None of this stopped Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, telling the UN Security Council that Qana was "a hub for Hezbollah", and that "Israel had urged villagers to leave". For a start, as he well knew, residents had no means to leave. A Spanish journalist in Qana, Monica Leiva, told Focus News, "There are no Hezbollah activists in the village of Qana. Israel is bombarding buildings and vehicles. There are only civilians here," http://www.focus-fen.net/index.php?catid=138&ch=0&newsid=93149
Lies, spin, cruelty and greed; that's the mantra of our times.
AS I write, the IDF is attacking a hospital in the World Heritage city of Tyre and ramping up the Lebanese civilian death toll, for which, employing the persuasive dexterity of Colonel Eisen, it will express regret. No wonder many of our young people are so daunted by today's global issues that they block them out, focussing instead on designer food and the antics of celebrities. Today's big media story is the rise in oil prices. The real story is the collapse of enlightened leadership in the West.
• "There is almost no evidence that Bush won the election in Ohio", and much evidence that he and Cheney stole the race, as in 2000. "This is not an allegation but a fact, notwithstanding the establishment refusal to discuss it". Mark Crispin Miller, Prof of Media Studies, NUY).
• 10,000 tons of heavy fuel oil has leaked from the Jiyye power plant, due to repeated air strikes by Israeli warplanes. A third of the Lebanese coast is polluted. According to Environment Minister Yaacoub Sarraf, "Chances are our whole marine ecosystem facing the Lebanese shoreline is already dead. What is at stake today is all marine life in the Eastern Mediterranean". http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=1&article_id=74428
1945: IT TOOK US AWHILE TO LEARN THE TRUTH
In the Second World War, three months after the defeat of the German army in May 1945, Europe was at peace and Japan was on the verge of surrender. At this time, on August 6, US President Harry Truman announced that an "American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base", though he was well aware the target was a city of 400,000 inhabitants. Despite Truman's pledge that the US wanted to "avoid, as much as possible, the killing of civilians", the world's first Atomic bomb was detonated without warning 600 meters above the Shima hospital in the center of the city during morning rush hour. Between a quarter and a half of its people were instantly incinerated, and over a thousand died slow agonising deaths. However, General Grove assured Congress that nuclear radiation caused "no undue suffering – in fact, they say it is a very pleasant way to die". (On the eve of the Baghdad invasion George W Bush assured the world that Iraqi civilians would be spared "in every way we can"). Three days after bombing Hiroshima, the US dropped a nuclear bomb over the Roman Catholic cathedral in Nagasaki, with incredible effect, but for no apparent reason. The official July 1946 report on the Pacific air war by the US Strategic Bombing Survey concluded: "Japan would have surrendered even if Atomic bombs had not been dropped".
The day before obliterating Nagasaki, the allies signed the London Agreement, which made crimes against humanity punishable in an international court. Awkwardly, the fourth Hague Convention of 1907, had banned the bombardment of civilians. However, the American war crimes prosecutor, Telford Taylor, decided that since air bombardment had become a "recognised part of modern warfare", such acts had become "customary law". As historian Sven Linqvist points out: rather than ruling that the allies – "especially the allies" – had committed this kind of war crime, "the American prosecutor declared the law had been rendered invalid by the actions of the allies". (See A History of Bombing by Sven Lindqvist, Granta Books, London, 2001)
Richard Neville has been a practicing futurist since 1963, when he launched the countercultural magazine, Oz, which widened the boundaries of free speech on two continents. He has written several books, including Playpower (71), the bio of a global serial killer (79), his sixties memoir, Hippie Hippie Shake (95) and his latest handbook of social change, Footprints of the Future. A social commentator and a professional futurist with a sharp tongue, Richard is based in Australia, where he continues to ?stir the possum?. He recently co-founded a futurist oriented socio-political website: http://www.homepagedaily.com and is a director of the Neville Freeman Agency - http://www.futureshouse.com/
By the nature a young person is a collective creature. the worst possible thing for a young person is to be alone and feel abandoned. That is exactly what we have now- abandonement. About 2/3 of the Earth population is abandoned and most of them are young people. Do you know that China will have soon a 30-million standing army of young men? That's an invasive force Chegnhis- Khan only dreamed about.
We have no work for young men. Our activity kills their ' habitat' and disenfranchise them. They go nuts and reach for weapons. And we offer them rubber computers instead?
I always will remember an MTV story they broadcatsed on Iraqi boy in Bagdad before the war of 2003. That boy was full of music. Where is he now? Most likely he joined the isurgency and our GIs are hunitng him. We had screwed up with normalcy and created an anomaly. We, the parents of those chldren are evil. Acknowledge that.
by
Mark Sashine (46 articles, 19 quicklinks, 234 diaries, 3348 comments)
on Thursday, August 3, 2006 at 7:11:39 AM
The principles of Geneva, Hague or Nuremberg cannot bestow upon us moral virtue. Rather, by reasoned choice, we bestow upon those principles the force of law. Like our own Constitution, those principles are meaningful only to the extent that power will subscribe to them and uphold them for themselves as for other nations. Little can be done, when the most "powerful" nation on earth decides to be utterly lawless. It was hoped at the end of the first round of Nuremberg Trials (Goering, Speer, et al) that what had been done at Nuremberg would ensure that such atrocities, to include aggressive war itself, would never happen again. Would that it were so! The tragic fact of the matter is that we now have -inside the Oval Office -a man who neither respects nor understands what had been done at Nuremberg. Doubly tragic, he respects even less the "rule of law" inside US borders. His ideal is more akin to Hobbes' "Leviathan" or Hegel's absolute state. At the heart of Geneva, Nuremberg and the earlier Hague Convention is a self-evident premise: the value of the individual human being. Nazis, neocons, and fascists have no patience with that kind of talk.
by
Len Hart (122 articles, 158 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 474 comments)
on Thursday, August 3, 2006 at 9:10:14 AM
today's armies see no diff between civilian & soldier
Guernica created widespread shock and an immortal artwork of protest; the flattening of Dresden was greeted with glee, though by the 1960's the Brits were expressing public remorse. Hiroshima gave the Pentagon a blank cheque, and it's been merrily bombing civilians ever since and bedecking pilots with medals. Panama, Vietnam, Kabul, Baghdad.... Human Rights Watch reports Israel is "deliberately bombing civilians", attacking numerous vehicles flying white flags ...
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Richard Neville (36 articles, 1 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 11 comments)
on Thursday, August 3, 2006 at 9:01:30 PM
GOP: A coalition of crooks, morons and religious fanatics
The GOP, a coalition of crooks, morons and religious fanatics apparently represents the will of a majority of Americans who vote. If you don't vote and don't fit into any of those three categories, you might want to consider voting from now on. Don't fool yourself, things could get a lot worse if you don't
Now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of their country.
VOTE! . . IMPEACH! . . VOTE! . . IMPEACH!
by
rabblerowzer (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 227 comments)
on Friday, August 4, 2006 at 8:10:17 AM
