scedptics argue that the treatment is useless. 'Rubbing on cow cells which have been previously frozen and are consequently dead is of no use at all. In any case, simply putting them onto the surface of the skin means they could never actually seep in to the body,'says Dr Minger.
'This treatment is farcical. Why would putting the cells of cows on to a human being's skin rejuvenate it? It's just not possible. Any woman who wants to rejuvenate her skin should simply eat healthily and invest in a good facial moisturiser.'
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