USS Cole dispatched to the Lebanese Coast and US military involvement in Lebanon

The United States has ordered a warship to take up position off the coast of Lebanon in a show of support for the country's embattled government.

Read here on the two main historical precedents.
In 1958, the US intervened to bolster the pro-Western Lebanese government of President Camille Chamoun against internal opposition.

In 1982, US forces entered Lebanon as part of a Multinational force:

"to provide appropriate assistance to the Lebanese Armed Forces as they carry out" responsibilities for the safe evacuation of the departing PLO, the safety "of the persons in the area" (generally interpreted to mean the Palestinian non-combatants remaining in Beirut), and to "further the restoration of the sovereignty and authority of the Government of Lebanon over the Beirut area." With regard to the safety of Palestinian non-combatants, the agreement stated that "The Governments of Lebanon and the United States will provide appropriate guarantees of safety. . . . "(emphasis added). In reality, the agreement was a vague and open-ended mandate for committing American military personnel.

A summary of the events of 1982 in Lebanon and a timeline on the side on this site. (The problem with the timeline is that it says when the French and the US troops were targeted by a suicide bombing but it doesn't tell when the troops entered Lebanon).

During the autumn of 1982, the presence of the Marines in Beirut began to take on an additional meaning which was never publicly acknowledged. The Marines became a bargaining chip in the complex international maneuvering that the United States was fostering. There were active negotiations among the United States, Israel, and Lebanon over the withdrawal of Israeli forces and the terms of a possible treaty between Lebanon and Israel. The presence of the Marines provided leverage in putting pressure on the Government of Lebanon to accede to Israeli demands. The presence implied some measure of protection for the Lebanese authorities against those Lebanese, Palestinians, and other Arabs who adamantly opposed any normalization between Lebanon and Israel.

I posted this Time Magazine cover from 1982 because this is the most salient feature associated in my memory with the events of 1982 in Lebanon. In 1958 I was barely born to remember. But those who slaughtered Palestinian civilians in 1982 are still around. They are the US staunchest allies in Lebanon, they are part of March 14th, the movement that is behind the present Lebanese pro-US government. The Palestinians are now gone, militarily speaking, from Lebanon, replaced by another resistance to Israel, Hezbollah and its allies. However, the slaughtering of civilians will continue, and the target this time - beside the Palestinians, always an easy target for Israel and its US ally - are Hezbollah, the Shias, and the Christians opposed to March 14th, as well as the civilians and the infrastructure around. It doesn't matter to the US that the Lebanese opposition is legitimate and enjoys the support of the majority of Lebanese. What matters for them is Israel and its clients in the country, March 14th and its illegitimate, ill elected, weak, unpopular, and amputated government. Oh yes, a show of force for the Lebanese people in order to send the message that whatever their will, if it doesn't match USrael's will, then it is not acceptable. And it is wishful thinking if the US thinks that the Lebanese people will adore this exhibition of military force...

Read here an hour by hour account from the US army of the first US Marines' landing in Beirut in 1982. At the end of the chapter you will find a link to the following chapter, and so on, all related to the presence of the US Marines in Beirut until their departure. Of particular interest is chapter 7 relating the investigation into the bombing of the US Marines in Beirut and its conclusions.

This post is mentioned by Raed Rafei in his blog's round-up on the USS cole's move, in the LA Times blogs.

Read here, in French, Lebanese blogger Frenchy, with his usual humor, commenting on the event.

Intensified Israeli attacks on Gaza: Israel threatening Gazans with a Holocaust

By late yesterday afternoon, the two- day air strike on Gaza had killed 27 Palestinians... Six of the dead were civilians, including the four boys, aged eight to 14, who were struck while playing football in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza. Two were brothers and the other two were their cousins. Another 12-year-old boy was wounded and died later.

Yes. And they used the word 'Shoah' in their threat. They will do anything but Palestinians will resist to the end.

An Israeli minister today warned of increasingly bitter conflict in the Gaza Strip, saying the Palestinians could bring on themselves what he called a "holocaust".
"The more Qassam [rocket] fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves," Matan Vilnai, Israel's deputy defence minister, told army radio.

In Pictures: Palestinians in Gaza protest Israeli attacks, friday february 29th.

A Gaza, des dizaines de milliers de personnes défilent contre les attaques israéliennes
LEMONDE.FR | 29.02.08

©

The True Cost of the Iraq War

Joseph Stiglitz's appreciation. Read it and you will realise that the Iraq war is pure madness. It is destructing two people, the Iraqi and the American people, and it is destabilising the region, and the wrold, for years to come...

People in the US, even though they were brainwashed to believe that the war was necessary, they overwhelmingly supported it, even electing Bush for a second term after what appeared to be a gigantic blunder. They are not to lament as much as Iraqis because this was their choice according to their own system of democracy. But what about Iraqis and other people in the Middle East who were affected by this war ? Who didn't vote and who didn't ask for it? Lebanese, Palestinians, etc..?

Those who made this war should be tried according to international law, if this law still exist...There is no way we can have our reason and our spirits back if justice, real justice, not the justice of the powerful, is not delivered...And Justice should be demanded both by Iraqis, the American people, and the rest of the world...

This is not, then, pure neocon ideology at work, says Stiglitz: "Ideology of convenience is a better description." It is an ideology illustrated even more clearly in another fact that Stiglitz can't believe - that Bush put through tax cuts while going to war. In Stiglitz and Bilmes's reading, this was downright underhand. Raising taxes, and resorting to the rhetoric of shared sacrifice used in the world wars, for example, would have made Americans more aware of exactly what the war was costing them, and would have provoked opposition sooner. The solution was to borrow the money, at interest of couple of hundred billion dollars a year, which, by 2017, will add up to another trillion dollars or so. This government will be gone in nine months; subsequent administrations, and generations, will have to pay it off.

At the same time, Stiglitz and Bilmes argue, the Federal Reserve colluded in this obfuscation, because it "kept interest rates lower than they otherwise might have been, and looked the other way as lending standards were lowered, thereby encouraging households to borrow more - and spend more." Alan Greenspan, by this account, encouraged people to take on variable-rate mortgages, even as household savings rates went negative for the first time since the Depression. Individuals were taking on unprecedented debt at the same time as a long housing bubble made them feel wealthy (and less concerned with derring-do abroad) - a scenario echoed on this side of the Atlantic.

As we now know, this couldn't continue - in part because of yet another effect of the war. Whatever the much argued reasons for bombing Baghdad, cheap oil has not been the result. In fact, the price of oil has climbed from $25 a barrel to $100 in the past five years - great for oil companies, and oil-producing countries, who, along with the contractors, are the only beneficiaries of this war, but not for anyone else. After calculations based on futures markets, Stiglitz and Bilmes conclude that a significant proportion of this rise is directly due to the disruptions and instabilities caused by Iraq. This price rise alone has cost the US, which imports about 5bn barrels a year, an extra $25bn per year; projecting to 2015 brings that number to an extra $1.6 trillion on oil alone (against which the recent $125bn stimulus package is simply, as Stiglitz puts it, "a drop in the bucket").

Turkey in radical revision of Islamic texts

Muslim Arab countries should follow the example...
Hat tip to Old Brit.

64% of Israelis favour holding talks with Hamas

A poll in the left-leaning Haaretz daily said 64 percent of Israelis supported talks with Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, to end cross-border rocket fire from the enclave and to secure the release of sergeant Gilad Shalit, who was abducted in 2006 by Gaza militants.

...Hamas says it would consider a ceasefire if Israel lifted its blockade and ceased military operations in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.Hamas, in talks with Egyptian mediators, has also offered a swap deal that could bring Shalit's release in exchange for the freeing of hundreds of Palestinians from Israeli jails.

White House to receive convicted Lebanese war criminal

To:
President George Bush
Sen. John Warner
Sen. James Webb
Rep. Thomas Davis
February 22, 2008

As of 1994, Geagea was tried and convicted for four crimes - only a small portion of his long list of war crimes that we have listed below for your reference. He was convicted for:
1. The assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister, Mr. Rachid Karami
2. The assassination of a former leading figure in the Lebanese Forces militia, Elias Zayek
3. The assassination of Christian leader Dany Chamoun with his wife and two young children (ages 5 and 7)
4. The assassination attempt against Deputy Prime Minister/Minister of the Interior Michel Murr.

More
And may I add: The assassination of Suleiman Frangie's parents and siblings for which Gea'gea stands for suspicion as the principal planner ?

This is my 999th post.

Israel will boycott the UN Durban conference on Racism

Israel will boycott the United Nations "Durban II" conference on human rights, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni announced yesterday in Jerusalem at the annual meeting of the Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism.

The decision followed an assessment by the Foreign Ministry, and other Western governments, that it will be impossible to prevent the conference from turning into a festival of anti-Israeli attacks.

Well, in the eighties, even when Israel's actions weren't as much in total disregard of Human rights and the rule of law as today, the parallells between israel and the south African Apartheid state were already on everybody's mind.
Watch this satirical video (found on Jews Sans Frontières) from a British TV program and tell me if one can still watch such a video today without accusations of anti-semitism.


How could Israel accuse a conference on racism to be potentially a festival of anti-Israel criticism when the Israeli state itself is built on racism and exclusions ?
Haaretz tries hard to present Israel's position as mainstream by giving this title to the article 'Israel toes Western line, will boycott 'Durban II'. But there is not one name of a western country mentioned in the article. Haaretz is known and was debunked in this blog for its subtle tactics in misinformation.

UPDATE: February 27th, 2008. The attack on Durban II has already started, led by notorious zionists and Muslim bashers. Read the article below (in French).

L'ONU contre les droits de l'homme
LE MONDE | 27.02.08

©

Gaza: Cry Freedom

Palestinians will never surrender to Israeli brutality and the complicity of 'moderate' Arab regimes.
Palestinian children take part in a human chain protest, near the Erez crossing, against the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. Photograph: Suhaib Salem/Reuters
Gazans form human chain along Israeli border in protest at blockade.

And in January Gazans toppled their prison wall on the Egypt border.

News from the Gaza ghetto

Robert Malley: The Gaza Time Bomb

A Montreal evening with John Mearsheimer on The Israel Lobby

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East was organising a three day tour in three Canadian cities for John Mearsheimer on the subject of the Israel Lobby. In Montreal, the event was cosponsored by the University of Concordia political science students' association.

The event took place on Saturday February 23rd, 7 p.m. at the university of Montreal.

I was there among some 250 attendees. Mearsheimer spoke about the nature of the Israel lobby in the US, how it operates, and why he, and his colleague Stephen Walt, think that the lobby is behind the US's disastrous policy in the ME. The central point of his argument is that, even though US foreign policy is full of errors, mistakes, and colonial adventures turned awry, there is absolutely no way to explain this policy of 100% alignment on Israel's position after the end of the cold war other than the influence of the lobby.

Indeed, the US has many friendly Arab regimes and all what the US could have wanted from middle eastern and Arab countries, oil, military bases, etc...it could have got it without war.

He described the threat of Arab countries on Israel laughable. He said that two countries have made peace with Israel, Egypt and Jordan. That Israel could have made peace with Syria any time and still could but is not interested. He described Saudi Arabia's embarrassment and efforts in 2002 and recently in 2007 to broker a peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and still Israel is not interested. Israel wanted war, and so the US, as it seems, under the influence of the lobby.

But this alone doesn't explain to me why the US is actually waging wars in the name of Israel in the ME. I cannot think of a responsible or an irresponsible government waging wars for another.

Some critiques leveled at Walt and Mearsheimer's (W&M) conclusions about the lobby, formulated by some of Israel's most prominent critics (Finkelstein, Chomsky, Massad), allege that W&M seem to be giving too much weight to the lobby while absolving the US whose own colonialist tradition might explain its current foreign policy in the ME. In my opinion, these critiques have only part of the answer to W&M's puzzlement about their country's foreign policy. Indeed, where these critiques struck a point is not in putting the blame on the US's colonial history but in highlighting one weakness in the W&M's thesis; namely that all the blame should go to the lobby. This portrays the Us government as a manipulated government unable to make its own choices for its own interests when it comes to foreign policy.

In the whole book, and again during his talk, Mearsheimer mentions the absurdity of his country's policy after the end of the cold war. But not once he blames some inherent problems in US foreign policy. There is a reason for that. While his critiques cite previous patterns in US foreign policy, W&M's starting point is not the US colonial history but US foreign policy after a major change, the end of the cold war.

There is no doubt that the facts about the lobby are overwhelming. And there is no doubt that it influences US foreign policy. But to portray the US government as a client of the lobby is a very strong thesis that needs more than local insider politic facts. A good answer might lie in the conjugated influence of the Israel lobby, and something else. What did change after the end of the cold war ? The US lost its main ennemy and there was an atmosphere of detente. The world could have become a better place. Except that, in 2000, neither Israel neither the US, and each for different reasons, were interested by peace.
Remember, Israel's Ehud Barak walked out from Camp David fearing that too much concessions for the Palestinians was going to cost him his career, and it did. And what followed was Sharon walking provocatively on the esplanade of Al-Aqsa mosque, and angering Palestinians. This is when the second intifada started.

On the US side, Clinton ended his two term presidency empty handed from Camp David. He was succeeded fraudulently by GW Bush who made war and building hostility in the ME the hallmark of his foreign policy, aided in that by an old ally from the cold war era, Osama Bin Laden. Ten years after the end of the cold war, and in the aftermath of 9/11, emerged an extraordinary convergence between the US and Israel. While Israel has been living in a continual state of war and never really seeked peace, the attacks on the twin towers brought with them a justification for the US for a constant state of war. The rethoric for war, a long war on terrorism we were told, was already in place the morning after 9/11. And don't blame this only on Bush. The US has been, in my opinion, quietly sliding in this state of war already under the Clinton administration. After the end of the cold war, instead of looking for ways to make the world a better place, the only policy the main and only superpower, the US, was able to devise for its citizens and the world, was more tension and more wars. Reversing itself and the entire world to the previous state of war, with this time a new immaterial but global ennemy, terrorism. And it happened that the only terrorism the US was ready to fight was Muslim terrorism, or at least the kind of 'terrorism' Israel thinks it is fighting in the occupied territories.

Mearsheimer criticised the very notion of fighting terrorism. He said that terrorism is not an ideology, as reprehensible as it might be, it is still a method of war. Declaring war on terrorim is like declaring war on anti-ballistic missiles or on anti-personal mines.
So, yes, I think that W&M are half right about the lobby, and their critics are half right about the responsibility of the US. And what we have at stake here is a convergence between two states who have made war the only hallmark of their foreign policy.

Mearsheimer was extremely lucid in analysing the grim prospects for Palestine. He said that the two state solution looks impossible now with all the facts that Israel created on the ground, settlements, roads separating the Palestinian territories from each other...He outlined three alternatives, none of them satisfactory:

A greater Israel with a binational state. But this is the end of the zionist dream and the Jewish only state;
Ethnic cleansing as was advocated by Avigdor Lieberman. But Israel would be at risk from accusations for crimes against humanity;
And finally, a limited autonomy to disconnected Palestinian Bantustans controlled by Israel. An apartheid state. But this would also be the end of Israel.

Zionism is doomed and its temporary survival depends on violence and wars...

Mearsheimer will be speaking in Toronto, Sunday, Feb. 24, 7:00 p.m., OISE Auditorium (Room G162), University of Toronto. Click here to buy tickets on the Internet or call 1-888-222-6608 for tickets. More information on Mearsheimer and the Toronto event here. (Tickets for Toronto event also available at the Toronto Women's Bookstore, 73 Harbord St., Toronto, 416-922-8744)

Anti-US anger spreading along with permanent US military bases

Protesters set ransack the US embassy alight in Belgrade. Photograph: AP

Protesters set fire to the American embassy in Belgrade tonight and then attacked the neighbouring Croatian embassy after 150,000 Serbs gathered in the city to demonstrate against the independence of Kosovo.

Read this interview on Kosovo independance in Spiegel with Balkans expert Dusan Reljic: 'Kosovo Is not Independent, It Is an EU Protectorate'

The irony is that on this same day, we have news that the US is expanding its permanent miltary bases around southwest Asia and the ME.

And this is how the world, and especially the ME, will look sixty years from now with all these US military bases.

More on Okinawa here.

Meanwhile the US military will claim that its presence is for self defense. Of course, you invade countries, take land, kill people, and they should be grateful. Like people in Gaza should be quiet and thankful for Israel because Israel in bombing them and starving them is only acting in self defense, exactly like the US. Israel didn't invade these people and stole their land in the first place. It's all their fault. The causal chain must stop before any blame can be attributed to the powerful and the occupier. Whatever the occupying force does before it reacts to the occupied people anger is not pertinent. Broken narratives, distorted memories, are something we should live with, no matter how far we are from the Truth.

The FO successfully fought to keep secret any mention of Israel contained on the first draft of the controversial Iraq WMD dossier

The Information Tribunal, which adjudicates on disputes involving the Freedom of Information Act, agreed to remove the single reference to Israel when it ordered the release of the draft of the Iraqi weapons dossier written by John Williams, the FO's chief information officer at the time.

Along with unfavourable references to the US and Japan, the reference to Israel was written in the margin by someone commenting on the opening paragraph of the Williams draft. It was written against the claim that "no other country [apart from Iraq] has flouted the United Nations' authority so brazenly in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction".

Michel Aoun and Hassan Nasrallah

Two Men. Two Generations. Two Destinies. One Vision for Lebanon.

On February 6th, Aoun And Nasrallah appeared on OTV. They answered questions and explained their Agreement of Mutual Understanding. The first of its kind, in a sectarian country like Lebanon, between two political leaders representing two communities. The agreement was signed two years ago. March 14th, on the contrary, ignoring the agreement, are calling for civil war.

Read the comment on the interview by Hanady Salman in Al Ahram weekly, republished on Tayyar's website (Michel Aoun movement's website).

Lebanese blogger Remarkz reports on the interview.

A Self portrait by Hassan Nasrallah (in French) on Alain Gresh's blog.

Israel's 'Free Hand' in Gaza

Olmert says the Israeli military have 'free hand' to hit Gaza, ignoring the Humanitarian concerns of many, including the UN.

The UN's top humanitarian, Sir John Holmes, said yesterday that the deteriorating economic and humanitarian situation in the Palestinian territory was a "political crisis" that needed a "political solution". He spoke as the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said the people of Gaza could not live normal lives while Israelis across the border were constantly targeted by rockets.

Speaking in Jerusalem at a gathering of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations, Olmert said Israel's military had a "free hand" to hit Gaza militants. "We will reach out for anyone involved in terrorism against Israelis and will not hesitate to attack them," he said. "That applies to everyone, first and foremost Hamas."

Speaking separately at a briefing to journalists, Holmes said: "The problems won't be removed without a political solution." But the under secretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, who is on a five-day visit to the region, said that as a humanitarian he had limited control over the UN's key political decision-making body, the security council. "I don't come expecting to work miracles. The situation is extremely difficult, the politics extremely difficult."

More here...
Disengagement and the frontiers of Zionism: a first person account on how Israel filters what should go and shouldn't into Gaza. (Thanks to Erdla from Gorilla's Guides)

Lebanon: Hanging by a thread

I have no time to blog. Or probably no desire. But I am reading a lot.
Here is a very accurate and bleak assessment of the situation in Lebanon, by Lebanese blogger and AUB professor Rami Zurayk.

The Torture Files: W Reloaded

And Unrepentant.

With Allies like these who needs terrorists ?

Hezbollah militant killed in a car bomb in Damascus or targeted Killings as a war tactic for the impotent state

Click on the picture to see ex-Mossad agent and Beyrouth bureau chief in 1982 surrounded by the pictures of Bachir Gemayel, ex president of lebanon during the Israeli occupation, and brother of Amine, now part of March 14th and Hariri's coalition in Lebanon. Read here the related article.

Mughniyeh, 45, was Hezbollah's security chief in the 1980s. He was believed to have directed a group that held Westerners hostage in Lebanon. Among them was journalist Terry Anderson, a former Associated Press chief Middle East correspondent who was held captive for six years.

Mughniyeh, who had been in hiding for years, was one of the fugitives indicted in the United States for the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner in which a U.S. Navy diver was killed. He is on an FBI wanted list with a $25 million bounty on his head. The bounty is equal to that the U.S. has put for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

Official declarations from all parties involved and accusations put aside, my little thumb is telling me that the Syrian regime is ready to stray away from its old alliance with Hezbollah. We might not see the implications of this shift quickly unless the current US administration is preparing, with current Israeli prime minister Olmert, a last minute operation or showdown in the ME, being on the war front or on the peace negociations front.

Now, Israeli experts, and not the state, have been boasting about the targeted killing of Mughniyeh while denying it:

The Israeli killing men are trying to contain their grins. The government issued a non-denial denial "Israel rejects the attempt by terror groups to attribute to it any involvement in this incident. We have nothing further to add" -- i.e. they reject terror groups saying they were involved, but do not say that they were not involved.

Both the US and Israel, USrael, claim that it was a 'just' killing and that it might have been done by Israel as a way of sending a message to Hezbollah about Israel's ability, and also the US - Yes, Yes, despite its faltering everywhere from Afghanistan to Iraq - to reach ennemies everywhere. Well, there is no doubt in my mind that Israel can do that. As a matter of fact, Israel has proved it can do only that. It cannot win wars against organised guerrilas in Lebanon like those it won against weak and underequipped armies in the Arab world and against Palestinian civilian population. So all what Israel can do is targeted killing as a way of delivering 'justice'. 'Justice' for what? For its failure of course, this is justice as a revenge. The US approves this way of chasing the ennemy because in our world 'justice' equals, not only targeted killings, but also unlawful wars, Torture, and everything that makes us feel good and stems from a sense of entitlment to kill, an entitlemnt not given to others.

Former Mossad chief Danny Yatom on Wednesday welcomed Mughniyah's death, calling it "a great achievement for the free world in its fight on terror."
"Mughniyah was one of the most dangerous and cruel terrorists of all time," said the Labor MK. "There are numerous intelligence agencies and countries that have been pursuing him, and the one that was successful in reaching him [has proven itself] - to have a high intelligence and operational capability."
Yatom called Mughniyah's death a serious blow to Hezbollah, both in terms of morale and in terms of its operational capabilities, saying the assassination could only have been made possible by penetrating deep into the organization.
"Whoever can take him out can take out anyone in Hezbollah," he said. "It will take Hezbollah a long time to find an heir."

Why is it that Israel didn't find Mughniyeh before ? Well, despite its might, having to operate for this killing in the strongly police state that is Syria, Israel must have had some local collaboration at some level. On the same day of Mughniyeh's killing, vague threats from Bush against Syrian officials might have helped, as the present Syrian regime is known mostly for its acute sense of survival. It might be also that Israel, having had to listen to Hezbollah's leader recent challenge to collect its dead soldiers' bodies that were left behind on the battle scene of July 2006,impotent as it is, wanted a quick revenge through a high profile action to restore its mighty image. And Mughniyeh's killing was the 'best' thing Israel could do to show its strenght; killing a Hezbollah member in an ennemy's capital, even though its importance in the movement is now way exagereted by all parties, and for different reasons. And it might be also that Israel is trying to drive Hezbollah to similar actions, like conducting terrorist operations outside Lebanon against Israel. But this is definitely the last thing Hezbollah will be willing to do. And it might be also that, even though Hezbollah will not be willing to conduct terror operations against Israel or the US, Israel could always do some operations that might appear as coming from Hezbollah and attribute them to the movement, as a retaliation. Israel did attribute the Argentina synaguogue bombing to Hezbollah despite many doubts (why on earth Hezbollah would chase Israel in Argentina?) and despite the fact that there never was a solid proof that the bombing was the doing of Hezbollah.
Israel is behaving as always; when it is defeated on the war front or on the diplomatic front, it resorts to high profile operations like the Entebbe raid to guard its image as a state that must be feared, while attributing the aftermath of these operations and their dramatic consequences to its opponents.
Assassination is a two-edged Sword: this analysis by one of Israel's intelligence epxerts proves that one of the goals of this assassination id to push Hezbollah and Iran to the edge and maybe to adopt the same tactic, therefore fueling accusations of terrorism. Because, never forget, for western minds, when Israel assassinates, it is an accomplishement for its own security and when Israel's ennemies assassinate, it is called terrorism.

Related:

News and Comments: Big Killer Takes Out Smaller One. "Wipe Out a Neighborhood." Life By Mafia Rules in the Israeli - US Domain.

Angry Arab:What role did the Syrian government play, if any, to facilitate the assassination?

UrShalim: Winograd Lamentation.

Alan Dershowitz (OJ Simpson's lawyer): Targeting Mughniyeh was the right thing to do.

And look how the Jeru Post has inflated Mughniyeh's role beyond any reasonable limit in order to present his killing as a smart coup by Israel.

Global Voices has some interesting links to the Arab blogosphere on Mughniyeh's assassination:
A reaction from Egypt
From Bahrain
From Syria
And I am still waiting for Moussa Bashir to give us a synthesis from the Lebanese blogosphere...

Angelina Jolie Of Arabia

Celebrities' involvment in Political and Humanitarian missions in faraway and third world countries tells only about the superficiality those missions have become to acquire in our western public consciousness.

See the post on Angry Arab

International Jury for Lebanon

Not for Hariri, for Lebanon. It is a mock jury made by activists, jurists, Human Rights advocates, and Political scientists, it will examine Israel's war crimes in Lebanon.

Brussels, February 22nd, 23rd and 24th, 2008

Belgian blogger Annie has the complete info on her website.

Norman Finkelstein on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and International Law

The Talk at LSE, 23-01-2008

The questions and Answers period.

Weapons of Mass and Durable Destruction in Vietnam and the ME

Three decades after US soldiers and diplomats scrambled aboard the last planes out of Saigon in April 1975, the toxins they left behind still poison Vietnam.

In the 3,160 villages in the southern part of Vietnam within the Agent Orange spraying zone, 800,000 people continue to suffer serious health problems and are in need of constant medical attention. Last month, members of a US Vietnamese working group reported that it will cost at least $14m to remove dioxin residues from just one site around the former US airbase in Danang. The cost of a comprehensive clean-up around three dioxin hotspots and former US bases is estimated at around $60m. The $3m pledged by US Congress last year is a pathetically inadequate amount set against the billions spent in waging war and deploying weapons of mass destruction.

This, as well as Israel's use of outrageously huge amounts of cluster bombs in south Lebanon in 2006, most of them leftovers from US's munitions from the Vietnam war era, will certainly go unnoticed and unpunished while these same countries are waging and threatening wars in the ME in the name of cleaning the area from WMD. I think the lesson to be learned from Vietnam is that the goal of USrael is not to clean the region from WMD but to inundate it with its own, threreby renewing its stock, feeding the war industry, and prolonging the war effects on the ennemy's civilian population, in the absence of a clear military victory against the ennemy.

HRW: Flooding South Lebanon. Israel’s Use of Cluster Munitions in Lebanon in July and August 2006.

UPDATE: For a more complete information go and visit Gorilla's Gguides' article which cites this one and expands on it by adding more sources and information.

More from Gorilla's: What a nice way of saying "genocide" (part 2)

And this is how This Old Brit feels about it all.

Twenty Reasons To Question The Official Story Of 9/11

Posted in January 2006 by Dailykoster at DailyKos. Toujours d'actualité...

"The West is blind to Palestinian suffering"

Tariq Ali on Israel, Palestine, and why he is not participating in the Turin book fair.

Al-Qaida roots itself in Lebanon, Thanks to Hariri's sectarian politics

From Le Monde Diplomatique, February Edition.
Excerpts from the article.
In addition to this article there are two others we can read on the subject of Al-Qaida in Lebanon:
Seymour Hersh: The Redirection
Nir Rosen: Al-Qaida in Lebanon, the Iraq war spreads.
And
A digest on the subject of Al-Qaida and the future movement published on this blog, May 2007.

RADICAL ISLAMISTS EXPLOIT A FRAGMENTED COUNTRY

Last year the Lebanese army besieged the Palestinian camp of Nahr al-Bared, where a previously unknown organisation, Fatah al-Islam, was dug in. These events, like attacks on the UN Interim Force in Lebanon, reflect the appearance of radical Sunni Islamist networks, some of them linked to al-Qaida, which is now treating Lebanon as a key base .
by Fidaa Itani

"We were forcibly thrust into a battle that does not concern us. I would rather not have had to fight the Lebanese army," said Shahin Shahin, a Fatah al-Islam military commander, to a negotiator during the siege of the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared by the Lebanese army. It was not then yet known that he was a son of Osama bin Laden and a high-ranking al-Qaida official. His misgivings about the fighting reflected his organisation's ambivalence towards Lebanon -- whether to see the country as a battleground on which to confront the United States and its allies, or just as a rear base for the training and transit of al-Qaida operatives...
...In those days the Sunnis were middle class traders, shopkeepers and civil servants, or illiterate country people. They expressed their support for Arab nationalism and the Palestinian struggle by joining Nasserite or leftwing movements. However, several Sunni groups moved closer to radical Islamism after Syrian troops occupied Lebanon in 1976, bringing repression with them. At the same time the influence of the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood started to increase, threatening the regime in Damascus with armed incursions by its military wing.
When the civil war in Lebanon ended in 1989, with the signature of the Taif accord, the Salafists, whose influence was still only limited, mainly targeted other Islamic organisations, al-Ahbash (1) or the Association of Islamic Charitable Projects (AICP). These attacks were an opportunity for the Salafist groups to perfect their intellectual and missionary skills, recruiting in many towns and villages.
They were particularly successful with middle-class graduates, as well as with students of theology who had been in Saudi Arabia and stayed in contact with radical ulema there. But the groups still lacked cohesion, the best known being al-Hidayah wal-Ihsan (Preaching and Charity), which was reorganised by the son of the movement's founder, Dai al-Islam al-Shahal.
On 31 August 1995 one of these groups assassinated Sheikh Nizar al-Halabi, the head of the AICP, and caused a stir. It was the first time that a Salafist group had eliminated an opponent. Members of the organisation confessed to committing the murder and persisted in taking exclusive responsibility to the end. However, the Lebanese authorities and Syrian intelligence (which controlled the country) chose to pin the crime on Abdul Karim al-Saadi (aka Abu Mahjen), the Palestinian leader of Asbat al-Ansar, which was based in the Ayn al-Hilwah refugee camp, near Saida in southern Lebanon. In 1999 the same group, originally formed by veterans from the war in Afghanistan, was blamed for the assassination of four judges in Saida central court.
...In May 2000 Russian negotiators, who were supervising the Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon with the Syrians, gave the Lebanese and Syrian authorities a recording of a conversation between Kanj and Chechen mujahideen, which led to a Lebanese army raid on Dinniyeh on New Year's Eve 2001. At the same time the Syrian authorities, operating on the other side of the border, arrested radical Islamists, confirming the network's trans- national nature.
Al-Qaida waited till the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003 before openly calling for units to be set up in Lebanon. But al-Qaida also operates as a form of franchise, with a far from centralised organisation, leaving considerable freedom of movement to local units. It was well established by the end of 2005 when the Lebanese authorities first succeeded in catching the members of a network, subsequently referred to as the "Network of 13", led by Hassan Nabaa, a Lebanese national. The group, which also comprised Saudis, Syrians and Palestinians, supported al-Qaida and the Iraqi resistance movement, operating in Lebanon and Syria where it clashed on several occasions with the secret service, particularly in
border zones. It is said to have shot down a Syrian helicopter.

The arrests prompted a controversy because the prisoners'confessions contained details of their involvement in the assassination of the former prime minister, Rafik Hariri, on 14 February 2005. But there is doubt about how the confessions were obtained, and the group's alleged link with the young Palestinian Ahmad Abu Adas, who claimed responsibility for the suicide attack on Hariri in an earlier video recording (2).
...The war of 2006
In July 2006 the 33-day war between Israel and Hizbullah erupted. The jihadist groups took advantage of the confusion to extend their influence. They also made use of the decision by the Islamic state in Iraq (instituted by al-Qaida) to expel any elements lacking specialist military skills or unable to blend in with the local population. Fatah al-Islam attracted many of these lost soldiers, prompting a hostile
response by Fatah and other groups belonging to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, which wanted to "cleanse" the Ain al Hilweh camp. The Lebanese army, which had just deployed in force to the south of Litani following the end of the fighting between Hizbullah and Israel, was worried about leaving these jihadists only a short distance from the 12,000 strong UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil). Fatah al-Islam decided to take refuge in the north, an area with a Sunni majority, considered friendly.
Several meetings paved the way for this move, not only with the local Salafists but also with members of parliament belonging to Saad Hariri's Future Movement, concerned about Hizbullah's growing influence. Al-Absi held talks with a Sunni MP from Tripoli, a doctor who once had leftwing sympathies and who expressed his fear that the Shia Hizbullah might turn on the Sunni (3). Al-Absi replied that, without entering into conflict with a force fighting Israel, he would not allow anyone to harm the Sunni.
...At the end of 2006 Ahmad Tuwaijiri, a senior Saudi al-Qaida member, arrived in Lebanon. He met Fatah al-Islam leaders several times, as well as other Salafist groups. Funding flowed in, with public and private donations from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait offered by prosperous businessmen who want to help the jihad.

The various Salafist organisations (4) were also keen to regroup, the better to resist the Shia threat. The political crisis in Lebanon and occasional clashes between Sunni and Shia, and between supporters of the parliamentary majority and opposition, created a favourable context (see "Why there is deadlock").
The local members of al-Qaida took advantage of the Future Movement's pressing need for militia to counterbalance Hizbullah. Although it appreciated the risks involved in dealing with fundamentalist factions, Hariri's party nevertheless adopted this short-term expedient in its struggle with Hizbullah, Syria and Iran. Al-Qaida acted pragmatically, seizing the opportunity to raise funds to recruit dozens of additional combatants, organise more training sessions at Ain al-Hilweh, prepare plans for attacking Unifil in the south, and spy on the embassies of western and Gulf countries in Beirut.

In June, a month after the fighting started, the Lebanese security forces discovered that Shahin was Saad bin Laden. He had managed to enter the camp a few days after the start of the battle and became popular with the combatants. The security forces had noticed his arrival in Lebanon a few months earlier. Saad, one of the most active leaders in the operations section of al-Qaida, had set up cells and support units all over Lebanon, in collaboration with al-Qaddur.

...Too high a price

However, as the political crisis in Lebanon grinds on, prompting all the factions to arm and train their combatants, al-Qaida may be able to lurk in the shadow of the largest Sunni group, the Future Movement, which is hiring combatants under the cover of private security companies. Hariri's organisation has so far assembled about 2,400 militia and plans to recruit 14,000 more in northern Lebanon alone. But the siege of Nahr al-Bared convinced part of Lebanon's Sunni elite that an alliance with al-Qaida came at too high a price.

...Will local groups claiming allegiance to al-Qaida agree to steer clear of Lebanese affairs? Whatever the answer, al-Qaida's future in Lebanon looks secure.
________________________________________________________ Fidaa Itani is a Beirut-based journalist
Translated by Harry Forster

Typical Israeli propaganda

From Angry Arab:

Typical Israeli propaganda chicanery.

A more insidious one, the Bad News Blogs project: Advertising on blogs bad news about countries who are thought to have a bias against Israel.

Amnesty Int'l: Winograd report fails to address Israel's war crimes

"The indiscriminate killings of many Lebanese civilians not involved in the hostilities and the deliberate and wanton destruction of civilian properties and infrastructure on a massive scale were given no more than token consideration by the commission," said Smart.
..."Of some 1,190 people killed, the vast majority were civilians not involved in the hostilities, among them hundreds of children. The overwhelming majority of homes, properties and infrastructure targeted in air strikes and artillery attacks were likewise civilian."
..."Although the Winograd Commission recommended that the army review its policies on the use of cluster bombs to ensure that the use of these weapons will not violate international humanitarian law and army discipline, it did not propose any concrete measures," said Smart.

Amnesty International called on Israel's government to provide data on the use of cluster bombs during the Second Lebanon War, establish an independent and impartial investigation into evidence indicating that IDF forces committed serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the conflict, and ensure that those responsible are brought to justice.

Related: Hezbollah leader accuses Siniora of working with Israel during war.

Read here Amnesty's full press release.