Mexico leftists take city center in vote protest...

Umm, we already knew that Hugo....

CNN is creating a permanent place, at CNN.com/exchange, where so-called citizen journalists can submit any photos, graphics, audio and video. It is also accepting submissions via e-mail.

Contributors will not be paid, however.

Visitors to the site can view other people's submissions, including ones that CNN does not use on television or elsewhere.

Border guards of the two Koreas briefly traded fire Monday but there were no South Korean casualties, Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said Tuesday.

The shootout occurred around 7:35 p.m. in Yanggu in the eastern portion of the demilitarized zone (DMZ), as North Korean soldiers fired two bullets towards a South Korean guard post, said a JCS official.

City marshals blocked a radio personality from feeding homeless people at a City Hall park Monday, and issued summonses to a television news crew covering a publicity protest against a ban on "mobile soup kitchens."

Israel's Security Cabinet has approved an expansion of the ground campaign against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon, Israeli officials said early Tuesday.

The Israeli government's Foreign Ministry is involved in efforts to influence public opinion on the Internet. Israel's Foreign Ministry orders Internet propagandists, so called "trainee diplomats," to skew online polls and public forums to conform with the Israeli line. This is an organized effort, using "special 'megaphone' software," to alert "hundreds of thousands of Jewish activists" so they can manipulate Internet websites and chatrooms to conform with the slant that already permeates mainstream media.

12 Official Guidelines for the Israeli Spokesman in Time of War...

It seems that the place were water was turned into wine, the wine has now been turned into blood.

"The barbaric war of annihilation the Israeli aggression is waging on our people in Lebanon and Palestine is increasing in ferocity," Assad said in a written address on the occasion of the 61st anniversary of the foundation of the Syria Arab Army.

Gaza: "Israel wants to drive us out of our lands"...

"There are no Hezbollah activists in the village of Qana, Israel is bombarding civilian buildings and vehicles", Spanish journalist Monica Leiva, who is in the southern Lebanese village at the moment, told FOCUS News Agency.

Shameless. Utterly shameless....

CNN anchor takes Israeli spokeswoman to task...

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem, 65, says America's rejection of an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon is "totally unacceptable." He denies that Syria has been supplying arms to Hezbollah and says an international force in Lebanon will only work if it isn't perceived as merely protecting Israel.

�This may be the worst security flaw we have seen in touch screen voting machines,� says Open Voting Foundation president, Alan Dechert. Upon examining the inner workings of one of the most popular paperless touch screen voting machines used in public elections in the United States, it has been determined that with the flip of a single switch inside, the machine can behave in a completely different manner compared to the tested and certified version.

I am writing to you with the hope that you will take swift action to address a grave and existential threat to the United Nations. The events in the Middle East are quickly spinning out of control as today�s attack on the UN offices in Beirut clearly indicates. The central problem is that the UN is no longer able to fulfill its mandate to "keep the peace" because of the obstructionism of the United States.

The Yesha Rabbinical Council announced in response to an IDF attack in Kfar Qanna that "according to Jewish law, during a time of battle and war, there is no such term as 'innocents' of the enemy."

All of the discussions on Christian morality are weakening the spirit of the army and the nation and are costing us in the blood of our soldiers and civilians," the statement said. (Efrat Weiss)

To the Lebanese, and most in the Arab world, the United Nations now symbolises everything that is corrupt about the international community and its "conscience". The world body, it has become clearer by the day, is a mere plaything of the United States and, by default, of Israel too. It is nothing more than a talking shop, one so enfeebled that it lacks the moral backbone even to denouce unequivocally the murder of four of its unarmed observers by the Israeli army last week. How can Lebanon expect protection for its civilians from an international body as emasculated as this?

Pictures From Qana...

At the moment the effect can only be produced in a lab under specific conditions but future applications could include seeing through rubble at earthquake sites, or looking at parts of the body obscured by bone.

Gaza: "Israel wants to drive us out our lands"...

Anti-war Tel Aviv rally draws Jewish, Israeli Arab crowd...

FLASHBACK: CONTROLLED PRESS HIDES CHERTOFF'S ISRAELI ROOTS...

I doubt if the one surviving girl of the family on the beach in Gaza killed last month when an Israeli warship fired on civilians cared about whether her family were killed with a gun or a precision rocket.

An Israeli air raid on the Lebanese village of Qana which killed at least 54 civilians was the result of indiscriminate Israeli bombing which amounts to a war crime, Human Rights Watch said.

The Mediterranean is threatened by its worst ever environmental disaster after Israel's bombing of a power plant in Lebanon sent thousands of tons of fuel gushing into the sea, the environment minister charged on Saturday.

You must have a heart of stone not to feel the outrage that those of us watching this experienced yesterday. This slaughter was an obscenity, an atrocity - yes, if the Israeli air force truly bombs with the "pinpoint accuracy'' it claims, this was also a war crime. Israel claimed that missiles had been fired by Hizbollah gunmen from the south Lebanese town of Qana - as if that justified this massacre. Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, talked about "Muslim terror" threatening "western civilisation" - as if the Hizbollah had killed all these poor people.

And there was no doubt of the missile which killed all those children yesterday. It came from the United States, and upon a fragment of it was written: "For use on MK-84 Guided Bomb BSU-37-B". No doubt the manufacturers can call it "combat-proven" because it destroyed the entire three-storey house in which the Shalhoub and Hashim families lived. They had taken refuge in the basement from an enormous Israeli bombardment, and that is where most of them died.

The border was open on Sunday, but people arriving in Lebanon were forced to leave their cars, walk around the bomb crater and find new transportation on the Lebanese side of the border.

"We are extremely disappointed, and indeed frustrated, that we have been unable to go ahead with this convoy. There are tens of thousands of people in the south who are in desperate need of assistance. Obviously this is a setback," Amer Daoudi, WFP emergency coordinator for Lebanon, said in a statement.

"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.

The Lobby was furious: what was holding up the "transformation" of the Middle East? How is it that the regimes of Bashar al-Assad and the Iranian mullahs were still standing?

A senior government source said Monday morning that despite a 48-hour halt in Israel Air Force activity in Lebanon, "there is no cease-fire."

Meanwhile, Defense Minister Amir Peretz told the Knesset on Monday that Israel must not agree to an immediate cease-fire, and that the military would expand and strengthen its attacks against Hezbollah.

Israeli settlers stone human rights workers in Hebron...

Speaking on Hezbollah television, Nasrallah dismissed a new diplomatic effort by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, saying the United States wants the fighting to continue.

A teenage mother clutches her two-month-old baby to her chest. Both are dead and mutilated. Beneath them, in what has become their concrete and steel tomb, are dozens more; body after broken young body, tangled and as yet unreachable in the ruin of a single house.

This was Qana, where more than 60 civilians, mostly women and children, are thought to have been killed in an Israeli missile strike in the early hours.

Obesity Maps, fast foods, slow bodies...

The congressional reaction to Hezbollah's attack on Israel and Israel's retaliatory bombing of Lebanon provide the latest example of why AIPAC's lock on US foreign policy in the Middle East must be examined.

"The Bush Administration is bad enough in tolerating measures they would not accept anywhere else but Israel," says Henry Siegman, the former head of the American Jewish Congress and a Middle East expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. "But the Congress, if anything, is urging the Administration on and criticizing them even at their most accommodating. When it comes to the Israeli-Arab conflict, the terms of debate are so influenced by organized Jewish groups, like AIPAC, that to be critical of Israel is to deny oneself the ability to succeed in American politics."

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has announced its strong support for Ambassador John Bolton to continue his tenure as US Ambassador to the United Nations and strongly urged US Senators to confirm him in his post at the world body.

US, Britain live in 'isolation' for Israel policy...

While it has become normal to read scathing -- occasionally valid -- critiques of the hateful and chauvinistic discourse "inherent" in Islamic and even Christian brands of fundamentalism, Jewish fundamentalism, which is among the key factors informing current Israeli apartheid policies and laws, remains a taboo subject that is rarely discussed or debated in the West.

US prepares to leave South Korea...

Israeli warplanes carried out airstrikes in southern Lebanon on Monday, hours after agreeing to temporarily halt raids while investigating a bombing that killed nearly 60 Lebanese civilians, mostly women and children seeking shelter.

How is it that Israel can persist in massacring people while the world stands by? What justification does it give itself, and what gives the world pause? The answer is as obvious as it is absurd: the Holocaust. The Jewish state receives dispensation for the crimes committed against the Jewish people. It was nearly exterminated, and now it must protect itself.

How many massacres can Israel commit before this dispensation runs out? Kibya, 1953; Sabra and Shatila, 1982; Jenin, 2002; Qana, 2006, and all the others in between. (Let us not forget that for Qana, this is the second time around. In 1996, Israel massacred 100 people there.)

Despite Israel's repeated insistence that it does not want an armed conflict with Syria, could the United States be encouraging the Israelis to attack Syria, or to goad the Syrians into attacking Israel first?

According to Sunday's Jerusalem Post, IDF officials have been "receiving indications from the United States that the U.S. would be interested in seeing Israel attack Syria."

Far more Americans use the Internet to get their news than a decade ago but the rate of online news audience growth is slowing, according to a study released on Sunday.

srael has repeatedly stated it does not plan to get Syria involved in the current conflict in Lebanon. IDF officials said Sunday that the strike was aimed at preventing arms from being smuggled into Lebanon and transferred to Hizbullah' hands.

You must have a heart of stone not to feel the outrage that those of us watching this experienced yesterday. This slaughter was an obscenity, an atrocity � yes, if the Israeli air force truly bombs with the " pinpoint accuracy'' it claims, this was also a war crime. Israel claimed that missiles had been fired by Hizbollah gunmen from the south Lebanese town of Qana � as if that justified this massacre. Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, talked about "Muslim terror" threatening " western civilisation" � as if the Hizbollah had killed all these poor people.

TONY Blair last night dismissed a growing Cabinet revolt over the Middle East crisis by boasting of his "complete inner confidence" in his own convictions.

He shrugged off criticism from senior colleagues, including Commons Leader Jack Straw, over his handling of the conflict.

The U.S. federal government agency at the center of a political controversy over foreign management of U.S. ports is scrutinizing a deal by Israeli company Check Point Software Technologies to acquire Sourcefire.

The Israel Defense Forces indicated yesterday that it might not have been responsible for the deaths of at least 54 Lebanese, including 37 children , when a building bombed in an Israeli air strike in the village of Qana collapsed yesterday - but was unable to offer an alternative explanation.

9/11 + The Neo-Con Agenda Panel Discussion to Replay on Tuesday, August 1, 2006 at 6:10PM (EDT)...

S eeking to justify its sweeping curtailment of Americans' Fourth Amendment protections, the Bush administration is blaming the spread of new technology.

In particular, cell phones and fiber-optic cables. CIA Director Michael Hayden told a Senate committee last week that the exploitation of such advanced technology by terrorists makes it necessary for the U.S. government to eavesdrop on Americans without getting court warrants.

That warning has a nicely calculated ominous tone, but it's completely unpersuasive. It's like arguing for a rollback in Americans' First Amendment rights because al-Qaida operatives have discovered satellite radio and high-definition television.

* The Border Patrol paid $20 million for camera systems that failed to work or were never installed.

* A $10-billion border security program meant to track visitors' U.S. entries and departures failed to monitor the departures and was vulnerable to unauthorized access.

* The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) spent more than $68,000 on 2,000 sets of dog booties for canine units. The booties couldn�t be used and remain in storage.

* Customs and Border Protection ordered 37 $2,500 rain jackets for agents to wear while training at an agency firing range, which, it turned out, is closed when it rains.

* The Secret Service purchased 12 iPod Nanos and 42 iPod Shuffles for "training and data storage."

* FEMA can't account for 12 of 20 boats its employees purchased for $208,000 per vessel.

Construction work has begun near Washington on a vast germ warfare laboratory intended to help protect the US against an attack with biological weapon, but critics say the laboratory's work will violate international law and its extreme secrecy will exacerbate a biological arms race.

The Pentagon is keeping a close eye on what troops are posting on the Web. Special attention is being paid to video that shows the aftermath of combat.

The Israeli air force carried out strikes Monday in southern Lebanon despite an agreement to halt raids for 48 hours after nearly 60 Lebanese civilians were killed in an Israeli bombing, the army said.

Think of this as part two of Recherche du trillions perdu, my Online Journal article on Dov Zakheim, former Bush appointee as Pentagon Comptroller from May 4, 2001 to March 10, 2004. At that time he was unable to explain the disappearance of $1 trillion dollars. Actually, nearly three years earlier, Donald Rumsfeld announced on September 10, 2001 that an audit discovered $2.3 trillion was also missing from the Pentagon books. That story, as I mentioned, was buried under 9-11�s rubble. The two sums disappeared on Zakheim�s watch.

Judicial Inc�s bio of Dov (linked below) tells us Zakheim was/is a dual Israeli/American citizen and an ordained rabbi and had been tracking the halls of US government for 25 years, casting defense policy and influence on Presidents Reagan, Clinton, Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. ... Judicial Inc points out that most of Israel�s armaments were gotten thanks to him. Squads of US F-16 and F-15 were classified military surplus and sold to Israel at a fraction of their value.

Latest pitiful play for sympathy...

So here is the mother of all scandals.

For two years, the FBI has suspected AIPAC of spying for a foreign country, and for those two years (and for decades before) that group suspected of spying for Israel has been reshaping the US Congress for the benefit of a foreign government.

And THAT is the mother of all scandals.

Think about that as billions of your tax dollars flow to Israel while your roads and schools crumble and decay and services are cut.

Think about that as the coffins come home with your loved ones inside.

Think about that when you and a million of your fellow citizens march down the streets of America opposing wars built on lies and deceptions and wonder why the government just doesn�t want to listen to you any more.

The congressional reaction to Hezbollah's attack on Israel and Israel's retaliatory bombing of Lebanon provide the latest example of why AIPAC's lock on US foreign policy in the Middle East must be examined.

Israel rejected mounting international pressure on Monday to end its 20-day-old war against Hizbollah guerrillas and the United Nations indefinitely postponed a meeting on a new peacekeeping force for Lebanon.

Iraq: Israel carrying out 'massacres' in Lebanon...

Iran is a significant, respected player in the Middle East which is playing a stabilizing role, French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said on Monday.

One by one - or when they were small enough, two at a time - the bodies of the children were taken away on stretchers carried by stone-faced Red Cross rescuers who loaded them into an ambulance. When no more would fit, the ambulance would drive away.

Accused of sexually abusing young boys, a Brooklyn rabbi lit for Israel 22 years ago. Now one alleged victim wants him brought back for trial.

More than 2,500 people on Saturday attended a demonstration against the war in Lebanon, marching from Tel Aviv's Rabin Square to a rally at the Cinemateque plaza.

Like I noted above, I think we all need to keep in mind that there hasn�t been a war waged in the past 60 years that did not use lies and propaganda to seduce the public. Why would Israel�s latest invasion of Lebanon be any different?

INDEX ON ILLEGAL US WEAPONS IN LEBANON...

Lebanon, which has never fought Israel and has 40 daily newspapers, 42 colleges and universities and hundreds of different banks, is being destroyed by our planes and cannon and nobody is taking into account the amount of hatred we are sowing.

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said he opposed calling for a truce, as requested by Annan in an impassioned plea to an emergency council meeting he called after the strike on Qana, the deadliest single attack of Israel's 19-day-old war against Hizbollah militants.

As I entered the Church, I noticed an American Flag and an Israeli Flag on the stage. Had they sent the Palestinian Flag out to be cleaned? This was not a good sign.

Only hours after I wrote this look what they did: Fifty innocent people were killed in a bombing raid in Qana in Lebanon...

As we look abroad aghast at this month�s accelerated hostilities and atrocities in the Middle East, the giddy cheering of the �Christian Zionists� in our midst is truly frightening.

A Department of Defense directive released on April 18 of this year states that Donald Rumsfeld has the authority to call military retirees back on active duty.

Hollywood Split Over Mel Gibson's Future...

SEATTLE SHOOTING SUSPECT IS A BAPTIZED CHRISTIAN!...

Man Arrested For Shooting Photo Of Police Activity

Bush urges Mideast peace "for the sake of children" Bush urges Mideast peace “for the sake of children��...

The spokesman, Adam Ereli, told reporters in Jerusalem that Israel would coordinate with the United Nations to provide a 24-hour period during which residents of southern Lebanon could leave area safely.

�Israel has, of course, reserved the right to take action against targets preparing attacks against it,� he said.

Top 10 Signs of the Impending U.S. Police State...

Qana: Photographic Evidence of Israeli Crimes against Humanity...

The State Department agency in charge of $1.4 billion in reconstruction money in Iraq used an accounting shell game to hide ballooning cost overruns on its projects there and knowingly withheld information on schedule delays from Congress, a federal audit released late Friday has found.

Officials: There 'aren't enough troops' to fix problems in Iraq...

The �Human Shield� LIE Exposed...

The Bush administration's decision to move thousands of U.S. soldiers into Baghdad to quell sectarian warfare before it explodes into outright civil war underscores a problem that's hindered the U.S. effort to rebuild Iraq from the beginning: There aren't enough troops to do the job.

Many U.S. officials in Baghdad and in Washington privately concede the point. They say they've been forced to shuffle U.S. units from one part of the country to another for at least two years because there haven't been enough soldiers and Marines to deal simultaneously with Sunni Muslim insurgents and Shiite militias; train Iraqi forces; and secure roads, power lines, border crossings and ammunition dumps.

Ken Lay may have passed away and Jeff Skilling and other former executives face dozens of years behind bars, but Enron�s legacy�single-handedly pushing electric power deregulation at the federal and state levels�unfortunately remains the law of the land. The radical restructuring that Enron achieved a decade ago overturned a century of orderly, accountable electricity planning that had made America�s power system the envy of the world. But our deregulated system is now a mockery, and consumers are left with higher prices and poorer reliability. That�s why our electric grid�from the August 2003 blackout that cascaded across the Midwest and Northeast, to recent power outages in New York and California�is more susceptible to failures that trigger blackouts.

Rice had hoped to leave the region after concrete progress on ending the fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon. But her work was hampered severely by Israel's missile strike early Sunday that killed more than 50 people, including many children.

It is very difficult to see how Israel can actually avoid attacking Syria. They and their US backers have set up Syria as the proverbial monster which they now have no option but to destroy. To a certain extent the same applies to Iran though, because Syria is closer, the logistics of Israel striking Syria are a lot less complex than trying to attack Iran, something the Israelis would prefer the US to do for them.

War Is A Racket...

When a bloody ambush in a Lebanese village ripped apart a squad of Israeli troops last week, the full reality of the fighting reached homes in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem for the first time. But calls for a major offensive have reawakened painful memories of old defeats, and old losses, across the troubled border.

Made in the USA, imported by Israel.

Emergency Security Council Meeting Convenes...

Israel still insists the 1996 shelling was an accident and that its forces had a legitimate militant target - a Hezbollah military unit that had fired mortars and rockets from near the Qana base.

THE TWO ISRAELI SOLDIERS WERE CAPTURED IN LEBANON...

Tony Blair was facing a full-scale cabinet rebellion last night over the Middle East crisis after his former Foreign Secretary warned that Israel's actions risked destabilising all of Lebanon.

Retired general Altay Tokat told the Turkish news weekly Yeni Aktuel that he ordered the attacks near to the homes of two civil servants in what he described as a move to intimidate them and make them understand the gravity of the situation.

'I remember exactly what he said: 'I'm tired of the killing, I'm tired of ordering people to kill. When I get back I want to get as far away from death as I can,'' his father said. 'I knew something had happened.'

Is Syrian Shoot-Down of Israeli Drone A Move Towards Full blown War?...

The truth of Blair's 'urgent diplomacy'...

So I ask all of the blind supporters of Israel this question: If Israeli news media clearly and openly take part in complete government censorship, how can you possibly trust them and how can you logically dismiss news and information that contradicts their claims?

Bush strategy is failing...

"I love the people of America. It's the government I hate. Tell the American people that we received their gift. The missile that they gave to Israel - we have received it, and this is the result," he says, motioning to the coffins.

As The Times noted in its lead editorial of July 16, 2006 entitled �The Real Agenda�: �This whole sorry story has been on vivid display since [Hamdan]. . . . For one brief, shining moment, it appeared that the administration realized it had met a [Constitutional] check that it could not simply ignore. . . . But by week�s end it was clear that the president�s idea of cooperation was purely cosmetic. At hearings last week, the administration made it clear that it merely wanted Congress to legalize President Bush�s illegal actions . . . . As for the Geneva Conventions, [the] administration . . . . want[s] to scrap the international consensus that no prisoner may be robbed of basic human dignity. . . . The most embarrassing moment came when Bush loyalists argued that the United States could not follow the Geneva Conventions because Common Article Three, which has governed the treatment of wartime prisoners for more than half a century, was too vague. Which part of �civilized peoples,� �judicial guarantees� or �humiliating and degrading treatment� do they find confusing?�

Israel's inability to beat Hezbollah directly leads it to retreat to its enduring strengths - long range destruction. I do not say indiscriminate destruction, since it is clear that they are extremely discriminating - when they kill civilians, they do so with precision-guided rockets and missiles. They've also continued to destroy the routes of escape for civilians, and appear to be readying themselves for war with Syria. Oh, and they're continuing the killing in Gaza despite rumours of a peace deal.

Of course, this is all going on because Bush and Blair have authorised it. The stupendous callousness of the Prime Minister in publicly declaring that he does not wish Israel to cease its murder has led even some of his loyalists to question what he's doing.

One of the most outspoken critics of the war in Iraq, Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey (D-Petaluma) today introduced H.R. 5875, legislation that would repeal the President�s War Powers for the Iraq War. While the Congress authorized President Bush to wage war against Iraq in 2002, the original authorization did not anticipate an open-ended U.S. military campaign against Iraq, or the occupation that currently exists.

In their joint press Conference at the White House , President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair renewed in no uncertain terms their threats against Syria and Iran. These threats are now backed by concrete military plans.

"The message is very, very simple to them. It is that, you have a choice. Iran and Syria have a choice. And they may think that they can avoid this choice; in fact, they can't. And when things are set in train like what has happened in Lebanon over the past few weeks, it only, in my view, underscores the fact they have this choice. They can either come in and participate as proper and responsible members of the international community, or they will face the risk of increasing confrontation.

This and other statements point to escalation where Lebanon is slated to be used as a casus belli, a just cause for war on Iran and Syria, due to their alleged support to Hizbollah.

An Unfair War...

BOMBS destined to be used by Israel are being flown via Scotland only because the Irish government refused to allow them to land on its soil.

Israel�s new and untested leadership believes that massive and disproportionate retaliation, similar to the reprisal raids of the 1950s, albeit with newer technology, will convey the message that Israel has had enough of having its gestures towards peace manipulated.

The U.S. Department of State is on track to start issuing passports with radio frequency identification (RFID) chips next week, despite warnings from some security experts that such systems could be accessed or tracked by hackers.

The situation in Lebanon is the result of many years of unconditional support for Israel, and over $42 million dollars in pro-Israel PAC money contributed to our Congressmen. It's time to do something about this. I would encourage all Americans to write to their Congressmen and let them know that enough is enough. If you don't want to write your own letter, feel free to copy and modify this one.

HOW MUCH MONEY DID YOUR CONGRESSMAN TAKE?

Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., co-author of a Senate bill on depleted uranium that passed June 20, said other studies have been done on the subject. Those studies concluded there was no evidence that exposure to the metal caused illnesses.

Hezbollah warned on Sunday it would punish Israel for the deaths of at least 51 civilians in Israeli air raids on the village of Qana, saying the Jewish state had to accept the consequences of its "massacre".

TWO US cargo aircraft carrying weapons for Israel are due to make stop-overs at a Scottish airport over the weekend with the approval of the British government, airport authorities said Saturday.

The two Boeing 747s are carrying "dangerous material" from Texas to Tel Aviv, and have been given authorisation to land, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said.

"They are hazardous material flights: the items that they are carrying are understood to be of a dangerous nature," a spokesman said.

According to the scurrilous war criminal Jacob Dallal of the IOF Wehrmacht, the children and old people of Qana, Lebanon, are guilty of firing rockets on Israel, and that�s why his outlaw nation targeted a building where refugees slept, killing sixty of them.

Wow� I don�t quite know what to make of this...

Olmert: We need 10 more days of military operations...

US occupation forces had demolished a thousand-year old historic district dating back to the First Abbasi Period (762-833 C.E.) in the city of al-Qa'im near the Iraq- Syria border, turning it into a soccer field.

Abdullah condemned "the ugly crime perpetrated by Israeli forces in Qana, which led to the killing of innocent civilians, including a large number of children and women," said a statement released by the king's press office.

srael has virtually destroyed the infrastructure of Lebanon. Instead of confronting Hezbollah directly (which I think they are afraid to do), they've bombed the civilian areas of Lebanon, hoping the Lebanese and Arabs will turn on Hezbollah. What's interesting is that the Arab world is becoming more united than ever against what Israel, with American support, is doing to the Lebanese.

CNN International is reporting that thousands of Lebanese protesters have stormed the U. N. compound in Beirut. The crowd is growing by the minute and includes Christians as well as Muslims, all praising Hezbollah and expressing their hatred of the U. S., Israel and the U. N. CNN reports that earlier today Israel bombed a four-story apartment building in the town of Qana killing between 36 to 51 civilians and this, in turn, impelled Lebanese who were "on the sidelines" to come out into the street. The pictures of the dead and injured are described as "horrific" because most of the victims were women and children. Even though Israel warned the civilians to leave, the CNN reporter explained that due to Israeli air strikes against civilian vehicles, the degraded iroads and the lack of gas, many civilians were too afraid and/or simply unable to leave.

As a result of this Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora has said that his country will not engage in talks with the Israelis in light of what he calls a "war crime" against civilians.

THE INCUBATOR LIE...

ISRAELI warplanes struck the town of Masnaa, the main crossing point over the border between Lebanon and Syria, security sources said.

One person was wounded when three missiles slammed into the last customs building at the crossing point, digging craters in the middle of the road, they said. The passageway was closed by the strike.

It also followed an announcement by an explosives specialist with the Israeli police said that the "unknown" missile fired by the pro-Syrian Hezbollah at the Israeli town of Afula on Friday was Syrian-made.

Several documents suggest that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers may have lied publicly about the involvement of the vice president's office in awarding the contract. It will be remembered that Vice President Dick Cheney was chairman and CEO of Halliburton from 1995-2000.

THE LIE OF THE CENTURY...

Republicans called it a stunt but promised to quickly wrap up the inquiry. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which is overseeing the investigation, said his report was near completion and there was no need for the fuss.

That was nine months ago.

Camp 6, a state-of-the-art maximum-security jail built by a Halliburton subsidiary, will be able to hold 200 prisoners. Commander Robert Durand, a spokesman for Joint Task Force Guantanamo, said the $30m, two-storey block was due to open at the end of September. He added: "Camp 6 is designed to improve the quality of life for the detainees and provide greater protection for the people working in the facility."

Israeli missiles hit several buildings in a southern Lebanon village as people slept Sunday, killing at least 56, most of them children, in the deadliest attack in 19 days of fighting. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed "great sorrow" for the airstrikes but blamed Hezbollah guerrillas for using the area to launch rockets at Israel, and said he would not halt the army's operation.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice returns to the region today for the second round of diplomacy in a week. In the hours before her arrival, Hezbollah political leaders here reversed course and agreed to join a Lebanese government proposal aimed at stopping the fighting in the country's south.

Stay out of Somalia, U.S. tells Eritrea, Ethiopia Stay out of Somalia, U.S. tells Eritrea, Ethiopia...

Israel insists it is not looking for a fight with Syria, but is still taking precautions in case it becomes embroiled in a war with the neighbor it accuses of sponsoring Hezbollah.

Syria's ambassador to the United States, Imad Moustapha, has not had a single meeting with any senior Bush administration official in a year and half. Even in the current crisis, his phone does not ring.

The Bush administration may explicitly state that Syria can rein in Hezbollah, whose fighters in Lebanon captured two Israeli soldiers and ignited the fighting that now threatens a wider conflict. But the White House has made no calls to start any kind of dialogue with Syria on resolving the crisis, Moustapha said, nor has the State Department.

The State Department agency in charge of $1.4 billion in reconstruction money in Iraq used an accounting shell game to hide ballooning cost overruns on its projects in Iraq and knowingly withheld information on schedule delays from Congress, a federal audit released late Friday has found.

The agency hid construction overruns by listing them as overhead or administrative costs, according to the audit, written by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an independent office that reports to Congress and the Pentagon.

In March 2005, USAid asked the Iraq Reconstruction and Management Office at the United States Embassy in Baghdad for permission to downsize some projects to ease widespread financing problems. In its request, it said that it had to �to absorb greatly increased construction costs� at the Basra hospital, and that it would make a modest shift of priorities and reduce �contractor overhead� on the project.

The hospital�s construction budget was $50 million. By April of this year, Bechtel had told the aid agency that because of escalating costs for security and other problems, the project would actually cost $98 million to complete. But in an official report to Congress that month, the agency �was reporting the hospital project cost as $50 million,� the inspector general wrote in his report.

Israel�s Government has thrown its weight behind efforts by supporters to counter what it believes to be negative bias and a tide of pro-Arab propaganda. The Foreign Ministry has ordered trainee diplomats to track websites and chatrooms so that networks of US and European groups with hundreds of thousands of Jewish activists can place supportive messages.

HENS MAY BELIEVE the rooster who tells them his cock-a-doodle-doo brings the sunrise, and there may be a few gullible Labour MPs who think Tony Blair�s dash to �persuade� George W. Bush to pressure Israel has not been carefully choreographed by the Americans and the Israelis � but the rest of Britain will be harder to persuade.

Our opinion is simply expressed. It is that George W. Bush is not America. We see danger in conflating one rogue US President with the personality and the ideals of a whole great nation.

Two revealing details stand out. The first is that the President of the United States actually sent a message of congratulations to Hagee's Washington clambake. Paradoxically, the chief executive stated that Hagee and his acolytes are "spreading the hope of God's love . . ." This statement is somewhat difficult to square with the fact that Hagee, who held one of his previous s�ances in an Israeli Air Force hangar, seems to positively lust for bloodshed. He is not only a strong supporter of the Iraq fiasco and the leveling of apartment blocks in Beirut, but has also written a book fomenting readers to put political pressure on their government to attack Iran.

UN emergency relief co-ordinator Jan Egeland asked for a 72-hour pause in the fighting to enable relief workers to evacuate the elderly, children and the wounded and to send in supplies.

"There is something fundamentally wrong with a war where there are more dead children than armed men," he said.

I was one of the lucky ones following Hurricane Katrina. Today I raise a glass to those in Palestine, consider their fate, and count my blessings.

Deprivation of water has proven one of the most effective means of crushing Palestinian society, consigning an entire people to perpetual desperation. Having reduced Palestinians to a crippled state, Israel lately appears determined to unplug remaining life support. Appeals to international law, insistence on water as a fundamental human right, the (pathetically muted) outcry of the international community, the endless recitation of deplorable health statistics (particularly concerning those most vulnerable, Palestinian children), have done little to alleviate the anguish of the victims. Or their thirst. We must continue to speak out on their behalf and redouble our efforts to secure for them the things we take for granted.

It is certainly a myth that Nero played a fiddle while Rome burned�since the violin was not invented for a full fifteen centuries after his rule�but it is true Condi Rice, Bush�s Secretary of State, played the piano in Kuala Lumpur as Lebanese continue to die under a hard rain of Israeli bombs and apparently chemical weapons, a situation allowed to continue after Condi nixed the �false promise� of a cease-fire and thumbed her nose at the Syrians and Hezbollah.

How utterly disgusting.

Up to 600 Lebanese civilians have been killed in the ongoing Israeli campaign and as many as 200 are still buried in rubble of bombed buildings...

An international medical charity has said that Israel's promised humanitarian aid corridors in south Lebanon are an illusion and that rockets have landed close to its teams two days in a row.

It's a kind of humanitarian alibi because in effect there is no real humanitarian access in the south," said Christopher Stokes of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) or Doctors Without Borders.

"The international community is deluding itself, if it believes there is."

This is satellite imagery of the Haret Hreik quarter of Beirut, the Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut, before and after Israeli bombing. When the media talks about �strongholds� I often think of a building or bunker not an entire neighborhood. This just shows that Israel is bombing without regard or a care in the world for civilian life. They flattened entire city blocks to take out a few terrorists.

The announcement came two weeks after the administration said it would sell Israel its latest supply of JP-8 aviation fuel valued at up to $210m to help Israeli warplanes �keep peace and security in the region.�

The United States also rushed a delivery of precision-guided bombs requested by Israel after launching its airstrikes against Hizbollah fighters in Lebanon 17 days ago, The New York Times reported last week.

Government to take over suicide hotline?...

Antiwar Candidate Backs Israeli Strikes...

While the Lebanese are fighting for survival amidst relentless deadly attacks by Israel, the Jewish State is receiving strong encouragement and support from an unusual source; Evangelical Christians.

An Israeli naval vessel fired a warning shot Monday night at a Turkish ferry en route to Beirut to pick up Australian nationals trying to flee Lebanon, said Turkish Transportation Minister Binyali Yildirim yesterday.

VIDEO FROM PALESTINE...

Lebanese doctors, aid workers, and refugees are all reporting that the official number of dead in Lebanon is far lower than the actual.

"I think that the real number is at least 750 dead so far," Dr. Bachir el-Sham at the Complex Hospital in Sidon told IPS in a telephone interview. Sidon is 43 km south of Beirut, and just north of Tyre. This region has seen the worst of the Israeli bombing.

The media magnate Rupert Murdoch is expected to offer Tony Blair a senior role in his News Corporation empire when he stands down as Prime Minister.

A lot of attention has been paid to the Katyusha rockets used by Hezbollah. We have been told time and time again that they are being loaded with ball bearing so that they can cause damage when they land. Today I heard CNN tell us about how they are now being made larger and more powerful. As a matter of fact the new versions of this rocket are capable of having 250 lbs of explosive. Of course CNN, in a blatant attempt to exaggerate the situation described the 20 lb. bomb as a half of a 500 lb bomb. Unbelievable! Why not just say it has a fraction of the power of a nuclear bomb and start refereeing them to as nukelettes?

British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned Iran and Syria that they face 'the risk of increasing confrontation' unless they reform their behavior in the Middle East.