IRAN: COUNTDOWN TO WAR

FPIF.org: War or Rumors of War?

What's going on with the current bustle around U.S. naval stations? According to Time, the Navy has issued “Prepare to Deploy Orders” (PTDOs) to a strike group including minesweepers, a submarine, an Aegis class cruiser, and a mine hunter. Taken alongside disclosures that the chief of naval operations asked his planners for a rundown of how a blockade of Iranian oil ports would work, these military preparations led Time to conclude cautiously that the United States “may be preparing for war with Iran.”
Military officials downplay these recent moves as routine. But given the administration's recent history of manufacturing threat, misreading intelligence, and misrepresenting war plans, it is tempting to read between the lines—especially when increasingly hot rhetoric is coming from Washington.

USA

ICH: War is Peace
By Irene Rheinwald

“Imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to extract confessions . . . and the deportation of whole populations – not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive.”

George Orwell penned these words over five decades ago, yet the sentiments are sadly germane to today’s “war on terror”. Israel and the United States, as self-styled purveyors of democracy and freedom, have ironically fallen into their own propaganda trap. In seeking to rationalize aggressions towards Arabs and Muslims, collectively termed “terrorists”, both nations employ techniques reminiscent of totalitarian regimes, and decry the “enemy” as fascist, irrational “evildoers” naturally bent upon violence. To a certain extent, the techniques succeeded. Inflammatory, racist, rhetoric cultivates a climate of xenophobic paranoia. Entire groups are ostracized and reviled without just cause. Recall how Nazism made scapegoats of minorities, most notably the Jews. Today we have the vaguely defined “terrorist”. What is a “terrorist”? Someone, anyone, who loathes freedom, liberty, the God given pursuit of materialism, and democracy as practiced by George W. Bush with the assistance of the Patriot Act.

USA

ICH: Woodward’s 60 Minutes bloodbath
by Mike Whitney

-- Veteran journalist Bob Woodward can always be counted on to tell the truth… after all the other options have been exhausted. His new book doesn’t veer too far from the pattern he’s followed his entire career; one minute he’s the “kingmaker” dishing up hearty-helpings of literary tripe like “Bush at War” and “Plan of Attack” and the next minute he’s ramming a scimitar into the lower lumbar region of his prey.

That’s Bob, the consummate insider and part-time assassin whose real job is not to maintain an “informed public” or preserve the free flow of information, but to use the privately-owned media in a way that serves the exclusive interests of the ruling elite.

Most of what Woodward said on 60 Minutes was accurate and interesting. Bush has deceived the American people about the slow-rolling catastrophe in Iraq. He’s obfuscated the truth about the 800 to 900 attacks on American troops per week and, yes, Rumsfeld is the greatest bungler in the history of the Republic. But why has Woodward decided to spill the beans now? And, how long has he been withholding this information from the public? (some of the crucial details date back to 2003!?!) And why would Woodward organize a book tour that is clearly designed to obliterate Bush’s credibility just 6 weeks before the election?

Online Video: State Of Denial
Bob Woodward 60 Minute Interview

CHAVEZ AT THE UN

Rense: Rise Up Against The Empire
Speech At The UN General Assembly
by Hugo Chavez

The devil is right at home. The devil, the devil himself, is right in the house.

"And the devil came here yesterday. Yesterday the devil came here. Right here." [crosses himself] "And it smells of sulfur still today.

Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world. Truly. As the owner of the world.

IRAQ

IPS: U.S. Resorting to 'Collective Punishment'
By Dahr Jamail

RAMADI, Sep 18 (IPS) - U.S. forces are taking to collective punishment of civilians in several cities across the al-Anabar province west of Baghdad, residents and officials say.

IRAN: ROAD TO WAR

Time: What Would War Look Like?
By Michael Duffy

A flurry of military maneuvers in the Middle East increases speculation that conflict with Iran is no longer quite so unthinkable. Here's how the U.S. would fight such a war--and the huge price it would have to pay to win it

USA

Independent via ICH: The American Military's Cult of Cruelty
by Robert Fisk

In the week that George Bush took to fantasising that his blood-soaked "war on terror" would lead the 21st century into a "shining age of human liberty" I went through my mail bag to find a frightening letter addressed to me by an American veteran whose son is serving as a lieutenant colonel and medical doctor with US forces in Baghdad. Put simply, my American friend believes the change of military creed under the Bush administration--from that of "soldier" to that of "warrior"--is encouraging American troops to commit atrocities.

RETAIL

Spacehijackers.org:A-Z Retail Tricks To Make You Shop

A - Aisle Order – Some customers, particularly men, tend to simply shop for what they want, walking down an aisle grabbing what they want, turning back and walking the way they came, this is called the 'Boomerang Effect'. In order to maximise shopper and produce contact time, shops therefore place major items and brands in the middle of aisles ensuring that from any direction the customer has to walk the furthest to reach them.

B - Baby Powder – Some UK baby shops now add Baby Powder to the air conditioning to remind people of new-born’s and relax them.

ISRAEL

ICH: State of Chuzpah
by Uri Avnery

THE PRESIDENT of Israel is supposed to symbolize the common denominator of all our citizens. Therefore it is proper for him to symbolize this trait, too. And indeed, it is difficult to imagine a more quintessential chutzpah than the behavior of His Excellency, President Moshe Katzav. He is the supreme symbol of Israeli chutzpah. Katzav has been accused of the sexual harassment of several women who worked for him in the President's office, as well as in his earlier public offices. At least three of them accused him of rape. Such accusations are, of course, far from a conviction

CENSORED

Project Censored: Top 25 Censored news stories of 2007

#1 Future of Internet Debate Ignored by Media

#2 Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technologies to Iran

#3 Oceans of the World in Extreme Danger

#4 Hunger and Homelessness Increasing in the US

#5 High-Tech Genocide in Congo

SECRET CIA PRISONS

NBC: Bush Admits, Defends Secret CIA Prisons

WASHINGTON -- President George W. Bush on Wednesday said for the first time that some suspected terrorist leaders have been held by the CIA outside the United States in secret locations.

His comments marked the first time the administration has acknowledged the existence of CIA prisons, which have been a source of friction between Washington and some allies in Europe. The administration has come under criticism for its treatment of terrorism detainees. European Union lawmakers said the CIA was conducting clandestine flights in Europe to take terror suspects to countries where they could face torture.

IRAQ WAR

Mother Jones: Lie by Lie

Mother Jones has a very interesting Flash Timeline with all the lies in the build up to the Iraq War.

Check it out

IRAN, SYRIA NEXT?

Global Research: The Next Phase of the Middle East War

Israel's war on Lebanon is an integral part of a US sponsored "military roadmap".

The war on Lebanon, which has resulted in countless atrocities including the destruction of the nation's economy and civilian infrastructure, is "a stage" in a sequence of carefully planned military operations.

Lebanon constitutes a strategic corridor between Israel and North-western Syria. The underlying objective of this war was the militarization of Lebanon, including the stationing of foreign troops, as a precondition for carrying out the next phase of a broader military agenda.

onfirmed by official statements and military documents, the US in close coordination with Britain (and in consultation with its NATO partners), is planning to launch a war directed against Iran and Syria. US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton has already initiated the draft of a UN Security Council resolution with a view to imposing sanctions on Tehran for its alleged (nonexistent) nuclear weapons program.

BANKSY DOES PARIS

BBC: Paris Hilton targeted in CD prank

Hundreds of Paris Hilton albums have been tampered with in the latest stunt by "guerrilla artist" Banksy.

Flickr-set

IRAQ

Arab News via Rense: Brits Abandon Major Southern Iraq Base

-- On Friday, Aug. 25, the Washington Post published a startling story from its Baghdad bureau. I can do no better than to quote its opening paragraph: "British troops abandoned a major base in southern Iraq on Thursday and prepared to wage guerrilla warfare along the Iranian border to combat weapons smuggling, a move that anti-American cleric Moqtada Sadr called the first expulsion of US-led coalition forces from an Iraqi urban center. 'This is the first Iraqi city that has kicked out the occupier!' trumpeted a message from Sadr's office that played on car-mounted speakers in Amarah. 'We have to celebrate this occasion!'"

Details painted the larger picture. Local resentment had boiled into anger when British soldiers entered a mosque to make arrests. Insurgents, clearly loyal to Sadr, began shelling the British base, Camp Abu Naji, which had 1,200 soldiers and was on the border of Iran. In simple language, the British withdrew from the camp, which was looted when they left, so clearly the withdrawal was less than orderly. The decision may have been encouraged by the fact that "the 2nd Battalion of the Iraqi Army's 4th Brigade mutinied".

MIDDLE EAST

Commondreams: Israel Prepares for the Next War

As Israelis read their newspapers, the message comes through loud and clear: Get ready for the next war, the really big war. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert gave his people an ominous warning yesterday when he “toured northern Israel Thursday and visited, among other venues, the hospital in Nahariya directly hit by rocket fire during the Lebanon war. ‘We must be prepared for (various) scenarios and ready for anything,’ he said. ‘We must push forward deadlines and be ready for the possibility of receiving casualties under all conditions.’ … ‘At this time we shall prepare for any possible scenario of a threat, in full force.’”

But who will be the enemy? “The head of the Israel Defense Forces Military Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that after the war with Hizbullah, Syria will try to reclaim the Golan Heights through either diplomatic or military means,” Yediot Aharonot reports.

ISRAEL

The Sun: Olmert, Minister in Clash Over Returning the Golan to Syria

TEL AVIV, Israel — Dissent within Israel's war Cabinet appeared to spill into the open yesterday with the country's minister for internal security defying an order from Prime Minister Olmert and publicly saying that if Syria was interested, he would endorse negotiating the return of the Golan Heights to the Baathist regime in Damascus in exchange for peace.

The statements from Avi Dichter — a former chief of Israel's FBI, known as the Shabak — seemed directly to contradict the prime minister, who said on Sunday before the weekly Cabinet meeting that members of the government should not discuss possible Golan negotiations.

ISRAEL

ICH: Restarting the 34 Day War
By Mike Whitney

Israel is in a state of post-war trauma. Its 34 day pounding of Lebanon achieved none of the stated goals and has left the public furious at the incompetence of the Olmert government. 118 soldiers were killed in the conflict and Israel’s celebrated "power of deterrents" has been smashed to smithereens. Nothing was gained. In the north, industry was brought to a complete standstill while the local people were shunted off to fallout shelters for weeks on end.

IRAQ

Tom Dispatch: 7 Facts You Might Not Know about the Iraq War

With a tenuous cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon holding, the ever-hotter war in Iraq is once again creeping back onto newspaper front pages and towards the top of the evening news. Before being fully immersed in daily reports of bomb blasts, sectarian violence, and casualties, however, it might be worth considering some of the just-under-the-radar-screen realities of the situation in that country. Here, then, is a little guide to understanding what is likely to be a flood of new Iraqi developments -- a few enduring, but seldom commented upon, patterns central to the dynamics of the Iraq war, as well as to the fate of the American occupation and Iraqi society.

CHOMSKY ON LEBONON

The Anatolian: Chomsky: UN Security Council acts within constraints set by great powers
Interviewed by Nermeen Al Mufti

UN Security Council Resolution 1701 came very late and posed a fragile ceasefire, yet there will be another war as long as the Bush-backed Israel has the pretext of "safer borders," and Bush himself is insisting on going further in his war against terrorism.

Eminent Professor Noam Chomsky, in this interview with The New Anatolian, speaks about Israeli-Lebanese war and the UN Security Council.

ISRAEL BREAKING CEASE-FIRE

ABC News: Israeli Warplanes Roar Over Lebanon

With concern mounting over the fragile truce, Israel sent war planes Monday over the coastal city of Tripoli, some 35 miles north of Beirut, and over Baalbek, scene of an Israeli commando raid two days ago which Israel said was to disrupt weapons shipments for Hezbollah from Syria.

Lebanon considers overflights a violation of the U.N. resolution that ended 34 days of fighting last week.

Reuters: Three hizbollah fighters killed in Israel clash-TV

DUBAI, Aug 21 (Reuters) - Three Hizbollah fighters were killed and four Israeli soldiers were wounded in a clash in south Lebanon on Monday, Al Arabiya television reported. The station did not give further details in its news flash. An Israeli army spokesman said earlier that Israeli troops had shot and wounded three Hizbollah guerrillas

USA/ISRAEL

Foreign Policy in Focus: How Washington Goaded Israel

There is increasing evidence that Israel instigated a disastrous war on Lebanon largely at the behest of the United States. The Bush administration was set on crippling Hezbollah...

..Israel was a willing partner. Although numerous Israeli press reports indicate that some Israeli officials, including top military officials, are furious at Bush for pushing Olmert into war, the Israeli government had been planning the attack since 2004. According to a July 21 article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Israel had briefed U.S. officials with details of the plans, including PowerPoint presentations, in what the newspaper described as “revealing detail.” Political science professor Gerald Steinberg of Bar-Ilan University told the Chronicle that “[O]f all of Israel's wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared. In a sense, the preparation began in May 2000, immediately after the Israeli withdrawal …”

ENGLAND

Guardian: Ryanair threatens government over airport security

Ryanair today threatened to sue the government for compensation unless airport security measures are returned to normal within seven days.

Michael O'Leary, the outspoken chief executive of Ryanair, described the new restrictions as "farcical Keystone Cops security measures that don't add anything except to block up airports", as he issued the ultimatum.

At a news conference in London, Mr O'Leary, described as "nonsense" the increased body checks and the new carry-on restrictions. Flanked by a Winston Churchill figure - in reference to the company's advertising campaign - he went on to say that the disruption at airports handed extremists a public relations victory.

TERRORISM/RACISM

Daily Mail: Mutiny as passengers refuse to fly until Asians are removed

Passengers refuse to allow holiday jet to take off until two Asian men are thrown off plan

British holidaymakers staged an unprecedented mutiny - refusing to allow their flight to take off until two men they feared were terrorists were forcibly removed.

"The Goverment Propaganda seems to work"

LEBANON

ICH: From Mania to Depression
by Uri Avnery

Thirty three days of war. The longest of our wars since 1949.

On the Israeli side: 154 dead--117 of them soldiers. 3970 rockets launched against us, 37 civilians dead, more than 422 civilians wounded.

On the Lebanese side: about a thousand dead civilians, thousands wounded. An unknown number of Hizbullah fighters dead and wounded.

More than a million refugees on both sides.

So what has been achieved for this terrible price?

AFGHANISTAN

AP: Afghan opium cultivation hits a record

ABUL, Afghanistan - Opium cultivation in
Afghanistan has hit record levels — up by more than 40 percent from 2005 — despite hundreds of millions in counternarcotics money, Western officials told The Associated Press.

The increase could have serious repercussions for an already grave security situation, with drug lords joining the Taliban-led fight against Afghan and international forces.

IRAQ

New York Times: July deadliest month in Iraq, tallies show

BAGHDAD More Iraqi civilians appear to have been killed in July than in any other month of the war, according to national and morgue statistics, suggesting that the much-vaunted Baghdad security plan started in June by the new government had failed.

An average of more than 110 Iraqis were killed per day in July, according to figures from Iraq's Health Ministry and the Baghdad morgue. At least 3,438 civilians died violently that month, a 9 percent increase over the total in June and nearly twice as many as in January.

USA

Los Angeles Times: Group Says Iran Is 'Not a Crisis'

WASHINGTON — Seeking to counter the White House's depiction of its Middle East policies as crucial to the prevention of terrorist attacks at home, 21 former generals, diplomats and national security officials will release an open letter tomorrow arguing that the administration's "hard line" has actually undermined U.S. security.

The letter comes as President Bush has made a series of appearances and statements, including a visit Tuesday to the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean, Va., seeking to promote the administration's record on security issues in advance of November's midterm congressional elections.

The rhetoric has increased since last week's Democratic primary in Connecticut, in which antiwar political newcomer Ned Lamont defeated three-term Sen. Joe Lieberman to become the party's Senate candidate — a victory that senior administration officials are describing as a sign that Democrats are embracing their party's extreme left.

"for me as european it is kinda funny to see what the americans are calling "extreme left" but maybe it is because they just have have a two party system where both parties are acting as big-business frontgroups""

LEBANON

ICH: Lebanese deaths, and Israeli war crimes, kept off the balance sheet
by Jonathan Steele

During Israel’s war against the people of Lebanon, our media, politicians and diplomats have colluded with the aggressors by distracting us with irrelevancies, by concocting controversies, and by framing the language of diplomacy. In the fragile truce that is currently holding while Lebanon waits for Israel to withdraw, we are simply getting more of the same.

One example of the many distractions during the war that neatly reveals their true purpose is the “faked Reuters photograph” affair. The supposed scandal of a Lebanese photographer tampering with a picture to add and darken smoke from an Israeli missile attack -- to little or no effect, it should be noted -- has not only been decried by activists on Zionist websites but amplified by mainstream commentators into a debate about whether we can trust the images of this war.

ISRAEL

Teheran Times: Olmert may not survive this disastrous war

The ceasefire in southern Lebanon will not hold. Israel will probably lose more soldiers killed in combat in the next month than in the past month (119). Ehud Olmert will probably no longer be prime minister of Israel by the end of this year. And it is all too likely that Binyamin Netanyahu will take his place.

The UN-sponsored ceasefire will not hold because Hezbollah has not been defeated. Despite a month of pounding by Israeli bombs and artillery, it still holds at least 80 percent of the territory south of the Litani river: in most places, Israeli forces have advanced no more than a few miles (kilometers) from the frontier. In the last few days before the ceasefire, Hezbollah was launching twice as many rockets into northern Israel as its daily average in the first week of the war.

LEBANON

Independent via ICH: In the face of Bush's lies, it's left to Assad to tell the truth
by Robert Fisk

In the sparse Baathist drawing rooms of Damascus, reality often seems a long way away. But it was a sign of the times that President Bashar al-Assad was able to bring the great and the good of Damascus to their feet by the simple token of telling the truth - which no other Arab leader has chosen to do these past five weeks: that the Lebanese Hizbollah guerrilla army has, in effect, won this round of their war with Israel.

LEBANON/IRAN

Democracy Now: Seymour Hersh: U.S. Helped Plan Israeli Attack, Cheney "Convinced" Assault on Lebanon Could Serve as Prelude to Preemptive Attack on Iran

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reports in this week's issue of the New Yorker that Israeli officials visited the White House earlier this summer to get a "green light" for an attack on Lebanon. The Bush administration approved, Hersh says, in part to remove Hezbollah as a deterrent to a potential US bombing of Iran. [includes rush transcript]

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LEBANON/IRAN

New Yorker: Washington’s interests in Israel’s war.
by Seymour M. Hersh

Issue of 2006-08-21 --In the days after Hezbollah crossed from Lebanon into Israel, on July 12th, to kidnap two soldiers, triggering an Israeli air attack on Lebanon and a full-scale war, the Bush Administration seemed strangely passive. “It’s a moment of clarification,” President George W. Bush said at the G-8 summit, in St. Petersburg, on July 16th. “It’s now become clear why we don’t have peace in the Middle East.” He described the relationship between Hezbollah and its supporters in Iran and Syria as one of the “root causes of instability,” and subsequently said that it was up to those countries to end the crisis. Two days later, despite calls from several governments for the United States to take the lead in negotiations to end the fighting, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that a ceasefire should be put off until “the conditions are conducive.”

"a must read"

LEBANON

Haaretz: IDF general: Troops lacking food can steal from Lebanese stores

"If our fighters deep in Lebanese territory are left without food our water, I believe they can break into local Lebanese stores to solve that problem," Brigadier General Avi Mizrahi, the head of the Israel Defense Forces logistics branch, said Monday.

Mizrahi's comments followed complaints by IDF soldiers regarding the lack of food on the front lines.

"If what they need to do is take water from the stores, they can take," Mizrahi told Army Radio.

"The most moral army in the world"

LEBANON

Independent via ICH: As the 6am ceasefire takes effect... the real war begins
by Robert Fisk in Beirut

The real war in Lebanon begins today. The world may believe - and Israel may believe - that the UN ceasefire due to come into effect at 6am today will mark the beginning of the end of the latest dirty war in Lebanon after up to 1,000 Lebanese civilians and more than 30 Israeli civilians have been killed. But the reality is quite different and will suffer no such self-delusion: the Israeli army, reeling under the Hizbollah's onslaught of the past 24 hours, is now facing the harshest guerrilla war in its history. And it is a war they may well lose.

CHOMSKY

YNET: Apocalypse Near

Following intellectuals' letter, Prof. Noam Chomsky explains his doctrine, discusses danger of Israel's nukes compared to 'Iranian threat,' global media's role in escalating Mideast conflict and US's place in picture

LEBANON

Axcess: Iran to Provide Hezbollah with Anti-Aircraft and Other Weapons System

New York - While the Israeli forces have been able to maintain total air supremacy in the skies over Lebanon, Iran is preparing to turn over state-of-the-art anti-aircraft weapons systems to Hezbollah for use against Israeli military planes, according to a report in Friday's Jane's Defense Weekly.

Jane's reported that during a strategy meeting last month, Hezbollah requested that its Iranian sponsors "accelerate and extend the scope of weapon shipments from Iran to the Islamic Resistance, particularly advanced missiles against ground and air targets."

LEBANON

Reuters: Truce goes into effect to end war

Guns fell silent across southern Lebanon on Monday after a U.N.-brokered truce went into effect to end five weeks of fighting between Israel and Hizbollah that killed more than 1,250 people and wounded thousands.

Diplomats expect the truce to be fragile -- tens of thousands of Israeli troops remain in southern Lebanon, and they are not expected to withdraw fully until an international peacekeeping force arrives alongside Lebanese troops.

QUOTES OF THE DAY

“To those countries who claim that we are using disproportionate force, I have only this to say: You’re damn right we are.”
- Dan Gillerman, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations at a pro-Israel Rally in New York



"Everyone in southern Lebanon is a terrorist and is connected to Hezbollah"
-Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon on July 27

LEBANON

Independent via ICH: Entire Lebanese family killed in Israeli attack on hospital
by Robert Fisk

An attack on a hospital, the killing of an entire Lebanese family, the seizure of five men in Baalbek and a new civilian death toll - 468 men, women and children - marked the 22nd day of Israel's latest war on Lebanon.

The Israelis claimed that helicopter-borne soldiers had seized senior Hizbollah leaders although one of them turned out to be a local Baalbek grocer. In a village near the city, Israeli air strikes killed the local mayor's son and brother and five children in their family.

The battle for Lebanon was fast moving out of control last night. Lebanese troops abandoned many of their checkpoints and European diplomats were warning their colleagues that militiamen were taking over the positions. Up to 8,000 Israeli troops were reported to have crossed the border by last night in what was publicised as a military advance towards the Litani river. But far more soldiers would be needed to secure so large an area of southern Lebanon.

The obscene score-card for death in this latest war now stands as follows:
508 Lebanese civilians, 46 Hizbollah guerrillas, 26 Lebanese soldiers, 36 Israeli soldiers and 19 Israeli civilians.

In other words, Hizbollah is killing more Israeli soldiers than civilians and the Israelis are killing far more Lebanese civilians than they are guerrillas

LEBANON: QANA

ICH: Pictures From Qana
Warning: Graphic images depicting the reality and horror of Israel's Invasion and destruction of Lebanon

ICH: Video Report of QANA Massacre

Witnesses said the early-morning strike hit the three-storey building where families had been sheltering in the basement, crushing it sideways into an enormous crater.

One survivor said the "bombing was so intense that no-one could move".

Elderly, women and children were among those killed in the raid, which wrought destruction over a wide area.

This report contains some images you may find distressing

07/30/06 BBC Report - Runtime 3 Minutes

LEBANON: MASSACRE

AP: '57 killed' as Israeli air strike hits children

Dozens of children were feared dead today after Israeli missiles struck the southern Lebanese village of Qana, flattening houses on top of sleeping residents. Survivors said that more than 50 adults and children had died.

The Israeli army said missiles had been fired from the area before the 1am air strike in which a three-story building took a direct hit.

Rescuers aided by villagers were digging by hand to look for casualties.

The bodies of at least 27 children were found in the rubble, said Abu Shadi Jradi, a civil defence official at the scene. At least 10 children's bodies had been pulled out, placed in plastic bags and loaded in ambulances, he said.

LEBANON

ICH: Mobilize to avenge the blood of Qana
by Uri Avnery

George Bush and his vassal, Tony Blair, are no statesmen. They are war criminals. They claim to be pious Christians. They are the physical manifestation of the devil himself.

Interviewed by the BBC's political editor, Nick Robinson, on Saturday 30 July, Blair repeatedly declined to call for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon.

"Give Israel time to do its job of destruction. Let Israel annihilate Hizbullah and, preferably, Syria as well. When this is done, we shall call for a ceasefire." This is the conclusion which any reasonable person watching Blair's interview would draw. Indeed, it is the conclusion which Nick Robinson himself drew - he said so himself in conversation with the television news presenter after the interview.

Well, Israel has done its job. At least 60 innocent civilians, including many children, were murdered on Sunday 30 July, the very next day after Blair's interview, when Israeli warplanes bombed the basement in which they were sheltering. And still, Bush's vassal will not call for an immediate ceasefire. The closest he would come to this is to call for a ceasefire "as soon as possible", i.e. when Israel has completed its job of murder and destruction.

LEBANON

Independent via ICH: 'How can we stand by and allow this to go on?'
by Robert Fisk

They wrote the names of the dead children on their plastic shrouds. "Mehdi Hashem, aged seven - Qana," was written in felt pen on the bag in which the little boy's body lay. "Hussein al-Mohamed, aged 12 - Qana',' "Abbas al-Shalhoub, aged one - Qana.'' And when the Lebanese soldier went to pick up Abbas's little body, it bounced on his shoulder as the boy might have done on his father's shoulder on Saturday. In all, there were 56 corpses brought to the Tyre government hospital and other surgeries, and 34 of them were children. When they ran out of plastic bags, they wrapped the small corpses in carpets. Their hair was matted with dust, most had blood running from their noses.

You must have a heart of stone not to feel the outrage that those of us watching this experienced yesterday. This slaughter was an obscenity, an atrocity - yes, if the Israeli air force truly bombs with the "pinpoint accuracy'' it claims, this was also a war crime. Israel claimed that missiles had been fired by Hizbollah gunmen from the south Lebanese town of Qana - as if that justified this massacre. Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, talked about "Muslim terror" threatening "western civilisation" - as if the Hizbollah had killed all these poor people.

LEBANON

Independent via ICH: Under fire in Beirut
by Robert Fisk

In his second weekly dispatch from the front line, our veteran war reporter confesses he was so scared after one attack that he could not put pen to paper

To Sidon. Ed Cody has found a cool, 120-mile-an-hour driver called Hassan - he has a black Mercedes which I nickname "Death Car" (because that will be the fate of anyone who gets in our way) and we zip down the coast road and turn east into the hills at Naameh, where the Israelis have just blown the bridge.

Thirty years ago, Cody was an Associated Press correspondent in Beirut and taught me how to cover wars. "Get in the car, drive to the battle and find out what the arseholes are doing," he used to say. Cody is from Oregon, a slim, brilliant, highly subversive journalist who is now Beijing correspondent for the Washington Post. A great guy to travel with, eyes sharp for F-16s, brave without being a poseur, fluent in Arabic, he understands the dirty war we are watching and thrives on cynicism.

"Look," he says, pointing to a blown-up highway interchange. "It's a terrorist bridge! And if you take the road to Zahle, you'll find a burned out terrorist flour and grain lorry!" If the world became a better place, I fear Cody would contemplate suicide.

LEBANON

Wayne Madsen Report:

July 28, 2006 -- Countering the spin. Hezbollah sources have an entirely different story about the incident that triggered the Israeli attack on Lebanon. The counter-story lends credence to the pre-meditated nature of a plan that was hatched in a three-way meeting between Dick Cheney, Binyamin Netanyahu, and Natan Sharansky at an American Enterprise Institute conference in Colorado last month.

Hezbollah reports that on July 12, two Israeli Defense Force (IDF) troops were captured by Hezbollah after they entered Lebanese territory. Hezbollah put out feelers that they would entertain a prisoner swap, something that had occurred many times in the past. However, already looking for an incident on the Israeli-Lebanese border, the Israeli government dispatched a Merkava-2 tank into Lebanon to retrieve its two captured troops. The tank hit a land mine, killing four Israeli soldiers. Haaretz confirmed that the tank was destroyed by a mine and not in a Hezbollah attack.

The neo-con spin machine, including George W. Bush, claims that Hezbollah entered Israel in an unprovoked attack and kidnapped the two Israelis.

LEBANON

CSM: Israeli strikes may boost Hizbullah base


The stakes are high for Hizbullah, but it seems it can count on an unprecedented swell of public support that cuts across sectarian lines.According to a poll released by the Beirut Center for Research and Information, 87 percent of Lebanese support Hizbullah's fight with Israel, a rise of 29 percent on a similar poll conducted in February. More striking, however, is the level of support for Hizbullah's resistance from non-Shiite communities. Eighty percent of Christians polled supported Hizbullah along with 80 percent of Druze and 89 percent of Sunnis.

Lebanese no longer blame Hizbullah for sparking the war by kidnapping the Israeli soldiers, but Israel and the US instead.

LEBANON

ICH: 'Everything In My Life Is Destroyed, So I Will Fight Them'
by Dahr Jamail

"I am in Hezbollah because I care," the fighter, who agreed to the interview on condition of anonymity, told me. "I care about my people, my country, and defending them from the Zionist aggression." I jotted furiously in my note pad while sitting in the back seat of his car. We were parked not far from Dahaya, the district in southern Beirut which is being bombed by Israeli warplanes as we talk.

LEBANON

Independent: On a Red Cross mission of mercy when Israeli air force came calling
by Robert Fisk


It was supposed to be a routine trip across the Lebanese killing fields for the brave men and women of the International Red Cross. Sylvie Thoral was the "team leader" of our two vehicles, a 38-year-old Frenchwoman with dark brown hair and eyes like steel. The Israelis had been informed and had given what the ICRC likes to call its "green light" to the route. And, of course, we almost died.

LEBANON

AP: UN Officials: Observers Asked Israel 10 Times To Halt Bombs

U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon called the Israeli military 10 times over a six-hour period to ask it to halt its nearby bombing before their observation post was hit, killing four people, according to details of a preliminary U.N. report on the incident released to The Associated Press on Wednesday.

During each phone call, an Israeli official promised to halt the bombing, according to a U.N. official who had seen the preliminary report.

The U.N. peacekeepers at the post said the area within a kilometer of the post was hit with precision munitions, including 17 bombs and 12 artillery shells, four of which directly hit the post Tuesday, the report said.

LEBANON

ICH: Is Beirut Burning?
by Uri Avnery

Tel Aviv - "IT SEEMS that Nasrallah survived," Israeli newspapers announced, after 23 tons of bombs were dropped on a site in Beirut, where the Hizbullah leader was supposedly hiding in a bunker.

An interesting formulation. A few hours after the bombing, Nazrallah had given an interview to Aljazeera television. Not only did he look alive, but even composed and confident. He spoke about the bombardment - proof that the interview was recorded on the same day.

So what does "it seems that" mean? Very simple: Nasrallah pretends to be alive, but you can't believe an Arab. Everyone knows that Arabs always lie. That's in their very nature, as Ehud Barak once pronounced.

The killing of the man is a national aim, almost the main aim of the war. This is, perhaps, the first war in history waged by a state in order to kill one person. Until now, only the Mafia thought along those lines. Even the British in World War II did not proclaim that their aim was to kill Hitler. On the contrary, they wanted to catch him alive, in order to put him on trial. Probably that's what the Americans wanted, too, in their war against Saddam Hussein.

LEBANON

Independent: Smoke signals from the battle of Bint Jbeil send a warning to Israel
by Robert Fisk

Qlaya, Southern Lebanon -- Is it possible - is it conceivable - that Israel is losing its war in Lebanon?

From this hill village in the south of the country, I am watching the clouds of brown and black smoke rising from its latest disaster in the Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil: up to 13 Israeli soldiers dead, and others surrounded, after a devastating ambush by Hizbollah guerrillas in what was supposed to be a successful Israeli military advance against a "terrorist centre".

To my left smoke rises too, over the town of Khiam, where a smashed United Nations outpost remains the only memorial to the four UN soldiers - most of them decapitated by an American-made missile on Tuesday - killed by the Israeli air force.

LEBANON

Independent: Robert Fisk: A war crime?
by Robert Fisk in Beirut

They are in the schools, in empty hospitals, in halls and mosques and in the streets. The Shia Muslim refugees of southern Lebanon, driven from their homes by the Israelis, are arriving in Sidon by the thousand, cared for by Sunni Muslims and then sent north to join the 600,000 displaced Lebanese in Beirut. More than 34,000 have passed through here in the past four days alone, a tide of misery and anger. It will take years to heal their wounds, and billions of dollars to repair their damaged property.

And who can blame them for their flight? For the second time in eight days, the Israelis committed a war crime yesterday. They ordered the villagers of Taire, near the border, to leave their homes and then - as their convoy of cars and minibuses obediently trailed northwards - the Israeli air force fired a missile into the rear minibus, killing three refugees and seriously wounding 13 other civilians. The rocket that killed them is believed to have been a Hellfire missile made by Lockheed Martin in Florida.

LEBANON

Aljazeera via ICH: Interview with Hezbollah Secretary General Hasan Nasrallah

July 22, 2006 - Al Jazeera in Arabic

Al-Jazeera interviews Hezbollah chief - Full text

Text of report by Qatari Al-Jazeera satellite TV on 20 July

Interview with Hezbollah Secretary General Hasan Nasrallah, by Al-Jazeera Beirut Bureau Chief Ghassan Bin-Jiddu, on 20 July.

LEBANON

DEBKAfile via Rense: Hezbollah Using Iwo Jima Tactics To Baffle IDF

Notwithstanding the IDF's important battle gains at a number of focal South Lebanese points in the last 24 hours ­ including the latest raids on the outskirts of Bint Jubeil on the heels of the capture of Maroun er Ras ­ only one multiple firing rocket launcher (picture) and 6 single-barrel launchers have been destroyed.

This figure will certainly multiply substantially in the coming days. Yet it will not change the essential strategic picture or stop the rocket fire from holding northern Israel and more than a million inhabitants to siege.

LEBANON: ETHNIC CLEANSING

Juan Cole: Friday, July 21, 2006

The Orwellian world into which Olmert and his band of manic bombers have plunged ordinary Lebanese is illustrated by Liz Sly's report for the Trib:

' Thousands of Lebanese were trying to flee the south after Israeli warplanes dropped leaflets warning people to leave, stirring fears that an Israeli ground invasion was imminent. But hundreds of thousands more remain stranded in villages and towns across the south, unable to leave their homes because of the intensity of the sustained Israeli bombing campaign. United Nations and Lebanese officials warned of an impending humanitarian disaster unless food and medical supplies are allowed to reach the stricken area and called on Israel to establish a "humanitarian corridor" to allow aid to get through. '

So let's get this straight. The Israelis warn the small town Shiites of the south to flee their own homes and go hundreds of miles away (and live on what? in what?). But then they intensely bombing them, making it impossible for them to flee. The Lebanese have awoken to find themselves cockroaches.

I repeat, this is nothing less than an ethnic cleansing of the Shiites of southern Lebanon, an assault on an entire civilian population's way of life. Aside from ecology, it is no different from what Saddam Hussein did to the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq, and the Israelis are doing it for exactly the same sorts of reasons that Saddam did.

IS JESUS COMING?

Harpers Via Boing Boing: Religious nuts ecstatic over Middle East turmoil

Harper's has posted messages from the Rapture Ready/End Times chat bulletin board. These folks are as happy as can be that Israel and Hezbollah are fighting because that means they're one step closer to the Rapture.

Got that dancing feeling on the inside of me.

* * *

This is the busiest I've ever seen this website in a few years! I have been having rapture dreams and I can't believe that this is really it! We are on the edge of eternity!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

* * *

Whoa! I can sure feel the glory bumps after reading this thread!

* * *

I too am soooo excited!! I get goose bumps, literally, when I watch what's going on in the M.E.!! And Watcherboy, you were so right when saying it was quite a day yesterday, in the world news, and I add in local news here in the Boston area!! Tunnel ceiling collapsed on a car and killed a woman of faith, and we had the most terrifying storms I have ever seen here!! But, yes, oh happy day, like in your screen name , it is most indeed a time to be happy and excited, right there with ya!!

LEBANON

Haaretz: Four soldiers killed in clashes with Hezbollah; thousands of IDF troops in Lebanon

Warplanes resumed strikes on targets across Lebanon on Friday as Israel warned hundreds of thousands of people to flee the south "immediately," preparing for a likely ground invasion to set up a deep buffer zone in southern Lebanon.

Four Israel Defense Forces soldiers were killed and five others were wounded, one seriously, in a series of battles fought Thursday just north of Moshav Avivim on the Lebanon border.

LEBANON

Haaretz: Lebanese defense minister: Army will fight ground invasion

Lebanon's army, which so far has sat on the sidelines of the violence raging in the country, will fight an Israeli ground invasion, Defense Minister Elias Murr said on Al-Jazeera television Thursday.

"The Lebanese army - and I stress - the Lebanese army will resist and defend and will prove that it is an army that deserves respect," he said.


Nasrallah: Hezbollah leadership intact
Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said Thursday that the group's leadership remains intact, appearing in an interview on Al-Jazeera TV a day after Israel claimed to have bombed a bunker where he may have been hiding.

"I can confirm without exaggerating or using psychological warfare, that we have not been harmed," he said. He denied claims by Israel to have destroyed half of Hezbollah's rocket arsenal.

LEBANON

Counterpunch: Why Hezbollah is Winning... So Far

The stakes in the Israel-Hezbollah-Hamas war are significantly higher than most observers understand. If Hezbollah and Hamas win—and winning just means surviving, given that Israel’s objective is to destroy both entities—a powerful state will have suffered a new kind of defeat, again, a defeat across at least one international boundary and maybe two, depending on how one defines Gaza’s border. The balance between states and “fourth generation warfare” forces will be altered world-wide, and not to a trivial degree.

So far, Hezbollah is winning. As Arab states stood silent and helpless before Israel’s assault on Hamas, another non-state entity, Hezbollah, intervened to relieve the siege of Gaza by opening a second front. Its initial move, a brilliantly conducted raid that killed eight Israeli soldiers and captured two for the loss of one Hezbollah fighter, showed once again that Hezbollah can take on state armed forces on even terms (the Chechens are the only other 4GW force to demonstrate that capability). In both respects, the contrast with Arab states will be clear on the street, pushing the Arab and larger Islamic worlds further away from the state.

LEBANON

Noam Chomsky: The Murder Of A Nation

Lebanon - Israel Facts the Media Isn't Telling You

LEBANON

ICH: The Most Dangerous Alliance in the World
by Norman Salomon

"In American media, the current mumbling about the need for “restraint” is little better than window-dressing for bomb-dropping. The prevalent dynamic is based on a chain of rarely spoken lies, however conscious or unconscious: none more important than the lie that a religion can make one life worth more than another; render a human death unimportant; elevate certain war-inflicted agonies to spiritual significance."

After getting out of Lebanon, writer June Rugh told Reuters: “As an American, I’m embarrassed and ashamed. My administration is letting it happen [by giving] tacit permission for Israel to destroy a country.” The news service quoted another American evacuee, Andrew Muha, who had been in southern Lebanon. He said: “It’s a travesty. There’s a million homeless in Lebanon and the intense amount of bombing has brought an entire country to its knees.”

LEBANON

Sidney Morning Herald: South Lebanon, Has Become A Killing Zone

Grim proof ordinary folk are dying in the killing zone

PARKED outside the small general hospital in Tyre is a badly refrigerated lorry container in which are stacked the bodies of 91 Lebanese civilians, 55 of them children.

The bodies have been placed inside black plastic rubbish bags and labelled in anticipation of the time, days or weeks from now, when their surviving relatives - if any - can come to collect them.

"It's a disaster. It's making me cry," the hospital's director, Dr Salman Zeineddine said. "We can't move them anywhere else. Since the attacks came I've been trying to get wounded out of Beit Jbeil and I can't. How could I get critical patients to Beirut, much less move dead people?"

Since Israel began bombing and shelling south Lebanon last Wednesday, about 380 patients have passed through this 65-bed hospital, plus the 91 dead.

A LETTER FROM SADDAM

ICH: Handwritten letter from President Saddam Hussein to the American people.

Click here to view a copy of the original letter: Pdf

To the American people:

Peace upon those who believe in peace and desire it, and the mercy of God and His blessings.

I address you in this letter from the place of my confinement, as my attempt on the basis of my moral, human, and constitutional responsibility so that no one among you might say that no one came to us with a message of peace after the war began, refuting the arguments for it and desiring peace for you and for our upright, loyal, heroic people. And as I say this, I do no know whether my brothers and comrades who are leading the Resistance outside the prison have come to you with a letter before or not. That is because the “democracy” of your leaders has prevented me since my arrest and until now from getting newspapers and magazines or hearing radio and television and has isolated me from the world and has isolated the world from me so that I might not hear or see anything from outside my place of confinement.

BAGHDAD

Independent: Civil war spreads across Iraq as bomb at Shia mosque kills 59
by Patrick Cockburn in Iraq

A civil war between Sunni and Shia Muslims is spreading rapidly through central Iraq, with each community seeking revenge for the latest massacre. Yesterday a suicide bomber driving a van packed with explosives blew himself up outside the golden-domed mosque in Kufa, killing at least 59 and injuring more than 130 Shia.

In the past 10 days, while the world has been absorbed by the war in Lebanon, sectarian massacres have started to take place on an almost daily basis, leading observers to fear a level of killing approaching that of Rwanda immediately before the genocide of 1994. On a single spot on the west bank of the Tigris river in north Baghdad, between 10 and 12 bodies have been drifting ashore every day.

LEBANON

Independent via ICH: The child lies like a rag doll - a symbol of the latest Lebanon war
by Robert Fisk

How soon must we use the words "war crime"? How many children must be scattered in the rubble of Israeli air attacks before we reject the obscene phrase "collateral damage" and start talking about prosecution for crimes against humanity?

The child whose dead body lies like a rag doll beside the cars which were supposedly taking her and her family to safety is a symbol of the latest Lebanon war; she was hurled from the vehicle in which she and her family were traveling in southern Lebanon as they fled their village - on Israel's own instructions. Because her parents were apparently killed in the same Israeli air attack, her name is still unknown. Not an unknown warrior, but an unknown child.

LEBANON

Guardian: United States to Israel: you have one more week to blast Hizbullah

Bush 'gave green light' for limited attack, say Israeli and UK sources

The US is giving Israel a window of a week to inflict maximum damage on Hizbullah before weighing in behind international calls for a ceasefire in Lebanon, according to British, European and Israeli sources.
The Bush administration, backed by Britain, has blocked efforts for an immediate halt to the fighting initiated at the UN security council, the G8 summit in St Petersburg and the European foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels.

ISRAEL

Guardian: If Israel has the right to use force in self defence, so do its neighbours

The west appears to insist that only one side in the conflict is able to intervene militarily across borders. That will never be accepted

FROM ISRAEL WITH LOVE

Israeli girls write messages on a shell at a heavy artillery position near Kiryat Shmona, in northern Israel, next to the Lebanese border, Monday, July 17, 2006. Copyright AP










copyright AP













copyright AFP

















copyright AFP











Flickr Beirut Photostream here

LEBANON

Reuters: Israeli strikes on Lebanon kill 42

Israeli air strikes killed 42 people across Lebanon on Monday, including 10 civilians hit on a southern bridge, on the sixth day of a bombardment that has wreaked the heaviest destruction in Lebanon for over 20 years.

Rescuers also pulled nine bodies from the wreckage of a building in the southern city of Tyre that was bombed on Sunday, raising the death toll since Israel's offensive to 204, all but 14 of them civilian.

LEBANON

ICH: 'Blow up my city and I'll blow up yours'
by Robert Fisk

So what else was new yesterday? Well, the Israeli army trotted over the border again - for about 30 metres - and then retreated behind their vulnerable south Lebanon frontier wire. Israeli jets killed another 17 Lebanese and wounded 53 more, taking the total death toll here to 196 against Israel's rising total of 24. The obscene exchange rate of death thus now stands at more than eight Lebanese for every Israeli.

LEBANON

Asia Times: Israel's path to total war

One of the most malignant aspects of the new chapter in the Arab-Israeli conflict is the myth of Israel as the assaulted party, lavishly propagated by the White House and the infinite pro-Israel pundits in the US media, including the editors of the New York Times, who have labeled Israel's blatant aggression against the nation of Lebanon as "legally and morally justified".

Never mind that the rest of the world, including the European Union, does not share this perception of who is mainly at fault for the deadly cycle of violence that has gripped the Middle East again. The irony is that one can detect greater voices of dissent and opposition to Israel's massive, disproportionate response to the token kidnapping of a few of its soldiers than is the case in the "pluralistic" US media, nowadays sheepishly toeing the official line.

LEBANON

Independent: From my home, I saw what the 'war on terror' meant by Robert Fisk

...But it was the undercurrent of terror-speak that was particularly frightening yesterday.

Lebanon was an "axis of terror", Israel was "fighting terror on all fronts". During the morning, I had to cut across an interview with an Australian radio station when an Israeli reporter stated - totally untruthfully - that there were Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon and that not all Syria's troops had left.

And the reason why the Israelis had attacked Beirut's infinitely secure and carefully monitored airport, used by diplomats and European leaders, a facility as safe as any in Europe? Because, so said the Israelis, it was "a central hub for the transfer of weapons and supplies to the Hizbollah terrorist organisation." If the Israelis really want to know where that hub is, they should be looking at Damascus airport. But they do know that, don't they?

And so it is terror, terror, terror again and Lebanon is once more to be depicted as the mythic terror centre of the Middle East along, I suppose with Gaza. And the West Bank. And Syria. And, of course, Iraq. And Iran. And Afghanistan. And who knows where next?

LEBANON

Stratfor via ICH: Israeli Air Force will likely make a pre-emptive strike against Syria

Analysis

The Israel Defense Forces is preparing for a major, sustained assault into southern Lebanon to eliminate the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. The assault will extend at least to the Litani River -- the first natural barrier, roughly 20 miles into Lebanon -- and possibly all the way to areas south of Beirut. The advance might have been intended for July 16, when the reservists of the Israeli Northern Command who were just activated will have had 72 hours to spin up. However, since rockets fired from Lebanon hit Israel's port city of Haifa on July 13, Israel's 7th Armored, Golani and Barak Brigades -- some of the elite and most decorated units of the regular Israeli army -- might push ahead as far as the Litani and let the reservists catch up later.

LEBANON

Haaretz: Bomb-laden drone believed to have hit ship

Four Israel Navy sailors were reported missing after an explosives-laden drone, apparently launched by Hezbollah, hit a naval vessel off the coast of Beirut on Friday night.

LEBANON

NY Times: Israel Vows to Rout Hezbollah

JERUSALEM, Saturday, July 15 — The face-off between Israel and the Lebanese group Hezbollah escalated sharply on Friday as Israeli jets hit its Beirut headquarters and southern strongholds and Israeli news reports said a Hezbollah drone aircraft packed with explosives struck an Israeli naval vessel, causing severe damage.

TOP 25 CENSORED STORIES OF 2006

Project Censored: Top 25 Censored Stories of 2006

#1 Bush Administration Moves to Eliminate Open Government

#2 Media Coverage Fails on Iraq: Fallujah and the Civilian Death

#3 Another Year of Distorted Election Coverage

#4 Surveillance Society Quietly Moves In

#5 U.S. Uses Tsunami to Military Advantage in Southeast Asia

GAZA: REPORT IN PICTURES

Reports from Rafah:

GAZA

ICH: What Are They Fighting For
By Prof. Tanya Reinhart

Whatever may be the fate of the captive soldier Gilad Shalit, the Israeli army’s war in Gaza is not about him. As senior security analyst Alex Fishman widely reported, the army was preparing for an attack months earlier and was constantly pushing for it, with the goal of destroying the Hamas infrastructure and its government.

The army initiated an escalation on 8 June when it assassinated Abu Samhadana, a senior appointee of the Hamas government, and intensified its shelling of civilians in the Gaza Strip. Governmental authorization for action on a larger scale was already given by 12 June, but it was postponed in the wake of the global reverberation caused by the killing of civilians in the air force bombing the next day.

The abduction of the soldier released the safety-catch, and the operation began on 28 June with the destruction of infrastructure in Gaza and the mass detention of the Hamas leadership in the West Bank, which was also planned weeks in advance. (1)

LEBANON

Independent via ICH: Beirut waits as Syrian masters send Hezbollah allies into battle
By Robert Fisk

It's about Syria. That was the frightening message delivered by Damascus yesterday when it allowed its Hizbollah allies to cross the UN Blue Line in southern Lebanon, kill three Israeli soldiers, capture two others and demand the release of Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails.

Within hours, a country that had begun to believe in peace - without a single Syrian soldier left on its soil - found itself once more at war.

Israel held the powerless Lebanese government responsible - as if the sectarian and divided cabinet in Beirut can control Hizbollah. That is Syria's message. Fouad Siniora, Lebanon's affable Prime Minister, may have thought he was running the country but it is President Bashar Assad in Damascus who can still bring life or death to a land that lost 150,000 lives in 15 years of civil conflict.

RUSSIA

BBC: Putin rebuffs 'colonialist' West

If you look at newspapers of 100 years ago, you see how, at the time, colonialist states justified their policies in Africa or in Asia. They talked of their civilising role, of the white man's mission," he said.

"If you change the word 'civilising' to 'democratisation', you find the same logic, you can read the same things in the press today."

"funny i used almost the same words as putin in a discussion i had with a friend yesterday"

LEBANON

Guardian: Borderline Beneficiaries

Israel's UN resolution-breaching incursion strengthens the hands of the Lebanese government's enemies.

The first thing to be made clear about this is that it need not have happened. Israel ended its occupation of southern Lebanon six years ago, but two outstanding issues, Lebanese prisoners held by Israel and continued Israeli occupation of the Shebaa Farms, provided a rationale for Hizbullah to retain its militia and to claim that it was continuing to wage a "liberation" struggle.

GAZA

UPI: Israeli use of poisonous material alleged

GAZA, July 10 (UPI) -- The Palestinian health ministry accused Israel of using a new type of banned explosives containing poisonous material.

A ministry report released Monday said testimonies from surgeons in Palestinian hospitals indicated that "all 249 casualties inflicted by the Israeli war machine during the operation on Gaza which started on June 27 resulted from shrapnel of new and developed shells and explosives which cause amputation of limbs and burning of all the injured parts."

The ministry called on the international community and human rights organization "to send medical committees to examine the wounded and verify the existence of poisonous material in their bodies caused by Israeli weapons."

IRAQ

Baghdat Burning: Atrocities...

The pity I once had for foreign troops in Iraq is gone. It's been eradicated by the atrocities in Abu Ghraib, the deaths in Haditha and the latest news of rapes and killings. I look at them in their armored vehicles and to be honest- I can't bring myself to care whether they are 19 or 39. I can't bring myself to care if they make it back home alive. I can't bring myself to care anymore about the wife or parents or children they left behind. I can't bring myself to care because it's difficult to see beyond the horrors. I look at them and wonder just how many innocents they killed and how many more they'll kill before they go home. How many more young Iraqi girls will they rape?

OCCUPIED TERRITORIES

Washington Post: Aggression Under False Pretenses
By Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh

GAZA, Palestine -- As Americans commemorated their annual celebration of independence from colonial occupation, rejoicing in their democratic institutions, we Palestinians were yet again besieged by our occupiers, who destroy our roads and buildings, our power stations and water plants, and who attack our very means of civil administration. Our homes and government offices are shelled, our parliamentarians taken prisoner and threatened with prosecution.

The current Gaza invasion is only the latest effort to destroy the results of fair and free elections held early this year. It is the explosive follow-up to a five-month campaign of economic and diplomatic warfare directed by the United States and Israel. The stated intention of that strategy was to force the average Palestinian to "reconsider" her vote when faced with deepening hardship; its failure was predictable, and the new overt military aggression and collective punishment are its logical fulfillment. The "kidnapped" Israeli Cpl. Gilad Shalit is only a pretext for a job scheduled months ago.

GAZA: ISRAELI MASSACRE

Haaretz: 7 killed in IAF strike on Gaza City house; IDF moves into central Gaza

The Israel Air Force struck at the home of a Hamas activist in Gaza City before dawn Wednesday, killing seven people and wounding top Hamas commander Mohammed Deif, Palestinians said.

The seven dead were all members of the same family - two parents, including senior Gaza Hamas figure Dr. Nabil al-Salmiah, and their five children - Palestinian hospital officials said. Rescuers said four other people were still missing and at least 24 people were wounded.

ISRAEL CROSSES BORDER TO LEBANON

Haaretz: ANALYSIS: Israel prepares for a wide military escalation



On the 18th day since the abduction of Corporal Gilad Shalit, the picture has become all the more complex. From limited fighting on a single front (the Gaza Strip), the Israel Defense Forces is now approaching what might evolve into a nearly outright war on two fronts.

This is the most complex crisis Israel has faced since Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, when Israel successfully curbed Hezbollah's bid to spark a confrontation on the northern border in response to the IDF's occupation of West Bank cities.

Senior officers say that the Lebanese government is responsible for the soldiers' abduction. According to the officers, if the kidnapped soldiers are not returned alive and well, the Lebanese civilian infrastructures will be taken back in time 20 and maybe 50 years.

ISRAEL CROSSES BORDER TO LEBANON

Haaretz: Hezbollah kidnaps 2 IDF soldiers during clashes on Israel-Lebanon border


Hezbollah kidnapped two Israel Defense Forces soldiers on the northern border in the midst of massive shelling attacks on Israel's north Wednesday morning. The IDF confirmed two of its soldiers were missing on the Lebanese border.

Hezbollah fighters attacked two IDF armored Hummer jeeps patrolling along the border with gunfire and explosives. The Hezbollah fighters nabbed two of the soldiers and wounded others in the Hummers.

Immediately following the Hezbollah attack, the organization's Al-Manar television station began broadcasting clips calling on Israel to release Lebanese prisoners held in Israel. The Hezbollah demands emphasized the release of Lebanese militant Samir Al-Kuntar. Al-Manar also broadcast video clips of previous Palestinian and Lebanese attacks on IDF troops.

MEDIA

Harpers: “I Was a Mouthpiece for the American Military”

An embedded TV producer's frank assessment

In an interesting interview published this week in Foreign Policy, Newsweek's Rod Nordland spoke about the difficulties of reporting from Iraq. He said that the Bush Administration has been largely successful in managing the news “to the extent that most Americans are not aware of just how dire it is and how little progress has been made” and revealed that some embedded reporters “have been blacklisted because the military wasn’t happy with [their] work.”

IRAQ

Guardian via ICH: All Iraq is Abu Ghraib

Our streets are prison corridors and our homes cells as the occupiers go about their strategic humiliation and intimidation

-- A'beer Qassim al-Janaby, a 15-year-old Iraqi girl, was with her family in Mahmudiyah, 20 miles south of Baghdad, when US troops raided the house. A group of soldiers have been charged with her rape and the murder of her father, mother, and nine-year-old sister. They are also accused of setting A'beer's body on fire.

The al-Janaby family lived near a US checkpoint, and the killings happened at 2pm on March 11. As usual, a US spokesman ascribed the killings to "Sunni Arab insurgents active in the area", contrary to local eyewitnesses.

OCCUPIED TERRITORIES

Haaretz: Who started?
by Gideon Levy

We left Gaza and they are firing Qassams" - there is no more precise a formulation of the prevailing view about the current round of the conflict. "They started," will be the routine response to anyone who tries to argue, for example, that a few hours before the first Qassam fell on the school in Ashkelon, causing no damage, Israel sowed destruction at the Islamic University in Gaza.

Israel is causing electricity blackouts, laying sieges, bombing and shelling, assassinating and imprisoning, killing and wounding civilians, including children and babies, in horrifying numbers, but "they started."

They are also "breaking the rules" laid down by Israel: We are allowed to bomb anything we want and they are not allowed to launch Qassams. When they fire a Qassam at Ashkelon, that's an "escalation of the conflict," and when we bomb a university and a school, it's perfectly alright. Why? Because they started. That's why the majority thinks that all the justice is on our side. Like in a schoolyard fight, the argument about who started is Israel's winning moral argument to justify every injustice.

TECH

MSNBC: Spyware developers net huge profits, outrage

With annual revenues of $2 billion, pop-up ads are a high-stakes game

Consumers have strong opinions about Direct Revenue's software. "If I ever meet anyone from your company, I will kill you," a person who identified himself as James Chang said in an e-mail to Direct Revenue last summer. "I will f------ kill you and your families." Such sentiments aren't unusual. "You people are EVIL personified," Kevin Horton wrote around the same time. "I would like the four hours of my life back I have wasted trying to get your stupid uninvited software off my now crippled system."

TECH

SFGate: Parents turn to tech toys to track teens

Paige White was surprised when her parents figured out soon after she started driving last year that she'd gone 9 miles to a party, not 4 miles to the friend's house she'd told them she was visiting. It seemed to her almost as if her car was bugged.

It was.

OCCUPIED TERRITORIES

Guardian: Europe's response to the siege of Gaza is shameful
by Jonathan Steel

The Palestinians have no partner for peace. They will only have one if Israel agrees to recognise Palestine's right to function

Thank goodness for the Swiss. Alone in Europe, their government has dared to condemn what the Israelis are doing to Gaza. It is collective punishment, they say. It violates the principle of proportionality. Israel has not taken the precautions required by international law to protect civilians.

Inevitably, the bloggers are pouring out the usual irrelevancies about the role of Swiss banks during the Nazi period. But as the depository of the Geneva conventions, one of the key legal advances to emerge from the ravages of the 20th century, Switzerland has a duty to speak out.

Its statement stands in contrast to the European Union's shamefully muted voice. The Palestinians kill two soldiers and take one prisoner and, in response, power stations are blown up, sewage and water systems grind to a halt, bridges are destroyed, sonic booms terrify children day and night, and all this is inflicted on a hungry people who are under siege in what is effectively a huge open prison. The EU's response? Vague expressions of "concern" and calls for "restraint".

MEXICO: VOTE FRAUD?

Guardian: Grand theft Mexico
by Greg Palace

The election race south of the US border is officially too close to call. Now, where have we heard that before?

s in Florida in 2000, and as in Ohio in 2004, the exit polls show the voters voted for the progressive candidate. The race is "officially" too close to call. But they will call it - after they steal it.

Reuters reports that, as of 8pm eastern time, as voting concluded in Mexico, exit polls showed Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the "leftwing" party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) leading in exit polls over Felipe Calderón of the ruling conservative National Action party (PAN).

We've said again and again: exit polls tell us how voters say they voted, but the voters can't tell pollsters whether their vote will be counted. In Mexico, counting the vote is an art, not a science - and Calderón's ruling crew is very artful indeed. The PAN-controlled official electoral commission, not surprisingly, has announced that the presidential tally is too close to call.

Calderón's election is openly supported by the Bush administration.

On the ground in Mexico city, our news team reports accusations from inside the Obrador campaign that operatives of the PAN had access to voter files that are supposed to be the sole property of the nation's electoral commission. We are not surprised.

GAZA

Haaretz: A black flag
by Gideon Levy

A black flag hangs over the "rolling" operation in Gaza. The more the operation "rolls," the darker the flag becomes. The "summer rains" we are showering on Gaza are not only pointless, but are first and foremost blatantly illegitimate. It is not legitimate to cut off 750,000 people from electricity. It is not legitimate to call on 20,000 people to run from their homes and turn their towns into ghost towns. It is not legitimate to penetrate Syria's airspace. It is not legitimate to kidnap half a government and a quarter of a parliament.

A state that takes such steps is no longer distinguishable from a terror organization.