Owen Parsons

I have repeatedly said I oppose the imprisonment of people for expressing their ideas no matter how loathsome – one of my heroes is the Jewish lawyer who defended the right of neo-Nazis to march in a city largely populated by Holocaust survivors. You have yet to show that laws against Holocaust denial were passed at the behest of Jews or Zionists. Europeans were very resentful of the Nazis after the war and most leftists are ardently anti-Nazi and at the same time anti or not particularly pro-Zionist. Many of these laws are part of codes that prohibit racism, there was a rightwing Belgian legislator who lost his seat for having made anti-Arab statements.

Yes, and I'd add that the only reason Belgian negationism law hasn't been updated to include the Rwandan and Armenian genocides is because of the power of the Turkish lobby over there (see here).

Do either of you have a real bios?

Of course my bio is real. Its outdated now, since I'm no longer in high school and I haven't bothered to update it. As for Daniel, I have no idea why he felt the urge to rewrite his bio in the manner that he did.

And Swift Boaters are the "Swift Boat Veteran for Truth," who came out around the time of the last Presidential election here in the states to blow smoke about John Kerry's war record.

Daniel appears to have had a childhood memorable for its poverty - and his skin, we are told, is black.

The first line in Daniel's new bio is obviously a homage to the first line of the classic Steve Martin movie The Jerk. You take things too literally.

Also, Len, I think you need to stop feeding the shark. Sid, unlike the Swift Boaters, only really comes out when you call him out.

Looks good. More university presses need to publish books like this.

Wasn't Robert Maheu the one behind the film to discredit Sukarno?

James

Yes, Robert Maheu was heavily involved in the effort. William Blum pinpoints Maheu as being the driving force behind the effort (here).

I seem to recall a particularly outrageous story about a party that occurred at Bing Crosby's estate in the California desert.

Isn't this where the CIA sought to entrap Sukarno in the company of some peroxide hookers?

Good old Bing, more interesting than we ever suspected - he ran an Agency knocking shop, complete with cameras...

Actually, the CIA made a porn film to discredit Sukarno and Bing Crosby was involved in the production of it:

In addition to the paramilitary activities, the CIA tried psychological warfare tricks to discredit Sukarno, such as passing rumors that he had been seduced by a Soviet stewardess. To that end, Sheffield Edwards, head of the CIA's Office of Security, enlisted the Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department to help with a porno movie project the CIA was making to use against Sukarno, ostensibly showing Sukarno in the act. Others involved in these efforts were Robert Maheu, and Bing Crosby and his brother. [source]

To undermine the regime of Indonesian strongman Achmed Sukarno, a lascivious thug with an insatiable sexual appetite whose political "crime was neutralism," the CIA "spread the rumor that [he] had been seduced by a good-looking blond airline stewardess who worked for the KGB." Needing documentation, Thomas writes, the CIA "commissioned a blue movie to be made of a Sukarno look-alike in the amorous embrace of a porn actress posing as the Russian spy. To play Sukarno, the moviemakers (Bing Crosby and his brother) chose a bald Chicano wearing a latex face mask." Why bald? Because "Sukarno was vain about his own baldness and always wore a skullcap, except, presumably, in bed." (You read it right: Bing Crosby and his brother.) [source]

Discovered this interesting critique of the way Hersh packaged Operation Phoenix for the gentle readers of the New Yorker. Doug Valentine, the author, makes clear the implications of this packaging in defining the limits of U.S. corporate media coverage of Iraq's U.S. created Death Squads.

Also along the lines of the Valentine article is this excerpt from Jim DiEugenio's article The Posthumous Assassination of JFK, which gives an overview of Hersh's career:

Hersh's book promises to be the mega "trash Kennedy" book. And, like any hatchet man, Hersh tries to disguise his mission. In the Vanity Fair article, his fellow workers on the ABC documentary say, "there have been moments when, while recounting private acts of kindness by JFK, Hersh has broken down and wept." (Anson p. 122) This from a man who intimidated witnesses with his phony papers and waved them aloft while damning the Kennedys with them. I believe his tears as much as I do the seance that Ben Bradlee and Jim Angleton attended to speak with the spirit of Mary Meyer (see Part One). At the end, Hersh joins in the con job: "I would have been absolutely devoted to Jack Kennedy if I had worked for him. I would have been knocked out by him. I would have liked him a lot." (Ibid) With what Anson shows of Hersh, I actually believe him on this score. He would have loved his version of Kennedy.

Anson's article begs the next question: who is Hersh? As is common knowledge, the story that made Hersh's career was his series of articles on the massacre of civilians at the village of My Lai in Vietnam. Hersh then wrote two books on this atrocity: My Lai 4 and Cover Up. There have always been questions about both the orders given on that mission and the unsatisfactory investigation after the fact. These questions began to boil in the aftermath of the exposure of the Bill Colby/Ted Shackley directed Phoenix Program: the deliberate assassination of any Vietnamese suspected of being Viet Cong. The death count for that operation has ranged between twenty and forty thousand. These questions were even more intriguing in light of the fact that the man chosen to run the military review of the massacre, General Peers, had a long term relationship with the CIA. In fact, former Special Forces Captain John McCarthy told me that—in terms of closeness to the Agency—Peers was another Ed Lansdale.

By the time Hersh's second book on the subject appeared, the suspicions about the massacre, and that Peers had directed a cover up, were now multiplying. Hersh went out of his way to address these questions in Cover Up. On pages 97-98 the following passage appears:

There was no conspiracy to destroy the village of My Lai 4; what took place there had happened before and would happen again in Quang Ngai province—although with less drastic results. The desire of Lieutenant Colonel Barker to mount another successful, high enemy body-count operation in the area; the desire of Ramsdell to demonstrate the effectiveness of his operations; the belief shared by all the principals that everyone living in Son My was staying there by choice because of Communists...and the basic incompetence of many intelligence personnel in the Army—all these factors combined to enable a group of ambitious men to mount an unnecessary mission against a nonexistent enemy force, and somehow to find the evidence to justify it all.

I won't go into all the things that must be true for Hersh to be correct. I will add that in the definitive book of the subject, The Phoenix Program, My Lai is described as part of the Colby/Shackley operation.

After My Lai, the New York Times assigned Hersh to the Watergate beat. The paper was getting scooped by Woodward and Bernstein at the Washington Post. For a "crack" reporter, Hersh did not distinguish himself, especially in retrospect. He basically followed in the footsteps of the Post. i.e. the whole complicated mess was a Nixon operation; there was no real CIA involvement; whatever Hunt and McCord did, no matter how weird and questionable, they did for the White House. As late as the December 12, 1992 edition of The New Yorker, Hersh was still hewing to this line in his article entitled "Nixon's Last Cover Up." In spite of this, at times Hersh actually did favors for the White House. As Ron Rosenbaum describes in Travels with Dr. Death, Hersh circulated some dirt on Dan Ellsberg (p. 294).

Anson mentions a famous anecdote about Hersh's reporting on Watergate (p. 107). Hersh got wind of a man involved in the Watergate caper by the name of Frank Sturgis. Sturgis was getting ready to talk during the early stages of the unfolding Watergate drama. Sturgis was working with Andrew St. George, a good, relatively independent journalist. The pair were going to write a book about Sturgis' experience in Watergate, but Hersh threatened to expose them first if they did not cooperate with him. In return, Hersh promised not to name St. George and to run the completed article by them first. St. George kept his side of the deal. Hersh broke his. St. George was named in the piece twenty-three times.

But there is another aspect to this story not mentioned by Anson. When St. George did publish a piece on Watergate in Harper's, it was based on his talks with another Watergate burglar, Eugenio Martinez. It gave strong indications of the CIA's role in Watergate, and that Howard Hunt was a double agent inside the Nixon camp. A few years later, in High Times (April 1977) sans Hersh, Sturgis now spoke. He depicted Watergate as a war not with Sam Ervin and the Post on one side and Nixon on the other; but as the CIA versus Nixon. None of this was in Hersh's piece, which presented the typical White House-funneling-"hush money"-to-the-burglars story which could have been written by Woodward.

Next for Hersh were his exposures in the New York Times of CIA counter intelligence chief James Angleton's domestic operations. Domestic ops were banned by the CIA's original charter, although they had been done ever since that Agency's inception. But at Christmas, 1974, Hersh's stories were splashed all over the Times. Hersh won a Pulitzer for them. One would think this would be a strong indication of Hersh's independence from, even antagonism for the CIA. One would be wrong. As everyone familiar with the Agency's history knows, in 1974 there was a huge turf war going on between Angleton and Colby (formerly of the Vietnam Phoenix program). Angleton lost this struggle, largely through Hersh's stories. But the week before Hersh's stories were printed, on December 16, 1974, Colby addressed the Council of Foreign Relations on this very subject and admitted to the domestic spying (Imperial Brain Trust p. 61). Why? Because their selective exposure could be used to oust Angleton. Many now believe that Hersh's stories were part of Colby's campaign to oust Angleton, sanctioned by the CIA Director himself.

Next up for Hersh was the story of the downing of KAL 700. This was the curious case of the Korean Air Liner shot down over Russian air space after having drifted off course. Many suspected that, as with the My Lai case, there was more here than met the eye. The long length of time that the plane had been off course, as well as its failure to respond to signals, led some to believe that the Russians had no choice but to shoot down the plane. In fact, many articles appeared, for example in The Nation, to support that thesis. The Reagan administration wanted to portray the incident as an example of Soviet barbarity (shades of Basulto's Brothers to the Rescue). They, and specifically Jeanne Kirkpatrick, treated the downing as a great propaganda victory. In his book, The Target Is Destroyed, Hersh ended up siding with the administration.

Which brings us to the nineties. Everyone knows that the broad release of Oliver Stone's JFK in 1992 put the Kennedy assassination back into play. The pre-release attack against the film was unprecedented in movie history. That's because it was more than just a movie. It was a message, with powerful political overtones that dug deeply into the public psyche: a grand political conspiracy had killed the last progressive president. That Vietnam would have never happened if Kennedy had lived. That JFK was working for accommodation with Castro at the time of his death. That the country has not really been the same since.

The preemptive strike was successful in slowing up the film's momentum out of the starting block. But the movie did increase the number of people who believe the case was a conspiracy into the ninety-percent range. The following year, in anticipation of the 30th anniversary of the murder, Gerald Posner got the jump on the critics with his specious book on the case. The media hailed him as a truth-teller. The critics were shut out. No nonfiction book in recent memory ever received such a huge publicity campaign—and deserved it less.

Good find, James.

These documents seem to settle the issue of the name of the landing boat: Barbara J, not Barbara.

Uh huh. Because it is a well-known fact that Christians were incensed with RFK's plans to sell fighters to Israel. Yessireebob. Earth to stupid: A Jordanian killed RFK that night, not a Christian. Hatred for Jews (surprise!) was his motivation. But you already knew that.

No, Brendan, Sirhan is indeed a Christian. And you made a second mistake here, too. Sirhan is Palestinian, not Jordanian. And there is a slight problem with the idea that Sirhan killed RFK because he planned to sell fighter planes to Israel. Namely this: Sirhan's totally incoherent "diary" entries about killing RFK started before anyone knew about RFK's fighter plane pledge. Get a clue.

In 1985 the cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked, and a 70-year-old disabled American passenger was murdered and thrown overboard by Middle Eastern Islamist males between the ages of 17 and 40.

There are problems with this one too. First of all, the PLO is not an "Islamist" organization. Second, while this hijacking and murder was carried out by "Middle Eastern... males," the real responsibility lies with the Mossad. I quote from former Israeli intelligence operative Ari Ben-Menashe's book, Profits of War, page 122:

The group's methods were rather unconventional, one could say heinous, but it had operated successfully for years. An example is the case of the "Palestinian" attack on the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985. That was, in fact, an Israeli "black" propaganda operation to show what a deadly, cutthroat bunch the Palestinians were.

The operation worked like this: Eitan passed instructions to Radi that it was time for the Palestinians to make an attack and do something cruel, though no specifics were laid out. Radi passed orders on to Abu'l Abbas, who, to follow such orders, was receiving millions from Israeli intelligence officers posing as Sicilian dons. Abbas then gathered a team to attack the cruise ship. The team was told to make it bad, to show the world what lay in store for other unsuspecting citizens if Palestinian demands were not met. As the world knows, the group picked on an elderly American Jewish man in a wheelchair, killed him, and threw his body overboard. They made their point. But for Israel it was the best kind of anti-Palestinian propaganda.

Ben-Menashe was one of the October Surprise whistle-blowers and an effort was made to discredit him as a phony. He has recently been authenticated by Rafi Eitan (see here), however, so I see no reason to doubt him.

In addition, I find your reference to "hundreds" of Israeli civilian casualties from rockets this year (in reality 43 casualties, see here from the Israeli government) to be very telling, seeing as how Israel is responsible for around 1,000 civilian casualities in Lebanon (link).

None of this is to say that Islamic terrorism doesn't exist or isn't a danger. Indeed, there are some problems with PON (as this review in The Nation shows). Your "research" and knowledge are just really sloppy and superficial.

In 1968 Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed by a Middle Eastern Islamist male between the ages of 17 and 40.

Aside from the fact that Sirhan appeared to be shooting blanks (if we are to credit the descriptions in the eyewitness accounts) and the autopsy report (which shows the shots coming from behind), Sirhan was not an "Islamist." He was (and I think still is) a Christian.

A belated thanks to Mr. Hogan for his words.

With the current talks about Kosovo's status being held (and with indepence looking ever more inevitable), I've decided to update and edit my post. I've added new information and many more sources (including replacing some of my old references with better ones), such as articles from the Berliner Zeitung and Toronto Sun that, on the basis of the Finnish report, declare "no massacre" and "hoax." I've also added a link to the report itself, among much else.

Blaming the USA - or its substandard, illegitimately-elected President - for the latest Lebanon debacle, is a predictable but unconvincing ploy.

And it seems Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the organization with which Israel is at war, has fallen for this "unconvincing ploy." In reality, the only things that are "unconvincing" are these superficial analyses of the Israel Lobby which ignore some rather important evidence, as I have outlined elsewhere. Its all very convenient for the United States government, as most of the people who write this stuff go out of their way to portray the U.S. as an innocent lamb whose primary interest is fostering and protecting democracy. If only it weren't for the Israel Lobby, which has hijacked this magnificent institution. People here may not subscribe to this viewpoint when they endorse the "Israel Lobby controls the U.S." thesis, but that is what is being pushed.

Of course the USA shares culpability for what has happened. The USA funds and uncritically supports the terrorist State of Israel. It therefore shares culpability for its actions. But to suggest that Israel's Government was pushed unwillingly by Washington into assaulting The Lebanon, as various Zionist apologists now claim, is once again to falsify history in an attempt to deceive and gain current advantage.

Nowhere do I assert that Israel was "pushed unwillingly by Washington." What I am asserting is that the United States is the primary mover. In fact, it appears as if Israel had enough power of its own to reject the Bush administration's urging for an attack on Syria.

Some good articles by Robert Parry of Consortium News on the subject:

- Bush Wants Wider War

- A 'Pretext' War in Lebanon

- Israeli Leaders Fault Bush on War

Also, I don't think you are in any position to accuse others of "falsify[ing] history."

Norman Finkelstein's site has posted a very interesting August 3rd speech from Hassan Nasrallah.

An excerpt:

I reach the last part which pertains to the political part. I say this: I would like to confirm to our Lebanese people and the peoples of our nation as well as the world. I want to be very clear. The killings, massacres, destruction, atrocities and barbarism that have taken place since the first day of the war and continue to be, Bush and his US administration are the first ones to be blamed. In our opinion, Olmert and his government are mere executive tools of this war. I want to stress on this meaning and say that the blood of the women and children in Qana as well as the blood of all the old people and innocent civilians whose blood was shed in Lebanon are tainting the faces of Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld, Cheney and this US administration. This administration is the assassin, murderer and assailant. Until now, this administration has been thwarting all attempts to stop the aggression and it is designing the terms and trying to dictate these terms. This issue must be clear to each Lebanese, each Moslem and Christian, and each noble person in this world. We are explaining this issue to eliminate any confusion.

Looks like I'm not the only who thinks the power of the Lobby is over-hyped.

Owen,

Try as I might, I couldn't get your link to the article to come up, but it doesn't matter--I get the gist. Fiery anti-US rhetoric indeed, but where does Nasrullah explicitly state that, in his opinion, the power of the Israeli lobby in the US is over-hyped? I believe this is your conclusion, not his.

Of course Nasrallah isn't directly adressing the Israel Lobby, but by saying that the Bush regime is to blame and that Olmert and his thugs are just puppets ("mere executive tools"), he makes it pretty clear who he thinks is the dominant partner in this relationship. From that it follows that he would probably not put much stock in the notion that U.S. Foreign Policy is run by the Israel Lobby.

Also, I checked the link again and it works fine.

Edit: Here's another link for the Nasrallah speech. It has a transcript and video footage.

Norman Finkelstein's site has posted a very interesting August 3rd speech from Hassan Nasrallah.

An excerpt:

I reach the last part which pertains to the political part. I say this: I would like to confirm to our Lebanese people and the peoples of our nation as well as the world. I want to be very clear. The killings, massacres, destruction, atrocities and barbarism that have taken place since the first day of the war and continue to be, Bush and his US administration are the first ones to be blamed. In our opinion, Olmert and his government are mere executive tools of this war. I want to stress on this meaning and say that the blood of the women and children in Qana as well as the blood of all the old people and innocent civilians whose blood was shed in Lebanon are tainting the faces of Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld, Cheney and this US administration. This administration is the assassin, murderer and assailant. Until now, this administration has been thwarting all attempts to stop the aggression and it is designing the terms and trying to dictate these terms. This issue must be clear to each Lebanese, each Moslem and Christian, and each noble person in this world. We are explaining this issue to eliminate any confusion.

Looks like I'm not the only who thinks the power of the Lobby is over-hyped.

Jim DiEugenio's review of Joan Mellen's A Farewell to Justice is now available on the PROBE/CTKA site.

http://www.ctka.net/mellen_review.html

Ron W

Huh. I was just wondering yesterday what Jim has been up to and where the Probe site had gone. Good to see the site back (and updated!) and good to see this article. It outlines the real problems with AF2J, unlike some of the anti-Garrison rantings that punctuate this thread (yes, you know who you are).

I agree with most of what he says about Mellen's book. Its a shame she had to mix all the valuable and new information she has on Garrison with a few dubious assertions and much RFK-bashing. I think the review is particularly dead-on about Ralph Schoenmann's influence on Mellen's view of the Kennedys. I came to this same conclusion a while ago and told Dawn about it.

Its still a valuable book for research purposes (with a good deal of suplementary reading and familiarity with the case) and the new edition should at least improve its aesethetic qualities, if nothing else. Unfortunately, the book isn't the thorough and definitive take on Garrison's investigation that many of us were hoping it would be. Nor is it a particularly good overview and introduction for the newcomer.

I didn't mention the subject of The Holocaust in this thread. Recurrently raising this red herring is a trick played repeatedly by Owen and Len in an attempt to marginalise me and shirk discussion of the contemporary issues that I do intend to discuss and learn about while I participate in this forum. Owen's desire to see me banned is never far from the surface - odd for one who in a not so recent post claimed to be an ex-Zionist, if I recall correctly.

There you go again with your odd insinuation that I only "claim" to believe what I post. What my taking offense at Holocaust "revisionism" has to do with Zionism I don't know. Your Holocaust postings were relevant to Peter's questioning of your motives and/or information, so I brought them up. And no, I'm not trying to get you banned, nor could I if I wanted to; I've said it before and I'll say it again here.

How many feel that the socio-political influence of individuals of the religious far-right in our epoch in the person's of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, the latter recently advocated the assassination of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, ["What would Jesus Do?"] are essentially no different, than those of W.A. Criswell and Billy James Hargis [The Christian Crusade tour with General Edwin Walker] in the 1960's?

Affirmative, these people follow a pretty linear course.

Well Sid, I'd really have to know what I'm being asked to rebut. You always pose this sort of thing in the form of a rhetorical question with no supporting evidence. The evidence in the Mark Crispin Miller FAIR article, which names names of powerful (non-Jewish) media seems to me to trump the non-evidence offered by the likes of Walker. If you mean that it isn't valid because the mainstream media shills for Israel, that is true, but it is not the point.

Also, if one of your sources on Jewish fundamentalism and its eschatology is Israel Shahak, I don't have a problem with that. I've bashed him here at least once in the past, but now that I've actually read some of his writings, I retract my previous attacks. He's been misread and misrepresented by both the pro-Israel attack dogs and anti-Semites (and perhaps not unintentionally ).

Name one US TV network, major US newspaper or Hollywood studio controlled or dominated by Christian fundamentalists. I doubt you can. By contrast, the power of Zionist Jews in these key opinion-guiding industries is legendary.

Yes, "legendary" is the appropriate word. See here.

There is some evidence that some of its ridiculous leaders - such as Jerry Falwell – are effectively bought and paid for by Zionists. Strip away the 'Christian' paintwork and its clear that Falwell & co serve as just one more channel for Zionist disinformation.

Falwell has probably been bought off by the "Zionists." However, he has also been bought off by Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his Moonies, who are quite politically powerful here in America and also have a small media empire. See here.

Doubt what I say? If so, I suggest reflecting on the furore generated anytime someone prominent makes the kind of claim I'm making now. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, the politician / journalist / academic / talking head in question is viciously attacked and often suffers severe, if not terminal, career damage. On talkboards, it usually provokes moral panic and calls for bans and excommunication.

As the old saying has it, if you are in a strange land and want to discover where power really lies, find out whom you may not easily criticize.

People will also get offended if you start suggesting that a cabal of black people run everything, or say that slavery wasn't really such a bad thing for black people. It will probably also bring about about "moral panic and calls for bans and excommunication." Many of your postings are at that level. And it is not even the case that anti-Semitism is a career ruiner, anyway. Some of the biggest right-wing media pundits here in America can spew anti-Semitic crap and get away with it with hardly any scrutiny at all. See here and here.

One final point. Although the Christian Zionists are undoubtedly numerous, there are many Christians – and mainstream Christian organizations – that have a much more balanced approach to the middle east conflict. The Roman Catholic Church is an example. So is the Church of England.

These two Churches have called – on numerous occasions – for a better deal for Palestinians, just as they have argued against militarism and in favour of a peaceful approach to conflict resolution. Their calls have gone unheeded and generally receive less than headline coverage by the mass media.

Christian Zionists make a lot of noise not only because of their numbers, but because their message is amplified by the mass media, whereas other voices within Christianity are downplayed.

People who are no friends of Christianity amplify the message of pro-Israel Christian fundamentalists. The agenda of these folk, if influenced at all by eschatological beliefs, owes nothing to Christian eschatology.

There is also a range of opinion among Orthodox Jews that is downplayed (e.g. Neturei Karta, who are Orthodox Jews and extremely anti-Zionist). Whats your point?

Here is some additional reading material for Sid (although I know he won't read it, as his mind is made up):

* The Demographics of American Jews by Lenni Brenner

* A Response to Paul Eisen's "Jewish Power" by Joel Finkel

* The Influence of the Christian Right on U.S. Middle East Policy by Stephen Zunes

* The Israel Lobby: How Powerful is it Really? by Stephen Zunes

* The Israel Lobby: Its not Either/Or by Norman Finkelstein

Also, Peter, Sid has outed himself as a Holocaust "revisionist" in the Political Conspiracies forum, so I think there may be more than just latent anti-Semitism at play here.

Venezuela Withdraws Israel Ambassador

Egypt and Jordan, Mauritania – the only Arab countries having diplomatic ties with Israel – have rejected calls to withdraw ambassadors.

CARACAS - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Thursday, August 3, ordered the withdrawal of Venezuela's ambassador in Israel in protest against the Israeli offensives in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.

"I have ordered the withdrawal of our ambassador in Israel," Chavez said during a speech in the northwestern state of Falcon, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

"It's really outrageous to watch Israel as it continues to abuse, bomb and massacre innocent people with its yankee planes," added the leftist leader.

Up to 900 Lebanese civilians, third of whom were children, since Israel has launched a 24-day-long blitz in Lebanon on the claim of seeking the release of two soldiers taken prisoner by the Lebanese resistance group Hizbullah.

The sepulchral silence and hoary-old clichés of Arab and Muslim rulers at the non-stop Israeli massacres have left their peoples boiling.

Turkey was among the few Muslim countries — if not the only — to have take a firm action of protest.

Some 70 Turkish MPs have resigned from Turkey-Israel Inter-parliamentary Friendship Group.

Egypt and Jordan, Mauritania – the only Arab countries having diplomatic ties with Israel – have rejected calls to withdraw ambassadors from Tel Aviv or expel the Israeli envoys.

Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia have rather blamed Hizbullah for triggering the conflict.

Pundits believe that some Arab rulers hoped that Hizbullah would be defeated by Israel, fearing that a victory by the resistance group would serve as a catalyst for reformists to push forward with their demands.

Indignation

Chavez also hit out at the excessive Israeli force.

"It really causes indignation to see how the state of Israel continues bombing, killing ... with all of the power they have, with the support of the United States," he added.

Israel on Friday, August 4, continued its destruction of the Lebanese infrastructure, destroying three highway bridges north of Beirut.

Up to 23 Lebanese were killed Friday in Israeli air strikes on southern Lebanon.

Israel also stepped up its offensive against the Gaza Strip on Friday, killing four Palestinians in Rafah, taking to 12 the number of people killed in the area in less than 24 hours.

At least 164 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed since Israel launched an open-ended military offensive on Gaza on claims of recovering a soldier taken prisoner by Palestinian groups to swap for 95 women and 313 children who are among almost 10,000 Arabs in Israeli prisons.

Genocide

Chavez also denounced the world indifference to the Israeli massacres against the Lebanese and Palestinian people.

"You can't understand why the world looks on with nonchalance. You can't understand why nobody does anything to stop this horror," he said, blaming the United States for failing to stop the Israeli onslaught.

"The United States has prevented the (UN) Security Council from taking any action to stop Israel's genocide against the people of Palestine and Lebanon."

Washington has resisted mounting calls for an immediate ceasefire of the Israeli offensive in Lebanon.

Washington also drew rebuke across the Arab and Muslim world for shipping arms and leaser-guided bombs to Israel to be used during its attacks in Lebanon.

"That's one of the reasons behind the United States' blatant, frank and immoral drive to bar us from joining the UN Security Council," said Chavez, referring to Venezuela's efforts to seek a permanent seat on the council.

Venezuela is the world's No. 5 oil exporter and a key supplier of oil to the United States. [link]

EDIT: More complete source.

Recently I've become interested in the Algerian Civil War of the 1990s, which was triggered by the Algerian military's nullification of the Islamic Salvation Front's win in the January 1992 elections on the interesting pretext that they would destroy democracy.

Its been something of an open secret that the hideously brutal massacres of civillians, sometimes wiping out entire villages, that were so characteristic of the conflict were actually carried out by the Algerian state and its proxies. This was strongly hinted at by many human rights organizations at the time the carnage was occuring and now it doesn't even seem to be particularly controversial. Noam Chomsky notes:

Turns out that Algeria is very enthusiastic about the US war against terror. [...] Algeria is one of the most vicious terrorist states in the world and has been carrying out horrendous terror against its own population in the past couple of years, in fact. For a while, this was under wraps. But it was finally exposed in France by defectors from the Algerian army. It's all over the place there and in England and so on. But here, we're very proud because one of the worst terrorist states in the world is now enthusiastically welcoming the US war on terror and in fact is cheering on the United States to lead the war. That shows how popular we are getting.

A very good and thorough overview of the conflict is provided by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, "Algeria and the Paradox of Democracy," which may be read here.

Discussion is welcome.

1 in 3 believe 9-11 conspiracy

By Thomas Hargrove and Guido H. Stempel III

Scripps Howard News Service

More than a third of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9-11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East, according to a new Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll.

Read the rest here.

I want to emphasize that I'm pretty neutral on this issue.

He claims he was in the basement when he felt an explosion from a lower level before the plane hit above, the only people to back his account were 3 of his coworkers. None of them said anything about this till they became plaintiffs in a suit seeking unspecified damages potentially reaching millions or billions of dollars against the federal government in general and Bush administration particular. The day after the attacks he gave a different version ""We heard a loud rumble, then all of a sudden we heard another rumble like someone moving a whole lot of furniture," Rodriguez said. "And then the elevator opened and a man came into our office and all of his skin was off.""

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/new.york.terror/

It is interesting that Peter should bring up WTC survivors. Except for Rodriguez and his three co-workers/co-plaintiffs none AFAIK support the 'controlled demolition theory' according to the 9/11

You seem to have it in for Rodriguez, who is by all acounts one of the "heroes" of 9/11. Anyway, assuming he has not been misquoted by CNN in its quick blurb, I wouldn't exactly call it a "different" version. Replace the word "rumble" with the closely related "explosion" and you have the same story he's always told, but in an undetailed manner, with explosion/rumble #1 coming from below and explosion/rumble #2 coming from above and coinciding with the plane strike. A detailed account of his story can be read here. Talk about reaching for straws.

On a side note, Rodriguez also gave testimony to the 9/11 commission that he encountered one of the hijackers in the north tower in June 2001 (link).

He is an expert

An expert what?

An expert janitor? What Peter is saying here is that Rodriguez would know about explosions in the WTC, having been there the first time around and that he knows the building like the back of his hand.

Mike Griffith did a pretty thorough review/debunking of Myers' Tippit tome a while back. It can be read here. I wonder if Mr. Gillespie has ever come across it?

UPDATE ON QANA: It would not have been possible for Hezbollah to have fired rockets from the building as described by the IDF in the first place. What exactly was the IDF retaliating against?

Hizbullah rockets cannot be fired from buildings

31/07/2006 | The Irish Times

Tom Clonan

Hizbullah has fired almost 2,000 missiles into Israel over the last fortnight, killing more than 50 Israelis and forcing almost one million into air raid shelters.

Despite this provocation, however, Israel's response has been sharply criticised as "disproportionate" in many quarters. In the aftermath of the deaths of dozens of innocent Lebanese women and children at Qana yesterday, even the US has urged the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) to modify their responses to Hizbullah's attacks.

IDF spokespeople are maintaining that Hizbullah had been mounting missile attacks on Israeli territory from Qana in recent days. The IDF has claimed it targeted the three-storey house in Qana at 1.30am local time in the belief it contained a Hizbullah "asset".

Any investigation into the targeting of this house will have to consider precisely what kind of Hizbullah "asset" could possibly have been hidden in a modest, low-rise building among the narrow streets of a village such as Qana.

The type of missiles being fired by Hizbullah at Israeli cities cannot be fired from within houses, mosques, hospitals or even UN facilities as has been suggested by the IDF. Due to the massive "back-blast" caused by the rocket launchers of these missiles, they can only be fired from open ground. To fire them from within a building would result in the instant death of the missile crew and probable destruction of the missile before launch. Most of the missiles are truck-mounted and are fired - on open ground - from the backs of flat-bedded trucks or larger four-wheel-drive vehicles.

When fired, these missiles generate an enormous flare of light, heat and sound energy - a heat and light signature which is readily detected by IDF target-acquisition systems. Accurate retaliatory fire can be directed at Hizbullah launch sites by IDF aircraft and ground artillery in seconds. Such a reaction would be considered by international military norms to be proportionate and within the general "rules of engagement".

In these circumstances, having fired their missiles, Hizbullah tends to disperse as rapidly as possible. It is unlikely that a flat-bedded truck with a multilaunch rocket-system mounted on it could be easily and rapidly hidden in a village as small as Qana. Nor is it likely that such a truck-mounted weapon or four-wheel-drive vehicle could easily be hidden in a house such as the one targeted by the IDF yesterday.

The pattern and circumstances of the attack are sinister. With no telltale scorch marks from a Hizbullah missile launch visible near the destroyed house, and with no Hizbullah fighters among the dead and injured, the question remains as to what kind of "asset" the IDF could credibly allege to have been contained within the building.

The timing of the attack, taking place as it did during a period of relative calm and not in the immediate aftermath of a Hizbullah missile launch, speaks of a punitive strike designed simply to kill members of the Shia community from which Hizbullah is drawn and receives its moral support. The targeting of unarmed Shia women and children would represent a deliberate targeting of innocent civilians for retaliatory or punitive purposes, and may well constitute a war crime.

Tom Clonan is The Irish Times security analyst.

© The Irish Times [link]

Ok, let's recap: 1. The eyewitnesses are consistent. The IDF's unsubstantiated timeline is refuted by them. 2. The condition of the bodies is not consistent with an 8 A.M. death. 3. Hezbollah fighters couldn't have fired rockets from the building without killing themselves. Nor were there any scorch marks near the house consistent with a missile launch. Is there anything left of the IDF's crude excuse?

ROME, July 30 (Reuters) - The U.N.'s World Food Programme said it had been forced to cancel a planned aid convoy to a southern Lebanese town on Sunday because Israeli forces had declined to give their agreement.

"We are extremely disappointed and indeed frustrated that we have been unable to go ahead with this convoy," Amer Daoudi, WFP Emergency Coordinator for Lebanon, said in a statement released in Rome.

"There are tens of thousands of people in the south who are in desperate need of assistance. Obviously this is a setback."

The six-truck convoy had been meant to take medicines, wheat flour, canned meat and vegetable oil to the Lebanese town of Marjayoun.

"The decision was in accordance with established security procedures in Lebanon, under which WFP requires concurrence from all parties involved in the conflict for humanitarian aid convoy movements. This is the first time that such concurrence has not been forthcoming," the statement said.

Aid workers have complained they are finding it impossible to get medical supplies and food safely to isolated villages in southern Lebanon due to the Israeli bombardment.

Shortly after the WFP statement was released, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he had ordered that humanitarian aid be allowed to reach the south Lebanese village of Qana in which at least 40 civilians were killed by Israeli bombs.

But it was not clear whether WFP food shipments would be affected by Olmert's announcement.

U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland on Friday asked for a 72-hour pause in the fighting to facilitate aid efforts, but Israel on Saturday rejected the call, saying it was not blocking aid from reaching southern Lebanon.

WFP, which is responsible for transporting all aid for U.N. agencies and much of the humanitarian community throughout Lebanon, said another relief convoy was scheduled for Sunday from Aarida -- the only border crossing remaining open to traffic between Lebanon and Syria -- to Beirut.

It said that from Monday it was planning to send at least two convoys a day to southern Lebanon, which has borne the brunt of the bombardment since the conflict started 19 days ago.

The U.N. estimates that at least 800,000 people, more than one-fifth of Lebanon's entire population, have been displaced by the violence. [link]