‘With the Israeli bombing of a U.N. camp and the killing of four U.N. peacekeepers, we really do seem to be in a "deja vu" all over again phase. Already Kofi Annan is under attack for condemning the "apparently deliberate targeting by Israeli Defense Forces of a U.N. Observer post."

It is reminiscent of the trouble his predecessor Boutros Boutros-Ghali got himself into last time the Israelis tried shock and awe on Lebanon back in 1996, when he failed to suppress a report that said pretty much the same thing about the IDF shelling of the U.N. post in Qana, which macerated some 106 Lebanese civilians to death.

It is worth remembering that of all U.N. secretaries-general, Annan has done the most to end Israel's isolation in the organization and maintained the closest relations with Israel's friends in the United States. In the end, however, he is also a secretary-general who sets great store by protecting U.N. staff, and so the palpable anger of his statement is entirely understandable.’

Did Israel Attack The UN 'Accidentally on Purpose'?

From the ABC

Israel claims 'green light' for war
Israel insists it has been given the green light from the world to press on with its deadly assault on Lebanon and called up more troops, after suffering its biggest single-day military loss in the conflict.

But Israel says it will limit its ground offensives after the killing of nine troops, including an Australian, in pitched battles with Hezbollah guerrillas yesterday.

At least 10 people have been killed as combat jets bombard Hezbollah strongholds in south Lebanon and the eastern Bekaa Valley.

The deaths bring the toll to 417 people in Lebanon alone as the conflict entered its 16th day.

"Yesterday in Rome we in effect obtained the authorisation to continue our operations until Hezbollah is no longer present in southern Lebanon," Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon told Army Radio.

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No Dear Mr Israeli...

There is no "green Light" from the world... The only "green light" you have is from your friend the US who have thwarted the Rome meeting... Everyone else want an immediate cease fire... and I am one of them...

And if you use your full might, may the wrath of your god fall upon you in what ever form...
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more from the ABC

The US, Israel's closest ally, infuriated Arab opinion by blocking calls at the Rome meeting for an immediate cease-fire and instead calling for efforts to reach a "sustainable" truce.

US President George W Bush says he is "troubled" by the destruction Israeli strikes have left in Lebanon but rejects any "fake peace" that does not tackle the conflict's root causes.

_________________

The root cause, my dear Mr president, is not what you think it is... So you better put a sock in it. Israel only exists by proxy. This existence is not doubted but the plight of the Palestinians in whatever form they exist need to be properly recognised.

A "fake" peace is better than a full-on destruction. History shows that it's full of "fake peace" that have led to betterment. wars are always followed by "fake' peace.

Mr Bush, you're just a "fake" president.

From the BBC

US rejects weapon flight concerns

The White House has dismissed UK concerns about the use of Prestwick Airport, in Scotland, by US planes carrying bombs to Israel. "Apparently, the British foreign minister thinks the paperwork was not in order," said spokesman Tony Snow.
"The Department of Defense does," he added. "We'll get it straightened out."
UK Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett protested to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, claiming procedures were ignored.
Mrs Beckett said: "We have already let the United States know that this is an issue that appears to be seriously at fault, and we will be making a formal protest if it appears that that is what has happened."
Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that two chartered Airbus A310 planes with a cargo of laser-guided "smart bombs" stopped at Prestwick, 30 miles south of Glasgow in western Scotland.
The Israelis have requested the munitions to attack bunkers being used by Hezbollah militants in Lebanon....

read more at the BBC

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Fantastic to see Tony Snow already up there with the best of the best, liars, fudgers, porkyists, con artists, tall tellers, fibsters... Welcome. Yes the paperwork might have been in order for the Pentagon but the "procedures were ignored"... for the Brits...

From the Guardian

6.45pm update
EU denies giving Israel green light

Staff and agencies
Thursday July 27, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
The European Union rebuked the Israeli government today after its justice minister claimed "permission from the world" to press on with its Lebanon campaign.
Haim Ramon, who is a close ally of the prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said failure at yesterday's Rome conference to agree on an immediate ceasefire in the 16-day-old crisis amounted to a green light for Israel to continue its offensive.

As both sides stepped up their rocket and missile attacks and Israel called up more reserves, the Finnish foreign minister, Erkki Tuomioja, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, called the interpretation "totally wrong" and said the fighting should stop immediately. "Most of the countries, including the European Union, [...] specifically want an immediate halt to the hostilities," he said.

The German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, called Mr Ramon's words "a gross misinterpretation".

extract from Time magazine

Ghassan Farran, a doctor and head of a local cultural organization called Thought and Culture, stares at the ruins of his home in disbelief. His apartment was on the third floor, although fortunately his family had fled Tyre days earlier. Dr. Farran says he is looking for his family photograph albums, but all he can do is gaze hopelessly at the scene of devastation before him. “All of my memories are gone, when my children were babies. They have killed my dreams,” he says.

But then this middle-class, educated professional switches from melancholy to trembling rage. “America, America!” he says, jabbing his finger at the smoking rubble. “This is the new Middle East of Ms. Rice,” he says, referring to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He adds that he was never interested in politics before this moment. “Now I am with Hizballah and I will fight Israel and America."

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Gus: Yes, Israel is the best recruitment office for Hizbollah... And US and Israel governments would have to be nuts not to see this... So they have ulterior motives... I would guess the gamble taken by the US and Israel is — while more Muslims and Arabs may join in the struggle against Israel — they would think that in the long term, through wars and battles, it would mean less Arabs/Muslims to have to deal with, since they die "much faster"... (see our own Johnnee excursion in why the death tolls in Lebanon was so high compared with Israeli casualties)... Most other concepts would not make sense, apart from trying to snare Syria and Iran into the conflict so that the US can bomb them with a "motive"... Then... see the supply of oil being throttled...

Security Council fails to condemn post attack
The United Nations Security Council has failed to condemn this week's Israeli attack on a UN observer post in Lebanon, which killed four peacekeepers.

The attack on the post in the town of Khiam killed peacekeepers from Austria, Canada, China and Finland.

The Security Council has adopted a statement saying it "is deeply shocked an distressed by the firing by the Israeli Defence Forces on a United Nations Observer post in southern Lebanon on 25 July, 2006."

But it stops short of condemning the bombing.

Diplomats say the US refused to agree to any statement which criticised Israel.

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The US not in the pocket of the Zionists...? "shocked an distressed" to white wash a blatant attack is beyond the pale. CEASE-FIRE NOW! The US has lost all credibility (er... as if they had any since Bush was elected...)...

from the ABC

Howard asks Israel to keep Australians safe
Prime Minister John Howard has urged his Israeli counterpart to keep in mind the safety of Australian citizens in southern Lebanon.

The moves comes as the Jewish state calls up 15,000 reservists, amid widening divisions on how to solve the crisis in the war-torn region.

Mr Howard had a 20-minute telephone conversation last night with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

He says Mr Olmert called him to express his thanks for Australia's diplomatic support.

Mr Howard has told Southern Cross Radio the safety of an estimated 500 Australians in southern Lebanon was also discussed.

"I asked that the care and safety and wellbeing of the Australians be kept in mind by the Israelis," he said.

"Now these things are always difficult to achieve in a military conflict but they are Australian citizens and I did raise my concerns about their safety with him.

"He said he would do everything he could to make sure they came to no harm."

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Gus: HEY, WHY DON'T YOU ASK YOUR "COUNTERPART" TO STOP THE FIRING IMMEDIATELY? Have a cease fire NOW and go through the motion of negotiations rather than try to obliterate all and sundries accidentally...

That you do not ask this immediately shows you support Israel in its invasion of Lebanon and whatever you MAY think of Hizbollah. this is high bastardry.

Tide of Arab Opinion Turns to Support for Hezbollah

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
Published: July 28, 2006
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.

--------------------------

Gus: One can already see the Bonsai of this sadder world rubbing his hands in anticipation... He's got one butt-cheek on his chair, the other in mid-air, while one of his fingers is feverishly poised in a reach to the red button already armed at unleashing limited nuke-bizos here and there... and more... Fun, fun, fun... a few regrets here and there, but fun nonetheless...

Bonsaiolo is eager, like a dumb Napoleon, to do the unthinkable... Unfortunately that's the way things seem to be done in America... Unthinkably... with great "positive" determination.

From the Guardian

Robert Fisk: Mystery of Israel's secret uranium bomb
Alarm over [http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1935945.ece|radioactive legacy] left by attack on Lebanon

Published: 28 October 2006
Did Israel use a secret new uranium-based weapon in southern Lebanon this summer in the 34-day assault that cost more than 1,300 Lebanese lives, most of them civilians?
We know that the Israelis used American "bunker-buster" bombs on Hizbollah's Beirut headquarters. We know that they drenched southern Lebanon with cluster bombs in the last 72 hours of the war, leaving tens of thousands of bomblets which are still killing Lebanese civilians every week. And we now know - after it first categorically denied using such munitions - that the Israeli army also used phosphorous bombs, weapons which are supposed to be restricted under the third protocol of the Geneva Conventions, which neither Israel nor the United States have signed.
But scientific evidence gathered from at least two bomb craters in Khiam and At-Tiri, the scene of fierce fighting between Hizbollah guerrillas and Israeli troops last July and August, suggests that uranium-based munitions may now also be included in Israel's weapons inventory - and were used against targets in Lebanon.

Scott Adams, with his voice back, easily counters this argument. So, that should be the end of it. 

Except, our very own Sheik

says he will only resign when the world is "clean of the White House".

Sounds suspiciously like another recent utterance, and should, therefore, form the foundation of another round of pointless point-scoring.

From Al Jazeera

Israeli warplanes fly low over Lebanon

Tuesday 31 October 2006, 23:02 Makka Time, 20:02 GMT

[http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/8FE8A0D9-8584-45B6-9510-EF91CA06B62F.htm|Israeli warplanes] have carried out intensive mock air raids at low altitude over south Lebanon and the capital, Beirut, despite growing pressure to respect an August ceasefire.
Both the United Nations and France, which commands the UN peacekeeping force overseeing the UN-brokered truce, have called on Israel to halt the overflights, which they say violate the ceasefire.

Chechens Relish Tour of Duty in Lebanon

By Pavel Davydov
Special to The Moscow Times

SIDON, Lebanon -- Not so long ago, the Russian camp was a war zone.

Today, the biggest bang most of the 250 military engineers here encounter is the 5 a.m. wake-up call at the sandy settlement of 50 or so tents nestled against the Mediterranean.
The relative calm is largely due to the end of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah. But it's also because two platoons of [http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2006/11/01/002.html|elite soldiers] plucked from the Army's 42nd Division's East and West battalions, based in Chechnya, are standing guard.
"Everything is calm here," says Rasud Baimuratov, commander of one of the platoons. An ethnic Chechen with a towering figure, Baimuratov and his comrades have been welcomed by locals who say they trust Russians more than Western forces.
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"Poke in the eye" Info, one might not see in "western" papers... or nice propaganda?

From our ABC

ABC accused of bias in Lebanon war reports

The ABC has been accused of bias against Israel in its reporting of the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon last year.

A Liberal Party Senator has raised concerns about the reporting of Israel using cluster bombs during the conflict but not an accusation that Hezbollah had done the same.

Concetta Fierravanti-Wells has questioned ABC managing director Mark Scott during Senate estimates hearings.

"My concern is it's alright to use Human Rights Watch when you want to put the boot into Israel but when it doesn't suit, your journalists ignore the source that you normally quote ad nauseam," she said.

"Quite frankly, Mr Scott, I think that this is demonstrating a lack of credibility and quite frankly, yet another example of anti-Israel bias by the ABC."

Mr Scott says a Human Rights Watch accusation that Hezbollah used cluster bombs was probably worthy of reporting.

He has defended the broadcaster against the assertion it is biased.

"I absolutely and fundamentally reject the proposition and find it offensive that the ABC is somehow biased against Israel in our coverage," he said.