Just some things to keep you occupied with Iran

Video:

Jazeera Coverage

Twitter and Iran:

Twitter reschedules maintenance around Iran Twitters
How to track the Iran Protests on Twitter and Social Media
Huffpo's twitter feed roundup on Iran (updates of tweets from Iran)
TechPresident's Iran Roundup: Facts and Framing
Andrew Sullivan Live Tweeting
Persiankiwi tweets

Global Voices:

Mapping Iran's Blogosphere
Iran: Protests and Repression

Blogs:

Huffpo's Live blog/video
Iranians' Blogs (a collection of blogs)
Revolutionary Road

Interesting:
On Ted: Bruce Bueno de Mesquita predicts Iran's future

The Independent:

• Khamenei backs Iran election results
• History suggests the coup will fail
• Michael Axworthy: The Islamic Republic may need Mousavi to survive

• Robert Fisk: Iran's day of destiny
• 'Seven killed as protesters launched attack'
• Britain 'must not take sides' over Iran poll
• Michael Noble: The Arabic Press view of Iranian elections
• Claims of student massacre spread
• Reza Molavi: The genie may not go back in the bottle

The Guardian:

Bog updates live

• The dust revolution – how Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's jibe backfired

• They came for justice - but then came the shots
• Simon Tisdall: Rafsanjani - shark or kingmaker?
• In pictures: Thousands march in Tehran
• Editorial: a fateful choice
• Interactive: Iran's election fallout

And for those who cannot be cured of the conspiracy theory illness:
Twitter conspiracy theory

On Leave

Far From the 'Banning' Crowd

I hope its the frenzy of the dying that has made the religious right, and all the people duped and terrified by them, ratchet up the forceful increase in 'shut up and disappear' tactics. You know, the ones they use instead of trying to make a point through reason and calm argument.

You tell them the earth has been around for billions of years and we are just a minuscule dot in an otherwise unfathomably large set of endless universes and their response is 'shut up and disappear'. Suggest that the human experience is colourful, endlessly surprising, diverse, full of more questions than answers and, therefore, beautiful...'shut up and disappear'. Suggest that humans are capable of thinking, choosing and learning from their own mistakes, and need I say it? 'shut up and disappear'.

Fear, paranoia and sexual obsessions are unfortunately the calling cards of these fanatics who want the world in little tiny simplistic boxes that are to0 small and too weak to hold in the crazily gorgeous multiplicity of possibilities offered up by science and art and the ability to love and create and be brave. So they get mad and have to shut us all up and make us disappear.

And yet, here we all are still talking and still dancing and still singing and still loving and still saying we are not afraid. They are so small and they are dying, so we understand that they need to be loud right now, but facts and reason and hearts bigger than their tiny misfiring brains are always going to sway to that everlasting tune they may someday, if they're lucky, recognize as freedom. Before they take their own advice and shut up and disappear.

Interesting

Sulayman Al-Bassam's Richard iii on PBS

A friend described him as a 'national treasure'... I would have to agree.

Donald Macintyre says we should be '..very Afraid' of the Israeli elections... One candidate plants a tree in occupied territory as an election ploy (and that isn't his worst behaviour)... Another is in the lead thanks to his racism and his ability to publicly say things like the Egyptian president can "go to hell". And Gaza knows too well what another bunch of candidates did to gain votes...

Well at least someone that doesn't sound ignorant, childish or insane can be elected somewhere.. even though it won't affect the nonsense above much.

Speaking of fear, the racist far right in Russia are also turning their crippling fear of 'the other' into a murderous rampage of stupidity and terror..

The strange contradictions of the human spirit are tugging at me... that flutter we get from the prospect of adventure can make a 56 year old swim across the Atlantic or an 18 year old sign up to kill and die thousands of miles from home... That nagging fear of death can make you an artist or a madman, and which is better at erasing the end? The desire to devour everything can make you a scholar or an adulterer or both...who isn't an adulterer after all with our unquenchable sense of entitlement that grows greater the faster time passes and we see our ability to care for anything other than our fading selves get weaker and hazier... as the noose tightens we try to spread our cornered flesh over its borders, forgetting the endless wonders swarming within...
Time, you damn killer, how we yearn for you in our multitude of final gasps.

But I digress...

Now see here, the NYTimes has some swell photos of "Generation Faithful: Away from Home in Dubai", Gaza/Israel photos in "A War's Many Angles".

And I leave you with... nothing.

This girl's photo is one I can't stop coming back to... A sense of guilt and shame, at the world community which has fiddled as Gaza burned and our impotence in the face of these crimes, makes me unable to make her invisible..

===

See photos of Gaza from the relief organization Care.
And Photos of Gaza from Save the Children
===
"The front page of the Beirut daily As-Safir said it all yesterday. Across the top was a terrible photograph of the bloated body of a Palestinian man newly discovered in the ruins of his home while two male members of his family shrieked and roared their grief. Below, at half the size, was a photograph from Israel of Western leaders joking with Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister." Robert Fisk

===

Paul Kaye lost his mother-in-law to a Hamas rocket, and he describes his family's sadness at what Israel is doing:

"My wife says she feels scared and lost and full of guilt. "It's my country and I see myself as Israeli not Jewish," she keeps shouting at me. Does that make you feel better or worse about what's going on, I ask? "That's worse!" she says, "because Israel is nothing to do with God." I digest this, but don't even know where to begin to start unravelling that statement." continue

===

The Observer reports that eyewitnesses in Gaza say that Israeli Soldiers:

• attempted to bulldoze houses with civilians inside;
  
• killed civilians trying to escape under the protection of white flags;
  
• opened fire on an ambulance attempting to reach the wounded;
  
• used indiscriminate force in a civilian area and fired white phosphorus shells continue
  

===

Caoimhe Butterly, An Irish Human Rights activist riding with ambulances in Gaza reports:

"The morgues of Gaza's hospitals are over-flowing. The bodies in their blood-soaked white shrouds cover the entire floor space of the Shifa hospital morgue. Some are intact, most horribly deformed, limbs twisted into unnatural positions, chest cavities exposed, heads blown off, skulls crushed in. Family members wait outside to identify and claim a brother, husband, father, mother, wife, child." continue

===

Despite the fluffing of feathers that comes with Israel continuously saying it 'withdrew' from Gaza in 2005, Ralph Nader writes:

"In 2006, the Israelis added to their unrelieved control of air, water and land around the open-air prison by establishing a blockade. The natives became restless. Under international law, a blockade is an act of war. Primitive rockets, called by reporters "wildly inaccurate" were fired into Israel. During this same period, Israeli soldiers and artillery and missiles would go into Gaza at will and take far more lives and cause far more injuries than those incurred by those rockets. Civilians-especially children, the infirm and elderly-died or suffered week after week for lack of medicines, medical equipment, food, electricity, fuel and water which were embargoed by the Israelis."continue

===

Who Violated the ceasefire? A Chronology of events assembled from the news and human rights oranisation by Howard Friel

===

Israel's disconnect: Surgical strikes and careful warnings to civilians are what the IDF claims. As I learned in Lebanon, the reality is far different Julie Flint, The Guardian.

===

Video of a boy wounded by the white phosphorus that Israel is being accused of using

===

A very dear friend is writing an excellent poem/song, to deal with the frustration and horror at what is happening in Gaza... and to hopefully move people to feel things they should feel at this disgusting display of human cruelty.

I am afraid I can't be as articulate. The frustration cripples the mind, and the outrageous and vicious statements made everyday to justify the slaughter of civilians is beyond comprehension.

Some lives are more precious than others, and it is so savagely clear in these bloody days.

========
The Casualties

More than 200 Palestinian children killed, so far.
3 United Nations Schools where civilians were finding refuge are hit, even though their coordinates were known.
More than 700 Palestinians killed, so far
Thousands injured
Medics targeted
The Gaza Community Mental Health Programme was bombed
UN Aid workers shot at
11 Israelis dead 8 of them soldiers, so far.

=========
The Talking Points

Anyone who has heard the Israeli spokespeople in the media is bound to have realized that they have a set of talking points that they stick to no matter what question they are asked. Here are some responses and refutations of those arguments:

Palestine's Guernica and the Myths of Israeli Victimhood- Fom the Huffington Post

"Israel has tried to take the initiative in the propaganda war over Gaza but, in one important instance, its version has been seriously challenged". BBC
==
One of the talking points/sound bites is that Hamas broke the ceasefire two weeks before the war on Gaza:

Gaza truce broken as Israeli raid kills six Hamas gunmen The Guardian, NOV 5th 2008

"Hamas had respected the previously negotiated ceasefire except when Israel used the ceasefire as cover to make assassination raids against Hamas and other Palestinian leaders" Rabbi Michael Lerner

CNN video on Israel breaking the ceasefire

"Israel's military and political leadership took many aggressive steps during the ceasefire that escalated a crisis with Hamas" Foreign Policy in Focus

==
Another sound bite is that Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005 so the Palestinians have nothing to complain about...The Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem has this to say:

"Israel issued an order declaring the end of the military government in the Gaza Strip, and claimed that it was no longer responsible for ensuring the proper functioning of life there. However, Israel continued to control the air and sea space, movement between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank (also via neighboring countries), the population registry, family unification, and the crossing of goods to and from Gaza . Also, residents of the Gaza Strip rely solely on Israel for its supply of fuel, electricity, and gas. Until 28 June 2006, an independent electric-power station operated in the Gaza Strip, producing about one-half of the electricity needed by the residents in the Strip. The station relied completely on fuel and gas from Israel. On 28 June, Israel bombed the electric-power station. Since then, residents of the Gaza Strip have relied completely on Israel for their electricity."
==
Another sound bite involves the idea that civilians are being avoided:

"Have we forgotten the 17,500 dead – almost all civilians, most of them children and women – in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon; the 1,700 Palestinian civilian dead in the Sabra-Chatila massacre; the 1996 Qana massacre of 106 Lebanese civilian refugees, more than half of them children, at a UN base; the massacre of the Marwahin refugees who were ordered from their homes by the Israelis in 2006 then slaughtered by an Israeli helicopter crew; the 1,000 dead of that same 2006 bombardment and Lebanese invasion, almost all of them civilians?

What is amazing is that so many Western leaders, so many presidents and prime ministers and, I fear, so many editors and journalists, bought the old lie; that Israelis take such great care to avoid civilian casualties"
Robert Fisk. The Independent

"Israel's use of white phosphorus airburst shells over the densely populated Gaza Strip came under fresh criticism last night for endangering civilians."
The Guardian

"In a scathing statement, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) accused the Israeli army of failing to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and evacuate the wounded"
ABCNews

========

[The Israeli Foreign minister Tzipi] "Livni rejected on Thursday a French proposal for a 48-hour truce to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, saying there was no humanitarian crisis in Strip.
Livni said Israel had been careful to protect the civilian population and had kept the humanitarian situation in Gaza "completely as it should be".
Alertnet

And yet:

"The European Commission on Sunday called on Israel to respect international law and allow access to people "suffering and dying" in Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip." AFP

"I have never previously felt so despondent about Israel, so shamed by its actions, so despairing of any peace that might end the dominion of the dead in favor of opportunity for the living."
Roger Cohen, The International Herald Tribune

"Many kids have stopped eating. They are inactive, they barely talk, they cling to their parents all the time," said Sajy Elmaghinni, who works for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Gaza.
AFP

"Four exhausted children have been discovered cowering in a house next to the bodies of their mothers by staff of the International Committee of the Red Cross" The Guardian

"The major news outlets meekly accepted Israel's banning of journalists from entering Gaza as an excuse for downplaying collateral civilian casualties" The Nation
===
And then:

"Israel pushed ahead with its offensive in the Gaza Strip today, ignoring a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire. " The Independent

========
In Images

Photos of the attacks:
BBC
The Huffington Post

Youtube/video:
The massacre of children in Gaza
News footage from french channels
The 19 month blockade of Gaza, an exchange between the two sides.
Clips from a film about life in Gaza: Occupation 101
UN Official outside Gaza Hospital
A Palestinian woman not allowed out of Gaza to get cancer treatment

"Al-Jazeera, based in Qatar, has four correspondents in Gaza and its bulletins are broadcasting graphic images that would never find their way on to western TV screens."
The Guardian
Here are the Jazeera English news channel clips on youtube.

=========

The blockade/siege of Gaza that preceded the attack:

"All we had heard about conditions in Gaza – deprivation, a sense of despair, the lack of economic activity – had not prepared us for the stark reality which we saw."
Desmond Tutu after visiting Gaza during the blockade.

A UN report on the blockade/siege includes the following:

• Only 23 out of 3,900 industrial enterprises are currently operational
• 70% of agricultural land in Gaza are no longer being irrigated, leading to desertification
• A lack of available cash in the Gaza Strip could lead to a collapse of the financial system
• Half of Gaza City's population is receiving water only once a week for a few hours
• Residents of Gaza City are without power for up to 16 hours each day
• Quality of health services severely affected

Israel blocking food and medicine to Gaza during blockade- BBC

UNICEF photoessay

“It seems the international community is neglecting them, that somehow Palestinian children don’t deserve the protections guaranteed under the Geneva Convention and humanitarian law.
Science Daily, 2006

'Routine day' that made two teenagers a bloody statistic

Political cartoons about the blockade: 1, 2, 3

Help:

International Medicals Corps
UNICEF
UNRWA
SAVE THE CHILDREN- Gaza Appeal
DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS

I leave you with Lama Al-Othman

فلنقم جنازاتنا... ولنقدم تعازينا لموت الإنسان فينا

Take a Ride..

It is with no small irony, after watching a film like Taxi to the Dark Side, that this should be the first thing on a loop all over the news...

The Oscar winning film unfurls all the ugliness and savagery of the war prisons, set up by the US, piece by piece till you see the whole damnable picture. It really makes you wonder "how little outrage there is" at these crimes.

The film is full of footage, not only of the horrific torture in the prisons and of the US soldiers admitting to it, but of officials, in the smug safety of their untouchable positions, using slippery language to defend their indifference to the suffering they have unleashed upon so many people.

This week Cheney says " he was directly involved in approving severe interrogation methods" LA Times

Then there is: "So What?"

The latest Harper's has an article called The Torture Presidency

The legacy of the presidency is outlined in this video from Keith Olbermann

Of course we have to expect the nauseating string of comments like Arabs/Muslims see shoes as a supreme insult... As if a shoe thrown at you anywhere else in the world is like having roses sprinkled on your cheeks.

How is the shoe story spreading?
A Flickr group has already been set up for people who would like to photograph the shoes they would like to add to the mix... A facebook group is also sending shoes in protest and solidarity...There is a game out where you dodge the shoe...Here are measurements of how quickly the video spread...And the spoof videos that are already out there are collected here.

Wouldn't you wish that the places the shoe thrower might end up in would get as much coverage and outrage as they deserve.

I know that changing the world is not easy
but it remains necessary nonetheless.
Fadhil Al-Azzawi

Can't get enough of this, so I thought I'd share...

Greenland, the big bear of the north, is rattling in its chains.. I must visit soon.

Yay! Patrick Fitzgerald is back :) .. (remember him)
Here is a current film that is related to the whole 2005 drama.
Here are the comedians on the 2008 scandal.

And talking of things you shouldn't pick...Picking your nose can lead to this...
And talking about all round bad ideas...yup, here you go.

Arundhati Roy writes in The Guardian about the Mumbai attacks..

Did you hear music under the big bright moon this weekend?

I leave you with Rumi..

Quietness is the surest sign
that you’ve died.
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence.

The speechless full moon
comes out now.
–Rumi,

Don’t worry about saving these songs!

And if one of our instruments breaks,
it doesn’t matter.

We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.

Rumi

I am winning the battle against cat scratch fever, or maybe that is the hopeful delirium that comes at the end...

The cat and I have worryingly similar notions of playfulness, but while I spend my time-between swatting and wrestling- biting my nails, she has a rigorous routine of honing her wolverine paws to the point where it's just dumb of me to go near her. But apparently I do dumb well. And do pain well too. Dumb pain.

How pretty is the weather these days? Very, I'd say.

We are so small, so small... But we dream big, poor creatures..
Here are some more crazy pictures of teeny tiny things from National Geographic.

Musicians out there try your hand at the YouTube Symphony Orchestra and music lovers, enjoy the Smithsonian Global Sound site.

Now onto matters more deathly serious:

Finally the DR Congo is on people's radars, too late for the millions that have been killed in the past decade... But not enough is being done, and activists are trying to draw attention to the 'rape as a weapon' horror going on there.

Want to help? Visit Women for Women International
----

I leave you with Paz, Williams, Seferis and Lenny... Because I have been reading too much.

Two bodies face to face
are two stars falling
in an empty sky.
–Octavio Paz

this morning for someone I’m not even sure exists
I waste tears. I count down by fractions
through the ash. I howl. I use up everything.
–CK Williams

but your heart's anguish
didn't cry out, became
what gives the world
a star-filled sky
--George Seferis

O friend of my scribbled life
Your heart is like mine—
your loneliness
will bring you home.
–Leonard Cohen

If you are anything like me (and believe me these days I would recommend anything but) then your heart races a little faster every time you hear that creaky little voice coming from the mighty and deadpan Ms. Sarah Vowell...

So as I debate whether allergies or closed coffin-like rooms are more palatable, and whether it would be annoying for people if I eat a LOT of nachos at the movies tonight, I find my very own Quantum of Solace by trawling the web for the lady that makes me look so much less nerdy than I am accused of being.

Why am I bringing this up? Well, this is my version of shouting off the rooftops, so bear with me, because I need there to be something worth shouting about these days.

It all started when I fell for her book Assassination Vacation, which was just the right amount of history, hilarity and quirky self revelation to hook me for life. Now she has The Wordy Shipmates which I am waiting for audible.com to make available already. You see, I have been dying to know about the Puritans, but have been wanting someone to tell me about them in a way that won't make me want to die.

ok enough personal memoir, here are some of her articles:
The Pessimism Deficit
When Bush Falls in Love

Yes, I bet some of you were thinking that if I were going to talk about matters of the heart I was going to bring up Potter Stewart again, my sexiest man ever to have graced the supreme court crush... Well you were right. Potter Stewart. There.

There must be some love stories left in the world after all... And then there are those loves you wish could be explained... And still other pleasures you wish didn't sound like this.

I guess we'll be seeing everyone Tuesday on that lawn we all know so well..

Have a peek at The Crisis and What to Do About it, by George Soros in the NYRB

If you feel like hunting for expensive art pieces that will be left out for free all around the city then get yourself to London... Or just enjoy them and leave them where they are for others to enjoy too.

And I leave you with Rilke..

Every single angel
is terrible!
And since that's the case
I choke back my own
dark Birdcall
My sobbing...
...Strange
To wish wishes no longer.
Strange
to see things
that seemed to
belong together
floating in every
direction.
...Is the old tale pointless
That tells how music began
in the midst of the mourning...
Duino Elegies

As if I needed another reason to recoil at having to touch elevator buttons: radioactive scrap from India was used to make buttons for Otis elevators in France. It makes me worry where we are getting our scrap from, considering we are in that part of the world where people like Larry Summers think dirty industries should be transferred.
See his old notorious creepy memo.
---
Yemen is flooded by a tropical storm..Dozens dead and tens of thousands displaced.
---
Jordan arrests a poet for using quotes from the Quran in his love poems... Though, it seems that we don't get enough arrests when people use quotes from the Quran to add flourish to hatred.
---
The Guardian has compiled 1000 artworks you should see before you leave the world.
---
A McCain worker's hoax might spell doom for him... But then again, scary movie characters always get back up when you think they're finished. Here is some more on the hoax including video.
---
Have a listen to some music that astronomers have recorded from stars... The beat of their pulse helps tell us their age and size and what they are made of... and it's pretty haunting.

I leave you to keep picking up all the pieces I have to put back together...
-
"Green eyes
Blue bedroom
bright machinegun sun"
love is a dog from hell

Since misery loves company, the planet and the economy in meltdown should offer some sort of comfort to my dwindling sanity... but planet you are gonna have to come up with a lot more crazy to make me feel matched.

Where do we start...oh where do we start?

The IMF said the "global financial system was on the brink of meltdown" which is triggering descriptions like "utter carnage" and "a titanic battle between greed and fear"... Last week was apparently the worst week ever... indeed.

And today the little green market arrows are pointing up... who feels reassured?

HuffPo has a list of economists who told you so (one of whom just won the Nobel Prize) and another list of those who got the economy to its dark depths...

Entire countries are feeling the strain, the beautiful Iceland is "on the brink of collapse" according to an interesting and worrying article in the Guardian.
And:

"Iceland is bankrupt," said Arsaell Valfells, a University of Iceland professor. "The Icelandic krona is history. The IMF has to rescue us." Link

And if you were quaking in your boots about the financial crisis where the hell were you when Earth got pushed against a wall and stripped of every last bit of its dignity?

A study by a Deutsche Bank economist says deforestation alone leads to financial losses that make the financial crisis look like piggy-bank pennies... The UN suggests a Green New Deal to save the economy.

Speaking of New Deals, the great Sarah Vowell has been turning to Roosevelt's Fireside Chats to deal with the panic of the economic crisis... I have been turning to the classic film channel for all sorts of other panic.

I leave you with one of my favourite quotes which has never been more stuck in my brain...

"Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears Do scald like molten lead"
King Lear

Tina Fey for vp again..

Background material in case you missed the debates:

Salon's take- The Dumbing Down of the GOP
The Amateur and the Professional The NYT





Tina Fey: Queen of Satire The Independent

Yeah.. I am in a video mood these days

Tina Fey as Palin

Researchers are great

Palin' before Palin

That icy rush you feel is just brain freeze from the new republican VP.

We can look forward to hearing more frozen-in-time comments that will still manage to warm the toes of those dinosaurs who disrespect all the science and history and philosophy that has blown such huge holes in their mythologies. It's been great news for those frozen relics who belittle all the rights that our beautiful human minds and human hearts have given birth to since that dusty ancient time they so worship.
And just as insidious is the nonsense on the environment and oil.

Here it goes:

The same party that turns off the lights every night and snuggles with oil, coal and gas giants, and then wakes up in the morning and hops into their poisoned pockets is suddenly going to pretend to be against their excesses.

How many times did Palin say she was tough on oil companies in her speech?
A great marketing gimmick since Americans for the first time in a long time are not thinking like oil addicts.

But really? Palin and oil companies, enemies?

"And she has been a friend of Big Oil, opposing a windfall profits tax on the oil industry that could fund affordable clean energy for more Americans." - Friends of the Earth Action Vice President Brent Blackwelder." Reuters

"Palin opposes greater protections for beluga whales found in the Cook Inlet, where oil and gas drilling and other development is proposed"LA Times

She sued to stop polar bears being placed on the endangered speceis list:
"She and other Alaska elected officials fear a listing will cripple oil and gas development in prime polar bear habitat off the state's northern and northwestern coasts..." Anchorage Daily News

"We believe that the ...... decision to list the polar bear was not based on the best scientific and commercial data available" Reuters, August 5, 2008

Not only that, But in an opinion piece she had in the NYT she had delusional symptoms brought on by oil fumes which makes you say things like:

"In fact, there is insufficient evidence that polar bears are in danger of becoming extinct within the foreseeable future"

Really?
Uhm what do experts say?

1-"She's either grossly misinformed or intentionally misleading, and both are unbecoming," said Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity. Anchorage Daily News
2- A study by the U.S. Geological Survey "predicted polar bears in Alaska could be wiped out by 2050".
3- "The governor's decision was clearly based on politics, not on science, and was primarily designed to protect the oil and gas industry stampede into the Arctic Ocean," said Steiner, the University of Alaska marine biologist. LA Times
4- This summer for the first time:
Nine polar bears at risk of drowning in global warming meltdown
Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom August 2008
"Nine polar bears are at risk of drowning after the ice floe where they lived melted because of global warming"...

"Professor Richard Steiner of the University of Alaska’s Marine Advisory Program said: “While these bears are swimming around in an ice-free coastal Arctic Ocean, the only thing the State of Alaska is doing is suing the federal government trying to overturn the listing of polar bears" Science Daily

Oh if you think that, and her 1930's german headmistress look, isn't attractive enough to make you want to draw pink hearts to her on your voting card... There is always this:
She also supports the aerial hunting of wolves.
(oh wait, you use those unreliable electronic voting machines there don't ya? Maybe you you carve pretty hearts on the screen with a nice hunting knife)

And she is, of course, thirsting for drilling in ANWR (also known as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) I repeat the words wildlife and refuge...Smoke that for a few minutes.

Here is her quotable quote on the topic :
"I beg to disagree with any candidate who would say we can’t drill our way out of our problem or that more supply won’t ultimately affect prices. Of course it will affect prices."

hehehehehehehe
hehehehehehehehehhaaaaaaaaa
That laughing interlude will get no apologies from me
As I continue, you can have a gander at:

1- "the U.S. Energy Information Administration, an independent statistical agency within the Department of Energy, concluded that new oil from ANWR would lower the world price of oil by no more than $1.44 per barrel—and possibly have as little effect as 41 cents per barrel—and would have its largest impact nearly 20 years from now" US NEws and World Report

2- "even if we drilled the entire state of Alaska and pulled new refineries out of thin air, the impact on gas prices would be minimal and delayed at best" Time Magazine

Links:
Palin’s first lie as VP candidate
From Salon: " It is hard to think of a more cynical and contemptuous political act this year than John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his vice -presidential running mate."
Here is Grist's opinion.
The Worst Vice-Presidential Nominee in U.S. History Robert J. Elisberg,
An Alaskan blogger's perspective
Sarah Palin, Wrong Woman for the Job The Nation., NY

And now back to local news:
got none for you tonight...
thank you

In our current days of darkness and superstitions... A little history goes a long way.

Science already known BCE/BC:

1- 500BCE/BC : Pythagoreans taught that Earth is a sphere

2- 470BCE/BC : Anaxagoras suggests that materials are made of "seeds"(atoms) (Near Izmir in Turkey)

3- 445 BC/BCE: Leucippus suggests possibility of indivisible atoms (Turkey)

4- 384-322 BC/BCE: Aristotle said it was common knowledge that earth was round.

5- 350s BC - Heraclides explained the rotation of Earth ( Turkey)

6- 220 BC/BCE: Eratosthenes of Cyrene estimated earth’s diameter correctly (in EGYPT)

In Ancient astronomy the seven known 'planets' that could be seen at the time were known as the 7 heavenly objects.

The others were not seen until the 1800's

The name of the sky/heavens god in Cannanite mythology was Shamayim the husband of earth (Eretz).
Their child was El, the supreme god.

In everyday Hebrew the name for sky and heaven is Shamayim and earth is Eretz.

Shamash was the common Akkadian name of the sun-god
(Akkadian Empire: 1050-100 BC/BCE)

Map of trade routes used by 1st century BC/BCE

The Guardian has some nice images of the day of the Eclipse.

Ideas that blow

Nuclear waste containers likely to fail, warns 'devastating' report
August 2008

Power madness: With spiralling costs, leaky reactors and dangerous cost-cutting at plants..
Jeremy Leggett

Greenpeace files complaints on Areva nuclear leaks
Reuters - Jul 31, 2008

100 employees at French nuclear site contaminated
BusinessWeek - Jul 23, 2008

Spanish nuclear plant closed after fire in electrical generator
AFP August 2008

Partial List of accidents

Meanwhile:
UAE invites bids for nuclear power project
GulfNews, United Arab Emirates -Aug 16, 2008

Does what happens in the Facebook stay in the Facebook?

And 'meet your meat'




Forget about the ad for PETA at the end, that's not the point...

It's just that:

"You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Kuwait plans to flex its muscles on web offenders... playground rules...

This is the week of explosions, what is going on? Bangalore, Gaza, Istanbul, Ahmadabad, China, Qantas, Greece, Queens... And weeks and endless weeks for Iraq.

Want to see serious competition for our local brand of ignorance and hatred? Watch this film.

And blowing through our dusty landscape are some cries for justice, that have been long ignored...

Reminders of the human desire for doing the right thing:

Article 23 of the UDHR
Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work...
Everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

Article24
Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Visit:
Anti-Slavery
The ILO

When did it become ok for a magazine to edit (by inserting more errors) and dumb down your articles without letting you know?
I have a growing suspicion that certain editors are actually robots that can't compute more than one layer of meaning in a text.
I will have to get myself a metal detector.

What was the fast moving white blur that just settled over everything and then went away?

I am tired of this place. I go away soon, to refresh the spirit that has no place here.

If I take a multifunction approach, one perk for an obsessive-compulsive like myself is the increase of human brooms in our parliament.
Hey, I could have taken the 100% pessimism in an endless darkness route.

Soon enough.

Us in the news these days:

Kuwait's parliament: It just slows things down

Democratic road to nowhere

Kuwait should liberate itself

My slightly unsteady hand just put my voting card and every document anyone could possibly ask me for into my overstuffed bag...ready for my first ever vote.

I managed to find three candidates in my really frighteningly regressive district that were pleasantly surprising. So even if me and the two other voters in my house are the only support they will get, it will be a small victory against the darkness in these parts.

May the day be hopeful for those of us who want to love this place a little more like we once did... and want to feel like it loves us back, in all our different colors.

Good luck to those that will reap what we sow...
Hope they'll have reason to thank us for our choices.

Who no longer trusts the weather here?
I find myself having to chaperone open windows...
Dust pneumonia, you haunt me.

===

The second most abundant element in our universe was first discovered on the sun, and so was named after the sun God Helios...
It is the second element on the periodic table...
It is produced from radioactive decay...
It is used to help rockets take off and microchips come to life.
We suck it up into our lungs and along the way our vocal vibrations travel 3 times faster than through air, rising in pitch.
Last week a priest strapped himself to 1,000 balloons filled with Helium, floated away, and has not been seen since.
Those 1,000 balloons were filled with a noble gas our planet is running out of.
It is used as a coolant in all them dangerous reactors everyone wants to stupidly build.
So, tick tock...

===

The Herald Tribune says people are playing games
Akh...preemption...Pandora has nothing on you...
Dark comedy, like all comedy, is all in the timing... Interesting that now is the time chosen to point fingers at a country that has a mutual defense treaty with the one place someone wants an excuse to do this to...
Setting it up... Setting it up...setting it up, Setting it up,
So, tick tock...

===

Chin up people, all is not lost. Pierre got a suit. And Owen's got a new mama.
Here is a short folktale for you folks.

===

And from the people at Wired:

"I think people don't understand that e-voting is a bad idea not just because of its insecurities but because it's really bad public policy to have these really expensive machines. The cost never goes down. In fact the cost only goes up as the machines age and need more parts and upgrading.

"They take up huge amounts of warehouse space in warehouses that need to be air-conditioned," she continues. "They have to recharge the batteries every six months. And (yet) we only haul them out about once a year (for elections)."

===
Now there ought to be some yodelin' in this song;
Yeah, there ought to be some yodelin' in this song;
But I can't yodel for the rattlin' in my lung.
Woodie Guthrie

Good luck with most other ideas though...

الصقر: «التصويت والفرز» إلكترونياً.. أفضل

Hmm.. Really hope it's not these machines though...or these...or these...or these...or these...or these...or these... or these... or these...

--
YouTube:

Should electronic voting machines be outlawed?-CNN
Democracy at Risk: Ohio Voting Machines Flawed- CNN
Computerized Voting Machines: Who is Counting your Votes?- Google Tech Talks
Voting Machine Failures- CNN
Demonstration of Electronic Vote Flipping - Fox News
Hacking Democracy- The Documentary
---

"One-by-one, states across the country are finding critical flaws in the accuracy and security of electronic voting machines." Democracy Now with Amy Goodman

But I bet we will get the efficient and non-corruptible machines here though...'cause we get all the reliable stuff.

"Kurzweil is 60, but he intends to be no more than 40 when the singularity arrives."
hmm... read on.
-----------------------
Manga does the Bible
-----------------------
"Today, our public discourse is dominated by people who have been wrong about everything" damn skippy...
-----------------------
While we are too busy deciding whether people kissing on the cheek is a sin... The world continues on...
-----------------------
...and on, so beautifully, without us.
-----------------------
Who was Cassini?

• First to observe 4 of saturn's moons
• He also discovered a gap between Saturn's two ring layers which is now named the Cassini Division
  
• The first to measure the true size of the solar system after figuring out our distance from Mars.
• A crater on Mars and another on our moon are named after him
• Born in 1625
  

I can barely think through these new allergies I have developed in this country but here are some things for you to look at that might give you allergies too..Or worse.

• It’s the ‘Oh Shit!’ Moment on Iran by Dave Lindor
• Drying Up Palestine- Watch this short online film about water issues in the Occupied Territories. (Great site called The Hub)
  
• Iraqi Refugee Children and Prostitution
• 2 Schools in Nablus- Watch a series on schools under occupation. Well made.
  

Numbers:

• Over 4 million Iraqi refugees...and counting
• 70% of Iraqis have no access to clean water
• Over 90% of Iraqi children have learning disabilities due to trauma
• $5,000 a second are spent on the war, how much is being spent on aid and peace?
• Hospitals in Gaza have 12 hour a day power cuts
• 80% of families in Gaza survive on food aid
• 70% of Gaza households earn less than $1.20 a day/person.

For the price of a side of fries...or a new cd...or a cinema ticket...you can save a life. If you are feeling generous the price of your flat screen, your laptop, your fancy shoes, the money we spend on all the things we can live without can provide safe drinking water, life saving medical care, school supplies, protection from exploitation, a future...

• Save the Children are helping Iraqi refugee children in Jordan
• Unicef- You can choose where your donation goes.
• Oxfam- Gaza crisis appeal
• UNRWA- Emergency aid to the Gaza and the West Bank

The petty parliament is finished, here's to the coming scramble. Are we going to be given the chance to hope, or just some more of the same clatter around our aching heads?

Obama is running on a platform of change, and everyone desperate enough to want it is following his pied piper tune even if they don't always know what it's saying...I think maybe we are desperate enough to become addicted to that siren song of 'change' too... And why not? We have tasted that rock called bottom, and in the immortal words of Yazz, y'know, there is only one way we can be headed...
I think.
But thinking is not one of my strong points these days so forgive me if I sound a little silly.

Don't you think it's time we grabbed that beautiful, dusty, crazy old dame called Kuwait and gave her a big shameless and heartbreaking kiss? Then with the blush of rekindled love on our cheeks we got out there and grabbed every single moron who thinks that he can have a piece of her to hang on his trophy wall... every single frustrated lump of hatred who wants to cover up her beautiful, ugly, seductive, funny, living, breathing, different parts because they offend him...every single lazy regressive coward who wants her to be the Miss Havisham she has turned into... and gave every single one of them a big fat kiss goodbye?

This mixed up, repressed lady needs some air and we are taking her out on the town to remind her, and ourselves, what it feels like to be free again...to be proud again...to be in love with everything. And once she can stand up straight again, maybe this beautiful place can take us all back in to her arms and we can finally be home.

No Comment

Gideon Levy of the Israeli Paper Ha'aretz writes:

" Two days earlier Israel killed more Palestinians than have been killed by all the Qassams over the past seven years. Among the dead were four children and an infant. The next day Israel killed another five boys. And who is the victim? Israel. And who is cruel? The Palestinians."
------------------
Ira Chernus Writes:

"Palestinian deaths this week outnumbered Israeli deaths by about 30 to 1, and the count of serious injuries is even more lopsided."
-------------------
On March 2nd The Observer's Peter Beaumont wrote:

"Israel is again deliberately obstructing the transfer of urgent medical cases for treatment outside Gaza in the latest extension of its policy of collective punishment of Palestinians."
--------------------
Nimer Sultany writes in The Guardian:

"Perhaps it is easy to dismiss this suffering by blaming the victims and resorting to ready cliches. Indeed, Israeli propagandists go out of their way to repeat the soundbite: we withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and since then the Palestinians have been firing rockets on our southern towns."..."In his most recent report (pdf) of January 2008, the UN rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied territories has recounted Israel's actions in Gaza, calling them "war crimes" and demonstrating how these have been relentlessly producing a humanitarian crisis."
--------------------
B'Tselem: The Israeli Information center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
--------------------

3:15 pm
AUK has been evacuated after a bomb threat...
Or some kind of threat that is still not clear.
Check on your family and friends.
The authorities are at the university.
All is fine so far.
Earlier in the day, witnesses say, there was an apparent threat at a bank, some say Burgan.

Hell and a hand basket, we know you well.

I need to recharge the fuel that is sapped by the depression of being dunked daily in the vat of ignorance and regressive philosophies of this manufactured majority...the majority created by decades of ensuring that education is no more than recitation... like those ads, these days, that suggest if children learn pages and pages by heart their parents' yellow brick road to heaven will be paved..

When you are too busy trying to learn something by heart you don't have time to understand it, to filter it through that amazing thing we are blessed with called a brain...you have no time to read anything else...and the ignorance works so well for those who have you hanging over a precipice staring into the hellfire that will swallow you up if you think too much.

If you think too much you are liable to tire yourself out, and if you are too tired you won't have the strength to wrap so many things around you to cover that other blessing we have; that body that is so complex, so miraculous and so apparently offensive to some people who claim to love its maker.

We get this one chance at living on this planet... I can't help but pity that so much of it is spent having to stop our society from continuously going into rewind...

Humans have managed to count 70 sextillion stars (that is 70 +21 zeros, chew on that for a while) and yes I am sure they will find something blasphemous about the name of that number. Get ready to waste time and fight that fight next...

We know that our galaxy has 300 billion stars... 10% of which are like our sun...and there are, as of a recent count, 125 billion galaxies in the universe...

We have walked the moon...we have created machines that spin around our planet and watch us and help us watch each other online, on tv, and eventually in little chips swimming around our brains... yes, it is only a matter of time before nano-technology, that frightening new frontier, will allow us to upload our minds onto machines...

We have cured diseases, we created light and flight and breathing underwater....we have painted things we can see and things we only dream of... we have written heartbreaking poetry and thunderous philosophies that have carved new passages in our brains...we beautiful humans have done all this, and more, and yet some of us would still prefer to pick the nose of the past, with faulty interpretations of a text they have the gall to think they can chain us with.

Our religion and all religions are greater than the small minded, blistered, malformed ideas pasted on them by some neurotic men's grandstanding.

I am not ready to suffer for the therapy and medications they didn't get.

Yes, I need to refuel, or rather purge this anger. So when I am not on youtube to satisfy a surprising new addiction to snooker...I like to feed on things that can lift the fog a little.

If you missed any of the events or interviews, to do with the anachronistic battles to regain the last tattered shreds of any self respecting human dignity and freedom, you can watch them at this great youtube collection.

Some news for those who think that all the proof out there supports segregating humans:

Single-sex schools 'no benefit for girls' The Observer,Sunday June 25 2006
"Half a century of research 'has not shown any dramatic or consistent advantages for single-sex education' for boys or girls"
---
"Studies show ..." is the usual lead-in to any defense of single-sex education. In fact studies do not show that girls fare better in single-sex schools. "There does not seem to be research support for this perspective," The Atlantic
---
"Lately the so-called boy crisis in public schools has become every lazy media outlet's topic du jour, fueling the perception that girls get better college preparation than boys. That theory has been officially debunked with genuine research -- race and class turned out to be two of the real culprits for educational disparities, not gender -- but the Bush administration has yielded to the overblown boy crisis hysteria anyway." Salon

I'm tired...But can't sleep...but I will try anyway...like we all do everyday with everything else.

I'm stuffed with rice krispie treats and jalapeno peppers and some organic ketchup... I realise, only faintly, that it might sound sickening, to some of you, but frankly if you can stand being here without flying away forever or flying out a window, then you can handle my eating habits.

Are you tired of being controlled by sex obsessed, self-hating, repressed apes who have no idea that their hair-brained ideas about holiness went out of fashion in the medieval gutters of history?

If some people read anything other than childish mini-books on how to beg God for the things they are too busy in rituals to get for themselves, they would realise that the world has moved light-years ahead of the puerile phobias these emperors of a poisoned panacea peddle to the frightened and the foolishly frustrated.

I am tired of them turning the beauty and peace of spiritual quests into claustrophobia, into the cunning commercialism of stickers and celebrity holiness, into a festival of ignorance and a denial of the miracle of human experience in all its forms.
Our middle ages are upon us, and frankly, I don't intend to pass them onto the next generation.

For a huge collection of free 'written-for-non-readers' versions of viral indoctrination take a trip to some of our ministries. If you can hold your food down long enough to make it through the vulgarisation of the original architecture, through to the debasement of offices that are supposed to house tomes of legal and political thought and professionals that look...well, professional, you will get to the offices filled, no not with books...guess again...no not with paperwork that makes it look like they have work....guess again...no no, silly, not with computers you are getting carried away.

The most you can expect from some of these rooms that represent our country are walls lined with stickers of palpitating hearts, that have confused material expression with experience of the divine. You will find handwritten supplications that look like the ones we used to paint back in kindergarten, hanging crookedly by the tired small sticky tape strips struggling to understand what they are doing suspended like this in official places of work.

There will, of course, be desks... empty except for the stacks of little books that tell you how you can spend all day murmuring " please Lord give me stuff, please don't let me do things someone said are bad, please, please, please let me just continue sitting here on my behind while you ensure that I get rich and healthy and happy."

I fear the nation that is made up of adults who have read nothing but little elf-sized books with one idea and one fear central to them all. Where are history, and philosophy and science and art and music and all those miracles that bubbled up from our depths during our short time in this universe? Why is it that some choose to fear admitting that we are more developed than our single celled ancestors that wriggled about waiting to evolve into things more diverse and colorful and complex?

This planet was alive 4 billion years before our cameo appearance. These painful proselytizers are all just actors with bit parts that still manage to strutt around like they own the place. The world will forget soon enough, the ignorance and fear belched out by these perverters of the religion they dare to suggest, in their hateful arrogance, that they represent. I just can't help but feel a sorrow for our time, for our youth that has passed in their ugly shadow. I grieve, but I will see everyone at 6 tomorrow, and something will be lifted.

I am buying a soccer jersey and its going to be red.

The clouds today wrapped round the blue sky like a belt, a line of white all around the horizon... If you tilt yourself upside down it would look like a real sky with all the pieces where you thought they should be.

Sorta like if you were upside down, this country might look like a real country...

Not the kind of country where universities are expected to be prisons, and straitjackets and where silence is your best friend and independent thought is a handicap...
Not the kind of place where surveillance and a hysteria of scandal mongering have become absurdly holy, and liberty and diversity are considered atrocities...
Not the kind of place where genders are supposed to be so protected from each other, so unknown to each other, so alien that the only thing they know how to do when they meet is no more developed than the feral coming together of wailing cats in our streets...
Not the place where art is dangerous unless it is as still and lifeless as we are supposed to be...
Not the place where families protect you by strapping on the very weapons they want to protect you from and riddling you till there is nothing left of you, or your freedom, to protect...
Not the place where politics is a zoo and we are helping to feed the monkeys.

Maybe if we are upside down long enough, the pressure on what is left of our brains will squeeze out an original thought, or a wild and free idea...

Or maybe just something close to the kind of courage it takes for a woman in this upside down place to stand firm and unswaying... close to the kind of calm that hushes the room when a woman defends against the pranks that should have been left long ago in the backward schoolyards that are the last places that bullies still reign. For the kind of solidarity that comes with people who stand together against the little tyrants that have slithered into the people's house, and smeared our still weeping newborn democracy with a meaninglessness that makes me eye one way tickets like they were the love of my life.

I think maybe some of you have been upside down for a while...because it seems so pretty once again that people are gathered in the building built for the people... And the sky looks right again.

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." Camus

It's late. I'm tired... but my eyes are too swollen to shut so you are going to be lucky enough to get a post after all this time. And of course lucky means get ready for some news you are not going to like, because that's just the way it is.

• Take this quiz or this one, then let's drown our sorrows together because the candidate most likely to match us and, in my opinion, save the world, will probably not become president.
• Over a million are displaced by Tabasco floods. No food, no power. Anyone still want to pooh pooh global warming?
• Is Zain sending anyone else impossible messages about money owed after they have already thanked you for paying your bill? It's probably only me and my electronic curse.
• Ok, so i'm too tired to make it a long list of bad stuff .

We can also try something that might get a smile out of you. And if you smile...I smile.

• Take a look at the young Aboriginal men dancing to Zorba the Greek. "Elcho Island dancers take 'Yolngu Zorba' to the world"

Just askin...

When will the price be too high?

.

When will "democracies" believe in everyone's rights?

.

Will this Exodus be remembered forever in rituals?

.

When are we going to start feeling shocked?

.

I don't know about you...

But this scares the bejeeeezuz out of me...

Been having "stinging eyes and sore throats and headaches" ? You are going to love reading this..

And by love, I of course mean the don't bother to pack just run far, far away kinda love..
-
In case you need more reason to do that...here you go.
-
Iraq in Fragments is on dvd
-
Aid Agenecies that need our help in Iraq are:

• IMC (they have done great work in Iraq and Lebanon and all over the world)
• Save the Children (They help Iraqi refugee children)
• Refugees International

-
Facebook and political activism...hmmm..
-

A child dies of malaria every 30 seconds... How many children will be gone by the time you turn away from this page?

All it takes is mosquito nets to save lives.. The season for generosity and giving is soon upon us. The cost of a lunch could save several lives...One net can protect up to 5 babies.

• Buy two nets for a few Dinars at Oxfam Unwrapped (they have tons of other great things)
• Nothing but Nets is an organisation that provides life saving nets to those who need them.

-

I detected a sadness in the eyes of my favourite blogger the other night... I thought maybe I was seeing things in the blackout, or maybe it was the fact that I had interrupted her workout... But I guess it was more than that..because she sounds sad too these days..

And I leave her with lines we have all spoken here:

גֵּר הָיִיתִי, בְּאֶרֶץ נָכְרִיָּה

Exodus 2:22

I was really missing this country...on my month of hotel hopping and racist encounters with certain white folk... but of course the joy at being back in the arms of the fatherland was short lived...Because them arms are brutal.
The pretty cozy mask we all knew was a bit too plastic fantastic is melting fast in our summer of wretchedness... Don't talk, don't be, don't complain and hope the big sticks won't come down on you.. And really I am beginning to despair...because all the protests and songs and slogans are just getting old and worn and frankly comic. And when I say comic, it's that dark thing that eats you inside because it looks so dead and stupid.
And as if it were not enough to see the goose stepping in the corridors of power and know that there is nothing like law and order or rights or compassion in this tiny blot on the planet that thinks it is king of the world, you have to deal with people closer to home that make you understand why this country is flushing itself down the toilet of history.
Is there a prejudice we haven't excelled at? A form of hatred we haven't dressed up in with a moronic pride? What hope is there for a place that fears change and destroys diversity and despises anything other than its bland and rotting self? And to have to do daily battle for the tiny,tiny crumbs of progress and for the ghosts of something humane and generous in people's souls to show itself, only to wake up to everything having automatically rewound to something even further in the putrid past, is outrageous.
I don't have any solutions. Not today.

What do Kuwait, Nigeria and the Ivory Coast have in common? Yup their embassy staff in the UK commit assault, because they can...
German embassy staff drive over the speed limit... tsk...them Germans.

--

Live Earth--This Saturday.

--

If you have been hibernating you may not have heard that the US is experiencing the worst drought ever... Yup even a lake caught fire...
Anyway, the situation has made the Governor of Alabama come up with a solution that I bet you will envy for its ease and practicality...
Get out that holy mojo for a week of prayer...
And well if the rains don't come down it will undoubtedly be because there was a faithless hedonist among the worshipers that ruined the whole desperate act... and if the rains do come down, make room in the pews, hallelujah!
--
Ok, ok what do Kwt and Alabama have in common?
No, silly, not wishful thinking...
They both have a government monopoly on something... And I'm letting you do your homework.
--
Goodnight...and no way is luck comin' sniffin' by these parts...

I have been slack...in so many ways. Posting, responding to comments...sorry...and it's not just because I am practicing for the new law...akh the new law...There is no business like monkey business, and there are no monkeys like ours...Could we get them in these getups and let them find somewhere far away for them to trash and degrade...Because there is so little left to love here...especially when yellow sky days like these dim that much more of it. The plants on the windowsill are roasted and crispy, and no amount of water will salvage them...So that's one less thing that depends on me being here...But I stay I stay...for a little longer.
-
In news from other failed states... Christie Whitman got a belated orchestra of hisses and boos at a hearing about poisoned air at ground zero... back in the first weeks of the cleanup she said "I am glad to reassure the people of New York and Washington, D.C. that their air is safe to breath and their water is safe to drink" (EPA) ... except, well... Lots of people knew it wasn't and said so...Medical Aftershocks December 2001.. And the EPA seems to have known that "some of the World Trade Center dust was as caustic as drain cleaner, but that neither the EPA nor FEMA, both of which were informed of the results, ever released the findings" (Fair) And it gets creepier... if you can imagine that.
-
Venezuela is preparing to defend itself againt a US invasion...I guess Chavez recognises it as the new American pastime...
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The UK may need a new Noah...
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And I need an early lunch...Bye.

Anyone who has been on these flights should get checked for TB..
-
Michael Moore's new film Sicko tackles the health industry...
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"Colony Collapse Disorder" anyone?

---
We would like to congratulate Kuwait on recognizing the danger posed by ozone depletion, almost a whopping twenty years after the Montreal Protocol made it more than obvious... It's like suddenly getting all excited about bell bottoms and polyester...
We ratified the Protocol in 1992...
We are still trying to replace ozone depleting products with safer alternatives...
And now I must get back to more behind the times reading...
----
I leave you with Mary Oliver once again:

"Plus, too,
it's love almost too fierce to endure, the bee
nuzzling like that into the blouse
of the rose. And the fragrance, and the honey, and of course
the sun, the purely pure sun, shining, all the while, over
all of us."

From the poem Hum

Been a bit out of the loop lately, but hey we made international news today... We are one of the countries arming the criminal regime of Sudan, despite a UN embargo...
And we thought we were plum out of reasons to be proud of this little troublemaker state of ours...
---
The Republicans are still insisting on filling the office at the top with donkeys...
Which might be why so many are defecting...
But they're not worried, they have Diebold on their side...
---
I don't know about you but I am looking forward to candlelight and star gazing during our coming summer blackouts...
Thanks to terrible planning, ignoring the fact that we have an abundance of renewable energy sources like the sun, and constantly being on our knees before our major non-renewable national oil gods, we can expect our gluttonous consumption and the rising planetary heat to result in a series of power cuts in our hottest months...with all the accompanying health hazards..

"The effect of global warming appears to be with us already... The consequences could be water-rationing and the threat of blackouts, as demand for air-conditioning and refrigeration soars in the summer, disrupting economic activity and potentially costing business millions"Observer

But don't worry, the country that bought you oil spills and fires in gas pipes on oil fields is thinking newkulur... Did someone say one way ticket out?

Holy, Holy
Since we are hurtling to yet another barbaric stage of human conflict...
History is a good teacher, who is a good pupil?

All flights out of Dubai Airport have been grounded indefinitely...
So far due to a Bangladesh bound plane having an incident that injured 14 people...
--
Today at 5pm this film will be showing at Layla Gallery cinema as part of this week's French Film Fest.
--
The sky is really pretty..
---
Tomorrow at Shaab cinema at 4:30 this film will be showing as part of an independent film fest...
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Wednesday there will be a Brazilian short film fest at Beit Lothan...
--
Next week will be dry and barren as always..
Thank you.

Some articles about the first Arabic production to be staged at the Royal Shakespeare Company... By a Kwti theater company with a pan-Arab cast.
From The Financial Times--- The Guardian--- The BBC
---
As a special gift for National Day, Kuwait confirmed 20 cases of bird flu in falcons, chickens and turkeys...Then they confirmed 5-7 more cases today. We can trust that our efficient and responsible authorities will be working day and night to keep us safe.
And now onto news I don't have to have a gun to my head to write...
--
Your choice of coffee could help heal the scars of genocide... While taking some vitamins could increase your chances of dying... and eating ice-cream could help you get pregnant

---
An Egyptian blogger is jailed...
Some suggest:

"Contrary to the optimism of the Nineties, that it would allow oppressed peoples to escape censors and read forbidden opinions, the net is proving surprisingly easy for dictatorships to control."The Guardian

Really?
--

And Iran Iran Iran...akh, that disease Iraq had a few years ago, the one where they were responsible for everything bad in the world, seems to have infected Iran... So if you feel a bit under the weather, if your car won't start, or your marriage is on the rocks or that raw meat you had last night just didn't sit too, well...it's probably all Iran's fault. Those busy Iranians seem to be responsible for everything from arming Iraqi militants to planning to partition Iraq, to kidnapping Yemeni Jewish children...And they are apparently doing all those pesky things (and we are hearing about them) right when the US plans to attack Iran...

You know what they say about comedy, it's all in the timing.

===
Seymour Hersh has a new article about US plans to attack Iran ... He warned us a year ago and even long before that...but we were all too busy, eh?
Fisk says Lebanon will be the First Victim of the Iran Crisis
Kucinich says: "The justification chosen by the Administration is the one circumstance in which a President could bypass Congress and still wage a military conflict" The Nation
---

"Russia's president accused Washington of seeking world domination, undermining the UN and other international institutions, monopolizing world energy resources, destabilizing the Mideast by its bungled occupation of Iraq, and unleashing a new nuclear arms race by planning to deploy anti-missile systems in Eastern Europe." Toronto Sun ...News to anyone?

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You have probably heard all the hoopla about Al Gore's whopping electricity bill...a day after he was celebrating his popularity at the Oscars came the 'scandalous' news that his electricity bill should shame the eco-warrior... Kieth Olbermann responds.
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And tonight, look up at around 11:18pm (20:18 GMT) to watch the moon start to move into the earth's shadow...for the best lunar eclipse in a couple of years.

Today there is only a poem...

Sulayman Al-Bassam is in Stratford, the birthplace of Shakespeare to put on an Arabic production of Richard III at the Royal Shakespeare Company...

---

mmmmm...mmmm..we have GM crops on our shelves...
---

A new Islamophonic podcast at the Guardian...have a listen.
---
A study from the University of Chicago says that you can help fight Global warming by going vegetarian...because eating meat is worse than driving a car... That's also what the UN said a while ago...go easy on the carcass munching.
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Speaking of eating dead bodies, my years of decimating the cow population of England might not make my brain go spongy if doctors have indeed started to reverse vCJD
They better be quick about it though...I feel it galloping behind me on the ghost of what became my beef burgers.
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Gotta run...

Sore, sore throat...maybe from screaming over the music at a wedding... or from being too cold because I said no to fur...and will keep saying hell no! to it...or maybe it's the suppressed yelps at being in this sometimes not so hopeful place...

---

كلام الناس. الوسطية والنحاسة الكويتية

He keeps helping us breathe again...

and also laugh again:

بعد اكتشاف خلو الكويت من التطرف"

"(!!)

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It's one of those things I avoid thinking of because it scares the bejeezuz out of me...but really, where do you think all the millions of phones and pc's and electronics we just toss out end up? With all their toxic insides leaking out into the soil and water? The EU is going to try to make it safer but really, maybe we also need to stop falling for having to buy the latest pretty phone everytime...a duck is a duck is a duck...even if it has a few feathers more or less...

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Photo Essay

That's all I have to say...

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"Saddam Hussein has vowed to go the gallows as a "martyr" ready and willing to sacrifice himself"...That was last week...and this morning, on the festival of sacrifice, they gave him what he wanted...Robert Fisk is disgusted at the idea that in the shadow of over 400,000 dead now, a criminal invasion, a country torn to shreds, Abu Ghraib and on and on... that "we are supposed to forget these terrible crimes as we applaud the swinging corpse of the dictator we created."...Human Rights Watch writes of Iraq's Shallow Justice and it's worth a read for its summary of how the trial was a mockery of justice.

Experts on Iraq react to the execution of Saddam Hussein

Saddam trial verdict tarnished by Iraqi court's failings

The Obituary

The finger pointed at Saddam the criminal comes so many years late, so many lives too late, and yet just in time for no more files to be opened up on any of the people who made him who he was...the puppet is dead, the puppeteers are toasting to it. And what good is it all now for anyone in burning Iraq?

--

And the Global Warming News of the day:

A giant ice shelf the size of 11,000 football fields has snapped free from Canada's Arctic

snocone tagged me...supposed to grab the closest book, look at page 123 and write down the 5th sentence and the following couple of sentences....

ok..
Page 123 in Bukowski's 'Love is a Dog from Hell' has only these lines...
.

"a single dog

walking alone on a hot sidewalk of

summer

appears to have the power

of ten thousand gods

why is this?"

-

How's that?

And How's about i don't tag anyone?

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And how's about we really teach anthropology of religion, comparative religions and cultural studies in universities and even schools here?

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And how's about we revoke everyone's driver's licence and make everyone get tested again?Especially me.

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And how's about i figure out where i got the idea that 'how's about' is correct English?

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And how's about someone get me a little fleece blankie for christmas?

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And how's about everyone keeps building up the courage to be who they are and not who they think people who don't give a damn about them think they should be?

Really How about that?

---

And how's about y'all read this

and this

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How's about the season make up it's mind, winter or summer...

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And how's about we read and remember things like this?

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"Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world...

And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. " M.L. King

A tale of two serial killers:
One has molested and killed over 30 children in 2 weeks the other kills 5 sex workers in 10 days- which story is all over the front pages from the start and is in a country that respects all its victims and its public?
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George Clooney (for president) spoke about Darfur here he is in Egypt on youtube...

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Congratulations to the less than 1% of people in the Emirates who will be voting this week.

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Pinochet is dead...what a whimper of an end for the man that ruined Chile and murdered so many...
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When there are sidewalks, how come people here insist on strolling in the middle of the road? At a reaaallly slow pace, even when you are headed right for them...

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Texas apparently thinks there aren't enough people running around with weapons that blow you to bits...Really?
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Fisk on who's in power in Lebanon and on some people's weird obsession with trying to erase a past when they can't solve issues in the present...

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Yet more documents that reveal the lies that took everyone to war...

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A study shows that the smarter you are the more likely you are to become a vegetarian :)

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Ahhh, drama at La Scala, where it should be...The star tenor gets booed off the stage (and hires lawyers), then an unsuspecting understudy has to finish off the scene and does it sooooo well he gets a 9 minute ovation...and the story goes on...

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Arundhati Roy has an article titled India's Shame in the Guardian...it includes information like this:"

"The Indian government declared that Pakistan - America's closest ally in the "war on terror" - was a terrorist state"...."moved more than half a million troops to the Pakistan border. Foreign embassies evacuated their staff and citizens, and tourists travelling to India were issued cautionary travel advisories. The world watched with bated breath as the subcontinent was taken to the brink of nuclear war. All this cost India an estimated pounds 1.1bn of public money. About 800 soldiers died in the panicky process of mobilisation alone."

That happened in 2001.

I saw An Inconvenient Truth last night...it had made the rounds of everyone in the house before it got to me...and when i finally got my mitts on it I had already heard how great it was from the least eco-friendly member of the household to the most active...but let me just add my own few words...if you give a damn about anything on this planet...even if it's just yourself, watch this film. Buy it, stuff holiday stocking with it, lend it to your friends, have a party and screen it...do anything you can to get as many people to see it because it is the easiest way to start making a difference.
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Sign this! Sign this! Sign this!!!!!

Stop Global Warming

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Aaaaaand...if you want to do a tiny bit more...go here...it's really just a tiny bit..you can do it.

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Plant some trees while you're at it.

.

Another Russian is poisoned.... radiation is found in 12 sites linked to the poisoning of Litvinenko... it's World AIDS day...and it's a beautiful grey out...

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Signora says that today's protests are a threat to democracy and Sama7a says, on Al-Manar, that Nasrallah wants nothing but democracy and an end to sectarianism...and in related flights of fancy, apparently ahl il-kahf could sleep for centuries because they got a massive ear trauma from the Almighty...which a 'scientist' has proved is possible to send one into a state between sleep and death...for hundreds of years...wawawewa..

مؤكدا انه توصل في بحثه الى امكان استخدام الضرب على الاذن كوسيلة من وسائل التخدير الحديث

How God-like of this scientist to be able to do that...and if you can prove a miracle is actually science, ain't it no longer a miracle?

====

And it would really be lovely if we could stop buying the myth about being against citizenship rights for Palestinians in the Arab countries they live in because 'we care about them and want Palestine back'...Are we supposed to think that some countries are against التوطين because if it happened Palestine would not exist?? Why, because 60 years of Palestinians being refugee 'guests' has really been great for that dream? The one chance we all get at being alive on this planet has for many Palestinians meant being hostages in a rhetorical game hung around their necks for half a century. No one did anything to make a realistic and functioning homeland for the Palestinians a reality but can still find it absurdly appropriate to use the idea of it as reason to NOT consider their citizenship. The countries that did give them nationalities didn't do it in some big plot to eliminate the chance that there will be a Palestinian state, despite what our epic seething paranoia about conspiracies might whisper in our ears...They did it because there are laws about citizenship that are applied if you give a damn about the people being born in and living in your country...and when they are not applied it is not 'for the sake' of the person not getting those benefits but for economic, political and social reasons particular to the country that doesn't want the Palestinians as citizens...so the angel wings can be retired when it comes to any talk about Palestinians and citizenship or the lack of it, enough already.

--

The day gets better when this man has something to say...

Olbermann: "What a dark place your world must be, Mr Gingrich. Where the way to save America is to destroy America. I will awaken every day of my life thankful I am not with you in that dark place. And I will awaken every day of my life thankful that you are entitled to tell me about it. And that you are entitled to show me what an evil idea lurks there and what a cynical mind. And that you entitled to do all that thanks to the very freedoms you seek to suffocate."

wow it was kinda hot this morning, and now i need gloves to type...great great stuff to be confused by the weather...
Where is that thing once known as winter?
And where is that online kwti site where people sell their cars?

There doesn't really need to be any relationship between the things i say...
==
Here are a few pardons:
1- Pardon?
2- Pardon?
3- Pardon?

And there's also a but of course...
An interesting...
And finally, a well, well...
==
The Russian spy poisoned with radiation wrote some final words before he died this week...Radiation was found in the Millennium Hotel, in london and the Itsu sushi bar in Leicester Square which he visited on Nov 1st...and people who were in contact with him are being offered free radiation tests...Here's an article about who killed him? He was investigating the death of the celebrated Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya who was shot last month...

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The Guardian has writers tell you what their favourite books of the year are...

Also there's money and blogging...

Bahraini elections drahhhma...

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It's lovely to welcome someone to the Galactica fan universe...there is good news in this world after all..

Here is a song for you...

There is a contest to name a new batch of 7 wonders...anyone want to nominate this deal with the devil-maker?... Then Lonely Planet suggest Belfast and Beirut are 'must see' cities...anyone want to nominate this other town of tears as a tourist destination?
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Germanwatch says that the US and Saudi are among the top five worst countries dealing with climate change...ahh good to know who our best friends are...good to know they are always helping to set an example in transparency, progress, rule of law, justice...and other fancy things.
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Shorts:
Al-Jazeera launches their new English channel---Because turning Darfur into the hell on earth is apparently not grisly fun enough, Sudan has decided to invade Chad---Ethiopia got arms from over 10 countries and counting, but the ones in the headlines are Iran and Syria---Pakistan has decided it's finally time to change rape laws, to now help the victim and not the rapist---O.J. Simpson writes a book about how he would have done it, if he hadn't done it, and wanted to pretend to have done it...erm...if he hadn't...yeah, what he would have done if he had killed his wife and her lover...cuz he did, no, didn't...a book...don't buy it, unless of course you have had Tamiflu recently and are experiencing one of the many documented cases of delirium and 'other unusual psychiatric behaviour'---If you wait long enough however, Global Warming, that thing everyone sucks at avoiding, will wipe out birds and you won't need to take Tamiflu no more...
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It's a lovely blue out again and there is one bird left chirping all on it's own...must feel sort of like all the lonely souls trying to make a difference in this place...keep chirping, someone will join you and then you'll realise it's suddenly springtime...
And then the typical kwti summer will come and singe your wings...but that's just me being cranky...

• Today there is Keith Olbermann...as there should be everyday
• But also there is Iran mad at Google
• And there is of course more Salon love for Battlestar G.
• There is also Jack Straw getting questions he wished he never got.
• Will the democrats make a difference? Larry Elliott thinks, not so much.
• There is a Scary new US court case that could affect the kind of news you get.
• And Lebanon, Lebanon...

Today there is only a poem..

Watching too many cooking shows...and not doing any cooking. Oh Tamasin why am I obsessed with your kitchen? So let's try to look at the news a little...They admit Iraq is chaos, isn't that big of them? oh no wait the word isn't 'big', is it?...Iraq is also said to be disintegrating and, well, a whole hell of a lot of hell is up north of us...quick, quick, look somewhere else, the US says there is a plot to 'topple the Lebanese government'...a plot...how sneaky, and distracting...and in other news of catchy ancient words for headlines, Egypt has a new major 'foe'...I have a new major disappointment, just when I was thinking about a flat screen tv I have to read that they increase global warming...which by the way, in case you haven't been on the globe for a week, is getting pretty bad...and if you want to know more about how bad it is, because you are morbid like me or just concerned look here...you know what else is bad? Life for women in the new Afghanistan, so bad that women are setting fire to themeselves to end their despair...let's get more depressed shall we? The same poisonous weapons used on our soil and in Iraq have most likely been used on Lebanon...Here is a list of the scarrriest people in America, and here is something that scares me to death, even though I'm not a fish.

Bloggers, internet users, everyone there is hope...I think...see I leave you with hope...even after I've bashed it on a rock.
Goodnight...

When you wake up in the morning and read that a nukulur power is saying that it will "deal merciless blows" to anyone that messes with it, you know it's going to be one of those days...and maybe that's why I have been wanting to crawl back under the covers...the no-sky-all day thing we have going here doesn't help either...and neither does the fact that the Antarctic just told us, again, that it's our fault... and then of course there's the news that the worst in Iraq is yet to come...which should sound pretty bloody scary to our northern neighbours who have had worse and worse for years now...especially since the Lancet just published another study saying that 650,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the occupation and war...
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October must be the month for sexual predators getting bit back...at least as far as awful Moshe Katsav and icky old Foley are concerned...and it was a little blog that got the Foley scandal out there..
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The BBC has a piece on Saudi blogging
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South Africa's fastest growing paper runs stories like 'girls who pee spoons' and 'boyfriends who eat mothers'...yeah I don't know what the hell is going on either..but there you are.
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I'm too sleepy to remember what else I read...but this is today's poem.

• Muslims angry and insulted again, which I am sure will do a lot of good...
• Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for more than 4,000 days...
• Thirteen journalists killed since Putin came to power...
• Holy War between Somalia and Ethiopia? We haven't had enough of those it seems.
• While everyone is looking here, look what's happening here...
• What will they need to reverse this Foley induced fall?
• Phrase of the day- October Surprise:"a stunning news event with the potential to influence the outcome of an election"
• Tom Segev writes of Olmert's True Colors
• In Liberated Iraq: Sunnis change names to avoid Shia death squads
• mmm Joseph Stiglitz answers 9 questions
• This is the poem for today..

Salon has an article about Battlestar Galactica's "intoxicating darkness"...and about season three's storyline which includes Caprica being invaded and occupied by the Cylons and the humans having to fight back, like insurgents...or like that other word with a 'T'...I keep tellin ya, scifi is 'the real world'.

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mmmmm mmm...this news just deserves a direct quote:

"Food from a Lancashire dairy has been banned from sale across Europe after it was found to contain out-of-date ingredients, milk with traces of detergent and dyes, and mouldy and contaminated cheese including "floor waste". The Independent

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When the Pope made those remarks about Islam a couple of weeks ago, it apparently didn't provoke quite as much Islamic rage as one would have wanted...so this week Jack Straw decided to try his luck..bless them for trying and trying again...

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And speaking of trying to start a war...What is up with the US navy issuing “Prepare to Deploy Orders”, Rice's visit to the ME being a front for building a coalition against Iran, the news running with stories of Iran defying, ignoring and dissapointing all them folks who just want it to stop having what they have, the US planning to 'punish' Iran, and that pesky letter...anyone smell the November elections?...

Mother Jones invites you to Meet the "Whack Iran" Lobby as well as 'the talented Mr. Fakhravar': Has Washington found its Iranian Chalabi?

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And just in case the disaster in Iraq is not enough to turn your stomach against US flavoured intervention , here is what it looks like in Afghanistan:

"In recent months the Taliban has seized control of entire regions of the country. The security situation has worsened as suicide bombings are up 600 percent this year. Opium and poppy cultivation are at record highs." Watch the whole show on Democracy Now!

Then take a look at Afghanistan, Inc.: A CorpWatch Investigative Report October 6th, 2006

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Thanks to Shemsi and Andy I have a new show to watch religiously, The Show with zefrank...Gotta do something religiously after all.

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And in short:

Bahrain's 'Bandargate'---The Daily Show asks what prez Bush's Job really is?---Shocker: KTV programs called 'sub-standard'...oh no wait, they meant 'immoral'---More fights with Elisabeth on The View---Ban Ki Moon, know him?

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The weather is really pretty...so are the two noisy birds on the tree outside the window...so is the cat that is watching them very very closely...

This retirement business is growing on me...but then who would give you too many links to articles you wish I hadn't found?...There is a responsibility on my weak little shoulders that has been nagging and nagging...so here it goes:

• Wonder Woman...Joss Whedon...woweee.

Ok, here it goes:

• When you have oil wealth overflowing like it was a heavenly river...you could go the way of Venezuela or...well, you could futz around a lot and then give people 200KD every so often. Plane to Caracas anyone?
• The best documentary I have ever seen was showing at the Beirut Film Festival...I can't even begin to describe the look on all our faces when the lights went up at the end...Iraq in Fragments, see it, see it, see it...stunning in every way.
• Yet another study tells us that our apocalypse is coming dressed as climate change for the big bash-ing. Between now and 2100 one third of the planet will be desert. Think wars for water, drought, starvation in the millions, struggles over limited resources...and other pretty things.
• Did you think that was the only mention of climate change I would include? Sorry, you know me better than that. The ice in the arctic, yeah, it's vanishing.
• What are these two up to?
• And really, what are these two up to? Here is the Daily Show on the issue.
• If King George's power grab didn't scare you before...I think it's time you got really terrified. Why? Here's a list:

Bizarro President

Detainee bill lifts Bush's power to new heights

Lincoln Weeps
by Bill Moyers

And finally...can't leave my first post in ages without the loveliest voice to come out of the Supreme Court on there...Shemsi I know this creeps you out...so look away now.

.

And on October 20 a meteor shower near Orion will say hi to us all..

16th September

10am-1pm and 5pm-9pm

Charity Bazaar

Zahra Complex

Mezzanine Level

Proceeds will all go to the IMC's work in Lebanon

I need to come out of retirement to make sure you see this

About bloody time...

-

And watch this if you haven't already

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"Tony Blair will be served notice to quit Downing Street at a meeting of the Cabinet next week" and he was called 'deluded' and 'self indulgent'...He might be competing with Bush on who can get called enough names by British politicians..

=

Iraq and numbers...how much can we feel for numbers? Nothing that makes us ready to say 'enough', apparently...

=

This country of ours is hot and dusty and full of so much piled up wrong that it's almost impossible to remember what is right anymore...I watch its stifled children try to lift the weight of everything in their way here, and they get tired and lonely and they go into hiding behind bank logos and business cards and paths set up by default...and they forget so many things, because it hurts like hell to battle and beg for crumbs when your head has already known magic....every move takes on its Sisyphean hue and how heavy it all becomes...especially waking up and especially falling asleep....but I love this country, I love it like a dream that keeps breaking everytime you touch it...like a painful fever that makes you lucid and strange..and now it's late at night and I prattle on like this just because I don't know how you can have hate and love so very close that they disappear into each other...but here they are, twinned and teasing...waiting, as ever, for us to do something about it all.

Goodbye now.

Thanks to everyone who has been by here...this blog is now on hold...see you around.

Chinese airlines are recruiting airline attendants 'with martial arts skills' in their attempt to make planes more secure...

Ernesto is heading to the Gulf Coast...

It's really hot in this country..

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Enjoy Kibbeh, kufta, lamb shanks and any other sheep meat dish? Live in Kuwait?

PETA wants your attention...you've seen the ads right?

"Before They’re Cooked in Yoghurt and Spices, They’re Marinated in Urine and Faeces”

Though PETA often shoot themselves in the foot with the melodrama..it is important to realise that the inhumane transport conditions that sheep endure are not only ethically unnacceptable but are pretty unhealthy for anyone eating the meat..not only is it swimming in filth but the torture endured under these conditions releases carcinogenic chemicals into the meat which are then transferred to us...just a thought to take with us to the dining table...

after watching this video, I for one am finally saying no to the only meat I still eat...

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Iran, Iran, Iran...Can't you just hear the Darth Vader theme playing everytime you read the news? I don't even feel like linking to any of the scare-mongering, the drama and the obsession preparing us for the next front of the War On Whateverism...you know it already..

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And in news that I like to hear...the Buffy goes to yet another interesting show...The first year the prize for most underappreciated tv show went to The Wire (get out and get it if you haven't seen it, now)...and the next year it went to the great Veronica Mars and this year the Buffy goes to....Battlestar Galactica...Yup it's a good show...it ain't perfect, but it is bittersweet and haunting at times and just good ol' sci fi adventure at others...

A very important and necessary project is taking place in Lebanon... In the absolutely vital humanitarian rush to help people who have suffered and had their lives and livelihoods broken by the war, a very necessary element of pressure and aid is often overlooked and that is the ability to bear witness to the atrocities and the daily suffering. A project called Lens on Lebanon has been set up in order to place digital cameras and film into ordinary people's hands so that they might document the destruction and the effect it has on their lives. This will then be podcast, shared with news and with research groups and also be available as proof of war crimes. Unlike watching news coverage, this project aims to personalize and humanize the experience and make sure that we can all continue to understand and not turn away.

A friend of a friend has set the project up and has already collected some equipment and has a network of activists all around Lebanon to place digital cameras into the hands of ordinary people living in extraordinary times...They could use any funds you would like to contribute to continue documenting the suffering so that the world can never say 'we didn't know'...If you have any digital cameras, digital video, or accessories and would like to donate them from Kuwait, let S know and she can probably get them over there for you or at least let you know how to get them to Lens..

A day after the news that the Deputy Prime minister of the UK called Bush 'Crap' the list of MP's going on the record to say they agree, he is 'Crap', is nice and long...and then there are the MP's who want to give Blair his walking papers...

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And what of the air-scare?

"Nine days on, nobody has been charged with any crime. For there to be no clear evidence yet on something that was "imminent" and would bring "mass murder on an unbelievable scale" is, to say the least, peculiar. " The Guardian
-
and a former British ambassador says "it doesn't seem to be based on a very great deal of evidence."..."It's very difficult to bomb a plane without a plane ticket, no sign that they’d actually made any bombs yet."

But then we get reports of police finding a suitcase with bomb-making components in a wood...

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The book everyone is talking about, The Looming Tower, sounds like an interesting read.

Here is an extract of it in the Guardian, it's the part about Sayyid Qutb..

Dexter Filkins says "what a riveting tale Lawrence Wright fashions in this marvelous book"..

As always, it is interesting to see from Qutb's letters, how closely tied a resort to hatred and violence is to sexual frustration, inadequacy and misplaced guilt.

Even more interesting is the possibility that the whole tragic day could have been avoided at so many points in time..

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Murder of Muslim girl 'rebel' by her father shocks all Italy

And take a look at - Maps For Lost Lovers which, as I read it, breaks my heart, makes me angry and also sews flesh and life onto the people in articles like the one above.

"Jugnu, and his girlfriend, Chanda, live next door.
Or did. Because as the novel opens, we are told that they are missing. We learn soon enough that they were murdered - an honour killing by Chanda's brothers because they cannot accept the couple living in sin" Guardian
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The Guardian interviews writers caught in this war... Elias Khoury, Hassan Daoud, Etgar Keret, Adania Shibli and Orly Castel-Bloom
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Elias Khoury's piece about the Israeli Invasion of Lebanon in the LRB:

Do I see or do I remember?

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There is so much in Le Monde Diplo that I don't know where to start:
Ok actually I do...It's Mexico- The Great Mexican Election Theft

Then there is Gresh's "Même si notre armée commet « un massacre de masse » au Liban, les Etats- Unis continueront à nous soutenir, a affirmé l’ambassadeur israélien à Washington, M. Dani Ayalon."-Even if our army commits a massacre in Lebanon, the US would continue to support us, affirmed the Israeli Ambassador to the US, Dani Ayalon"

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UN Chief Kofi Annan: Israel Violated Cease-Fire...

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Want to know if your Dell laptop is likely to explode..or at the very least go up in flames?

The Chinese Ambassador to the UN tells the US to "Shut-up"....The UK's deputy PM thinks Bush is "crap"...which is pretty much what a British airline agent was all too eager to tell us yesterday at the airport, except she called him a 'monkey'...She also said she was sure Churchill wouldn't have gone on holiday during a crisis, referring to Blair's Caribbean holiday..she also called Blair something I am too polite to print...

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When people have lost their fear, the lies that tyrants make up lose their legs...everyone we meet has begun to say in public what they only whispered before...what will come next?

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There was 'Who's afraid of The Big Bad Wolf?', then there was 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'...These days it's 'Who's Afraid Of Hillary Clinton?' and 'Who's Afraid of Shirin Ebadi?'...

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"You take the trouble to construct a civilization, to build a society based on the principles of... of principle. You make government and art and realize that they are, must be, both the same. You bring things to the saddest of all points, to the point where there is something to lose. Then, all at once, through all the music, through all the sensible sounds of men building, attempting, comes the Dies Irae. And what is it? What does the trumpet sound?

Up yours."

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf

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Lebanon is lifting the rubble and finding it's dead...the count has reached 1,300 as of this morning...it will take a long time to understand how it was ok in this day and age to violate a sovereign country so brutaly and still pretend to be the shining example of civilised democracy in the region...but then again, look at the company Israel keeps: While all eyes were on Lebanon, the unbelievable and viciously asinine US version of Iraq claimed more lives in July than in any other month since the invasion...in numbers that is 3,438 killed in one month...an average of 110 human beings killed per day...

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Darfur is up in flames and still no one gives a damn...
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Three Mexican Fishermen lost at sea for nearly a year have been found alive, and one of their cousins is so shocked he says "I'm trembling all over and I think I'm going to have a heart attack".

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The Financial Times has a piece on Yoshitomo Nara...I have always had a weakness for his little ladies...they are watching over something special, after all.

.

" Nara's children are a study of abandonment, petty violence and suspicion of the adults who have messed up the world"

Andrew Lee and David Pilling

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For those of you who like mathematics, and mysteries...and theories of space, 3-manifolds, topology, shrinking loops and the Poincaré conjecture...phew...an article in the Herald Tribune might interest you..

===========

And speaking of mysteries...remember little JonBenet Ramsey? A teacher just admitted to her murder..

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A year ago I bought a book at Starbooks on the 4th Ring Rd, called "Russian Thinkers" and I was floored by it...It sent me into frenzied obsession over Alexander Herzen... In my frantic googling, I found out that Tom Stoppard also read the book and had become so fascinated by it that he wrote the trilogy 'The Coast of Utopia' ...It played at the National in London and is now opening in NYC at the Lincoln Center...The cast will include Jennifer Ehle, Billy Crudup, Martha Plimpton and Ethan Hawke..

Tickets you ask? Here

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And I leave you with a thought from Alexander Herzen:

"What breadth, what beauty and power of human nature and development there must be in a woman to get over all the palisades, all the fences, within which she is held captive!"

Seymour Hersh writes in the New Yorker about Washington's joint planning with Israel and it's hope that Isreal's attack on Hizbullah will "serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations"

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"It may well be that a war neurosis stirred up by propaganda of fear and hatred is the prelude to destruction."

John B. Orr

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The Israeli writer Yitzhak Laor writes in the LRB about "The power of the army to produce meanings, values, desire". Of "the cheapness of Arab blood" he says "Our usual way of looking at them is borrowed from our intelligence corps, who ‘translate’ them and interpret them, but cannot recognise them as human beings"

An important moment should be taken here to think how we all are guilty of dehumanising 'the enemy'...And how we can come to terms with our own worship of stereotypes and ingrained beliefs about Israelis...Or else we are just playing games...and the time for games is long past.

Laor goes further to say "We must remember the crimes of Olmert, and of our minister of justice, Haim Ramon, who championed the destruction of Lebanese villages after the ambush at Bint Jbeil, and of the army chief of staff, Dan Halutz. Their names should be submitted to The Hague so they can be held accountable." Who else should join them?

===

After a sunday afternoon attack on South Lebanon, Al-Nahar photo

-

A creepy opinion from a creepy man...With people like this in positions of power, there will never be peace...

===

Gideon Levy writes in Ha'aretz that "there is the danger the IDF will want to restore its lost honor on the backs of the helpless Palestinians. It didn't work in Bint Jbail, so we'll show them in Nablus." He does however hope that because of the difficulties faced in Lebanon that "Seared by failure, maybe the IDF will be less enthusiastic to rush into battle." and that maybe they will finally (and we keep saying finally) come to understand the true power of negotiation and a just peace. But we will believe it when we see it, the Masters of War on all sides have gotten too used to their treats.

===

Rami Khouri says: "On the two occasions that it has made resolutions on the basis of law and equal rights - the peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt - Israel has found calm, official acceptance and some normal contacts with citizens in those Arab lands. But in Lebanon, Syria and Palestine, where Israel has acted unilaterally and in a predatory and violent way, it has reaped only resistance, ever more fierce and proficient with the years."

===

Robert Fisk: As the 6am ceasefire takes effect... the real war begins

-

From today's Al-Nahar

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-

Norway disinvests from Walmart for it's involvement in human and labour rights abuses, and does the same to Freeport because of it's terrible environmental record...not only that...here are all the Companies excluded from the investment universe :) They can use all the super-hero language they want, they earned it..anyone else Got Ethics?

===

South Africa has an obesity epidemic because people don't want to look like they are HIV+...

===

The Huffington Post says Bush Administration Knew About Liquid Explosive Threat, Yet Bush Still Calls It "New"

Updates

Heathrow on Red Alert
Incoming Flights stoped, but outgoing flights are still on though extreme delays are expected. The tv news is saying don't bother to turn up at Heathrow unless your trip is extremely important to you.
Passengers will not be allowed hand luggage and mothers with babies will be required to drink the milk they bring on the plane to prove it is in fact, milk.
Wallets and purses, money, credit cards, baby milk, keys that are not electrical, sanitary items.All will be placed in a plastic bag.
No liquids will be allowed.
Every Passenger will be hand searched.
All other airports in the UK are on High alert.
-
6 Planes were targetted, 20 people have been arrested so far-9:30am GMT
-
John Reid:

"The police, acting with the Security Service MI5, are investigating an alleged plot to bring down a number of aircraft through mid-flight explosions, causing a considerable loss of life. "

"This will mean major disruption at all UK airports from today. But as far as is possible we want people to go about their business as normal."Independent

---

Threats on Liberties again voiced :

"The home secretary yesterday gave the thinktank Demos his strongest hint yet that a new round of anti-terror legislation is on the way this autumn ...
"Sometimes we may have to modify some of our own freedoms in the short term in order to prevent their misuse and abuse by those who oppose our fundamental values and would destroy all of our freedoms in the modern world," Guardian

When we give up our freedoms in the short term, we can forget that we had them at all...And how short is short-term?? The short-term could be someone's entire lifetime...What's the difference between someone blowing your freedom away (if indeed it's your freedom they give a damn about, and that has yet to be convincingly argued) and between you giving your freedom up?
-
Apparently PM Blair was aware of his threat for some time and even spoke to Prez. Bush about it on the last trip...and yet he is currently on vacation in the Caribbean...or maybe just somewhere he knows is not under threat..
Blair to work on tan and Lebanon solution
Blair takes leave of reality Gulf News
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The metopolitan police describe it as a plan to cause 'mass murder on an unimaginable scale'

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So that this news does not divert all attention away from crimes committed elsewhere:

Israel plans further invasion

"Lebanon campaign expanded, as general is replaced by commander with more aggressive reputation"

--

It is Lebanon, not Israel, that faces a threat to its existence in this war

The Franco-US resolution is an absurdity: it would give Israel immunity while denying Lebanon the right to defend itself

---

"A member of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party quit his defense post Wednesday to protest the government's handling of the Mideast crisis and its close alignment with the United States." Guardian

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"More than 150 MPs, including a fifth of Labour's parliamentary party, yesterday joined forces with 17 charities, including Oxfam and Amnesty International, to urge the recall of parliament to discuss the crisis in Lebanon" Guardian

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Evil that proves our leaders are worse than donkeys

"There is an urgent need for a recall of parliament, but not to debate the crisis in Lebanon, desperately serious as that is. Even more serious is the escalating emergency in Iraq"

---

Then and now: Requiem for Baghdad Independent

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The Iraq Body Count so far- At least 40,069 civilians /probably 44,596 civilians

---

This week was the 61st Anniversary of the murderous Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings...Those killed 200,000 people in a flash...mass murder on a grand scale indeed.

"More than 900 lives ago, we asked for an immediate ceasefire. More than 3,000 injured civilians ago, we asked for an immediate ceasefire.
"We asked for a ceasefire when the 1 million Lebanese now sleeping on the floors of our schools and public buildings and welcoming homes were still sleeping in their own homes - homes that for many no longer exist."

Lebanese envoy, Tarek Mitri at the UNSC meeting yesterday

-

The head of Médecins Sans Frontières' (MSF) mission in Lebanon, Chris topher Stokes, described Israeli assurances of protected aid corridors as delusional. "For many days, the concept of humanitarian corridors has been used to mask the reality," The Independent

-

Doctors Without Borders have details of what it takes to get aid through:

"Four tonnes of supplies were carried by hand on a distance of 500 metres thanks to a huge human chain. A tree trunk spanning across the river was used as a makeshift bridge..."

-

"Israeli aircraft dropped leaflets over Tyre yesterday morning, warning people not to use vehicles south of the Litani river....The travel ban had no time limit and mentioned no exceptions, even for ambulances and humanitarian convoys"...

.."it said: "Read this carefully and follow its instructions. The Israeli Defence Forces will escalate their operations and will strike with force against terrorist elements who are using you as human shields and firing rockets from inside your homes against Israel..." All vehicles would be bombed the letter said. It was signed "State of Israel". Guardian

Imagine that letter fell from the sky in London, Boston, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Sydney, Paris, Barcelona, Hong Kong, Salmiya, Tel Aviv...or anywhere else you call home...How would it feel? How terrorized would you feel picking that up and reading it?

Let alone how you would feel about the bombs and missiles that come with it...Monsters of fire that dwarf the katyushas that we know are also condemnable murderous weapons.

How must it feel to be told that the enemy they are aiming for is 'inside your home', and so your home is fair game...despite the fact that you look around and see your children, your pictures your glass of water, your bed and your breakfast table...the everyday things that make up your life inside your home...The people you love...but someone is convinced, against any protestation, that your home is a viable target, as is any escape from your home. Despite the fact that they have no problem understanding that when Israeli homes are hit, it is a war crime, it is a tragedy, people are lost, lives are damaged, belongings and sacred objects are extinguished forever...

From Y. Amichai again there are simple words that might reach across this abyss we form between our suffering and our enemy's..

הגאולה תבוא רק אם יגידו להם

"Redemption will only come if they tell them"

You see that house of your enemy? You see the rubble, the loss the hatred?

"Next to that, a little to the left and below it, sits

A man who has bought fruits and vegetables for his family"

לידה, קצת שמאלה ולמטה ממנה,יושב

אדם שקנה פֵּרות וירקות לבית

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...but who now must bury his dead...

--

Robert Fisk: What do you say to a man whose family is buried under the rubble?

Took a few days off to get over an attack of hopelessness...

-----------

Smokers should not expect to be protected by anti-discrimination laws in employment. The Financial Times had a piece that quoted an employer who said 'smokers need not apply' explaining that smokers 'stink', they take more sick leave and suggested that if they were ignoring all the health warnings and facts about smoking then they "haven't got the level of intelligence" needed for the job..

Which is another excuse for me to link you to a piece by Stephen Colbert

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The 'Condi Rice Show' is doing very badly...

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"In addition to regular deadly raids on Gaza, where 1.4 million Palestinians are trapped by an economic blockade, the Israelis have arrested a third of the Hamas government and 36 members of the Palestinian parliament since 26 June." By Anne Penketh

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While the UN fiddles... the Middle East burns

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Lebanon has rejected the UN draft proposal because as Nabih Berri says: " the draft resolution legitimised Israel's occupation, adding that it would "open the door to never-ending war"

Syria and Iran made fun of the US pretending to be mediator while being the biggest backer, arms dealer and apologist for Israel all these years..It's like asking Iran or Syria to be mediators in a Hezbullah dispute..

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Text of the Draft Resolution

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Israel also has problems with the draft..

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Robert Fisk: This draft shows who is running America's policy... Israel

"a document of such bias and mendacity that a close Lebanese friend read carefully through it yesterday, cursed and uttered the immortal question: "Don't these bastards learn anything from history?"

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How do some Israelis and victims of Hizbullah attacks feel about the debate between using military might or Diplomacy?

Kibbutz mourners call for diplomacy
By Eli Ashkenazi
"Based on the conclusion that the military operations of the past 31 years have not brought quiet to the north, but only more and more bereaved families and graves, what will you do, from today, to stop the chain of wars and victims within the borders of the state where our kibbutz lies?" Baumel asked. "Will you find the diplomatic path, which exists and which we all know what it is, or will you continue to stick, with blind faith, to the gods of killing and bereavement?"

Kol HaKavod to voices like this...we are all tired of this insatiable thirst for blood.

.

The Kibbutz can add its voice to that of the father of hostage soldier Gilad Shalit, who has been calling for negotiations to free his son from the begining...They can also add their names to the over 100 Israeli intellectuals who signed a petition accusing the Israeli government of war crimes...also there are the refuseniks and 5,000 protesters in Tel Aviv...yet PeaceNow is silent...In the New York Times, Tikkun put in an ad for "an end to the slaughter in Lebanon, Israel and the Occupied Territories" ...and yet, Peace Now is silent... Gush Shalom is protesting....And yet Aviv Gefen the poster boy for peace...says this war is justified..the tide is all over the place..

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

Yitzhak Laor (The writer who initiated the petition mentioned above) writes in Ha'aretz:

"That is the great trap of military thinking, the Israelis' only way of thought regarding the conflict: not only belief in the need to be superior, right or wrong, able or not able, but especially the inability to think in terms of the other side, not as an object translated and interpreted by the Intelligence Corps, but as human beings."

Many Arabs need to think about how they also fall into this type of thinking...

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

Ha'aretz's Danny Rubenstein writes:

"Those in power in Israel are portrayed now, more than ever, like foreign agents striving to serve American interests. They are striking Hezbollah in order to hurt the Iranian "patron."

"The Palestinian media highlighted an item in which lawyers in Morocco are suing Amir Peretz - who, according to them, holds a Moroccan passport - for war crimes."

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"Shulamit Aloni, a human rights activist and former minister of education, said, “This is a reckless war… The army introduced its ready-made plan while the government didn’t have any plans. In our country, the army is a sacred cow, [people] believe in it blindly, on the pretext that it understands security issues better than anyone else does." Asharq Al-Awsat

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Enough...Kafa...yesh gvul, lo?

The largest peace march since before the Iraq invasion is expected to descend upon Downing Street today

Robert Fisk: A terrible thought occurs to me - that there will be another 9/11

======

Theater and therapy meet on stage at Beirut's Masrah al-Madina
Playhouse-turned-relief center provides creative outlet for all comers
"Laughter Under the Bombs" was devised by Masrah al-Arab's Sharif Abdunnur. Partly scripted, partly improvised, it features actors from the Masrah al-Arab theater troupe, interacting with audience members. It is produced by the Masrah al-Madina and Al-Janna Foundation (an NGO dedicated to children's needs)." Daily Star. Read

Iranian woman awaits stoning decision ---Stanford's Prof. Joel Beinin is suing the right-wing bigot Horowitz---Ambassador says Bush had no idea there were Sunnis and Shiite Muslims just months before the invasion of Iraq---Fox News at it again: Insists Israelis didn't hit Qana---Amnesty accuses Israel of whitewashing the Qana massacre---The Human cost, so far, in Lebanon

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

"Of the 615 people so far confirmed dead, Save The Children says that almost half are children. They make up one third of the 3,225 injured, and about 45 per cent of the nearly one million Lebanese refugees are under the age of 18, according to Unicef." The Independent

Donate by visiting www.savethechildren.org.uk/independent

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"The prospect of a low intensity civil war and a de facto division of Iraq is probably more likely at this stage than a successful and substantial transition to a stable democracy."

"Iraq will remain "messy and difficult" for the next five to 10 years"

The UK Ambassador to Iraq

Lucky Iraq...

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

The headline in Haaretz is this:

Iranian President: Solution to Middle East crisis is to destroy Israel- and it's a headline because it is an appalling statement to make (ok not shocking for Ahmadinejad, but in general)...

The fact that Israel is not saying but doing the very same thing to Lebanon doesn't seem so appalling to the 90% of Israelis that support this campaign. Go figure, in death and destruction some are 'more equal than others'..

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

France's nuclear tests in Pacific 'gave islanders cancer'

After 30 years of testing, it's finally out...

How long will it take to 'scientifically' prove this, this and this..

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

Against the advice, against the facts
"Tony Blair's unthinking oversimplifications about the Middle East belong in an army recruitment pamphlet - not an adult conversation." Oliver Miles

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

International Medical Corps is helping out in Lebanon and Iraq...as well as in many other worthy places in the world...

.

Donate here, every penny counts..

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Positions they anticipate will open for those who want to help/work/volunteer:

Communications/Information Officer, Lebanon
Country Director, Lebanon
Finance Director, Lebanon
Logistics Officer, Lebanon
Medical Director, Lebanon
Mental Health Specialist, Lebanon
Program Support Officer, Lebanon
Security Officer, Lebanon
Water & Sanitation Officer, Lebanon

Roundup

• The Atlantic has an interesting piece on the strange investigation of The Monster of Florence
• Ari Berman has a Nation piece on the lobby of lobbies.
• Human Rights Watch accuses Israel and Hezbullah of war crimes.
• A tale of two ways to use veto power..To prevent and to encourage war crimes..
• And the green lights keep coming..
• Democracy Now! interviews to watch with Robert Fisk on Qana, and a with Guantanamo ex-inmate.
• Millions are in the streets in Mexico to demand a recount, oh Gore, if only....
• Sri Lanka is back into civil war
• Halliburton's legacy in Iraq
• The body count of Iraqi civilians killed as of today: at least-39,696 probably-44,185
• California/ UK team up on carbon trading, challenging Bush's moronic stance on the issue.
• Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts
• Oliver Stone's own requiem..
• A curious show will be aired on C-Span today and you can watch it online.
• For my birthday, I want one of these.

And that's it..

A 48 hour pause in aerial bombardment...it's that easy, isn't it...just to stop...one wonders why we can't do it more often...

Hope eveyone gave as much as they could, just for an opportunity like this where the supplies can actually get to those suffering...

The buttons on the right need pressing..

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=====>>>

Some headlines make it a victory for Condi, maybe so that everyone that has been highlighting her talent for being a criminally incompetent excuse for a diplomat, might also put a pause on the critiques...though I wouldn't let that stop me, she got a pause and lost the ceasefire...as planned.

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

As usual, it isn't Israel's fault that they target civilian communities with 'smart bombs'...because Hezbollah either fires from there or if that tale doesn't pass the test of truth, then it's because it's a hotbed of Hezbollah supporters (we all know how much children are known for that)...the same laws of illogic don't apply to Hezbollah strikes though...everytime their rockets land in Israel officials can't hurry fast enough to say the Hizb are targetting civilians on purpose, despite the fact that Hezbullah bombs are not as 'smart' as Israeli bombs, and have been murdering less civilians than the Israelis have...and despite the fact that Hezbullah could use the equally idiotic excuse that the civilian areas were a hotbed of support for the Israeli military invasion and bloodbaths in Lebanon and Gaza (with over 90% support by the civilian population that would be a hotbed indeed) But we are capable of seeing the vicious cynicism of that argumant only if one side uses it.

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

A magazine that is always interesting is Salon, and it gives you Watching Beirut die as well as :

"The "hiding among civilians" myth Israel claims it's justified in bombing civilians because Hezbollah mingles with them. In fact, the militant group doesn't trust its civilians and stays as far away from them as possible" By Mitch Prothero

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

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

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

Conservative pundits made wildly wrong claims about how Iraq would turn out -- what are they saying now about the Middle East?

There should be a safety warning when reading this...your sanity might not survive the onslaught of criminal and fanatic conservative fantasies..

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

Here is an article you will need a strong drink and some time to get through...

Mindless in Iraq By Peter W. Galbraith

It's a NYRB article that reviews 4 books about Iraq, and like any NYRB article it's a feast of information.

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

And in tales of other wars that continue to claim victims long after they are 'over'...

Vanity Fair has a photo essay and an article about the victims of America's use of Agent Orange in Vietnam...

"In the 1960s, the United States blanketed the Mekong River delta with Agent Orange, a chemical defoliant more devastating than napalm. Thirty years after the end of the Vietnam War, the poisoned legacy lives on in the children whose deformities it is said to have caused"
By CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

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

And more from news of how this world is a better place since freedom and liberty became fightin' words:

Sergeant Tells of Plot to Kill Iraqi Detainees

Somali government close to collapse as Islamists take palace

Six Are Shot at Seattle Jewish Center

Haim Ramon "doesn't understand" why there is still electricity in Baalbek; Eli Yishai proposes turning south Lebanon into a "sandbox"; Yoav Limor, a Channel 1 military correspondent, proposes an exhibition of Hezbollah corpses and the next day to conduct a parade of prisoners in their underwear, "to strengthen the home front's morale." By Gideon Levy

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Qana 2006

.

..

(AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)

..

Al-Jazeera footage

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Two days ago:

Hezbollah politicians back peace package

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It is the possible sight for the Biblical Cana, where Christ is said to have turned water into wine...These days it's just where Israel insists on turning everything into blood.
Qana in 1996
And, today up to 56 dead...34 of them children...murdered as the building they were sleeping in collapsed on top of them after an Israeli hit...

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

Olmert: No hurry to agree ceasefire

No Hurry....because it's only Lebanese and Israeli civilians that are at risk...Olmert can sleep safe and sound.

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

Olmert: Qana used to launch rockets

Except that:

"There are no Hezbollah activists in the village of Qana, Israel is bombarding civilian buildings and vehicles, Spanish journalist Monica Leiva, who is in the southern Lebanon village at the moment, told FOCUS "Read the rest of her report

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"The Israeli military says it warned Qana residents to leave before the strike"

Yes sleep well thinking that is enough...after they bombed the roads and bombed the bridges and bombed civilian convoys and ambulances...I'm sure that telling people to run into the open under the vicious indiscriminate Israeli missiles was enough to get people to leave their homes, the only thing they have. Israel can keep pretending the blood isn't on its hands, but everyone sees it. It says this just as it does this:

"Israel defied the United Nations yet again by rejecting a 3 day break to allow aid to arrive and let the innocent civilians flee. "

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

Jack Straw broke ranks to condemn Israel for causing "death and misery to innocent civilians".

France condemns Qana bombing, calls for ceasefire

Where are the rest of you? You civilised international westerners...
Wainkum ya 3arab???
Condemnation here, shock there...make it stop...no one wants the empty words, act!

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

Rice says "time for ceasefire" after Qana bombing
Is that what it took? Were the 400 dead before that, the million refugees...the 1,000 maimed and cluster-pocked not shocking enough?? This is the most disgusting time to think better late than never.
-------------
Enraged Lebanese protestors gathered around the UN building in Beirut and expressed their outrage...some breaking in to the building..most standing outside and protesting.

Israel's secret war: the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Palestine
By Anne Penketh in Gaza City

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MercyCorps Gaza Crisis Appeal

UNRWA's Emergency Appeal

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A Photographer in Gaza

Take a look at this and this, please...

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

"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. By NICK WADHAMS

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Of course, Israel is blocking an investigation into events that took place on Lebanese soil and if Lebanon doesn't mind that the UN investigate the deaths of the UN's own people, then....

Amazing what the arrogance of power can do..

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"The US has blocked the UN Security Council from issuing a statement condemning Israel's bombing of a UN post on the Lebanon border, in which four military observers were killed" The Australian

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

"The UN is useless, the UN is useless" cry the only two countries making it useless, the one who keeps ignoring all it's resolutions and the one who keeps vetoing them...

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"The United States makes the U.N. work when it wants to work." Revoltin' Bolton

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

China expressed anger that the United States "watered down" a United Nations Security Council statement on the deadly Israeli strike on a UN observer mission.- Can West News

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

The watered down statement goes a little like this:" shocked and distressed"...

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

All the UN can do within the chains the US has clamped on it is say " shiver me timbers"...

What's that you hear running through your head now?:

"This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper."

Hollow Men indeed...

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

So Israel gets what it wants:

The last witnesses to it's actions in South Lebanon are withdrawing...

Now that Aid agencies can't make it in:

"In effect there is no real humanitarian access in the south, the international community is deluding itself with talk of humanitarian corridors," said Christopher Stokes of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF, Doctors Without Borders). Daily Star

And reporters can't make it in:

"Israeli bombardments, Flynn continues, have restricted photographers movements, and within the safe areas, "there's a limited amount to shoot." pdnonline

The south will soon become invisible.

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

"The United States, for its part, is egging on the bombing, apparently on the same theory that led to the mess in Iraq--that somehow a civilian population under bombardment will not blame the bombers, but understand the political necessity of displacing them, wrecking their homes, and killing their loved ones. It's an amazingly myopic view." Ruth Conniff

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

We all know that it was savagery like this that gave birth to Hezbollah, and all the other bogey-men...but the lies and barbarism of politicians and military commanders can only last for so long, before the tables are turned...and when they turn, it is just as ugly...after all, the world knows only ugliness now...

-----------

...and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout 'Save us!' And I'll look down and whisper 'No.'

Rorschach , Watchmen

Rolling Stone has an exclusive worth reading...It starts like something out of a spy film and ends like Revelations...

You might need something strong to sip on while you read it.

If you want to round off the story: Mother Jones' "Three Days in Rome" is an article to look at.

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

The T-shirt seller of Beirut

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

Is it possible to be this stupid? For Rummy to uncork some stale insipid philosophical tripe when faced with a question as grave as whether a bloody civil war is raging as a result of his decisions and under his drenched-in-blood watch, is unbelieveble.

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

Regarding the UN observers that were killed by the Israeli forces when they fired on their base 21 times, let me say that again, 21 Times:

Khiyam: Accidentally on Purpose - by Ian Williams

You'll hit us, warned UN staff -Martin Chulov, Beirut

UN observers' plea ignored -By Anna Claridge

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One of the UN peacekeepers was Canadian...the other from Finland..another from China and the fourth from Austria...What do those countries think of this?

"BEIRUT, Lebanon (CNN) -- The U.N. observers killed when an Israeli bomb hit their bunker in Lebanon Tuesday called an Israeli military liaison about 10 times in the six hours before they died to warn that aerial attacks were getting close to their position, a U.N. officer said."

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

Take a look at Martin Rowson's cartoon in the Guardian

'Highway Bloggers' or 'Freeway Bloggers' are in the news again, this time in the Boston Globe

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Israelis, Lebanese Blog To Each Other

MTV

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That Dennis Kucinich is at it again, asking to put peace on the agenda...Little dreamer...

-

Sanayeh Relief Center has developed a map of Israeli strikes on Lebanon...Have a look, it is staggering..

-

Please give to UNICEF Lebanon

And to Sanayeh

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"both Democrats and Republicans are now on record that, in the name of “fighting terrorism,” U.S. allies – and, by extension, the United States as well – can essentially ignore international law and inflict unlimited damage on the civilian infrastructure of a small and largely defenseless country, even a pro-Western democracy like Lebanon." continue reading about resolutions in the House and Senate that approve of Israel's behaviour..

and in related news:

"tacit support for Israeli military strikes on Lebanon may have increased the danger of militant retaliation against the United States"Wash. post

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According to Human Rights Watch:

“the targeting and capture of enemy soldiers is allowed under international humanitarian law.”

-

And we all know what isn't allowed, but let's just go over it:

Targeting civilian infrastrusture, like airports, roads, homes, villages, towns, bridges and ports...targeting civilians of course goes without saying, and no amount of calling it retaliation or self-defence will wipe the blood off anyone's hands...targeting ambulances ..not to mention the unethical use cluster munitions in populated areas, as well as the suspected use of chemical weapons...and to top it off, why not add killing UN observers...

But yeah, keep saying Hezbollah started it..it will help you sleep better at night.

-

From the Israeli Human Rights group, B'Tselem

Israeli Soldiers Used Palestinians as Human Shields in Gaza

Killing of 9 family members in Gaza bombing: Grave suspicion of a war crime

New B’Tselem Report: Take No Prisoners - Grave suspicion of assassinations under the guise of arrests

One Big Prison: New Report Warns Against Continued Strangulation of Gaza Strip after Disengagement

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Statistics from B'Tselem:

Fatalities-Demolition of Houses as Punishment-Water Crisis

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From The ICJ (Int. Court of Justice)

143. The Court having concluded that, by the construction of the wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem, and by adopting its associated régime, Israel has violated various international obligations incumbent upon it

and lets not forget:

Suicide bombing: Wrong and illegal

...but we've heard that enough times to know it for sure..

And the use of captured combatants as hostages...War crime.

---

Jon Stewart, again...

For commentary out of Beirut that comes with a satisfying blend of lucid prose and biting humour pay a visit to Anecdotes from a Banana Republic

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مركز الإغاثة – الصنائع

SAMIDOUN Relief Center – Sanayeh

CLIENT NAME: GREENLINE ASSOCIATION

ACCOUNT NMBR: 6189003

BANK: BANK OF KUWAIT AND THE ARAB WORLD

SWIFT: BKAWLBBE

For more information, please contact: +961 3 647 605, +961 3 670 783, sanayeh.center@gmail.com

They are helping refugees, many of whome are children and babies...look at their site to learn more.

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63% of the British public agree that Blair has been poodle too long..

The same poll showed that "only 22% of voters believe Israel has reacted proportionately"..

It seems that democracy means that the rulers side with the minority views in their country..

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Here is Jon Stewart on whether or not Israel's actions were disproportionate..

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"The ambulance headlamps were on, the blue light overhead was flashing, and another light illuminated the Red Cross flag when the first Israeli missile hit, shearing off the right leg of the man on the stretcher inside. As he lay screaming beneath fire and smoke, patients and ambulance workers scrambled for safety, crawling over glass in the dark. Then another missile hit the second ambulance." Suzanne Goldenberg in Tyre

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Scale of the human crisis emerges

Brian Whitaker in Beirut

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UNICEF's Aid appeal for children in Lebanon

Click and give..it's the least any of us can do..

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Guardian Photos

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And more news of how the world is a better place since the Empire Struck Back in the name of freedom and democracy:

Pakistan launches huge nuclear arms drive

Violence In Afghanistan Spreads

Women back under wraps with Taliban vice squad

Civilian Death Toll Mounts in Iraq

Iraq's civilian toll: Over 100 a day

and

North Korea calls the US "the worst gangsters in the world" and calls Condoleeza Rice "a political imbecile."

"Lebanon carpenters are running out of wood for coffins. Bodies are stacked 3 or 4 feet high at the hospital morgue. The stench is spreading in the rubble.…

On Thursday, the wild dogs gnawed at the charred remains of a family bombed as they were trying to escape the village."

Hassan Fattah, New York Times

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Lebanon's Refugees

Guardian Photos

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While all this is happening

Blair's government is competeing with his best buddy Bush's administration for title of 'most scandal-ridden administration' ...

-

Since neither of these two governments and their third musketeer Israel can stop saying "Iran, Iran, Iran, Syria", like they have some incurable tic...are we all going to be surprised when they finally bait a response from either Syria or Iran with the savage attacks on Lebanon?..Or are they the ones being baited? Either way, the Israel/US alliance, that knows nothing but military options, has been planning an attack on Iran and Syria for too long for any of us to bat an eye if, and when, it finally happens...and Iran is really enjoying the role of local mafia Don with it's Syrian sidekick...while it lasts..

But what a price? A wildfire of hatred racing across the world, Lebanese , Palestinian, Israeli civilians shredded to pieces... Lebanon burning, Haifa burning, Gaza burning (as always)... Israelis no safer now and not going to be any safer when the dust has settled, despite their current fantasy that slaughtering people in front of the whole world is somehow a logical solution.

And what is buried beneath the rubble and arrogance of these ugly and savage muscles being flexed all across the region is the fact that all victims are united by their suffering, united by their desire to end the suffering and always forced to forget what unites them in the name of some illusionary greater cause...the Palestinians, who have been existing in a state of continuous loss and terror for the past 60 years (pawns in the Arab game of distacting their populations and pawns beneath the Israeli military boot, that disracts its own population) are being told that they are the heroic front line, while they are born and die as refugees, as strangers in everyone else's land including their own...the Israeli civilians have to live in the terrorizing knowledge that the grudges of the disposessed will always haunt their cafes and streets and homes as long as the criminal leaders of each side refuse to reach out with an honorable peace..and, the Lebanese are constantly been dragged back to death and destruction by the power games of those around them...

Each side is told they are fighting the good fight..Whether it's paradise or the promised land, it means the same thing...suffer now for the reward you'll never get...Children on each side born into a world of hatred and fear and distrust...Each side convinced that the other is the one planning, conspiring, hating without cause, driving into the sea, or planning to take over the whole world...while the people on each side are just trying to survive.

And the military machine, being fed on both ends by the big guys who are far enough away to still be laughing...Iran and Syria arm the Hizb and they are guilty of punishable crimes in everyone's eyes, but the US and its little shop of horrors feeding frenzy of weapons to Israel is not? Even though it violates US law to supply weapons to a country that uses it to attack civilians and to subjugate another occupied people..but wait, all we have to do is call it self defense, no matter how savage and no matter how cynical, and suddenly it's ok.

Everytime someone says the word Lebanon now, I can actually feel something in my chest begin to tear..but I also have to feel it for Gaza, and for Haifa, and for all the people caught in the jaws of the reckless war machine.

Death is supposed to be the great equalizer, but we know that saying wasn't meant for the Middle East...Or for any war...because it seems that my enemy's life is always cheap..and mine is always sacred...A dead Israeli civilian will probably not be mourned in Lebanon...A palestinian child's life is worth a fine of 12 to 25 Pounds Sterling for the Israeli soldier who aimed, shot and killed him...A Lebanese woman cowering in her shelled village while missiles play Russian roulette with her house is not quite as tragic as the Israelis in bomb shelters...and an Israeli saying he is afraid to go out for fear of being killed in the street is ridiculed by Palestinians who say thay are living in constant fear for their own lives...what savage irony, that we have constructed minefields and barbed wire even around the words we use to describe similar events...

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter goes one idiotic saying..and one man's dead child is another man's collateral damage..etc...etc...But what does this mangling of meaning really provide us with besides new ways to keep from giving a damn about each other?

I have forgotten how to laugh, these past two weeks, and have been feeling guilty that I didn't forget earlier...when Gaza was blasted and when Iraqi bodies piled up by the hundreds every day..and when Darfur wept and wailed and when people on a train in Mumbai ceased to exist and when we killed our oceans and our sky and our earth and when...and when...and when...

How many things do we have to screw up before we decide to do the right thing?

'Enough' is the word being splashed all across the Lebanese television channels..aren't they right? Isn't it time? Or was Yehuda Amichai right when he said:

אני, שהבאתי גוויות מן הגבעות,

יודע לספר שהעולם ריק מרחמים

"I, who have brought the corpses down from the hills,

Know to tell you that the world is empty of mercy."

-

This is the song in my head today.

One of LBC's stations has been hit..the one that transmits the local channels, and they are now transmitting via LBC Europe...LBC is a major Lebanese local and satellite channel...They have also hit Mobile phone networks, which means people are without even phone contact...according to Al-Arabiya.

-

LBC is now reporting that at around 2:30 Lebanese time Israeli tanks invaded the south.

10 Tanks

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Is this part of the preparation for a ground offensive..start taking out the local stations, leave everyone in the dark..without news and without mobile phone service?

-

LBC is showing footage of the artillery fire in the southern village of Maroun il-Ras.

It is 2pm GMT now.

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"It was, our journalists told us, to be the greatest evacuation since Dunkirk. There it was again, the Second World War. And it was another cruel lie which the Lebanese spotted at once. For these mighty craft had not arrived to save Lebanon, to protect a nation now being destroyed by America's ally, Israel, Lebanon whose newly flourishing democracy was hailed by our leaders last year as a rose amid the dictatorships of the Arab world. No, they were creeping through the dawn after asking Israel's permission to help their citizens to flee. These great warships had been sent here by Western leaders (Jacques Chirac excepted) too craven, too gutless, too immoral, to utter a single word of compassion for Lebanon's suffering."

Fisk

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Israel told the Lebanese in the South to leave, and is planning to invade the south , and reports coming in say that they have already captured locations in South Lebanon...

They will probably blast it to even tinier smithereens.

..

BBC Photo

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Thanks for the 'humanitarian' warning, it's great when you tell people to run for their lives before you bomb their homes, their schools, their workplaces and their towns and their memories and everything they own... Also, it's pretty great to do that after you have already bombed all the roads, bridges and exits out of the area. I'm sure in the end it will always be the victims fault, so thanks for being so kind.

--

The Lebanese are increasingly terrified that once the foreigners have left the country there will be nothing to restrain Israel from going all out and turning Lebanon to dust and ashes..

A British woman being evacuated yesterday said that everyone she knows thinks that there will be a bloodbath once the American and European citizens have left.

--

Israel calls up 3,000 reservists to prepare for ground invasion

Israeli troops mass on Lebanon border

U.S. Speeds Up Bomb Delivery for the Israelis

--

"How soon must we use the words "war crime"? How many children must be scattered in the rubble of Israeli air attacks before we reject the obscene phrase "collateral damage" and start talking about prosecution for crimes against humanity?" Robert Fisk
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Srifa was a bustling hillside village. Then yesterday the Israeli jets came

Clancy Chassay outside Srifa

Thursday July 20, 2006

-

..

Photo of Abbas Khalil, a Srifa victim from Al-Nahar July 21st Front page

--

“International humanitarian law is clear on the supreme obligations to protect civilians during hostilities,’’ she said. That same obligation exists, she added, in international criminal law, which defines war crimes and crimes against humanity.
“Indiscriminate shelling of cities constitutes a foreseeable and unacceptable targeting of civilians,” Loiuse Arbour the high commissioner for human rights.

To see what is happening to the Lebanese see here
-

Britain and US defy demand for immediate ceasefire
"Two countries, the US and Britain, defiantly refused to back the international clamour for an immediate ceasfire between Israel and Hizbollah guerrillas. Their ambivalence about civilian deaths in Lebanon has given Israel a powerful signal that it can continue its attacks with impunity" Independent

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"it's not even a war. What you have are hostilities, at this point, between Israel and Hezbollah. I would not characterize it as a war. "

Tony Snow, the White House spokesperson.

-

...

Thanhniennews Photo

Y'know what, you're right Snowy, why call this a war?

+

Or this..

Ya Libnan Photo

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Watch Jon Stewart's take on the media not calling what is happening a war.

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

"does anybody still believe this is about saving three Israeli soldiers - a piece of Hollywood schmaltz called "Saving Corporal Shalit" and its two sequels? Are Beirut, Haifa and Gaza City burning for them?
Only a dwindling band of people now believe this, the official pretext for the twin-set of wars Israel is fighting on its northern and southern fronts. If it had been true, there was an obvious solution - swapping prisoners. Israel is currently holding 8,200 Palestinian fighters, as well as at least three Lebanese fighters who were seized in Lebanon itself during the long 18 years when Israel was occupying its entire southern region. Both Hamas and Hizbollah have said the Israeli soldiers will head home as soon as there is a fair swap" Continue Johann Hari's Article

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

Thousands flock to hills, parks and schools, but no place safe from bombs

Jonathan Steele

"In small pockets of misery and distress tucked away across Beirut, thousands of Lebanese refugees are sheltering from Israel's relentless bombing."

..

BBC Photo

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Misery rules in tomb of living dead

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"What kind of life is being offered to us now?"

"I will tell you what kind: a life of destruction, despair, displacement, dispossession, and death."

"We the Lebanese want life, we have chosen life. We refuse to die. ...I sincerely hope that you will not let us down"

The Lebanese PM addressing the deaf, blind and mute international community...

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Save the Children's Emergency appeal

for Lebanon, Palestine and other Middle Eastern tragedies.

----

And thank you Mr. Annan for mentioning Gaza, the land of 1.4 million humans invisible to the rest of the world.

----

A woman being evacuated from her home in South Lebanon wept on Sky News saying "we are humans"...

Because she knows she actually has to remind the world of that fact...

I read a letter sent from the Lebanese artist Zena el-Khalil to a mutual friend and discovered that she had a blog...she is blogging from Beirut..Her words are beautiful and heart-breaking. Stop by her blog and give her your love and support.

Beirut Update

"Members of a religious sect in central Kenya are bracing themselves for a nuclear war predicted to take place no later than 12 September 2006."

BBC

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And Lebanon...

-

..

Ya Libnan Photo

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

For those who feel powerless, just watching this unfold:

Help out with donations:

-

FPM's BANK ACCOUNT FOR REFUGEES:>

BANK: SGBL, Sin El Fil, Lebanon> Account: 001-004-361-236446-01-3> Swift: SGLILBBX

+

CARITAS LEBANON

: BNPI, Achrafieh, Lebanon > Account: 136 932.001.24> Account Name: Caritas Lebanon > Swift: BNPI LBBX> Other accounts are provided here.

+

UNICEF

LEBANESE RED CROSS

+

SAMIR KASSIR FOUNDATION

(To support Refugees) > Bank: Byblos Bank - Tabaris> Account (USD): 380.3652902.001> Account (LBP): 380.3652902.002> SWIFT: BYBALBBX

From the blog http://lettersapart.blogspot.com/

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To help in Gaza :

UNRWA's Emergency appeal

Aid agencies express concern about humanitarian crisis facing Gaza

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

From YouTube :

July 16, Night Bombing audio/video

Operation Just Reward on Lebanon (The first three days)

Israeli and Arab TV News Show Different Sides of War

-

And Today's cartoon in Al-Nahar

"Don't Speed, Death is faster"

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Jewish Americans Protest Israel's targetting of civilians

"Bush: You see, the ... thing is what they need to do is to get Syria, to get Hizbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over. " Independent

Bush tells Blair in the middle of stuffing his face with food at the G8, when they had no idea the microphone was on...

You can watch the whole thing here

'

Bush and Blair's Less Than Excellent Conversation

Arianna Huffington

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"For the second time in 48 hours western governments declined to intervene as Israeli forces, on the sixth day of aerial attacks, killed 47 people and wounded at least 53. Hizbullah, the Iranian-backed militia, also stepped up its attacks, launching 50 rockets against Israel, the highest number in a single day. The death toll since Israel began its attack has risen to 210 in Lebanon and 29 in Israel."Guardian

-

....

Getty Photo Ya Libnan Photo

Lebanese victims

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"US Ambassador John Bolton said there was no moral equivalence between the civilian casualties from the Israeli raids in Lebanon and those killed in
Israel from "malicious terrorist acts". Yahoo News

-

From Tikkun:

Michael Lerner, Gila Svirsky, Uri Avnery and Gideon Levy discuss the political and moral significance of this summer's violence.
End the Suffering in the Middle East

By Rabbi Michael Lerner

+

Understanding Israel in Gaza and Lebanon

We present a view on how to end these crises, along with analyses by Tanya Reinhart, Yitzhak Frankenthal, Michael Rubin, David Horowitz, Arik Diamont (of Courage to Refuse,) Robert Fisk, and others.

-

Cartoon from Al-Nahar, a lebanese daily paper:

"Arabism's Hero"

The cheering ineffective cowards

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Gaza

Covering up Gaza
The state of Israel, fearful of the truth, continues to control media coverage of its brutal occupation

Jonathan Cook

+

"Israel launched a furious assault on the entire population of Gaza, destroying its only energy plant, which left 700,000 people without power, and seizing more than two dozen Hamas elected officials. Israel's leading liberal daily, Ha'aretz, warned that "the government is losing its reason...arresting people to use as bargaining chips is the act of a gang, not of a state." Amnesty International condemned the attacks against civilian infrastructure as a war crime, and the UN's Relief and Works Agency warned that Gaza is "on the brink of a public health disaster." The Nation

-

The rest of the world:

More than 300 died in Java Tsunami

-

More than 50 killed in Iraq shrine attack

Gunmen kill 56 in sectarian attack on Iraqi market town

-
More than a million people demand election recount in Mexico City

Mexico: A Yellow revolution brewing?

"It will be called the massacre of Marwaheen. All the civilians killed by the Israelis had been ordered to abandon their homes in the border village by the Israelis themselves a few hours earlier. Leave, they were told by loudspeaker; and leave they did, 20 of them in a convoy of civilian cars. That's when the Israeli jets arrived to bomb them, killing 20 Lebanese, at least nine of them children. The local fire brigade could not put out the fires as they all burned alive in the inferno. " Independent

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(AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)

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"In Lebanon as in Gaza, it is not Israel's right to protect its civilian population from terrorist aggression that is at issue. It is the way Israel goes about exercising that right...military leaders remain addicted to the notion that, whatever they have a right to do, they have a right to overdo" Observer

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(REUTERS/Sharif Karim) .

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"Yes, Hamas had no right to take an Israeli soldier captive, nor was Hezbollah justified in seizing two Israeli soldiers and killing eight others. But Israel has now killed more than 50 Lebanese civilians, and it is destroying the civilian infrastructure of that country, along with Gaza’s. These aren’t defensive acts. These are acts of aggression."Matthew Rothschild

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Israel hits Gaza house, Saturday, 15 July

AP Photo

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"So to suggest that Israel is looking for a solution here, to suggest that it’s playing for peace, is to be as cynical as those imbeciles who claim Israel is being “humanitarian” by raining leaflets of evacuation warnings before dropping its tonnage of barbarism in civilian zones. When rogue goes against rogue, and a rogue-in-chief stands by from his Roman-themed colonnades a Potomac away, a just solution is not only not being sought; it’s a virtual impossibility." Pierre Tristam

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Some of the thousands fleeing areas in Lebanon

BBC

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"Olmert lacks what the people of Israel like, which is someone who knows how to kill Arabs," Baltiansky said. "It sounds harsh, but Sharon knew when and how to kill Arabs, and when to talk to them" IHT

-

BBC

Strikes on Haifa, and other Israeli cities, civilians killed...

Olmert says:

"There will be far-reaching consequences in our relations on the northern border and in the area in general." Newsday

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The Israeli warship is attacked, Iran is blamed... the soldiers are kidnapped by Hizbullah, Israel says they might be transferred to Iran ...Tiberias hit, Iran blamed...Haifa hit, Iran blamed, Israel says there are even Iranian revolutionary guards in Lebanon...and Iran probably has Hoffa... a close second held by blame on Syria..

Blair accuses Iran, Syria of causing Middle East crisis

Forbes

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Remember the New Yorker, Jan 2005?

"Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign.... This is the last hurrah"

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Wildly disproportionate attack on Lebanon seems like pretext to confront Iran

Toronto Star

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Israel cutting Lebanon into pieces

Kuwait Times, Kuwait

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BBC photos of the effects of this war

Where are the mudhaharat now?

Israel's army chief Dan Halutz declared that no targets in Lebanon were immune from attack. "Nothing is safe. It is as simple as that,"

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"The US vetoed a UN resolution last night that demanded Israel halt its military offensive in Gaza ­ the first UN Security Council veto in almost two years.Ten of the 15 countries voted in favour; while Britain, Denmark, Slovakia and Peru abstained" Independent

-

ICRC gravely concerned about humanitarian situation in Gaza

-

"Israel said it feared the two captured soldiers - Ehud Goldwasser, 31, and Eldad Regev, 26 - could be taken to Iran, " Guardian

(How convenient for Israel)

-

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Thursday an Israeli strike on Syria would be considered an attack on the whole Islamic world that would bring a "fierce response", state television reported "Haaretz

-

"an Israeli plane dropped a bomb on to the home of a Shia Muslim cleric. He was killed. So was his wife. So were eight of his children. One was decapitated. All they could find of a baby was its head and torso which a young villager brandished in fury in front of the cameras" Independent

-

-

Check on the Lebanese Bloggers

Thanks to the Don for the link

-

Israel Blasts Beirut's Airport, Highways

55 civilians dead, and counting

Kuwaiti family killed in lebanon

4 Brazilians killed

Beirut burns after Israeli attacks

-

What part of this was she responible for?

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"A house with 10 children, the youngest was 6 months old — were they the resistance?" he asked. "Is a 6-month-old a resistance fighter?" The L.A. Times

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On a roof in the Old City

Laundry hanging in the late afternoon sunlight:

The white sheet of a woman who is my enemy,

The towel of a man who is my enemy,

To wipe off the sweat of his brow.

In the sky of the Old City

A kite.

At the other end of the string,

A child

I can't seeBecause of the wall.

We have put up many flags,

They have put up many flags.

To make us think that they're happy.

To make them think that we're happy.

Yehuda Amichai's Poem Translated by Irena Gordon

-

انتظرنا عربياً واحداً
يسحبُ الخنجرَ من رقبتنا..
انتظرنا هاشمياً واحداً..
انتظرنا قُرشياًَ واحداً..
دونكشوتاًَ واحداً..
قبضاياً واحداً لم يقطعوا شاربهُ..
انتظرنا خالداً أو طارقاً أو عنتره..
فأكلنا ثرثره... وشربنا ثرثره

..

نحنُ شعبٌ من عجين
كلّما تزدادُ إسرائيلُ إرهاباً وقتلاً
نحنُ نزدادُ ارتخاءً.. وبرودا

نزار قباني

-

The arrogance of power...

"Israel threatened to bomb Lebanon "back 20 years"

Guardian

-

When soldiers, who are a military target, are kidnapped...the response is attacks on civilian targets? In this upside down world, yes.

-

Halt the slide to war

"Ehud Olmert lost no time in describing the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Lebanese guerrillas as an "act of war". ....

(Earlier):

"Palestinian fighters kidnapped an Israeli soldier from a position just across the border from Gaza. For weeks before that dozens of home-made rockets were fired into Israel. Mr Olmert's response was to emulate what his mentor, Ariel Sharon, would have done: he bombed a power station, depriving hundreds of thousands of civilians of electricity and water in the summer heat. Israeli aircraft have been breaking the sound barrier in a campaign of psychological warfare against 1.4m people. That has all been rightly condemned as collective punishment, which is banned by the Geneva conventions.
Since the abduction more than 70 Palestinians, many of them civilians, have been killed by Israeli forces."

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And South in Gaza:

"Rescue workers pulled a four-year-old child out of the rubble. He had on a red T-shirt but his body was cut in two. Palestinian doctors said the owner of the house, Nabil Abu Salmiyeh, a lecturer at the Islamic University and a Hamas activist, had been killed along with his wife and seven of his nine children.
Rami Samour, 25, who lives near by, said the blast blew the mutilated body of a woman into a neighbouring house. A neighbour, Safwan Amamour, 39, said he and his wife were hit by flying rubble. He said: "No words can describe this destruction, this hellish damage, which I will remember of the rest of my life."

The Independent

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"There is an axis of terror and hate, created by Iran, Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas that wants to end any hope for peace"

These are the words of the Israeli foreign minister...it's the map for what they plan too do.

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And their eternal echo:

"The White House said it held Iran and Syria responsible for the abduction" Guardian

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Here is an interactive guide to the ecalations

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Only sanctions will stop this brutal campaign

The world is watching, and we are all made complicit by the failure of our governments to end Palestinian anguish

Ahdaf Soueif

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I officially apologise to my little niece for the world that she will have to live in.

The happiest guy in town...

.

.

.

This photo is the property of ricobel.com

The Majlis...Day one

After hearing everyone repeat the pledge so many times you would think that the duties of being an MP would have sunk in, especially for those that have had to do this before...but I guess it's in one ear and out everywhere else...
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Money talks..and walks and sits down with you to eat and and whispers promises that make you break the ones you made..and that's been the story of our little dot on the planet...
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Words like, when you're older, must appease him
And promises of someday make his dreams
And the seasons they go round and round...

...There'll be new dreams maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through
Joni