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Editorial: A Planet On The Edge Of Anarchy?
Joe Quinn
Signs of the Times
28/07/2006
In a recent article, Michael Chossudovsky asks an interesting question:
Is there a relationship between the bombing of Lebanon and the inauguration of the World's largest strategic pipeline, which will channel more than a million barrels of oil a day to Western markets?
He continues:
Virtually unnoticed, the inauguration of the Ceyhan-Tblisi-Baku (BTC) oil pipeline, which links the Caspian sea to the Eastern Mediterranean, took place on the 13th of July, at the very outset of the Israeli sponsored bombings of Lebanon.
One day before the Israeli air strikes, the main partners and shareholders of the BTC pipeline project, including several heads of State and oil company executives were in attendance at the port of Ceyhan. They were then rushed off for an inauguration reception in Istanbul, hosted by Turkey's President Ahmet Necdet Sezer in the plush surroundings of the Çýraðan Palace.
He then quotes a Jerusalem Post article:
"Turkey and Israel are negotiating the construction of a multi-million-dollar energy and water project that will transport water, electricity, natural gas and oil by pipelines to Israel, with the oil to be sent onward from Israel to the Far East,
The new Turkish-Israeli proposal under discussion would see the transfer of water, electricity, natural gas and oil to Israel via four underwater pipelines.
"Baku oil can be transported to Ashkelon via this new pipeline and to India and the Far East.[via the Red sea]"
"Ceyhan and the Mediterranean port of Ashkelon are situated only 400 km apart. Oil can be transported to the city in tankers or via specially constructed under-water pipeline. From Ashkelon the oil can be pumped through already existing pipeline to the port of Eilat at the Red Sea; and from there it can be transported to India and other Asian countries in tankers.
So Israel appears to be securing its own personal supply of oil and water, with the water also being transported undersea. What has changed that Israel now needs its own private oil and water supply? A few years ago everyone was saying that the US invasion of Iraq was "for the oil", which allows us to suggest that 9/11, which provided the justification for the Iraq invasion, was also "for the oil". But with the US government's claims that the Iraq invasion was about WMDs, and when that fell flat, it was about spreading democracy, and when that became somewhat laughable we were brought back to the "war on terror", there picture has been sufficiently muddied that talk of exactly why the US invaded Iraq has been silenced.
We can say with some confidence that in the world of international politics and warmongering, nothing is ever as it seems. And while Israel adn the US might claim that they are just planning for the future and securing their energy and water needs, the nature of these two governments as evidenced by thier current and track records, tends to make us skeptical that their intentions are as wholesome as they claim.
Along with "securing water and oil resources", Israel is currently creating a "buffer zone" in southern Lebanon. Israel claims this is to protect against Hizb'allah's rockets, yet, as the entire world is saying, Israel's actions are massively disproportionate to the threat. So what might be the real agenda here?
It seems to me that these events and the events of the past 5 years are best viewed in light of the infamous Pentagon Report on Climate Change from 2004, where it was stated:
A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.
The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.
'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'
Maybe the "war on terror" was never really about terrorism. Maybe that that was just the excuse. Maybe the global elite have known for a long time about natural earth-shattering (literally?) events in the very near future, and they simply created a "war on terror" behind which they could forcibly re-shape the political and demographic landscape of the Middle East in order to ensure their own survival during the upcoming "global anarchy", as the Pentagon report puts it.
Food for thought, if nothing else.
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Editorial: Israel's New Middle East: Kill All Arabs
Kurt Nimmo
ANother Day in the Empire
Friday July 28th 2006
As expected, Israel plans to completely flatten southern Lebanon and murder anybody who remains there, no matter there are thousands of people unable to leave-the sick, elderly, and those without resources.
"Everyone remaining in southern Lebanon will be regarded as a terrorist, Israel's justice minister said yesterday as the military prepared to employ 'huge firepower' from the air in its campaign to crush Hizbollah," reports the Telegraph.
"What we should do in southern Lebanon is employ huge firepower before a ground force goes in," insisted Haim Ramon, member of the "moderate" Kadima party and "Minister of Justice," that is to say justice for Israelis, not for Arabs, who are considered untermenschen worthy of slaughter. "Everyone in southern Lebanon is a terrorist and is connected to Hizbollah. Our great advantage vis-à-vis Hizbollah is our firepower, not in face-to-face combat." Obviously, this includes babies, grade school kids, and old people-all who will soon be blasted with white phosphorus and depleted uranium munitions.
"The government's unrelenting line has the backing of the Israeli media, which are demanding a harsh response to an ambush in the Hizbollah stronghold of Bint Jbeil, in which eight soldiers died."
In other words, the entire population must suffer for the fact Hezbollah successful repelled the invading Israelis at Bint Jbeil. This is collective punishment, a war crime-but then Israel and its patron, the United States, don't do the Geneva Conventions or humanitarian law.
"According to Elias Hanna, a researcher of military affairs, the decision to limit the ground campaigns was made because 'Israelis are traumatized by their negative experience during the invasion of Lebanon in 1982,'" reports the Daily Star, a Lebanese newspaper.
Translation: the Israelis are now keen to limit their casualties, as dead IOF soldiers eventually resulted in Israel pulling out of Lebanon in 2000 under public pressure. Instead, the Israeli government will carpet bomb southern Lebanon and kill everything that moves. This will be far more acceptable to the Israeli population at large, as few-beyond a handful of Israeli antiwar and peace activists-sincerely care what happens to their neighbors to the north.
Nearly 90 percent of all Lebanese now support Hezbollah, as similar numbers would support resistance groups in America if it was invaded. Thus, according to Israeli logic, millions of people are terrorists who must be eradicated, sort of like cockroaches.
"In Lebanon, the entire political spectrum is becoming more radicalized as a consequence of this," Wayne White, former head of the Middle East desk at the US State Department's Intelligence and Research, tells the Christian Science Monitor. "I think [Israel] can substantially destroy the existing Hizbullah infrastructure, but how long will it take? And in the end, they'll reconstitute themselves and they'll be turning recruits away by the thousands."
Contrary to Israel's Grapes of Wrath invasion in 1996, the current "offensive is very different," according to BBC correspondent Jim Muir. "This time, neither Israel nor the US wants to accept Hezbollah as a party to anything, nor do they want its patrons Syria or Iran to be involved, except apparently in a capitulation. For them, any settlement must be based on the defeat of Hezbollah and the humiliation of its Syrian and Iranian sponsors."
Of course, this absolutist, Manichean demand-at the root of the Zionist and neocon agenda to "reshape" (through DU and bunker-busters) the Middle East-will translate into hundreds of thousands of dead people, earmarked as terrorists, making it easier to slaughter them in large numbers, possibly with nukes.
"Already, there are signs of a rapprochement between radical Sunni and Shia factions which could rebound massively on the US if it gains wider ground," Muir continues. Any such reconciliation between the two sects of Islam would spell big trouble for both Israel and the United States. But then the neocons have long attempted to create a larger, wider conflict, thus pushing the United States to commit itself to "World War Three," as Newt Gingrich recently characterized the simmering "clash of civilizations" project. Drawing Syria and Iran into the conflict will all but ensure Gingrich and the Machiavellian neocons realize their wildest, if not demented and psychopathic, dreams.
Meanwhile, the Moonie owned newspaper, the Washington Times, claims "the leader of Hezbollah is hiding in a foreign mission in Beirut, possibly the Iranian Embassy," thus providing a pretext to widen the invasion.
"If confirmed, the reports could lead to an Israeli air strike on the embassy, possibly leading to a widening of the conflict, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Foreign embassies are sovereign territory and an attack on an embassy could be considered an act of war."
However, in order to cover all bases, the Washington Times posits "Sheik Nasrallah may be in Damascus. A Kuwaiti newspaper, Al-Seyassah, reported from the Syrian capital yesterday that Sheik Nasrallah was seen moving through the city with Syrian guards in an intelligence agency car, Associated Press reported. He was dressed in civilian clothes, not his normal clerical robe."
Now that most foreign nationals have skedaddled from Lebanon, Israel is free to carpet bomb and kill everything that moves-not that the Israelis have any special commitment to protect foreign nationals (not killing them, several Canadians not withstanding, is a public relations move).
In this genocidal process, as virtually all Lebanese are now considered terrorists, we can expect the Iranian embassy to be flattened, and possibly an attack on Damascus under the pretext of going after Nasrallah, thus drawing both of these countries into the conflict.
Of course, this will suck in the United States, as planned by the neocons, thus realizing Gingrich's "World War Three," or as some neocons call it, World War Four.
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Editorial: Gaza: "Israel wants to drive us out our lands"
A Palestinian reports from Gaza.
Silvia Cattori, 27 July 2006
Khaled lives precariously in a refugee camp in Gaza. His poignant reports have been translated into many languages. Today, his voice, usually cheerful, was filled with revolt and a great lassitude.
Sivlia Cattori: The Israeli bombings have already killed over 500 people and have wounded thousands in a few weeks in Gaza and Lebanon. Don't the Israeli authorities have any human consideration?
Khaled: Now the soldiers are in the process of bombing us from all sides, from the sky, from their tanks posted on the frontier north of Gaza. It is very worrisome. Every day we are plunged in an boundless pain because of our dead and wounded. Yesterday, Israeli shooting claimed 25 new victims and more than 75 wounded among the inhabitants of Al Shijaeeya in Al Sha'af, east of the city of Gaza, and in the neighbourhood of Jabalyia, they bombed a house only 100 metres from my own.
S.C.: Will you have to leave?
Khaled: The Israeli army advised one of our neighbours that he should leave. Between his house and mine there is only one house.
S.C.: But what is Israel trying to achieve with this repeated carnage and destruction? What is their final goal? Terrorize you until you leave for good, as they have already done at Rafah?
Khaled: It didn't start yesterday. Since 1948 the Israelis are following the same plan to get rid of us: they call this plan "transfer". At one moment, it is at a certain place that they terrorize and massacre us, at another moment, it is somewhere else. The crime is called "ethnic cleansing". Their goal: to make us leave so they can take our land under the pretext of creating "security zones". As there are no protests worthy of this name, the Israeli soldiers are free to continue this indefinitely.
S.C.: Is the goal, then, to terrorize you by ever more horrifying massacres, and once panic has entered your hearts, to see you flee en mass as in 1948? But where can you go this time? To Egypt?
Khaled: The important thing for them is to completely clean us out of Gaza. It doesn't matter if they have to drive us into the sea. It is their plan. That's how they got ¾'s of the Palestinians to flee in 1948. But I think the Israelis will never again manage to get us to leave this refuge.
S.C.: You must be disappointed with the results of the Rome Conference where the cry of the Lebanese prime minister for a cease-fire was not heard. Was that taken in Gaza as a green light for Israel to continue to massacre you?
Khaled: The west has always allowed Israeli governments to massacre and destroy as they wished. It is only the degree of brutality that changes. The rights of man are violated by the state of Israel with the full awareness of the entire world, with the support of the United States, and organizations like Amnesty International say nothing, and the Europeans say nothing, and they ask us, the victims, to make an effort. Every time the Security Council votes on a resolution critical of Israel's actions, the United States immediately vetoes it and prevents Israel from being condemned. For us, things are like they always are. The West condemns our resistance. Hamas and Hezbollah, whatever one thinks of them, are the honour of the Arab peoples. Israel wants to kill the only force that defies them and that have any honour. For us, what is happening in Gaza, and now in Lebanon, is terrible. But, even if what we are enduring is more horrible than ever, Europe must know that we will never abandon the authorities of the Hamas government.
S.C.: Do you think the battalions of tanks would dare penetrate into the interior of the Gaza Strip?
Khaled: It's done. They have entered the north of Gaza. They are close to Jabalyia. Only two kilometres separate them from us. It could be that, if they enter Jabalyia, we will undergo a massacre like that at Sabra and Chatila.
S.C.: Which means you feel completely powerless in the face of this seasoned army?
Khaled: The militants try to protect us, to prevent the Israeli soldiers from entering our neighbourhoods, but they don't have the means. In Lebanon, Hezbollah militants can fight against them because there are mountains and zones with few people. But here we are piled up one on another. It isn't possible. Under their shelling, there are no safe places. We have no other choice but to stay in our homes and hope that God will protect us.
S.C.: The fact that you can't escape must create an oppressive sense of being closed in.
Khlaed: Yes, we feel imprisoned. The Gaza Strip is the biggest prison in the world.
S.C.: Have your authorities called on the humanitarian organizations?
Khaled: All those representatives of the NGOs, of the UN or of governments have never done anything concrete for us. We suffer more and more and their peace or aid projects only serve to reinforce Israel's position. The last example is the conference in Rome. Every day you can see the blood of our children being spilt. Who has the cure? Maybe they are obliged to act for the Lebanese people because of the large-scale destruction inflicted by Israel. But have you heard the Red Cross or any of the other human rights organizations protest against what is being done to us? Have you heard them accuse Israel of war crimes? Amnesty labelled the suicide bombings as crimes against humanity in 2003. Amnesty shuts up when it comes to Israel.
S.C.: Are your militants completely powerless to stop the battalions of Israeli tanks?
Khaled: Yes. They have nothing other to do but to stay standing.
S.C.: But, when the bombing stops, what we see are above all women and children who have been massacred. The population must feel in a state of complete abandonment and indescribable panic, the children above all.
Khaled: These acts demand that the entire world denounces the odious crimes against innocent people. However, the Arab states stay silent and, when they say something, it is to support the position of the United States. The children have been traumatized for a long time. They have worrisome behaviour. The Israeli army is waging a war against militants who take seriously their responsibility to protect us. The government leaders are very threatened and live clandestinely. They aren't apt to take up a rifle against a tank.
S.C.: Are you hopeful that this reign of bombing will soon end?
Khaled: Israel is not going to stop. They would only stop if one of these massacres provoked large protests. Then, the Israeli army might pull back a bit, waiting for the protests to calm down, and then the masscres will start again.
Copyright: silviacattori@yahoo.it
Translated by Signs of the Times
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Mid East Murder - Is It Really About Terrorism?
Blair to meet Bush to talk about Mideast crisis
Last Updated Fri, 28 Jul 2006 06:12:14 EDT
CBC News
British Prime Minister Tony Blair is expected to talk with U.S. President George W. Bush about seeking ways to end the fighting in the Middle East during a meeting in Washington on Friday.
Blair is expected to discuss the possibility of seeking a United Nations Security Council resolution in an attempt to bring an end to the violence between Israel and the Lebanese-based militant group Hezbollah, which entered its 17th day on Friday.
A spokesperson for Blair said he would like the resolution to be in place by early next week.
Blair and Bush are expected to talk about what would be needed to bring about a ceasefire. Blair is on record as saying he thinks a ceasefire should be lasting.
The spokesperson for Blair told reporters on his plane as it flew to Washington that Blair is expected to "increase the urgency" of the need to resolve the crisis through a ceasefire and to talk to Bush about the "practical steps" necessary to end the violence, including setting up an international stabilization force in the region.
"We want to accelerate discussions that are going on among the international community, identifying those who would serve in a stabilization force, and increase the tempo of putting that stabilization force together," said the spokesperson, who customarily speaks from a position of anonymity.
Looking for lasting peace
Blair has said the violence is a crisis but certain conditions are needed to make a lasting peace.
"It will not stop on both sides unless there is a plan to make it stop and that's what we are working on urgently," Blair said at a news conference on Monday with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
Blair and Bush are also expected to talk about Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and the fighting in the Darfur region in Sudan, although fighting between Israel and Hezbollah is likely to dominate discussion.
In other developments Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she will fly back to Israel to discuss the crisis with the Israeli government, but she did not say when. Rice was in Malaysia attending a conference on Asian issues.
"I do think it is important that groundwork be laid so I can make the most of whatever time I can spend there," Rice told reporters in Kuala Lumpur.
Israeli media reported Friday that Rice will return to Israel on Saturday night and plans to meet with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday, but the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv and Israel's foreign ministry declined to confirm the reports.
Battling for control of border towns
The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah has left at least 438 people dead in Lebanon and 52 in Israel. Lebanon's health minister said Thursday he thinks as many as 600 Lebanese civilians have been killed by the violence so far.
Fighting started on July 12, when Hezbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid.
Since then, Israel has launched an offensive against Hezbollah, pounding its positions in Beirut and south Lebanon daily to destroy its infrastructure. Hezbollah has responded with rocket attacks on northern Israel.
Israeli troops and Hezbollah guerrillas have been battling for control of border towns and villages in south Lebanon.
Thousands of civilians, including foreign nationals in Lebanon, have been caught in the crossfire. The UN estimates about 800,000 people have been affected by the conflict.
with files from the Associated Press
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Israeli DM vows no return to status quo of Hezbollah
www.chinaview.cn 2006-07-28 05:35:54
JERUSALEM, July 27 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz vowed on Thursday that Lebanon's Hezbollah would "not return to what it was" as Israel pressed ahead a massive assault against the group.
Peretz made the statements at a joint news conference with Israel Defenses Forces Chief of Staff Dan Halutz in Tel Aviv,which was broadcast live by local TV channels.
"Our goal is to achieve a reality in which Hezbollah does not threaten Israel and its citizens," Peretz said.
Insisting on Israel's right of self-defense, Peretz said that "everything" would be done against those who attacked Israel, adding that Israel would not allow the presence of Hezbollah guerillas in the border area.
He said that Israel would "exert all the power required" in order to defend itself, adding that the recruitment of reserve soldiers was aimed at "preparing for any possible development" in Lebanon.
Meanwhile, Halutz announced that the Israeli army had inflicted "enormous" strategic damage to Hezbollah during the 16-day-old onslaught in Lebanon.
Hundreds of Hezbollah fighters have been hit during the Israeli assault, according to Halutz, who also said that Hezbollah's weapons capabilities had also been "damaged significantly."
In addition, the Israeli military chief said that the Israeli army would draft up to three divisions, following the cabinet's approval. Three divisions are made up of between about 18,000 to 30,000 soldiers.
Both Peretz and Halutz said that the Israeli military offensive in Lebanon would "continue as long as it takes", but added that Israel had no intention to "open a front" with Syria, which supports Hezbollah.
The top Israeli military brass' statements came after the Israeli cabinet decided against a massive ground invasion of Lebanon earlier in the day.
But the cabinet agreed to call up more reserve soldiers if need be.
Israel launched a big assault against the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah on July 12 when Hezbollah guerillas kidnapped two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others during cross-border attacks.
The Israeli army has launched intense airstrikes on targets across Lebanon and small units of ground forces are operating on the Lebanese side of the border to carry out "pinpoint" attacks against Hezbollah strongholds.
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Israeli intelligence agency says Hezbollah remains ability of attack: report
www.chinaview.cn 2006-07-28 18:56:49
JERUSALEM, July 28 (Xinhua) -- Israeli intelligence agency Mossad's head Meir Dagan said Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas were still capable of fighting with Israel at the current level for a long time, local newspaper Ha'aretz reported on Friday.
However, Israeli Military Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin disagreed with the Mossad judgment, saying that the Lebanese Shiite group had been seriously damaged, the report said.
But both Dagan and Yadlin agreed during a security cabinet meeting on Thursday that Hezbollah still maintained the ability to command and control and still held long-range missiles, according to the report.
A military source said on Friday that at least 200 Hezbollah operatives had been killed during the over-two-week conflict, said Ha'aretz.
Lebanese security sources said that Israel Air Force (IDF) warplanes renewed attacks on suspected Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon Friday morning, killing at least on person and wounding three others.
Israeli jets attacked targets at Lebanon's southern market town of Nabatiyeh at about 8:30 a.m. (0530 GMT), the sources said, adding that a Jordanian was killed by missile shrapnel and three others were wounded in the strike.
The Israeli massive offensive against Lebanese Hezbollah entered its 17th day Friday, which started on July 12 after two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped by the Shiite group Hezbollah in across-border attack.
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Israel says UN can't be part of probe of deadly attack on post
Haaretz
28/07/2006
Israel rules out United Nations role in peacekeeping force
Israel's ambassador to the UN ruled out Thursday major UN involvement in any potential international force in Lebanon, saying more professional and better-trained troops were needed for such a volatile situation.
Dan Gillerman also said Israel would not allow the United Nations to join in an investigation of an Israeli air strike that demolished a post belonging to the current UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon. Four UN observers were killed in the Tuesday strike.
"Israel has never agreed to a joint investigation, and I don't think that if anything happened in this country, or in Britain or in Italy or in France, the government of that country would agree to a joint investigation," Gillerman said.
He apologized for the strike that killed the four UN observers, but said the conflict was a war and that accidents happen.
"This is a war which is going on," he told reporters. "War is an ugly thing and during war, mistakes and tragedies do happen."
Gillerman, who spoke at an event hosted by The Israel Project advocacy group and later inside the United Nations, gave a heated defense of Israel's two-week campaign against Hezbollah militants. He said some diplomats from the Middle East had told him that Israel was doing the right thing in going after Hezbollah.
His refusal to conduct a joint investigation will be a slap to UN officials, who have specifically sought to partner with Israel to investigate the bombing.
Comment: You see, it was all an accident, simply because Israel's ambassador to the UN says so. The FACT that the UN post repeatedly notified the Israeli military of its position before the bombing and that the Israeli military were already undoubtedly aware of the exact location of the UN base, is not relevant apparently.
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Israeli strike on UN post not accident: Finnish officer in Lebanon
www.chinaview.cn 2006-07-28 16:37:36
HELSINKI, July 28 (Xinhua) -- A Finnish officer commanding the Observer Group Lebanon, part of the UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), said on Thursday he did not believe that the Israeli airstrike on a UN observation post in Lebanon on Tuesday had been an accident.
Colonel Rolf Kullberg told Finnish commercial broadcaster Nelonen that prior to the incident, the peacekeepers had repeatedly asked the Israel Defense Forces not to bomb the post.
Nelonen quoted witnesses as saying that four Israeli warplanes had bombed the post.
The direct hit on the post killed four UN observers, who were from Austria, Canada, China and Finland.
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Three killed as Israeli warplanes pound Lebanon
28/07/2006
Reuters
Israeli warplanes struck three buildings in a village near the market town of Nabatiyeh in southern Lebanon as they renewed attacks on suspected Hezbollah targets today, killing three people and wounding nine, including four children, Lebanese security officials said.
Israeli jets fired missiles at a four-storey building that housed a construction company believed owned by a Hezbollah activist, reducing it to rubble, at about 8.30am (6.30am Irish time) in the village of Kfar Jouz, the officials said.
Hussam Abu Shamet, a Jordanian in a nearby house, was killed by missile shrapnel, and four children of Lebanese journalist Ali Dawoud, who also lives nearby, were wounded by flying glass and taken to the hospital, the officials said.
Security officials said a Lebanese couple in a shelter also were killed when a missile struck another building in the area, with the impact from the blast collapsing their hideout on top of them.
The bodies of Hussein Basma and his wife, Anissa Atawi, were retrieved by civil defence personnel from under the rubble of the destroyed three-storey building hours after the missile attack.
It was not known if they had any children kept elsewhere.
Five other people, including three Syrians, were wounded in the series of strikes on the village.
The warplanes have pounded 130 targets in Lebanon, including a Hezbollah base in the Bekaa Valley where long-range rockets were stored, the military said today.
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PM backs Israel bomb flights
13:08pm 28th July 2006
Tony Blair faces a public backlash after it emerged that he has given the go-ahead for Britain to be used as a staging post for the supply of bunkerbusting bombs to Israel.
Whitehall sources confirmed that two more U.S. cargo planes carrying laserguided weapons will be given permission to land on British soil over the next couple of weeks.
The embarrassing U-turn comes only hours after Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett savaged the U.S. on learning that two A310 cargo planes loaded with GBU28 bombs landed at Prestwick airport in Glasgow last weekend.
But in a humiliating slap-down to the Foreign Secretary, sources said it would be 'safe to assume' that the stop-overs will continue to be allowed.
The U.S. yesterday confirmed it had lodged requests to bring two more planes through the UK carrying bombs and missiles for Israel, which claimed yesterday it had the world's approval to continue its bombardment of Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon as the death toll there passed the 600 mark.
In an extraordinary and controversial outburst, justice minister Haim Ramon declared the decision of the Rome conference of foreign ministers on Wednesday not to call for a ceasefire was in effect the green light to continue the offensive.
Mr Ramon said the Israeli air force must bomb villages before ground forces enter, suggesting that this would help prevent Israeli casualties in the future.
As he spoke, the Israeli cabinet approved the call-up of 30,000 more reserve soldiers. And Al Qaeda intervened in the crisis for the first time, urging Muslims to strike the 'crusaders' backing Israel - a tacit threat to the U.S. and Britain, whose leaders are holding crisis talks in Washington today.
- A top Iranian envoy was in Syria yesterday for talks on the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, according to Iranian news reports. They said the meeting was designed to discuss ways to maintain supplies to Hezbollah fighters with 'Iranian arms flowing through Syrian territories'.
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Blair to tell Bush: we need a ceasefire
Ewen MacAskill, Simon Tisdall and Michael White
Friday July 28, 2006
The Guardian
Tony Blair will press George Bush today to support "as a matter of urgency" a ceasefire in Lebanon as part of a UN security council resolution next week, according to Downing Street sources.
At a White House meeting, the prime minister will express his concern that pro-western Arab governments are "getting squeezed" by the crisis and the longer it continues, the more squeezed they will be, giving militants a boost. The private view from No 10 is that the US is "prevaricating" over the resolution and allowing the conflict to run on too long.
But diplomatic sources in Washington suggest the US and Israel believe serious damage has been inflicted on Hizbullah, so the White House is ready to back a ceasefire resolution at the UN next week. Today Mr Bush and Mr Blair will discuss a version of the resolution that has been circulating in Washington and London.
The draft peace deal involves two phases. In the first, Israel and Lebanon would agree a ceasefire and a small multinational force would be deployed on the border, allowing Israeli troops to withdraw. Then a much larger force of between 10,000 and 20,000 troops would be assigned to implement UN security council resolution 1559, agreed two years ago, under which militias such as Hizbullah would be disarmed and the authority of the Lebanese government forces extended to the country's southern border.
European officials are sceptical about disarming Hizbullah. But they believe that, if other countries in the region can be persuaded to contribute to the buffer force, it would give them a vested interest in addressing Hizbullah's threat to Israel.
A British official said the two-phase idea was raised by Britain at Wednesday's international conference in Rome and "the US are almost certainly going to push something through next week".
France, which holds the presidency of the security council, has drafted its own resolution which it wants to push to a vote early next week. The French plan calls for an "immediate halt to the violence", "a handover of prisoners to a third party enjoying the trust of the two belligerents", UN shuttle diplomacy in pursuit of a "general settlement framework", and the deployment of an international force in support of the Lebanese army. Controversially, it says a buffer zone should straddle the Israel-Lebanon border.
It is unclear whether Mr Blair will urge Mr Bush to do something the administration has decided to do anyway. The prime minister is intent on demonstrating that he has influence in the White House and Britain has its own policy. Polls this week showed public disquiet over his closeness to Mr Bush and the failure to act more decisively to end the bloodshed.
The US and Britain have stood against most of the rest of the world in refusing to call for an immediate ceasefire. Mr Blair has not changed his position on that, but a Downing Street source said he would urge the US to move faster in backing the resolution. "Collectively we have to step up the urgency of the search for a ceasefire."
With an eye on the Arab world, Mr Blair wants to ensure that Hizbullah and other militant groups such as Hamas do not emerge stronger from the crisis. He will reiterate to Mr Bush that the key to resolving the violence is resolution of the Palestinian issue.
No 10 dismissed the row over US military flights using Prestwick airport, Scotland, to send weapons to Israel without telling Britain as an issue of process, not principle.
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Israel's long-standing practice of unlawful collective punishment
Shane Darcy, The Electronic Intifada, 26 July 2006
The extensive military operations that have been conducted by the Israeli army in and around the Gaza Strip over the past weeks have displayed a marked disregard for international humanitarian law and have involved the imposition of grave and unlawful measures of collective punishment on the Palestinian population. The principle of proportionality has been completely abandoned. As part of its attempt to secure the release of a single captured Israeli soldier, the army has destroyed bridges, government offices and civilian property, and cut off the electricity to over half the population of Gaza. One Israeli journalist has described the operation simply as an "act of vengeance".
Israel has long taken the view that it is justified in inflicting collective punishment because the Palestinian population is collectively responsible for any acts committed within its midst. Politicians frequently speak of the "heavy price" that must be paid for attacks on Israeli citizens or the army.
There is considerable historical precedent for such conduct. Reliance on collective responsibility was hitherto viewed as a lawful means of deterring the commission of hostile acts by a population in occupied territory. During the United States-Mexico War of 1847-48, US General Winfield Scott ordered that if individuals responsible for attacks on troops and army property were not handed over by the Mexican authorities then "the punishment shall fall upon entire cities, towns, or neighborhoods". The tactic of punishing on the basis of a notion of collective responsibility was also a common feature in colonial era conflicts - in the Boer War the British would respond to hostility by imposing fines, burning farms and destroying private property. The Black and Tans relied on similar means in pre-independence Ireland, as exemplified by notorious incidents such as 'The Sack of Balbriggan'.
It was during the Second World War, however, that this concept of collective responsibility was relied on in the bloodiest of ways. The treatment of the Russian population by the Nazis, for example, was described as a "punitive expedition in continuous operation", in which widespread collective penalties were inflicted in the form of mass executions and extensive destruction of property. On the Allied side, Winston Churchill proposed in the aftermath of several massacres in Czechoslovakia that three German villages should be razed for every one which had been destroyed by German troops. In the aftermath of the war several Nazi war criminals were convicted of the crime of collective punishment by Allied military tribunals.
Universal repugnance to the conduct of the Second World War led to the adoption in 1949 of the Geneva Conventions, marking a turning point in the way in which States would conduct themselves during warfare. More States have signed up to these important treaties than the United Nations Charter, demonstrating a universal commitment to be bound by the rules of international humanitarian law. The Fourth Geneva Convention protects civilians in occupied territories and states clearly that "[n]o protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited." While reliance on collective responsibility was not relegated to the past - Saddam Hussein is currently being tried for the murder of 143 people in Dujail as a collective punishment for an attack on his life there in 1982 - the unlawful character of such conduct is now established beyond doubt and can no longer be justified on the basis of some perceived deterrent effect.
Despite being a signatory to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, Israel has frequently resorted to collective punishment since the beginning of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. It has illegally demolished thousands of houses in response to hostile acts committed by one or more of the inhabitants. The Supreme Court has regularly upheld the lawfulness of this practice, regardless of the clear conflict with the rules of international law, and Justice Ben-Dror once commented that an individual who engages in terrorism "should know that his criminal acts will not only hurt him but also are apt to cause great suffering to his family". Although the practice of house demolition was temporarily suspended in 2004, the Israeli army has indicated a willingness to resurrect the practice if circumstances require it.
The imposition of collective punishment is a war crime under customary international law. Numerous individuals being tried before the Special Court of Sierra Leone have been charged with just such a crime. But in the most comprehensive codification of international crimes, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, collective punishment does not feature among the dozens of listed war crimes over which the Court has jurisdiction. Although Israel is not a party to the Rome Statute, its representatives did attend the 1998 diplomatic conference which led to the adoption of the instrument. It was at their behest that the war crime of collective punishment was excluded from the Court's jurisdiction.
The Israeli armed forces' actions in Gaza continue its long-standing tradition of taking harsh collective punitive measures against the Palestinian population. History has shown that such repressive measures rarely achieve their stated objectives. Rather than deter hostile conduct, such actions have tended to antagonize and embitter the local population, and provoke even further violent acts of resistance. In the context of this particular conflict, and especially in light of the political compromise that had been achieved between Hamas and Fatah days before the commencement of the Gaza offensive, it seems that a revival of hostilities may very well have been what the Israeli authorities had intended when they allowed the armed forces to take such extreme and disproportionate measures.
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If Not, Then What?
Tide of Arab Opinion Turns to Support for Hezbollah
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
07/28/06 "New York Times"
DAMASCUS, Syria, July 27 - At the onset of the Lebanese crisis, Arab governments, starting with Saudi Arabia, slammed Hezbollah for recklessly provoking a war, providing what the United States and Israel took as a wink and a nod to continue the fight.
Now, with hundreds of Lebanese dead and Hezbollah holding out against the vaunted Israeli military for 15 days, the tide of public opinion across the Arab world is surging behind the organization, transforming the Shiite group's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, into a folk hero and forcing a change in official statements.
The Saudi royal family and King Abdullah II of Jordan, who were initially more worried about the rising power of Shiite Iran, Hezbollah's main sponsor, are scrambling to distance themselves from Washington.
An outpouring of newspaper columns, cartoons, blogs and public poetry readings have showered praise on Hezbollah while attacking the United States and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for trumpeting American plans for a "new Middle East" that they say has led only to violence and repression.
Even Al Qaeda, run by violent Sunni Muslim extremists normally hostile to all Shiites, has gotten into the act, with its deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, releasing a taped message saying that through its fighting in Iraq, his organization was also trying to liberate Palestine.
Mouin Rabbani, a senior Middle East analyst in Amman, Jordan, with the International Crisis Group, said, "The Arab-Israeli conflict remains the most potent issue in this part of the world."
Distinctive changes in tone are audible throughout the Sunni world. This week, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt emphasized his attempts to arrange a cease-fire to protect all sects in Lebanon, while the Jordanian king announced that his country was dispatching medical teams "for the victims of Israeli aggression." Both countries have peace treaties with Israel.
The Saudi royal court has issued a dire warning that its 2002 peace plan - offering Israel full recognition by all Arab states in exchange for returning to the borders that predated the 1967 Arab-Israeli war - could well perish.
"If the peace option is rejected due to the Israeli arrogance," it said, "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."
The Saudis were putting the West on notice that they would not exert pressure on anyone in the Arab world until Washington did something to halt the destruction of Lebanon, Saudi commentators said.
American officials say that while the Arab leaders need to take a harder line publicly for domestic political reasons, what matters more is what they tell the United States in private, which the Americans still see as a wink and a nod.
There are evident concerns among Arab governments that a victory for Hezbollah - and it has already achieved something of a victory by holding out this long - would further nourish the Islamist tide engulfing the region and challenge their authority. Hence their first priority is to cool simmering public opinion.
But perhaps not since President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt made his emotional outpourings about Arab unity in the 1960's, before the Arab defeat in the 1967 war, has the public been so electrified by a confrontation with Israel, played out repeatedly on satellite television stations with horrific images from Lebanon of wounded children and distraught women fleeing their homes.
Egypt's opposition press has had a field day comparing Sheik Nasrallah to Nasser, while demonstrators waved pictures of both.
An editorial in the weekly Al Dustur by Ibrahim Issa, who faces a lengthy jail sentence for his previous criticism of President Mubarak, compared current Arab leaders to the medieval princes who let the Crusaders chip away at Muslim lands until they controlled them all.
After attending an intellectual rally in Cairo for Lebanon, the Egyptian poet Ahmed Fouad Negm wrote a column describing how he had watched a companion buy 20 posters of Sheik Nasrallah.
"People are praying for him as they walk in the street, because we were made to feel oppressed, weak and handicapped," Mr. Negm said in an interview. "I asked the man who sweeps the street under my building what he thought, and he said: 'Uncle Ahmed, he has awakened the dead man inside me! May God make him triumphant!' "
In Lebanon, Rasha Salti, a freelance writer, summarized the sense that Sheik Nasrallah differed from other Arab leaders.
"Since the war broke out, Hassan Nasrallah has displayed a persona, and public behavior also, to the exact opposite of Arab heads of states," she wrote in an e-mail message posted on many blogs.
In comparison, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's brief visit to the region sparked widespread criticism of her cold demeanor and her choice of words, particularly a statement that the bloodshed represented the birth pangs of a "new Middle East." That catchphrase was much used by Shimon Peres, the veteran Israeli leader who was a principal negotiator of the 1993 Oslo Accords, which ultimately failed to lead to the Palestinian state they envisaged.
A cartoon by Emad Hajjaj in Jordan labeled "The New Middle East" showed an Israeli tank sitting on a broken apartment house in the shape of the Arab world.
Fawaz al-Trabalsi, a columnist in the Lebanese daily As Safir, suggested that the real new thing in the Middle East was the ability of one group to challenge Israeli militarily.
Perhaps nothing underscored Hezbollah's rising stock more than the sudden appearance of a tape from the Qaeda leadership attempting to grab some of the limelight.
Al Jazeera satellite television broadcast a tape from Mr. Zawahri (za-WAH-ri). Large panels behind him showed a picture of the exploding World Trade Center as well as portraits of two Egyptian Qaeda members, Muhammad Atef, a Qaeda commander who was killed by an American airstrike in Afghanistan, and Mohamed Atta, the lead hijacker on Sept. 11, 2001. He described the two as fighters for the Palestinians.
Mr. Zawahri tried to argue that the fight against American forces in Iraq paralleled what Hezbollah was doing, though he did not mention the organization by name.
"It is an advantage that Iraq is near Palestine," he said. "Muslims should support its holy warriors until an Islamic emirate dedicated to jihad is established there, which could then transfer the jihad to the borders of Palestine."
Mr. Zawahri also adopted some of the language of Hezbollah and Shiite Muslims in general. That was rather ironic, since previously in Iraq, Al Qaeda has labeled Shiites Muslim as infidels and claimed responsibility for some of the bloodier assaults on Shiite neighborhoods there.
But by taking on Israel, Hezbollah had instantly eclipsed Al Qaeda, analysts said. "Everyone will be asking, 'Where is Al Qaeda now?' " said Adel al-Toraifi, a Saudi columnist and expert on Sunni extremists.
Mr. Rabbani of the International Crisis Group said Hezbollah's ability to withstand the Israeli assault and to continue to lob missiles well into Israel exposed the weaknesses of Arab governments with far greater resources than Hezbollah.
"Public opinion says that if they are getting more on the battlefield than you are at the negotiating table, and you have so many more means at your disposal, then what the hell are you doing?" Mr. Rabbani said. "In comparison with the small embattled guerrilla movement, the Arab states seem to be standing idly by twiddling their thumbs."
Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting from Cairo for this article, and Suha Maayeh from Amman, Jordan.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
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Israeli strikes may boost Hizbullah base
By Nicholas Blanford
TYRE, LEBANON
from the July 28, 2006 edition
The ferocity of Israel's onslaught in southern Lebanon and Hizbullah's stubborn battles against Israeli ground forces may be working in the militant group's favor.
"They want to shatter the myth of Israeli invincibility," says Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a leading Lebanese expert on Hizbullah. "Being victorious means not allowing Israel to achieve their aims, and so far that is the case."
Still, the intensity of the Israeli bombing campaign appears to have taken Hizbullah aback. Mahmoud Komati, the deputy head of Hizbullah's politburo told the Associated Press, "the truth is - let me say this clearly - we didn't even expect [this] response ... that [Israel] would exploit this operation for this big war against us."
When Hizbullah guerrillas snatched two Israeli soldiers from across the border, it appeared to be a serious miscalculation. In the days that followed the July 12 capture, Israel unleashed its biggest offensive against Lebanon since its 1982 invasion, smashing the country's infrastructure, creating 500,000 refugees, and so far killing more than 400 civilians.
Thursday, Israeli air and artillery strikes continued in southern Lebanon and the International Committee of the Red Cross said bodies were laying in the streets of some Lebanese border villages where fighting has trapped civilians. Also Thursday Al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman Zawahiri, called in a televised video for Muslims to join fighting in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon in a holy war against Israel. While al-Qaeda is a Sunni Muslim group which in general views Shiites, who make up Hizbullah's ranks, with disgust and not even as Muslims, they share a common hatred of Israel and the US.
In a televised address Tuesday, Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah's secretary general, said the Israeli onslaught was an attempt by the US and Israel to "impose a new Middle East" in which Lebanon would be under US hegemony.
"Our fate is to confront this plan ... we are waging a war for the liberation of the remaining occupied lands and the liberation of our detainees," Mr. Nasrallah said.
Ms. Saad-Ghorayeb says that Hizbullah's goals have changed, "assuming a wider strategic importance" in which the party is at the forefront of opposition to the Bush administration's agenda of transforming the Middle East into a series of pro-Western democracies.
"Hizbullah is in a unique position to confront the US agenda which if successful will be, by extension, a victory for Syria, Iran and Hamas," she says.
Hizbullah's top guerrilla fighters are mounting a stubborn campaign against the region's most powerful army in and around Bint Jbail, the largest Shiite town in the border district where support for the party runs high.
Hizbullah has had six years - ever since Israel withdrew from south Lebanon - to prepare for this climactic showdown. Instead of storing weapons and ammunition in vulnerable stockpiles, they are scattered throughout the south in natural caves, tunnels, and homes. Hizbullah officials say they have sufficient ammunition and high morale tofight for months.
Hizbullah's frontline fighters are battle-hardened veterans after fighting Israeli forces in the 1990s. They are armed with advanced Russian antitank missiles, which have proved deadly against Israel's vaunted Merkava tanks and use classic hit-and-run guerrilla tactics.
"Hizbullah is doing what it does best, harassing the enemy," says Timur Goksel, who served 24 years with the UN peacekeeping force in south Lebanon.
Indeed, Nasrallah has announced the launch of the "second phase of our struggle" in which his long-range rockets would "go beyond Haifa," Israel's third-largest city. Israeli officials have been bracing for possible rocket attacks on Tel Aviv, which would mark a major escalation in the conflict.
"If Hizbullah hits Tel Aviv, I think that Israel will totally wipe off the map Bint Jbail, Khiam, Tyre and Nabatieh," says Nizar Abdel-Kader, a columnist for Ad-Diyar newspaper and a retired Lebanese army general.
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.
The latest poll by the Beirut Center found that 8 percent of Lebanese feel the US supports Lebanon, down from 38 percent in January.
"This support for Hizbullah is by default. It's due to US and Israeli actions," says Saad-Ghorayeb, whose father, Abdo, conducted the poll.
The most favorable outcome for Hizbullah, analysts say, is to keep harassing Israel until there is a cease-fire agreement that essentially leaves Hizbullah intact. If Israel establishes an occupation zone along the border to police the area, Hizbullah will likely continue fighting, unhindered by a weakened Lebanese government and backed by a radicalized Shiite community. That growing radicalization is palpable in this laid-back coastal town where support for Hizbullah traditionally has been arbitrary.
Ghassan Farran, a doctor and head of a local cultural organization, gazes in disbelief at the pile of smoking ruins which was once his home. Minutes earlier, an Israeli jet dropped two guided missiles into the six-story apartment block in the centre of Tyre.
"Look what America gives us, bombs and missiles," says this educated, middle-class professional. "I was never a political person and never with Hizbullah but now after this I am with Hizbullah."
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You're all targets, Israel tells Lebanese in South
By Harry de Quetteville in Jerusalem
(Filed: 28/07/2006)
Everyone remaining in southern Lebanon will be regarded as a terrorist, Israel's justice minister said yesterday as the military prepared to employ "huge firepower" from the air in its campaign to crush Hizbollah.
Haim Ramon issued the warning as the Israeli government decided against expanding ground operations after the death of nine soldiers in fighting on Wednesday.
"What we should do in southern Lebanon is employ huge firepower before a ground force goes in," Mr Ramon said at a security cabinet meeting headed by Ehud Olmert, the prime minister. "Everyone in southern Lebanon is a terrorist and is connected to Hizbollah. Our great advantage vis-a-vis Hizbollah is our firepower, not in face-to-face combat."
Mr Olmert promised that the army would "continue toward the established goals".
Mr Ramon's comments suggested that civilian casualties in Lebanon, which stand at about 600 after 16 days of bombardment, could rise yet higher.
The government's unrelenting line has the backing of the Israeli media, which are demanding a harsh response to an ambush in the Hizbollah stronghold of Bint Jbeil, in which eight soldiers died.
The country's biggest-selling paper, Yedioth Ahronoth, said the army had raised the threshold of response to Katyusha rockets.
"In other words: a village from which rockets are fired at Israel will simply be destroyed by fire," it said.
"This decision should have been made and executed after the first Katyusha. But better late than never."
Three divisions of reserve soldiers, up to 15,000 men, are to be called up.
Almost 50 Hizbollah missiles landed in northern Israel yesterday, wounding four people and bringing the total number of rockets fired into the country to about 1,400.
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Bombs bound for Israel came via British airports
UK Independent
27 July 2006
Ministers are embroiled in a row over whether British military equipment and airports are being used to assist Israeli attacks on Lebanon.
MPs called on Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, to ensure that arms made in Britain were not being used in the violence in the Middle East, amid warnings that Israeli F-16 warplanes flying sorties across the border may contain British parts.
Last night Mrs Beckett said she had protested to the American government after it emerged that two cargo planes loaded with 5,000lb " bunker-buster" bombs bound for Israel had stopped over at Prestwick airport near Glasgow.
She told Channel Four News: "I am not happy about it. Not least because it appears that in so far as there are procedures for handling of that kind of cargo hazardous cargoes irrespective of what they are it does appear that they were not followed.
But she faced criticism over officials' monitoring of British military components exported to Israel. Under strict British rules governing arms exports, military equipment should not be used for internal oppression or external aggression. According to BBC2's Newsnight, the United States has lodged requests for two planes carrying missiles to make stop-overs in the UK in the coming fortnight.
The Foreign Office insisted it had "no reports that UK-supplied equipment is being deployed by Israel in Gaza" in a way inconsistent with controls on international arms sales.
Tony Blair was also criticised by his former adviser, Sir Stephen Wall, for having a "bunker" mentality in his support of George Bush over Israel.
Ministers are embroiled in a row over whether British military equipment and airports are being used to assist Israeli attacks on Lebanon.
MPs called on Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, to ensure that arms made in Britain were not being used in the violence in the Middle East, amid warnings that Israeli F-16 warplanes flying sorties across the border may contain British parts.
Last night Mrs Beckett said she had protested to the American government after it emerged that two cargo planes loaded with 5,000lb " bunker-buster" bombs bound for Israel had stopped over at Prestwick airport near Glasgow.
She told Channel Four News: "I am not happy about it. Not least because it appears that in so far as there are procedures for handling of that kind of cargo hazardous cargoes irrespective of what they are it does appear that they were not followed. I have already let the United States know that this is an issue that appears to be seriously at fault: that we will be making a formal protest if it appears that that is what has happened."
Comment: Did you get that? The reason Beckett is a little irked is that the procedures were not followed. The fact that the bombs were on their way to dismember Lebanese children is of no consequence apparently.
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Dump Condi: Bush allies in revolt over Mideast policy
insightmag.com
7/25/2006
Conservative national security allies of President Bush are in revolt against Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, saying that she is incompetent and has reversed the administration's national security and foreign policy agenda.
The conservatives, who include Newt Gingrich, Richard Perle and leading current and former members of the Pentagon and National Security Council, have urged the president to transfer Miss Rice out of the State Department and to an advisory role. They said Miss Rice, stemming from her lack of understanding of the Middle East, has misled the president on Iran and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
"The president has yet to understand that people make policy and not the other way around," a senior national security policy analyst said. "Unlike [former Secretary of State Colin] Powell, Condi is loyal to the president. She is just incompetent on most foreign policy issues."
The criticism of Miss Rice has been intense and comes from a range of Republican loyalists, including current and former aides in the Defense Department and the office of Vice President Dick Cheney. They have warned that Iran has been exploiting Miss Rice's inexperience and incompetence to accelerate its nuclear weapons program. They expect a collapse of her policy over the next few months.
"We are sending signals today that no matter how much you provoke us, no matter how viciously you describe things in public, no matter how many things you're doing with missiles and nuclear weapons, the most you'll get out of us is talk," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said.
Miss Rice served as Mr. Bush's national security adviser in his first term. During his second term, Miss Rice replaced Mr. Powell in the wake of a conclusion by the White House that Mr. Bush required a loyalist to head the State Department and ensure that U.S. foreign policy reflected the president's agenda.
"Condi was sent to rein in the State Department," a senior Republican congressional staffer said. "Instead, she was reined in."
Mr. Gingrich agrees and said Miss Rice's inexperience and lack of resolve were demonstrated in the aftermath of the North Korean launch of seven short-, medium-, and intermediate-range missiles in July. He suggested that Miss Rice was a key factor in the lack of a firm U.S. response.
"North Korea firing missiles," Mr. Gingrich said. "You say there will be consequences. There are none. We are in the early stages of World War III. Our bureaucracies are not responding fast enough. We don't have the right attitude."
Several of the critics have urged that Mr. Bush provide a high-profile post to James Baker, who was secretary of state under the administration of Mr. Bush's father. They cited Mr. Baker's determination to confront Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein in 1990.
A leading public critic of Miss Rice has been Richard Perle, a former chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board and regarded as close to Mr. Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Mr. Perle, pointing to the effort by the State Department to undermine the Reagan administration's policy toward the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, has accused Miss Rice of succumbing to a long-time State Department agenda of meaningless agreements meant to appease enemies of the United States.
"Condoleezza Rice has moved from the White House to Foggy Bottom, a mere mile or so away," Mr. Perle wrote in a June 25 Op-Ed article in the Washington Post that has been distributed throughout conservative and national security circles. "What matters is not that she is further removed from the Oval Office; Rice's influence on the president is undiminished. It is, rather, that she is now in the midst of - and increasingly represents - a diplomatic establishment that is driven to accommodate its allies even when (or, it seems, especially when) such allies counsel the appeasement of our adversaries."
Mr. Perle's article was said to have reflected the views of many of Mr. Bush's appointees in the White House, Defense Department and State Department. Mr. Perle maintains close contacts to U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control Robert Joseph, Deputy National Security Advisor Elliot Abrams and Mr. Cheney's national security adviser, John Hannah.
A major problem, critics said, is Miss Rice's ignorance of the Middle East. They said the secretary relies completely on Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, who is largely regarded as the architect of U.S. foreign policy. Miss Rice also consults regularly with her supporters on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Chairman Richard Lugar and the No. 2 Republican, Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.
The critics said Miss Rice has adopted the approach of Mr. Burns and the State Department bureaucracy that most - if not all - problems in the Middle East can be eased by applying pressure on Israel. They said even as Hezbollah was raining rockets on Israeli cities and communities, Miss Rice was on the phone nearly every day demanding that the Israeli government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert exercise restraint.
"Rice attempted to increase pressure on Israel to stand down and to demonstrate restraint," said Stephen Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. "The rumor is that she was told flatly by the prime minister's office to back off."
The critics within the administration expect a backlash against Miss Rice that could lead to her transfer in wake of the congressional elections in 2006. They said by that time even Mr. Bush will recognize the failure of relying solely on diplomacy in the face of Iran's nuclear weapons program.
"At that point, Rice will be openly blamed and Bush will have a very hard time defending her," said a GOP source with close ties to the administration.
Comment: The critics said Miss Rice has adopted the approach of Mr. Burns and the State Department bureaucracy that most - if not all - problems in the Middle East can be eased by applying pressure on Israel.
If the above statement is true, then Condi's career in the State Department will indeed come to a screeching halt rather quickly.
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Iran: The Next War
Rolling Stone Magazine
28/07/2006
Even before the bombs fell on Baghdad, a group of senior Pentagon officials were plotting to invade another country. Their covert campaign once again relied on false intelligence and shady allies. But this time, the target was Iran.
How did the Bush administration sell the Iraq war? Check out our award-winning story on the PR machine for regime change in Iraq -- and join a reader debate: Is war with Iran unavoidable?
I. The Israeli Connection
A few blocks off Pennsylvania Avenue, the FBI's eight-story Washington field office exudes all the charm of a maximum-security prison. Its curved roof is made of thick stainless steel, the bottom three floors are wrapped in granite and limestone, hydraulic bollards protect the ramp to the four-floor garage, and bulletproof security booths guard the entrance to the narrow lobby. On the fourth floor, like a tomb within a tomb, lies the most secret room in the $100 million concrete fortress-out-of-bounds even for special agents without an escort. Here, in the Language Services Section, hundreds of linguists in padded earphones sit elbow-to-elbow in long rows, tapping computer keyboards as they eavesdrop on the phone lines of foreign embassies and other high-priority targets in the nation's capital.
At the far end of that room, on the morning of February 12th, 2003, a small group of eavesdroppers were listening intently for evidence of a treacherous crime. At the very moment that American forces were massing for an invasion of Iraq, there were indications that a rogue group of senior Pentagon officials were already conspiring to push the United States into another war-this time with Iran.
A few miles away, FBI agents watched as Larry Franklin, an Iran expert and career employee of the Defense Intelligence Agency, drove up to the Ritz-Carlton hotel across the Potomac from Washington. A trim man of fifty-six, with a tangle of blond hair speckled gray, Franklin had left his modest home in Kearneysville, West Virginia, shortly before dawn that morning to make the eighty-mile commute to his job at the Pentagon. Since 2002, he had been working in the Office of Special Plans, a crowded warren of blue cubicles on the building's fifth floor. A secretive unit responsible for long-term planning and propaganda for the invasion of Iraq, the office's staffers referred to themselves as "the cabal." They reported to Douglas Feith, the third-most-powerful official in the Defense Department, helping to concoct the fraudulent intelligence reports that were driving America to war in Iraq.
Just two weeks before, in his State of the Union address, President Bush had begun laying the groundwork for the invasion, falsely claiming that Saddam Hussein had the means to produce tens of thousands of biological and chemical weapons, including anthrax, botulinum toxin, sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent. But an attack on Iraq would require something that alarmed Franklin and other neoconservatives almost as much as weapons of mass destruction: detente with Iran. As political columnist David Broder reported in The Washington Post, moderates in the Bush administration were "covertly negotiating for Iran to stay quiet and offer help to refugees when we go into Iraq."
Franklin-a devout neoconservative who had been brought into Feith's office because of his political beliefs-was hoping to undermine those talks. As FBI agents looked on, Franklin entered the restaurant at the Ritz and joined two other Americans who were also looking for ways to push the U.S. into a war with Iran. One was Steven Rosen, one of the most influential lobbyists in Washington. Sixty years old and nearly bald, with dark eyebrows and a seemingly permanent frown, Rosen was director of foreign-policy issues at Israel's powerful lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Seated next to Rosen was AIPAC's Iran expert, Keith Weissman. He and Rosen had been working together closely for a decade to pressure U.S. officials and members of Congress to turn up the heat on Tehran.
Over breakfast at the Ritz-Carlton, Franklin told the two lobbyists about a draft of a top-secret National Security Presidential Directive that dealt with U.S. policy on Iran. Crafted by Michael Rubin, the desk officer for Iraq and Iran in Feith's office, the document called, in essence, for regime change in Iran. In the Pentagon's view, according to one senior official there at the time, Iran was nothing but "a house of cards ready to be pushed over the precipice." So far, though, the White House had rejected the Pentagon's plan, favoring the State Department's more moderate position of diplomacy. Now, unwilling to play by the rules any longer, Franklin was taking the extraordinary-and illegal-step of passing on highly classified information to lobbyists for a foreign state. Unable to win the internal battle over Iran being waged within the administration, a member of Feith's secret unit in the Pentagon was effectively resorting to treason, recruiting AIPAC to use its enormous influence to pressure the president into adopting the draft directive and wage war against Iran.
It was a role that AIPAC was eager to play. Rosen, recognizing that Franklin could serve as a useful spy, immediately began plotting ways to plant him in the White House-specifically in the National Security Council, the epicenter of intelligence and national-security policy. By working there, Rosen told Franklin a few days later, he would be "by the elbow of the president."
Knowing that such a maneuver was well within AIPAC's capabilities, Franklin asked Rosen to "put in a good word" for him. Rosen agreed. "I'll do what I can," he said, adding that the breakfast meeting had been a real "eye-opener."
Working together, the two men hoped to sell the United States on yet another bloody war. A few miles away, digital recorders at the FBI's Language Services Section captured every word.
Continue reading here
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The War on Lebanon and the Battle for Oil
07/26/06
GlobalResearch
Is there a relationship
between the bombing of Lebanon and the inauguration of the World's
largest strategic pipeline, which will channel more a million
barrels of oil a day to Western markets?
Virtually
unnoticed, the inauguration of the Ceyhan-Tblisi-Baku (BTC) oil
pipeline, which links the Caspian sea to the Eastern
Mediterranean, took place on the 13th of July, at the very
outset of the Israeli sponsored bombings of Lebanon.
One day before
the Israeli air strikes, the main partners and shareholders of
the BTC pipeline project, including several heads of State and
oil company executives were in attendance at the port of Ceyhan.
They were then rushed off for an inauguration reception in
Istanbul, hosted by Turkey's President Ahmet Necdet Sezer in
the plush surroundings of the Çýraðan Palace.
Also in
attendance was
British Petroleum's (BP) CEO, Lord Browne together with
senior government officials from Britain, the US and Israel. BP
leads the BTC pipeline consortium. Other major Western
shareholders include Chevron, Conoco-Phillips, France's Total
and Italy's ENI. (see Annex)
Israel's
Minister of Energy and Infrastructure Binyamin Ben-Eliezer was
present at the venue together with a delegation of top Israeli
oil officials.
The BTC pipeline
totally bypasses the territory of the Russian Federation. It
transits through the former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan and
Georgia, both of which have become US "protectorates", firmly
integrated into a military alliance with the US and NATO.
They were then rushed off for an inauguration reception in
Istanbul, hosted by Turkey's President Ahmet Necdet Sezer in
the plush surroundings of the Çýraðan Palace.
Also in
attendance was
British Petroleum's (BP) CEO, Lord Browne together with
senior government officials from Britain, the US and Israel. BP
leads the BTC pipeline consortium. Other major Western
shareholders include Chevron, Conoco-Phillips, France's Total
and Italy's ENI. (see Annex)
Israel's
Minister of Energy and Infrastructure Binyamin Ben-Eliezer was
present at the venue together with a delegation of top Israeli
oil officials.
The BTC pipeline
totally bypasses the territory of the Russian Federation. It
transits through the former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan and
Georgia, both of which have become US "protectorates", firmly
integrated into a military alliance with the US and NATO.
Moreover, both Azerbaijan and Georgia have longstanding military
cooperation agreements with Israel. In 2005, Georgian companies
received some $24 million in military contracts funded out of
U.S. military assistance to Israel under the so-called "Foreign
Military Financing (FMF) program".
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/states/GA.html
Israel has a stake in the
Azeri oil fields, from which it imports some twenty percent of
its oil. The opening of the pipeline will substantially enhance
Israeli oil imports from the Caspian sea basin.
But there is another dimension which directly relates to the war
on Lebanon. Whereas Russia has been weakened, Israel is slated
to play a major strategic role in "protecting" the Eastern
Mediterranean transport and pipeline corridors out of Ceyhan.
Militarization of the Eastern Mediterranean
The bombing of
Lebanon is part of a carefully planned and coordinated military
road map. The extension of the war into Syria and Iran has
already been contemplated by US and Israeli military planners.
This broader military agenda is intimately related to strategic
oil and oil pipelines. It is supported by the Western oil giants
which control the pipeline corridors. In the context of the war
on Lebanon, it seeks Israeli territorial control over the East
Mediterranean coastline.
In this context,
the BTC pipeline dominated by British Petroleum, has
dramatically changed the geopolitics of the Eastern
Mediterranean, which is now linked , through an energy corridor,
to the Caspian sea basin:
"[The BTC
pipeline] considerably changes the status of the region's
countries and cements a new pro-West alliance. Having taken
the pipeline to the Mediterranean, Washington has
practically set up a new bloc with Azerbaijan, Georgia,
Turkey and Israel, " (Komerzant, Moscow, 14 July 2006)
Israel is now
part of the Anglo-American military axis, which serves the
interests of the Western oil giants in the Middle East and
Central Asia.
While the
official reports state that the BTC pipeline will "channel oil
to Western markets", what is rarely acknowledged is that part of
the oil from the Caspian sea would be directly channeled towards
Israel. In this regard, an underwater Israeli-Turkish pipeline
project has been envisaged which would link Ceyhan to the
Israeli port of Ashkelon and from there through Israel's main
pipeline system, to the Red Sea.
The objective of
Israel is not only to acquire Caspian sea oil for its own
consumption needs but also to play a key role in re-exporting
Caspian sea oil back to the Asian markets through the Red Sea
port of Eilat. The strategic implications of this re-routing of
Caspian sea oil are farreaching.
In April 2006,
Israel and Turkey announced plans for four underwater pipelines,
which would bypass Syrian and Lebanese territory.
"Turkey
and Israel are negotiating the construction of a
multi-million-dollar energy and water project that will
transport water, electricity, natural gas and oil by
pipelines to Israel, with the oil to be sent onward from
Israel to the Far East,
The new
Turkish-Israeli proposal under discussion would see the
transfer of water, electricity, natural gas and oil to
Israel via four underwater pipelines.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1145961328841&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
"Baku oil
can be transported to Ashkelon via this new pipeline and to
India and the Far East.[via the Red sea]"
"Ceyhan
and the Mediterranean port of Ashkelon are situated only 400
km apart. Oil can be transported to the city in tankers or
via specially constructed under-water pipeline. From
Ashkelon the oil can be pumped through already existing
pipeline to the port of Eilat at the Red Sea; and from there
it can be transported to India and other Asian countries in
tankers. (REGNUM
)
Water for
Israel
Also involved in
this project is a pipeline to bring water to Israel, pumping
water from upstream resources of the Tigris and Euphrates river
system in Anatolia. This has been a long-run strategic objective
of Israel to the detriment of Syria and Iraq. Israel's agenda
with regard to water is supported by the military cooperation
agreement between Tel Aviv and Ankara.
The
Re-routing of Central Asian Oil
Diverting
Central Asian oil and gas to the Eastern Mediterranean (under
Israeli military protection), for re-export to Asia, serves to
undermine the inter-Asian energy market, which is based on the
development of direct pipeline corridors linking Central Asia
and Russia to South Asia, China and the Far East.
Ultimately, this
design is intended to weaken Russia's role in Central Asia and
cut off China from Central Asian oil resources. It is also
intended to isolate Iran.
Meanwhile,
Israel has emerged as a new powerful player in the global energy
market.
War and Oil
Pipelines
Prior to the
bombing of Lebanon, Israel and Turkey had announced the
underwater pipeline routes, which bypassed Syria and Lebanon.
These underwater pipeline routes did not overtly encroach on the
territorial sovereignty of Lebanon and Syria.
On the other
hand, the development of alternative land based corridors (for
oil and water) through Lebanon and Syria would require
Israeli-Turkish territorial control over the Eastern
Mediterranean coastline through Lebanon and Syria.
The
implementation of this project requires the militarisation of
the East Mediterranean coastline, sea ways and land routes,
extending from the port of Ceyhan across Syria and Lebanon to
the Lebanese-Israeli border.
Is this not one of the hidden objectives of the war on Lebanon?
Open up a space which enables Israel to control a vast territory
extending from the Lebanese border through Syria to Turkey.
"The Long
War"
Israeli Prime
minister Ehud Olmert has stated that the Israeli offensive
against Lebanon would "last a very long time". Meanwhile, the US
has speeded up weapons shipments to Israel.
There are
strategic objectives underlying the "Long War" which are tied to
oil and oil pipelines.
The air campaign
against Lebanon is inextricably related to US-Israeli strategic
objectives in the broader Middle East including Syria and Iran.
In recent developments, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice
stated that the main purpose of her mission to the Middle East
was not to push for a ceasefire in Lebanon, but rather to
isolate Syria and Iran. (Daily Telegraph, 22 July 2006)
At this
particular juncture, the replenishing of Israeli stockpiles of
US produced WMDs points to an escalation of the war both within
and beyond the borders of Lebanon.
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The silent minority
Ian Black from Jerusalem
Friday July 28, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
Condoleezza Rice hardly noticed the small demonstration outside the Jerusalem hotel, when she arrived from Beirut for her meeting with Ehud Olmert.
The US secretary of state probably didn't even hear the slogans as her cavalcade swept up to a side entrance under heavy security. "Go home Condi," they chanted. "War is terrorism with a bigger budget," read one neatly written placard. The handful of Israeli anti-war activists were almost outnumbered by policemen but their voices are in any case being drowned out by overwhelming public support for the fight against Hizbullah in Lebanon.
There is plenty of voluble criticism in this ever fractious country about the way the war is being conducted, but heavy losses in one fierce battle on Wednesday - nine soldiers killed - have hardened the national mood.
Last weekend, 2,500 demonstrators turned out in Tel Aviv, but many were Israeli Arabs and radical left-wingers far from the political mainstream. A smaller demonstration in Haifa on Tuesday had to be postponed because air raid sirens wailed to warn of incoming missiles and protesters scattered to the shelters. Overall there is no traction to the anti-war movement.
"The left has been completely marginalised," said the veteran leftist and peace activist Chaim Baram. "It's never been as bad. It is true that no sovereign state could stand rocket attacks like these. But they are only a nuisance and the response is disproportionate, destroying infrastructure and killing children. The difference of quantity is a difference of quality."
Plenty of doves and liberals worry too about the proportionality of Israel's offensive agsinst Lebanon, while acknowledging that Hizbullah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and his Iranian ally are dangerous and fanatical enemies. But there has been fierce condemnation of those who have spoken out forcefully against Ehud Olmert's government. Support from the US, happy to see Israel take on Tehran's militant protégé, as well as hurting Syria, has given the prime minister unusual freedom of manoeuvre.
"Screw them all," snarled one young Israeli who was watching the demonstrators as Ms Rice disappeared into the hotel. "Let's kill Nasrallah and then we can all go home." The contrast with the last war in Lebanon could hardly be greater. Back in 1982 Israel saw the biggest peace rallies in its history, with many thousands opposing Menachem Begin's "war of choice" and turning out in even larger numbers when Christian militiamen massacred Palestinians in Beirut, while Israeli troops stood by.
Protests have been muted because the Hizbullah raid that began this latest round on July 12 is seen as a deliberately provocative act of aggression by an extremist Islamist organisation that ignores Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon six years ago, as certified by the UN.
Israel does still occupy a small area called the Shebaa Farms, on the disputed border between Lebanon and Syria. But it has signalled it will evacuate the area as part of an overall settlement with Lebanon.
It is correct too, that Hizbullah's rockets are not an existential threat. But foreign observers would be wrong to underestimate the pressure on Olmert's untried coalition government because of worries about maintaining deterrence, difficulties with civilian morale in the north and the damage to the economy, at what should be the height of the tourist season.
Criticism of the scale and ferocity of Israel's response has been limited too because much of the left was already demoralised by the stagnation in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process since Ariel Sharon's unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the victory of the Islamist movement Hamas in the Palestinian elections.
Gaza has now been under siege for months, with violence reaching new heights since the abduction of a young soldier and heavy-handed Israeli attempts to stop the firing of Qassam rockets across the border. With attention now focused on Lebanon, over 100 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli raids in the last few days alone. But even those Israelis with clear-cut views about the Palestinian issues find themselves confused by the current conflict.
"I am a man of the left and I want peace, but this is a very strange war," said the Jerusalem academic Eli Shaltiel. "Hizbullah and (Iran's president) Ahmedinejad want to kill me just because I am a Jew. I despise them. On the other we are destroying half of Lebanon. Did we really have to turn 750,000 people into refugees? Maybe it could have been done otherwise?"
Zohara Antebi, the founder of a women's organisation that demanded Israel's pullout from Lebanon in 2000, is concerned about proportionality but not about the principle of hitting back.
"War is a tragedy," Ms Antebi said on one of the many TV chat shows where this crisis is being endlessly discussed. "I can only hope that this ends quickly. People on the right say I am unpatriotic because I want to pull back from the West Bank into our own borders. But we do have to be strong inside those borders." Israeli public opinion can be volatile in wartime, and a change of mood cannot be ruled out if the fighting goes on for much longer and there are more losses without a clear blow to Hizbullah.
"People know this is not going well," said the historian and Ha'aretz commentator Tom Segev. "Israelis like wars that we win." But Condi Rice is unlikely to find many more demonstrators waiting for her when she returns to Jerusalem over the weekend. US secretaries of state are used to encountering protests in Jerusalem. After the 1973 war Henry Kissinger was booed by Jewish settlers carrying black umbrellas - the reference was to Neville Chamberlain and Munich- to signal contempt for "appeasing" Israel's Arab enemies by pressure for withdrawals from conquered territory.
This time is different because - for the moment at least - America is cheering Israel on.
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How Much Longer?
By Eduardo Galeano
07/28/06 "IPS"
One country bombed two countries. Such impunity might astound were it not business as usual. In response to the few timid protests from the international community, Israel said mistakes were made.
How much longer will horrors be called mistakes?
This slaughter of civilians began with the kidnapping of a soldier.
How much longer will the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier be allowed to justify the kidnapping of Palestinian sovereignty?
How much longer will the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers be allowed to justify the kidnapping of the entire nation of Lebanon?
For centuries the slaughter of Jews was the favorite sport of Europeans. Auschwitz was the natural culmination of an ancient river of terror, which had flowed across all of Europe.
How much longer will Palestinians and other Arabs be made to pay for crimes they didn't commit?
Hezbollah didn't exist when Israel razed Lebanon in earlier invasions.
How much longer will we continue to believe the story of this attacked attacker, which practices terrorism because it has the right to defend itself from terrorism?
Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon: How much longer will Israel and the United States be allowed to exterminate countries with impunity?
The tortures of Abu Ghraib, which triggered a certain universal sickness, are nothing new to us in Latin America. Our militaries learned their interrogation techniques from the School of the Americas, which may no longer exist in name but lives on in effect.
How much longer will we continue to accept that torture can be legitimized?
Israel has ignored forty-six resolutions of the General Assembly and other U.N. bodies.
How much longer will Israel enjoy the privilege of selective deafness?
The United Nations makes recommendations but never decisions. When it does decide, the United States makes sure the decision is blocked. In the U.N. Security Council, the U.S. has vetoed forty resolutions condemning actions of Israel.
How much longer will the United Nations act as if it were just another name for the United States?
Since the Palestinians had their homes confiscated and their land taken from them, much blood has flowed.
How much longer will blood flow so that force can justify what law denies?
History is repeated day after day, year after year, and ten Arabs die for every one Israeli. How much longer will an Israeli life be measured as worth ten Arab lives?
In proportion to the overall population, the 50,000 civilians killed in Iraq-the majority of them women and children-are the equivalent of 800,000 Americans.
How much longer will we continue to accept, as if customary, the killing of Iraqis in a blind war that has forgotten all of its justifications?
Iran is developing nuclear energy, but the so-called international community is not concerned in the least by the fact that Israel already has 250 atomic bombs, despite the fact that the country lives permanently on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
Who calibrates the universal dangerometer? Was Iran the country that dropped atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima?
In the age of globalization, the right to express is less powerful than the right to apply pressure. To justify the illegal occupation of Palestinian territory, war is called peace. The Israelis are patriots, and the Palestinians are terrorists, and terrorists sow universal alarm.
How much longer will the media broadcast fear instead of news?
The slaughter happening today, which is not the first and I fear will not be the last, is happening in silence. Has the world gone deaf?
How much longer will the outcry of the outraged be sounded on a bell of straw?
The bombing is killing children, more than a third of the victims.
Those who dare denounce this murder are called anti-Semites.
How much longer will the critics of state terrorism be considered anti-Semites?
How much longer will we accept this grotesque form of extortion?
Are the Jews who are horrified by what is being done in their name anti-Semites? Are there not Arab voices that defend a Palestinian homeland but condemn fundamentalist insanity?
Terrorists resemble one another: state terrorists, respectable members of government, and private terrorists, madmen acting alone or in those organized in groups hard at work since the Cold War battling communist totalitarianism. All act in the name of various gods, whether God, Allah, or Jehovah.
How much longer will we ignore that fact that all terrorists scorn human life and feed off of one another?
Isn't it clear that in the war between Israel and Hezbollah, it is the civilians, Lebanese, Palestinian, and Israeli, who are dying?
And isn't it clear that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the invasion of Gaza and Lebanon are the incubators of hatred, producing fanatic after fanatic after fanatic?
We are the only species of animal that specializes in mutual extermination.
We devote $2.5 billion per day to military spending. Misery and war are children of the same father.
How much longer will we accept that this world so in love with death is the only world possible? U
Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan writer and journalist, is author of "Open Veins of Latin America" and "Memory of Fire." This article is published with permission of IPS Columnist Service.
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Is It A Global Power Struggle?
Russia Outlaws 17 Terror Groups; Hamas, Hezbollah Not Included
Created: 28.07.2006 11:59 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 11:59 MSK
MosNews
The Russian government has issued a list of 17 terrorist groups whose activities it has banned. The list was published by the Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily Friday. Although al-Qaeda and several other influential groups are included, neither Hamas nor Hezbollah are on the list.
Among the groups outlawed by the decree signed by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov earlier this week are Chechen-linked Shura of the United Forces of the Mujahadeen of the Caucasus, the Congress of the Peoples of Ichkeria and Daghestan, international networks such as al-Qaeda, "The holy war" ("Al-Jihad" or the "Egyptian Islamic Jihad"), "The Islamic group" ("Al-Jamaa al-Islami"), "The Muslim Brotherhood" ("Al-Ikhvan al-Muslimun"), the Taliban, "The Islamic Jihad" and several others.
Alexander Novokshenov, a senior prosecutor official at the General Prosecutor's Office, has explained to the RIA-Novosti news agency that the majority of these names have been known since 2003, only two have been added recently.
Remarkably, the Russian government's official list of the 17 international terrorist organizations signed by Fradkov this week does not include Hezbollah and Hamas, blacklisted by the United States and other western nations.
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Russia signs deal with Venezuela to sell military planes
www.chinaview.cn 2006-07-27 20:15:16
MOSCOW, July 27 (Xinhua) -- Russia has signed a deal with Venezuela to sell 24 warplanes and 53 helicopters to the Latin American country, the Interfax news agency reported on Thursday.
Russia and Venezuela have signed arms contracts for more than 3 billion U.S. dollars in the past 18 months, including supplying 24 warplanes and 53 combat helicopters to Venezuela, Sergei Chemezov, head of Russia's state arms-trading agency, Rosoboron export, was quoted as saying.
Chemezov, who made the remarks on the sidelines of the meeting between President Vladimir Putin and visiting Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, did not elaborate on what types of planes Russia will provide to Venezuela.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said last week that Russia had struck a deal of 1 billion U.S. dollars with Venezuela to sell 30 Sukhoi-30 fighters and as many helicopters to the country.
The United States has expressed concern over Russia's plan to sell fighter jets to the South American nation, but Russia defended its military cooperation with Venezuela on Wednesday, saying the cooperation is "in full accordance with international and Russian legal norms."
Chavez, who is in town for a three-day visit, thanked Russia for the arms deal after talks with Putin in the Kremlin.
"Russia has stretched out its hand to us in the face of international pressure, even an embargo on us in this field," Chavez said.
The U.S. government has forbidden U.S. manufacturers to sell arms to Venezuela, accusing the country of not being "a reliable partner in the war on terror."
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South America: Hugo Chávez to the fore
Álvaro Vargas Llosa
Published: July 27, 2006
While the world was focused on the tragic events taking place in Lebanon and northern Israel, something very disturbing happened in South America last week.
The trading bloc known as Mercosur (the South American common market), at its summit meeting in the Argentine city of Cordoba, formally supported Venezuela's bid for one of the two Latin American seats on the United Nations Security Council.
President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela had worked the summit to make sure he could defeat Guatemala, Washington's preferred candidate, and gain the coveted seat when Argentina's two-year term expires in October.
Chávez wants to become a world power broker as a member of the Security Council that will deal with highly sensitive issues such as Iran and North Korea. The seat would also make him the voice of Latin America at the UN.
Mercosur comprises Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and, as of last week, Venezuela - with Chile, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia as associate members. The formal declaration of support means that most of South America is now behind Chávez's bid.
Until the summit, there was a chance that Chile, whose moderate left-wing government follows a very different path than the one chosen by Chávez, would promote a third candidacy, perhaps with the support of Peru's new president, Alan Garcia.
But President Michelle Bachelet of Chile is strenuously attempting to bring her country into the South American political fold after many years of what was perceived as Chile's aloofness and even arrogance due to its economic success.
It is hard to see how she would stand up to the Mercosur trading bloc, especially after the announcement was made in her presence and she did not express any reservations.
Adding insult to the injury, Mercosur invited Fidel Castro to the summit and signed a "trade" deal with him that was more political than commercial, while the host nation, Argentina, provided him with a platform for a three-hour speech at the University of Cordoba in which he defended everything that Mercosur is supposedly against: one- party rule, jailing political opponents, ideological confrontation with the United States and a socialist economy.
So, have the Mercosur countries all gone bananas? Yes. Forget the fact that Chávez is offering to supply natural gas to the Southern Cone countries through a 5,000-mile pipeline. What's really driving these countries are an inferiority complex, ideological adultery and an economic misconception.
The inferiority complex is a case of reverse nordomania. The term - a mania for all things northern - was coined by Uruguayan writer José Enrique Rodó a century ago to signify what he thought was a Latin American tendency to copy U.S. materialism.
Today, the moderate left-wing governments of Latin America have shaken off many of their old left vices, but still cling to the superstition that dignity means backing anything that happens to displease the United States even at the cost of Latin America's development.
Ideological adultery comes from the fact that moderate left-wing governments are married to democracy and private enterprise at home - the boring spouse - but unleash their carnal instincts on Chávez - the voluptuous lover - in matters of foreign policy.
They would not dream of destroying their own democratic systems, sending mobs to beat up opponents, expropriating agricultural and industrial businesses, protecting Colombian terrorists and making crude comments about the U.S. secretary of state.
But they love to make up for their moderate behavior at home by throwing at their barking constituents the crumbs of (occasional) foreign policy radicalism. Start by drinking holy water and you will end up believing, said French philosopher Blaise Pascal. Mercosur countries would do well to heed these words.
And, finally, the economic misconception resides in the belief that economic power comes from regional protectionism. Since its creation in 1991, Mercosur has failed to generate wealth because it reproduced at the regional level the national barriers to the free flow of goods, services, ideas and people.
The result has been constant dispute - from the one between Brazil and Argentina over car exports to the current brawl between Argentina and neighboring Uruguay over the latter country's green light to the construction of two pulp mills near the border.
Chile, the best economy in the region, has not joined Mercosur because the rules forbid member countries from pursuing open trade with nations outside the bloc. The protectionism of Mercosur will be reinforced by Venezuela's incorporation.
These - and not Chavez's pipeline - are the main reasons why Mercosur is backing his bid for a seat at the UN Security Council.
His e-mail address is AVLlosa(at symbol)independent.org.
Álvaro Vargas Llosa, author of "Liberty for Latin America," is the director of the Center on Global Prosperity at the Independent Institute.
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Russia Warns Georgia Against Using Force in Breakaway Abkhazia
Created: 28.07.2006 12:25 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 12:25 MSK
MosNews
The Georgian authorities "have no chance" of solving the problems of South Ossetia and Abkhazia by using force, the ITAR-TASS news agency quoted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying on Friday.
Georgian forces launched raids in the Kodori Gorge on July 26, chasing local militia leader Emzar Kvitsiani from the area. Part of the gorge lies within Abkhazia.
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili on July 27 announced that a government-in-exile for the separatist region Abkhazia will be based in the Kodori Gorge.
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Yushchenko Holds Round-Table Talks to End Political Stalemate in Ukraine
Created: 28.07.2006 09:43 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 11:18 MSK
MosNews
President Viktor Yushchenko held crisis-talks to find a way out of Ukraine's political stalemate, but his appeal for compromise was shattered when lawmaker and former ally Yulia Tymoshenko lashed out against what she termed calls for artificial unity, AP reports.
"In not a single democratic country in the world is it possible to unite all political forces," said Tymoshenko, one of the leaders of the 2004 Orange Revolution, in an angry speech during the round-table discussions. "As a rule, there are those in power and the opposition."
The ex-Soviet republic has been locked in turmoil since Viktor Yanukovych's pro-Russian Party of Regions won the most seats in a March parliamentary election, besting the pro-Western reformers who backed Yushchenko, but falling short of a majority.
Yushchenko's allies teamed up with Tymoshenko's bloc and the Socialist Party to create a majority coalition in June, but the Socialists defected before it had time to form a new government. The Socialists united with the Party of Regions and the Communists in a new coalition that proposed Yanukovych as prime minister.
Fraud allegations during Yanukovych's run for the presidency against Yushchenko in 2004 triggered the massive protests known as the Orange Revolution; the Supreme Court declared the vote invalid, and Yushchenko defeated Yanukovych in a rerun.
Yushchenko so far has not forwarded Yanukovych's nomination as premier to the parliament. But because the parliament convened more than 60 days ago without forming a government, Yushchenko technically has the right to dissolve the legislature and call new elections.
Faced with the equally unattractive prospects of calling new elections or allowing his foe to become prime minister, Yushchenko has been casting desperately for a solution as the Aug. 2 deadline to decide on Yanukovych's candidacy approaches.
"The moment of truth has come, we need to make a decision," Yushchenko said at the start of the round-table, which was televised live.
Yushchenko proposed that all the parties sign a memorandum of national unity which would safeguard freedom of speech, Ukraine's territorial integrity, liberal economic reforms, European integration efforts and support for a single national language, Ukrainian.
But when the leaders began discussing the memorandum, discussion over whether Ukraine should join NATO sparked heated debate. The Socialists and Communists oppose NATO membership, while Yushchenko countered that cooperation with the alliance was the only way to provide security to Ukraine.
After Yushchenko and Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko exchanged barbs over NATO and the issue of creating a single Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Tymoshenko said the sharp disagreements were an example of why a broad coalition would not work.
"Why should we have two centers of power that rule the country with different courses ... it is only a matter of time before they clash," she said.
But Yanukovych, who is seeking Yushchenko's support, appeared eager to find a compromise. He said that "cooperation with NATO is natural."
However, after six hours of talks, the party-leaders failed to reach an agreement on the text of the memorandum. Yushchenko ordered a working group to hash out differences and prepare a final document by Friday morning.
The tension in the room was obvious, even without the main issue - Yanukovych's premiership - being addressed. When Yanukovych went into a long-winded speech, Yushchenko pointedly interrupted to tell him he had been speaking too long.
Yushchenko ally Roman Bezsmertny said that the president's bloc was willing to work with the Party of Regions, but only if a new coalition of national unity was formed. "Today all of us must think first of all about unity," he said.
Ukraine remains deeply divided between the Russian-speaking east, which supports Yanukovych, and the Ukrainian-speaking west, which considers a Yanukovych premiership a betrayal of the Orange Revolution.
Tymoshenko pressed the president to reject any union with Yanukovych, urging him to dissolve parliament and call new elections. Yushchenko has appeared reluctant to take such a drastic step.
The Party of Regions suggested earlier Thursday that it was ready for some compromises, but would refuse to discuss dropping Yanukovych.
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Somali minister shot dead
Friday 28 July 2006, 16:17 Makka Time, 13:17 GMT
A minister in Somalia's transitional national government has been shot dead in a new blow to the country's internationally recognised but virtually powerless administration.
Abdallah Deerow Isaq, the Constitution and Federalism Minister, was killed as he left Friday prayers in the town of Baidoa - seat of the fragile interim Somali government.
"It looks like an organised assassination," Mohamed Abdi Hayr, the Somali information minister said.
"So far we do not know who did it. They shot him as he was leaving the mosque then ran off. Police are chasing the gunmen."
The government was formed in 2004 as the 14th attempt to restore central rule to Somalia since the 1991 overthrow of military ruler Mohammed Siad Barre.
It has been unable to halt the rise to power of the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia - an Islamist militia that took control of the capital Mogadishu and other towns in June.
Deerow was not among the 18 ministers who resigned from the administration on Thursday, complaining about the government's inability to stabilise the African nation.
Also on Friday, fighters loyal to the Islamist group closed roads around the capital's airport and chased away onlookers while a large cargo plane was unloaded of unidentified cargo.
A similar aircraft landed on Wednesday, and officials from the transitional government accused Eritrea of sending arms to the militants.
Local people said several trucks came to collect the delivery from the airport.
"The Islamists are arming themselves and now we have to wait for fighting," said Abdullahi Ali, a local man.
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Aussie peacekeepers 'may go to Lebanon'
The Age
July 28, 2006
Australia may send a small number of peacekeepers to southern Lebanon once a ceasefire is declared, but only in a specialist or command roles, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said on Friday.
Mr Downer had closed-door talks with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and EU foreign policy tsar Javier Solana on the sidelines of an ASEAN security summit in Malaysia, telling both that Canberra would not rule out a peacekeeping role for Lebanon.
But it would not involve large numbers of troops as Australian Defence Force (ADF) are already stretched by security operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and East Timor.
"I suspect that the only role you could conceive for the ADF in this situation, and it's possible there could be some role, would be a niche role of some kind or other, or else some kind of leadership role," Mr Downer said.
"But sending battalions of infantry, that's not going to happen."
Mr Downer made his comments as a demonstration raged outside the venue of the Kuala Lumpur ASEAN Regional Forum meeting.
Riot police held back as demonstrators burned flags near the conference centre in protest at the hands-off approach by the US to Israel's bombing in south Lebanon.
This week, a high-level Middle East conference in Rome ended in disagreement, with most European leaders urging an immediate ceasefire, but the US was willing to give Israel more time to punish the guerilla group.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has reportedly interpreted this as a green light to continue Israel's offensive.
Dr Rice has made clear the ultimate deal to end the crisis will be between Israel and Lebanon, and not the Hizbollah militants who the US says have formed "state within a state".
Mr Downer said there was a strong case for an international intervention force in southern Lebanon and discussions were underway on what shape it would take.
"But that international intervention force will have to go in in an environment where there is a ceasefire, and to provide security in the southern part of Lebanon, and to facilitate the Lebanese army taking back control of that part of the country," he said.
"There will be a ceasefire very quickly when Hizbollah make it clear they are going to withdraw from southern Lebanon," Mr Downer said.
Mr Downer and Dr Rice also discussed the nuclear standoff with North Korea and the recent test-firing of seven missiles by the reclusive Stalinist nation, including several that possibly could reach Australia.
He said new talks involving Indonesia, Malaysia, Canada, Australia and New Zealand along with so-called Six-Party negotiation participants like the US, South Korea, Japan and the China would help broaden the focus of crisis diplomacy with Pyongyang.
"It makes for a more significant regional input," Mr Downer said.
"Their isolation is substantial, if not complete, and they have to understand that minister after minister in the ASEAN Regional Forum has called for them to resume negotiations in the six-party talks and to introduce a moratorium on missile testing."
Mr Downer said even China was exasperated with North Korea's intransigence, saying that Pyongyang was facing a "cold and lonely" international shutout.
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Or Preparing For Disaster?
Moderate earthquake shakes small islands in southwestern Japan
Friday July 28, 2006
TOKYO (AP): A moderate earthquake of preliminary magnitude 5.9 shook a group of small islands in southwestern Japan on Friday, but there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries, officials said.
There was no fear of tsunami, huge waves caused by undersea disturbances or volcanic activities, from th