lebanon

Israel OKs expansion of Lebanon campaign
Hopes dim for quick end to Mideast crisis

  thanks to Huffington Post

'Everything In My Life Is Destroyed, So I Will Fight Them'
By Dahr Jamail

The member of Hezbollah I was interviewing-let's call him Ahmed-has been shot three times during previous battles against Israeli forces on the southern Lebanese border. His brother was killed in one of these battles. It's been several years since his father was killed by an air strike in a refugee camp. "My home now in Dahaya is pulverized, so Hezbollah gave me a place to stay while this war is happening," he said, "When this war ends, where am I to go? What am I to do? Everything in my life is destroyed now, so I will fight them."

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Comments from three Israelis:

The turnabout will come quickly

First they said it would be "a few days." Then "a couple of weeks." Then "by the end of the month." Well, maybe a few months. But at the end of that time, however long that time may be, "victory will be ours." The head of Israel's Northern Command said so today, so it must be true. Unfortunately for him, things have changed since the last time Israel fought a war. Now there is the Internet, and Israel is an extremely wired country. Even if the military censors and self-censorship of the Israeli press keeps out the scenes of devestation in Lebanon, holds back on the number of Israeli soldiers killed for as long as possible, and exaggerates the military's achievements, ordinary Israelis can see for themselves that their leaders are lying. Olmert can claim world leaders support him, but Israelis can read what ordinary citizens around the world think of this bloody campaign. And so I agree with Meron Benvinisti - the turnabout among Israelis will come quickly. Israel will not stay in Lebanon 18 years this time.

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Days of darkness
By Gideon Levy

In war as in war: Israel is sinking into a strident, nationalistic atmosphere and darkness is beginning to cover everything. The brakes we still had are eroding, the insensitivity and blindness that characterized Israeli society in recent years is intensifying. The home front is cut in half: the north suffers and the center is serene. But both have been taken over by tones of jingoism, ruthlessness and vengeance, and the voices of extremism that previously characterized the camp's margins are now expressing its heart. The left has once again lost its way, wrapped in silence or "admitting mistakes." Israel is exposing a unified, nationalistic face.

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Who is winning this war?
Q & A With Uri Avnery

On the 15th day of the war, Hizbullah is functioning and fighting. That by itself will go down in the annals of the Arab peoples as a shining victory. When a featherweight boxer faces a heavyweight and is still standing in the 15th round - that is a victory, whatever the final outcome.

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A nice little war
By Uri Avnery

It is the old story about the losing gambler: he cannot stop. He continues to play, in order to win his losses back. He continues to lose and continues to gamble, until he has lost everything: his ranch, his wife, his shirt.

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Robert Fisk is one of the finest journalists in the Middle East. He lives in Lebanon. Here is a series of his reports

Smoke signals from the battle of Bint Jbeil send a warning to Israel
By Robert Fisk

Is it possible - is it conceivable - that Israel is losing its war in Lebanon? From this hill village in the south of the country, I am watching the clouds of brown and black smoke rising from its latest disaster in the Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil: up to 13 Israeli soldiers dead, and others surrounded, after a devastating ambush by Hizbollah guerrillas in what was supposed to be a successful Israeli military advance against a "terrorist centre".

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On a Red Cross mission of mercy when Israeli air force came calling
By Robert Fisk

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.

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Under fire in Beirut
By Robert Fisk

To Sidon. Ed Cody has found a cool, 120-mile-an-hour driver called Hassan - he has a black Mercedes which I nickname "Death Car" (because that will be the fate of anyone who gets in our way) and we zip down the coast road and turn east into the hills at Naameh, where the Israelis have just blown the bridge.

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'How can we stand by and allow this to go on?'
By Robert Fisk

They wrote the names of the dead children on their plastic shrouds. "Mehdi Hashem, aged seven - Qana," was written in felt pen on the bag in which the little boy's body lay. "Hussein al-Mohamed, aged 12 - Qana',' "Abbas al-Shalhoub, aged one - Qana.'' And when the Lebanese soldier went to pick up Abbas's little body, it bounced on his shoulder as the boy might have done on his father's shoulder on Saturday. In all, there were 56 corpses brought to the Tyre government hospital and other surgeries, and 34 of them were children. When they ran out of plastic bags, they wrapped the small corpses in carpets. Their hair was matted with dust, most had blood running from their noses.

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A Nato-led force would be in Israel's interests, but not Lebanon's
Every foreign army - including the Israelis - comes to grief in Lebanon.
By Robert Fisk

So, how come George Bush and Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara - after their inevitable disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq - believe that a Nato-led force is going to survive on the south Lebanese border? The Israelis would obviously enjoy watching its deployment - it will be time for the West to take the casualties - but Hizbollah is likely to view its arrival as a proxy Israeli army. It is, after all, supposed to be a "buffer" force to protect Israel - not, as the Lebanese have quickly noted, to protect Lebanon - and the last Nato army that came to this country was literally blasted out of its mission by suicide bombers.

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What is Hizbullah?
by Juan Cole

Western and Israeli pundits keep comparing Hizbullah to al-Qaeda. It is a huge conceptual error. There is a crucial difference between an international terrorist network like al-Qaeda, which can be disrupted by good old policing techniques (such as inserting an agent in the Western Union office in Karachi), and a sub-nationalist movement.

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Some of the best commentary has been coming from Billmon:

The Clock is Running
by Billmon

And it may not leave the Israelis much time to finish taking down the Lebanese Hitler (or whatever the propaganda phrase of the moment happens to be).

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Big Muddy
by Billmon

Twelve days in, and even Ralph Peters thinks the Israelis are losing: Israel is losing this war. For a lifelong Israel supporter, that's a painful thing to write. But it's true. And the situation's worsening each day.

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The Debacle
by Billmon

If the Israelis truly are contemplating "solving" the problem with artillery they can certainly reduce Bint Jbeil to a collection of destroyed or half-destroyed buildings. Unfortunately, the history of urban warfare shows that destroyed and half-destroyed buildings usually make even more effective fortifications than the intact variety -- particularly if the enemy has had time to build underground bunkers and fire positions and connect them with trenches and/or tunnels.

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The Definition of Losing
by Billmon

It is in that sense -- the sense Clausewitz used -- that Israel is losing, and has probably lost, this war. There's always the possibility that the IDF will dream up a bold, imaginative stroke to redress the balance, like the brilliant '73 counterattack that trapped an entire Egyptian Army on the banks of the Suez Canal. But this IDF isn't showing that kind of creativity and daring. It's also not clear what kind of a stroke against a guerrilla army like Hizbullah could give Israel the smashing success it needs in the limited time left. And in lunging hastily for a badly needed victory, the IDF could stumble into an even greater defeat. It's happened many times in many wars, although not to the Israelis.

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The Show Must Go On
by Billmon

A few days ago a friend of mine -- the same one who gave me this little briefing last week -- predicted that if the Israelis continued their semi-discriminate air attacks on Lebanon, at some point they would make a big mistake, kill a bunch of innocent civilians and bring the war to a grinding halt. Even the United States would have to call for an immediate cease fire in place.

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For the Sake of the Children
by Billmon

"Today's actions in the Middle East remind us that the United States and friends and allies must work for a sustainable peace, particularly for the sake of children. George W. Bush President Attends Tee Ball Game July 30, 2006

A civil defense worker carries the body of Lebanese child recovered from the rubble of a demolished building that was struck by an Israeli airstrike at the village of Qana near the southern Lebanon city of Tyre, Sunday, July 30, 2006. (AP)

book recommendation

In the Belly of the Green Bird:
The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq
by Nir Rosen

The long review (from Amazon):

Nir Rosen has been hailed by The New York Review of Books as the reporter who managed to get inside Fallujah "at a time when it was a death trap for Western reporters," and as one of the few Western reporters able to report the truth from Iraq. Still in his twenties, a freelancer who has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, and Harper's Magazine, Rosen speaks Iraqi-accented Arabic and has managed to report from some of the country's most dangerous locales. Even The Weekly Standard notes that "he probably has more sources in the insurgency than any other American reporter." Rosen knows better than anyone how much the Americans are hated, and how deeply the Sunni Iraqis hate the Shias and vice versa. He has listened to the insurgents, and he knows that they will never rest until the Americans are gone. Too many Sunnis and Shias are willing to use violence for Iraq to ever have peace. The overthrow of Saddam has proved to be nothing less than a triumph for the martyrs who use violence at every turn. Ever since the fall of Saddam's regime Rosen has been in and out of Iraq, from north to south, listening to Friday sermons in mosques, breaking bread with dangerous men, interviewing political henchmen, joining Shia pilgrims, and listening to ordinary Iraqis who face American soldiers on raids in the Sunni triangle. He has had to plead for his life at times, and he has received more than one death threat. He has been pres-ent when bombs were detonated, and he has sat in meetings of insurgent leaders as they made policy decisions about territory they controlled. He has heard the double messages of Iraqi leaders -- the careful English messages for Western ears and the unvarnished hostility in Arabic -- and he has interviewed politicians and imams and seen how the insurgents and gang leaders create militias, private courts, prisons, security services, and more. In the Belly of the Green Bird is a searing report, unlike any other book about the American experience in Iraq. Almost everything covered in the Western media has been at least one or two steps removed from the minds and acts of the people who will determine the future of Iraq. Some of them are peaceful, some are violent. Some of them hate one another with the intensity of ancient enemies. The depth of discord between Sunnis and Shias is difficult to fathom without listening to them. Their anti-Americanism is much more recent, but not much less intense. The divisions within this cobbled-together country, much like those within Yugoslavia after Tito, are simply too intense to contain.

The short review: We're fucked.

iraq

Qana Massacre...
by Riverbend

Although the sun is blinding this time of year in our part of the world, the Middle East is seeing some of its darkest days… I woke up this morning to scenes of carnage and destruction on the television and for the briefest of moments, I thought it was footage of Iraq. It took me a few seconds to realize it was actually Qana in Lebanon. The latest village to see Israeli air strikes. The images were beyond gruesome- body parts and corpses being hauled out from under tons of debris. Wailing relatives and friends, searching for loved ones… So far, according to humanitarian organizations, 34 were children. They killed them while they were sleeping inside their bomb shelters- much like the Amriya Shelter massacre in 1991. We saw the corpses of the children on television, lifeless and twisted grotesquely, what remained of their faces frozen in expressions of pain and shock. I just sat there and cried in front of the television. I didn’t know I could still feel that sort of sorrow towards what has become a daily reality for Iraqis. It’s not Iraq but it might as well be: It’s civilians under lethal attack; it’s a country fighting occupation.

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Losing an Army

In other words, in the event of a real world war -- as opposed to the kind that pundits pontificate about on Fox News -- Centcom would either have to "pacify" the transportation routes through southern Iraq quickly and ruthlessly (which might not be possible, given the troops available and the possibility some Iraqi units might turn on their putative allies) or try to evacuate some or most U.S. forces from Iraq, either by air or ground. We're talking, on other words, about a potential debacle -- the worst U.S. military defeat since Pearl Harbor. Not because the Iranians are brilliant strategists or tough fighters (although they may be; we really don't know) but because the Iraq occupation has left the U.S. Army dangerously overextended, given its massive supply requirements. Way back at the beginning of this war, I remember reading a quote from Air Force Col. John Warden, who fretted that the invasion and occupation of Iraq would leave the U.S. military holding "a very narrow beachhead in the midst of a billion undefeated Muslims." You don't have to buy into Warden's grandiose clash-of-civilization rhetoric to see how relevant his point may be now.

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The vulnerable line of supply to US troops in Iraq

American forces in Iraq are in danger of having their line of supply cut by guerrillas. Napoleon once said that "an army travels on its stomach." By that he meant that the problem of keeping an army supplied is the prerequisite for the very existence of the force. A 21st-century military force "burns up" a tremendous volume of expendable supplies and continuously needs repairs to equipment as well as medical treatment. Without a plentiful and dependable source of fuel, food, and ammunition, a military force falters. First it stops moving, then it begins to starve, and eventually it becomes unable to resist the enemy.

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  thanks to Whiskey Bar

U.S. military confirms sharp rise in attacks

Bombings and shootings soared by 40 percent in the Baghdad area in the past week, the U.S. military said Thursday. An American general said extremists were preparing “an all-out assault” on the capital in a decisive battle for the future of Iraq.

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Hagel: The Iraq War Is ‘An Absolute Replay Of Vietnam’

[Hagel] said that in the previous 48 hours, he had received three telephone calls from four-star generals who were “beside themselves” over the Pentagon’s reversal of plans to bring tens of thousands of soldiers home this fall. Instead, top Pentagon officials are suspending military rotations and adding troops in Iraq. The Pentagon has estimated that the buildup will increase the number of U.S. troops from about 130,000 to 135,000. “That isn’t going to do any good. It’s going to have a worse effect,” Hagel said. “They’re destroying the United States Army.“

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  thanks to Huffington Post

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tibet

Магистраль между Пекином и столицей Тибета Лхасой

  thanks to Coudal Partners

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iran

Afghanistan close to anarchy, warns general

The most senior British military commander in Afghanistan today described the situation in the country as "close to anarchy" with feuding foreign agencies and unethical private security companies compounding problems caused by local corruption. The stark warning came from Lieutenant General David Richards, head of Nato's international security force in Afghanistan, who warned that western forces there were short of equipment and were "running out of time" if they were going to meet the expectations of the Afghan people. The assumption within Nato countries had been that the environment in Afghanistan after the defeat of the Taliban in 2002 would be benign, Gen Richards said. "That is clearly not the case," he said today. He referred to disputes between tribes crossing the border with Pakistan, and divisions between religious and secular factions cynically manipulated by "anarcho-warlords".

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  thanks to Steve Gilliard's News Blog

Benign?! How could they believe that unless they were totally ignorant of Afghanistan and it's history?

Death trap
Christina Lamb has spent 20 years covering Afghan wars and was lucky to escape with her life after a firefight 10 days ago. Afghanistan is littered with the debris of invading empires – so why do we refuse to learn from history?

When you twice stare death in the face in ditches in southern Afghanistan, first with Afghans and then fighting Afghans, you start to wonder what it is about this country that keeps drawing us back.

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  thanks to Talking Points Memo

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book art

Fore-Edge Painting

A fore-edgE painting is where the page block is fanned and an image applied to the stepped surface. If the page edges are themselves gilded or marbled, this results in the image disappearing when the book is relaxed. When refanned, the painting magically re-appears.

iran

LAST STAND
The military’s problem with the President’s Iran policy.

On May 31st, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced what appeared to be a major change in U.S. foreign policy. The Bush Administration, she said, would be willing to join Russia, China, and its European allies in direct talks with Iran about its nuclear program. There was a condition, however: the negotiations would not begin until, as the President put it in a June 19th speech at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, “the Iranian regime fully and verifiably suspends its uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities.” Iran, which has insisted on its right to enrich uranium, was being asked to concede the main point of the negotiations before they started. The question was whether the Administration expected the Iranians to agree, or was laying the diplomatic groundwork for future military action. In his speech, Bush also talked about “freedom for the Iranian people,” and he added, “Iran’s leaders have a clear choice.” There was an unspoken threat: the U.S. Strategic Command, supported by the Air Force, has been drawing up plans, at the President’s direction, for a major bombing campaign in Iran. Inside the Pentagon, senior commanders have increasingly challenged the President’s plans, according to active-duty and retired officers and officials. The generals and admirals have told the Administration that the bombing campaign will probably not succeed in destroying Iran’s nuclear program. They have also warned that an attack could lead to serious economic, political, and military consequences for the United States.

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Next We Take Tehran

President Bush may or may not order a massive aerial bombardment of Iran later this year. Or he may wait until 2007. Or he may simply escalate a risky confrontation with Iran through covert action and economic sanctions. But whatever the next act in the crisis, don’t be fooled by the assertion that the problem is Iran’s pursuit of nuclear arms.

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  thanks to Antiwar.com

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movie recommendation

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

When my kids were much shorter we would go camping and I would read Roald Dahl books to them. Now they are in their mid 20s and they still want me to go camping with them and to read Roald Dahl books to them. Dahl's books are dark and subversive and absolutely wonderful. Children's books that have much to recommend for adults, at least dark and subversive adults. Read them all. Roald Dahl hated Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka. It's hard to say what a dead man would have liked but I think Burton and Depp's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory would have been much more to Roald Dahl's liking. It certainly was to mine.

how are fearful leaders are screwing everything up

Tomgram: Playing the Destabilization Card at Home and Abroad

The administration's destabilization strategy, as convincingly laid out by Cohen, was not, however, limited to Russia. The ambitions of top administration officials and their supporters, after all, were world-spanning. (It wasn't for nothing that the neocons and allied pundits began talking about us as the planet's New Rome back in 2002, while we were tearing up treaties, setting up secret prisons, and preparing to launch our first "preventive" war.) In retrospect, it seems clear that destabilization was their modus operandi. Despite what some have argued in relation to Iraq (and elsewhere in the Middle East), they were undoubtedly not voting for chaos per se. What they were eager to do was put the strategically most significant and contested regions of the planet "in play," using the destabilization card, always assuming in every destabilization situation that the chips would fall on their side of the gaming table, and that, if worse came to worse, even chaos would turn out to be to their benefit.

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analog recording device

If one uses an analog storage device then one should have an an analog recording device to write in it.

Before I started using Moleskine notebooks I used a Pilot G2 07 pen. But, when I discovered Moleskine notebooks I also rediscovered pencils. Over the past several months I've accumulated several fine pencils. First on the left is a Mirado Black Warrior. These are one of the nicer pencils you can find at the OfficeMaxes of the world. Not dark enough for me. though. Ken Smith sent me some Dixon Ticonderogas. Good pencils. He also sent some Tri-Conderogas which are larger and triangular shaped but difficult to get a good point. My favorite pencils are from Pencil World: Forest Choice, Golden Bear, and Spangles. My favorite is Pencil Worlds Palomino but I used mine up and, last Christmas when I ordered some color pencils for Zoe, the sent me three dozen Spangles which sharpen beautifully and are reasonably dark. It's fun to uses these distinctly different pencils. When I run out of Spangles I will order some more Palominos. While it's now easy to get some very fine pencils I had a harder time getting something to sharpen them with.

My first sharpeners were from local stores. The blades dulled pretty quickly. In my sharpener research I found that Kum sharpeners had replaceable blades but I couldn't find a place that sold single sharpeners. The Ticonderoga pencils Ken sent came with a sharpener that sharpened both sizes and had German blades that did very well but it seems to have vanished. The Pencil Things opened up and they have everything pencil including a wide selection of Kum sharpeners. The two sharpeners on the left are Kum sharpeners I bought from Pencil Things. Both are excellent sharpeners. The blades are still sharp. I prefer sharpeners that will contain the shavings since I don't always have a trash can handy. The only problem was that they sharpened to a short point. Pencil World now has the Kum Palomino long point sharpener. (I think Pencil Things has a version, too.)

It uses a two stage sharpening and comes with an extra set of blades.

The first stage sharpens the wood only and leaves a long unsharpened lead. You just keep sharpening until the unsharpened lead hits the stop. It leaves a wonderful continuous shaving, particcularly with Pencil World's Spangles.

The second stage just sharpens the lead. It sharpens to a fine point without oversharpening. The container doesn't hold a whole lot of shavings but it's big enough. The openings also don't close. They remain open but the design of the sharpener keeps the open holes up when in my pants pocket. I will have this one for a long time. Unless I lose it, of course. But, thanks to Pencil Things and Pencil World, there is a wonderful choice of pencils and sharpeners.

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