ten downing street

Letter From Airstrip One: Fear Over Facts

2006-08-19T08:14:00.000-07:00

London - Swift action by British intelligence services foil an imminent terrorist strike by religious extremists that would have resulted in mass death and social upheaval on an unprecedented scale. Government ministers heatedly denounce the plotters as the evil agents of a worldwide sectarian conspiracy seeking to impose its totalitarian ideology on free nations everywhere.

The country goes on high alert, with raids on private homes and places of worship. Native adherents of the suspect faith fall under a cloud of suspicion as "the enemy within"; neighborhoods are riven with distrust. Any attempts at exploring the grievances that so radicalized the plotters are dismissed as treasonous coddling of a monstrous foe impervious to reason.

The year, of course, is 1605.

The foiling of the Gunpowder Plot 400 years ago - when a small group of radical Catholics tried to blow up Parliament and the royal family - is still celebrated as one of the chief national holidays in the UK: November 5, "Guy Fawkes Day," named, oddly enough, after the chief plotter. Effigies of the dastardly terrorist - who was tortured, hanged, drawn and quartered for his pains - are still burned each year at night rallies across the country.

It's unlikely, however, that last week's apparent thwarting of an alleged test-run by one alleged conspirator in an alleged plot by a group of alleged religious extremists to allegedly blow up an ever-shifting number of US-bound airplanes with some sort of liquid explosive or other will be celebrated centuries from now as "Rashid Rauf Day," after the alleged plot mastermind who was arrested in Pakistan and is now, after the gentle ministrations of the ISI, said to be "cooperating with authorities." But Britain's political and media elites have reacted to the incident with a degree of fearmongering and rancor that would have done old Guy's torturers and quarterers proud.

In fact, the level of government bombast and media Muslim-bashing following the Great Bomb Scare Plot far surpasses that seen after the successful terrorist attack on July 7 last year, when 56 people were killed by bombs on London's transport system. And it's off the scale when compared to the nation's measured stoicism in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when 78 Britons died in the attacks on American soil. It seems Tony Blair and the UK commentariat are operating by some strange law of inverse proportion: the less dire the incident, the greater the frenzy.

Of course, Blair himself reacted to this "imminent threat" of "mass murder on an unimaginable scale," this moment of extreme national peril, by · cruising the Caribbean. The sight of Blair sunning on a luxury yacht while security troops stormed suburban homes and surrounded mosques back home was just one of the many surreal juxtapositions in the vast media spectacle that quickly overwhelmed whatever kernel of reality lay behind the plot.

The inherent schizophrenia of the "War on Terror" was everywhere in evidence. Britons were told they were facing the greatest threat to the life of the nation since World War II, requiring tireless vigilance, a "huge effort of will and courage" - but they should keep shopping, keep traveling, carry on with their normal lives (as their tanned and jaunty leader was doing). They were pipelined stories by an unquestioning media about the dazzling triumph of the super-efficient security services - the same services that had botched the Iraq WMD intelligence, shot dead a Brazilian carpenter they mistook for a terrorist last year and, just two months before, sent 250 heavily armed agents on a raid to seize two alleged "chemical bombers" (and shoot one of them) on the false word of a single informant. Britain has arrested more than 700 people on terrorism charges in the last five years; only 17 have been found guilty - and only three of these convictions were related to "Islamic terrorism," as CounterPunch and the uardian report.

For days, TV screens here were filled with the gruff visage of Home Secretary John Reid, a former Stalinist who used to enforce the party line on his communist comrades with his fists, and now serves the same function - sans knuckles - for Blair's increasingly right-wing regime. Reid is the point man for a raft of draconian measures that Blair has been pushing for years, including national ID cards; trials without jury; summary powers for police to dispense "instant justice," without trial or defense, for a range of street crimes; and ever-broader expansions of the state's surveillance and arbitrary detention powers, which in many cases already outstrip those claimed by Bush's "unitary executive." You will not be shocked to hear that Reid has now seized on the bomb scare as bullwhip to drive Parliament forward on these and other "security reforms."

Reid is the rising star of the Blair Remnant, which aims to prevent Tony's long-time rival and putative successor, Chancellor Gordon Brown, from seizing the Labour crown when Blair makes his long-promised, much-delayed exit. In the bomb plot media blitz, Reid completely eclipsed the nominal head of government in Blair's absence, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, who was already in the doghouse after an adultery scandal - and who will likely be eased out altogether now that he has committed the ultimate heresy of Blair's inner circle: denigrating George W. Bush. In private remarks leaked to the Independent this week, Prescott called Bush's Middle East policy "crap" and mocked him as "cowboy with his Stetson on." Doubtless Prescott is now mulling the fate of ex-Foreign Minister Jack Straw, who was dumped from his post earlier this year after publicly declaring that the Bush administration's obvious yen for a war with Iran was "nuts." Those who speak ill of the Master in the White House are not long toleratd by his satrap in Downing Street.

But perhaps the most surreal and jarring juxtaposition of all was the assertion by the British Establishment that the UK's central role in the Iraq War - and Blair's lockstep behind Bush's "crap" policy of giving Israel's hardline government free rein in the Middle East - have played no part in radicalizing young Muslims. Leading writers from the left-leaning Guardian and Observer to the staid rightists of the Times and the Telegraph joined Blair and Reid (and Bush and even Bill Clinton) in advancing this remarkable thesis. No, they all said, the fact that America and Britain invaded the Islamic heartland on false pretenses and have killed more than 100,000 innocent Muslim civilians there could not possibly have angered a small handful of Muslims to the point of wanting to answer violence with violence. Nor could the pictures of shredded infants being pulled from the rubble of farming villages in Lebanon while Bush and Blair cheered on Israel's inducement of "birth pangs" in the region have had any effect o anguished and impressionable minds.

Not even the "Intelligent Design" crowd denies reality with such willful ignorance as this. After all, both the US and UK intelligence services have clearly stated that the war in Iraq is fomenting more terrorism worldwide. Yet when a group of leading Establishment Muslims - "good" Muslims, you understand, including some peers of the realm - echoed this rational, fact-based assessment in a polite public letter to Blair, they were castigated across the commentariat for their defeatism, their terrorist-coddling, even their ingratitude. Didn't they realize, thundered the Observer, that America and Britain were actually in Iraq to save Islam from the extremists who pervert the faith? Why, that's what the war is all about!

The Sunday Times best encapsulated the Establishment mood with an ominous piece entitled - what else? - "The Enemy Within." It is not Iraq or Palestine or any other so-called grievance that is generating terrorism, said the paper; it's just pure evil, a floating, motiveless malignancy which has infected "a generation of disaffected Muslims" who seek any excuse "for killing their fellow citizens." These deadly microbes in the body politic may "seem all too ordinary, perhaps enthusiastic about football and cricket and living 'normal' westernized existences in neat terraced houses. They work, study or run small businesses," but any one of them - or maybe all of them, a whole "generation" - might be secretly plotting to "destroy our way of life."

This is about as far as you can go in Muslim-baiting short of calling for an outright pogrom. It appeared in one of the nation's most venerable and respected papers. It evoked not a single spark of controversy. Indeed, it represents the conventional wisdom of an Establishment that, with few exceptions, now seems addicted to the manufacture of hysteria, the exaltation of fear over facts: blind to the corrosive effects of its own use of death and violence for political ends; inflating moderate risks into existential threats; sacrificing liberty for an illusory security; and obliterating the complexities of reality with cartoonish rhetoric that poisons public discourse - and official policy - with fear and suspicion.

Happy Rashid Rauf Day everyone. Don't forget your effigies.

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Chris Floyd is an American journalist. His weekly political column, "Global Eye," ran in the Moscow Times from 1996 to 2006. His work has appeared in print and online in venues all over the world, including The Nation, CounterPunch, Columbia Journalism Review, the Christian Science Monitor, Il Manifesto, the Bergen Record and many others. His story on Pentagon plans to foment terrorism won a Project Censored award in 2003. He is the author of Empire Burlesque: High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium, and is co-founder and editor of the "Empire Burlesque" political blog. - link

Mass murder in the skies: was the plot feasible?

2006-08-19T08:06:00.000-07:00

Binary liquid explosives are a sexy staple of Hollywood thrillers. It would be tedious to enumerate the movie terrorists who've employed relatively harmless liquids that, when mixed, immediately rain destruction upon an innocent populace, like the seven angels of God's wrath pouring out their bowls full of pestilence and pain.The funny thing about these movies is, we never learn just which two chemicals can be handled safely when separate, yet instantly blow us all to kingdom come when combined. Nevertheless, we maintain a great eagerness to believe in these substances, chiefly because action movies wouldn't be as much fun if we didn't.

Now we have news of the recent, supposedly real-world, terrorist plot to destroy commercial airplanes by smuggling onboard the benign precursors to a deadly explosive, and mixing up a batch of liquid death in the lavatories. So, The Register has got to ask, were these guys for real, or have they, and the counterterrorist officials supposedly protecting us, been watching too many action movies?

We're told that the suspects were planning to use TATP, or triacetone triperoxide, a high explosive that supposedly can be made from common household chemicals unlikely to be caught by airport screeners. A little hair dye, drain cleaner, and paint thinner - all easily concealed in drinks bottles - and the forces of evil have effectively smuggled a deadly bomb onboard your plane.

Or at least that's what we're hearing, and loudly, through the mainstream media and its legions of so-called "terrorism experts." But what do these experts know about chemistry? Less than they know about lobbying for Homeland Security pork, which is what most of them do for a living. But they've seen the same movies that you and I have seen, and so the myth of binary liquid explosives dies hard.
Better killing through chemistry

Making a quantity of TATP sufficient to bring down an airplane is not quite as simple as ducking into the toilet and mixing two harmless liquids together.

First, you've got to get adequately concentrated hydrogen peroxide. This is hard to come by, so a large quantity of the three per cent solution sold in pharmacies might have to be concentrated by boiling off the water. Only this is risky, and can lead to mission failure by means of burning down your makeshift lab before a single infidel has been harmed.

But let's assume that you can obtain it in the required concentration, or cook it from a dilute solution without ruining your operation. Fine. The remaining ingredients, acetone and sulfuric acid, are far easier to obtain, and we can assume that you've got them on hand.

Now for the fun part. Take your hydrogen peroxide, acetone, and sulfuric acid, measure them very carefully, and put them into drinks bottles for convenient smuggling onto a plane. It's all right to mix the peroxide and acetone in one container, so long as it remains cool. Don't forget to bring several frozen gel-packs (preferably in a Styrofoam chiller deceptively marked "perishable foods"), a thermometer, a large beaker, a stirring rod, and a medicine dropper. You're going to need them.

It's best to fly first class and order Champagne. The bucket full of ice water, which the airline ought to supply, might possibly be adequate - especially if you have those cold gel-packs handy to supplement the ice, and the Styrofoam chiller handy for insulation - to get you through the cookery without starting a fire in the lavvie.
Easy does it

Once the plane is over the ocean, very discreetly bring all of your gear into the toilet. You might need to make several trips to avoid drawing attention. Once your kit is in place, put a beaker containing the peroxide / acetone mixture into the ice water bath (Champagne bucket), and start adding the acid, drop by drop, while stirring constantly. Watch the reaction temperature carefully. The mixture will heat, and if it gets too hot, you'll end up with a weak explosive. In fact, if it gets really hot, you'll get a premature explosion possibly sufficient to kill you, but probably no one else.

After a few hours - assuming, by some miracle, that the fumes haven't overcome you or alerted passengers or the flight crew to your activities - you'll have a quantity of TATP with which to carry out your mission. Now all you need to do is dry it for an hour or two.

The genius of this scheme is that TATP is relatively easy to detonate. But you must make enough of it to crash the plane, and you must make it with care to assure potency. One needs quality stuff to commit "mass murder on an unimaginable scale," as Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson put it. While it's true that a slapdash concoction will explode, it's unlikely to do more than blow out a few windows. At best, an infidel or two might be killed by the blast, and one or two others by flying debris as the cabin suddenly depressurizes, but that's about all you're likely to manage under the most favorable conditions possible.

We believe this because a peer-reviewed 2004 study (http://www.technion.ac.il/~keinanj/pub/122.pdf) in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) entitled "Decomposition of Triacetone Triperoxide is an Entropic Explosion" tells us that the explosive force of TATP comes from the sudden decomposition of a solid into gasses. There's no rapid oxidizing of fuel, as there is with many other explosives: rather, the substance changes state suddenly through an entropic process, and quickly releases a respectable amount of energy when it does. (Thus the lack of ingredients typically associated with explosives makes TATP, a white crystalline powder resembling sugar, difficult to detect with conventional bomb sniffing gear.)
Mrs. Satan

By now you'll be asking why these jihadist wannabes didn't conspire simply to bring TATP onto planes, colored with a bit of vegetable dye, and disguised as, say, a powdered fruit-flavored drink. The reason is that they would be afraid of failing: TATP is notoriously sensitive and unstable. Mainstream journalists like to tell us that terrorists like to call it "the mother of Satan." (Whether this reputation is deserved, or is a consequence of homebrewing by unqualified hacks, remains open to debate.)

It's been claimed that the 7/7 bombers used it, but this has not been positively confirmed. Some sources claim that they used C-4, and others that they used RDX. Nevertheless, the belief that they used TATP has stuck with the media, although going about in a crowded city at rush hour with an unstable homebrew explosive in a backpack is not the brightest of all possible moves. It's surprising that none of the attackers enjoyed an unscheduled launch into Paradise.

So, assuming that the homebrew variety of TATP is highly sensitive and unstable - or at least that our inept jihadists would believe that - to avoid getting blown up in the taxi on the way to the airport, one might, if one were educated in terror tactics primarily by hollywood movies, prefer simply to dump the precursors into an airplane toilet bowl and let the mother of Satan work her magic. Indeed, the mixture will heat rapidly as TATP begins to form, and it will soon explode. But this won't happen with much force, because little TATP will have formed by the time the explosion occurs.

We asked University of Rhode Island Chemistry Professor Jimmie C. Oxley, who has actual, practical experience with TATP, if this is a reasonable assumption, and she tolds us that merely dumping the precursors together would create "a violent reaction," but not a detonation.

To release the energy needed to bring down a plane (far more difficult to do than many imagine, as Aloha Airlines Flight 243 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Flight_243) neatly illustrates), it's necessary to synthesize a good amount of TATP with care.
Jack Bauer sense

So the fabled binary liquid explosive - that is, the sudden mixing of hydrogen peroxide and acetone with sulfuric acid to create a plane-killing explosion, is out of the question. Meanwhile, making TATP ahead of time carries a risk that the mission will fail due to premature detonation, although it is the only plausible approach.

Certainly, if we can imagine a group of jihadists smuggling the necessary chemicals and equipment on board, and cooking up TATP in the lavatory, then we've passed from the realm of action blockbusters to that of situation comedy.

It should be small comfort that the security establishments of the UK and the USA - and the "terrorism experts" who inform them and wheedle billions of dollars out of them for bomb puffers and face recognition gizmos and remote gait analyzers and similar hi-tech phrenology gear - have bought the Hollywood binary liquid explosive myth, and have even acted upon it.

We've given extraordinary credit to a collection of jihadist wannabes with an exceptionally poor grasp of the mechanics of attacking a plane, whose only hope of success would have been a pure accident. They would have had to succeed in spite of their own ignorance and incompetence, and in spite of being under police surveillance for a year.

But the Hollywood myth of binary liquid explosives now moves governments and drives public policy. We have reacted to a movie plot. Liquids are now banned in aircraft cabins (while crystalline white powders would be banned instead, if anyone in charge were serious about security). Nearly everything must now go into the hold, where adequate amounts of explosives can easily be detonated from the cabin with cell phones, which are generally not banned.
Action heroes

The al-Qaeda franchise will pour forth its bowl of pestilence and death. We know this because we've watched it countless times on TV and in the movies, just as our officials have done. Based on their behavior, it's reasonable to suspect that everything John Reid and Michael Chertoff know about counterterrorism, they learned watching the likes of Bruce Willis, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Vin Diesel, and The Rock (whose palpable homoerotic appeal it would be discourteous to emphasize).

It's a pity that our security rests in the hands of government officials who understand as little about terrorism as the Florida clowns who needed their informant to suggest attack scenarios, as the 21/7 London bombers who injured no one, as lunatic "shoe bomber" Richard Reid, as the Forest Gate nerve gas attackers who had no nerve gas, as the British nitwits who tried to acquire "red mercury," and as the recent binary liquid bomb attackers who had no binary liquid bombs.

For some real terror, picture twenty guys who understand op-sec, who are patient, realistic, clever, and willing to die, and who know what can be accomplished with a modest stash of dimethylmercury.

You won't hear about those fellows until it's too late. Our official protectors and deciders trumpet the fools they catch because they haven't got a handle on the people we should really be afraid of. They make policy based on foibles and follies, and Hollywood plots.

Meanwhile, the real thing draws ever closer. - link

Hizbullah's attacks stem from Israeli incursions into Lebanon

2006-08-19T08:05:00.000-07:00

As pundits and policymakers scramble to explain events in Lebanon, their conclusions are virtually unanimous: Hizbullah created this crisis. Israel is defending itself. The underlying problem is Arab extremism.

Sadly, this is pure analytical nonsense. Hizbullah's capture of two Israeli soldiers on July 12 was a direct result of Israel's silent but unrelenting aggression against Lebanon, which in turn is part of a six-decades long Arab-Israeli conflict.

Since its withdrawal of occupation forces from southern Lebanon in May 2000, Israel has violated the United Nations-monitored "blue line" on an almost daily basis, according to UN reports. Hizbullah's military doctrine, articulated in the early 1990s, states that it will fire Katyusha rockets into Israel only in response to Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilians or Hizbullah's leadership; this indeed has been the pattern.

In the process of its violations, Israel has terrorized the general population, destroyed private property, and killed numerous civilians. This past February, for instance, 15-year-old shepherd Yusuf Rahil was killed by unprovoked Israeli cross-border fire as he tended his flock in southern Lebanon. Israel has assassinated its enemies in the streets of Lebanese cities and continues to occupy Lebanon's Shebaa Farms area, while refusing to hand over the maps of mine fields that continue to kill and cripple civilians in southern Lebanon more than six years after the war supposedly ended. What peace did Hizbullah shatter?

Hizbullah's capture of the soldiers took place in the context of this ongoing conflict, which in turn is fundamentally shaped by realities in the Palestinian territories. To the vexation of Israel and its allies, Hizbullah - easily the most popular political movement in the Middle East - unflinchingly stands with the Palestinians.

Since June 25, when Palestinian fighters captured one Israeli soldier and demanded a prisoner exchange, Israel has killed more than 140 Palestinians. Like the Lebanese situation, that flare-up was detached from its wider context and was said to be "manufactured" by the enemies of Israel; more nonsense proffered in order to distract from the apparently unthinkable reality that it is the manner in which Israel was created, and the ideological premises that have sustained it for almost 60 years, that are the core of the entire Arab-Israeli conflict.

Once the Arabs had rejected the UN's right to give away their land and to force them to pay the price for European pogroms and the Holocaust, the creation of Israel in 1948 was made possible only by ethnic cleansing and annexation. This is historical fact and has been documented by Israeli historians, such as Benny Morris. Yet Israel continues to contend that it had nothing to do with the Palestinian exodus, and consequently has no moral duty to offer redress.

For six decades the Palestinian refugees have been refused their right to return home because they are of the wrong race. "Israel must remain a Jewish state," is an almost sacral mantra across the Western political spectrum. It means, in practice, that Israel is accorded the right to be an ethnocracy at the expense of the refugees and their descendants, now close to 5 million.

Is it not understandable that Israel's ethnic preoccupation profoundly offends not only Palestinians, but many of their Arab brethren? Yet rather than demanding that Israel acknowledge its foundational wrongs as a first step toward equality and coexistence, the Western world blithely insists that each and all must recognize Israel's right to exist at the Palestinians' expense.

Western discourse seems unable to accommodate a serious, as opposed to cosmetic concern for Palestinians' rights and liberties: The Palestinians are the Indians who refuse to live on the reservation; the Negroes who refuse to sit in the back of the bus.

By what moral right does anyone tell them to be realistic and get over themselves? That it is too much of a hassle to right the wrongs committed against them? That the front of the bus must remain ethnically pure? When they refuse to recognize their occupier and embrace their racial inferiority, when desperation and frustration causes them to turn to violence, and when neighbors and allies come to their aid - some for reasons of power politics, others out of idealism - we are astonished that they are all such fanatics and extremists.

The fundamental obstacle to understanding the Arab-Israeli conflict is that we have given up on asking what is right and wrong, instead asking what is "practical" and "realistic." Yet reality is that Israel is a profoundly racist state, the existence of which is buttressed by a seemingly endless succession of punitive measures, assassinations, and wars against its victims and their allies.

A realistic understanding of the conflict, therefore, is one that recognizes that the crux is not in this or that incident or policy, but in Israel's foundational and per- sistent refusal to recognize the humanity of its Palestinian victims. Neither Hizbullah nor Hamas are driven by a desire to "wipe out Jews," as is so often claimed, but by a fundamental sense of injustice that they will not allow to be forgotten.

These groups will continue to enjoy popular legitimacy because they fulfill the need for someone - anyone - to stand up for Arab rights. Israel cannot destroy this need by bombing power grids or rocket ramps. If Israel, like its former political ally South Africa, has the capacity to come to terms with principles of democracy and human rights and accept egalitarian multiracial coexistence within a single state for Jews and Arabs, then the foundation for resentment and resistance will have been removed. If Israel cannot bring itself to do so, then it will continue to be the vortex of regional violence.

• Anders Strindberg, formerly a visiting professor at Damascus University, Syria, is a consultant on Middle East politics working with European government and law-enforcement agencies. He has also covered Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories as a journalist since the late 1990s, primarily for European publications.
- link

IRAQ: CORRUPTION COSTS COUNTRY 7.5 BILLION DOLLARS

2006-08-19T08:02:00.000-07:00

Corruption within the Iraqi bureaucracy has amounted to the disappearance of 7.5 billion dollars over the last two years, according to the state-appointed Commission for Integrity's president Radi al-Radic. He also said that several former cabinet ministers and top bureaucrats have been summoned to appear before the commission in connection with the missing funds.

Former electricity minister, Ayham al-Samarrai e Abd al-Muhsin Shallash, former transport minister, Luway al-Ars, former welfare minister, Layla Abd al-Latif, and former defence minister, Hazim al-Shaalan, were among those requested to appear before the commission.

Radi said that the commission would also ask that parliamentary immunity be lifted on the leader of the Reconciliation and Freedom group's leader, Mashaan al-Jaburi, so that he could respond to "charges of corruption" filed against him.

Radi also said that he and other commission members have "received threats" and that 21 commission employees have been killed since the anti-graft body was created in 2004. - link

Chavez: Lebanon destroyed by genocidal hand of Israel

2006-08-19T08:01:00.000-07:00

Venezuelan president announces nationwide fundraising drive to raise money for rebuilding Lebanon and for Palestinians; calls Lebanese ‘heroic people’

President Hugo Chavez said Venezuela is carrying out a nationwide fundraising drive to raise money for rebuilding Lebanon and for the Palestinian people.

Chavez called the Lebanese and Palestinians “Heroic people” and reiterated his criticisms of Israel over its military offensive in Lebanon.

“I ask everyone in the country to give what we can for this fundraising campaign for the reconstruction of Lebanon - destroyed by the genocidal and fascist hand of Israel, and its masters, the U.S. Empire,” Chavez said.

The Venezuelan president said on Aug. 3 that he was withdrawing his country’s top diplomat to Israel to protest its attacks in Lebanon and its actions toward the Palestinians.

Israel, which responded by calling home its ambassador, has criticized what it calls Chavez’s “One-sided policy” and “Wild slurs.” - Associated Press

Learning from Its Mistakes

2006-08-12T10:40:00.000-07:00

In his memoir, Not So Wild a Dream, the famous CBS correspondent Eric Sevareid recalled watching the execution of six Nazi collaborators in the newly liberated city of Grenoble in 1944.

When the police van arrived and the six who were to die stepped out, a tremendous and awful cry arose from the crowd. The six young men walked firmly to the iron posts, and as their hands were tied behind the shafts they held their bare heads upright, one or two with closed eyes, the others staring over the line of the buildings and the crowd into the lowering clouds . . . There was the jarring, metallic noise of rifle bolts and then the sharp report. The six young men slid slowly to their knees, their heads falling to one side. An officer ran with frantic haste from one to the other, giving the coup de grâce with a revolver, and one of the victims was seen to work his mouth as though trying to say something to the executioner. As the last shot was fired, the terrible, savage cry rose again from the crowd. Mothers with babies rushed forward to look on the bodies at close range, and small boys ran from one to the other spitting upon the bodies. The crowd dispersed, men and women laughing and shouting at one another. Barbarous?

Such events were part of what the French described as the épuration – the purification or purging of France after four years of German occupation. The number of French men and women killed by the Resistance or kangaroo courts is usually put at ten thousand. Camus called this ‘human justice with all its defects’. The American forces that liberated France tolerated local vengeance against those who had worked for a brutal occupier. Thousands of French people, encouraged by a government in Vichy that they believed to be legitimate, had collaborated. Many, like the Milices, fascist gangs armed by Vichy, went further and killed Frenchmen. When Vichy’s foreign sponsors withdrew and its government fell, the killing began. Accounts were settled with similar violence in other provinces of the former Third Reich – countries which, along with Britain and the United States, we now think of as the civilised world.

From 1978 to 2000 Israel occupied slices of Lebanon from their common border right up to Beirut and back again. To reduce the burden on its own forces, the Israelis created a species of Milice in the form of the locally recruited South Lebanon Army – first under Major Saad Haddad, who had broken from the Lebanese army in 1976 with a few hundred men, and later under General Antoine Lahad. Both were Christians, and their troops – armed, trained, fed and clothed by Israel – were mainly Shia Muslims from the south. About a third of the force, which grew to almost 10,000, were Christians. Some joined because they resented the Palestinians’ armed presence in south Lebanon. Others enlisted because they needed the money: the region has always been Lebanon’s poorest. The SLA had a reputation for cruelty, confirmed when its torture chambers at Khiam were opened after the Israeli withdrawal in 2000, and for a high rate of desertions.

As Israel pulled back from Beirut, the high-water mark reached during its 1982 invasion, its share of Lebanon contracted further and further. Having seized 3560 square kilometres, about a third of the country, containing around 800 towns and villages, Israel found itself in 1985 with only 500 square kilometres and 61 villages, mostly deserted. Hizbullah, which led the resistance that had forced the Israelis to abandon most of their conquest, demanded the unconditional return of all Lebanese territory. Its attacks intensified, resulting in a loss of IDF soldiers that became unpalatable to most Israelis. The Israeli army placed the SLA between itself and Hizbullah so that it could pay the price that Israel had decided it could not afford. Hizbullah kidnapped SLA men, and the SLA and Israelis kidnapped Shias. The two sides killed each other, as well as many civilians, and blood feuds were born. On 17 May 1999, Israelis elected Ehud Barak on the strength of his promise to reverse Ariel Sharon’s Lebanon adventure, which had by then cost around a thousand Israeli lives.

Barak announced that Israel would pull out in an orderly fashion in July 2000, provided that Lebanon agreed to certain conditions. The Lebanese government, urged by Hizbullah, rejected these conditions and demanded full Israeli withdrawal in accordance with UN Resolutions 425 and 426 of 1978. Barak abandoned Lebanon two months ahead of schedule, suddenly and without advance warning, on 23 May 2000. His SLA clients and other Lebanese who had worked for the occupation over the previous 22 years were caught off guard. A few escaped into Israel, but most remained. UN personnel made urgent appeals for help to avert a massacre by Hizbullah. Hizbullah went in, but nothing happened.

The deputy secretary-general and co-founder of Hizbullah, Sheikh Naim Qassem, wrote a fascinating if partisan account of the creation and rise of Hizbullah. His version of the events in 2000 is, however, borne out by eyewitnesses from other Lebanese sects – including some who stood to lose their lives – and the UN. ‘It is no secret that some young combatants, as well as some of the region’s citizens, had a desire for vengeance – especially those who were aware of what collaborators and their families had inflicted on the mujahedin and their next of kin across the occupied villages,’ Qassem wrote in Hizbullah: The Story from Within. ‘Resistance leadership issued a strict warning forbidding any such action and vowing to discipline those who took it whatever the justifications.’ Hizbullah captured Israeli weapons, which it is now using against Israel, and turned over SLA militiamen to the government without murdering any of them. Barbarous?

Naim Qassem called the liberation of south Lebanon ‘the grandest and most important victory over Israel since it commenced its occupation [of Palestine] fifty years before – a liberation that was achieved at the hands of the weakest of nations, of a resistance operating through the most modest of means, not at the hands of armies with powerful military arsenals.’ But what impressed most Lebanese as much as Hizbullah’s victory over Israel was its refusal to murder collaborators – a triumph over the tribalism that has plagued and divided Lebanese society since its founding. Christians I knew in the Lebanese army admitted that their own side would have committed atrocities. Hizbullah may have been playing politics in Lebanon, but it refused to play Lebanese politics. What it sought in south Lebanon was not revenge, but votes. In the interval between its founding in 1982 and the victory of 2000, Hizbullah had become – as well as an armed force – a sophisticated and successful political party. It jettisoned its early rhetoric about making Lebanon an Islamic republic, and spoke of Christians, Muslims and Druze living in harmony. When it put up candidates for parliament, some of those on its electoral list were Christians. It won 14 seats.

Like Israel’s previous enemies, Hizbullah relies on the weapons of the weak: car bombs, ambushes, occasional flurries of small rockets and suicide bombers. The difference is that it uses them intelligently, in conjunction with an uncompromising political programme. Against Israel’s thousand dead on the Lebanese field, Hizbullah gave up 1276 ‘martyrs’. That is the closest any Arab group has ever come to parity in casualties with Israel. The PLO usually lost hundreds of dead commandos to Israel’s tens, and Hamas has seen most of its leaders assassinated and thousands of its cadres captured with little to show for it. Hizbullah’s achievement, perhaps ironically for a religious party headed by men in turbans, is that it belongs to the modern age. It videotaped its ambushes of Israeli convoys for broadcast the same evening. It captured Israeli soldiers and made Israel give up hundreds of prisoners to get them back. It used stage-set cardboard boulders that blew up when Israeli patrols passed. It flew drones over Israel to take reconnaissance photographs – just as the Israelis did in Lebanon. It had a website that was short on traditional Arab bombast and long on facts. If Israelis had faced an enemy like Hizbullah in 1948, the outcome of its War of Independence might have been different. Israel, whose military respect Hizbullah, is well aware of this.

That is why, having failed to eliminate Hizbullah while it occupied Lebanon, Israel is trying to destroy it now. Hizbullah’s unpardonable sin in Israel’s view is its military success. Israel may portray Hizbullah as the cat’s-paw of Syria and Iran, but its support base is Lebanese. Moreover, it does one thing that Syria and Iran do not: it fights for the Palestinians. On 12 July Hizbullah attacked an Israeli army unit, capturing two soldiers. It said it would negotiate indirectly to exchange them for Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners in Israel, as it has done in the past. It made clear that its attack was in support of the Palestinians under siege in Gaza after the capture of another Israeli soldier a week earlier. The whole Arab world had remained silent when Israel reoccupied the Gaza settlements and bombed the territory. Hizbullah’s response humiliated the Arab regimes, most of which condemned its actions, as much as it humiliated Israel. No one need have been surprised. Hizbullah has a long history of supporting the Palestinians. Many of its original fighters were trained by the PLO in the 1970s when the Shias had no militias of their own. Hizbullah risked the anger of Syria in 1986 when it sided against another Shia group which was attacking Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut. Hizbullah has never abandoned the Palestinian cause. Its capture last month of the two Israeli soldiers sent a message to Israel that it could not attack Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank without expecting a reaction.

On this occasion Israel, which regards its treatment of Palestinians under occupation as an internal affair in which neither the UN nor the Arab countries have any right to interfere, calibrated its response in such a way that it could not win. Instead of doing a quiet deal with Hizbullah to free its soldiers, it launched an all-out assault on Lebanon. Reports indicate that Israel has already dropped a greater tonnage of bombs on the country than it did during Sharon’s invasion in 1982. The stated purpose was to force a significant portion of the Lebanese to demand that the government disarm Hizbullah once and for all. That failed to happen. Israel’s massive destruction of Lebanon has had the effect of improving Hizbullah’s standing in the country. Its popularity had been low since last year, when it alone refused to demand the evacuation of the Syrian army after the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. Hizbullah sensed that Washington was orchestrating the anti-Syrian campaign for its own – rather than Lebanon’s – benefit.

Syria had, after all, helped found Hizbullah after Israel’s invasion – and encouraged it to face down and defeat the occupation, as well as to drive the Americans from Lebanon. Syria in turn allowed Iran, whose religious leaders gave direction to Hizbullah and whose Revolutionary Guards provided valuable tactical instruction, to send weapons through its territory to Lebanon. Hizbullah’s leaders nevertheless have sufficiently strong support to assert their independence of both sponsors whenever their interests or philosophies clash. (I have first-hand, if minor, experience of this. When Hizbullah kidnapped me in full view of a Syrian army checkpoint in 1987, Syria insisted that I be released to show that Syrian control of Lebanon could not be flouted. Hizbullah, unfortunately, ignored the request.) Despite occasional Syrian pressure, Hizbullah has refused to go into combat against any other Lebanese militia. It remained aloof from the civil war and concentrated on defeating Israel and its SLA surrogates.

Hizbullah’s unspectacular showing in the first post-Syrian parliamentary elections was largely due to changes in electoral law but may also be traced in part to its perceived pro-Syrian stance. Now, Israel has rescued Hizbullah and made its secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, not only the most popular man in Lebanon – but in the whole Arab world. An opinion poll commissioned by the Beirut Centre for Research and Information found that 80 per cent of Lebanese Christians supported Hizbullah; the figure for other communities was even higher. It was not insignificant that, when false reports came in that Hizbullah had sunk a second Israeli warship, the area that fired the loudest celebratory shots in the air was Ashrafieh, the heart of Christian East Beirut. Unlike in 1982, when it could rely on some of the Christian militias, Israel now has no friends in Lebanon.

Israel misjudged Lebanon’s response to its assaults, just as Hizbullah misjudged Israeli opinion. Firing its rockets into Israel did not, as it may have planned, divide Israelis and make them call for an end to the war. Israelis, like the Lebanese, rallied to their fighters in a contest that is taking on life and death proportions for both countries. Unlike Israel, which has repeatedly played out the same failed scenario in Lebanon since its first attack on Beirut in 1968, Hizbullah has a history of learning from its mistakes. Seeing the Israeli response to his rocket bombardment of Haifa and Netanya in the north, Nasrallah has not carried out his threat to send rockets as far as Tel Aviv. He now says he will do this only if Israel targets the centre of Beirut.

If the UN had any power, or the United States exercised its power responsibly, there would have been an unconditional ceasefire weeks ago and an exchange of prisoners. The Middle East could then have awaited the next crisis. Crises will inevitably recur until the Palestine problem is solved. But Lebanon would not have been demolished, hundreds of people would not have died and the hatred between Lebanese and Israelis would not have become so bitter.

On 31 July, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said: ‘This is a unique opportunity to change the rules in Lebanon.’ Yet Israel itself is playing by the same old unsuccessful rules. It is ordering Lebanon to disarm Hizbullah or face destruction, just as in 1975 it demanded the dismantling of the PLO. Then, many Lebanese fought the PLO and destroyed the country from within. Now, they reason, better war than another civil war: better that the Israelis kill us than that we kill ourselves. What else can Israel do to them? It has bombed comprehensively, destroyed the country’s expensively restored infrastructure, laid siege to it and sent its troops back in. Israel still insists that it will destroy Hizbullah in a few weeks, although it did not manage to do so between 1982 and 2000 when it had thousands of troops on the ground and a local proxy force to help it. What is its secret weapon this time?

Charles Glass has recently published two books on the Middle East, The Northern Front and The Tribes Triumphant, and is writing a book set in France during the German occupation. - link

How I found myself with the Islamic fascists

2006-08-12T10:39:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me as I watched the story unfolding on my TV of a suspected plot by a group of at least 20 British Muslims to blow up planes between the UK and America that the course of my life and that of the alleged “terrorists” may have run in parallel in more ways than one.

Like a number of them, I am originally from High Wycombe, one of the non-descript commuter towns that ring London. As aerial shots wheeled above the tiled roof of a semi-detached house there, I briefly thought I was looking at my mother’s home.

But doubtless my and their lives have diverged in numerous ways. According to news reports, the suspects are probably Pakistani, a large “immigrant” community that has settled in many corners of Britain, including High Wycombe and Birmingham, a grey metropolis in the country’s centre where at least some of the arrested men are believed to have been born.

Britain’s complacent satisfaction with its multi-culturalism and tolerance ignores the facts that Pakistanis and other ethnic minorities mostly live in their own segregated spaces on the margins of British life. “Native” Britons like me -- the white ones -- generally assume that is out of choice: “They stick to their own kind”. Many of us rarely come into contact with a Pakistani unless he is serving us what we call “Indian food” or selling us a packet of cigarettes in a corner shop.

So, even though we may have been neighbours of a sort in High Wycombe, my life and theirs probably had few points of contact.

But paradoxically, that changed, I think, five years ago when I left Britain. I moved to Nazareth in Israel, an Arab -- Muslim and Christian -- community on the very margins of the self-declared Jewish state. In the ghetto of Nazareth, I rarely meet Israeli Jews unless I venture out for work or I find myself sitting next to them in a local restaurant as they order hummus from an Arab waiter, just as I once asked for a madras curry in High Wycombe. When Israeli Jews briefly visit the ghetto, I suddenly realise how much, by living here, I have become an Arab by default.

Living on the margins of any society is an alienating experience that few who are rooted in the heartland of the consensus can ever hope to understand. Such alienation can easily deepen into something less passive, far more destructive, when you find yourself not only marginalised but your loyalty, rationality, even your sanity, called into question.

As we approach the fifth official anniversary of the “war on terror”, the foiled UK “terror plot” has neatly provided George W Bush, the “leader of the free world”, with a chance to remind us of our fight against the “Islamic fascists”. But what if the war on terror is not really about separating the good guys from the bad guys, but about deciding what a good guy can be allowed to say and think?

What if the “Islamic fascism” President Bush warns us of is not just the terrorism associated with Osama bin Laden and his elusive al-Qaeda network but a set of views that many Arabs, Muslims and Pakistanis -- even the odd humanist -- consider normal, even enlightened? What if the war on “Islamic fascism” is less about fighting terrorism and more about silencing those who dissent from the West’s endless wars against the Middle East?

At some point, I suspect, I joined the Islamic fascists without my even noticing. Were my name different, my skin colour different, my religion different, I might feel a lot more threatened by that realisation.

How would Homeland Security judge me if I stepped off a plane in the US tomorrow and told officials not only that I am appalled by the humanitarian crises in Lebanon and Gaza but also that I do not believe the war on terror should be directed against either the Lebanese or the Palestinians? How would they respond if, further, I described as nonsense the idea that Hizbullah or the political leaders of Hamas are “terrorists”?

I have my reasons, good ones I think, but would anyone take them seriously? What would the officials make of my argument that, before Israel’s war on Lebanon, no one could point to a single terrorist incident Hizbullah had been responsible for in at least a decade? Would the authorities appreciate my comment that a terrorist organisation that doesn’t do terrorism is a chimera, a figment of the President’s imagination?

Equally, what would they make of my belief that Hizbullah does not want to wipe Israel off the map? Would they find me convincing if I told them that Israel, not Hizbulalh, is the aggressor in the conflict: that following Israel’s supposed withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000, Lebanon experienced barely a day of peace from the terrifying sonic booms of Israeli war planes violating the country’s airspace?

Would they understand as I explained that Hizbullah had acted with restraint for those six years, stockpiling its weapons for the day it knew was coming when Israel would no longer be satisfied with overflights and its appetite for conquest and subjugation would return? Would the officials doubt their own assumptions as I told them that during this war Hizbullah’s rockets have been a response to Israeli provocations, that they are fired in return for Israel’s devastating and indiscriminate bombardment of Lebanon?

And what would they say if I claimed that this war is not really about Lebanon, or even Hizbullah, but part of a wider US and Israeli campaign to isolate and pre-emptively attack Iran?

Thank God, my skin is fair, my name is unmistakenly English, and I know how to spell the word “atheist”. Chances are when Homeland Security comes looking for suspects, no one will search for me or be interested -- not yet, at least -- in my views on Hassan Nasrallah or the democratic election of a Hamas government for the Palestinians.

My friends in Nazareth, and those Pakistani neighbours I never knew in High Wycombe, are less fortunate. They must keep their views hidden and swallow their anger as they see (because their media, unlike ours, show the reality) what US-made weapons fired by American and Israeli soldiers can do to the fragile human body, how quickly skin burns in an explosion, how easily a child’s skull is crushed under rubble, how fast the body drains of blood from a severed limb.

Sitting in London or New York, the news that Gaza lost 151 souls, most of them civilians, last month to Israeli bombs and bullets passes us by. It is after all just a number, even if a high one. At best, a number like that from a place we don’t know, suffered by a people whose names we can’t pronounce, makes us pause, even sigh with regret. But it cannot move us to anger.

And anyway, our news bulletins are too busy to concentrate on more than one atrocity at a time. This month it is Lebanon. Next month it will probably be Iran. Then maybe it will be back to Baghdad or the Palestinians. The horror stories sound so much less significant, the need for action so less pressing, when each is unrelated to the next. Were we to watch the Arab channels, where all the blood and suffering blends into a single terrible Middle Eastern epic, we might start to make connections, and maybe suspect that none of this happens by accident.

But my Arab friends and High Wycombe’s Pakistanis have longer memories. Their attention span lasts longer than a single atrocity. They understand that those numbers -- 151 killed in Gaza, and in a single incident 33 blown up in a market in Najaf, Iraq, and at least 28 crushed by rubble from an Israeli attack on Qana in Lebanon -- are people, flesh and blood just like them. They can make out, in all the pain and death currently being inflicted on Arabs and Muslims, the echoes of events stretching back years and decades. They see patterns, they make connections, and maybe discern a plan. Unlike us, they do not sigh, they burn with fury.

This is something President Bush and his obedient serf in Britain, Tony Blair, need to learn. But of course, they do not want to understand because they, and their predecessors, are responsible for creating those patterns and for writing that epic tale in blood. Bush and Blair and their advisers know that the plan is far more important than the rage, the “red” alert levels at airports, or even planes crashing into buildings and plunging out of the sky.

And to protect that plan -- to preserve the Middle East as a giant oil pump, cheaply feeding our industries and our privileged lifestyles -- those who care about the suffering, the deaths and the wars must be silenced. Their voices must not be heard, their loyalty must be questioned, their reason must be put in doubt. They must be dismissed as “Islamic fascists”.

One does not need to be a psychologist to understand that those with no legitimate way to vent their rage, even to have it recognised as valid, become consumed by it instead. They seek explanations and purifying ideologies. They need heroes and strategies. And in the end they crave revenge. If their voice is not heard, they will speak without words.

So I find myself standing with Bush’s “Islamic fascists” in the hope that -- just possibly -- my solidarity and that of others may dissipate the rage, may give it meaning and offer it another, better route to victory.

Jonathan Cook is a journalist and writer based in Nazareth, Israel. His book, Blood and Religion: the Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State, is published by Pluto Press. His website is www.jkcook.net - link

New Facts Surface

2006-08-12T10:37:00.000-07:00

Two extraordinary new facts have come to light that have profound bearing on the deteriorating situation in the Mideast. They surfaced during an interview with Noam Chomsky.

If the celebrated MIT linguist is correct, our US government and media are keeping back vital information from the American public. The key information has to do with Iran’s actual positions regarding its nuclear program, and also its relation to Israel. While the US press has focused exclusively on inflammatory remarks by Iranian president Ahmadenijad, even more important statements by Iran’s head mullah, Ayatollah Khamenei, who is Ahmadenijad’s boss, have never been reported here in the US.

After some checking I was able to confirm that Chomsky is correct. In 2003 Iran offered to negotiate directly with the US. In its proposal the Iranian government agreed to accept the most stringent new International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) protocols on its nuclear program. The protocols would involve onsite inspection of all nuclear sites, something that our own government has never accepted. These tough verification measures would make cheating virtually impossible.

Iran also changed its long standing rejectionist policy on Israel. It agreed to support the 2002 Arab peace initiative, which offered Israel an end to the conflict if the Israelis would abide by UN Security Council resolutions (242 and 338) on Palestine. This was an extraordinary development, yet, it was not even reported in the US.

But Iran went still further. It also agreed to end its logistical support of Hezbollah in the event of a political settlement with Israel. Gareth Porter’s excellent backgrounder provides details about the 2003 initiative.

According to Chomsky, Iran’s head mullah Ayatollah Khamenei again reiterated these offers in June 2006.

Chomsky also mentions a UN vote on a proposed UN Fissile Materials Cutoff Treaty (FMCT), wherein all fissile materials worldwide would be placed under the control of the IAEA. Again, Chomsky is correct. The UN General Assembly vote occurred on April 11, 2004. On that day 147 nations, including Iran, voted in favor of UN resolution A/RES/48/75L. The resolution calls for the immediate drafting of such a treaty. Clearly, the whole world is demanding that the nuclear powers consent to be disarmed. The USA cast the sole “no” vote. Israel and the UK abstained. For more details regarding this important UN resolution go to:

http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2004/gadis3291.doc.htm

Today, Americans need to ask: Why did the Bush administration reject offers by Iran that held promise to resolve the crisis? And why has our government refused to join the community of nations on the crucial matter of nuclear disarmament?

The UN vote -- and, indeed, all of these facts -- reveal the hypocritical nature of US policy, and of escalating attempts here to demonize Iran. Obviously, the IAEA protocols could become an interim step leading to a FMCT, which would not only prevent Iranian nuclear weapons proliferation, but also make possible the implementation of article VI of the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT); which calls for full nuclear disarmament.

The facts suggest that the endgame of the Bush administration is not peace; but maintaining the status quo. The bottom line appears to be US support of Israel’s continuing refusal to withdraw from occupied Palestine, i.e., the West Bank, and the Golan, which is Syrian land.

Clearly, this is unacceptable, as it only leads to deepening conflict. Perhaps this is why Chomsky, normally so restrained, ended the interview on an apocalyptic note. I have never seen Chomsky use such language.

Will there be a regional meltdown, possibly involving nuclear weapons, because of two otherwise inconsequential patches of real estate? Everything now depends on us. - link

Last week, a group of renowned intellectuals published an open letter blaming Israel for escalating the conflict in the Middle East. The letter, which mainly referred to the alignment of forces between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, caused a lot of anger among Ynet and Ynetnews readers, particularly due to its claim that the Israeli policy's political aim is to eliminate the Palestinian nation.

The letter was formulated by art critic and author John Berger and among its signatories were Nobel Prize winner, playwright Harold Pinter, linguist and theoretician Noam Chomsly, Nobel Prize laureate Jos é Saramago, Booker Prize laureate Arundhati Roy, American author Russell Banks, author and playwright Gore Vidal, and historian Howard Zinn.
Prof. Chomsky, you claimed that the provocation and counter-provocation all serve as a distraction from the real issue. What does it mean?

"I assume you are referring to John Berger’s letter (which I signed, among others). The “real issue” that is being ignored is the systematic destruction of any prospects for a viable Palestinian existence as Israel annexes valuable land and major resources, leaving the shrinking territories assigned to Palestinians as unviable cantons, largely separated from one another and from whatever little bit of Jerusalem is to be left to Palestinians, and completely imprisoned as Israel takes over the Jordan valley.
"This program of realignment cynically disguised as “withdrawal,” is of course completely illegal, in violation of Security Council resolutions and the unanimous decision of the World Court (including the dissenting statement of US Justice Buergenthal). If it is implemented as planned, it spells the end of the very broad international consensus on a two-state settlement that the US and Israel have unilaterally blocked for 30 years – matters that are so well documented that I do not have to review them here.

"To turn to your specific question, even a casual look at the Western press reveals that the crucial developments in the occupied territories are marginalized even more by the war in Lebanon. The ongoing destruction in Gaza – which was rarely seriously reported in the first place - has largely faded into the background, and the systematic takeover of the West Bank has virtually disappeared.
"However, I would not go as far as the implication in your question that this was a purpose of the war, though it clearly is the effect. We should recall that Gaza and the West Bank are recognized to be a unit, so that if resistance to Israel’s destructive and illegal programs is legitimate within the West Bank (and it would be interesting to see a rational argument to the contrary), then it is legitimate in Gaza as well."

You claim that the world media refuses to link between what's going on in the occupied territories and in Lebanon?
"Yes, but that is the least of the charges that should be leveled against the world media, and the intellectual communities generally. One of many far more severe charges is brought up in the opening paragraph of the Berger letter.

"Recall the facts. On June 25, Cpl. Gilad Shalit was captured, eliciting huge cries of outrage worldwide, continuing daily at a high pitch, and a sharp escalation in Israeli attacks in Gaza, supported on the grounds that capture of a soldier is a grave crime for which the population must be punished.

"One day before, on June 24, Israeli forces kidnapped two Gaza civilians, Osama and Mustafa Muamar, by any standards a far more severe crime than capture of a soldier. The Muamar kidnappings were certainly known to the major world media. They were reported at once in the English-language Israeli press, basically IDF handouts. And there were a few brief, scattered and dismissive reports in several newspapers around the US.

"Very revealingly, there was no comment, no follow-up, and no call for military or terrorist attacks against Israel. A Google search will quickly reveal the relative significance in the West of the kidnapping of civilians by the IDF and the capture of an Israeli soldier a day later.
"The paired events, a day apart, demonstrate with harsh clarity that the show of outrage over the Shalit kidnapping was cynical fraud. They reveal that by Western moral standards, kidnapping of civilians is just fine if it is done by “our side,” but capture of a soldier on “our side” a day later is a despicable crime that requires severe punishment of the population.

"As Gideon Levy accurately wrote in Ha’aretz, the IDF kidnapping of civilians the day before the capture of Cpl. Shalit strips away any “legitimate basis for the IDF's operation,” and, we may add, any legitimate basis for support for these operations.

"The same elementary moral principles carry over to the July 12 kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers near the Lebanon border, heightened, in this case, by the regular Israeli practice for many years of abducting Lebanese and holding many as hostages for long periods.

Truly disgraceful
"Over the many years in which Israel carried out these practices regularly, even kidnapping on the high seas, no one ever argued that these crimes justified bombing and shelling of Israel, invasion and destruction of much of the country, or terrorist actions within it. The conclusions are stark, clear, and entirely unambiguous – hence suppressed.

"All of this is, obviously, of extraordinary importance in the present case, particularly given the dramatic timing. That is, I suppose, why the major media chose to avoid the crucial facts, apart from a very few scattered and dismissive phrases, revealing that they consider kidnapping a matter of no significance when carried by US-supported Israeli forces.
"Apologists for state crimes claim that the kidnapping of the Gaza civilians is justified by IDF claims that they are 'Hamas militants' or were planning crimes. By their logic, they should therefore be lauding the capture of Gilad Shalit, a soldier in an army that was shelling and bombing Gaza. These performances are truly disgraceful."

You are talking first and foremost about acknowledging the Palestinian nation, but will it solve the "Iranian threat"? Will it push Hizbullah from the Israeli border?
"Virtually all informed observers agree that a fair and equitable resolution of the plight of the Palestinians would considerably weaken the anger and hatred of Israel and the US in the Arab and Muslim worlds – and far beyond, as international polls reveal. Such an agreement is surely within reach, if the US and Israel depart from their long-standing rejectionism.

"On Iran and Hizbullah, there is, of course, much more to say, and I can only mention a few central points here.
"Let us begin with Iran. In 2003, Iran offered to negotiate all outstanding issues with the US, including nuclear issues and a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. The offer was made by the moderate Khatami government, with the support of the hard-line “supreme leader” Ayatollah Khamenei. The Bush administration response was to censure the Swiss diplomat who brought the offer.

"In June 2006, Ayatollah Khamenei issued an official declaration stating that Iran agrees with the Arab countries on the issue of Palestine, meaning that it accepts the 2002 Arab League call for full normalization of relations with Israel in a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus. The timing suggests that this might have been a reprimand to his subordinate Ahmadenijad, whose inflammatory statements are given wide publicity in the West, unlike the far more important declaration by his superior Khamenei.
"Of course, the PLO has officially backed a two-state solution for many years, and backed the 2002 Arab League proposal. Hamas has also indicated its willingness to negotiate a two-state settlement, as is surely well-known in Israel. Kharazzi is reported to be the author of the 2003 proposal of Khatami and Khamanei.

"The US and Israel do not want to hear any of this. They also do not want to hear that Iran appears to be the only country to have accepted the proposal by IAEA director Mohammed ElBaradei that all weapons-usable fissile materials be placed under international control, a step towards a verifiable Fissile Materials Cutoff Treaty.
"ElBaradei’s proposal, if implemented, would not only end the Iranian nuclear crisis but would also deal with a vastly more serious crisis: The growing threat of nuclear war, which leads prominent strategic analysts to warn of 'apocalypse soon' (Robert McNamara) if policies continue on their current course.

"The US strongly opposes a verifiable FMCT, but over US objections, the treaty came to a vote at the United Nations, where it passed 147-1, with two abstentions: Israel, which cannot oppose its patron, and more interestingly, Blair’s Britain, which retains a degree of sovereignty. The British ambassador stated that Britain supports the treaty, but it “divides the international community”. These again are matters that are virtually suppressed outside of specialist circles, and are matters of literal survival of the species, extending far beyond Iran.
"It is commonly said that the 'international community' has called on Iran to abandon its legal right to enrich uranium. That is true, if we define the “international community” as Washington and whoever happens to go along with it. It is surely not true of the world. The non-aligned countries have forcefully endorsed Iran’s “inalienable right” to enrich uranium. And, rather remarkably, in Turkey, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, a majority of the population favor accepting a nuclear-armed Iran over any American military action, international polls reveal.

"The non-aligned countries also called for a nuclear-free Middle East, a longstanding demand of the authentic international community, again blocked by the US and Israel. It should be recognized that the threat of Israeli nuclear weapons is taken very seriously in the world.
"As explained by the former Commander-in-Chief of the US Strategic Command, General Lee Butler, “it is dangerous in the extreme that in the cauldron of animosities that we call the Middle East, one nation has armed itself, ostensibly, with stockpiles of nuclear weapons, perhaps numbering in the hundreds, and that inspires other nations to do so.” Israel is doing itself no favors if it ignores these concerns.

"It is also of some interest that when Iran was ruled by the tyrant installed by a US-UK military coup, the United States – including Rumsfeld, Cheney, Kissinger, Wolfowitz and others - strongly supported the Iranian nuclear programs they now condemn and helped provide Iran with the means to pursue them. These facts are surely not lost on the Iranians, just as they have not forgotten the very strong support of the US and its allies for Saddam Hussein during his murderous aggression, including help in developing the chemical weapons that killed hundreds of thousands of Iranians.

Peaceful means
"There is a great deal more to say, but it appears that the “Iranian threat” to which you refer can be approached by peaceful means, if the US and Israel would agree. We cannot know whether the Iranian proposals are serious, unless they are explored. The US-Israel refusal to explore them, and the silence of the US (and, to my knowledge, European) media, suggests that the governments fear that they may be serious.

"I should add that to the outside world, it sounds a bit odd, to put it mildly, for the US and Israel to be warning of the “Iranian threat” when they and they alone are issuing threats to launch an attack, threats that are immediate and credible, and in serious violation of international law, and are preparing very openly for such an attack. Whatever one thinks of Iran, no such charge can be made in their case. It is also apparent to the world, if not to the US and Israel, that Iran has not invaded any other countries, something that the US and Israel do regularly.
"On Hizbullah too, there are hard and serious questions. As well-known, Hizbullah was formed in reaction to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and its harsh and brutal occupation in violation of Security Council orders. It won considerable prestige by playing the leading role in driving out the aggressors.

"The 1982 invasion was carried out after a year in which Israel regularly bombed Lebanon, trying desperately to elicit some PLO violation of the 1981 truce, and when it failed, attacked anyway, on the ludicrous pretext that Ambassador Argov had been wounded (by Abu Nidal, who was at war with the PLO). The invasion was clearly intended, as virtually conceded, to end the embarrassing PLO initiatives for negotiation, a “veritable catastrophe” for Israel as Yehoshua Porat pointed out.

Shameful pretexts
"It was, as described at the time, a “war for the West Bank.” The later invasions also had shameful pretexts. In 1993, Hizbullah had violated “the rules of the game,” Yitzhak Rabin announced: these Israeli rules permitted Israel to carry out terrorist attacks north of its illegally-held “security zone,” but did not permit retaliation within Israel. Peres’s 1996 invasion had similar pretexts. It is convenient to forget all of this, or to concoct tales about shelling of the Galilee in 1981, but it is not an attractive practice, nor a wise one.

The problem of Hezbollah’s arms is quite serious, no doubt. Resolution 1559 calls for disarming of all Lebanese militias, but Lebanon has not enacted that provision. Sunni Prime Minister Fuad Siniora describes Hizbullah’s military wing as “resistance rather than as a militia, and thus exempt from” Resolution 1559.
"A National Dialogue in June 2006 failed to resolve the problem. Its main purpose was to formulate a “national defense strategy” (vis-à-vis Israel), but it remained deadlocked over Hizbullah’s call for “a defense strategy that allowed the Islamic Resistance to keep its weapons as a deterrent to possible Israeli aggression,” in the absence of any credible alternative. The US could, if it chose, provide a credible guarantee against an invasion by its client state, but that would require a sharp change in long-standing policy.

"In the background are crucial facts emphasized by several veteran Middle East correspondents. Rami Khouri, now an editor of Lebanon’s Daily Star, writes that “the Lebanese and Palestinians have responded to Israel’s persistent and increasingly savage attacks against entire civilian populations by creating parallel or alternative leaderships that can protect them and deliver essential services.”

Apocalypse near (Part two)
You are not referring in your letter to the Israeli casualties. Is there differentiation in your opinion between Israeli civic casualties of war and Lebanese or Palestinian casualties?

"That is not accurate. John Berger’s letter is very explicit about making no distinction between Israeli and other casualties. As his letter states: “Both categories of missile rip bodies apart horribly - who but field commanders can forget this for a moment.”
"You claimed that the world is cooperating with the Israeli invasion to Lebanon and is not interfering in the events Gaza and Jenin. What purpose does this silence serve?

"The great majority of the world can do nothing but protest, though it is fully expected that the intense anger and resentment caused by US-Israeli violence will – as in the past – prove to be a gift for the most extremist and violent elements, mobilizing new recruits to their cause.
"The US-backed Arab tyrannies did condemn Hizbullah, but are being forced to back down out of fear of their own populations. Even King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Washington’s most loyal (and most important) ally, was compelled to say that "If the peace option is rejected due to the Israeli arrogance, then only the war option remains, and no one knows the repercussions befalling the region, including wars and conflict that will spare no one, including those whose military power is now tempting them to play with fire."

"As for Europe, it is unwilling to take a stand against the US administration, which has made it clear that it supports the destruction of Palestine and Israeli violence. With regard to Palestine, while Bush’s stand is extreme, it has its roots in earlier policies. The week in Taba in January 2001 is the only real break in US rejectionism in 30 years.
"The US also strongly supported earlier Israeli invasions of Lebanon, though in 1982 and 1996, it compelled Israel to terminate its aggression when atrocities were reaching a point that harmed US interests.

"Unfortunately, one can generalize a comment of Uri Avnery’s about Dan Halutz, who “views the world below through a bombsight.” Much the same is true of Rumsfeld-Cheney-Rice, and other top Bush administration planners, despite occasional soothing rhetoric. As history reveals, that view of the world is not uncommon among those who hold a virtual monopoly of the means of violence, with consequences that we need not review."
What is the next chapter in this middle-eastern conflict as you see it?

"I do not know of anyone foolhardy enough to predict. The US and Israel are stirring up popular forces that are very ominous, and which will only gain in power and become more extremist if the US and Israel persist in demolishing any hope of realization of Palestinian national rights, and destroying Lebanon. It should also be recognized that Washington’s primary concern, as in the past, is not Israel and Lebanon, but the vast energy resources of the Middle East, recognized 60 years ago to be a “stupendous source of strategic power” and “one of the greatest material prizes in world history.”
"We can expect with confidence that the US will continue to do what it can to control this unparalleled source of strategic power. That may not be easy. The remarkable incompetence of Bush planners has created a catastrophe in Iraq, for their own interests as well. They are even facing the possibility of the ultimate nightmare: a loose Shi’a alliance controlling the world’s major energy supplies, and independent of Washington – or even worse, establishing closer links with the China-based Asian Energy Security Grid and Shanghai Cooperation Council.

"The results could be truly apocalyptic. And even in tiny Lebanon, the leading Lebanese academic scholar of Hizbullah, and a harsh critic of the organization, describes the current conflict in “apocalyptic terms,” warning that possibly “All hell would be let loose” if the outcome of the US-Israel campaign leaves a situation in which “the Shiite community is seething with resentment at Israel, the United States and the government that it perceives as its betrayer.
"It is no secret that in past years, Israel has helped to destroy secular Arab nationalism and to create Hizbullah and Hamas, just as US violence has expedited the rise of extremist Islamic fundamentalism and jihad terror. The reasons are understood. There are constant warnings about it by Western intelligence agencies, and by the leading specialists on these topics.

"One can bury one’s head in the sand and take comfort in a “wall-to-wall consensus” that what we do is “just and moral” (Maoz), ignoring the lessons of recent history, or simple rationality. Or one can face the facts, and approach dilemmas which are very serious by peaceful means. They are available. Their success can never be guaranteed. But we can be reasonably confident that viewing the world through a bombsight will bring further misery and suffering, perhaps even 'apocalypse soon.'"

link

Bush seeks political gains from foiled plot

2006-08-12T10:36:00.000-07:00

US President George W. Bush seized on a foiled London airline bomb plot to hammer unnamed critics he accused of having all but forgotten the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Weighed down by the unpopular war in Iraq, Bush and his aides have tried to shift the national political debate from that conflict to the broader and more popular global war on terrorism ahead of November 7 congressional elections.

The London conspiracy is "a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation," the president said on a day trip to Wisconsin.

"It is a mistake to believe there is no threat to the United States of America," he said. "We've taken a lot of measures to protect the American people. But obviously we still aren't completely safe."

His remarks came a day after the White House orchestrated an exceptionally aggressive campaign to tar opposition Democrats as weak on terrorism, knowing what Democrats didn't: News of the plot could soon break.

Vice President Dick Cheney and White House spokesman Tony Snow had argued that Democrats wanted to raise what Snow called "a white flag in the war on terror," citing as evidence the defeat of a three-term Democratic senator who backed the Iraq war in his effort to win renomination.

But Bush aides on Thursday fought the notion that they had exploited their knowledge of the coming British raid to hit Democrats, saying the trigger had been the defeat of Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut by an anti-war political novice.

"The comments were purely and simply a reaction" to Democratic voters who "removed a pro-defense Senator and sent the message that the party would not tolerate candidates with such views," said Snow.

The public relations offensive "was not done in anticipation. It was not said with the knowledge that this was coming," the spokesman said.

Snow said Bush first learned in detail about the plot on Friday, and received two detailed briefings on it on Saturday and Sunday, as well as had two conversations about it with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

But a senior White House official said that the British government had not launched its raid until well after Cheney held a highly unusual conference call with reporters to attack the Democrats as weak against terrorism.

An aide to Lieberman, who would have been one of the first Democrats to hear of the plot because he is the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said the lawmaker first heard of it late Wednesday.

On Wednesday, Cheney had suggested that Democrats believe "that somehow we can retreat behind our oceans and not be actively engaged in this conflict and be safe here at home, which clearly we know we won't, we can't, be," he said.

While some Democrats have opposed some steps in the war on terrorism, and more and more are calling for a withdrawal from Iraq, no major figures in the party have called for a wholesale retreat in the broader conflict.

But Bush's Republicans hoped the raid would yield political gains.

"I'd rather be talking about this than all of the other things that Congress hasn't done well," one Republican congressional aide told AFP on condition of anonymity because of possible reprisals.

"Weeks before September 11th, this is going to play big," said another White House official, who also spoke on condition of not being named, adding that some Democratic candidates won't "look as appealing" under the circumstances. - link

Americans believe spin, not facts

2006-08-12T10:35:00.001-07:00

WHAT is truth? Pontius Pilate's infamous question may be worth asking again, in light of responses to a recent Harris Poll on the war in Iraq.

Given the poll's surprising findings, truth has nothing to do with facts and everything to do with the version of reality you choose to subscribe to.

Half of those polled said Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction at the time of the U.S. invasion in 2003. That's up from 36 percent a year ago. And it's despite the fact that after the invasion, U.S. inspectors took 16 months and spent $900 million to conclude that Saddam had no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons leading up to the invasion. He had dismantled them more than a decade before.

But why let inconvenient facts get in the way? Almost two-thirds of the Harris Poll respondents also said Saddam had "strong links" to al-Qaida. That's another Bush administration line that has been repeatedly debunked in the past three years -- along with the persistent implication that Saddam had something to do with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

If you believe all that, it's a lot easier to support a war that has taken more than 2,500 American lives. Maybe that's why some Republican senators have been pointing recently to hundreds of unearthed chemical weapons containers in Iraq as the long-awaited evidence of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.

The containers are abandoned munitions at least 15 years old. Even the Pentagon says so.

But facts, evidence and truth apparently can't hold a candle to spin. Bush administration officials did a masterful job of selling Congress and the American people on the need to invade Iraq. They used shameless scare tactics like hyped intelligence, terrorism and the specter of "mushroom clouds."

They were so successful that three years later, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, fully half of the American people still believe the weapons existed.

And that's the truth. - link

Lust For War

2006-08-12T10:35:00.000-07:00

Today,the war entered its fifth week. Hard to believe: our mighty army has now been fighting for 29 days against a "gang" and "terrorist organization", as the military commanders like to describe them, and the battle has still not been decided.

Yesterday, military sources in Israel announced that 400 of the 1200 Hizbullah "terrorists" have been killed. That's to say, a mere 1200 fighters have been standing against the tens of thousands of our soldiers, who are equipped with the most advanced weapons on earth, and hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens are still under rocket fire while our soldiers continue to be killed.

WHO? ME? Now everybody already admits that something basic has gone wrong in this war. The proof: the War of the Generals, that previously started only after the conclusion of a war, has now become public while the war is still going on.

The Chief-of-Staff, Dan Halutz, has found the culprit: Udi Adam, the chief of the Northern Command. He has practically dismissed him in the middle of the battle. That is the old ploy of the thief shouting "Stop thief!" After all, it is obvious that the person mainly to blame for the failures of the war is Halutz himself, with his foolish belief that Hizbullah could be defeated by aerial bombardment alone.

But it is not only at the top of the army that mutual accusations are flying around. The army command accuses the government, which is retaliating in kind.

On the eve of his downgrading, Udi Adam publicly accused the government of tying his hands. Meaning: the government is guilty. Ehud Olmert did not remain silent and declared that the army had not submitted any plans for widening the campaign. That's to say: if you are incompetent, don't blame me!

To justify himself, Olmert added a significant sentence: "From the first day of the war, the government has not refused the army a single request!" In other words, it is the Chief-of-Staff who makes policy and conducts the war, while the political leadership just rubber stamps everything that the army "requests".

But this is a sterile debate, because it ignores the main fact, which is becoming clearer from day to day: it is altogether impossible to win this war. That's why nothing is working as planned.

PLAN? WHAT PLAN? Years ago the military commentator of Haolam Hazeh, the magazine I was editing at the time, got fed up with the boast the our army excels in improvisation. "The ability to improvise," he wrote, "Is just another name for our inability to plan."

According to the reports, the Israeli army has been preparing for this war for more than three years. The last exercise took place a month before the war started and included the invasion of Lebanon by land forces. It is clear that the command did not anticipate a campaign that would last for four weeks and more. What the hell! After all, it was against a small gang of terrorists. This just confirms the dictum that even the best war plan does not survive the first day of war.

THE WAR OF THE POOR. It is quite clear that the army command's wonderful plan did not include the defense of the rear within rocket range. There was no plan for the solution of the hundred and one problems emanating from the attack on Hizbullah: from the protection of the civilian population from thousands of missiles to the necessary economic arrangements when a third of the country's population is living under bombardment and is paralysed.

Now the public is crying out, and soon the ministers and generals will have to try to find somebody to blame for that, too.

For this war is being fought on the backs of the weak, who cannot afford to "evacuate themselves" from the rockets' area. The rich and well-to-do have got out long ago - in Israel as well as in Lebanon. The poor, the old, the sick and the handicapped remain in the shelters. They are the main sufferers. But that does not cause them to oppose the war. On the contrary, they are the most vociferous group in Israel demanding "to go to the end", "to smash them", "to wipe them out".

That is not new, either: the weakest in society always want to feel that they belong to the strongest nation. Those who have nothing become the biggest patriots. And they are also the main victims.

Those who initiated and planned the war cynically flatter the inhabitants of the North, who are stuck there, calling them "heroes" and lauding their "wonderful steadfastness".

UNITED CYNICS. Now the end of the killing depends on the UN.

David Ben-Gurion called it contemptuously "UNO-SHMUNO" (UM-SHMUM in Hebrew). In the 1948 war, he violated its cease-fire resolutions whenever it suited him (as a soldier I took part in some of these actions). He and all his successors over the years have violated almost all the UN decisions concerning us, arguing (not without justification) that the organization was dominated by an automatic anti-Israeli majority, consisting of the Soviet bloc and Third World countries.

Since then, the situation has changed. The Soviet bloc has collapsed and the UN has become an arm of the US State department. Kofi Annan has become a janitor and the real boss is the US delegate, John Bolton, a raving neo-con and therefore a great friend of Israel. He wants the war to go on.

The name of the American game is: to give the Israeli army more days, and perhaps more weeks, to go on with the war, to pursue the mirage of victory, while pretending to make great efforts to stop the war. It seems that Olmert has promised Bush to win after all, if given time.

The new proposals of the Beirut government have lit red lights in Jerusalem. The Lebanese government proposes to deploy 15 thousand Lebanese troops along the border, declare a cease-fire and get the Israeli troops out of Lebanon. That is exactly what the Israeli government demanded at the start of the war. But now it looks like a danger. It could stop the war without an Israeli victory.

Thus a paradoxical situation has arisen: the Israeli government is rejecting a proposal that reflects its original war aims, and instead demands the deployment of an international force, which it objected to strenuously at the start of the war. That's what happens when you start a war without clear and achievable aims. Everything gets mixed up.

GENERALS AND COMMENTATORS. I have a proposal to solve all the problems caused by this war: to switch the generals and the commentators.

The generals have not excelled in conducting the war. But they and their comrades, the ex-generals, have proved themselves excellent commentators. They have crowded everyone else out of the studios, created a national consensus and silenced all real criticism. (Except one sort of criticism: Why do we not advance deeper into Lebanon? Why haven't we reached the Litani? Why don't we go beyond the Litani? Why don't we eradicate the Lebanese villages from the face of the earth?)

On the other side, the broadcasts prove that the military commentators know exactly how to wage the war. They have forceful opinions and plenty of expert advice. They know when to advance and where, which troops to deploy and what weapons to use.

So why not let them conduct the war?

MACHOSTAN. The battery of generals that appears every evening on all TV channels in order to give a "briefing" (a.k.a. propaganda) to the nation, are all male. They bring with them a token woman, a real beauty who bears the title of "army spokesperson" and serves mostly for diversification. The commentators on TV are, of course, tough guys, and so are almost all the other speakers.

The rule of males is underlined by the fact that the Foreign Ministry is headed by a woman. Since the foundation of Israel, the Ministry of Defense has been the realm of he-men, who look with disdain upon the Foreign Office, which is always considered feeble and effete. Now, too, the Foreign Office is a sickly limb of the "defense establishment". Tsipi Livni, who once aroused hopes, is a parrot of the army - as Condoleezza Rice is the parrot of Bush.

War is, of course, a matter for men. That's how it was from the beginning of the human race, and perhaps even before. A tribe of baboons, for example, when faced with danger, automatically adopts a defensive formation: old males, women and children in the center, young males in a circle around them. There is only one difference between them und us: their leader is always the wisest and most experienced of the tribe.

The love of the human male for war - a phenomenon we have had the opportunity to observe from close up these last few days - is connected not only with this biological heritage. War assures the total dominance of the males over society. It also assures the total dominance of the generals over the state.

If we believed that that would change with a government headed by civilians, we were obviously wrong. The opposite is true: the civilians who pose as war-leaders are no better then the generals. A veteran general might even have learned something from his experience.

I am going now to say something I did not think I would ever utter: It is quite possible that we would not have slid into this foolish war if Ariel Sharon were in charge. Fact: he did not attack Hizbullah after the withdrawal in 2000. One attempt was enough for him. Which proves again that there is nothing so bad that something worse cannot be found.

The lust for war also explains the talking choir of the hundreds of ex-generals, who think and talk in unison in favor of the war. A cynic would say: what's the big deal, after all it's the army that gave them their standing in society. They are important only as long as the conflict between Israel and the Arab world continues. The conflict guarantees their status. They have no interest whatsoever in its resolution.

But the phenomenon is more profound. The army is the crucible for senior officers. It shapes their world outlook, their attitude and style. Apart from the settlers, the senior officers' corps - in and out of uniform - is today the only ideological party in Israel and therefore has a huge influence. It can easily gobble up a thousand little functionaries like Amir Peretz before breakfast.

This is why there is no real self-criticism. At the beginning of the fifth week, the slogans are again: Forwards! To the Litani! Further! Stronger! Deeper!

Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom.

- link

Race on to 'liquidate' idolized Hezbollah chief

2006-08-12T10:32:00.000-07:00

As the world prepares to call time on its offensive in Lebanon, Israel is determined to strike a last and telling blow -- to find and kill Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah.

The 46-year-old Lebanese militia chieftain has become one of the most powerful and influential figures in the Middle East following Hezbollah's four-week battle with Israel.

Nasrallah's face, which in recent weeks has sprung up on billboards in Lebanon, Syria and Iran, decorates key chains and computer screen savers all over the Middle East. His taped sermons, filled with anti-Semitic invective and hatred for Israel, are best-sellers in Arab bazaars. Excerpts from his speeches are even used as ring tones on cellphones.

It's said that when Shiite Muslim families fled their homes in bomb-ravaged south Beirut, they left behind an open Koran and a picture of Nasrallah as talismans to protect their property.

"He's seen as a messianic figure, much higher than any official in Lebanon," said Walid Phares, a Lebanese-born terrorism expert at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.

Four weeks of war with Israel have enhanced Hezbollah's credentials on the Arab street, boosting Nasrallah into the pantheon of pan-Arab nationalists alongside former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, who reigned briefly as the leading Arab champion against Israel before he miscalculated and triggered the Six Day War in 1967.

"Nasrallah is a hero among the Palestinian public today and further afield, among many Arab people as well. Even more than Gamal Abdel Nasser was in his day," wrote columnist Danny Rubinstein in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz.

"Nasser held on for six days in 1967, while Nasrallah has kept a quarter of the Israeli population stuck in bomb shelters and protected rooms for almost four weeks now, say people on the Palestinian street. In a radio broadcast from Gaza, someone declared, 'We are all Shiite now.' "

Nasrallah's soldiers have attacked an Israeli warship off the coast of Lebanon, launched commando raids into Israel, rained rockets down on Israeli cities and threatened to strike Tel Aviv.

Backed by Syria and Iran, Hezbollah's henchmen have raised fears worldwide over what they might do if they were ever equipped with even more powerful weapons. In a short, one-sided war, Hezbollah has been willing to risk massive civilian casualties and to take a severe military pounding in order to win propaganda points. In the process it has changed the calculus of conflict in the Middle East.

And as a result, Nasrallah is a marked man. Israel's air force has already bombed both his headquarters and his home in the Hezbollah strongholds in Beirut's southern suburbs. The Israeli Defence Forces can be expected to carry out a frantic search to locate and destroy Nasrallah and his top associates before any ceasefire is in place.

"Nasrallah is the serpent's head and, therefore, must be liquidated if possible," Israel's Environment Minister Gideon Ezra, former deputy head of Shin Bet security force, told Ha'aretz yesterday. "I do not think there is anyone on our side who would miss an opportunity like that. That need not be Israel's goal, but I do not discount that as one of Israel's objectives."
Early in the war, another Israeli Cabinet minister, Meir Sheetrit, the Minister of Housing, urged the IDF to focus on Nasrallah.

"Nasrallah is a first-degree terrorist," he said. "There's no difference between him and [Osama] bin Laden or any other arch-terrorist that the world is looking for.

"If Israel can lay its hands on him, it will be outstanding, or capture him and put him on trial -- that's even better. And if not, then bring the law to him."

Any solution to the current crisis that boosts Hezbollah or Nasrallah's standing will be anathema to Israel, which has regarded the black-turbaned Islamic cleric as one of its chief terrorist threats.

The son of a Beirut vegetable vendor, Nasrallah was a military commander in the early days of Hezbollah, when the group staged a number of suicide attacks, hijackings and infamous kidnappings. He became the head of Hezbollah at the age of 32 in 1992 after an Israeli rocket incinerated his predecessor, Sayyad Abbas Musawi.

Within weeks of Nasrallah assuming Hezbollah's leadership, the group was implicated in the suicide bombing of the Israeli embassy in Argentina, which killed 29 people. Another Hezbollah bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires claimed 85 lives in 1994. In subsequent interviews, Nasrallah, while never admitting to the Argentine bombings, has claimed that Jews anywhere are legitimate targets.

A strong strain of anti-Semitic invective stains almost all of Nasrallah's speeches. He regularly calls Jews "Allah's most cowardly and greedy creatures" and terms Israel "a cancerous entity" or the "ultimate evil." In a 2002 interview with Lebanon's Daily Star newspaper, Nasrallah insisted: "If they [Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide." Faced with that sort of threat, Israel is unlikely to sit back and wait for a revitalized and resurgent Hezbollah to rearm.

It would be much easier, in the few days remaining before an internationally imposed truce takes place, to seek out and destroy Hezbollah's leadership.Nasrallah obviously thinks so. There have been repeated intelligence reports he and his family have taken refuge in Iran's embassy in Beirut. - link

Syrians celebrate Nasrallah as a hero

2006-08-12T10:28:00.000-07:00

Browsing a street bookstall at the foot of the stone walls which flank the ancient citadel of Damascus, Hussam Habib is buying a poster for his four-year-old son.

The 32-year-old civil servant points to the glossy image of a bespectacled grinning face, with a thick beard and a turban.

"Who is this?" he asks his son, Zein.

"Hassan Nasrallah," comes the shy answer.

"And who is this?" Hussam asks, this time pointing to a second figure on the left-hand side of the same poster, also smiling, and separated from the Hezbollah leader by a bed of flowers.

Zein again replies correctly: "President Bashar."

Hussam pats his son on the head, hands over 10 Syrian pounds (about $0.20) to the bookseller, and leaves with the poster.

Symbols of resistance

Such posters – and dozens of variations - have become increasingly common sights in Damascus since Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on 12 July, triggering the current war in Lebanon.

They adorn car windows and shop fronts, while yellow and green Hezbollah flags flutter from street corners, side by side with the Syrian flag or even its Lebanese counterpart.

For some Syrians, openly backing Hezbollah mirrors support for their own country's stance on the Lebanon crisis.

Bilal Mohamed, 25, who sells posters and books from his stall in Damascus's old city, says: "For me, both President Assad and Hassan Nasrallah represent the resistance."

As a close backer of Hezbollah, Syria has repeatedly been accused by Israel and the US of acting as a conduit for arms and supplies sent into Lebanon.

The Syrian government denies this charge, and, in contrast to the lukewarm endorsement which most other Arab governments have given Hezbollah, has been outspoken in its support for the Lebanese Shia group and its leader.

Cult status

And the current conflict with Israel has boosted Nasrallah's popularity to that of a cult-like figure.

Hezbollah paraphernalia, long available in parts of Lebanon, now appear to be a growth industry in Syria, too.

The Hezbollah logo on T-shirts
for sale in Damascus
Abou Radwan, an employee of the Al-Quds (Jerusalem) bookshop in a central Damascus market, says: "Ever since 2000 when Israel withdrew from south Lebanon, a few people have been asking me for Hezbollah flags or posters.

"But since 12 July, people from all over Syria are coming here to buy pictures of Nasrallah and President Assad."

On many of the posters and postcards on sale, Nasrallah now appears as part of a trio with Bashar Assad, the current president, and his father, Hafez al-Assad, who ruled Syria from 1971 till his death in 2000.

Customers can also invest in a collage of the Shia leader's smiling face superimposed over a burning Israeli warship, cartoonish flames roaring from its side in a recreation of the Hezbollah 14 July missile attack which crippled the vessel.

"People come to me for my posters, because they have the highest resolution," says Abou Radwan, who sells hundreds of such images a day.

"A shop in Aleppo has tried to compete with me and print their own versions," he says, holding up an inferior-quality image of Nasrallah’s smiling face overlooking a crowd.

"But mine are better."

A people's hero

Hezbollah T-shirts, key rings and even CDs are being snapped up; bookshops are also selling a 352-page biography of the group's leader, published in Cairo and entitled The'ir min Jnoub, or The Revolutionary from the South.

"He is the first leader since Saladin who will defend all the Arabs"

Rola Melli, 21 ,student
"Lots of people want to know more about Nasrallah's life and times now," says Mohamed, working outside the Damascus citadel.

And for some of Syria's youth, the Lebanese Shia leader has become an inspiring reminder of their great historical heroes.

In a cafe near Bab Touma in the Christian quarter of the Old City, Rola Melli, a 21-year-old Sunni Muslim student, explains her support for Hezbollah.

"Nasrallah has become a hero for the Syrian young. For us, he represents Saladin," she says, referring to the 12th-century Muslim leader who defeated the Crusaders and retook Jerusalem.

Saladin is buried in Damascus.

"He is the first leader since Saladin who will defend all the Arabs, whether they are Shia or Sunni, Muslim or Christian, and he will bring us our dignity," she said. - link

The Anglo-American empire’s “next 9/11” will set up final war; “foiled” UK terror plot a propaganda dry run

2006-08-12T10:25:00.000-07:00

The August 10 report of a spectacular foiled UK-based super-terror plot, an alleged Operation Bojinka variation, has sparked an unprecedented round of 9/11-style fear and panic mongering throughout the world. This is a new attempt, at the highest levels of the Bush and Blair administrations, in concert with Pakistan’s ISI and Israel, to fabricate the justification for an escalation in the "war on terrorism" across the Middle East.

This escalation will include an attack on Iran and Syria as early as October, and with even greater geostrategic violence to follow.

Proof that Bush administration planning the next 9/11

Dick Cheney recently declared: "The enemy that struck on 9/11 is fractured and weakened, yet still lethal, still determined to hit us again." That is a concise description of Cheney’s own administration, and its intentions. And he knows it.

It is a known fact that the Bush administration, itching for a wider war, has been planning to set up a "second 9/11" to establish the pretext to justify a multi-front war stretching from Africa across Middle East, and across the Eurasian continent that the Anglo-American empire seeks to control:

The Pentagon's "Second 9/11"

It is now known that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld (among others) have been overtly planning "another attack [blamed on 'terrorists' and/or Iran] that could create both a justification and an opportunity that is lacking today to retaliate against some known targets." The Bush administration has already prepared the operation, as well as the criminal lies and propaganda to go with it.

There is a good reason why Bush and Blair have spent so much time together lately.

Recent rhetoric from the Bush administration’s criminal leadership (Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld) has clearly attempted to tie Hezbollah, Hamas, Iraqi resistance, Afghan fighters, and other "Islamic fascists" with "Al-Qaeda." The mass public has willingly accepted this and other ongoing "war on terrorism" deceptions.

These detailed plans by the Bush administration, in place for over the past year, with instructions given to its military-intelligence agencies, await the official go-ahead. Undoubtedly, the "next 9/11" will be blamed on "Islamic fascists," and either directly carried out by manipulated intelligence assets, or deliberately provoked by atrocities now being committed in the Middle East and Iraq. But, just as it was on 9/11, the fascists at the highest levels in Washington, London and Islamabad (and Tel Aviv) will be the ones responsible for whatever happens next.

Manufactured blowback is not blowback. Guided covert operations are manufactured terrorism, not "terrorism."

The next 9/11 may already be happening

Recent events suggest that the broader operation likely began with the horrific Mumbai transit bomb attacks, a blatantly manufactured event carried out by terror cells directly connected to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, the ISI (a virtual branch of the American CIA), and the same (alleged "Al-Qaeda") apparatus also responsible for the Bush administration’s 9/11 and other post-9/11 terror events.

This was followed by Israel’s attack on Gaza, and its invasion of Lebanon, with both events preceded by a bogus "anti-terrorism" pretext. The London construct follows the same pattern as the London 7/7, which was a false flag operation.

Ties to London 7/7 lead back to Bush, Blair, ISI

Current reports about the new foiled London plot pin the responsibility on "homegrown" terrorists with ties to Pakistan and "Al-Qaeda", and the London 7/7 attacks. The London 7/7 attack itself was the work of British intelligence, as well as Pakistan's ISI.

This is the same apparatus, the same "terror" propaganda. The international feeding frenzy of security "experts" and current and former spooks falling over themselves to proclaim the threat to be real, quick to lick at Bush-Cheney’s jackboots, is no surprise.

Meanwhile, officials in London have, predictably, provided little or no concrete evidence to support their allegations, or the conspiracy theories and speculations spinning out of control across the media. This is consistent with every "terror" event since 9/11: deception and cover-up, no evidence.

Meanwhile, underneath the layers of noise created by the mighty Wurlitzer, bits such as this line from the Washington Post beg for attention: "Intelligence officials and private analysts expressed suspicion that the plot was an al Qaeda operation, but said there was no confirmation."

Fear, intimidation, stupidity

The UK terror story is, at the very least, a test of the effectiveness of the "terrorism" propaganda apparatus that has been the bread and butter of Bush/Blair/Israel.

Based on Pavlovian reactions to the new stories, and the panic, and mass ignorance displayed by the masses, the fear of "terrorists" and bone-deep racism inspired by Bush’s manufactured 9/11 false flag operation remain tragically potent. Mass public ignorance still abounds, evidenced by the international paralysis of the past 48 hours. The "terrorists 24-7" narrative has been accepted without a hint of skepticism, without any questions, without the pursuit of any facts, by the vast majority -- still powerful enough, in spite of the unpopularity of Bush and the Iraq "mistake," to fuel the criminal "war on terrorism" well into the future.

Until and unless realities are understood and directly faced, the world remains in the sleeperhold of the propaganda apparatus of Bush-Blair-Olmert. As long as this dynamic persists, these legions of "good Germans," obediently swallowing their propaganda poisons, will jump through the hoops, even as more government-approved mass murder takes place, including their own.

Adjusting the script, covering their political rear ends

It is clear that, for reasons of political expediency, that the "war on terrorism" narrative has been changed to focus on "foiled" terror plots, and ("even tougher to apprehend") "homegrown terrorists," in order to 1) create the perception of competence and successful anti-terrorism to counter criticism from political opponents (themselves equally fervent, equally criminal "war on terrorism" proponents) who have criticized the Bush administration’s "failures," while 2) infusing the "Al-Qaeda" propaganda structure with fresh and lurid new twists.

These new fictions include slippery "home grown terrorists", alleged to still be guided by "Al-Qaeda," "specialists" capable of carrying out "spectaculars," and endless speculations about creative new delivery methods.

The tipping point is now

Five years have gone by since the manufactured crisis of 9/11. Now, the Anglo-American empire needs a "new 9/11" or a perceived threat capable of deceiving the mass public into supporting the next planned geostrategic horror.

Check the calendar, and think like a Bush administration criminal. The five-year anniversary of 9/11 is only a few weeks away. The Bush administration wants to attack Iran and Syria by October. Israel is going into Lebanon, but cannot expand beyond southern Lebanon, cannot attack Syria and Iran without Anglo-American help. A US election (or "selection") in November, likely to hand some degree of political power back to neoliberals (Democrats), gives the Bush-Cheney neocons a three-month window to attempt their super-violent end run. Peak Oil and Gas, increasing shortage, is making itself felt in earnest with the disruptions of US oil supplies from Prudhoe Bay, crisis reports from remaining oil fields (Saudi Arabia), defiance from Venezuela, etc. Desperation fuels the likelihood of increasing brute force and violence, led by the Bush administration.

This is a moment of elite criminal consensus, and unprecedented danger.

This is a perfect storm.
Prepare yourselves. - link

It’s that’s time again – for another ‘terror plot’

2006-08-12T10:24:00.000-07:00

"Sometimes we may have to modify some of our own freedoms in the short term in order to prevent their misuse and abuse by those who oppose our fundamental values and would destroy all of our freedoms in the modern world." – Home secretary, John Reid

It’s amazing really that nobody sees the paradox of Reid calling for the abolition of what’s left of our civil rights in order to preserve them but then there’s nothing logical about the 'war on terror’, it is itself a contradiction of terms.

As to Reid’s notion of his "fundamental values" well, one assumes these include the wholesale destruction of societies and their peoples and standing by whilst his allies do the same. Not only standing by but urging them on for Christ’s sake!

And also amazing is Reid’s call to destroy our rights even as he accuses those who would, he alleges, destroy them!

Is it really too farfetched to assume that people who can speak with such hypocrisy and whose hands are soaked in the blood of the tens of thousands of innocents would think twice about engineering a plot if they thought it would further their objectives?

Yes, I know, I have no proof merely the record of recent (and not so recent) history to go on and the lapses and contradictions of the state propaganda machine as it prepares us for Der Tag.

The problem for us is that the word conspiracy has been so bastardised that now it only applies to cranks and whackos but the fact is, the state itself is a conspiracy, a conspiracy of one class over another. With so much at stake, there is literally nothing they won’t do in order to hold onto power including fabricating evidence in order to launch illegal wars. Don’t’ tell me that the invasion and destruction of Iraq wasn’t the result of an international conspiracy!

Evidence was fabricated on a grand scale, lies told to all and sundry and the lies were delivered by a complicit corporate and state media. It doesn’t need a gang of people in some back room somewhere, plotting and scheming, it’s called government policy and it takes place at the highest levels of government; this is the political class’s role, to preserve the rule of capital at any cost.

And yes, I know it’s hard to accept the fact that the state would go to such lengths to 'fit up’ people but the record shows that it has happened over and over again and bear in mind that the state has effectively unlimited resources and armies of loyal servants paid and trained to obey orders. This is our reality whether people are prepared to accept it or not.

Apparently, the 'war on terror’ could last a half century or so we are told but regardless of how long this phony war lasts, it’ll mean living under the boot of the state. It might not wear jackboots but it’ll be every bit as ruthless in suppressing dissent and as time passes, the space for dissent will shrink, and shrink, and shrink … 'til there’s none left.

I read somewhere that there is a direct, statistical relationship between 'terror alerts’ and events detrimental to the state, thus it’s safe to assume that the state is involved up to its dirty neck in the latest attempt to scare the pants off everyone.

Cast your mind back if you can, to previous 'terror’ alerts that came to nought with not even a trial let alone a conviction of attempting to blow anything or anybody up.

The worst the authorities could come up with were 'thought crimes’, that is, some guys sat around and talked shit, at least according to the authorities but think about it, we have governments that lie to us about everything they do, including why they destroy entire countries and exterminate countless thousands of people, either directly or indirectly such as Israel’s war on Lebanon, so why is it so farfetched that these self-same people would not create fictional threats?

The timing of the latest alert is absolutely crucial as it came just as the Western states were under increasing pressure to force Israel to stop its criminal war of extermination and the situation in Iraq is going from bad to disastrous for the occupiers.

The plots that never were

There was the 'ricin’ poison 'plot’ 'cept there was no ricin, never mind a plot though this was the story the MSM spread; see the following stories for the real story on the 'ricin plot’

'The Case of Kamel Bourgass – The sound of one hand clapping or a conspiracy of one’, www.williambowles.info/ini/ini-0327.html and,

'Ricin: The plot that never was by Severin Carrell and Raymond Whitacker’, www.williambowles.info/spysrus/ricin_plot.html and,

'Fake Terror – Ricin Ring That Never Was’ by Duncan Campbell’, www.williambowles.info/spysrus/ricin_plot2.html [1]

Then there was 'gas attack’ on the London underground, another story that came to nought.

And then there was the army pitching at Heathrow on the 'intelligence’ that 'terrorists’ were about take out a jet with a ground-to-air missile. As with all the other 'terror’ alerts, it was all hot air.

The state’s response was and is, 'well we foiled it didn’t we’, though ask them for the proof and you’ll get the stock response, 'sorry, can’t tell, it’s a state secret.’

There seems to be direct correlation between the scale of the disasters of Empire and the nature of the 'terror alert’ with each disaster accompanied by an even bigger alert.

Thus far, 24 people have been arrested (and one released without charge) and 19 named and charged under various and sundry 'anti-terrorism’ legislations.

As usual, there are a number of disturbing aspects to this latest hysteria that contradicts the draconian measures the government have taken.

Firstly, it was, according to the government, the worst plot since 9/11, with allegedly, 10 transatlantic flights targeted for destruction, and apparently Blair informed Bush this past weekend yet the 'critical alert’ wasn’t announced until AFTER the arrests and it didn’t stop Blair flying off on HIS transatlantic flight to the Caribbean for his vacance.

And, according to Pakistani authorities as of 12/8/06, a Briton who was detained this week, 'spilled the beans’ on the alleged plot precipitating the alert, yet the British police claim to have had the 'group’ under surveillance for some months.

Another report talks of an agent who had infiltrated the group. What was this person’s role? Was he an agent provocateur?

And if it was such a threat to life and limb, why did the authorities wait five days before making arrests?

As with all the previous 'terror alerts’, all kinds of stories get leaked to the media in dribs and drabs, designed specifically to sow confusion and fear. Trying to piece together events would tax even the illustrious (if fictional) powers of Sherlock Holmes, but this is entirely the point of such disinformation.

Should holes in the story emerge, as they already have, without a definitive explanation, it is easy for the state to deny that it has anything to do with the plethora of tidbits conveniently leaked to the press.

The previous week, home sec Reid gave a major speech in London at which he announced that we face "probably the most sustained period of severe threat since the end of the second world war" and accused opponents of the government’s anti-democratic legislation of undermining the "war on terror." Very convenient timing indeed, leading one to suspect that Reid was all too aware of the events that unfolded this week.

And as per usual, the government announcements about the alleged plotters are so vague and open-ended that anyone who wants to try and understand exactly what these guys were allegedly up to, are no wiser.

I should explain that blowing up people in tubes and planes is not my idea of how to bring about change, at best it’s misguided, at worst it’s pathological and open to manipulation as we have seen over and over again, by agents of the state.

Interestingly, the latest research reveals that the overwhelming majority of 'suicide bombers’ carry them out for secular reasons. At least half identify themselves as 'left wing’ (whatever that means these days).

"The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign-over 95 percent of all the incidents-has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw." – Professor Robert Pape, author of Dying to Win: The Logic of Suicide Terrorism

So when Bush called them "Islamo-fascists", he got it all wrong but then that’s the whole point of pushing the Muslim thing, because it avoids dealing with the underlying causes and also obscures the essential issues.

As Pape points out (and he’s no lefty), the overwhelming majority of so-called suicide bombers are motivated by political reasons not religious, thus the un-ending torrent of propaganda that seeks to place the blame on religious fanatics serves only to demonise not only those who happen to be sitting on resources the West desperately needs but conveniently sections of our society who are, by virtue of being brown-skinned and one assumes Muslim, handy scapegoats.

Historically, such propaganda campaigns exploit the under-current of racism and xenophobia that is endemic to imperialism, indeed it can be argued that racism and imperialism are inseparable resting as they do on centuries of ideological justification for the crimes of the exploiters.

When individuals and even commissions of inquiry talk of 'institutional racism’ what they really mean is that the entire state apparatus is complicit in promoting a world view that sees Western 'civilisation’ and its so-called values as innately superior simply by virtue of 'race’. And as the occasional admission by a servant of the state reveals, without tearing down the state apparatus, it is impossible to remove.

Such views are embedded in every aspect of society from education to the criminal justice system. Even our public health system does not escape the insidious poison of the ideology of racism that sees people of colour many times more likely to be incarcerated in mental institutions just as our prisons are bursting with a disproportionate number of poor, black people.

In such a climate, is it any wonder that 'terror alerts’ are so effective when they focus on those sections of our society already alienated and oppressed?

Notes

Now whether or not you think the current 'alert’ is for real or not, the evidence of both the US and UK’s governments involvement in set-ups and provocations is overwhelming.

'The British Terrorist Plot: Stage Two of the October Surprise’ Hassan El-Najjar, August 11, 2006
tinyurl.com/lgwwu

"The Pentagon’s "Second 911"
"Another [9/11] attack could create both a justification and an opportunity to retaliate against some known targets" by Michel Chossudovsky, August 10, 2006
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=
viewArticle&code=CHO20060810&articleId=2942

Seven Morons In A Warehouse
www.infowars.com/articles/terror/
seven_morons_in_a_warehouse.htm

Sears Tower: US Government Creates Another Al-Qaeda Cell
prisonplanet.com/articles/june2006/230606searstower.htm

Cooked Canary Wharf Terror Plot Recycled
prisonplanet.com/articles/june2006/220606cookedterror.htm

Canadian 'Terror Plot’ Begins To Unravel
prisonplanet.com/articles/june2006/060606terrorplot.htm

Hyped Terror Raid Proves To Be Paper Tiger
prisonplanet.com/articles/june2006/050606terrorraid.htm

Toledo Terrorists and Government Entrapment
prisonplanet.com/articles/februa
ry2006/240206toledoterrorists.htm

Twenty-Three Intel Experts Say LA Terror Plot a Sham
prisonplanet.com/articles/february2006/100206plotasham.htm

Bush Plays Terror Card With Bogus LA Attack Plot
prisonplanet.com/articles/february2006/100206terrorcard.htm

NYC Subway "Plot": Just Another Fake Terror Alert
www.prisonplanet.com/articles/
october2005/101005faketerror.htm

ALSO SEE: FAKE TERROR ALERTS ARCHIVE
www.prisonplanet.com/archive_war_on_terror.html#alerts - link

UN Resolution fails to acknowledge that Israel has launched a War against Lebanon

2006-08-12T10:22:00.000-07:00

UN Security Council Resolution 1701 was drafted by France and the US in close consultation with the Israeli government.

a) The resolution is in blatant violation of the UN charter and international law. It fails to acknoweldge that Israel has launched an all out war on Lebanon in violation of international law. It describes the bombing and destruction of an entire country as as a "conflict between Hizbollah and Israel". The word "war" does not appear in the the text of the Resolution.

b) Referring to the two abducted Israeli soldiers, the Resolution states that Hizbollah was responsible for launching "the attack on Israel on 12 July". It denies the fact, amply documented, that an all out war against Lebanon had been in the planning stages well before July 12.

c) The historical causes of the war are denied. The abduction of the two Israeli soldiers on July 12, is presented as a just cause for Israeli retaliation.

d) The resolution does not acknowledge the extensive war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Israel against the people of Lebanon. In this regard, Israel is indelibly responsible for "Crimes against Peace" as defined in Article 6a of the Nuremberg Charter: for "the planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties". Israel is also responsible for "War Crimes" under Article 6b of the Nuremberg Charter .through the "plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity;" (Art. 6b). It is responsible for "Crimes against Humanity" through the perpetration of acts of : "murder,... and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war..." (Article 6c).

e) There is nothing in Resolution 1701 which requires Israel to immediately and unconditonally withdraw its troops. The Security Council acknowledges the government of Lebanon's "request" for withdrawal of Israeli forces and it "calls upon the government on Israel" to withdraw its troops once a UN mandated international force is in place.

"Calls for a full cessation of hostilities based upon, in particular, the immediate cessation by Hezbollah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations;

Upon full cessation of hostilities, calls upon the government of Lebanon and Unifil as authorised by paragraph 11 to deploy their forces together throughout the South and calls upon the government of Israel, as that deployment begins, to withdraw all of its forces from southern Lebanon in parallel;"

f) Israel signed a military cooperation agreement with NATO in 2005. It has a longstanding military alliance with Turkey. Israel also signed a military cooperation agreement under NATO auspices entitled the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI) with several frontline Arab states including Egypt, Morocco, Jordan and Algeria. If troops are dispatched from NATO countries, in all likelihood they will serve the interests of Israel under the terms of the NATO-Israeli military cooperation agreement.

g) The resolution implies the disarmament of Hizbollah, although the condition is not explcxitly stated.

h) The draft of Resolution 1701 was prepared in close consultation with the Israeli government, which is responsible for extensive war crimes.

i) The adoption of Security Council Resolution 1701 doesnot override or erase the fact that Israel has violated international law and has committed extensive crimes (Article 6 of Nuremberg Charter).
Text of Resolution 1701, passed unanimously by the UN Security Council aimed at ending the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

emphasis (bold italics) added

The Security Council,

Recalling all its previous resolutions on Lebanon, in particular resolutions 425 (1978), 426 (1978), 520 (1982), 1559 (2004), 1655 (2006), 1680 (2006) and 1697 (2006), as well as the statements of its president on the situation in Lebanon, in particular the statements of 18 June, 2000, of 19 October, 2004, of 4 May 2005, of 23 January 2006 and of 30 July 2006;

Expressing its utmost concern at the continuing escalation of hostilities in Lebanon and in Israel since Hezbollah's attack on Israel on 12 July 2006, which has already caused hundreds of deaths and injuries on both sides, extensive damage to civilian infrastructure and hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons;

Emphasising the need for an end of violence, but at the same time emphasising the need to address urgently the causes that have given rise to the current crisis, including by the unconditional release of the abducted Israeli soldiers;

Mindful of the sensitivity of the issue of prisoners and encouraging the efforts aimed at urgently settling the issue of the Lebanese prisoners detained in Israel;

Welcoming the efforts of the Lebanese prime minister and the commitment of the government of Lebanon, in its seven-point plan, to extend its authority over its territory, through its own legitimate armed forces, such that there will be no weapons without the consent of the government of Lebanon and no authority other than that of the government of Lebanon, welcoming also its commitment to a UN force that is supplemented and enhanced in numbers, equipment, mandate and scope of operation, and bearing in mind its request in this plan for an immediate withdrawal of the Israeli forces from southern Lebanon;

Determined to act for this withdrawal to happen at the earliest;

Taking due note of the proposals made in the seven-point plan regarding the Shebaa farms area;

Welcoming the unanimous decision by the government of Lebanon on 7 August 2006 to deploy a Lebanese armed force of 15,000 troops in south Lebanon as the Israeli army withdraws behind the Blue Line and to request the assistance of additional forces from Unifil as needed, to facilitate the entry of the Lebanese armed forces into the region and to restate its intention to strengthen the Lebanese armed forces with material as needed to enable it to perform its duties;

Aware of its responsibilities to help secure a permanent ceasefire and a long-term solution to the conflict;

Determining that the situation in Lebanon constitutes a threat to international peace and security;

1. Calls for a full cessation of hostilities based upon, in particular, the immediate cessation by Hezbollah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations;

2. Upon full cessation of hostilities, calls upon the government of Lebanon and Unifil as authorised by paragraph 11 to deploy their forces together throughout the South and calls upon the government of Israel, as that deployment begins, to withdraw all of its forces from southern Lebanon in parallel;

3. Emphasises the importance of the extension of the control of the government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory in accordance with the provisions of resolution 1559 (2004) and resolution 1680 (2006), and of the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords, for it to exercise its full sovereignty, so that there will be no weapons without the consent of the government of Lebanon and no authority other than that of the government of Lebanon;

4. Reiterates its strong support for full respect for the Blue Line;

5. Also reiterates its strong support, as recalled in all its previous relevant resolutions, for the territorial integrity, sovereignty and political independence of Lebanon within its internationally recognized borders, as contemplated by the Israeli-Lebanese General Armistice Agreement of 23 March 1949;

6. Calls on the international community to take immediate steps to extend its financial and humanitarian assistance to the Lebanese people, including through facilitating the safe return of displaced persons and, under the authority of the government of Lebanon, reopening airports and harbours, consistent with paragraphs 14 and 15, and calls on it also to consider further assistance in the future to contribute to the reconstruction and development of Lebanon;

7. Affirms that all parties are responsible for ensuring that no action is taken contrary to paragraph 1 that might adversely affect the search for a long-term solution, humanitarian access to civilian populations, including safe passage for humanitarian convoys, or the voluntary and safe return of displaced persons, and calls on all parties to comply with this responsibility and to cooperate with the Security Council;

8. Calls for Israel and Lebanon to support a permanent ceasefire and a long-term solution based on the following principles and elements:

* Full respect for the Blue Line by both parties;
* security arrangements to prevent the resumption of hostilities, including the establishment between the Blue Line and the Litani river of an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the government of Lebanon and of UNIFIL as authorised in paragraph 11, deployed in this area;
* Full implementation of the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords, and of resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1680 (2006), that require the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so that, pursuant to the Lebanese cabinet decision of July 27, 2006, there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state;
* No foreign forces in Lebanon without the consent of its government;
* No sales or supply of arms and related materiel to Lebanon except as authorized by its government;
* Provision to the United Nations of all remaining maps of land mines in Lebanon in Israel's possession;

9. Invites the secretary general to support efforts to secure as soon as possible agreements in principle from the government of Lebanon and the government of Israel to the principles and elements for a long-term solution as set forth in paragraph 8, and expresses its intention to be actively involved;

10. Requests the secretary general to develop, in liaison with relevant international actors and the concerned parties, proposals to implement the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords, and resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1680 (2006), including disarmament, and for delineation of the international borders of Lebanon, especially in those areas where the border is disputed or uncertain, including by dealing with the Shebaa farms area, and to present to the Security Council those proposals within 30 days;

11. Decides, in order to supplement and enhance the force in numbers, equipment, mandate and scope of operations, to authorize an increase in the force strength of Unifil to a maximum of 15,000 troops, and that the force shall, in addition to carrying out its mandate under resolutions 425 and 426 (1978):

*
a. Monitor the cessation of hostilities;

*
b. Accompany and support the Lebanese armed forces as they deploy throughout the South, including along the Blue Line, as Israel withdraws its armed forces from Lebanon as provided in paragraph 2;

*
c. Coordinate its activities related to paragraph 11 (b) with the government of Lebanon and the government of Israel;

*
d. Extend its assistance to help ensure humanitarian access to civilian populations and the voluntary and safe return of displaced persons;

*
e. Assist the Lebanese armed forces in taking steps towards the establishment of the area as referred to in paragraph 8;

*
f. Assist the government of Lebanon, at its request, to implement paragraph 14;

12. Acting in support of a request from the government of Lebanon to deploy an international force to assist it to exercise its authority throughout the territory, authorizes Unifil to take all necessary action in areas of deployment of its forces and as it deems within its capabilities, to ensure that its area of operations is not utilised for hostile activities of any kind, to resist attempts by forceful means to prevent it from discharging its duties under the mandate of the Security Council, and to protect United Nations personnel, facilities, installations and equipment, ensure the security and freedom of movement of United Nations personnel, humanitarian workers, and, without prejudice to the responsibility of the government of Lebanon, to protect civilians under imminent threat of physical violence;

13. Requests the secretary general urgently to put in place measures to ensure Unifil is able to carry out the functions envisaged in this resolution, urges member states to consider making appropriate contributions to Unifil and to respond positively to requests for assistance from the Force, and expresses its strong appreciation to those who have contributed to Unifil in the past;

14. Calls upon the government of Lebanon to secure its borders and other entry points to prevent the entry in Lebanon without its consent of arms or related materiel and requests Unifil as authorised in paragraph 11 to assist the government of Lebanon at its request;

15. Decides further that all states shall take the necessary measures to prevent, by their nationals or from their territories or using their flag vessels or aircraft;

*
a. the sale or supply to any entity or individual in Lebanon of arms and related materiel of all types, including weapons and ammunition, military vehicles and equipment, paramilitary equipment, and spare parts for the aforementioned, whether or not originating in their territories, and;

*
b. the provision to any entity or individual in Lebanon of any technical training or assistance related to the provision, manufacture, maintenance or use of the items listed in subparagraph (a) above, except that these prohibitions shall not apply to arms, related material, training or assistance authorised by the government of Lebanon or by Unifil as authorised in paragraph 11;

16. Decides to extend the mandate of Unifil until 31 August 2007, and expresses its intention to consider in a later resolution further enhancements to the mandate and other steps to contribute to the implementation of a permanent ceasefire and a long-term solution;

17. Requests the secretary general to report to the Council within one week on the implementation of this resolution and subsequently on a regular basis;

18. Stresses the importance of, and the need to achieve, a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East, based on all its relevant resolutions including its resolutions 242 (1967) of 22 November 1967 and 338 (1973) of 22 October 1973;

19. Decides to remain actively seized of the matter.

- link

Fascist Christian Militia

2006-08-12T10:21:00.000-07:00

Israel has called on the services of the Christian militia it once sponsored in Lebanon to help its current fight against Hizbollah, the militia's former leader has disclosed.

Gen Anton Lahad assumed control of the South Lebanon Army (SLA) in 1984 - two years after it was implicated in the massacre of up to several thousand Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila.

Now he says that Israel is tapping into his expertise in secret meetings.

Now the fascinating part to me is not that one fascist likes to consult with another fascist... no, no the absolutely fascinating part to me is the fact that the Christian fascists have absolutely no dignity or pride. Who can forget the images of the SLA standing at the border between "Israel" and Lebanon begging--yes, literally begging and pleading to be let into Israel when Israel was run out of Southern Lebanon by Hezbollah? I certainly won't forget it:

"Oh please let us in Israeli masters, we are more like you than we are like them. We won't cause any problems, we'll just lick your boots clean and we'll wash dishes at your restaurants, pleaseeeeee!"

The Israelis gave them a swift kick in the ass and sent back to Lebanon.

So you can understand why I am so fascinated by the "consultations" between one set of fascists with the other. - link

Terra! Terra! Terra

2006-08-12T10:20:00.001-07:00

The alleged U.K. terror plot has been investigated for months by British intelligence, and the idea that the airliner attacks were planned for today seems to be nothing more than political fabrication and media hysteria.

Tony Blair and George W. Bush even planned the terror freakout in a series of phone calls that began last Friday and continued through the weekend. Blair and Bush put the finishing touches on their diabolical operation in a phone call early Wednesday, the Associated Press revealed today.

That's right: While millions of travelers are going through absolute hell today because of the sudden terror "news," it was last week when the U.S. president and U.K. prime minister began their cold calculations on how to get the maximum political benefit from the months-old investigation.

"U.S. President George W. Bush seized on a foiled London airline bomb plot to hammer unnamed critics he accused of having all but forgotten the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks," AFP noted this afternoon.

"Weighed down by the unpopular war in Iraq, Bush and his aides have tried to shift the national political debate from that conflict to the broader and more popular global war on terrorism ahead of November 7 congressional elections."

But the American warmongers are hardly alone in needing a "terror boost" for their fading political fortunes. The timing of the hysteria was even more useful to Blair, who was on the verge of being thrown out of Downing Street last night.

"A Scottish MP last night quit the government in protest at Tony Blair's handling of the Middle East crisis, amid warnings from ministers that the Prime Minister's continuing support for American foreign policy could cost him his job," the Scotsman reported this morning.

"Jim Sheridan, Labour MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire North, became the first to resign from a government post over the war. He quit as parliamentary private secretary to the Ministry of Defense, saying he could no longer accept that Scottish airports were being used to refuel United States planes carrying arms to Israel."

The newspaper made it crystal clear that Blair had mere days left in power, with some 150 members of parliament demanding Blair's enemy Jack Straw call the politicians back to London, even though they're on summer break:

"His resignation came as ministers furious at Mr Blair's handling of the crisis said they would push for an emergency recall of parliament in a maneuver they hoped would trigger the Prime Minister's downfall."

Unlike the theoretical "massacre" of the theoretical terror plot that will soon be exposed in the courts as another make-believe scheme, actual massacres continue uninterrupted in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon.

At least 2,000 Iraqis were slaughtered in July alone, most in Sunni vs. Shiite violence that has exploded under the U.S. occupation. Baghdad continues to be the capital of death, but the bloodshed happens everywhere, every day, all the time. Today in Najaf, another religious shrine was blown up, leaving at least 35 dead and another 100 hurt.

Morons and Patsies

If the suspected terrorists are anything like the amateur morons arrested recently in Toronto, London and Florida, the "terror plot" will eventually be revealed to be nothing more than idiot fantasies encouraged by the usual intelligence agents.

While Muslim nations will continue be bombed by the United States and Britain, travelers are stranded all over the Western World and England's beleaguered Pakistanis can expect a new round of bogus terror raids, constant police harassment and attacks by neo-fascist skinheads, Bush and Blair can expect a solid boost for their bloodstained political parties.

The only other beneficiaries of today's insanity are the "homeland security" and private-army industries, the defense contractors and the personal-hygiene business -- having taken our corkscrews, pocket knives and fingernail clippers, airport goons are now seizing shampoo, deodorant, hair gel, toothpaste and pretty much everything else in your toiletries kit.

Not that you can even have a carry-on with your toothpaste and other essentials. As of today, British airports have banned all carry-ons.

Miserable passengers have been photographed standing around with nothing more than a clear plastic baggie holding their tickets and passports.

It's the world of the future, and it sucks. - link

Israeli strikes on Lebanese watersheds questioned

2006-08-12T10:20:00.000-07:00

Israeli bombing has knocked out irrigation canals supplying Litani River water to more than 10,000 acres of farmland and 23 villages in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, raising accusations here that Israel is using its war on Hezbollah to lay claim to Lebanon's prime watersheds.

Heavy fighting and a series of targeted strikes on open water channels and underground water diversion pipes has effectively suspended much of Lebanon's agricultural use of the Litani River along the coastal plain and in parts of the Bekaa Valley near Qaraon dam, according to water engineers who have surveyed the south.

The damaged or broken facilities include a pump station on the Wazzani River, whose inauguration by Lebanon in 2002 prompted Israel to threaten military action because it diverted waters only a few hundred meters from the Israeli border, in a watershed that feeds the Jordan River, officials here said. At the time, Hezbollah vowed to defend the facility.

The strikes went largely unnoticed by the outside world in the nearly monthlong air assault on Hezbollah guerrilla strongholds in southern Lebanon. But Lebanese point to the extensive damage to their irrigation and drinking-water system as evidence that border security and water issues remain intertwined in a region short on both.

"Whenever Israel throughout history has thought of its northern border, they don't talk, for example, of the mountains as a border. They always think of the valley of the Litani," said Mohammed Shaya, dean of the college of social sciences at Lebanese University.

Israel has said repeatedly that it has no designs on Lebanon's water. "There's a policy decision at the highest level not to target those water pumping stations," said Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry. "We don't claim an inch of Lebanese sovereign territory. We don't claim a gallon of Lebanese water. We have no hostile intentions whatever towards Lebanon as a country, towards the Lebanese people or towards Lebanese natural resources."

But the enduring suspicion here that Israel regards the waters of the Litani as its own, and the lands to its south as a security perimeter help explain Lebanon's reluctance to accept any U.N. cease-fire resolution that does not call for an immediate Israeli withdrawal from the region.

At a minimum, Lebanese officials fear that the repeated attacks against water facilities - as well as bridges, highways, power plants and roads - signal an intent to debilitate Hezbollah-dominated southern Lebanon and enable a long-term Israeli presence there.

"They started [bombing] with the Litani water reservoir, the Litani dam. And we all know that the Litani has a special place in this country," said Fadl Shalaq, president of the Council for Reconstruction and Development. "It's a big reservoir of water, and the Israelis don't hide it that there are several parts of the Litani that they would like to take for themselves."

Officials in southern Lebanon said the attacks have hit not only bridges, but open water canals, crippling irrigation to thousands of acres in the Tyre region and in the Bekaa Valley.

During fighting near the Wazzani springs, a guard at the pump station was killed, the pump was knocked out of service and the underground pipes through which water is transported were heavily damaged, said Hussein Ramal, an engineer for the Litani Authority, which operates irrigation systems in the region. "Now every one of these villages is without water," he said.

The Litani flows 102 miles, entirely within Lebanon. It courses south through eastern Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, before turning sharply westward two miles from the Israeli border, to head through the coastal plain to the Mediterranean, north of Tyre.

Israel has always argued that much of the Litani flows wasted to the sea.

A large portion of the river's flow is diverted to a series of hydropower dams, leaving relatively little for irrigation in southern Lebanon. But the Lebanese government had planned to bid a $200 million contract this summer to irrigate major new sections of southern Lebanon. - link

Israel Wants the Litani River Water and Farmlands

2006-08-12T10:19:00.000-07:00

The fact that Israel is trying to destroy all of Lebanon, not just Hezbollah, is clear by their bombing of Christian villages and other infrastructure that has nothing to do with Hezbollah.

What Israel really wants is control of Lebanon by a puppet government, but also covets the Litani River and the lands it irrigates--very good cropland that is the heart of the Bekka Valley, which is the heart of Lebanese agriculture. Israel also wants the electricity the dams and the Litani generate--so that they may use this for more of their "settlements" and, just like Hitler, they want this area but use different names for their taking of the land of others.

Ironically, the Western media has given little attention to this matter, but those of us who know the Middle East well know that the Litani and the area of the south is an area that Israel has coveted for years. Israel also wants revenge on Hezbollah for the defeat Hezbollah visited on Israel by pushing the Israeli army out of Lebanon a few years back.

So, the next time you hear that Israel is "defending herself", remember the thousands of Lebanese from the South who have had to leave their homes (most of which have been destroyed by Israel by now), are homeless (with no future except as refugees), all the bridges of Lebanon which have been destroyed, the water and electric facilities and ever other meaningful sign of progress in Lebanon from the last 20 years--all of which Israel has destroyed, and continues to destroy.

It is time for this killing to stop and the sovereign nation of Lebanon once again to be rebuilt and to be able to live in peace--but not until Israel withdraws and has to pay damages to rebuild Lebanon (but this may never happen). This is a sad day for the Lebanese, and for the world; it is Palestine all over again, with Israel, like Hitler, wanting to expand its territory at the expense of others (the Poles, Hungarians and Russians and others remember this well from the 1930s when Hitler was allowed to attack freely--just as Israel is doing today, while the world stands by and sheds crocodile tears).

Professor Sam Hamod is an expert on the Middle East and a former advisor to the State Department. - link

Huge cost of US-Israel State Terrorism

2006-08-12T10:17:00.000-07:00

ANOTHER BIG LIE has been recently revealed by George Monbiot who has written an incisive analysis in the UK Guardian "Comment is Free" entitled "Israel responded to an unprovoked attack by Hezbullah, right? Wrong".

According to Monbiot "The assault on Lebanon was premeditated - the soldiers' capture simply provided the excuse. It was also unnecessary … A "senior Israeli official" told the Washington Post that the raid by Hezbullah provided Israel with a "unique moment" for wiping out the organisation. The New Statesman's editor, John Kampfner, says he was told by more than one official source that the US government knew in advance of Israel's intention to take military action in Lebanon. The Bush administration told the British government. Israel's assault, then, was premeditated: it was simply waiting for an appropriate excuse … the suggestion that Hezbullah could launch an invasion of Israel or that it constitutes an existential threat to the state is preposterous." ( see: HERE ).

This Big Lie is also revealed by the horrendous disparity of the outcomes of Israel’s War in response to "3 kidnapped Israeli soldiers". According to a summation by the UK Independent newspaper (8 August, 2006): 29 Lebanese Army soldiers have been killed, about 1,000 Lebanese killed, 3,293 wounded; 45 per cent of casualties are children; 913,000 Lebanese have been displaced (1/3 are children ) VERSUS 94 Israelis killed and 1,867 wounded. There has been huge infrastructure damage to Lebanon: $2 billion in damage; 146 bridges and 72 roads destroyed; and release of 30,000 tons of oil from an Israeli air strike has created the Mediterranean's worst environmental catastrophe. Lebanon is being devastated by bombing and shelling (see: here ).

And all this "ostensibly" over "3 kidnapped Israeli soldiers". The reality is a deliberate US-Israeli State Terrorist (USIST) War for US and Israeli Middle East hegemony: oil, water, and geopolitics (for the US), water sources, lebensraum, and Palestinian and Lebanese genocide (for Israel), and possible genocidal escalation to include destruction of Syria and Iran - countries presently at peace but under acute threat from America.

The scary thing about this latest US-sanctioned Israeli War is that it is deliberate and deliberately "unforgivable", involving as it does the remorseless, cold-blooded destruction of 2 whole countries (Lebanon and Palestine). The big bonus for US-Israeli State Terrorism (USIST) is hatred and continued, if demonstrably relatively ineffective, Indigenous Arab "terror" responses which are used via complicit, racist Western Media as a "justification" for continued foreign occupation of Arab lands and horrendous, genocidal USIST violence against defenseless Women and Children.Image

The US-backed Israelis now say that they will continue the war for another month. But what will be the human cost?

In terms of deaths of Palestinians and Lebanese (50% Children and 75% Women and Children) the present circa 1,200 deaths is just the beginning – downstream there will be a horrendous death toll due to the destruction of life-sustaining economies and civil infrastructure (water supply, sanitation, clinics, hospitals, communications, transport, roads, bridges and transport). There will be an estimated 44,000 Lebanese plus Palestinian "annual avoidable deaths" if these countries are bombed and shelled to a "UK-US-occupied Iraq scenario", as calculated below from the latest UNICEF comparative infant mortality and population data.

Under-5 infant mortality figures are presented in updated UNICEF reports for essentially every country in the world - it is only a click away, and tells us the following: in 2004 the under-5 infant mortality was 122,000 in Occupied Iraq, 359,000 in Occupied Afghanistan and 1,000 in the occupying country Australia (noting that in 2004 the populations of these countries were 28.1 million, 28.6 million and 19.9 million, respectively). In contrast, in 2004 the under-5 infant mortality was 2,000 in Lebanon (population 3.5 million) and 3,000 in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (population 3.6 million). The total population of Lebanon plus the Occupied Palestinian Territory is 3.5 million + 3.6 million = 7.1 million.

It must be appreciated that "under-5 infant deaths" in Third World countries are about 90% avoidable but "avoidable under-5 infant deaths" represent only about 60% of "total avoidable mortality" (excess mortality, mortality that should not happen), which is defined as the difference between the actual deaths in a country and the deaths expected for a peaceful, decently-run country with the same demographics. Exhaustive analysis of global avoidable mortality instructs that for Third World countries "under-5 infant mortality" is about 0.7 of the "total avoidable mortality" (see "Layperson’s Guide to Counting Iraq Deaths", MWC News ).

If Lebanon and Palestine are bombed "back to the Stone Age" as promised by a senior Israeli government official in 2002 (for Israeli adumbration of the present atrocities ), then Lebanon and Palestine would be reduced to a "UK-US-Coalition occupied Iraq scenario" or indeed to a "UK-US-Coalition-NATO-occupied Afghanistan scenario". Image

On the basis of the 2004 figures, if Lebanon and Palestine are bombed to a "UK-US-occupied Iraq scenario" then the "annual under-5 infant deaths" will total 122,000 x 7.1/28.1 = 30,826, this corresponding to an "annual avoidable mortality" of 30,826/0.7 = 44,037 i.e. about 44,000. If Lebanon and Palestine are bombed to a "UK-US-occupied Afghanistan scenario" then the "annual under-5 infant deaths" will total 359,000 x 7.1/28.6 = 89,122 corresponding to an "annual avoidable mortality" of 89,122/0.7 = 127,318 i.e. about 127,000.

The continued civilian-targeting and infrastructure bombing by racist, war criminal US-Israeli State Terrorists (USISTs; US planes, tanks, bombs and shells and Israeli military "just obeying orders") is set to cause horrendous "annual avoidable deaths" of over 44,000 annually. The US is still blocking World demands for a ceasefire and USIST remains resolute in preventing Peace (or even "interim Peace") with Equality, Justice and Reconciliation in the Middle East. The only sensible course for the Civilized World involves immediate International Boycotts and Sanctions ("free market choice" in all areas of human activity) against racist, war criminal US-Israeli State Terrorists (USISTs) and against all the countries, corporations and individuals supporting US and Israeli war crimes in the Middle East. Such Sanctions and Boycotts were ultimately successful against the similarly racist and violent Israel- and US-backed Apartheid regime in South Africa.

================

Dr Gideon Polya, MWC News Chief political editor, published some 130 works in a 4 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 2003), and is currently writing a book on global mortality - link

The London Plot

2006-08-12T10:16:00.000-07:00

A huge 'terror plot’ has just been uncovered in London. "This was intended to be mass murder on an unimaginable scale" say the London Metropolitan police. Britain's terror alert, accordingly, has been ratcheted up to its highest-ever level with security services, military and police now on "severe specific" alert.

Not to be left behind, even though the list of unanswered questions, irregularities, and discrepancies continues to grow with each passing hour, the obedient Western media jumped at the occasion ensuring a spate of spectacular cover stories and anti-Muslim tirade.

As usual, though the facts are still coming in, the media is dutifully following the open-ended cues provided by the US and British governments, and reproducing the handed-down script without a pause for the facts to emerge fully. With an indecent haste, government enforcers have already slapped ridiculous restrictions on travelers, with mother's having to taste baby milk before they board planes and all hand luggage, including liquid drinks, being banned.

If there indeed was such a plot, then by its uncovering innocent lives surely have been saved and just in time too. If not, then let us thank God for that and hasten to analyze the event from a slightly closer quarter as it has happened a little too conveniently for certain personages of rather dubious repute and vile agenda.

Consider the following.

The Anglo-USraeli juggernaut is on a roll and under fire at the same time. George Bush’s Iraq jaunt has spun out of control with his own top General now openly admitting the possibility (read happening already) of a civil war in that unfortunate country. With the US president’s 'war on terror’ now thoroughly discredited by renowned policy specialists, his approval ratings stand at a historical worst for any President of United States in opinion polls. Tony Blair is beleaguered by his own party men for his sycophantic support of Zionist extremists. Israel is getting some lessons in humility from the rag tag Hezbollah fighters raising fears among its supporters in the West. Iran not only remains defiant over its nuclear program but also continues to provide both overt and covert support to Hezbollah and Hamas. Syria, uncompromising as ever, watches on quietly for now yet ready to jump into the melee come the calling. In short, it is a mess and THE ISLAMISTS are clearly responsible for all this. Undoubtedly, a single major distraction capable of killing a whole slew of nasty birds was the crying need of the time.

Not surprisingly, therefore, clichés that are the corner stone of Anglo-American policy for global hegemony like 'Islamic Terror’, 'Bin Laden', 'Jihaadis', 'Al-Qaeda style attack’, 'suicide bombers’ and 'security of Western citizens’ etc. are back with a bang with this latest buildup. The smear machine has had gallons of oil thrown onto its creaking cogs and is in full gear instantly. At the same time, to breathe new life into the stalling agenda of their masters, crawling out of the woodwork are these states’ instruments of coercion and control such as the CIA, MI6, Mossad and affiliated intelligence agencies, like Pakistan's ISI.

Statistical analysis has now conclusively proven that every time Blair and Bush slump in approval ratings, a fresh terror alert gives them a rebound back up the charts. Every single major terror alert, hear this, issued by the US, Canadian or UK governments has proven to be either a contrived facade, a setup sting operation or an out-and-out fraud.

But then why not a full blown 9/11 as predicted by many, self included? Why this just-in-time-uncovering of the plots (e.g. Toronto, Florida, the earlier London plot etc) only days/weeks before the supposed attempts, one may ask?

The answer probably lies in the 9/11 truth movement being on the crest of a wave of media exposure. Distinguished scientific minds and brave citizens have now blown open the lid on evidence of government sponsored terror and how they control the society through the power of nightmares. The movement itself, already on the lens of quite a few main stream media big names like C-Span, is about to burst out full time from the sidelines into the middle of the road. Similarly, just like the 9/11, the July 2005 London bombings too, have been now proven to be a British intelligence operation and the alleged ringleader, Mohammed Siddique Khan, to be working for MI5.

That there are still men and women out there clearly able to see through the charade and call it for what it is, is now the fear of the fear-mongers. It seems that the powers that be have learnt a lesson that it is better to 'discover plots just in time’ rather than once again be the agents of unashamed criminality in the annihilation of their own citizens and become a focus of relentless attention of the truth seekers--for now at least.

Who are the patsies this time, will be clearer in the days to come. As we await more news to come out, it would be worth our while to refresh our memories about some of the past flag operations carried out by certain Western security agencies through their patsies. Infowars has an interesting list.

The Mohammed Atta who operated within the USA attended the Defense Language Institute at Monterey.

U.S. military sources had given the FBI information that suggests five of the alleged hijackers of the 9/11 planes that were used that terror attack received training at secure U.S. military installations in the 1990s.

Three of the alleged hijackers listed their address on driver licenses and car registrations as the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Fla.—known as the "Cradle of U.S. Navy Aviation," according to a high-ranking U.S. Navy source.

On 29 July 2005, on FOX News Channel's Day Side programme, there was a claim by Former US Justice Dept. prosecutor John Loftus that the 'mastermind' of the 7/7 London Bombings, Haroon Rashid Aswat, worked for MI6 (British intelligence).

A Kuwaiti citizen Omar Al-Faruq who allegedly was the mastermind in the Bali bomb plot was arrested in Bogor, Indonesia, on June 5, 2002 and handed over to the US authorities. Former Indonesian State Intelligence Coordinating Board (BAKIN) chief A.C. Manulang was quoted by Tempo as saying that Al-Faruq is a CIA-recruited agent. A Pentagon official in Washington later confirmed that al-Faruq escaped from a U.S. detention facility in Bagram, Afghanistan, on 10 July 2005. Too convenient by half, I would say.

If this latest hype remains unexposed and the US-UK-Israeli aggressor bloc is able to somehow pin this newest fantasy on Hezbollah, Syria, or Iran, then given the imminent collapse of the Anglo-US imperialistic venture, and the unforeseen drawing out of the current Israeli offensive in Lebanon, this new stunt threatens to take the world into a general war.

As the grateful Bush-Blair combo, the chief beneficiaries of the purported plot, play out their jaded routine in front a servile media, it is time to ring some bells. This large-scale joint psyops of Western governments and media shows that something is not only rotten in the state of Denmark; something far more sinister is afoot. - link

No dead Lebanese children on TV today

2006-08-12T10:09:00.000-07:00

George Bush is just following John Reid in ensuring any trials following today's arrests are irretrievably prejudiced.

It is a fact that only the closest Blair circle bothers to deny, that if young British Muslims are turning to terrorism, it is the Blair-Bush foreign policy of war on Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine that has driven them to it. The majority of British people share their outrage at our foreign policy. That is not to condone the response of irrational violence. Terrorism is plain wrong. But it is Blair who has, through his evangelical embrace of the neo-con foreign agenda, massively increased any current threat of terrorism to the UK.

But let us do what none of the 24 hour news channels are doing; draw breath and count up to ten. What has actually happened so far?

There have been, reportedly, 21 people arrested. There have been no terrorist attacks, no explosions. US sources are reported as saying that explosive devices have been found, but no news from the Police as yet.

I am reminded of the Forest Gate arrests and the notorious "Chemical weapon vest" which was threatening London and required 270 policemen and a four mile air exclusion zone to deal with. The media was shoving that out just as uncritically as it is shoving out this air attack, even though it made no sense. Anyone who knows anything about weapons knows that for a chemical weapon you want maximum dispersal - the last thing you are going to do is wrap it in fabric around a human body. And why the air exclusion zone? Were they going to throw the vest at a passing jet? The media never did ask any of those questions.

Similarly, I recall the famous ricin plot, where again police and the professional pundits said millions could have been killed. In the event, of course, it turned out there was no ricin and no plot.

And I remember Jean Charles De Menezes, the "suicide bomber", with his "bulky jacket", with "wires sticking out", who "leapt" the ticket barriers and "raced" onto the tube. All lies.

So I am waiting with a little healthy scepticism to see the truth of this "al-Qaida plot" bringing "Mass murder on an unprecedented scale".

Of course, it helps New Labour look Churchillian, and explains why Israel had to be supported in the ethnic cleansing of South Lebanon, part of the "Arc of extremism". it is interesting that the timing of these arrests exactly today, after "months" of surveillance, was determined by the Prime Minister - the CO in COBRA, the operational command, stands for Cabinet Office.

The political timing could not have been more convenient - a junior minister had resigned over arms to Israel, and the backbench rebellion demanding a recall of parliament over Lebanon will now be containable in the name of standing together in the War on Terror. And the news agenda has been seismically shifted. The public mood is instantly tilted from sympathy for the people of Lebanon, leading to questioning of the War on Terror, to renewed fear that "Islamic fascists" are planning to kill us all.

So to recap: Blair's crazed foreign policy has made us a genuine potential target for terrorist attack. The government manipulates and spins that threat to political advantage.

We wait for the court system to show whether this was a real attempted attack and, if so, it was genuinely operational rather than political to move against it today. But the police' and security services' record of lies does not inspire confidence. - link

Lebanon aid group boldly defies Israeli vehicle curfew

2006-08-12T09:56:00.000-07:00

The medical relief organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) announced Thursday that it would defy an Israeli threat to bomb any vehicle moving south of Lebanon's Litani river, an area that includes the port city of Tyre.

"To forbid all forms of movement, without distinction, will lead to even more civilian deaths and suffering," said Rowan Gillies, MSF's international president. "We refuse to accept this paralysis of humanitarian assistance and will continue to assist those in need," he said.

The Israeli military dropped leaflets Tuesday warning it would strike any vehicle, "whatever its nature," traveling south of the Litani river on suspicion of transporting weapons.

A World Food Program spokeswoman in Geneva said later that the United Nations had been informed the ban did not apply to its relief convoys. But the UN agency nonetheless cancelled attempts to send convoys to south Lebanon because of security concerns.

And on Monday, two MSF convoys traveling in different areas of the south were nearly hit by artillery or air strikes, the relief group said. Israeli and Lebanese authorities had been informed of the vehicles' movements and the convoys were clearly identifiable from the air and the ground, it added.

Tyre has been cut off from the rest of Lebanon since Monday when Israeli bombardments destroyed a makeshift bridge that was the last crossing over the Litani river into the area.

"Basic necessities are certainly running out in Tyre," Gillies told a Beirut news conference. "Food is running out. Fuel is running out," he said.

The group's south Lebanon coordinator Christopher Stokes said no one should imagine the region had entirely emptied of inhabitants in the face of the Israeli onslaught. "These so-called ghost towns still host civilians," he said.

A dire fuel shortage is also proving catastrophic for the south, as hospitals which are doubling up as refuges for some of the nearly 1 million people displaced by the fighting are quickly running out of resources.

One hospital in Tyre which is still functioning and has been hosting internally displaced people has only 48 hours worth of supplies.

"Al Najem hospital is running out of fuel. Diesel is impossible to get and you can't run an operating theater without them," said Gillies.

MSF has had to bring its own shipments of fuel into Lebanon, to keep their operations going "as long as possible."

"It's unusual for us to try to get fuel to people. But we need to do it because there's no other way," said Gillies.

The month-long Israeli pounding of Lebanon since Hezbollah militants captured two soldiers in a deadly cross-border raid on July 12 has created a rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation particularly in the south.

A sea blockade has cut off the country's fuel supplies and damage to infrastructure has blocked access to the most vulnerable areas.

MSF said it was currently providing medical assistance and distributing relief goods around Lebanon, including in Tyre and the main southern city of Sidon.

The Israeli security cabinet gave its approval Wednesday for a broader ground offensive although commanders said they were delaying the start to give more time for diplomacy. - link

Israeli warplanes plunge Tyre into darkness

2006-08-12T09:54:00.000-07:00

Electricity transformers in southern Lebanon city hit; Israeli drone rockets refugee convoy fleeing southern Lebanese town of Marjayoun, killing and wounding as many as 15 people
Associated Press

Israeli warplanes bombed two electricity transformers in south Lebanon on Friday night, plunging the port city of Tyre into darkness, security sources said.

The attack came as Israel said it was expanding its ground operation in southern Lebanon.

An Israeli drone fired missiles into a convoy of refugees fleeing attacks in the southern town of Marjayoun, killing and wounding as many as 15 people, witnesses and security officials said.

The convoy, consisting of more than 100 civilian vehicles and those carrying a detachment of 350 Lebanese soldiers and police from the area around Marjayoun, was hit near Chtaura on the west side of the Bekaa Valley.

Two armored UN peacekeeping vehicles had led the convoy out of Marjayoun Friday afternoon, but it was not known if they were still accompanying it when the attack occurred.

Associated Press photographer Lutfallah Daher was with the convoy and said he saw the body of one dead man and many others wounded. The state-run National News Agency said at least four people were killed. Al-Jazeera television reported that the Lebanese Interior Minister Ahmed Fatfat said three people were killed and 7 wounded.

Marjayoun was taken by Israeli soldiers early Thursday and intense bombing and artillery fire has been reported in the region for the past 24 hours.

Security officials in the Bekaa said at least nine rockets were fired on the convoy. Hospital officials in the town of Job Jannine said they had received 25 casualties from the attack, although it was not immediately clear how many were fatalities.

Daher said there was a second attack on Red Cross and civil defense vehicles rushing the aid of the stricken convoy. It was not known, he said, if any rescuers were hurt.
- link

Israel widens attack despite UN resolution

2006-08-12T09:40:00.000-07:00

Israel continued its military offensive in Lebanon today, killing at least 19 people, despite a United Nations resolution for a ceasefire, passed unanimously last night.

The deadliest attack was on homes in the village of Rachaf, in the south of the country, just four miles from the Israeli border, where at least 15 civilians were killed by air strikes, security officials said.

Israeli missiles hit a vehicle in Kharayeb, a village in the Zahrani region about halfway between Beirut and the Israeli border, killing three people and wounding five, and the army reported that a Lebanese soldier was killed overnight in an air raid near an army base in the western Bekaa Valley.

Another Israeli airstrike destroyed a road leading to the only remaining border crossing to Syria - Arida, on the northern coast - severing the last escape route for besieged Lebanese people and for humanitarian aid entering the country.

The United Nations security council unanimously approved a resolution late last night, calling for an end to the conflict in Lebanon.

The resolution demanded a "full cessation of hostilities", and authorised the deployment of up to 15,000 UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon.

That force would stand between Israeli forces and Hizbollah as Israel withdraws completely from the south of the country and Hizbollah ceases all military activity.

The Lebanese government is hours away from voting on the ceasefire and is widely expected to accept the plan, with its prime minister, Fuad Saniora, telling reporters: "This resolution shows that the whole world stood by Lebanon."

The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, last night called George Bush to signal his agreement, and government sources say his cabinet will approve the UN resolution tomorrow but warned it may take time to implement.

Israel refused to halt air strikes until the ceasfire is approved, continuing the major ground offensive it launched yesterday.

The army announced it had nearly tripled the number of troops operating in southern Lebanon to around 30,000, with Dan Halutz, the Israeli army's chief of staff saying: "we have multiplied by three the number of our troops operating in Lebanon".

Mr Halutz told Sky News the army will obey the ceasefire only once it is implemented and will continue to operate until Israel achieves its aims.

The army plans to move deeper into Lebanon, towards the strategically significant Litani River, some 30km (18 miles) from the Israeli border.

There were also reports that Hizbollah rockets have injured five people in northern Israel. A direct hit on a house in Amirim, a northern Israel community, injured two people who were hit by shrapnel, while a strike in the northern town of Kiryat Shemona injured three people.

The Israeli army said it had destroyed several Hizbollah rocket launchers and killed more than 40 guerrillas in the last 24 hours, although the guerrilla group disputed these figures. - link

UN votes for peace deal; Israeli cabinet to decide tomorrow

2006-08-12T09:39:00.000-07:00

The United Nations security council unanimously approved a resolution calling for an end to the conflict in Lebanon late last night. Israel announced it would respect the plan, but said it would not call off a full-scale land invasion, launched yesterday, before tomorrow at the earliest.

Ending weeks of fraught negotiations between the US and France, the resolution demanded a "full cessation of hostilities", authorising the deployment of up to 15,000 UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, to help Lebanese armed forces take control as Israeli troops withdraw.

Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert had called George Bush to signal his agreement, and will ask his cabinet to approve the plan on Sunday, foreign ministry spokesman Gideon Meir said. Until then, there would be no halt to a major Israeli ground offensive launched yesterday.

"The logic would be that even in the framework of this successful outcome, if you hand over to the Lebanese army in south Lebanon where you have Hizbullah removed from the territory, that makes [Lebanon's] troubles a lot easier," another foreign ministry spokesman said.

The deal in New York followed a few hours of confusion after Mr Olmert shocked the UN by ordering a major ground offensive and rejecting the draft text as unacceptable, before quickly changing his mind. Lebanon made no immediate public response to the UN plan.

The focus will now move to how Israel and Hizbullah respond to the resolution, which calls for Hizbullah to end all attacks and for Israel to end "offensive military operations", leaving open the possibility of actions deemed defensive. Diplomats suggested there might be a 10-day space between a halt to hostilities and UN troops beginning to replace Israeli forces.

After increasingly frantic talks, diplomats appear to have found a middle way between Lebanon and Israel's demands on an international force. Lebanon had objected to authorising UN troops to use force to secure peace - a so-called "chapter seven" mandate - and had insisted instead on a "chapter six" force that would monitor the ceasefire and fire only in self-defence. Israel had vowed that its troops would not withdraw unless replaced by a sufficiently muscular buffer force.

The compromise language in the resolution stops short of explicitly authorising UN troops to use force, and denies Israel its demand for a completely new multinational force. "You never get a deal like this with everybody getting everything that they want," said Margaret Beckett, the British foreign secretary.

From New York, Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, said that the international troops would be empowered "to create security in the south and to secure the arms embargo" against Hizbullah.

In a concession by the Lebanese there is no mention of Sheba'a Farms, the disputed territory Israel continued to occupy after withdrawing from Lebanon in 2002. Nor is there a demand for Lebanese prisoners held by Israel to be freed.The resolution emphasises the importance of freeing the Israeli troops held by Hizbullah, but does not formally demand it. - link

Give us good policing and fair trials - not rhetoric on stilts

2006-08-12T09:38:00.000-07:00

Trust me, I really do get it. We face a significant terrorist threat from an international network that feeds on division, distrust, real and perceived injustice, and converts it into suicide and murder. You see the intelligence and hear "the chatter" on a daily basis. You carry responsibility for protecting lives and democratic institutions. You field criticism for domestic and foreign policy, and periodic opposition to particular measures which some think counter-productive . But don't make the mistake of confusing scrutiny with complacency or treachery. As the prime minister suggested in California, both praise and criticism of leadership should be looked upon "with a very searching eye".

You have sat in the greatest department of state for 100 days. Whether you stay there for 100 or 1,000 more, you are unlikely to do or say anything more important than your call for tolerance, resilience and solidarity yesterday. I believe that at times of great difficulty rhetoric can either unite or divide its recipients. Sometimes legislation becomes rhetoric on stilts, and at the Home Office hyperactivity can be as grave a danger as inaction. A deep breath and a calm voice might be a better prescription than the arbitrary deportation and legislative lock-down already demanded by parts of the press.

A devastating human-rights atrocity may have been prevented, not by political debate and new legislation but by intelligence-gathering and policing. I have little doubt that while the suspects are said to be British Muslims, much of the intelligence must also have come from Muslims. This kind of courage can only be built on if you are unequivocal in protecting the suspected, the innocent and even the guilty from the baying mob.

If some of that intelligence is converted into evidence and fair trials, innocent members of minorities who have been made weary, afraid and even sceptical by less successful operations may grow a little more trusting. That's why it was so important that Peter Clarke of the Metropolitan police spoke of focusing on the criminal process and saying nothing to prejudice fair trials.

This week, as the airport operation followed hard upon your immigration and national security speech, people remarked upon the "conveniently coincidental timing". We now know there to be no coincidence. You will have known of the suspected plot and planned operation for some time. Yet surely this degree of scepticism requires real reflection on how to rebuild trust in intelligence and government. Few expect a complete volte-face on hotly contested policies, but generosity and humility in the face of democratic dissent might be a good start in promoting the value of debate over destruction.

On Thursday you spoke of a unity of purpose that you share with your political shadows. Whatever the differences on details of policy, surely there is no reason for that not to continue? A good example was the largely overlooked counterterror report of the all-party joint parliamentary committee on human rights a couple of weeks ago. The committee took time and care in preparing its recommendation that the law-enforcement approach is the best defence against the terrorist threat. It advocates involving prosecutors earlier, bringing charges and facilitating fair trials in preference to long periods of pre-charge detention. It joins Liberty and the Met in calling for intercepted material to be admissible in trials. Above all, it speaks of the often false choice between liberty and security, of the dangers of counterproductivity in the rush to the statute book and of a human-rights framework that contains careful balances between values of protection, freedom, equal treatment and justice.

I know that you have not always been the greatest fan of human-rights instruments, or of the lawyers who seek to apply them. But if you can reach out to political opponents and demonised minorities, I suggest you might find language that achieves a solidarity with the legal community as well.

I was interested in your comments on Wednesday that the convention on human rights was designed in another age as a defence against fascist states rather than fascist individuals. But let me ask how it squares with your belief in "our values" and the prime minister's stark choice between "open and closed" societies. We must not allow opponents to paint open societies as decadent pits of binge-drinking moral relativism where anything goes. Human rights are not mere laws but the ultimate values of dignity, equality and fairness that preserve and inspire the openness and modernity you defend. - link

Muslim leaders say foreign policy makes UK target

2006-08-12T09:35:00.000-07:00

Leading UK Muslims have united to tell Tony Blair that his foreign policy in Iraq and on Israel offers "ammunition to extremists" and puts British lives "at increased risk".

An open letter signed by three of the four Muslim MPs, three of the four peers, and 38 organisations including the Muslim Council of Britain and the Muslim Association of Britain, was greeted with dismay in Downing Street. It has courted the MCB and several of the signatories, such as key Labour MPs Sadiq Khan (Tooting) and Shahid Malik (Dewsbury), whom it believes can shape Muslim opinion.

The letter says: "As British Muslims we urge you to do more to fight against all those who target civilians with violence, whenever and wherever that happens. It is our view that current British government policy risks putting civilians at increased risk both in the UK and abroad.

"To combat terror the government has focused extensively on domestic legislation. While some of this will have an impact, the government must not ignore the role of its foreign policy.

"The debacle of Iraq and the failure to do more to secure an immediate end to the attacks on civilians in the Middle East not only increases the risk to ordinary people in that region, it is also ammunition to extremists who threaten us all.

"Attacking civilians is never justified. This message is a global one. We urge the prime minister to redouble his efforts to tackle terror and extremism and change our foreign policy to show the world that we value the lives of civilians wherever they live and whatever their religion. Such a move would make us all safer."

The signatories insisted they condemned those who planned the alleged attacks. Mr Khan told the Guardian that Mr Blair's reluctance to criticise Israel over the Lebanon attacks meant the pool of people from which terrorists found their recruits was increasing.

He said: "We simply cannot ignore the fact that our country's foreign policy is being used by charismatic [figures] to tell British Muslims that their country hates them. Current policy on the Middle East is seen by almost everyone I speak to as unfair and unjust. Such a sense of injustice plays into the hands of extremists."

Mr Malik said British foreign policy encourages the view in the Muslim community "where you forget about right and wrong, where you think two wrongs equals a right ... those events are diminishing my ability to put forward arguments against extremism".

Lord Patel of Blackburn said the US and British governments were applying "double standards" by failing to take on Israel.

Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: "We hope the government will do more to ensure its policy doesn't allow people to believe that the lives of some civilians are worth more to it than others."

No 10 is frustrated by the letter, which it did not know about until last night. A spokesman said: "Al-Qaida starting killing innocent civilians in the 90s. It killed Muslim civilians even before 9/11, and the attacks on New York and Washington killed over 3,000 people before Iraq. To imply al-Qaida is driven by an honest disagreement over foreign policy is a mistake."

Two Muslim commentators blamed a lack of community leadership from foreign-born imams and mosque elders for the alienation felt by some younger Muslims. On the BBC's World at One Shiraz Mihir, a former member of the hardline Hizb ut-Tahrir group, said: "The mosques are not able to offer any effective leadership. At a time when there is a polarising debate about Muslim identity and how young British Muslims fit into the wider British society, there is a vacuum which is being filled by radicals and extremists."

Harris Rafique of the newly formed Sufi Muslim Council added: "We are seeing a huge politicisation of faith rather than (economic) circumstances. An ideology is taking hold of our youngsters."

Senior members of other faith communities voiced their practical support for a peace settlement in the Middle East. John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, announced that he was cancelling his holiday and would embark on a week of prayer and fasting inside York Minster.

Alan McDonald, moderator of the general assembly of the Church of Scotland, called for prayers for peace and donate to charities such as Christian Aid. - link

Israel wages broader Lebanon attack

2006-08-12T09:33:00.000-07:00

At least 19 people have been killed as Israel launched a wider offensive against Hezbollah just hours after the UN passed a resolution to stop the fighting.

Backed by warplanes and tanks, Israeli ground troops pushed deeper into Lebanon on Saturday, reaching Ghanduriya, 11km north of the border.

The broad offensive comes despite a unanimous UN Security Council call for an end to the one-month old war. The offensive is expected to reach as far as the strategic Litani River, 20km from the border.

An Israeli army spokesman said: "In line with Wednesday's decision by the security cabinet, the army has launched a ground operation in south Lebanon which is expected to extend up to the Litani River."

Israel's top general, Dan Halutz, told reporters on Saturday that Israel "will continue to operate until we achieve our aims".

"In order to ensure a ceasefire you need two [parties]. Once the agreement will be completed in all the details, then we will be able to decide when the ceasefire will be implemented."

Continued offensive

Israeli combat jets were also in action across other parts of Lebanon, pounding northern roads leading to Syria and destroying a power plant in the major southern city of Sidon. The city is likely to be without power for 10 days.

Fifteen of the latest victims of the war were killed or injured when fighter-bombers hit a village near the southern port city of Tyre, police said.

Troops in tanks and armoured vehicles were rolling towards hilltops overlooking the Litani where they were meeting with resistance from Hezbollah fighters, Lebanese police said.

The Litani has served as a strategic limit for Israel's operations in Lebanon since it first invaded its northern neighbour in 1978.

Attacks on Baalbek

Aljazeera's correspondent in the Bekaa Valley said one person had been killed and 12 others injured in 10 Israeli air raids in the space of an hour on Baalbek and the surrounding villages on Saturday.

He said that, unlike previous attacks on Baalbek, the strikes targeted residential areas and had hit a building containing clinics, shops and houses. Other strikes have damaged the old market in the city.

Previous strikes had hit roads, trucks and petrol stations.

Also under Israeli fire were the villages and towns of Tlaile, Taraya, Janata and Marabun, near Baalbek.

Meanwhile, at least four Hezbollah rockets were fired into northern Israel, causing two casualties, Israeli police said.

Aljazeera reported that four Israeli soldiers were also killed and 23 others wounded in clashes with Hezbollah in south Lebanon on Saturday.

There was no confirmation from the Israeli army.

Late on Friday the UN Security Council passed a resolution calling for a cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah and the deployment of a 15,000-strong international force in Lebanon. - link

al-manar tv - reports - Israeli aggression against Lebanon: Day 29

2006-08-09T08:40:00.000-07:00

Chavez: I have no interest in maintaining diplomatic relations, nor an office, nor trade nor anything with a state like Israel

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said he wants to break Venezuela's diplomatic ties to Israel, blasting the Jewish state's attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon. In a speech broadcast on state television, Chavez said it was "for sure" that Venezuela was severing relations with Israel following two days of diplomatic tit-for-tat embassy withdrawals. "They also withdrew their ambassador and what is for sure is that we are breaking diplomatic relations," he said. "I have no interest in maintaining diplomatic relations, nor an office, nor trade nor anything with a state like Israel." In his television appearance Tuesday, Chavez said: "You see what Israel is doing: bombing cities, finishing off the entire country, it doesn't matter that there are children, women, dead mothers embracing their children." The Venezuelan president earlier accused Israel of "terrorism and pure fascism."

Israeli aggression against Lebanon: Day 29
09/08/2006

The number of martyrs from the Israeli massacre in the Shiyah area, near Beirut, reached 60 including more than 20 children, while the number of injuired exceeded 50. Israeli killer jets raided two buildings Monday night in the Hajjaj street in the region and destroyed them on the heads of their occupants. Lots of families were taking refuge in those building from the daily Israeli bombing of areas in Beirut's southern suburb. In the meantime, Isaeli warplanes searched for civilians to kill, and found one in the town of Mashghara in the Western Bekaa region. Israeli killer jets raided a 4-story house in the town and destroyed it on its occupants killing at least six civilians from the same family. And in the western Bekaa town of Mashghara Israeli killer jets committees another massacre today when they raided a four-story residential house killing a whole family of seven including children. Israeli fighter jets waged deadly new bombing raids on different regions of southern Lebanon on Wednesday. Before dawn broke across Lebanon, Israeli warplanes struck in the north, east and centre of the war ravaged country, hitting roads, bridges, fuel tankers and homes. Seven people were killed.

Israeli government okays expanding military operations in Lebanon and Peretz assigns new commander in North, the first such move since 1973

The Israeli security cabinet agreed to expand military offensive against Lebanon. According to Haaretz, the Israeli army proposal is for a two-week ground operation that would involve conquering the entire area south of the Litani River, and even a few areas north of it, with the goal of significantly reducing Hezbollah's short-range rocket launching capabilities. Defense Minister Amir Peretz fully supports the army's plan, which he considers essential for Israel to achieve its diplomatic goals. Peretz has meanwhile ordered the army to prepare to expand its operations, possibly going beyond the Litani river. Israel also assigned a new commander in charge of coordinating the military offensive against Lebanon. Chief of General Staff Lieutenant General Dan Halutz appointed his deputy, Major-General Moshe Kaplinsky, to supervise air, sea and land operations as his representative in the north until the end of the war, the military said. . Israeli commentators saw the decision as pushing aside the head of the northern command, Major-General Udi Adam, who has overseen the four-week offensive against Lebanon so far. The last time such a move was taken by Israel was in 1973 when Israel was surprisingly attacked by Syria and Egypt.

Israeli army's new weapon: Snipers who fought in Chechnya

Israeli Yediot Aharonot said that 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 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. According to Yediot, 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. 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.
- link

Vice and virtue in Afghanistan

2006-08-09T08:38:00.000-07:00

The Afghan government's move to reactivate the Department of Vice and Virtue has set alarm bells ringing among sections of the international community. Under the Taliban, a full-fledged ministry was responsible for formulating some of its most contentious laws.

The Taliban's tal-Amr bi al-ma'ruf wa al-Nahi 'an al-Munkir or Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice was responsible for implementing a wide range of codes governing public behavior, including bans on activities ranging from homosexuality and apparently innocent pastimes such as kite-flying and music to the absurd, including on women showing their ankles, as well as diktats on the length of men's beards.

Reacting to the move by President Hamid Karzai government, Human Rights Watch said it raised "serious concerns about the

potential abuse of the rights of women and vulnerable groups". The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission said it was "concerned about the move, since this would evoke fears of the legacy of human-rights abuses at the hand of the Taliban".

However, though the step has been projected as "setting up" of the department, the reality is that the department was never closed down by the Karzai government after it came to power, but lay dormant. Another little-reported fact is that the department was first set up under the mujahideen, though the Taliban upgraded it into a full-fledged ministry.

In the wake of September 11, 2001, and US military operations in Afghanistan, all terror and abuse in the country is equated solely with the Taliban. Though the Taliban period did reflect the worst excesses of religious conservatism, the international community has by and large chosen to ignore the rabid conservatism within sections of the jihadi leaders, as it has their human-rights excesses and abuses. Many of these leaders are now in government as well as being allies of the forces prosecuting the "war on terror".

There was little reaction from any of the international community when the government's equivalent of the moral police was first set up. In January 2005, the government instituted a task force under the Interior Ministry that was charged with cracking down on immorality in public. The department has raided brothels and some foreign guesthouses, seized liquor and arrested suspected prostitutes. (Under Afghan law, alcohol and prostitution are both banned, though an unwritten code allows foreigners to consume alcohol.)

The lack of a major public outcry over the continuing abuse of women within the judicial and criminal system - there are large numbers of women in jail, arrested for crimes including attempts to escape from abusive domestic situations - suggests that the consternation over the Vice and Virtue Department has more to do with the paradigm of the "war against terror" and its demonization of the Taliban.

Moulvi Mohammed Qasim, deputy minister of Haj and Religious Affairs (the ministry charged with the oversight of the Vice and Virtue Department), insists there is nothing dangerous in the move to reactivate the department, since its only purpose will be to preach to the public about morality, a task it already does. (Preachers employed in many of the mosques throughout the country are employees of the ministry.) The move was a response to the "public demand" arising out of concerns about "growing immorality in society", he said.

A young Kabul professional, Mustafa, has traditional values and similar concerns about growing immorality in society through alcohol and prostitution. However, in a democracy the task of dealing with this ought to be left to the police, who have the necessary authority, he feels. Though the police system also needs revamping to deal with corruption, Mustafa fears the reactivation of the old Vice Department will bring back bad memories.

Parveen is from a far more radical background. A member of the underground Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, Parveen said secularism is an important component of democracy and that the government should not be involved in religion. This is despite the fact that she too has concerns about a certain Westernized culture she said has been introduced into Afghan society to distract the youth from taking an active part in politics and questioning the way the country is being governed.

While reactions to the department have been mixed, there are also a fair number of international observers who think the move is a good one. A longtime aid worker suggested that the move would be good for the government, which is walking a tightrope between liberal and conservative forces. He suggested the decision to reactivate the department was a reaction to the moves to modernize too quickly.

The European Union and the United Nations have reacted with circumspection, saying they were waiting to see what the department is all about, even while both have referred to the need to uphold human-rights commitments. The UN, even while welcoming the government's assurances on the department, called for more information, transparency about the purpose and suggested safeguards.

The absence of clear rules governing this department is indeed a cause for worry. Though the current proposed role of the department does not appear to endanger civil liberties, much will depend on the implementation and the checks and balances. The stick of un-Islamic behavior could be used against sections and persons critical of the government. Media, says one political observer, could be the first casualty.

However, Qasim insists that the move is nothing more than a revamping of existing structures. It will bring together three existing departments under one roof to ensure coordination and better functioning, he said. The three are the Department for Propagating Islamic Values through Media (currently under the Information Ministry), the Department of Accountability to Islamic Principles (under the Supreme Court), and the Department on Islamic Preaching (under the Ministry of Haj). Preaching morality is enjoined by Islam, and most of the major religions preach morality, Qasim said.

He denied that the move seeks to strengthen the Karzai government, but admitted that it will be good for its image "if people see that the government is taking steps to preach Islamic principles", since their belief in the government being Islamic will be strengthened.

The decision by the government reflects a trend whereby Karzai, wholly reliant on international support initially, has for some time begun taking greater backing from conservative sections. In a weakened polity (political parties have been deliberately kept weak through successive measures, endorsed by the international community, that serve to maintain a strong presidency), the only cohesive political groups are either commanders of armed groups or leaders with religious backing. These groups alone are capable of delivering the support of larger groups, something that Karzai has taken advantage of repeatedly recently.

The result has been a gradual ascendancy of conservative sections. Marginalized in the immediate aftermath of the ouster of the Taliban, the conservative sections are now gradually acquiring respectability and getting back their space within the mainstream. A series of small but significant steps are being taken now in response to the concerns of this community. These include tightened controls on the media, a larger role in governance for conservative sections, and measures such as reactivation of the Department of Vice and Virtue.

The reactivation of the department, if approved by parliament, may yet turn out to be a toothless body. But its symbolic value will definitely help the government.

Aunohita Mojumdar is an Indian journalist who is currently based in Kabul. She has reported on the South Asian region for 16 years and has covered the Kashmir conflict and post-conflict situation in Punjab extensively. - link

Ukraine's shadow across Eurasia

2006-08-09T08:37:00.000-07:00

Modern Ukraine's most famous son, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, once said, "He who cannot eat horse meat need not do so. Let him eat pork. But he who cannot eat pork, let him eat horse meat. It's simply a question of taste."

The predicament facing the United States over the death of the "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine is somewhat similar. The choice is whether to do business with the incoming pro-Russian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich or to destabilize him in the coming months by consorting with the mercurial opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko. The dilemma is acute insofar as Washington doesn't have a genuine "taste" for either of the two Ukrainian leaders.

The choice would have been easy if Moscow had placed its cards on the table. But Moscow is not helping matters. It is eschewing

polemics and is not stating preferences. Instead it is putting on a poker face - an exasperating correct median line. No sooner had Yanukovich assumed office in Kiev on Friday than Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov extended customary greetings and expressed hope for the development of bilateral ties.

President Vladimir Putin took another three full days to add his felicitations. On Monday, significantly, he first telephoned Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko to congratulate him for putting an end to the political crisis emanating out of the latter's rift with his "orange partner" Tymoshenko. And only then did Putin congratulate Yanukovich.

With characteristic understatement, Moscow drew attention to the great strategic defeat that the US has suffered in Ukraine. It is common knowledge that the US actively worked behind the scenes after the March elections to put together an orange coalition of Yushchenko and Tymoshenko.

Washington was eager to see an orange coalition in power in Kiev so that at the summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in November in Riga, Ukraine could be formally invited to a membership action plan, which in turn would qualify Ukraine potentially for full membership at the 2008 NATO enlargement summit. But in the event, Yushchenko simply would have no truck with Tymoshenko.

Fearing that his popularity, which is already below 10%, might plummet even further if fresh elections were held because of a hung parliament, Yushchenko opted for a grand coalition with Yanukovich despite the US administration's deep suspicion of the latter as a menace to the United States' geopolitical interests. Worse still, as a former American diplomat put it, "pretty much everybody ... was surprised" by the undercurrents that swept Yanukovich to power.

Washington has put a brave face on the geopolitical shift in Kiev. The US State Department spokesman claimed satisfaction that Yanukovich's return to power was "in the old-fashioned, democratic way" and, therefore, Washington would seek a "good relationship" with his government, "just as we would with any other democratically elected government".

Yet such grandstanding couldn't hide that in three broad directions at least, Yanukovich's ascendancy signifies a shift in Ukraine's policies that profoundly hurt the US position. First, developments in Ukraine conclusively debunk Washington's claims that a wave of US-sponsored freedom and democracy was on the march. President George W Bush himself had listed in his 2005 State of the Union address the "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine as one of the "landmark events in the history of liberty".

As Russia scholar Anatol Lieven wrote, these assumptions on which the US strategies have been based stand contradicted today; Ukraine "demonstrated that the processes which the West has encouraged in Central Europe and the Baltic states cannot be extended seamlessly to the former Soviet Union. Societies, economies and national identities and affinities are very different, links to Russia are closer, and both the US and the EU are weaker than appeared to be the case a few years ago."

Indeed, the reverberations of the collapse of the "orange project" will be felt far and wide in the post-Soviet space. Belarussian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka will feel vindicated in his assertion that there will be no rose, orange or banana revolutions in his country. Mikheil Saakashvili in Georgia, on the other hand, will worry that "color revolutions" are not irreversible.

Kurmanbek Bakiyev of Kyrgyzstan would be gratified that his early burial of the "Tulip Revolution", and his choice of indigenous and regional moorings as the mainstay of power, were after all the correct choice.

Across the length and breadth of the post-Soviet space a realization will have dawned that the era of the "color revolutions" has ended and that with all its awesome power as the sole superpower, there are serious limits to the US influence in bringing about regime changes. Certainly, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine - or, wherever Washington has let the genie of "democracy" out of the bottle - pandemonium prevails.

The Bush administration faces a serious credibility problem in the post-Soviet republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus, which will pose a difficult legacy for the next administration. The less said the better for Washington's "Greater Central Asia" strategy or any mediation in settling the "frozen conflicts" in Moldova or Transcaucasus. (Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin visited Moscow on Tuesday to discuss with Putin key issues of finding a settlement to the Transdnistria problem.)

Equally Ukraine, with its 50 million people, its advanced military-industrial complex, its strong agricultural base, its highly strategic geography, and not least of all its near-mystic appeal to Mother Russia, should have been the fulcrum around which an entire geopolitics was conceived by the US. With Ukraine cut adrift once again in the midriff of Eurasia, issues are wide open.

Democracy may or may not have changed Yanukovich. But one thing is certain: Moscow is back in serious business in Ukraine - that is, if it ever was out of it in real terms. In his first remarks within hours of assuming office, Yanukovich told the Russian government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta that Ukraine-Russia ties will run on an altogether different track than under the orange regime. He said: "We need to stop quarrelling with our neighbors and learn to have respectful discussions ... The new government is not going to foster anti-Russia sentiments in Ukraine."

Influential Russian politicians promptly reciprocated. But the chairman of the Russian duma's International Affairs Committee, Konstantin Kosachyov, underlined Moscow's cautious approach not to raise hackles in the West. He commented: "Yanukovich stands for a balanced foreign policy of Ukraine. Russian-Ukrainian relations now have a chance to overcome the crisis and start gradual development." The emphasis of Russian politicians was on the "de-ideologization" of Russian-Ukrainian relations and their pragmatic development.

All indications are that Russia will offer Yanukovich's government a new concept of strategic partnership focusing on the economic-reform objectives of Ukraine but aimed at closer integration with Russia in terms of projects and programs. Russia has an inherent advantage over all of Ukraine's Western partners in pursuing such a course. More important, it is a "win-win" situation, since Russia will also attend to the top priorities of Ukraine's political economy.

But US cold warriors seem to be stopping at nothing to raise the dust in Russia-Ukraine relations. They see fresh hope in the "checks and balances" implicit in the Yushchenko-Yanukovich grand coalition. (They made more or less the same misplaced assumption in the case of the Bakiyev-Felix Kulov team in Kyrgyzstan.) They count on Tymoshenko providing an "effective critique" of the grand coalition in Kiev. They insist democracy has changed Yanukovich's outlook. They calculate that the US still has its own clientele in the Ukrainian leadership. They visualize Yushchenko, though an isolated politician, as still capable of (and interested in) fighting for the "orange" spirit.

Without doubt, Yanukovich will create a change in atmosphere in Ukraine's relations with Russia, especially at the political and diplomatic level. He will not be enthusiastic about the anti-Russia regional groupings sponsored by Washington such as the GUAM group (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova) or the Community of Democratic Choice. These regional groupings are bound to wither away if Kiev doesn't put its heart in them.

The million-dollar question has always been about the prospects of Ukraine's NATO membership. In his first comments, Yanukovich reiterated his opposition to Ukraine joining the NATO. He recalled that the orange regime's stance on the issue "made Russia unhappy" and that his government must abide by the wishes of the majority of Ukrainian people who were opposed to NATO membership.

Yanukovich later amplified that "NATO is a very sensitive issue for our society" and, therefore, "balanced and collective decisions" became necessary involving the government, president and the parliament. What all this adds up to is that the NATO enlargement summit in 2008, which Bush very much hoped to have as a legacy of his presidency, will have to be postponed indefinitely.

But NATO expansion is not merely an issue of Bush's political legacy. If Ukraine holds back, NATO's eastward expansion virtually stalls. Ukraine is too big to be bypassed. And no encirclement of Russia is realistic without Kiev coming on board.

Furthermore, NATO expansion into Ukraine was intended to give verve to Poland's claims of a leadership role in Eurasia, which the US was counting on, challenging Russia. Eastward expansion is NATO's strategy; it isn't Ukraine's strategy. It is a strategy that, essentially speaking, has nothing to do with the actual security of member countries. It is political and has been championed by the caucus involving the US, Poland and the Baltic states. It is a venture about which other NATO countries harbor ambivalent feelings.

Washington hoped that NATO expansion would give impetus to the United States' trans-Atlantic leadership and keep burning the fire of Euro-Atlanticism even in the post-Cold War setting. Now, if NATO begins to meander for want of motivation or a clear-cut action plan, lingering doubts about its raison d'etre would resurface.

It is not even two years since then German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder questioned NATO's pivotal role or France reactivated its NATO links. The challenge is thus political and, as Khrushchev put it, politics are the same all over - "They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river."

M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for more than 29 years, with postings including ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-98) and to Turkey (1998-2001).
- link

A fight to the finish

2006-08-09T08:36:00.000-07:00

"I care about my people, my country and defending them from the Zionist aggression," said a Hezbollah fighter after I'd asked him why he joined the group. I found myself in downtown Beirut sitting in the back seat of his car in the liquid heat of a Lebanese summer. Sweat rolled down my nose and dripped on my notepad as I jotted furiously.

"My home in Dahaya is now pulverized," he said while the concussions of Israeli bombs landing in his nearby neighborhood echoed across the buildings around us. "Everything in my life is destroyed now, so I will fight them. I am a shaheed [martyr]."

He asked to remain anonymous, and that I refer to him only as Ahmed.

The late-afternoon sun was behind him as he told me just how

hard his life had been. When he was 11 years old he and his youngest brother had been taken from their home by Israeli soldiers and put in prison for two years. I asked him what happened to him there, but that was a subject he wouldn't discuss. One of his brothers was later killed by Israeli soldiers.

After his release from an Israeli prison Ahmed was spending his teenage years in southern Lebanon when he was caught in crossfire between Hezbollah fighters and Israeli soldiers near his home. He was shot three times. Many years before, his father had been killed by an Israeli air strike on a refugee camp in south Beirut.

"What are we left with?" he asked, while the angle of the sun through the windshield highlighted tears welling in his eyes. "I know I will die fighting them, then I will go to my god. But I will go to my god fighting like a lion. I will not be slaughtered like a lamb."

A widely misunderstood group
Leaving on this trip to Syria, I never intended to go to Lebanon. When my plane took off from San Francisco, Lebanon was still a peaceful land; by the time my plane touched down in Damascus, however, everything had changed. That very day, I learned on landing, Hezbollah had taken two Israeli soldiers captive and killed eight others. While the mainstream media have taken it as fact that the Hezbollah raid occurred inside Israel, many Arab outlets claim the Israelis actually entered Lebanon before being attacked. The exact location of the clash remains in dispute.

Clearer, however, are the effects of the subsequent Israeli attack on Lebanon. Physically, Lebanon has been bombed if not yet back to the Stone Age, then at least to a point where much of the country now looks as it did in the worst periods of its brutal civil war, which lasted from 1975 until 1990.

According to statistics provided by the Lebanese government on July 24, there had already been well over US$2.1 billion of damage to the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon - all three of its airports and all four of its seaports had by then been bombed, and in the weeks to follow it was only to get worse.

By estimates that go quickly out of date as the bombing campaign continues, there has already been nearly $1 billion of damage done to civilian residences and businesses, with more than 22 gasoline stations as well as fuel depots bombed and the major highways along which fuel resupply would take place badly damaged. Scores of factories, worth more than $180 million, have also been damaged or destroyed.

Red Cross ambulances, governmental emergency centers, United Nations peacekeeping forces and observers, media outlets and mobile-phone towers have all been bombed, each a violation of international law. Mosques and churches have been hit; illegal weapons such as cluster bombs and white phosphorus used; and, as far as can be told at this early point, more than 90% of the victims killed have been civilians.

As of this writing, the Lebanese government had already announced at least 900 deaths, and that number is now certainly well over 1,000. At least 60 Israelis are also dead from Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israel and fierce fighting inside Lebanon.

Tom Engelhardt recently wrote (Air war, barbarity and the Middle East, August 1):

As air wars go, the one in Lebanon may seem strikingly directed against the civilian infrastructure and against society; in that, however, it is historically anything but unique. It might even be said that war from the air, since first launched in Europe's colonies early in the last century, has always been essentially directed against civilians. As in World War II, air power - no matter its stated targets - almost invariably turns out to be worst for civilians and, in the end, to be aimed at society itself. In that way, its damage is anything but "collateral", never truly "surgical", and never in its overall effect "precise". Even when it doesn't start that way, the frustration of not working as planned, of not breaking the "will", invariably leads, as with the Israelis, to ever wider, ever fiercer versions of the same, which, if allowed to proceed to their logical conclusion, will bring down not society's will, but society itself.

The government of Israel stated at the outset that the goal of its massive air campaign, leveled directly at the infrastructure of Lebanese society and at its economy, was in essence psychological - meant to increase popular pressure against Hezbollah; but, as might easily have been predicted, exactly the opposite has occurred.

"I never supported Hezbollah before," a young student at the American University of Beirut told me shortly after I arrived in the capital city. "But now they are defending us against Israel." His view of Hezbollah is quickly becoming the norm for hundreds of thousands of previously unsympathetic Lebanese as US-made Israeli bombs and missiles continue to rain down on the country.

During my time in Lebanon I drove to Qana. On the way there, I passed one small hilltop village after another, all of them resembling bombed-out ghost towns. Chunks of buildings littered the roads, which our car had to negotiate carefully. Powdered rock from shattered homes seemed to cover everything like a thin film. No one was walking the deserted streets, even in the middle of the day. The few who remained, mostly the elderly and children, hid in basements. For whole stretches, only occasional stray cats and dogs were seen, along with a flock of goats whose herder had long since fled.

Irregular thumping of bomb explosions continued in the distance. The roar of Israeli F-16s overhead was a constant reminder that no place in the south of this country was safe. After witnessing this level of destruction, the literal tearing apart of a society, it was clear to me why so many more people were supporting Hezbollah.

Enter Nasrallah
To grasp the unfolding events in Lebanon, you have to begin with an uncomfortable fact. Hezbollah, widely known throughout much of the West as a "terrorist organization", is seen as anything but in Lebanon. This was obviously true of most Shi'ites, especially in south Lebanon, before this round of war began. Now, even many in the conservative Christian population in parts of northern Lebanon and west Beirut have come to hold its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in high regard. With seats in the Lebanese parliament, Hezbollah is seen as a legitimate political group.

Hezbollah first came into existence as a result of the Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon, which began on June 6, 1982. The group draws most of its popular support from southern Beirut and southern Lebanon, where the majority of the country's Shi'ite population lives. Downtrodden, impoverished, and largely overlooked by a government in Beirut in which they had inadequate representation, the Shi'ites were primed for a leader who would promise them a better future.

The group was officially founded on February 16, 1985, when Sheik Ibrahim al-Amin proclaimed its manifesto. Nasrallah would only come to power after the Israeli military assassinated Amin. A charismatic leader, he promptly solidified his base and swelled Hezbollah's ranks by working to satisfy the most essential needs of his followers. Hezbollah soon started providing the basic social-service infrastructure in the neglected Shi'ite areas of the country - hospitals, schools, construction projects, welfare programs and, above all, a well-trained, highly disciplined militia for protection.

After years of brutal guerrilla war against the Israeli military, which had occupied part of south Lebanon, Hezbollah succeeded in doing what neither the Lebanese government nor its impotent army could possibly have done. Its fighters wore down the Israeli military and finally forced it out of the country in 2000. This, not surprisingly, lent it even greater popularity.

While the coming years also brought it more significant political representation and respect, the Druze and Christian populations continued to distance themselves from or oppose the group.

Now, the staggeringly disproportionate Israeli response to the detention of two of its soldiers and the killing of others in mid-July has changed even this. In a sense, the Israelis are accomplishing the previously inconceivable - uniting the otherwise hostile power centers of the country behind Hezbollah.

Last week, the Israelis actually began bombing key bridges in the Christian part of the country for the first time - a clear statement that no Lebanese are to be spared their attentions. Most of the Druze and Christian leadership have by now condemned the Israeli response. Many have even gone so far as to state that they believe Hezbollah is working to defend the country's sovereignty.

Thus the Israeli response has played a huge role in strengthening the already strong hand of Nasrallah.

The view from Damascus
Hezbollah enjoys massive popular and political support in Syria. Everywhere in the ancient city of Damascus the yellow-and-green flags of the group hang from storefronts, flutter in the wind from television antennas, and fly from the radio antennas of cars. Portraits and photos of Nasrallah are taped to the back windows of Mercedes and BMWs. Key chains of his bearded, smiling face, along with iconic T-shirts in which he is portrayed between the Syrian flag and that of Hezbollah, are now selling like hotcakes.

"We know the Americans are trying to smash our dignity," a man named Faez told me in the coastal Syrian city of Latakia. Inside a heavily air-conditioned European-style coffee shop, while sipping espresso, the businessman did what so many Syrians do nowadays – he used "America" and "Israel" interchangeably.

The head of the Syrian Union of Engineers, Hassan Majid, was no less frank as we sat in his plush office in downtown Damascus. "Hezbollah has our greatest respect now," he said softly.

Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese refugees have flooded the capital. You can see them inhabiting schools and crowded into various offices for Middle East Airlines, Lebanon's air carrier. They are always to be found at Syrian Red Crescent shelters hoping to acquire lodging, food, or other assistance.

The support they receive is of a far better kind than is available to the tens of thousands of internal refugees who have fled no further than Beirut, where they sleep in the dirt in city parks or, if they are lucky, on thin foam mats in still-empty schools; yet their accounts of suffering and loss are no less heart-wrenching. These stories ripple across Syria daily, broadcast far and wide by state television.

At the headquarters of the Syrian Red Crescent, you can still see a plaque from the Red Cross thanking the Syrian group for its efforts assisting Hurricane Katrina victims. When I asked about it, one of the volunteers told me Syria had donated medical supplies to aid the desperate residents of New Orleans.

An old man named Hassan Hamdan had just arrived from south Lebanon and was waiting for volunteers to find him somewhere to sleep. He caught the spirit of the moment when he took my very first open-ended questions as an opportunity to vent his rage.

In a sense, it never felt as if he was talking to me at all. As he began, he promptly stood up. His voice rose instantly into the shouting range and he quite literally yelled, "The Israelis are attacking and killing everything which moves!" I involuntarily took a step back, fearing he was so angry he might actually assault me. "It's total destruction! They just shredded our city!" For a moment he calmed slightly and explained that he'd just left his village near the south Lebanese city of Bint Jbail. Immediately, his voice rose and he was off again: "Everyone is now with Hezbollah! Even Jesus is with Hezbollah! Insha'Allah [God willing], Hezbollah will smash the Israelis and kick them from Lebanon once and for all!"

I've seen similar rantings broadcast on Syrian state television as people crowd around to watch inside sweaty restaurants and I automatically dismissed it as so much state propaganda. But here that "propaganda" was alive and unbelievably vociferous, with not a screen in sight.

In fact, it hardly matters any more what anyone says or does. Sometimes you can feel a tidal pull in events - in this case, a strong one flowing in a single powerful direction. When one Israeli general recently aimed some pointed barbs at Syria for supporting Hezbollah, and President Bashar al-Assad promptly put the Syrian military on high alert, popular support for Hezbollah, further galvanized, only grew accordingly. It's no longer hard to imagine a whole region in which the shouting might reach previously inconceivable decibels and nobody will be listening.

Drastic measures
After visiting a hospital in Beirut where I saw dozens of horribly wounded children, women and the elderly, their skin burned, often from the flames of their own devastated homes, their bodies shredded, possibly by the cluster bombs the Israelis have reportedly been using, I walked outside and wept.

Shortly after, I met with Ahmed again and briefly described the experience while, once again, tearing up. "This is what I've been seeing my entire life," he replied, staring into my eyes. "Nothing but pain and suffering."

Now, this is also what so many Lebanese, sheltered these past years of reconstruction from life experiences like Ahmed's, are seeing first-hand, and this is why Hezbollah is viewed by almost all Lebanese as a legitimate resistance movement, not a "terrorist organization". This is what the Israelis have actually done to the Lebanese, other than dismantling their society and turning them into refugees in their own land.

When you are in Syria or, I suspect, in most Arab states today and utter the words "terrorist organization", it doesn't even occur to people that Hezbollah might be the topic of conversation. They take it for granted that you're referring either to Israel or the United States.

As Israeli pilots continue to drop US-made precision-guided bombs from F-16s and Hezbollah launches barrages of rockets ever deeper into Israel, the radicalization of both populations - and of the region - only intensifies amid the spreading devastation.

When this war finally ends, the societal, economic and environmental destruction will undoubtedly be staggering - it already is - as well as long-lasting; but it will pale in comparison to the psychological damage that has already been done. Rather than sowing the seeds of a future peace, it's painfully clear to an observer that the seeds of everlasting bloodshed, resentment and resistance are now sprouting amid the ruins.

Arab leaders continue to earn the scorn of their populations for not putting their all into stopping the Israeli campaign against Lebanon. Meanwhile, Hezbollah appears committed to doing so until the very end - and, based on what I saw in my days in Lebanon, that "end" of mutual destruction seems all that is left on the minds of those involved.

The Israelis, overvaluing the technology of war and, in particular, of air power (as so many have done before them), began their campaign against Lebanon by using perfectly real bombs and missiles to achieve largely psychological ends - the humiliation of Hezbollah in the eyes of the Lebanese population. As it turns out, they have indeed changed the psychology of Lebanon - and possibly of the region. Just not in ways they ever imagined.

As Tarad Hamade, the Lebanese minister of labor and official representative of Hezbollah, told me in Beirut recently, "We might not be as powerful as the Israeli army, but we will fight until we die."

Dahr Jamail is an independent journalist from Anchorage, Alaska, who spent eight months reporting from occupied Iraq. He regularly reports for Inter Press Service, and contributes to Asia Times Online, The Independent, the Sunday Herald, as well as Tomdispatch.com. He maintains a website at www.dahrjamailiraq.com. - link

We are just hit-and-run guerrillas'

2006-08-09T08:35:00.000-07:00

Over the past days, this correspondent has met many Hezbollah field commanders on the war front, as well as in other parts of Lebanon, but they have been too concentrated on their military campaign to offer any real insights.

Similarly, Hezbollah ideologues and, of late, even parliamentarians have gone underground to avoid Israeli spies, or even being attacked.

However, after an arduous process spread over several days, Asia Times Online managed to arrange an interview with Sheikh Bilal. Bilal, who wears a white turban and a black robe, is a close aide of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and in charge of a region in south Lebanon.

He is also an ideologue of Hezbollah, having been educated in the

Iranian city of Qom and then sent by the Iranian leader ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini back to Lebanon to "guide" Hezbollah.

Bilal comes from the Dahieh district of Beirut, but constant bombing of the area forced him to leave his home. He agreed to meet this correspondent on condition that no hint of the location would be given.

Sporting a small white beard, Bilal sat in front of a picture of Nasrallah, but refused to have his own picture taken.

Asia Times Online: How do you view the Israeli plans? Will they be able to push into south Lebanon and destroy Hezbollah's arms?

Bilal: Israel is the fourth-strongest power in the world. The Americans, British and even Arab countries support its designs, but I tell you, despite all of this, the whole war is in our hands, not in the hands of Israel. We are pulling the strings of this war, not the Israeli war machine. It is because Allah is with us.

Even though they [Israelis] are very powerful, they believe in a tangible life in which they eat, sleep and entertain, and then die. We believe in eternal life, which starts from our apparent death [Bilal then quoted a long phrase from Nahjul Balagha (The Peak of Eloquence) - a collection of sermons, precepts, prayers, epistles and aphorisms of Imam Ali to support his statement.]

ATol: But still, you are an organization. Israel is a state. There is surely no match?

Bilal: But the question is, who has better control over the battlefield? I accept Hezbollah is not a conventional army. We are just hit-and-run guerrillas. Israel is trying to get into Lebanon with its 30,000 men equipped with the best war equipment. Has it achieved anything? No. Its achievement is zero because it has failed to inflict any serious losses on Hezbollah. I swear to you, Israel has only one edge on us, and that is its air force.

Were the air force removed from over our heads, we would go deep inside Israel and liberate Palestine. The whole Israeli activity is a brutal bombardment of civilians and on the infrastructure. But when they finish with their spray of guns and expect a free walkway into south Lebanon and go for a military push, we will catch them in the middle and force them to retreat. In about a month of war they have not even established exactly where we are based and how and from where we confront them.

ATol: There was a time when Palestine was a matter of honor for Arab nations. They fought many wars against Israel, but now when Hezbollah confronts Israel, why do Arab countries criticize Hezbollah?

Bilal: They are scared that any appreciation or encouragement of Hezbollah would encourage other resistance movements in their own country and ultimately the present rulers would lose their governments and Islamic movements would take over control. For instance, Egypt and Jordan are fearful of Iqwanul Muslemeen [Muslim Brotherhood]. The Muslim Brotherhood tried to take to the streets in Egypt in favor of Hezbollah, but the Egyptian government suppressed them with force. This is the situation of this whole region.

ATol: Hezbollah and the Brotherhood are very close. What is the secret of their closeness, despite Hezbollah being Shi'ite and the Brotherhood predominately Sunni?

Bilal: Yes, this is true that we are close and we both work for the Islamic cause beyond any sectarian differences. But let me tell you that does not mean that we like takfiris [those militantly intolerant of "infidels"] like al-Qaeda. We hate them because they kill innocent people and destroy sacred places.

ATol: Hamas and Islamic Jihad also believe in Salafi Islam, like al-Qaeda. Yet Hezbollah is close with them.

Bilal: We have one thing in common, and that is Islam. And because of that we support them. And another aspect is the liberation of Palestine, which is central to all Muslims. We do not care whether they are Salafis or not. We are committed to the Palestinian cause, and for that we can go to any lengths.

You want to know what this war is all about? We understood that after the abduction of Israeli soldiers in Gaza, Israel was ready to raze Gaza. And then we came into the picture and diverted all their attention to us [by abducting Israeli soldiers]. This forced Israel to disengage from taking on the weak Palestinians and engage our forces.

ATol: Do Hezbollah's designs go beyond Lebanon?

Bilal: Hezbollah is only for Lebanon. We do not have any designs beyond Lebanon or Palestine.

Syed Saleem Shahzadis Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com. - link

War Crimes Act Changes Would Reduce Threat Of Prosecution

2006-08-09T08:31:00.000-07:00

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.

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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.

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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."- link

Putin's energy chess game: The Algerian move against US/Europe

2006-08-09T08:28:00.000-07:00

By Sarah Laitner in Brussels and Ian Limbach in Milan

Published: August 8 2006 20:46 | Last updated: August 8 2006 20:46

Europeans could pay more for natural gas as a result of a deal between Russian and Algerian state-controlled gas groups, Italy has warned.

Gazprom of Russia and Algeria’s Sonatrach agreed this month in a memorandum of understanding to work together in the liquefied natural gas business and could consider joint bids for foreign assets.

But Pierluigi Bersani, Italy’s industry minister, said the deal between the two would raise European dependency on a limited number of gas suppliers and could push up prices.

His comments underline concern over the European Union’s growing reliance on foreign energy providers. Gazprom meets a quarter of the union’s gas needs, while Algeria is among the biggest suppliers of the fuel to the EU.

As their natural resources dwindle, EU members will depend on imports for 70 per cent of energy requirements by 2030 against 50 per cent now, the European Commission predicts.

Russia and Algeria are expected to become increasingly important energy providers to the 25-member club, but concern has grown about the Kremlin’s use of gas as a political tool through Gazprom, the country’s biggest power group.

The union’s member states were stung by Moscow’s decision in January to cut gas supplies to Ukraine over a price dispute in which deliveries to western Europe, including Italy, were briefly hit. Following that incident, Paolo Scaroni, chief executive of the Italian oil and gas group Eni, warned that Russia and Algeria could create an Opec-style gas cartel.

High oil prices, the growth of national energy “champions” and divisions over nuclear power compound the EU’s woes.

Energy supplies are a particularly sensitive topic in Italy, as the country depends on imports for about 80 per cent of its gas needs: Russia meets 32 per cent of its gas demands, while 37 per cent comes from Algeria.

In a letter to Andris Piebalgs, European energy commissioner, Mr Bersani wrote: “The deal confirms the concern already expressed about the effects on European gas supplies, and to Italy in particular, derived from the dependence on imports from a limited number of supplying countries, which is expected to worsen in the coming years.”

He added that “the agreement between two of the largest suppliers of gas to Europe could eventually lead to economic pressures on European gas prices”.

In his letter Mr Bersani called on the European Commission to request detailed information on the agreements between Gazprom and Sonatrach, to allow their potential impact on European markets to be evaluated. He also urged more co-ordination of energy policy and foreign policy at the European level.

Italy has repeatedly voiced concern over the growing influence of foreign companies in its economy.

Only this week its decision to block a €25bn ($32.5bn, £16.7bn) merger of an Ital- ian motorway operator with a Spanish company sparked an intervention by the European Commission. Brussels called on Rome to explain its stance, suggesting the move might have violated the Commission’s exclusive powers to review pan-European mergers and takeovers.

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Gazprom and LUKoil Seeking Algerian Ventures

Gazprom and LUKoil signed memorandums of understanding Friday with Algerian state company Sonatrach as they seek more joint oil and gas projects.

The Industry and Energy Ministry said Gazprom and Sonatrach agreed to cooperate in upstream asset swaps, joint bidding for assets in third countries and in the liquefied natural gas business, in which Sonatrach is a leading player.

Gazprom supplies Europe with one-quarter of its gas needs, and Sonatrach is also a major gas exporter to the continent.

LUKoil said it had also agreed with Sonatrach to cooperate in asset swaps in the upstream sector.

Russia and Algeria are both seeking to increase state control over their energy sectors and have often called for closer cooperation in the gas sector.

In the 1990s, Gazprom’s management outraged European officials by calling for an OPEC-like gas cartel, which would involve Russia, Algeria and Norway, supplying the bulk of pipeline gas to Europe.

The idea never materialized and Gazprom said it was focusing on learning more about gas liquefaction, a completely new business for the company, which allows for long-haul exports by tanker.

Last year, Gazprom agreed with France’s Gaz de France to swap Russian pipeline gas in Europe against one of GdF’s LNG cargoes for delivery to the United States. Gazprom supplied additional volumes of gas for GdF to Europe and swapped it against an LNG cargo from a joint venture between GdF and Sonatrach.

Gazprom supplies Europe with 150 billion cubic meters of gas per year. Algeria has exports of about 60 bcm a year.

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ALGERIA PROCURES S-300 FROM RUSSIA

MOSCOW MENL — Algeria plans to become Russia's first Arab client of the S-300 air and missile defense system.

Russian industry sources said Algeria has ordered eight battalions of the S-300PMU2 system in a $1 billion deal. The sources said the batteries would ensure coverage of major Algerian cities and strategic sites.

For more than a decade, Russia has sought to sell the S-300 to such countries as Iran, Jordan Syria and the United Arab Emirates. Moscow was said to have offered an S-300 system to Damascus as part of a deal for Russian Navy access to the Syrian ports of Latakia and Tartous.

In 1998, the Republic of Cyprus ordered the S-300 from Russia. Under Turkish pressure, Nicosia agreed to transfer the system to Greece, which has deployed the S-300 in Crete.

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First i would like to call your attention to the weapons Algerian is buying:

- 36 light MiG-29SMT Fulcrums
- 28 heavy Su-30MKA Flankers
- 16 Yak-130 Mitten combat trainers
- upgrade of 36 older Fulcrums
- supplies of missiles and ground-based radars, and pilot and technician training

Venezuela announced the purchase of 24 SU-30, Algeria is going to have 100 fighters plus 16 trainers.

And the S-300 rumours. if it is true that Algeria plans to purchase this defense system, than a lot will be talked. It will means that Algeria wants to be serious protected against "energy predators".

The following comment was made in a previous article (Algeria, 7.5 bln in weapons and Putin's energy chess game) but i it adjusts perfectly here some months after. i recomment the lecture.

In fact the sell of 7.5 billions in arms is a huge contract for Russia. A very good one. military/aircraft industry is clearly growing healthy.

On the other hand, Algeria will receive a serious weapons package. with proper training and maintenance, Algeria will impose respect.

''But what i want to write, is not about weapons sells or Algeria's weapons purchase.

What i want to talk is about russian energy moves.

It looks like Algeria to pay for these weapons, will not give just money. they will "give access to an oil- and gas-rich region".

This a very interesting energy develoment. Algeria is very important energy provider to Europe. take a look to the following text:

"...With a total trade with the EU of €24 billion, principally due to exports of oil to the EU, Algeria is one the biggest EU trading partners in the Euro-Mediterranean region and ranks in 2004 as the EU's 19th largest trading partner..."

"...With 71.8% of EU imports from Algeria being energy in 2004, Algeria counts as the EU's sixth largest source in this sector. Bilateral trade volumes increased by 7.6% between 2000 and 2004, principally because of the amount of oil exports from Algeria to the EU... "

Algeria - EU partnership

Now take a look to the relation between Europe and Russia in energy terms:

"...For the EU, Russia is today the single most important external supplier of natural gas and oil. Russia accounts for some 50% of total gas imports or 25% of total EU gas consumption, and for over 30% of total crude oil and oil product imports or over 25% of total EU oil consumption..."

link

So the biggest supplier of energy, Russia, is getting access to EU's sixth largest source, Algeria.

And the indications is that Russia will receive shares of Algeria's intercontinental energy deliveries, meaning Algeria's energy deliveries to... Europe.

This clearly shows that Russia's influence is growing fast and is preparing to use their energy "weapons".

More, this shows that Russia is pretty active in counter balancing US/European moves. Countries that links Europe to Russia have entered or are entering NATO and EU, meaning that in energy terms we have Russia, transit countries, and Europe.

There is a battle inside Europe. The pro-US faction, does not want to see Russia importance growing, does not want to see NATO disappear, because that means US loosing access to Europe, so this faction will act in US interests.

The pro-European faction, sees Russia as a very important partner. not only energy but in other spheres too. and clearly see a lot of threats.

The main threat for an independent Europe is US. Europe is threatning US as world power (except on military field, where US is very strong commited, an item necessary for world domination). Europe is becoming big, have created the euro(major headache for US), is building an alternative GPS system (another headache), Airbus took Boeing's place as nº1, in space Europe is building serious links with Russia that will transform European space policies, is creating important links with South America (selling weapons to Venezuela despite US pressure) and connections with China are increasing huge being alreayd the first trading partner, and the list goes on...

This pro-european faction searching a more independent Europe have another serious preocupation. if some can argue that Europe is increasingly become dependent on Russia energy, and with that, more sensitive to Russia pressure, the same can be applied to US. And frankly i find very strange media attack so much Russia but is unable to point the finger if that harms US. Is all main media playing the same "music"?

The "New Europe" as US likes to call, haven fallen to US dominance. Baltic states for example entered first NATO and the UE. Ukraine is trying hard to enter NATO, entering UE is not enough, they have to switch for a US military group.

Looking with more attention a wall is being erupted between Europe and Russia by a US military organisation (NATO), the wall is being built in energy transit countries to Europe. This means that if in the past Europe have to consider for security energy, only Russian as a provider, now they have to consider Russia and US, because US controls transit countries. This means US is in position to strangulate Europe if they "behave" bad or against US wishes.

To counter US moves, Russia is building alternatives to deliver energy, bypassing problematic transit countries., the direct link between Germany and Russia is one the most important. Off course transit countries that are US allies are not liking a bit. As an example i want to call your attention to the second article.''

In the second article dedicated to Europen energy issues, have some interesting statments from an US big allie, one of the "new europe" countrie, better saying Poland. take a look to the following staments:

- "Former Polish Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek...said...EU also had to do everything in its power to prevent Gazprom from gaining control of all pipelines into Europe..."

- "...Ukraine, which had its own gas and oil pipelines. Because of January's deal between Ukraine and Russia, it was possible these pipelines would in the future be under Gazprom ownership...

- "...Buzek argued that Europe should bypass Russia and open the gateway through the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea to Ukraine and the European Union..."

Polland since is very commited to US interests is now paying a heavy price, the direct link between Russia and Germany, means that in future Russia can cut supplies to Poland without affecting Germany. Now Poland is saying that "EU also had to do everything in its power to prevent Gazprom from gaining control of all pipelines into Europe", well, too late, you have made your choices.

But what is more curious to see is, Poland's reference to Caspian Sea. Poland is refering to BTC pipeline (a US pipeline), so Poland is refering to Georgia and Ukraine, all of them US friends, being Georgia and Ukraine trying to enter NATO, and Poland backs heavely both.

Poland want that EU support US actions to reach Caspian Sea. That EU helps US controlling Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbeijan in order to get oil.

What a shame.

So what is the relation with all of this between Russia and Algeria deals? While US is trying to control oil flux to Europe, the same is being done by Russia. Putin is preparing to deal with differents Europes, with an independent Europe, Putin will give energy and build more bridges between them, If Europe turns to US, Russia will be prepared to deal too.

To finalize, i would like to call your attention that friday, european president will meet Putin to talk about energy. It could be interesting.

- link

500 Mexican Women Take Over TV Station in Bloodless Coup Against State/Corporate Media

2006-08-09T08:25:00.000-07:00

his report appears on the internet at http://www.narconews.com/Issue42/article1990.html

OAXACA CITY, August 1, 2006: In the style of the marcha de las caserolas (cooking-pot march) made famous in Argentina, the women of Oaxaca took to the streets with their pots, frying pans and spoons to beat out the call "Ruiz fuera!": "Governor Ruiz out!"

Women March through the Oaxaca zocalo August 1

On Tuesday morning about 2,000 women gathered at the Plaza of the Seven Regions and marched toward the zocalo, a distance of five miles. Along the route they were greeted by cheering onlookers who handed them water and waved signs in support of the social movement that has set as its first and foremost goal the removal from office of Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz ("URO"). The women tapped out the rhythm of "ya cayó" ("he's already fallen") and used pan covers as cymbals. Many carried wooden spoons and drummed on their frying pans.

When they gathered in the zocalo the drumming sound was like a tropical downpour - rain on a tin roof. Then the bells of the ex-government building, made over as a museum by URO, began to ring. The movement has attached ropes from the bell towers to the pavilion in the center of the zocalo, and over the sound of the tapping of thousands of spoons on pots, the bells peeled out.

No tropical rain: the sun at mid-day glared, and many women, some of whom carried children, also carried sun-umbrellas. The females present ranged in age from babes in arms to tough old grannies. As many women wore the traditional aprons -a trademark of street and market vendors in Oaxaca- as wore jeans. Before the march dispersed at 12:30, somebody announced from the pavilion, "Women are going to Channel 9." The location of the state television facilities is a bus-ride outside the downtown area, across from the Alvaro Carillo Theater.

Women have played a strong part from the beginning of the movement, as they comprise half of the teachers' union and/or are mothers of students affected. As parents they have expressed rage against lack of decent schools and classrooms, and most recently against paying enrollment fees for public schools. Free education is guaranteed by the Mexican Constitution. Fees to register, as well as purchase of uniforms and books, appear to have fronted yet another method of state theft.

About 350 women marched into the state TV Channel 9 facilities at approximately 1:30 p.m. Nobody stopped them. Perhaps a thousand women and children more stood on watch outside the building. At 3:30 the channel went off the air. Within an hour, the women telephoned Radio Universidad, the radio station at the Benito Juárez Autonomous University of Oaxaca (UABJO), to say they had two radio stations working from the site, one AM and one FM, but no television. They reported that there had been no opposition, no struggle, and nobody was hurt. They asked the listeners for back-up - guards, food, water, and people who know how to operate television cameras.

By early evening some of the occupying force of women had returned to speak in person on Radio Universidad, while most remained at the television station.

"We are not afraid," the spokeswoman said. "Whatever happens, happens. We are fed up with this situation. We are fighting for our children. We women cannot stay home."

On the previous day, Monday July 31, the government sponsored a second "Guelaguetza" tourist event organized by the state's Department of Culture in the newly paved Llano Park, another renovated piece of cultural patrimony. Although Radio Universidad - yesterday the only source of public communication for the social movement - had suggested that people let it go, stay away and not provoke trouble, the students (I'm guessing by the youthful voices) rushed right down to Llano where the event was starting, screaming "ya cayó!" However, they stationed themselves at the opposite side of the park from the event.

According reporting in the local newspaper Las Noticias, a near-confrontation was provoked when one youth climbed the park's monument to Benito Juárez. The boy who climbed the monument was literally lowered off the pedestal among a rain of peanuts, empty bottles of water and some stones. A movement contingent went to his defense. The shouts, insults and physical aggression multiplied. Then someone began to fire a pistol of the type, according to reports from APPO, used exclusively by the army. The audience fled and the event was canceled.

The alleged shooter was captured by the APPO representatives. He was, it was reported, handled with care, not mistreated, and verified as healthy by a doctor before being handed over. Representatives of the federal Attorney General's office went to UABJO to retrieve the prisoner, identified as Isaías Pérez Sánchez. Perez declared his innocence.

The news reports indicated that Pérez was dressed in civilian clothing, but is in fact a member of the police force. As usual for Oaxaca, it is very slow going to burrow down to the truth. However, as an observer I can say that if a shooter, whoever it might have been, wanted to hurt anybody he could have - but he did not.

Therefore, I place the event in the realm of the government policy to create fear, anxiety and threats. Police cars stop in front of the homes of leaders and members of the movement. Reports of armed paramilitaries grow like weeds. The general atmosphere is flooded with confusion and misinformation and outright lies such as attributing to the teachers the unlawful behavior committed by thugs.

From the side of the social movement, the government buildings of all the three branches have been blocked for four days; movement people picketed the various hotels and restaurants where the state delegates and governor have been trying to meet; several major highways are shut; denunciations of various PRI criminals continue on Radio Universidad; as reported above yet another tourist event was cancelled yesterday by protesters; and from outside the city, towns call in to say they have taken back their municipal buildings from the PRI caciques (bosses) who have been draining town resources while the people cowered in fear of repression.

Against this backdrop, at 7:00 this evening Channel 9 went back on the air. Terrible sound, full of static, but there was the APPO. Seated in front of a movement banner, which read "When a woman advances there is no man who stays behind," Daniela, a lawyer who works both with APPO and the civil rights commission CODEP, introduced half a dozen women (none introduced by name, I simply recognized Daniela). The women took turns with a hand-held microphone to demand that URO resign. "The women organized for a great march," one said. "We are in the struggle. Thanks to Ulises Ruíz the people have risen up, with marches, and concentrations of citizens. Channel 9 never gave us information, only lies. The APPO is the people. In a peaceful way we have taken the channel which is the public channel."

Another woman said, "This is a historic moment." The scene backdrop, handheld, walked with invisible feet to stand behind her. In white letters on red background it read, "Fuera Ulises" - Ulises Out.

After the women's victory broadcast, Channel 9 briefly broadcast parts of videos by indigenous community members. At 8:30 all was quiet.

UPDATE, WEDNESDAY MORNING, August 2: This morning on Public Television Channel 9 the people are showing all the videos of the June 14 attack with armed police, interviews with the teachers in the hospital, the marches, the rallies, the meetings, etc. All this material was taped as it happened, but never shown on any station. It's fantastic to watch it now for the first time. - link

Crisis atmosphere builds in Israel

2006-08-09T08:19:00.000-07:00

Israel’s fragile Kadima-Labour coalition government is facing mounting popular unease, both with the atrocities being inflicted on Lebanon and with the collapse of the government’s initial claims of a swift victory in the month-old war.

According to media opinion polls, the first two weeks of the conflict produced a dramatic turnaround in the previous dissatisfaction with the performance of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who replaced the comatose Ariel Sharon as Kadima leader, and Defence Minister Amir Peretz, the former trade union federation boss who ousted Shimon Peres as Labour Party leader.

Polling published in Maariv indicated that 78 percent of respondents were satisfied with Olmert’s performance, up from just 43 percent in just two weeks. Satisfaction with Peretz had jumped from 28 percent to 61 percent.

The longer the war has dragged on, however, the more disenchantment has surfaced. Over the past week, in particular, Olmert’s claims to have already decimated Hezbollah have backfired. In another survey published by Maariv on August 4, only 55 percent of respondents said Israel was winning the war, while 3.5 percent said Hezbollah was winning and nearly 38 percent said “no one” was winning.

The loudest voices, at least in the media, are those from within the military and political establishment demanding even more aggressive action. After 12 Israeli soldiers and three civilians were killed by rockets last weekend, military analyst Ze’ev Schiff, writing in Haaretz, called for “a prompt, more extensive aerial and ground operation.”

Echoing Schiff, Agriculture Minister Shaul Simhon said the Israeli army should push beyond the Litani River to the Alawi River, 25 kilometres further north. “We have to get it into our heads that this is not just a military operation; this is war,” Simhon said. “We’ve got to stop going for surgical strikes and put down massive fire. We’ve been treading water.”

Confronted by unexpectedly strong resistance in Lebanon, increasingly strident calls are emerging for the “cleansing” or “purging” of south Lebanon. “We need to use a few divisions who will have to flush southern Lebanon up to the Litani River,” Ben Caspit, a Maariv columnist, wrote. “With tremendous force, with a massive amount of armour and fire. Why? Because there is no other choice.”

In a Haaretz column, Gideon Levy, a critic of the war, cited other media commentary calling for even greater barbarity in Lebanon: “Haim Ramon ‘doesn’t understand’ why there is still electricity in Baalbek; Eli Yishai proposes turning south Lebanon into a ‘sandbox’; Yoav Limor, a Channel 1 military correspondent, proposes an exhibition of Hezbollah corpses and the next day to conduct a parade of prisoners in their underwear, ‘to strengthen the home front’s morale.’ ”

Others are publicly calling for the extension of the war to Syria and Iran in order to take full advantage of Washington’s backing. In a Jerusalem Post op-ed last piece week, former public security minister Uzi Landau declared that Syria “must also pay a direct price.” He continued: “Any further Hezbollah attacks on our citizens will result in more extensive and harsher attacks on Syria.... This war, forced upon us, is a one-time opportunity to disrupt the plans of Iran and Syria while most of the democratic world still supports us.”

Last Sunday, the Jerusalem Post reported that Israeli defence officials had told the newspaper that they were receiving indications from the US that America would be interested in seeing Israel attack Syria.

At the same time, anti-war protests are growing, together with anger over the war’s physical and financial impact on the working class. On August 5, the largest demonstration to date was held in Tel Aviv, joined by more than 5,000 people, according to Haaretz. The turnout was more than twice the number that organisers had agreed upon with police in order to secure permission for the rally.

Among the speakers was Zohar Milgrom, a reserve soldier who announced his refusal to serve in Lebanon. “Under no circumstances am I ready to be a partner in the war crimes that the country is committing,” he told the crowd. He became the third to face jail for refusing to fight in Lebanon.

Another speaker referred to the underlying social polarisation in Israel, as well as in Lebanon. Dr. Gadi Algazi of Tel Aviv University said: “This war is being committed on the back of the most poor, both in Israel and in Lebanon. Those who cannot escape are paying the heaviest price in this war.”

Thousands of Arab Israelis marched through Umm al-Fahm last week, despite fear of official and police victimisation. Their chants included “Israel is a terror state” and “Our people in Gaza and Lebanon will not surrender.”

While still relatively small, more than 100 anti-war demonstrations have been staged in Israel over the past month, even though the leaders of the former protest movement, Peace Now, have backed the war and the Israeli media has largely refused to report the protests.

Protesters have bitterly denounced Peretz, who took office as an avowed supporter of negotiations with the Palestinians and claimed to oppose the severe cuts to welfare and working class living standards imposed by the previous Likud-Labour government of Sharon and Peres. - link

Bliar damned by his own words

2006-08-09T08:17:00.000-07:00

This is taken from the official no.10 website:

http://www.number10.gov.uk

"Madam Speaker, other questions arise about this military operation. Let me deal with some of them. Is it a specific objective to remove Saddam Hussein? The answer is it cannot be. No-one would be better pleased if his evil regime disappeared as a direct or indirect result of our action, but our military objectives are precisely those I have set out. Even if there was legal authority to do so, removing Saddam through military action would require the insertion of ground troops on a massive scale hundreds of thousands, as the British Chief of the Defence Staff, Sir Charles Guthrie, made clear this morning. Even then there would be no absolute guarantee of success. I cannot make that commitment responsibly."
- link

Behind Bush’s “truce” plan: the drive towards a wider Middle East war

2006-08-09T08:15:00.000-07:00

US President George W. Bush on Monday declared his full support for a US-French United Nations resolution that dictates Israel’s terms to the Lebanese people while allowing the Israeli military to indefinitely continue its occupation and devastation of Lebanon.

This document, far from an agreement for peace, represents one more step in widening the war initiated by the Bush administration in 2003 with the invasion of Iraq into a regional conflagration that poses an immense threat to working people not only in the Middle East, but in the US and all over the world.

Speaking at his Crawford, Texas ranch, Bush made it clear that his administration intended to accept no substantive changes in the UN resolution, and that it was particularly opposed to an amendment, advanced by the Lebanese government and supported by the entire Arab world, specifying that any settlement require the invading army of 10,000 Israeli troops to immediately withdraw from Lebanon.

Standing by his side, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who worked systematically over the past month to block a ceasefire and ensure that the killing in Lebanon be allowed to continue, belittled the objections of the Lebanese. "We understand how emotional this is for the Lebanese," she declared. "They’ve been through a very difficult war."

The UN document makes no condemnation whatsoever of Israel’s blitzkrieg against Lebanon—supposedly in response to the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers—resulting in the deaths of over a thousand Lebanese civilians, the wounding of thousands more, the expulsion of one million Lebanese from their homes and the decimation of the country’s infrastructure.

Nor does it call upon Israel to relinquish its control of Lebanon’s Shebaa Farms territory, an occupation that, under international law, makes Hezbollah’s armed resistance a legitimate form of struggle.

The UN resolution amounts to the kind of victor’s peace traditionally imposed on a nation decisively defeated in war. In fact, despite the carnage Israel has wreaked upon Lebanon, largely through the use of missiles, shells and cluster bombs supplied by the US, Israel has failed to achieve its military objectives or secure its grip on any Lebanese territory. Israel’s military setbacks on the ground are the result of fierce opposition by Hezbollah fighters.

Nor has Israel been able to stop Hezbollah rocket attacks, the most deadly of which occurred Sunday, killing 12 Israeli soldiers preparing to join the invasion of Lebanon.

The demands set forth in the draft resolution—that Hezbollah disarm and cease all military operations while Israel continues occupying Lebanese territory and carrying out "defensive" air strikes against defenseless civilians—are completely unacceptable not only to Hezbollah, but also to the Lebanese people and the Lebanese government, as well as the governments of Syria and Iran.

After stonewalling efforts to bring about an immediate ceasefire so as to allow its Israeli ally to continue its offensive, Washington is now brushing aside all objections by the Lebanese—in the name of "peace." Thus, at his Monday press conference, Bush declared hypocritically, "Everyone wants the violence to stop."

This is a lie. Washington no more wants an end to the violence now than it did a month ago.

Nabih Berri, the speaker of the Lebanese parliament, drew the correct assessment of the UN draft resolution, declaring that by legitimizing Israel’s occupation it would "open the door to never-ending war." There is every indication that "never-ending war" is precisely the strategy of the Bush administration in the Middle East.

This is the real meaning of Bush’s statement Monday that the UN resolution was designed to get at "the root causes of the conflict." By this he did not mean addressing the grievances, stretching back nearly six decades, of the Palestinian people, who were expelled from their homeland with the creation of the Israeli state in 1948, and then subjected to nearly four decades of illegal and brutal occupation after Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967.

Nor do the "root causes" Bush has in mind include the century-old domination of the region by Western imperialism—first British and then American—maintained with the single-minded objective of installing pliant Arab regimes that would insure a steady flow of oil at profitable rates, while suppressing the aspirations of their own people.

For Bush and the right-wing layers directing the affairs of the American government, the "root" problem is popular resistance to both Israel’s land grabs and the drive by the US to establish undisputed hegemony over this strategic area of the globe.

The perverse and fraudulent character of the UN resolution is epitomized by the fact that what purports to be a truce agreement has been negotiated essentially between one of the combatants—Israel—and its principal backer, the US.

The terms of the resolution, which the Bush administration cooked up with the French government, are intended to be unacceptable to both Hezbollah and the Lebanese government. The aim is to place the onus on them for the policy being carried out by Israel and the US—a continuation and escalation of the war against the Lebanese people.

The reaction of the Israeli government makes transparent the bogus character of the supposed truce effort. Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz told a parliamentary committee Monday, "I gave an order that if within the coming days the diplomatic process does not reach a conclusion, Israeli forces will carry out the operations necessary to take control of Katyusha rocket launching sites in every location." The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), he added, "will operate anywhere in Lebanon."

This is a clear signal that the IDF will be sent to clear out the population and occupy Lebanese territory up to the Litani River and perhaps beyond. The logic of this military campaign is yet another annexation of territory to Israel.

"No limits" on Israeli attacks

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared that he would place "no limits" on the IDF’s use of force.

The Israeli daily Haaretz quoted an unnamed senior military officer as saying that Israel now plans to "attack strategic infrastructure targets and symbols of the Lebanese government." Another officer told the newspaper, "It could be that at the end of the story, Lebanon will be dark for a few years."

The escalation of the Israeli aggression was already evident on Monday, with the bombing of a crowded shopping area in a southern suburb of Beirut located on the edge of the city’s predominantly Christian district. The death toll was put at 20 by the official Lebanese news agency, though more victims were believed buried in the rubble. The air strike demolished a residential building close to a shopping mall where many refugees had taken shelter.

Meanwhile, in south Lebanon, the IDF announced a 10 p.m. curfew, warning that anyone on the streets after that hour would be considered a terrorist and shot.

Washington has made it a point of principle that it will have no contact with either Hezbollah or the two nations with the strongest ties to Lebanon and its Shiite population—Syria and Iran. Instead, it has sought to demonize all three, laying the ideological groundwork for further wars of aggression.

Thus, Bush spoke of the UN resolution serving to "prevent armed militias like Hezbollah and its Iranian and Syrian sponsors from sparking another crisis."

Asked by a reporter why Washington refused to talk to either Syria or Iran, he replied, "I appreciate people focusing on Syria and Iran, and we should, because Syria and Iran sponsor and promote Hezbollah activities—all aimed at creating chaos, all aimed at using terror to stop the advance of democracies." He added, for good measure, "The actions of Hezbollah through its sponsors of Iran and Syria are trying to stop that advance of democracy. Hezbollah launched this attack. Hezbollah is trying to create the chaos necessary to stop the advance of peace."

There is no reason to believe that Bush knows anything more about Lebanon than he did about Iraq. (According to one recently published account, he did not know before the war that there were two branches of Islam—Shiite and Sunni). But the reality is that Hezbollah is not some cat’s-paw of either Syria or Iran, and neither government can control its actions.

It is a movement that grew out of the Lebanese Shiite population’s resistance to the 18-year Israeli occupation of their land. It gained immense prestige by succeeding in expelling Israeli troops from Lebanese territory, and emerged as a powerful movement that appealed to the aspirations of the Lebanese Shiite population, historically the country’s most impoverished and most politically disenfranchised layer.

In the most chilling section of Bush’s remarks on Monday, he related the events in Lebanon to his administration’s broader policy in the Middle East and the so-called "global war on terrorism."

He declared: "...What the American people need to know is we’ve got a strategy—a strategy for freedom in the Middle East which protects the American people in the long run. And we’ve got a strategy to deal with the situations that arise in the Middle East—first Lebanon; of course, the Iranian nuclear weapon issue."

He continued: "The challenge in the 21st century is to remind people about the stakes, and remind people that in moments of quiet, there’s still an Islamic fascist group plotting, planning and trying to spread their ideology. And one of the things that—one of the things that came out of this unfortunate incident in the Middle East is a stark reminder that there are those who want to stop the advance of liberty..."

Bush’s "strategy" is to widen the wars for "regime change" in the Middle East that began with the toppling of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. When the American president—whose closest allies in the region are the police state regimes and absolutist monarchies of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan—uses the words "freedom" and "liberty," he is talking about the freedom of American banks and corporations to exercise exclusive domination over Middle East and its oil wealth.

Facing a catastrophe in its occupation of Iraq (with thousands of US forces now being sent back into Baghdad to resecure the capital and confront its restive Shiite population), the Bush administration has decided that the solution is not to withdraw, but rather to launch new wars, not only in Lebanon, but ultimately against Syria and Iran.

There is undoubtedly an element of madness in this strategy of escalating militarism, but this is not merely the lunacy of America’s dim-witted president and his advisors. Rather, it reflects an irrational social system based on private ownership of the planet’s productive forces and vital resources and the division of a globally integrated world economy into rival nation states.

US policy is essentially to utilize its military power to assert domination over the oil resources of the Middle East and Central Asia, and thereby assure American capitalism both a secure energy supply and the ability to dictate terms to its economic rivals.

The turn to escalating militarism is also driven by the profound internal contradictions of American society, dominated by an unprecedented polarization between a wealthy elite and the masses of working people, and faced with a growing prospect of economic slump combined with rising inflation—a recipe for social explosions.

A military attack on Syria and Iran has the gravest implications. With US military forces already stretched to the limit by the failing imperialist adventure in Iraq, a new war will inevitably bring with it the reinstitution of the draft, forcing American young people to serve as cannon fodder for the conquest of Iranian oil fields.

Moreover, a war against Iran has the most deadly implications. A US attack would provoke an Iranian response against Israel, and, in turn, a possible nuclear retaliation by Israel. The path now being taken by US imperialism leads to the death of millions.

The carnage in Lebanon has demonstrated that there exists no genuine political opposition to this turn towards global warfare within the US political establishment, with the ostensible opposition party, the Democrats, seeking to outdo the Republicans in their support for Israel. At the same time, the draft resolution produced by the US and France makes it clear, once again, that the European bourgeoisie is incapable of mounting any opposition to US militarism, and that the UN itself serves only as a tool for imperialist policy.

The threat of a far wider and more devastating war can be countered only through the independent mobilization of the working class, in the US and internationally, based on a common socialist program. - link

Amended UN Resolution: Hizballah is the big winner if it passes

2006-08-09T08:12:00.000-07:00

Tuesday night, Aug. 8, the UN Security Council was to begin discussing a resolution drafted by the US and France calling for a full cessation of hostilities based on the immediate halt of all Hizballah’s attacks and immediate end of all Israeli offensive military operations.

A second resolution, the second half of the US-French effort to resolve the Middle East crisis by diplomacy, would set out a mandate for an international force to be sent out to Lebanon.

An Arab League delegation arrived at the UN in time to overshadow the deliberations with a strong representation of the Lebanese position, which insists on an Israel’s withdrawal after a ceasefire starts.

France pushed for two changes in the original text to address the Arab-Lebanese demands: one, calling for the Israeli pullout before an international force is in place, the other, the handover of the tiny disputed Shebaa Farms enclave to UN custody.

The United States is reluctant to amend the text, but US Condoleezza Rice has promised to “listen to the concerns of the parties and see how they may be addressed.”

And France, as the Bush administration’s conduit to Hizballah and Tehran, may be heeded.

The French-Arab-Lebanese-ploy was carefully stage-managed.

As part of the show, prime minister Fouad Siniora burst into tears at the Arab League foreign ministers meeting in Beirut Monday, Aug. 7, when he counted the war’s cost to Lebanon, and the Syrian foreign minister Walild Mualem marched out of the meeting in protest against the proceedings.

The same day, US president George W. Bush delivered an address from his Texas ranch in which he labeled Hizballah the “root cause” of the Lebanese crisis and backed Israel’s case all the way. However, secretary of state Condoleezza Rice broke in with some down-to-earth comments. “We believe the first resolution draft is the right solution but we will listen to the parties after the Arab foreign ministers meeting in Beirut,” she said.

Within hours of the meeting’s breakup, the Arab delegation was on its way to UN Headquarters in New York bearing aloft Lebanon’s demands for changes in the US-French UN Security Council resolution draft.

Paris stood ready to chip in with two textual changes.

After night fell, the Beirut government decided unanimously to post Lebanese soldiers in the south to cooperate with UNIFIL - as soon as Israeli troops had departed. Surprisingly, the five Hizballah ministers and allies endorsed the motion.

The props were now in place for the next stage of the performance: a combined effort to rewrite the US-French resolution so as to hustle Israeli troops out of South Lebanon and wrap up the Lebanon war by a ceasefire, without waiting for the “robust” international force which Israel is holding out for to come into being.

In his address, the US president conveyed the impression that Israel had plenty of time to complete its mission – Israeli officials were still talking on that fateful Monday about “several weeks of combat” still to come. But DEBKAfile reports that Rice, in an effort to regain American initiative in the Lebanese crisis, was busy making quiet contacts, mainly through the Saudis, to terminate the conflict.

DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources report that in Paris, the Saudis put the Lebanese majority leader Saad Hariri to work with guidelines for PM Siniora on the force for South Lebanon.

In Washington, ex-ambassador to the US Prince Bandar, coordinator of the Saudi secret services, undertook to bring Syrian president Basher Assad aboard.

If the French-Arab-Lebanese initiative is allowed to proceed according to plan, DEBKAfile’s analysts foresee the following potential results, none of which were envisaged a month ago:

1. Lebanon will place on the ready units for deployment in South Lebanon. It will be a token force. While making a show of calling up reserves to deploy 15,000 men in the south, Lebanon has no reserve army only a special airborne commando battalion called The Leopards which numbers no more than 1,000 men.

2. France will place on standby a similar number of paratroops to eke out UNIFIL’s deployment ahead of the main multinational stabilization force.

3. Following a UN Security Council call for the immediate cessation of hostilities, the French contingent will fly to South Lebanon to form a buffer between the IDF and Hizballah forces.

4. It will do so on the basis of a Hizballah pledge to refrain from firing on the French-Lebanese deployment.

5. A token UNIFIL force of no more than some scores of troops will be posted at the Lebanese border crossings to Syria to try and monitor arms deliveries from Syria and Iran to Hizballah.

6. Either the Security Council or the commanders of this mixed force will demand that Israel desist from attacking Hizballah after obtaining a commitment from Hassan Nasrallah to stop firing rockets at Israel.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that Hizballah is badly in need of a pause in the fighting. Israeli military pressure has taken a heavy toll of his resources.

7. Israel will face the demand to immediately pull its troops behind the international border, the Blue Line.

8. Hizballah will face a corresponding demand to pull its forces out of South Lebanon. But it will be understood in private exchanges that they will leave only after Israel cedes to international control the disputed Shebaa Farms. In the interim, Hizballah fighters will stay put with the status of “civilian residents.”

9. Indirect talks on the exchange of prisoners leading to the release of the two Israeli soldiers abducted by Hizballah, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, will begin through an international broker.

If this plan goes through, the Olmert government will come out of a painful and devastating war without achieving any of its objectives. Hizballah will have suffered a beating without being broken or bowed. The IDF will not have repaired its deterrent strength, and Hizballah, rather than Israel, will be seen - at least by Arab opinion -as having come out on top. A ransom in the coin of a prisoner exchange will be paid for the Israeli hostages. It is hard to see any force capable or willing to make Nasrallah pull his troops out of South Lebanon or disarm after the Israeli army failed.

Financial assistance will flood into Lebanon to repair the damage caused by Israeli bombardments; Israel will have to foot its own bill for the destruction wrought by Hizballah to one third of the country and the ruin of its economy.

Of course, Israel is still free to accept or reject these terms.

Wednesday, Aug 9, the day after the first Security Council discussion on the crisis, Israel’s inner cabinet will be asked to approve the expansion of the military offensive to push Hizballah up to the Litani River and beyond. The Olmert government must also decide whether to stick by its demand for an “effective” multinational destabilization force to move into the south before Israel removes its army.

The snap appointment of a high-powered general, deputy chief of staff Maj.-Gen Moshe Kaplinsky, to supervise the war from the IDF’s northern command, is designed to give wings to the slow slog of Israel’s war effort.

But it may be too late to turn the war round. The role played by France in this initiative is ambivalent. While the Americans believe the French are partners, in fact Paris is playing a double game and working closely with Tehran. The amendments France is pushing for would manipulate the United Nations into granting Nasrallah everything he wants if only he makes a show of removing his guerrillas from the south until the heat is off and they can filter back.

Until it is decided which way diplomacy is going, both Hizballah and Israel will intensify their effort to gain the upper hand on the battlefield. - link [note: debka israeli propaganda site]

A new poll from Lebanon

2006-08-09T08:11:00.000-07:00

A new poll from Lebanon. I have just received from Abdu Sa`d, director of the Beirut Center for Research and Data, the results of a new public opinion poll that was conducted between 6th and 7th of August in Lebanon (and it included refugees from South Lebanon). The survey had one question: "Should Lebanon consent to international resolutions that are in conflict with the seven points that were adopted by the Lebanese government"? 88% of the Lebanese people said no. Shi`ites had the largest percentage of rejection (96.6%); followed by Sunnis (91.4%); followed by Christians (80.4%), and then Druzes (79.4%). - link

Israel Changes Command Structure

2006-08-09T08:09:00.000-07:00

Israel changed its military commander Tuesday, suggesting the government is not satisfied with the way the war in Lebanon is going. While a government statement said that military officials have "complete confidence" in Maj. Gen. Udi Adam, head of Northern Command, Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky, the army's deputy chief of staff, was appointed coordinator of operations in Lebanon, The Washington Post reported.

The move came the day before the cabinet is scheduled to discuss an Israeli Defense Force Plan to expand the ground war.

Israeli warplanes again pounded Lebanon Tuesday.

At least 13 people were killed in an airstrike on Ghaziyeh, a Shiite village near Sidon, the Irish Examiner reported. The bombing occurred just after a funeral procession for those killed in an earlier raid passed by. - link

Once we were beggars’; Hezb steel from dignity restored

2006-08-09T08:07:00.000-07:00

In his spacious sun-splashed apartment in Tyre’s old city, surrounded by a dozen grandchildren and feasting on generous portions of lamb, Tawfiq Bahr, like many of his Shiite brethren, has seen his lot improve since his youth. “We Shiites used to be beggars,” Bahr, 62, recalls, “Now our people have started to live comfortably.” For many of Lebanon’s Shiite Muslims, militant group Hezbollah, currently waging a bloody conflict against Israel, deserves much credit. It has won support by providing much-needed social services and health care.

It is the secret to its popularity among Shiites and its ability to pose problems even for the Israeli army, the mightiest in the Middle East. At age four, Bahr was an orphan. His mother died when he was two, and his father was killed while shuttling Palestinian refugees from Haifa to Tyre during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. He was raised by his aunt, who cleaned the homes of Tyre’s well-to-do. Instead of an education, at age 10 Bahr went to work for a shoe cobbler for one Lebanese pound a week.

“I couldn’t even buy bread,” says Bahr, now the proud patriarch doted on by his eight children and dozen grandchildren. “I never went to school. There was nobody to help me get an education.” Not so for Khadija Farraj, a 30-year-old mother of three, reclining on a stoop in Bahr’s neighborhood, quietly watching the children of the alley chase around a deflated soccer ball.

Her husband, an over-the-hill boxer, is now unemployed. When their kids needed money for text books last year, they found their savings wouldn’t cover the costs. “We went to them,” she says, “them” being Hezbollah. “We said we need help. They gave us a piece of paper and said, ‘Take it to the book store, they’ll give you what you need.’” Bahr’s own family has also benefited from Hezbollah’s help. When his granddaughter Amani, 21, needed an operation, Bahr’s son-in-law Abbas Hassan didn’t have the 1.8 million Lebanese pounds (1,500 dollars)

He appealed to the Ministry of Health and other government agencies, but was ignored, reinforcing his suspicions that Beirut cares little for the Shiites of the south. The 46-year-old taxi driver shakes a strand of prayer beads angrily as he recounts his government’s refusal to help. Instead he went elsewhere for assistance. “I finally went to a local Hezbollah-run charity and asked them,” says Hassan. “They said ‘yes’ and paid for the whole thing.” “Today, I thank Hezbollah for everything I have.”

Were Bahr an orphan today in south Lebanon, he would have a formidable support network to fall back on — Hezbollah.
“They don’t let anyone live in need,” says Bahr. “Anybody who needs help gets it. How can you not love these people? They do so many good things.” His young grandchildren all agree. With Israeli planes pounding their cities and villages, and its tanks slowly creeping into southern Lebanon, these youngsters say Hezbollah makes them feel safe.

“I am not afraid as long as the resistance is here,” says Bahr’s eight-year-old granddaughter Lara Al Ayan through blue candy-stained lips. “If Hezbollah wasn’t there, Israeli troops would be here in Tyre and we’d be dead,” says Aya Hassan, 18, another of Bahr’s grandchildren. Lebanon’s Shiites have long been deprived citizens in Lebanon. Hezbollah grew out of earlier Shiite movements who long worked to remedy this political imbalance. The legacy of four decades of advocacy has bound Shiites to their sect’s leaders — now embodied by Hezbollah.

Before there was Hezbollah and its fiery charismatic leader Hassan Nasrallah, there was another equally revered Shiite leader, Mussa al-Sadr, dispatched to Lebanon by Iranian clerics in the late 1950s. Bahr tells the story of how he grew from orphan to middle class family man and Sadr’s own story as one interwoven narrative. “Sadr brought all the beggars and widows to his house and gave them a monthly salary,” says Bahr. “He saw what the poor people needed and he provided for them.”

“He taught us that we don’t need money and charity from Britain, America or any country in the Western world, and that we can rely on ourselves.” For Bahr, and for many other Shiites, Sadr and Nasrallah blend seamlessly together into one tradition of Shiite activism. “I would die under the feet of Sayed Hassan,” says Bahr, referring to the Hezbollah frontman. “He returned our dignity and the dignity of all Shiites.”
- link

Israeli tanks stream into Lebanon

2006-08-09T08:03:00.000-07:00

As diplomats debate, Israel considers expanding Lebanon campaign

Wednesday, August 9, 2006 Posted: 0954 GMT (1754 HKT)

BEIRUT, Lebanon (CNN) — Israeli helicopter gunships took the fight in Lebanon to that country's largest Palestinian refugee camp early Wednesday, just hours before Israel's Security Cabinet was to consider expanding its military campaign against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

And along the Israel-Lebanon border in the early hours of the morning, a dramatic troop deployment began. Countless Israeli tanks headed across the border into Lebanon as machine gun fire rattled the night. Heavy barrages of artillery, including rocket-propelled grenades and tank shells, fired from multiple Israeli locations.

Israeli troops massed along the border, wearing black face paint and camouflage.

At the United Nations, meanwhile, diplomats still hoped for a vote Thursday on a U.N. resolution aimed at ending the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, but an Arab-backed proposal that calls for a full Israeli withdrawal threatened Tuesday night to tip "a very delicate balance" and set the process back again, a Bush administration official said.

The Israeli attack on Ain El-Helwe camp in Sidon killed at least one person and wounded at least six, Sultan Abu Alaynen, the head of Fatah in Lebanon, said.

Earlier, Israel attacked the town of Ghaziye near the port city of Sidon, killing eight civilians and wounding more than 30, according to Lebanese Internal Security Forces.

Hezbollah, too, kept up its barrage of rocket fire into northern Israel. By 6:45 p.m. (11:45 a.m. ET), 145 rockets had crossed the border, including 14 that landed in cities, according to Israeli police. Two people were wounded, they said.

Along the Israel-Lebanon border, the steady drumbeat of artillery fire continued. Five Israeli soldiers were wounded Tuesday by anti-tank missile fire north of the town of Bint Jbail, and another soldier was wounded during a ground operation in Ras El Beida, an Israeli military spokesman said. (Watch as Israel considers widening its campaign — 3:06)

Also on Wednesday, rescuers scrambled to pull at least five bodies from the rubble of a three-story building in Mashghara in the Bekaa Valley after it was leveled by an Israeli airstrike, a Lebanese relief worker at the scene said.

Arabic-language networks Al Jazeera and Nabih Berri News reported at least six members of a family were killed in the airstrike.

Red Cross: Israel violates Geneva Conventions
Tuesday morning, Israeli aircraft dropped leaflets over Tyre, south of the Litani River, warning residents of pending airstrikes.

"All cars of any type will be shelled if seen moving south of the Litani River because it will be considered a suspect of transferring rockets, military ammunitions and those causing destruction," the leaflets read.

But International Committee of the Red Cross President Jakob Kellenberger accused Israel of violating the Geneva Conventions and said that dropping leaflets into an area is not enough.

"By letting down leaflets you cannot get rid of your responsibilities under international law," Kellenberger said at a news conference in Tyre.

He complained of the difficulties of arranging passage for aid convoys into southern Lebanon, but ICRC spokesman Roland Hueguenin-Benjamin told CNN that the Red Cross had finally been able Tuesday to negotiate "freedom of movement" for the convoys after days of getting the red light from the Israeli military.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met with President Moshe Katsav, afterward telling reporters that the Security Cabinet would consider an expansion of military efforts.

"The Cabinet will discuss it tomorrow and of course, in the end, they will come to a decision," he said. (Watch as troops dig in on the front lines — 4:07)

Diplomatic maneuvering
At the United Nations, the timetable for an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon continued to be a sticking point in negotiations to end the fighting.

Diplomats said U.N. Security Council members need to get "back on the same page" by an early enough time Wednesday to see a vote on a cease-fire resolution the following day. (Watch as experts debate cease-fire possibilities — 3:56)

At issue was Lebanon's proposal to send 15,000 of its own troops into southern Lebanon — provided all of Israel's troops withdraw back into Israel — and to move a U.N. force into the disputed Shebaa Farms region, a sliver of land occupied by Israel that Lebanon claims but the U.N. has ruled belongs to Syria.

A diplomatic source familiar with the negotiations told CNN that the French are pushing new language in the resolution taking the Arab concerns into account — including specific text on the Shebaa Farms region.

The diplomatic source said the French are trying to redraft many parts of the resolution — a move that makes U.S. officials nervous.

The administration official, who is keeping track of developments at the United Nations, said the White House is "sympathetic" to the concerns raised by the Arab delegation — particularly that a draft resolution backed by the United States and France which doesn't call for Israel's withdrawal will leave Hezbollah with a pretext to continue fighting. (Key points in the Arab League plan)

But, the official said, "we want a final product that has a reasonable chance of success." The United States is concerned that the Lebanese army will be not able or willing to stop the resupply of Hezbollah and is not convinced that a bolstered U.N. peacekeeping force could do the trick either. (Watch an analyst describe why Hezbollah is ready for war — 2:13)

And, the official said, Israel has "even stronger" views on those issues.

Still, Arab League chief Amr Moussa told reporters that the evening's talks, which came after the Arab delegation presented its views at a Security Council session, "were promising."

"There are new developments and points that the Arab side wishes to insert," he said. " ... Tomorrow we will resume our consultations. We hope that by tomorrow all sides will know at least the skeleton of what kind of a new draft will be."

As of Tuesday, Israeli casualties in the conflict stand at 98 dead, including 35 civilians, and more than 700 wounded, according to the IDF.

Lebanese security forces said Wednesday that 800 people have died, most of them civilians, and nearly 3,135 have been wounded.

CNN's Karl Penhaul and Elise Labott contributed to this report. - link

Rumour that Blair's right-hand man has fled to Israel

2006-08-09T08:02:00.000-07:00

Where is Lord Levy? We know he's been keeping a low profile, well, not so much 'low' as postivively subterranian, but where is he?.

Blair is on holiday and pretending to negociate a UN Security Council resolution (actually he's been told to bugger off and leave the US and French to sort it out), so we would expect some activity from his special Envoy to the Middle East.

Has anyone seen Lord Levy? Please put sightings in the comment box. Many thanks.

http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/node/1283

It goes without saying that this is already creating uproar in the UK. One response to Blairwatch quotes directly from The Daily Telegraph:

"Lord Levy, Mr Blair's Middle East envoy, is also away - at his holiday home in Israel."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/08/06/wmid06.xml
- link

War Pimp Alert: Claim: Hezbo command center untouched in Syrian town

2006-08-09T07:59:00.001-07:00

Israel has not been able to break up Hiz b’allah’s command and control, or even to lower the pace of rockets raining down on Haifa and the North of Israel. Now DEBKA.com claims one reason is that Hezbo command and control is not located in Lebanon at all.

The command which coordinates the pace of those attacks is located at the Anjar base of the Syrian Army’s 10th Division opposite the Lebanese town of Az Zabdani. It is manned by Iranian and Hizballah officers, who take their orders from a Syrian military intelligence center in Damascus to which Iranian Revolutionary Guards intelligence officers are attached. It is headed by a general from one of Syria’s surface missile brigades. This joint command is provided with the most up-to-date intelligence and electronic data available to Syria on targets in Israel and IDF movements. The timing and tempo of Hizballah rocket strikes are set according to that information.

To keep the rockets coming without interruption, the joint Hizballah-Syrian-Iranian command is also responsible with keeping Hizballah supplied with an inflow of rockets and launchers. They use smuggling rings to slip the supplies into Lebanon by mule and donkey which ply the 5,000-7,000 feet mountain paths that straddle the Syrian-Lebanese frontier.

A senior Israeli officer told DEBKAfile: We can go on bombing Lebanon for many weeks, but that will not stop the rockets.

We can’t be sure this report is true. But it makes sense because of the failure (so far) to impede Hezbollah’s rain of rockets. If Israel has known about the Anjar command center, a political decision must have been taken to leave it alone for fear of bringing in Syria and perhaps Iran. Israel’s government is said to fear knocking out the Assad government, because Syria could be taken over by an even worse regime.

The result of such an Israeli decision is to leave a safe haven for Hezbollah supply, command and control. This is the Vietnam failure: US Presidents were reluctant to mine and blockade North Vietnamese ports for fear of involving China. Hezbo seems to be following a Vietcong strategy, by mining, tunneling, bunkering, and holding a safe supply chain that cannot be attacked. We now know that the Vietcong were constantly supplied with fresh soldiers from the North Vietnamese Army, who simply took off their uniforms and suddenly became guerrillas.

There is evidence for Iranian, Syrian, North Korean and Chinese expertise being supplied for Hiz b’allah. This is a major test for Israel, but it is also a serious test for the United States. Israel mirrors American combat ethics, emphasis on the value of human life, reluctance to harm civilians, as well as US arms, planes, and civilian control of the military. As in Vietnam, the Western model may be in danger of failing. If it does, this same pattern of attack will be repeated in Iraq and elsewhere.

Although news reports are always spotty, we know that the IAF has been bombing South Lebanon for four weeks. The Hezbos have not broken. This is from the UK Times:

The Israeli military has saturation air coverage over southern Lebanon with missile-firing reconnaissance drones, Apache helicopter gunships and F16 fighter-bombers. It is attacking its Hezbollah enemy with multiple airstrikes and heavy artillery bombardments from land and sea as well as raids by Israeli special forces units.

Yet Hezbollah squads are still firing dozens of rockets a day into Israel from locations lying just a few hundred yards from the border and within full view of the Israeli military.

One such position lies between the villages of Naqoura and Alma al-Shaab. The rocky, uninhabited hillside and deep ravine of 12 square miles is covered in a dense undergrowth of juniper bushes and scrub oak where Hezbollah over the past three years has established an unseen, but clearly formidable, military infrastructure of weapons depots, tunnels and bunkers. ....

Even seasoned UN observers, whose headquarters is at the foot of the hill, are baffled at how the guerrillas have managed to survive the onslaught and keep up a steady rate of rocket fire. “We simply have no idea how they have been able to fire rockets for so long from more or less the same location and the Israelis have not been able to stop them,” said a senior officer for United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon

One possibility is that the Naqoura bunker complex has simply been bypassed by Israeli ground forces. However, it seems at least equally likely that the government of Israel has tied the hands of the IDF, as the US did in Vietnam.

Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post expects a heated national debate after the Hezbo war is over, with respected military officers speaking out against the Olmert government. She points out that an earlier debate along those lines led to the resignation of Golda Meir’s government and the rise of Likud.

The IDF cannot afford to fail. Israel had a traumatic experience trying to hold Lebanese territory before it retreated in 2000. But the only choices today may be to either expand the war and hit Syrian command centers for Hezbollah, with the danger that Iran will enter the war; or to take Lebanese territory up to the Litani river, and hold it against guerrila attacks. None of the choices are attractive.

Ultimately, Tehran is protecting its nuclear ambitions. If Hezbollah cannot be defeated in Lebanon, Iran will increase the number of its long-range missiles pointing at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem under the nominal control of the Hezbos. Any attack on Iranian nuclear facilities will elicit an immediate counter-attack on Israel’s civilian population.

It is in the interest of the West for the Hezbos to be severely degraded. If that cannot be accomplished, Iranian nukes might as well be taken as a given. The implications for the control of the world’s oil supply and for the war on terror are frightening to contemplate. - link

War Pimp Alert: Claim: Hezbo command center untouched in Syrian town

2006-08-09T07:59:00.000-07:00

Israel has not been able to break up Hiz b’allah’s command and control, or even to lower the pace of rockets raining down on Haifa and the North of Israel. Now DEBKA.com claims one reason is that Hezbo command and control is not located in Lebanon at all.

The command which coordinates the pace of those attacks is located at the Anjar base of the Syrian Army’s 10th Division opposite the Lebanese town of Az Zabdani. It is manned by Iranian and Hizballah officers, who take their orders from a Syrian military intelligence center in Damascus to which Iranian Revolutionary Guards intelligence officers are attached. It is headed by a general from one of Syria’s surface missile brigades. This joint command is provided with the most up-to-date intelligence and electronic data available to Syria on targets in Israel and IDF movements. The timing and tempo of Hizballah rocket strikes are set according to that information.

To keep the rockets coming without interruption, the joint Hizballah-Syrian-Iranian command is also responsible with keeping Hizballah supplied with an inflow of rockets and launchers. They use smuggling rings to slip the supplies into Lebanon by mule and donkey which ply the 5,000-7,000 feet mountain paths that straddle the Syrian-Lebanese frontier.

A senior Israeli officer told DEBKAfile: We can go on bombing Lebanon for many weeks, but that will not stop the rockets.

We can’t be sure this report is true. But it makes sense because of the failure (so far) to impede Hezbollah’s rain of rockets. If Israel has known about the Anjar command center, a political decision must have been taken to leave it alone for fear of bringing in Syria and perhaps Iran. Israel’s government is said to fear knocking out the Assad government, because Syria could be taken over by an even worse regime.

The result of such an Israeli decision is to leave a safe haven for Hezbollah supply, command and control. This is the Vietnam failure: US Presidents were reluctant to mine and blockade North Vietnamese ports for fear of involving China. Hezbo seems to be following a Vietcong strategy, by mining, tunneling, bunkering, and holding a safe supply chain that cannot be attacked. We now know that the Vietcong were constantly supplied with fresh soldiers from the North Vietnamese Army, who simply took off their uniforms and suddenly became guerrillas.

There is evidence for Iranian, Syrian, North Korean and Chinese expertise being supplied for Hiz b’allah. This is a major test for Israel, but it is also a serious test for the United States. Israel mirrors American combat ethics, emphasis on the value of human life, reluctance to harm civilians, as well as US arms, planes, and civilian control of the military. As in Vietnam, the Western model may be in danger of failing. If it does, this same pattern of attack will be repeated in Iraq and elsewhere.

Although news reports are always spotty, we know that the IAF has been bombing South Lebanon for four weeks. The Hezbos have not broken. This is from the UK Times:

The Israeli military has saturation air coverage over southern Lebanon with missile-firing reconnaissance drones, Apache helicopter gunships and F16 fighter-bombers. It is attacking its Hezbollah enemy with multiple airstrikes and heavy artillery bombardments from land and sea as well as raids by Israeli special forces units.

Yet Hezbollah squads are still firing dozens of rockets a day into Israel from locations lying just a few hundred yards from the border and within full view of the Israeli military.

One such position lies between the villages of Naqoura and Alma al-Shaab. The rocky, uninhabited hillside and deep ravine of 12 square miles is covered in a dense undergrowth of juniper bushes and scrub oak where Hezbollah over the past three years has established an unseen, but clearly formidable, military infrastructure of weapons depots, tunnels and bunkers. ....

Even seasoned UN observers, whose headquarters is at the foot of the hill, are baffled at how the guerrillas have managed to survive the onslaught and keep up a steady rate of rocket fire. “We simply have no idea how they have been able to fire rockets for so long from more or less the same location and the Israelis have not been able to stop them,” said a senior officer for United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon

One possibility is that the Naqoura bunker complex has simply been bypassed by Israeli ground forces. However, it seems at least equally likely that the government of Israel has tied the hands of the IDF, as the US did in Vietnam.

Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post expects a heated national debate after the Hezbo war is over, with respected military officers speaking out against the Olmert government. She points out that an earlier debate along those lines led to the resignation of Golda Meir’s government and the rise of Likud.

The IDF cannot afford to fail. Israel had a traumatic experience trying to hold Lebanese territory before it retreated in 2000. But the only choices today may be to either expand the war and hit Syrian command centers for Hezbollah, with the danger that Iran will enter the war; or to take Lebanese territory up to the Litani river, and hold it against guerrila attacks. None of the choices are attractive.

Ultimately, Tehran is protecting its nuclear ambitions. If Hezbollah cannot be defeated in Lebanon, Iran will increase the number of its long-range missiles pointing at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem under the nominal control of the Hezbos. Any attack on Iranian nuclear facilities will elicit an immediate counter-attack on Israel’s civilian population.

It is in the interest of the West for the Hezbos to be severely degraded. If that cannot be accomplished, Iranian nukes might as well be taken as a given. The implications for the control of the world’s oil supply and for the war on terror are frightening to contemplate. - link

Lebanese dead going unburied

2006-08-09T07:53:00.000-07:00

The bodies of scores of people killed in southern Lebanon are going unburied amid fears of fresh attacks by Israeli warplanes.

Many relatives of those who have died have either fled the region or are too scared to conduct funeral services in the middle of the ongoing offensive by Israeli forces.

More than 70 bodies, recovered from various southern villages and brought to the Lebanese government hospital in Tyre, are still waiting to be laid to rest.

They include victims who died in air strikes on the southern village of Srifa, which has been repeatedly pounded by Israeli warplanes since uly 19.

At least 30 people have died in the village and more than 15 buildings levelled.

Qana massacre

When the town of Qana was struck by Israeli warplanes on 30 July, television audiences around the world watched relief workers removing corpses of civilians, including women and children, from the rubble.

But many of these bodies are still unburied after next of kin who fled the southern town to neighbouring cities like Sidon and Beirut were unable to access the roads which have been repeatedly hit by Israeli warplanes.

Many of the bodies in Qana have
still not been buried

Cut off from reaching Qana and other bombed-out villages, the families have been unable to conduct proper Islamic rites.

The number of unburied corpses has risen so dramatically in recent weeks that local religious leaders issued fatwas permitting corpses to be buried in temporary sites, often makeshift mass graves prepared by the Lebanese army.

Once the fighting dies down, the families will be allowed to transfer the corpses to their respective towns and conduct proper rites, including the traditional three days of funeral services.

"No dignity"

Qana survivor Samir Shalhoub, who lost several members of his family, explained that it was difficult to accept the temporary burial solution at first because relatives would be unable to properly pay their respects.

He told Aljazeera.net: "The fatwa allows us to move the bodies to their hometowns when the bombings stop and only then would we be able to hold a proper funeral that martyrs like them deserve to receive."

Temporary burials 'stripped the
dead of their dignity'

He said although the family accepted the temporary burials in Tyre, they felt it stripped the dead of dignity.

But he and many others may have to wait even longer.

As preparations were being finalised for a temporary burial on August 1, Israeli artillery opened fire on the Borj al-Shamali village adjacent to Tyre, wounding two youths.

Fearful that the armed Israeli drones hovering above Tyre signalled an imminent attack, a doctor at the hospital said the funeral had been cancelled because it was no longer safe.

In the days that followed, Tyre came under Israeli commando attack and nearby villages suffered heavy bombardment.

Mass graves unfilled

Five days later, the bodies remained unburied. With fatalities on the rise, medical authorities have resorted to using refrigerated trucks, usually used for storing vegetables and meat, to hold corpses as the morgue could not accommodate all them.

Dozens of light-brown wooden coffins are stacked up against the hospital walls waiting to be filled.

Bodies remain unburied in the
hospital morgue
There is a stench of death in and around the hospital. In the parking lot, where the refrigerated trucks are parked, the smell is so fetid that passers-by cover their mouths.

Although the temporary burial site lies just 100m away from the morgue, it is still highly dangerous to attempt a mass burial.

The last mass burial at this site was on July 29 when 33 people, including one-day-old Sawsan Taj al-Din, were buried there.

The infant had died in her mother's arms when an Israeli missile hit their car as they fled their home in Bazourieh, a village south of Tyre.

Three children belonging to the same family were put in one casket. Since then, the Lebanese army has dug two new mass graves.

But for now, none of the dead will find rest there. - link

The end of the beginning

2006-08-09T07:48:00.000-07:00

US forces are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in the Middle East in a few hours. US readiness for more war is just one indicator that the present war is likely to spread and intensify in the coming months.

Unnoticed amidst coverage of the war, Iran has rejected a UN resolution demanding it halt uranium enrichment. Condoleezza Rice anticipates that on the nuclear issue: "when the Iranians get past this August 31 deadline, I think they're going to see sanctions from the international system that are going to start to make life pretty miserable." Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, stated back in April that the decisive point in Iran's development of nuclear arms would come in months.

Both the Iranian and US governments regard the fighting in Lebanon and Israel as related to their own conflict. President Bush made the end of Iranian and Syrian support of Hizbullah a condition of any ceasefire, though he has since softened his stance at the UN. Condoleezza Rice remarked that "we do know that this is more than just Hizbullah in Lebanon. This is an extension of Iranian power through a proxy war."

US Intelligence Chief, John Negroponte, told the US Senate Intelligence Committee earlier this year that Iran regarded Hizbullah as "a critical regime safeguard by deterring US and Israeli attacks". With Hezbollah already at war, this "safeguard" is in the process of being removed.

Iran has threatened a world oil price crisis in response to UN sanctions. We do not now know if China, France and Russia will support sanctions or if US will once more regard the UN's failure as a license to act militarily. These "ifs" require a close look at the US, Israeli and Iranian political intentions and military capabilities.

American intentions towards Iran are fairly clear. If diplomacy and sanctions fail to halt Iran's nuclear ambitions then military force must be used. No one should be shocked that William Kristol, the neoconservative leader, has already called for a military strike on Iran in response to Hizbullah's attack on Israel.

Seymour Hersh's articles claim that President Bush ordered war against Iran shortly after the President's re-election in 2004. His claim that Bush is determined not to leave Iran to a future president and that he has support from leading Democrats is born out by numerous conversations I have had with colleagues in Washington. As a senior staffer to Senator Kerry put it: "why should people object if we carry out disarmament militarily?"

There are plenty more reports that war with Iran is either underway or in preparation. Special forces "prepare for Iran attack" wrote Robert Fox back in 2003. Pat Buchanan's American Conservative argues along with Hersh that vice-president Cheney has prepared a war plan for Iran including the use of nuclear weapons by summer 2005. Scott Ritter has claimed that President Bush ordered that the US be ready to attack Iran at any point after June 2005 and Newsweek reported that the administration was considering options for regime change. The Atlantic Monthly concluded after conducting a wargame that attacking Iran was too risky. The powerpoint slides from that game provide a glimpse into the world of war planning. Their analysis assumes a large ground invasion, clearly not a favoured option of either Don Rumsfeld or the American public. Most recently, the eminent investigative writer, James Bamford, has described a neoconservative push for regime change.

Speculation aside, we do know that Don Rumsfeld has placed US forces on alert. "We're now at the point where we are essentially on alert," lieutenant-colonel Bruce Carlson, commander of the 8th Air Force, said. "We have the capacity to plan and execute global strikes in half a day or less."

Under the command of marine-general James Cartwright, US Global Strike planning has the potential to destroy over 10,000 targets in Iran in one mission with "smart" conventional weapons. US government documents obtained by Hans Kristensen and analysed by William Arkin has described the development of this Global Strike capability.

Awaiting his orders, George Bush has more than 200 strategic bombers (B52-B1-B2-F117A) and US Navy Tomahawk cruise missiles. One B2 bomber dropped 80,500lb bombs on separate targets in 22 seconds in a test flight. Using just half the available force, 10,000 targets could be attacked almost simultaneously. This strike power alone is sufficient to destroy all major Iranian political, military, economic and transport capabilities.

Such a strike would take "shock and awe" to a new level and leave Iran with few if any conventional military capabilities to block the straights of Hormuz or provide conventional military support to insurgents in Iraq. If this was not enough, the latest generation of smart bombs now being delivered to the US air force quadruples the number of weapons all US warplanes can carry.

Placing forces on high alert, no more means that the US will actually use them. However, in combination with an increasing crisis, high alert levels mean we should be extra careful how we move forward. We should heed Tony Blair. When Mike Gapes MP, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, queried the prime minister's equivocation over pre-emptive war on Iran, asking: "Does that mean, then, we are just left with sanctions? Mr Blair replied: "It means that you take this a step at a time." - Dan Plesch

Bush's disastrous 'democratic fundamentalism'

2006-08-09T07:47:00.000-07:00

Things are as they are, and their consequences will be what they will be. Why, then, should we seek to be deceived?"

Columnist Stewart Alsop, dead now these 30 years, once closed a column with this quote from the philosopher Bishop Berkeley. His column, I believe, was about Vietnam.

As we approach the fifth anniversary of 9-11, we, too, can see the shape of things to come.

In the ideology of "democratic fundamentalism" to which George W. Bush converted after 9-11, we are simply in a rough patch on the glory road to a democratic Middle East and "the end of tyranny on this earth."

In reality, our situation has never been more grim.

The successful experiment that featured the "freest, fairest elections ever held" in Palestine is dead. Over 125 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. The Gaza Strip is a shambles. The terror wing of Hamas will have no trouble recruiting in the rubble.

The same is true of Lebanon. The "Cedar Revolution" was a Bush success, a beacon of hope. That Hezbollah won a dozen seats only seemed to prove that the elections had indeed been free, fair and open to all.

Now Lebanon is in ruin. The 900 dead, thousands wounded, the million refugees, the smashed infrastructure and the scores of thousands of Westerners who have fled means years before Lebanon recovers, if ever she does. Arab hatred of Israel and America is pandemic.

Hezbollah ignited the hostilities. But it was Israel that escalated to rain destruction on a people and nation that had not countenanced or condoned Hezbollah's provocation, but condemned it.

Think back. Had Reagan done to Lebanon, when half a dozen Americans were seized as hostages, what Israel has done, when two soldiers were taken hostage, Democrats would have denounced Reagan as a war criminal. Conservatives would have begged him to ease up.

Yet, almost to a man and woman, our politicians are falling all over one another to express their 100 percent support of what Israel has done to Lebanon. Even Israelis must feel a measure of contempt for this kind of groveling.

Indeed, in Israel, dissent against the blitzkrieg is rising, and the Olmert regime is being challenged and even condemned by courageous Israelis for letting the air force have a free hand to smash Lebanon.

Moving on to Iraq, where the war has lasted as long as our war on Nazi Germany, Gen. John Abizaid is warning that a descent into civil war is now possible, and Bush concedes that, three years and three months after "Mission Accomplished," the situation in Baghdad is "terrible."

Questions now on the table are: Will America let go? Will Iraq break apart? Americans are not all that far away from a strategic disaster.

Whatever happens to Joe Lieberman in Connecticut, the new center of gravity of the Democratic Party is anti-war. Democratic hawks are a dying species. Al Gore now emerges, given his authentic anti-war credentials and emergence as a world leader of the global-warming movement, as the left's best hope for the nomination.

Kerry and Edwards, the 2004 ticket, know which way the wind is blowing. Both have declared that had they known in 2002 what they know today, they would not have voted for the war. Hillary senses the ground shifting beneath her feet. Last week, she scourged Rumsfeld, called for his resignation and denounced Pentagon mismanagement of the war.

Two years and three months before November 2008, the Democratic Party has pulled out of the Bush coalition; two-thirds of the nation considers Iraq a mistake; and a majority wants the troops home.

Can Bush sustain support for the war as the news from Iraq gets worse and worse? For, if this war is lost on the home front, the war will be lost in Mesopotamia.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban are fighting in larger units and, colluding with drug lords, killing more Afghans and allied troops than they have in five years. Hamid Karzai reigns in Kabul but does not rule. U.S.-NATO forces are not losing battles, but they are insufficient in number to win the war.

Iran, fearful of Bush in 2003, is now rejecting U.S.-EU bribes and rejecting any suspension of its uranium enrichment program. Bring it on, Ahmadinejad seems to be saying to Bush. As for Pakistan, the Islamists there remain but a bullet away from custody of an atomic bomb.

While all these are trends, none seems to be going our way.

The Israeli-American ace of trumps, raw military power, is still able to defeat armies and destroy states, but it has proven less effective in eradicating guerrillas, and counterproductive in changing Islamic hearts and minds.

If neither U.S. party is willing to show any independence of Israel, if America will not address the root causes of Arab animosity, and if we will not even negotiate with our enemies, we should probably pack up and get out of the Middle East. Before we are thrown out. - link

Israel responded to an unprovoked attack by Hizbullah, right? Wrong

2006-08-09T07:46:00.000-07:00

Whatever we think of Israel's assault on Lebanon, all of us seem to agree about one fact: that it was a response, however disproportionate, to an unprovoked attack by Hizbullah. I repeated this "fact" in my last column, when I wrote that "Hizbullah fired the first shots". This being so, the Israeli government's supporters ask peaceniks like me, what would you have done? It's an important question. But its premise, I have now discovered, is flawed.

Since Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, there have been hundreds of violations of the "blue line" between the two countries. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) reports that Israeli aircraft crossed the line "on an almost daily basis" between 2001 and 2003, and "persistently" until 2006. These incursions "caused great concern to the civilian population, particularly low-altitude flights that break the sound barrier over populated areas". On some occasions, Hizbullah tried to shoot them down with anti-aircraft guns.
In October 2000, the Israel Defence Forces shot at unarmed Palestinian demonstrators on the border, killing three and wounding 20. In response, Hizbullah crossed the line and kidnapped three Israeli soldiers. On several occasions, Hizbullah fired missiles and mortar rounds at IDF positions, and the IDF responded with heavy artillery and sometimes aerial bombardment. Incidents like this killed three Israelis and three Lebanese in 2003; one Israeli soldier and two Hizbullah fighters in 2005; and two Lebanese people and three Israeli soldiers in February 2006. Rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel several times in 2004, 2005 and 2006, on some occasions by Hizbullah. But, the UN records, "none of the incidents resulted in a military escalation".

On May 26 this year, two officials of Islamic Jihad - Nidal and Mahmoud Majzoub - were killed by a car bomb in the Lebanese city of Sidon. This was widely assumed in Lebanon and Israel to be the work of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. In June, a man named Mahmoud Rafeh confessed to the killings and admitted that he had been working for Mossad since 1994. Militants in southern Lebanon responded, on the day of the bombing, by launching eight rockets into Israel. One soldier was lightly wounded. There was a major bust-up on the border, during which one member of Hizbullah was killed and several wounded, and one Israeli soldier wounded. But while the border region "remained tense and volatile", Unifil says it was "generally quiet" until July 12.

There has been a heated debate on the internet about whether the two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hizbullah that day were captured in Israel or in Lebanon, but it now seems pretty clear that they were seized in Israel. This is what the UN says, and even Hizbullah seems to have forgotten that they were supposed to have been found sneaking around the outskirts of the Lebanese village of Aita al-Shaab. Now it simply states that "the Islamic resistance captured two Israeli soldiers at the border with occupied Palestine". Three other Israeli soldiers were killed by the militants. There is also some dispute about when, on July 12, Hizbullah first fired its rockets; but Unifil makes it clear that the firing took place at the same time as the raid - 9am. Its purpose seems to have been to create a diversion. No one was hit.

But there is no serious debate about why the two soldiers were captured: Hizbullah was seeking to exchange them for the 15 prisoners of war taken by the Israelis during the occupation of Lebanon and (in breach of article 118 of the third Geneva convention) never released. It seems clear that if Israel had handed over the prisoners, it would - without the spillage of any more blood - have retrieved its men and reduced the likelihood of further kidnappings. But the Israeli government refused to negotiate. Instead - well, we all know what happened instead. Almost 1,000 Lebanese and 33 Israeli civilians have been killed so far, and a million Lebanese displaced from their homes.

On July 12, in other words, Hizbullah fired the first shots. But that act of aggression was simply one instance in a long sequence of small incursions and attacks over the past six years by both sides. So why was the Israeli response so different from all that preceded it? The answer is that it was not a reaction to the events of that day. The assault had been planned for months.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that "more than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to US and other diplomats, journalists and thinktanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail". The attack, he said, would last for three weeks. It would begin with bombing and culminate in a ground invasion. Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, told the paper that "of all of Israel's wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared ... By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we're seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it's been simulated and rehearsed across the board".

A "senior Israeli official" told the Washington Post that the raid by Hizbullah provided Israel with a "unique moment" for wiping out the organisation. The New Statesman's editor, John Kampfner, says he was told by more than one official source that the US government knew in advance of Israel's intention to take military action in Lebanon. The Bush administration told the British government.

Israel's assault, then, was premeditated: it was simply waiting for an appropriate excuse. It was also unnecessary. It is true that Hizbullah had been building up munitions close to the border, as its current rocket attacks show. But so had Israel. Just as Israel could assert that it was seeking to deter incursions by Hizbullah, Hizbullah could claim - also with justification - that it was trying to deter incursions by Israel. The Lebanese army is certainly incapable of doing so. Yes, Hizbullah should have been pulled back from the Israeli border by the Lebanese government and disarmed. Yes, the raid and the rocket attack on July 12 were unjustified, stupid and provocative, like just about everything that has taken place around the border for the past six years. But the suggestion that Hizbullah could launch an invasion of Israel or that it constitutes an existential threat to the state is preposterous. Since the occupation ended, all its acts of war have been minor ones, and nearly all of them reactive.

So it is not hard to answer the question of what we would have done. First, stop recruiting enemies, by withdrawing from the occupied territories in Palestine and Syria. Second, stop provoking the armed groups in Lebanon with violations of the blue line - in particular the persistent flights across the border. Third, release the prisoners of war who remain unlawfully incarcerated in Israel. Fourth, continue to defend the border, while maintaining the diplomatic pressure on Lebanon to disarm Hizbullah (as anyone can see, this would be much more feasible if the occupations were to end). Here then is my challenge to the supporters of the Israeli government: do you dare to contend that this programme would have caused more death and destruction than the current adventure has done? - link

Red Cross: Israel denying safe passage

2006-08-09T07:45:00.001-07:00

The Israeli military has denied permission for aid groups to move food and medicine to besieged villages in southern Lebanon for two days, the Red Cross said Monday.

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. - link

Qana strike fits conflict pattern: Annan

2006-08-09T07:45:00.000-07:00

UN secretary-general Kofi Annan says Israel's shelling of the Lebanese village of Qana appears to fit a pattern of violations of international law marking warfare between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas.

In a report to the UN Security Council, Mr Annan says a comprehensive investigation is needed to gather evidence of possible violations of international humanitarian and human rights laws affecting both Lebanese and Israeli civilians during the conflict.

The 15-nation council asked Mr Annan to look into the deadly July 29 Israeli bombing of a residential building in Qana to determine the facts of the raid, which triggered outrage around the world.

Early Lebanese reports on the attack branded it a massacre, putting the death toll at more than 54 people and at one point more than 60 people.

A Security Council statement a day after the bombing expressed "extreme shock and distress" at the shelling and called for a UN inquiry to be completed within a week.

The Lebanese Government later said it had found 28 corpses, including 14 children, but it added the toll could still rise as recovery efforts had been temporarily suspended.

Israel said in an August 3 letter to Mr Annan that it regretted the civilian casualties but "blames Hezbollah for manipulating and using innocent Lebanese civilians as human shields".

However, the Lebanese Government told the UN chief that rescuers found no weapons in the building and no evidence that any of the dead had been Hezbollah militants.

Lebanese military authorities found "no indication that rockets were launched next to the building".

Mr Annan says a week is inadequate to determine the facts.

"The attack should be seen in the broader context of what could be, based on preliminary information available to the United Nations, including eyewitness accounts, a pattern of violations of international law ... committed during the course of the current hostilities," he said.

"The effects of the current conflict on civilians in Lebanon and Israel rise to a level of seriousness that requires further gathering of information including violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law.

"Accordingly, I support the calls for a more comprehensive investigation." - link

Thirty-one Gaza children killed in Israeli offensive in thirty-one days

2006-08-09T07:44:00.000-07:00

As Israel 's siege on the Gaza Strip passes the one month milestone, Defence for Children International – Palestine Section (DCI/PS) would like to draw attention to the 31 Palestinian children whose deaths expose anew the degradation of the principles of international humanitarian law. The death of these children implicates both the parties to the conflict as well as those States not directly involved, but who, as third parties, are legally bound to enforce these principles.

Recalling that the Gaza Strip has been under belligerent occupation by Israel since 1967, and that it remains under occupation despite the 12 September 2005 ‘disengagement' of Israeli troops, the attacks by both the Israeli army and Palestinian armed groups in the past month have been characterized by their lack of respect for the customary international law principle of distinction. This principle requires combatants at all times to distinguish between civilians and civilian objects, and military objectives. The Israeli tactics in Gaza have also been condemned as disproportionate by the EU and the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator in that the incidental loss of Palestinian lives, injury of Palestinians and damage to Palestinian civilian infrastructure has been excessive in relation to the military advantage understood to be gained by Israel . Israeli air, sea and ground troops have opened fire in civilian areas in the dense population centers of Gaza cities and refugee camps, including near hospitals, schools, and in crowded residential housing complexes on numerous occasions.

The following children have been killed by Israeli military actions in Gaza since 26 June 2006:

1. Anwar Isma'el Atallah, 12 years old

2. Saleh Sleman Al Jemasi, 16 years old

3. Ruwan Fareed Hajjaj, 5 years old

4. Khalid Nidal Abed Al Karim Wahbeh, 1 year old

5. Mahfouth Farid Nasseer, 15 years old

6. Ahmad Ghaleb Abu Amshah, 16 years old

7. Ahmed Fathi Odah Shabat, 16 years old

8. Waleed Mahmoud Al Zinati, 12 years old

9. Salah Adeen Hammad Abu Maktuma, 17 years old

10. Ibrahim Ali Khatoush, 15 years old

11. Mahmoud Muhammad Al Asar, 15 years old

12. Ibrahim Ali Al Nabaheen, 15 years old

13. Ahmad Abdil Mina'm Abu Hajaj, 16 years old

14. Nasrallah Nabil Abu Selmieh, 5 years old

15. Aya Nabil Abu Selmieh, 7 years old

16. Iman Nabil Abu Selmieh, 11 years old

17. Yahya Nabil Abu Selmieh, 9 years old

18. Huda Nabil Abu Selmieh, 13 years old

19. Basma Nabil Abu Selmieh, 15 years old

20. Sumaia Nabil Abu Selmieh, 16 years old

21. Raji Omar Deif Alla, 16 years old

22. Muhanna Sa'ed Mesleh, 16 years old

23. Ahmad Rawhee Abdo, 13 years old

24. Ali Kamil Al Najar, 13 years old

25. Fadwa Faisel al 'Urouqi, 13 years old

26. Mohammad Awad Muhra, 17 years old

27. Khitam Muhammad Tayeh, 11 years old

28. Nadee Habib Al Ataar, 11 years old

29. Saleh Ibrahim Nasser, 13 years old

30. Ashraf Abdullah Awad Abu Thaher, 14 years old

31. Bara' Naser Habib, 2 years old

DCI/PS recalls that one of the predominant reasons for restrictions enshrined in the ius in bello (the law governing the conduct of warfare, or international humanitarian law) is to regulate combatant behavior such that acts will not be taken which are so grave as to prevent the return to peace. At a time when international political actors are calling for a return to the logic of ‘durable solutions' to stop the current escalation in violence, DCI/PS asserts that nations at war remember no injuries as acutely as they remember the death of their children. Thus, DCI/PS believes that any effective solutions to the current crisis and the crisis of the future must include a reiterated commitment to the principles of international humanitarian law, and particularly those principles relating to the protection of the civilian population and civilian infrastructure. - link

Brutal US killing of unarmed Afghans

2006-08-09T07:43:00.000-07:00

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." - link

The Brilliantly Profitable Timing of the Alaska Oil Pipeline Shutdown

2006-08-09T07:40:00.000-07:00

Is the Alaska Pipeline corroded? You bet it is. Has been for more than a decade. Did British Petroleum shut the pipe yesterday to turn a quick buck on its negligence, to profit off the disaster it created? Just ask the "smart pig."

Years ago, I had the unhappy job of leading an investigation of British Petroleum's management of the Alaska pipeline system. I was working for the Chugach villages, the Alaskan Natives who own the shoreline slimed by the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker grounding.

Even then, courageous government inspectors and pipeline workers were screaming about corrosion all through the pipeline. I say "courageous" because BP, which owns 46% of the pipe and is supposed to manage the system, had a habit of hunting down and destroying the careers of those who warn of pipeline problems.

In one case, BP's CEO of Alaskan operations hired a former CIA expert to break into the home of a whistleblower, Chuck Hamel, who had complained of conditions at the pipe's tanker facility. BP tapped his phone calls with a US congressman and ran a surveillance and smear campaign against him. When caught, a US federal judge said BP's acts were "reminiscent of Nazi Germany."

This was not an isolated case. Captain James Woodle, once in charge of the pipe's Valdez terminus, was blackmailed into resigning the post when he complained of disastrous conditions there. The weapon used on Woodle was a file of faked evidence of marital infidelity. Nice guys, eh?

Now let's talk timing. BP's suddenly discovered corrosion necessitating an emergency shut-down of the line is the same corrosion Dan Lawn has been screaming about for 15 years. Lawn is a steel-eyed government inspector who has kept his job only because his union's lawyers have kept BP from having his head.

Indeed, it's pretty darn hard for BP to claim it is surprised to find corrosion this week when Lawn issued a damning report on corrosion right after a leak and spill were discovered on March 2 of this year.

Why shut the pipe now? The timing of a sudden inspection and fix of a decade-long problem has a suspicious smell. A precipitous shutdown in mid-summer, in the middle of Middle East war(s), is guaranteed to raise prices and reap monster profits for BP. The price of crude jumped $2.22 a barrel on the shutdown news to over $76. How lucky for BP which sells four million barrels of oil a day. Had BP completed its inspection and repairs a couple years back -- say, after Dan Lawn's tenth warning -- the oil market would have hardly noticed.

But $2 a barrel is just the beginning of BP's shut-down bonus. The Alaskan oil was destined for the California market which now faces a supply crisis at the very height of the summer travel season. The big winner is ARCO petroleum, the largest retailer in the Golden State. ARCO is a 100%-owned subsidiary of … British Petroleum.

BP could have fixed the pipeline problem this past winter, after their latest corrosion-caused oil spill. But then ARCO would have lost the summertime supply-squeeze windfall.

Enron Corporation was infamous for deliberately timing repairs to maximize profit. Would BP also manipulate the market in such a crude manner? Some US prosecutors think they did so in the US propane market. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) just six weeks ago charged the company with approving an Enron-style scheme to crank up the price of propane sold in poor rural communities in the US. One former BP exec has pleaded guilty.

Lord Browne, the imperious CEO of BP, has apologized for that scam, for the Alaska spill, for this week's shutdown and for the deaths in 2005 of 15 workers at the company's mortally sloppy refinery operation at Texas City, Texas.

I don't want readers to think BP isn't civic-minded. The company's US CEO, Bob Malone, was Co-Chairman of the Bush re-election campaign in Alaska. Mr. Bush, in turn, was so impressed with BP's care of Alaska's environment that he pushed again to open the state's arctic wildlife refuge (ANWR) to drilling by the BP consortium.

Indeed, you can go to Alaska today and see for yourself the evidence of BP's care of the wilderness. You can smell it: the crude oil still on the beaches from the Exxon Valdez spill.

Exxon took all the blame for the spill because they were dumb enough to have the company's name on the ship. But it was BP's pipeline managers who filed reports that oil spill containment equipment was sitting right at the site of the grounding near Bligh Island. However, the reports were bogus, the equipment wasn't there and so the beaches were poisoned. At the time, our investigators uncovered four-volume's worth of faked safety reports and concluded that BP was at least as culpable as Exxon for the 1,200 miles of oil-destroyed coastline.

Nevertheless, m'Lord Browne preens himself with his corporation's environmental record. We know BP cares about nature because they have lots of photos of solar panels in their annual reports -- and they've painted every one of their gas stations green.

The green paint-job is supposed to represent the oil giant's love of Mother Nature. But the good Lord, Mr. Browne, knows it stands for the color of the Yankee dollar.

BP claims the profitable timing of its Alaska pipe shutdown can be explained because they've only now run a "smart pig" through the pipes to locate the corrosion. The "pig" is an electronic drone that BP should have been using continuously, though they had not done so for 14 years. The fact that, in the middle of an oil crisis, they've run it through now, forcing the shutdown, reminds me, when I consider Lord Browne's closeness to George Bush, that the company's pig is indeed, very, very smart. - Greg Palast

Baghdad Burning: Summer of Goodbyes...

2006-08-09T07:39:00.000-07:00

Residents of Baghdad are systematically being pushed out of the city. Some families are waking up to find a Klashnikov bullet and a letter in an envelope with the words “Leave your area or else.” The culprits behind these attacks and threats are Sadr’s followers- Mahdi Army. It’s general knowledge, although no one dares say it out loud. In the last month we’ve had two different families staying with us in our house, after having to leave their neighborhoods due to death threats and attacks. It’s not just Sunnis- it’s Shia, Arabs, Kurds- most of the middle-class areas are being targeted by militias.

Other areas are being overrun by armed Islamists. The Americans have absolutely no control in these areas. Or maybe they simply don’t want to control the areas because when there’s a clash between Sadr’s militia and another militia in a residential neighborhood, they surround the area and watch things happen.

Since the beginning of July, the men in our area have been patrolling the streets. Some of them patrol the rooftops and others sit quietly by the homemade road blocks we have on the major roads leading into the area. You cannot in any way rely on Americans or the government. You can only hope your family and friends will remain alive- not safe, not secure- just alive. That’s good enough.

For me, June marked the first month I don’t dare leave the house without a hijab, or headscarf. I don’t wear a hijab usually, but it’s no longer possible to drive around Baghdad without one. It’s just not a good idea. (Take note that when I say ‘drive’ I actually mean ‘sit in the back seat of the car’- I haven’t driven for the longest time.) Going around bare-headed in a car or in the street also puts the family members with you in danger. You risk hearing something you don’t want to hear and then the father or the brother or cousin or uncle can’t just sit by and let it happen. I haven’t driven for the longest time. If you’re a female, you risk being attacked.

I look at my older clothes- the jeans and t-shirts and colorful skirts- and it’s like I’m studying a wardrobe from another country, another lifetime. There was a time, a couple of years ago, when you could more or less wear what you wanted if you weren’t going to a public place. If you were going to a friends or relatives house, you could wear trousers and a shirt, or jeans, something you wouldn’t ordinarily wear. We don’t do that anymore because there’s always that risk of getting stopped in the car and checked by one militia or another.

There are no laws that say we have to wear a hijab (yet), but there are the men in head-to-toe black and the turbans, the extremists and fanatics who were liberated by the occupation, and at some point, you tire of the defiance. You no longer want to be seen. I feel like the black or white scarf I fling haphazardly on my head as I walk out the door makes me invisible to a certain degree- it’s easier to blend in with the masses shrouded in black. If you’re a female, you don’t want the attention- you don’t want it from Iraqi police, you don’t want it from the black-clad militia man, you don’t want it from the American soldier. You don’t want to be noticed or seen.

I have nothing against the hijab, of course, as long as it is being worn by choice. Many of my relatives and friends wear a headscarf. Most of them began wearing it after the war. It started out as a way to avoid trouble and undue attention, and now they just keep it on because it makes no sense to take it off. What is happening to the country?

I realized how common it had become only in mid-July when M., a childhood friend, came to say goodbye before leaving the country. She walked into the house, complaining of the heat and the roads, her brother following closely behind. It took me to the end of the visit for the peculiarity of the situation to hit me. She was getting ready to leave before the sun set, and she picked up the beige headscarf folded neatly by her side. As she told me about one of her neighbors being shot, she opened up the scarf with a flourish, set it on her head like a pro, and pinned it snuggly under her chin with the precision of a seasoned hijab-wearer. All this without a mirror- like she had done it a hundred times over… Which would be fine, except that M. is Christian.

If M. can wear one quietly- so can I.

I’ve said goodbye this last month to more people than I can count. Some of the ‘goodbyes’ were hurried and furtive- the sort you say at night to the neighbor who got a death threat and is leaving at the break of dawn, quietly.

Some of the ‘goodbyes’ were emotional and long-drawn, to the relatives and friends who can no longer bear to live in a country coming apart at the seams.

Many of the ‘goodbyes’ were said stoically- almost casually- with a fake smile plastered on the face and the words, “See you soon”… Only to walk out the door and want to collapse with the burden of parting with yet another loved one.

During times like these I remember a speech Bush made in 2003: One of the big achievements he claimed was the return of jubilant ‘exiled’ Iraqis to their country after the fall of Saddam. I’d like to see some numbers about the Iraqis currently outside of the country you are occupying… Not to mention internally displaced Iraqis abandoning their homes and cities.

I sometimes wonder if we’ll ever know just how many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis left the country this bleak summer. I wonder how many of them will actually return. Where will they go? What will they do with themselves? Is it time to follow? Is it time to wash our hands of the country and try to find a stable life somewhere else? - link

The Lebanese Nakba and Israeli Ambitions

2006-08-09T07:36:00.000-07:00

Why did Israel remain in southern Lebanon after the departure of the PLO in 1982? The publicly stated reason was to assure the security of its northern border by neutralizing the resistance forces and by maintaining a "buffer" zone. However, it is clear that the most secure period for northern Israel since 1978 and perhaps earlier has been the period from 2000 to the present, when it had no occupation forces in Lebanon except for the Shebaa farms.

Many Lebanese and international observers suspect that the real purpose of Israel's leadership (as distinct from that of its population) was to seize and ultimately annex southern Lebanon up to the Litani river. If so, it is plausible to speculate that this may not have been the original intention, but rather evolved from the initial successes of Ariel Sharon, then commander of Israeli forces in Lebanon, in occupying the territory in question. The historical record seems to show that the Israeli leadership was divided about the wisdom of this action at the time, indicating that any possible thoughts of annexation would have to have been a later development.

Given Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, it may appear that such ideas were abandoned. However, it is prudent to recall that Israel's first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, always argued that Israel's "natural" northern frontier should be the Litani river, and that Moshe Dayan drew up the first plans for its conquest as early as 1956.

Is the current invasion another attempt to make this portion of the early Zionist dream come true? The Israeli military has already acknowledged that it has had a plan in place for Lebanon, which it is now implementing. In itself, this is not surprising; any competent military organization will keep a variety of contingency plans on the shelf. However, a closer look at the way the plan is unfolding provides clues to its (possibly unstated) intentions.

First, this invasion differs from all others in terms of the numbers of refugees. More than any other, it has successfully cleared south Lebanon of its inhabitants, and that process is continuing. The ostensible reason is to humanely continue its war against Hezbollah without harming the civilian population. However, if the absurdity of creating 750,000 refugees for humanitarian reasons is not self-evident, the civilian death toll belies the contention. How would Israel respond to an argument that it should remove 750,000 of its inhabitants in the north so that Hezbollah rockets could safely strike targets without harming civilians?

Second, some of the earliest targets of the invasion were the bridges, roads and sea access connecting the south with the rest of Lebanon and the outside world. The stated purpose was to deny Hezbollah the chance to bring in more rockets and munitions. However, military and paramilitary forces are usually much better equipped to cope with terrain challenges than are civilian traffic and commerce. An equally or more compelling reason would be to create the initial stages of a new border.

In these respects, Israel's current invasion resembles previous ones in Lebanon less than it does Plan Dalet of 1948, which cleared 78 per cent of the British mandate of Palestine of most of its Palestinian Arab population in order to create the state of Israel. Palestinians know this as al-nakba ("the catastrophe"), and the Palestinians thus evicted were never permitted to return to their homes.

A Lebanese nakba is taking shape in much the same way; even the numbers of refugees are roughly the same. The only other comparable Israeli action was in the Golan Heights in 1967, where nearly the entire population of 130,000 was put to flight. In both of the previous cases, the territories thus emptied of most of their indigenous populations were then incorporated into the state of Israel.

A similar process is happening in the occupied Palestinian West Bank, where native Palestinians are being driven from their lands by onerous restrictions, demolitions and land confiscations to make way for Jewish settlements so that the land may be annexed in the proposed "convergence" plan.

Will the newly created Lebanese refugees be permitted to return to their homes?

It can of course be argued that Israel's acceptance in principle of an eventual multinational force to take over the policing of south Lebanon shows its lack of territorial aspirations. However, it initially spurned such a suggestion and then acceded only under advice from the U.S., and even then only in return for U.S. assurances that there would be no ceasefire until Israel had been given time to accomplish its objectives. Furthermore, there is evidence that Israel is counting on such a force to fail. No international force would accept to go without an invitation from the Lebanese government, of which Hezbollah is a part, and Israel was counting on Hezbollah to veto the idea.

When Hezbollah accepted, Israel immediately accused it of insincerity and disregarded its acceptance.

Chances are that Hezbollah will not accept disarmament as part of the arrangement until its demands are satisfied, and that Israel will not accept to evacuate the Shebaa farms and release all Lebanese prisoners until Hezbollah disarms and the multinational force satisfies Israel's requirements, leaving a stalemate that Israel can try to use as justification to stay indefinitely.

Of course, Israel also recognizes that things do not always go as planned and that strategic retreats are sometimes necessary. The entire history of Israeli actions in Lebanon provides such lessons, as does the unanticipated tenacity and effectiveness of Hezbollah ground combat fighters in the current engagement. Furthermore, the Israeli public may be less than patient with such a plan, and might not tolerate it unless it achieves early successes with a minimum of casualties.

Israel may therefore find its ambitions frustrated once again. However, we should not underestimate the patience and persistence of the Israeli leadership in pursuing its long- term objectives, even if they may be at odds with those of the Israeli public. It therefore behooves the U.S. to recognize that Israel's interests are not the same as its own, and to inform its policies accordingly. Such recognition necessarily requires consideration of the legitimate rights and grievances of the peoples and states directly affected by Israel's territorial ambitions and military actions.

Paul Larudee is the former supervisor of a Ford Foundation project in Lebanon, a Fulbright-Hays lecturer to Lebanon and a contract U.S. government advisor to Saudi Arabia. He is one of seven volunteers of the International Solidarity Movement wounded by Israeli gunfire on April 1,2002. - link

Because 50% of the U.S. is certifiably STUPID

2006-08-09T07:33:00.000-07:00

You don't believe me?

See: Half of US still believes Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

The government thinks they can pull one of these off, again:

War Pimp Alert: Yellow Cake II - Iran's plot to mine uranium in Africa : IRAN is seeking to import large consignments of bomb-making uranium from the African mining area that produced the Hiroshima bomb, an investigation has revealed.

Yo, stupid Americans! Wake UPPPP! They don't even bother making up new lies to fool you, they just recycle the old stupid lies that EVERYONE else on earth laughs at. That's how DUMB your own government knows you are.

Thanks! - link

Israel’s Conspiracy Theories

2006-08-09T07:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, after Hezbollah killed12 Israeli soldiers preparing to fight in Lebanon, Israeli Prime Minister Olmert met with fifty of his mouth pieces to inform them of the new talking points. In preparation for the widening of aggression against all of Lebanon, Hezbollah areas and not, they needed to get some new spin ready.

"Our enemy is not Hezbollah, but Iran, which employs Hezbollah as its agent," Olmert told his spokepersons.

Israel often constructs a mythical puppeteer, far bigger than the opponent it is fighting, to either exaggerate its victories or minimize the meaning of its defeats.

In March 2002, a Palestinian sniper killed 10 Israeli soldiers with a primitive WW2 rifle, the attack was so potent, 10 out of 15 rounds fired were deadly. Sitting in a hill opposed to military post, the sniper withdrew unharmed. It sent shock waves within the Israeli military establishment.

It was so hard for the Israelis that a Palestinian could have carried out such an attack; they claimed an IRA member must have done it. They issued alerts to look out for any suspected IRA members in Palestine, and called the Irish Authorities to investigate if any IRA fighters traveled to Palestine. Of course, Israel's wished never materialized. A couple of years later, they arrested a Palestinian man in his late sixties and charged him with the attack.

Similarly, Israel, not being able to face its failure to defeat Hezbollah, will attach the words "Syria" and "Iran" to every mention of the group. This mantra particularly intensifies when Hezbollah carries out sophisticated attacks, like flying reconnaissance drones over Israeli targets, and the bombing of a warship with an advanced guided missile three weeks ago. Israel not only blamed Iran for supplying the weapon, but also it insisted that there was Iranian advisor present for Hezbollah to be able to fire such a missile.

It is common knowledge that Iran supports and supplies Hezbollah, but by no means to the extent the US supports and supplies Israel (billions of dollars a year). Nor does that make Hezbollah a foreign proxy.

Israel continues to claim that arms are still being shipped to Hezbollah as the fighting goes on, despite the near complete destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure, particularly roads, bridges, airports, and seaports. Such are meant to mask the fact that Hezbollah had large stockpiles of weapons, which Israel's attacks failed to destroy.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Israel portrayed the Soviet Union as the enemy behind the enemy during its wars with neighboring Arab countries. Israel's victory then is behind the current myth-like reputation of the Israeli army, as it 'not only defeated the Arab armies, but also their Soviet backing.' Israel also cultivated the fruits of that strategy through the massive US support it won on ideological grounds.

Israel losing this fight has immense political effects on Israel. An Israel that is not capable of defeating Hezbollah is not the strategic ally the pro-Israel lobby portrays in justifying massive and unconditional American political and financial support to Israel. As a result, the longer this fight goes on -- the further away victory seems for the Israeli army -- the more focused the Israeli PR machine becomes on building up the straw men behind Hezbollah, Syria and Iran.

The Sunday attack that killed 12 Israeli soldiers was so humiliating to Israel's military might, the mythical puppeteer no longer satisfies the fury. Israel revealed its newest measure, a higher level of hatred, rage, and revenge. It announced it would target "strategic civilian infrastructure" and "symbols of the Lebanese government." When the self-deluded "civilized" get desperate, we see war crimes painted as strategy.

Aside from being immoral, unethical, illegal collective punishment, Israel's actions provide an insight into the feeling of defeat that is beginning to wear down the Israeli leadership. - link