Ripe thimbleberries. Click to enlarge.
Ripe thimbleberries. Click to enlarge.
It’s thimbleberry season.
Between 1999 and 2003, work-site enforcement operations were scaled back 95 percent by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which subsequently was merged into the Homeland Security Department. The number of employers prosecuted for unlawfully employing immigrants dropped from 182 in 1999 to four in 2003, and fines collected declined from $3.6 million to $212,000, according to federal statistics.In 1999, the United States initiated fines against 417 companies. In 2004, it issued fine notices to three.
Full article here.
I don’t think so. Manhattan, unlike New Orleans, is above sea level. Blowing up a highway tunnel to it will flood the tunnel, but (absent any interconnection between it and other tunnels) that’s about the extent of the flooding you’ll get.
A much more logical choice would be the old Hudson & Manhattan railroad tunnel used by PATH. That railroad never comes up to ground level in Manhattan. Moreover, it’s an old tunnel, made out of fragile brick and cast iron instead of reinforced concrete.As nowhere in lower Manhattan is above about 35 feet, that would flood most of the PATH tunnels. As there’s interconnections between PATH and the MTA subway, it would also flood the that. Odds are there’s at least several dozen interconnections between the PATH and MTA tunnels and utility tunnels (for openers, electric railroads consume a lot of electricity, and there has to be a way to get that into the tunnels), which in turn interconnect to building basements.
Or perhaps they were targeting one of the number of MTA subway tunnels that run under the East River. Or maybe even one of the tunnels that carry commuter-rail lines to Penn Station or Grand Central Terminal.
They might not even have to get the explosives into a tunnel. They all run barely below the river bottoms, which are nothing but soft mud. Put a big enough charge on top of it and hydrostatic pressure provides a very convenient tamping effect directing the force of the explosion into the hollow space below.
It would end up being approximately a repeat of what happened to Chicago in 1992: all utility service disrupted and all underground transit severed. The most important business district in the USA would be out of commission for at least a week, and seriously disrupted for a number of weeks after that.
It is thus not a surprise to see the following quote buried near the end of this article:
A government official with knowledge of the investigation said while the alleged plot did focus on New York’s transportation system, it did not target the Holland Tunnel. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the case is ongoing, would give no further details about the intended targets.
Initial reports said that the terrorists wanted to attack the Holland Tunnel, a major thoroughfare for cars entering the island of Manhattan. But officials said the group had specifically mentioned only the train tunnels under the Hudson River used by commuters on their way to New York and New Jersey [emphasis added].Full story here.
I know it’s just unsubstantiated speculation, but this just makes Ken Lay’s death come across as too convenient to be pure coincidence:
HOUSTON — The death of Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay will likely cause his conviction to be erased from the record, experts said Thursday.⋮
What will become of his money and assets, however, is still unclear. If his conviction is erased, that would thwart the government’s effort to seize millions prosecutors say he gained from participating in Enron’s fraud.
⋮
Roma Theus, vice chairman of the corporate integrity and white collar crime committee of the Chicago-based Defense Research Institute and a former federal prosecutor, said that because an appeal was pending, Lay’s convictions are abated.
“The law views it as though he had never been indicted, tried and convicted” Theus said.
Without that, the government cannot continue its efforts to seize Lay’s assets through criminal courts, he said.
David Berg, a Houston civil litigator, said all that’s left is a bureaucratic process in which Lay’s attorneys can file court papers, with Lay’s death certificate, asking Lake to vacate the convictions. If Lake complies as expected, Lay would no longer be a felon.
I’m not to the point of concluding it’s completely staged, but it does make me wonder if it’s suicide. If, in fact, he did have a heart condition*, it could have been as simple as skipping a dose or two of medication. Otherwise, there’s plenty of medications that one can overdose on to cause a heart attack. Digitalis comes to mind, and it has the benefit of coming from a common herbal source, making it easy to manufacture if you can’t obtain it via some other means.
* The first question that comes to mind is why we didn’t know about it beforehand. He was public figure, the press got nosey about the details of his life after his crimes became known, yet somehow this escaped their attention? At the least, one would expect it to have been part of a plea for leniency in front of the court.
I’ve been withholding comment because frankly I haven’t heard many details of the specifics of the irregularity charges. It’s as if the establishment media is refraining from fully reporting them so as to make the charges seem less substantiated. Somehow, I don’t think this would have happened had the leftist candidate scored the from-the-behind squeaker of a victory and the rightist was questioning it.
Anyhow, this article is interesting in that even the supporter of the conservative candidate admits there’s not much confidence in the electoral system.
In all their coverage of the upcoming elections in the Congo (the first in over a half-century), I haven’t heard NPR make any mention of just who is implicated in instigating the coup against (and murder of) the first and only democratically-elected leader that nation has ever had.
The Karami dictatorship should have never been a recipient of US aid in the first place, but better late than never.
The Bush regime’s level of concern for human rights can be best summed up by what they did in the immediate aftermath of the Andijon massacre, Uzbekistan’s own Tiananmen:
[McCain] appeared vexed that after legislation was introduced last year to bar the Defense Department from sending terror-coalition funds to Uzbekistan, the Pentagon had wired the $23 million to Tashkent before a vote could be held.
This is terrorism:
Hezbollah militants captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid Wednesday, and dozens of Israeli troops crossed the frontier with warplanes, tanks and gunboats to hunt for the captives. Three Israeli soldiers also were killed in the raid.
And so is this:
[Israeli] Army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz warned the Lebanese government that the Israeli military will target infrastructure and “turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years,” if the soldiers are not returned, Israeli TV reported.
Full article here.
But really, stories like this:
The United States blocked an Arab-backed resolution Thursday that would have demanded Israel halt its military offensive in the Gaza Strip, the first U.N. Security Council veto in nearly two years.The draft, sponsored by Qatar on behalf of other Arab nations, accused Israel of a “disproportionate use of force” that endangered Palestinian civilians, and demanded Israel withdraw its troops from Gaza.
The United States was alone in voting against the resolution. Ten of the 15 Security Council nations voted in favor, while Britain, Denmark, Peru and Slovakia abstained.
Really make me wish that the US was more of an independent voice in the UN when it comes to criticism of Israel, instead of suddenly turning into a mouthpiece for that nation.
I’m sure the resolution was, as Ambassador Bolton puts it, “unbalanced.” The Arab world is a bunch of incredible hypocrites when it comes to the rights of the Palestinians, as is evidenced by the poor way the Palestinian disapora is treated in the Arab world (like second-class citizens, eerily reminiscent of the way the residents of the Occupied Territories get treated by Israel).
So amend it to the point where it becomes balanced. Or introduce and support a competing resolution instead. What’s the problem? Cat got your tongue?
Getting back to the Arab hypocrisy, one of the reasons for it is the generally dismal record of the governments of the Arab world. With one exception, they’re all authoritarian to totalitarian states where kleptocracies rob the people into poverty and oppress them politically. The Palestine issue gets dragged up solely as a diversionary tactic and fig leaf for anti-semitism; it’s the old game of creating an external enemy to defuse internal criticism.
That one exception to the lack of democracy in the Arab world is Lebanon, which has been attempting to undergo the difficult task of creating a democratic and pluralistic society in the aftermath of a nasty civil war. That’s not to say there aren’t serious problems there (particularly the armed groups like Hezbollah), but let’s put things in perspective: what other Arab state has a bill of rights guaranteeing its citizens freedom of religion, press, assembly, and association; an independent press (including a gay and lesbian magazine); multiparty elections; and an active grassroots democracy movement?
You’d think that a country that has suffered so much because of the authoritarian nature of the region it is located in would attempt to be somewhat understanding. Especially given that — up until now — the rebuilt Lebanon was becoming a popular vacation spot for the rest of the Arab world. You’d think that the concept of an Arab democracy that other Arabs visit, enjoy the open and less-repressive atmosphere of, and hopefully return home with ideas in their heads would be precisely the sort of thing you’d want to encourage.
But no. It’s bombs away, and with all sorts of horrid rhetoric about bombing Lebanon back into the dark days of the civil war. Which, alas, isn’t a complete surprise either; the Zionist movement has a long and ugly history of regarding the Arabs as something less than fully human.
But so much for the Zionists. The US is supposedly a separate political entity, and should be unafraid to promote differing policies when it becomes clear the Israeli government is being both inhumane and, ultimately, self-defeating. Alas, all the US seems to be able to do is mumble over and over: “Thou shalt not criticize Israel.”
And then everyone wonders why so many people in the Mideast hate us.
Of course, there are those who support Hizbullah. But the majority of the people I have met everywhere, Christian and Muslim, just want calm, quiet lives. In short, they want the peace that we take for granted in the west. Young people here realise Israelis want the same. A young Lebanese student said to me yesterday: “Khallas, this is 2006, why can’t we just talk at a table, why are they bombing us?”. Everyone, everywhere here is asking the same question: how can the international community allow Israel to strike us, our whole country, in this way? Why has the US not spoken out? Why does the EU refer only to “disproportionate force”? We are at war, they say — again — and we are being held to ransom by terror.
Full article here.
One with a clue about what’s going on in Lebanon:
France was among Israel’s toughest critics, with the president, Jacques Chirac, yesterday terming Israel’s actions “completely disproportionate”.“One can ask oneself whether there isn’t a sort of desire to destroy Lebanon,” he said.
Mr Chirac also condemned Hezbollah and the Palestinian militant group Hamas for abducting Israeli soldiers and provoking the Israeli response.
And one without a ghost of a clue:
The White House spokesman, Tony Snow, said Mr Bush “believes the Israelis have the right to protect themselves and that in doing that they should limit as much as possible so-called collateral damage, not only to facilities but also to human lives”.Asked whether he agreed to Lebanese prime minister Fouad Siniora’s request to tell the Israelis to limit their military operations, Mr Snow said: “No. The president is not going to make military decisions for Israel.”
I mean, really now. You make the decision to give them military aid and yet when it comes to what that aid is used for, you suddenly become too chickenshit to face the facts.
Full story here.
The people of the region have been glued to their television screens, watching the horror of Israel’s bombs and missiles raining down on Gaza and Lebanon, destroying our infrastructure, our homes and our civilians’ lives and livelihoods. Although these American-made weapons do nothing to diminish the resolve of militants, they steadily chip away our entire region’s sense of compassion and morality. The moral vacuum left behind is filled with a palpable hatred, rage and desire for limitless revenge. Lest we forget, it was during Israel’s bloody invasion of Lebanon in 1982 that a young Osama bin Laden watched the destruction of high-rises in Beirut and first resolved to take down the towers of the World Trade Center.
Full article here.
Helen Thomas proves once again why she’s one of the few establishment journalists that’s worth a damn. And Tony Snow lies like a rug in an attempt to deny it. The inability to even admit they’re actively supporting an armed madhouse (takes one to support one, I guess) just demonstrates yet again the complete moral bankruptcy of the Bush regime.
They know what they’re doing is wrong. That’s why they’re lying about it. That’s why the whole bunch could be (but, alas, probably won’t be) put on trial for war crimes.
Remember those absolutely disgusting pictures of Palestinians celebrating when Iraq invaded Kuwait? Well, the USA is no better. Worse, actually. Those were just random folks in the street, not the upper ruling elite, which shied away from such expressions. In contrast, here’s what Congress has been busy doing:
Democratic and Republican congressional leaders are rushing to offer unalloyed support for Israel’s offensive against Hezbollah fighters, reflecting a bipartisan desire to not only defend a key U.S. ally but also solidify long-term backing of Jewish voters and political donors in the United States, according to officials and strategists in both parties.With Israel intensifying its air and artillery attacks on Lebanon and warning of a protracted war, the Senate yesterday unanimously passed a bipartisan resolution endorsing Israel’s military campaign and condemning Hezbollah and its two backers, Iran and Syria [emphasis added]. A few hours earlier, Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) delivered his most strident defense of Israel since the conflict erupted a week ago. The House is expected to pass a similarly pro-Israel resolution today.
Full article here.
[U]ndoubtedly the State of Israel is committing crimes in Lebanon: killing children, killing civilians.
Wha—? Knesset? It’s not a US Representative but a member of the Israeli parliament who said that? The US Congress marches in tighter lockstep behind Israel’s government than the Israel’s own lawmakers?
Never mind.
… That either Iran or Syria (or both) had a hand Hizbullah’s attack on Israel? Both hate Israel, and Syria is still smarting from having gotten the boot from the Lebanese. It’s a convenient way to exact revenge on both the hated Zionist state and the democratic Arab state whose example put dangerous ideas into other Arabs’ heads.
… That Israel’s rape of Lebanon wasn’t pre-approved by the USA? It’s hardly as if the two are really even separate countries when it comes to foreign policy, they way they both march in lockstep.
Wasn’t gonna post more, but just came across this. Mirroring it in full in case it gets axed. Original here.
Executive summary: responing to border raid a pretext, attacks planned years in advance.
(07-21) 04:00 PDT Jerusalem — Israel’s military response by air, land and sea to what it considered a provocation last week by Hezbollah militants is unfolding according to a plan finalized more than a year ago.In the years since Israel ended its military occupation of southern Lebanon, it watched warily as Hezbollah built up its military presence in the region. When Hezbollah militants kidnapped two Israeli soldiers last week, the Israeli military was ready to react almost instantly.
“Of all of Israel’s wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared,” said Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University. “In a sense, the preparation began in May 2000, immediately after the Israeli withdrawal, when it became clear the international community was not going to prevent Hezbollah from stockpiling missiles and attacking Israel. By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we’re seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it’s been simulated and rehearsed across the board.”
More than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to U.S. and other diplomats, journalists and think tanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail. Under the ground rules of the briefings, the officer could not be identified.
In his talks, the officer described a three-week campaign: The first week concentrated on destroying Hezbollah’s heavier long-range missiles, bombing its command-and-control centers, and disrupting transportation and communication arteries. In the second week, the focus shifted to attacks on individual sites of rocket launchers or weapons stores. In the third week, ground forces in large numbers would be introduced, but only in order to knock out targets discovered during reconnaissance missions as the campaign unfolded. There was no plan, according to this scenario, to reoccupy southern Lebanon on a long-term basis.
Israeli officials say their pinpoint commando raids should not be confused with a ground invasion. Nor, they say, do they herald another occupation of southern Lebanon, which Israel maintained from 1982 to 2000 — in order, it said, to thwart Hezbollah attacks on Israel. Planners anticipated the likelihood of civilian deaths on both sides. Israel says Hezbollah intentionally bases some of its operations in residential areas. And Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has bragged publicly that the group’s arsenal included rockets capable of bombing Haifa, as occurred last week.
Like all plans, the one now unfolding also has been shaped by changing circumstances, said Eran Lerman, a former colonel in Israeli military intelligence who is now director of the Jerusalem office of the American Jewish Committee.
“There are two radical views of how to deal with this challenge, a serious professional debate within the military community over which way to go,” said Lerman. “One is the air power school of thought, the other is the land-borne option. They create different dynamics and different timetables. The crucial factor is that the air force concept is very methodical and almost by definition is slower to get results. A ground invasion that sweeps Hezbollah in front of you is quicker, but at a much higher cost in human life and requiring the creation of a presence on the ground.”
The advance scenario is now in its second week, and its success or failure is still unfolding. Whether Israel’s aerial strikes will be enough to achieve the threefold aim of the campaign — to remove the Hezbollah military threat; to evict Hezbollah from the border area, allowing the deployment of Lebanese government troops; and to ensure the safe return of the two Israeli soldiers abducted last week — remains an open question. Israelis are opposed to the thought of reoccupying Lebanon.
“I have the feeling that the end is not clear here. I have no idea how this movie is going to end,” said Daniel Ben-Simon, a military analyst for the daily Haaretz newspaper.
Thursday’s clashes in southern Lebanon occurred near an outpost abandoned more than six years ago by the retreating Israeli army. The place was identified using satellite photographs of a Hezbollah bunker, but only from the ground was Israel able to discover that it served as the entrance to a previously unknown underground network of caves and bunkers stuffed with missiles aimed at northern Israel, said Israeli army spokesman Miri Regev.
“We knew about the network, but it was fully revealed (Wednesday) by the ground operation of our forces,” said Regev. “This is one of the purposes of the pinpoint ground operations — to locate and try to destroy the terrorist infrastructure from where they can fire at Israeli citizens.”
Israeli military officials say as much as 50 percent of Hezbollah’s missile capability has been destroyed, mainly by aerial attacks on targets identified from intelligence reports. But missiles continue to be fired at towns and cities across northern Israel.
“We were not surprised that the firing has continued,” said Tzachi Hanegbi, chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. “Hezbollah separated its leadership command-and-control system from its field organization. It created a network of tiny cells in each village that had no operational mission except to wait for the moment when they should activate the Katyusha rocket launchers hidden in local houses, using coordinates programmed long ago to hit Nahariya or Kiryat Shemona, or the kibbutzim and villages.”
“From the start of this operation, we have also been active on the ground across the width of Lebanon,” said Brig. Gen. Ron Friedman, head of Northern Command headquarters. “These missions are designed to support our current actions. Unfortunately, one of the many missions which we have carried out in recent days met with slightly fiercer resistance.”
Israel didn’t need sophisticated intelligence to discover the huge buildup of Iranian weapons supplies to Hezbollah by way of Syria, because Hezbollah’s patrons boasted about it openly in the pages of the Arabic press. As recently as June 16, less than four weeks before the Hezbollah border raid that sparked the current crisis, the Syrian defense minister publicly announced the extension of existing agreements allowing the passage of trucks shipping Iranian weapons into Lebanon.
But to destroy them, Israel needed to map the location of each missile.
“We need a lot of patience,” said Hanegbi. “The (Israeli Defense Forces) action at the moment is incapable of finding the very last Katyusha, or the last rocket launcher primed for use hidden inside a house in some village.”
Moshe Marzuk, a former head of the Lebanon desk for Israeli Military Intelligence who now is a researcher at the Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya, said Israel had learned from past conflicts in Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza — as well as the recent U.S. experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq — that a traditional military campaign would be countereffective.
“A big invasion is not suitable here,” said Marzuk. “We are not fighting an army, but guerrillas. It would be a mistake to enter and expose ourselves to fighters who will hide, fire off a missile and run away. If we are to be on the ground at all, we need to use commandos and special forces.”
Since fighting started — Israeli air strikes on Lebanon have hit more than 1,255 targets, including 200 rocket-launching sites.
— Hezbollah launched more than 900 rockets and missiles into northern Israel.
— At least 317 Lebanese have been killed, including 20 soldiers and three Hezbollah guerrillas. Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora says 1,100 have been wounded; the police put the number at 657.
— 31 Israelis have been killed, among them 16 soldiers, according to Israeli authorities. At least nine soldiers and 344 civilians have been wounded.
— Foreign deaths include eight Canadians, two Kuwaiti nationals, one Iraqi, one Sri Lankan and one Jordanian.
For having the backbone to be one of only eight representatives to stand up to the Israel lobby’s inane contention that if you admit it’s possible for the State of Israel to do wrong, you’re an anti-Semite.
Regarding which, Tom Hayden has an interesting personal account here.
If there can be any such thing at the present moment, is that the civilian death toll is growing slower than it was in the early days of the attacks. This seems to be due to a predictable nature to the attacks; targets were chosen to punish the ethnic groups that voted for Hezbollah. Once people got out of those areas, they were relatively safe.
This also means that the entire country hasn’t been pulverized; parts of it have. Large parts are still mostly intact. This will make it easier to recover after hostilities cease.
None of which makes Israel a moral actor in this. Quite the contrary: it puts them on the moral level of Al Qaeda in the 9/11 attacks. Like the attacks on Lebanon, they were done to punish a civilian population for voting the wrong way. Like the attacks on Lebanon, they were calculated to have a certain level of violence, and no more than that: Al Qaeda considered, then rejected, attacking nuclear power stations because they didn’t desire that level of death and destruction.
As to the exact death toll, if someone had exacted a civilian death toll on the US proportional to what Israel has on Lebanon, 26,000 Americans would be dead (and over 40 million homeless), making Israel’s coldly calibrated level of savagery many times worse. Far from being intemperate or inflammatory with my “moral level of Al Qaeda” comment, I’m being generous to Israel.
And the few Israeli bombs lobbed at Christian areas after prominent Christian MP Michel Aoun said something Israel didn’t like means that the “restraint” is subject to being withdrawn on a hair-trigger’s notice for the most petty of reasons. The relative “good” news is a very tenuous thing indeed.
“Consistently, from the Hezbollah heartland, my message was that Hezbollah must stop this cowardly blending … among women and children,” he said. “I heard they were proud because they lost very few fighters and that it was the civilians bearing the brunt of this. I don’t think anyone should be proud of having many more children and women dead than armed men.Full article here.“We need a cessation of hostilities because this is a war where civilians are paying the price,” said Egeland, before flying to Israel.
It’s just been leaked (then denied) that Israeli military chief of staff Dan Halutz has indeed authorized collective punishment in Lebanon. As if that should be any surprise to anybody that’s been following the news.
In related news, maybe it’s time to think of another symbol to paint on ambulances, given how the traditional red crosses are apparently being interpreted as X marks the spot, drop bomb here.
I am shocked and deeply distressed by the apparently deliberate targeting by Israeli Defense Forces of a United Nations observer post in southern Lebanon that has killed two United Nations military observers, with two more feared dead.This coordinated artillery and aerial attack on a long established and clearly marked United Nations post at Khiyam occurred despite personal assurances given to me by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that United Nations positions would be spared Israeli fire. Furthermore, General Alain Pelligrini, the United Nations Force Commander in south Lebanon, had been in repeated contact with Israeli officers throughout the day on Tuesday, stressing the need to protect that particular United Nations position from attack.
Full quote here.
Mind you, this is Kofi Annan speaking, well-versed in the art of couching statements in cautious and moderate terms. I don’t have a transcript, but NPR this morning played a quote of Annan explaining further why he believed the attacks to be deliberate. Apparently the shelling started early in the morning and went on until 7PM, despite repeated pleas for it to stop. The UN post has been there for years and is on all the maps of the region.
I wonder how the Israel-can-do-no-wrong crowd will explain away this one. I have no idea most of them will at least manage to convince themselves it wasn’t an atrocity. The human capacity for self-deception (especially when it prevents one from acknowledging a painful truth) is nearly infinite.
How many folks are aware of this?
While Israel does indeed have a national security interest in preventing missiles from hitting targets there, I’ll note the basics of their censorship policy:
The conditions include; no real-time reports giving the exact locations of missile hits; no reports of missile hits on army bases, strategic targets, or misses into the sea; and no reports telling when citizens are allowed to leave their bunkers for supplies. Reporters are also not permitted to give details about senior Israeli officials going to the north of the country, where the rockets are falling, until the officials are gone, nor are they allowed to report places where there aren’t enough shelters or where public defense is weak. [emphasis added]
This has the very convenient (for Israel) side-effect of making it difficult or impossible for foreign media to report Hezbollah attacks on military targets, while leaving them completely free to report attacks that damage civilian ones. Thus, of course, making Hezbollah’s targeting seem worse than it actually is.
Reporters in Israel have no choice to obey the rules or risk ending up in the clink. I understand that. But the least you’d expect an unbiased media to do is disclaim that the reports were passed through Israeli censorship. That way the audience would understand it’s probably not getting the full picture from them.
More darkly, the censorship also has the effect of making their own citizens into human shields for their military. Call it Israeli roulette: you’re less likely to hit the army because you’re more likely to hit residential neighborhoods.
The Daily Star has an editorial that, in my view, comes up with the likely reason for Israel’s disproportionate response to the kidnapping of two of its soldiers:
This brings us back to Lebanon, where scenarios for a possible flare-up between Israel and Hizbullah have been bandied about for months. One burning question was whether, in the event of an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, Hizbullah would come to the aid of its sponsor by lashing out at the Jewish state with its arsenal of rockets and mostly crude missiles. This led thoughtful observers to ponder another possibility: Might the Israelis try to eliminate Hizbullah beforehand so as not to be distracted when and if they decided it was time to deal with Iran? One theory was that a pretext would be desirable so that pre-emption could be made to look like retribution.Enter a squad of Israeli reservists sent to patrol a border within spitting distance of a resistance movement that had sworn to capture more Israeli soldiers in hopes of exchanging them for a Lebanese militant whose release was part of a previous deal on which the Jewish state partially reneged at the last minute. Hizbullah snatched two of them, and within minutes the Israelis began the massive display of firepower that continues to ravage Lebanon and the Lebanese.
There is a precedent for Israel launching attacks against Iran’s nuclear facilities: Israel did the same thing to Iraq. It’s also known that Israel planned this whole thing in advance, almost certainly with the pre-approval of the USA. Now I think I know why. I always wondered why they were doing it, given the failure of such operations to wipe out terrorist groups in south Lebanon in the past. They’re not trying to wipe Hezbollah out, they’re just aiming to temporarily weaken it before they attack Iran.
Given that Hezbollah will start rearming and regrouping as soon as the shooting stops, expect the attacks against Iran to happen sooner rather than later. Probably within the next six months, definitely within the next year.
Given that an attacked Iran would very much like to exact revenge against Israel via Hezbollah, this time the attacks won’t end with a few strikes against a reactor. If they were limited attacks, Iran would be able to rearm Hezbollah. So Iran is apparently next in line to be pulverized.
And here’s where it gets really creepy: it may well involve using nuclear weapons.
Update: Better link on nuclear attack plans here.
It has emerged that Hezbollah has shelled from the vicinity in the past; however, there’s no accounts to indicate they were shelling at the time of the Israeli attacks. Perhaps most telling, Israel has refused to allow a joint investigation into the incident. Instead, Israel alone will “investigate,” and everyone else will be expected to trust them.
The traffic yesterday was abnormally congested as I was trying to work my way to Westlake Park for Critical Mass. At one point, I saw the street a few blocks ahead blocked by fire engines. Looked like some sort of emergency.
It was, and a particularly ugly one at that. Rumors were circulating that it had something to do with a Jewish center of some sort, which I hoped were incorrect. Alas, later that evening, while returning home, I noticed a squad car sitting in the parking lot of the Seattle Hebrew Academy, whose presence pretty much confirmed the gist of the rumors.
It’s not a complete surprise, alas. Hate was obviously coming out of the woodwork in response to Israeli war crimes in Lebanon. I have been spending all too much time on the Craigslist World Politics Forum, and in recent days various sorts of neo-Nazi slime (one even posted an excerpt from a Hitler speech) have oozed onto the forum.
At this point, it doesn’t seem to have any broader connection or planning. The perpetrator is a Pakistani Muslim immigrant who is known to have mental health issues (for example, he was arrested in Eastern Washington for running around naked).
Looks like it’s about to get much worse in Lebanon.
No, Mr. Olmert, it is hardly the case that “Everyone in southern Lebanon is a terrorist and is connected to Hizbollah.” It matters not how many times they have been leafleted from the air: What about those too poor to own a car or afford the (now exorbitant) taxi fares out of the war zone? What about those whose cars have mostly empty fuel tanks (which are going to stay empty because your air force targeted the gas stations)? What about people in villages with no usable roads leading out (thanks, again, to your air force)?
Olmert’s logic makes as much sense as Hizbollah’s logic that everyone within range of their rockets is a Zionist enemy and thus fair game.
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