From the New York Times

Israel Promises Rice to Allow Relief Flights to Beirut

By GREG MYRE and HELENE COOPER
Published: July 25, 2006
JERUSALEM, July 25 — Wrapping up a two-day visit to this convulsed region, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pushed today for easing humanitarian conditions for Palestinian and Lebanese civilians. But she left without any sign of a quick end to Israel’s military campaigns in Lebanon or the Gaza Strip.

Ms. Rice won a promise from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel to allow humanitarian relief into Lebanon, including flights into Beirut International Airport, where the runways have been bombed by Israel. Ms. Rice also told the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, that she would ask for restrictions to be eased at border crossings with Israel.

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Gus: So stupidly done: first bomb people, then humanitarianise them?

Gees... the media is crook... the US administration is crook... Israel is crook... Hizbollah is crook... It reminds me of Hagar the Horrible showing his son a "globe of the world" in the shape of a badly cut cube... "But, dad" says the son "this is crooked"... "you're learning, son... you're learning" says Hagar with a wry smile...

In the mean time, Hiz-rael can bomb a few more ambulances and claim right of defence...

Nothing much will change... The status quo will come back in one form or another but oodles of people will have lost their lives for nothing and more anger will have entered hearts...

Stupidity plus.

From the BBC

Israeli bomb kills UN observers

Four United Nations peacekeepers have been killed in an Israeli air strike on an observation post in southern Lebanon, the UN has said.A bomb struck the post occupied by the peacekeepers of the Unifil force in the Khiam area, it said.
The attack came as Israel announced it would keep control over an area in southern Lebanon until a new international force could be deployed.
The force will be discussed at crisis talks to be held in Rome on Wednesday.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will be at the talks after ending her tour of the Middle East on Tuesday.
More than 380 Lebanese and 42 Israelis have died in nearly two weeks of conflict in Lebanon, which began after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on 12 July.
Protest

The UN in Lebanon says the Israeli air force destroyed the observer post, in which four military observers were sheltering.

It said the four, from Austria, Canada, China and Finland, had taken shelter in a bunker under the post after it was earlier shelled 14 times by Israeli artillery.

A rescue team was also shelled as it tried to clear the rubble.

The UN has made urgent protests about the attacks.

...................

Israel stupidity plus!

From the Guardian

Rice: US has not forgotten Palestinians

Staff and agencies
Tuesday July 25, 2006
Guardian Unlimited

The United States has not forgotten the Palestinian people, despite the current crisis in Lebanon, the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, insisted today after meeting the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, in the West Bank.
"The Palestinian people have lived too long with violence and the daily humiliations that go along with the circumstances here," Ms Rice said in Ramallah.

"I assured the president that we had great concerns about the sufferings of innocent people throughout the region," she told reporters, saying "even as the Lebanon situation resolves, we must remain focused on what is happening here."

"You have our pledge that in our common work of bringing a two-state solution to the people of Palestine and the people of Israel that we will not tire in our efforts," Ms Rice added.

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Gus impersonating Ms Rice: "and this is why the US administration is also rushing urgent humanitarian aid to Israel in the form of cluster bombs, laser guided missiles and patriot loaded trucks..."

From the Guardian

Palestinian groups agree deal for return of Israeli

Hamas leaders in Damascus are last obstacle to Gaza ceasefire

Conal Urquhart in Ramallah
Tuesday July 25, 2006
The Guardian

Palestinian factions, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have agreed to stop firing rockets at Israel and to free a captured Israeli soldier in a deal brokered by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president.
The deal, agreed on Sunday, is to halt the rocket attacks in return for a cessation of Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, and to release Corporal Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier captured on June 25, in exchange for the freeing of Palestinian prisoners at some point in the future.
An adviser to Mr Abbas told the Guardian that all Palestinian politicians were united on the need to free the Israeli soldier and stop all violence in Gaza, but the obstacles were the Israeli government and the Hamas leadership in Damascus.
"The problem is that both Islamic Jihad and Hamas have to seek the advice of their political bureaux in Damascus and we are waiting for their response," he said.
Ibrahim al-Naja, a Hamas minister in Ramallah, told the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz: "This initiative was presented in an attempt to alleviate Palestinian suffering, but now it depends on Israel, which is showing no indication yet of its willingness for a ceasefire."

From the New York Times

STRATEGY
Israel Finding a Difficult Foe in Hezbollah

By STEVEN ERLANGER and THOM SHANKER
Published: July 26, 2006
JERUSALEM, July 25 — A week ago, Israeli officials said their military had knocked out up to half of Hezbollah’s rocket launchers and suggested that another week or two would finish the job of incapacitating the Lebanese militia. That talk has largely stopped.

Hezbollah is still launching 100 rockets a day at Israel, nearly as many as it did at the start of the war. Soldiers return from forays into Lebanon saying the network of bunkers and tunnels is more sophisticated than expected. And Iranian-made long-range missiles apparently capable of hitting Tel Aviv remain in the Hezbollah arsenal.

“Two weeks after Israel set out to defeat Hezbollah, its military achievements are pretty limited,” lamented Yoel Marcus, a columnist and supporter of the war, in the daily Haaretz on Tuesday....

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Gus: Yeah, all Israel has done so far is massively buggered Lebanon for a long time... increased the support for Hizbollah in the region... bombed a UN post "by accident"... and have a few small offensive successes against Hizbollah... Brilliant!

CIVILIANS TARGETED IN 'SURGICAL' STRIKES

‘For those familiar with the cold-blooded Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in 1967, in which 34 American servicemen were killed and another 171 maimed and wounded, the tribal behavior now being displayed in the callous killing of Lebanese civilians should come as no surprise. This is but the latest example.  

Red Cross ambulances destroyed in Israeli air strike on rescue mission
 
The Guardian, London - Tuesday, 25 July 2006

’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.

Even in a war which has turned the roads of south Lebanon into killing zones, Israel's rocket strike on two clearly marked Red Cross ambulances on Sunday night set a deadly new milestone.

Six ambulance workers were wounded and three generations of the Fawaz family, being transported to hospital from Tibnin with what were originally minor injuries, were left fighting for their lives. Two ambulances were entirely destroyed, their roofs pierced by missiles.

The Lebanese Red Cross, whose ambulance service for south Lebanon is run entirely by volunteers, immediately announced it would cease all rescue missions unless Israel guaranteed their safety through the United Nations or the International Red Cross.  

For the villages below the Litani river, the ambulances were their last link to the outside world. Yesterday, that too was gone, leaving the 100,000 people of Tyre district with no way of reaching hospital other than to take to the roads themselves, under the roar of Israeli war planes. 

Missiles strike patients being transferred

The fateful call to the Red Cross operations room came through at about 10pm ˜ well after dark, a time when almost no Lebanese now dare venture out.

At the Red Cross office in Tyre, three volunteer medics dressed in their orange overalls, and got into their ambulance. The plan was to drive halfway, meet the local ambulance, and transfer the three patients to their vehicle to return to Tyre.

By Nader Joudi's reckoning, the ambulances had been stopped for barely two minutes. Two patients had been loaded: Ahmed Mustafa Fawaz, who had been hit by shrapnel in the stomach, and his son, Mohammed, 14.

The volunteer attendant was just easing Jamila Fawaz, 80, inside and setting up a drip when the missile struck. He managed to get the old woman and the child outside, but there was no way to reach Mr. Fawaz. "It was horrible," Mr. Joudi said. "He was screaming, and we couldn't do anything."

One of the members of the three-man crew from Tibnin radioed for help when another missile plunged through the roof. Ambulance crew and patients retreated to the cellar of a nearby building, then waited to be rescued, trying as best as they could to help the injured. "Each of us treated ourselves. There was no light," said Kassem Shaalan, a medic from Tyre.

By the time patients and ambulance crew reached Tyre, Mr. Fawaz was unconscious after losing one leg, and suffering severe fractures to the other.

His son had lost part of a foot, and his mother's body was riddled with shrapnel. Mr. Joudi had shrapnel wounds in his left arm, and Mr. Shaalan cuts to the face and leg.

Red Cross insignia clearly visible

He was adamant that the ambulances, with their Red Cross insignia on the roof, were clearly visible from the air. "I don't think there can be a mistake in two bombings of two ambulances," he said.

Although the air strike marked the first time ambulances have been hit by Israel in this war, for Mr. Shaalan and the other Red Cross volunteers it was only a matter of time. After two weeks of strikes designed to choke off possible supply lines to Hizbullah guerrillas, travel to many villages was just too dangerous.

Coastal villages even within a few kilometers of Tyre are cut off. In some, corpses remain trapped in the rubble for days.

But nothing is more perilous than travelling by night, and no more so than just before midnight that Sunday when another Red Cross crew set off from Tyre to pick up their injured colleagues.

"I was trembling," said Ali Deeb, one of the volunteers on the mission. "It was too dangerous, and helicopters buzzing, and all through this, I am thinking one thing: the ambulance that left half an hour before you has already been injured, and you could be next."

Later yesterday afternoon, two missiles landed in the building across the road from the Red Cross office.’

Red Cross Ambulances Destroyed In Israeli Air Strike On Rescue Mission

meanwhile, at Najem hospital …..

‘Dirty bandages hid the worst of 8-year-old Zainab Jawad's swollen, bloodied nose Monday. Her arm, fractured in two places, was strapped to her chest.

Stretched out on a bed at Najem Hospital, Zainab squeezed her brown eyes shut as memories of the attack flooded back, some of her words muffled as she fought sobs.

A day earlier, Israeli bombs destroyed her family's home in the southern village of Ayta Chaeb. Then rockets slammed into the family's car as they fled.

“I don't want to remember, but I can't help it. What I remember most is the sound, the sound of the planes, and I was scared because I thought there were so many. I fell asleep last night, but all I could hear in my sleep were planes."

Zainab's aunt was in the next bed. Her mother, Usra Jawad, and 4-year-old brother, Mohammed, were across the hall. Mohammed's eyes fluttered as he slipped in and out of consciousness; his leg was in a cast to his hip. His mother's leg was in traction, with steel pins in several places.

The week before, Usra Jawad's three sisters visited her village to see the new family home. When the bombing started, the four sisters fled in a car with the two children, hoping to reach their parents' home north of Tyre.

But rockets hit their car. Two of the sisters, both teachers, were killed.’

Civilians Bear Fear, Injuries, Death, Grief

 

For those not familier with the USS Liberty, you can find that information here:

http://www.ussliberty.org/report/report.htm 

You just need to be a flea against injustice. Enough committed fleas biting strategically can make even the biggest dog uncomfortable and transform even the biggest nation. ~~ Marian Wright Edelman

From the Seattle Times

Isolated among allies? U.S. charts a separate course in the Middle East
By ANNE GEARAN and KATHERINE SHRADER
The Associated Press

ROME – The United States is charting a separate course from its European and Arab allies in the Middle East.

Again.

The two-week-old conflict between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon follows the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and the Hamas victory in Palestinian election as events that highlight the Bush administration's different focus.

In each case, President Bush has pursued a strategic, long-term goal that he sees as worth short-term costs. In the Lebanon crisis, the administration sees an opportunity to disable Hezbollah as a fighting force, while European diplomats and Lebanon's beleaguered leader argue that the conflict already has claimed too many lives and must stop immediately.

The United States and its ally Israel are nearly alone in the world in rejecting the idea of a quick truce. Rice has said repeatedly that a cease-fire without conditions would allow Hezbollah to regroup and attack Israel or other nations anew.

The awkward split was clear as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice finished three days of inconclusive Mideast diplomacy on Wednesday with an emergency international meeting in Rome that failed to produce a unified statement on the short-term goal of ending the fighting.

"I have made it very clear that I seek urgently to get an end to these hostilities, an end to this violence," Rice told reporters after the conference. "We have to have a plan that will actually create conditions in which we can have a cease-fire that will be sustainable."

Rice left Rome for a previously scheduled diplomatic trip to Asia, but could return to the Middle East as soon as this weekend.

During stops in Lebanon and Israel this week, Rice said the Lebanon crisis offers an opportunity for a "new Middle East." That reflects the Bush administration's hope for deep-rooted democracy in a region marked by autocratic governments and family dynasties, but chafes some of the very Arab powers such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia that Rice will need to negotiate peace, said Arthur Hughes, a former ambassador to Yemen.

"I think the United States is very isolated, and it was very late" to begin active diplomacy, Hughes said.The Iraq war has been widely opposed in the Arab world and Europe, but more than three years into it the Bush administration and some key allies have essentially agreed to disagree. The current crisis is not likely to provoke the strong divisions evident early in that conflict, but it leaves Washington in the familiar position of defending its objectives to a skeptical world

...
read more at the Seattle Times

Russell Razzaque:
How can we defeat the extremists like this?
By supporting Bush, Blair lends credence to claims that the entire West hates us

Published: 28 July 2006

......
I have spent my entire adult existence trying to convince Muslims that notions of conspiracy involving the West planning to persecute and, ultimately, destroy Islam are all in their heads. I have rebuked those who suggest there are grounds for enjoining a "defensive" jihad. I have reminded people - and still do - that we are all equals in the eyes of western law - national and international - that nobody is under attack and that George Bush's talk of Crusades is no more than an [http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article1201291.ece|aberration]

....
But that is nothing compared with the rage being provoked in more dangerous circles. Somewhere in the UK is a young Muslim who is beginning to see, everywhere he looks, other Muslims being persecuted and their persecutors being applauded. Then one night he will realise, for the first time, that what those hate-filled campaigners outside the mosque had been saying was, in fact, right all along. That's when he switches off the TV, and goes to meet them.

read more at the Independent...

Soon the next headlines are going to be that the US never gave Israel a "green light" for bombing Lebanon... What we have here is a simple but effective way to deny what the US has done by stopping other countries to obtain a cease fire from the Zionists...

Talk about double dipping and double dealing... and carefully treading the stage by denying that what happened never happened...

Clever.

From the BBC

US 'outrage' over Israeli claims

The US state department has dismissed as "outrageous" a suggestion by Israel that it has been authorised by the world to continue bombing Lebanon."The US is sparing no efforts to bring a durable and [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5223940.stm|lasting end to this conflict]," said spokesman Adam Ereli.

read more at the BBC

An international treaty banning cluster bombs will enter into force in August after it was ratified by a 30th country, the UN says.

Burkina Faso and Moldova became the latest states to ratify the treaty.

The convention bans the production and use of cluster munitions and obliges states to compensate victims.

First developed during World War II, cluster bombs contain a number of smaller bomblets designed to cover a large area and deter an advancing army.

But campaigners, including some in the military, have long argued they are outmoded and immoral because of the dangers posed to civilians from bombs that do not explode and litter the ground like landmines.

Holdouts

The treaty is binding only on countries that have signed and ratified it.

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 Of course the US and Israel are not signatory to this agreement... nor are China and Russia... See new (old) toon at top...

May we congratulate the convention and the countries that have RATIFIED the ban of cluster bombs.

Here they are:

Ratifications (alphabetical order)

Albania, Austria, Belgium, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Croatia, Denmark, France, Germany, The Holy See, Ireland, Japan, The Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Luxembourg, The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Malawi, Malta, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Norway, San Marino, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, Spain, Uruguay and Zambi.

 

May our own countries — those who have "signed" the document but not ratified it — ratify as soon as possible. Since 30 countries have ratified the convention it will be in force 6 month from now, according the terms of the Convention.

Kofi Annan passed away from a “short illness” on Saturday, his family and the Kofi Annan Foundation announced in a statement. Annan, a former diplomat from Ghana, led the United Nations from 1997 to 2006.

In 2001, Annan and the UN were co-recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize.

After his tenure as secretary general, he served as the UN-Arab League special envoy for Syria in 2012, until he became frustrated with the lack of progress.

 

read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/436267-kofi-annan-un-dies/

 

 

read from top...

Washington’s “absolutely deconstructive” stance is hampering the rebuilding of Syria and constricts the UN in aiding the country until a so called ‘political transition’ takes place, Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s Foreign Minister, said.

“We addressed UNESCO on how they plan to implement the longtime talks, the longtime understanding on attracting the potential of this organization to rebuilding Palmyra,” an ancient city, regarded by the agency as a World Heritage Site, Lavrov said. “From the explanations of why UNESCO has still been unable to get involved in this process actively, we took that there was some kind of a directive from the United Nations headquarters in New York.”

He said that the UN Secretariat, which is the organizations’ executive arms, has “actually issued and distributed a secret directive throughout the UN system in October last year that prohibited the agencies included in this system from participating in any kind of projects aimed at restoring the Syrian economy.”

“Only humanitarian aid and nothing more” was allowed, the minister told the journalists after talks with Lebanese counterpart, Gebran Bassil, in Moscow. “A term was put forward that restoration of Syria would only be on the agenda after a certain progress is made in the so-called political transition” in the country, he added.

The Russian Foreign Ministry also said that due to the “absolutely deconstructive” stance of the US one also shouldn’t expect any positive decisions on rebuilding Syria and return of refugees to the country from the UN Security Council.

He reminded that following the talks between US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and UN Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, last week, Washington said that that “any discussion of reconstruction was premature absent a political solution” in Syria.

Lavrov pointed out that such demands are only put forward by the Americans for areas liberated from terrorist and controlled by the Syrian government in Damascus.

“As for the areas held by often non-constructive opposition forces, cooperating with the US… the restoration processes there is, on the contrary, in full swing. Furthermore, the US attracts a number of its allies to funding these activities,” he said.

According to the minister, Washington’s actions contradict the UN Security Council Resolution 2254 from 2015, which stressed the “critical need to build conditions for the safe and voluntary return of refugees… and the rehabilitation of affected area” in Syria.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/436411-secret-directive-un-syria-russia/

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May be it's time for Lafarge to become good again... Read from top.