That Long Newspaper Spoon

Let's see what's on the end of that long newspaper spoon... William Burroughs, "Naked Lunch" (1959).

This book really ought to be mandatory reading for all second graders, by the way. On the end of that long newspaper spoon? A mean gruel and lies, cons and mind-heists.

Let us look at a few recent topics: How I Helped Moved a Factory To Mexico, from Business Week, actually a pretty good business publication. This article goes to show you the sheer insanity of the US government. Sure, global forces often more or less mandate taking plants out of the country.

The factory in the US closes, and $18/hour workers lose their jobs. The jobs go to Mexico, where the same work pays $3/hour, including benefits. Since $3/hour is not nearly as good as $18/hour, the flood from Mexico to the US continues.

Almost no one in Mexico is starving. As an illegal alien farm worker from Oaxaca told me over drinks at the bar about Oaxaca, "Comida, si. Dinero, no." In Oaxaca, there is plenty of food, but no money. So everyone heads up here. Why, cuz they are starving? No, so they can buy 27 inch color TV sets.

US workers lose when US jobs are shipped overseas, then lose once again with the mad, lunatic illegal alien invasion that is ruining US working class jobs all over our nation. We have been shipping jobs to Mexico wildly since NAFTA in 1994.

One would think that this flood of jobs to Mexico would have resulted in a dramatic reduction in illegal immigration, but in fact, 1994 approximately coincides with a total explosion in the illegal immigrant tsunami to the US.

After NAFTA, workers and consumers in the US, Mexico and Canada all lost ground. Got that? Workers in Mexico, the US and Canada all got screwed by NAFTA. Some say they never made it up since either. Only business cleaned up, and only some businesses at that.

All free trade agreements between disparate nations, that I can tell, are going to have the exact same effects as NAFTA. Probably all free trade agreements that the US has negotiated since NAFTA have had similar effects, probably on a smaller scale.

Workers, consumers and public all get screwed. The environment takes a massive hit. Crappy Mexican trucks flood our highways and destroy them. All free trade agreements are always sold with the same load of crap that NAFTA was, as benefiting workers, consumers, the public, and hell, even the environment, why not?

Nearly the entire US media, from top to bottom, is in on this lie, and if you only read the MSM, you will never figure out the con. Workers, consumers, the public, the environment, and lots of small businesses get screwed by NAFTA-bullshit, and on top of that, we get an avalanche of illegal aliens.

Wow, what a deal! Hail NAFTA! Hail free trade!

File under lies, lies, and more lies: As reasonable folks may have guessed, Business Week (once again, heads up to a good capitalist magazine) columnist Ed Wallace informs us that there is no gas shortage. No gas shortage, no oil shortage, no nothing like that.

Has the media ever told us that? No. Have the politicians ever told us that? No. What do the media and pols tell us? That there is a gas and oil shortage! Why is there a gas and oil shortage? Oh, so many things! Especially, rising demand in China and India! Oh, but what a load of crap that is!

We are also told that we are somewhere near Peak Oil (but no one knows when that hits or what it even means) and this is the cause of the problem. Forget it. Peak oil implies a supply-demand equation, and no such mathematics is working like that here.

The cheerleaders for capitalism tell us that one of the great things about capitalism is supply and demand. It is true that this is an excellent way of fixing prices, and it is possible that socialist economies ignore this at the risk of their extinction. But oil prices have nothing to do with supply and demand! Nothing!

The fundamentals of the oil and gas market are exactly the same as when oil was $60/barrel back in 2006. Whether the market can go back to the $20/barrel in 2002 is not known; possibly it cannot. Check out this great, prophetic Tom Friedman column from that year wondering if the Iraq War will shoot oil to the horror of $60/barrel.

But as far as supply and demand go, oil ought to be no more than $60/barrel and I assume that gas should be no more than $2/gallon or so. So why is it $120/barrel instead of $60?

Because capitalism doesn't necessarily work on supply and demand. The rest is just sheer speculation. Traders are pulling their money out of the sinking dollar and plunking it right into oil and other commodities, and it's sure been a nice ride all right. Just a bunch of speculators bidding the price up like crazed buyers at an auction; that's all it is. That's the cause of your $4/gallon gas.

Oil reserves are at their highest levels since 1999. Gasoline reserves are at their highest levels since 1993 (!) But surely demand is rising, China and India and all that? Nope, demand has been falling all year now and will probably fall even into the summer.

On the other hand, oil refineries are not necessarily doing that well at all, at least according to them. They are getting killed by high oil prices on the one hand and low gasoline demand on the other. In order to make a decent profit, refineries have deliberately cut back oil production. The purpose of running the refineries at low speed is to push up the price of gas even further.

Distillates such as airline fuel and diesel have seen their prices so through the roof, and there are shortages of these, but they are deliberately created by the industry. If there were, why are we exporting more distillates than we are importing. Not only that, but imports of distillates have crashed by some 40% in a year.

It would seem that in all of this insanity something like a National Industrial Policy would be called for. For decades, countries South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan and now China, not to mention most of Western Europe, have done just that.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that capitalism with no government (free market neoliberalism) is an orchestra of great musicians with no composer. At some point, it's the economic equivalent to an insane asylum or an elementary school playground.

We can also see that that all of the feverish nostrums peddled by the politico-media Lying Classes are loads of garbage? We need to fly to Saudi Arabia and beg the Saudis to turn up the oil spigots! We need to drill in the Arctic!

We need to drill everywhere, off the beach next to your house! We need to get rid of environmental regulations and taxes that make gas so expensive! And last but not least, the favorite of right-wing liars everywhere, we need more refineries!

We do not really need any of these things, at least at the moment. The oil refineries lie is one of the most evil of them all. It is probably peddled by the stinking garbage in human forms that run the oil industry itself.

The line goes like this:

-Oil is high!
-Why is it high?
-Hardly any new refineries since (insert year)!
-Why not?
-Evil environmentalists! Evil regulations! They've made it impossible to build new refineries!
-(sputtering) Bastard environmentalists and regulators! Get rid of them so we can build more refineries!
-Yes, yes, yes!

The thing is, this whole line is just an incredibly devious lie peddled by Oil Company Scum and their gargoyle allies in government and media and rightwing politics. No regulations have gotten in the way of building any new refineries in the US.

The industry itself has flat out refused to build new oil refineries in the US because industry does not want to create more refinery supply. Low numbers of refineries are good for keeping gas supply low and prices high. The conversational ruse above is designed to get rid of existing environmental and other regulations at existing plants.

This ethanol mandate crap is about to do the same thing to food prices. My advice if you are worried about your money to put it into food stockpiles, preferably non-perishable. Food is going to go up in value quite a bit soon - it is already - and it is not going to be pretty.

It's looking ugly and it's going to get uglier. We socialists have in general done a superb job of feeding people and a way better job of feeding people than capitalism has (despite the Mt. Everest of capitalist lies about how socialism starves people) and hopefully a hungrier world will find more socialist-oriented policies are better for filling the belly.

My bullshit detector was screaming the other day when Yahoo Headlines shouted in my ear that Congress was going to be briefed on how evil North Korea was helping wicked Syria build a diabolical nuclear reactor.

I remember well when Israel bombed the plant in question.

I looked into the story extensively at the time and my conclusion was that Syria was building a chemical weapons plant, not a nuclear reactor plant, at the site. The North Koreans are experts at chemical weapons stuff and the Scud missiles to shoot them with, and that was apparently why they were there.

Now there is reportedly a new video showing that evil Syria was just about this far (index and thumb nearly touching) from building a devilish nuclear power plant, to build nuclear bombs with, to load on missiles, to shoot at Israel, to kill all the Jews!

To kill all the Jews! To kill all the Jews! To kill all the Jews! To kill all the Jews! To kill all the Jews!

Holocaust 2. Holocaust 2. Holocaust 2. Holocaust 2. Holocaust 2. Holocaust 2.

This is obviously a Jewish media cabal influenced article, and all such articles include the Holocaust Porn fetish typical of most Jews nowadays.

The Holocaust traumatized them, but they'd already predicted it for millenia, and it had already been attempted over and over according to them, because Jews really do love to believe that their enemies have been trying to exterminate them all from day one!

The whole history of the Jews, according to them, is Jews fending off mad Final Solution attempts by Persia-Nazis or Roman-Nazis, or Russian-Nazis, or Arab-Nazis, or This-Nazis or That-Nazis.

You can't understand the Jew until you get to the Holocaust Porn thing. It's not just his own death; that's bad enough. The baddies are never going to be satisfied with one Jew. They are going to do every single last one of them.

Understanding this helps shed light on phenomena like Zionism: Go Nazi ourselves, steal some land, arm to the teeth with nukes, and dare the anti-Semites to wipe us out.

How bout Iran? Does Ahmadinejad want to kill one Jew? Course not. He wants to kill them all.

Does the PLO and Hamas just want to kill a Jew here and there for sport? Nope, they want to "destroy Israel" = code for kill all the Jews.

Why do Jews need to go to Israel? Because evil whatever-Nazis in the Diaspora are getting ready to kill all the Diaspora Jews.

For Chrissake man, it's porn! It's Holocaust Porn! It's a fetish already. How else to explain the absolutely sickening and clearly unhealthy Jewish obsession with the horrors of the Holocaust. Holocaust museums, coming soon to a city near you. Holocaust Museum, my Jewish girlfriend took me to visit her very own, this was an essential part of our romance.

What's a Jew reading these days? Oh, a Holocaust novel. Or maybe some non-fiction, surely with a Holocaust twist somewhere in there. Hollywood has a Holocaust hard-on . Seems every year there's more and more Shoah tales.

I do not have enough information yet to look into the North Korean - Syria reactor thing yet, but I have studied Syria's nuclear program in the past. My take was that Syria has been working on a nuclear program for about 25 years now but has made little headway due to shortages of money, technology, brains, etc.

This is actually quite common; many smaller countries have similar nuclear projects in the ruts. People just do not get it. Rome was not built in a day, and neither was any nuclear program. They require a highly developed economy and always take years and often take decades to even get going.

Even when they do, there is one problem after another. The super brains like A. Q. Khan of Pakistan are few and far between, and he's under house arrest.

So let us say I am somewhat skeptical that Syria was about "this close" to building a nuclear weapon.

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Video: Mass Grave of Syrian Soldiers at Jisr Al Shughour

This video is pretty nasty. It shows Syrian troops in Jisr Al Shughour uncovering a mass grave of some of the 120 Syrian troops killed in that city a week ago.

Nobody quite knows what happened in that city. The opposition says that the Syrian troops were executed by their own troops when they refused to fire on protesters. The government says they were killed in an ambush by anti-regime forces. It's going to take a long time, if ever, to find out what really happened here.

This video is pretty gross. Viewer discretion is strongly advised. The dead bodies pulled out of the grave are pretty gross and mangled up.

Video: Syrian Troops Open Fire on Protesters

A very exciting video from Syria. It was shot on Friday, June 10, 2011. It is said to take place in the Qaboun District of Damascus, Syria. As you can see, the protesters are not exactly peaceful as the supporters of this video say. They are harassing, hounding and chasing the armed Syrian troops through the city. Periodically, the troops turn around and aim at the protesters, but they keep on coming anyway.

The protesters are basically chasing the troops through the city, and the troops are beating a hasty retreat from the protesters. Finally, the troops kneel down and aim at the protesters. The idiot protesters keep rushing the troops anyway like a bunch of morons. Of course, the troops open fire. What do you expect? And a number of the protesters get injured or killed of course.

I don't know what to make of this video. It's pretty moronic of protesters to charge, chase and hound armed, retreating troops through a city. What are the troops supposed to do? Allow their position to be overrun?

Anyway, it's a really shocking video!

Video: Syrian Soldier Hanged in Hama

This is a very nasty video. Extreme viewer discretion advised. During the riots in Hama, Syria on Saturday, a Syrian soldier was captured and then apparently hung from a post in front of cheering mobs. The mobs also abused his body and beat it with sticks. They also threw shoes at it.

The video is short, but then it seems to repeat a few times. The last 2 thirds of the video seem useless.

This video has been making the rounds in Syria, and it has stirred up a lot of regime supporters. The rebels are claiming it's fake, but I don't think so.

Video: Syrian Soldiers Massacre Civilians in Deraa

This is a very nasty video. Extreme viewer discretion is advised. It shows Syrian forces on a rooftop in Der'a in the South of Syria, where the rebellion began. They are standing among a group of civilians, who have all been killed by the soldiers. Many of them have head shots, and the footage is very gruesome (Ever seen half a guy's head blown off?).

The soldiers are apparently all Allawi from a special brigade led by the President's brother, sent because the regime was not sure whether or not the regular army was down for the job. But this special brigade is all Allawi and very loyal to the regime, so they are down for about anything. The soldiers do have Allawi accents. The soldiers are joking about the dead bodies, posing with them, etc.

The men were bringing food to the city or the fighters in the city after the city was blocked off. Apparently the food was mistaken for weapons and this is why the men were killed. However, the head shots suggest execution at close range. If they were only bringing food, why execute them? This is a pretty serious crime on the part of the regime.

Exciting video, you can hear the sounds of battle - gunfire, etc. in the background.

Who Killed Rafik Hariri?

One wonders where to begin with a post like this. Rafik Hariri, of course, was the Prime Minister and self-made billionaire who ruled Lebanon for a time recently. He was assassinated in an expertly planned car bomb attack, but no one really knows who did it. All suspicion fell on Syria, and Syria did have good reason to kill Hariri.

You really need a lot of background in Lebanese and Middle Eastern politics to even begin to understand the twists and turns of this sinuous murder mystery.

Hariri was elected head of Lebanon and proceeded to go on a borrowing spree, mostly with Saudi money, and rebuilt Lebanon after the Civil War destroyed it. He did this by playing all factions off each other. He also instituted a Lebanese version of free market economics, an economic system that, thank God, is largely absent from the Middle East because it contradicts Arab and especially Islamic values.

Hariri is a Sunni, but a fairly secular one. The Sunnis make up maybe 17% of Lebanon. The Shia, represented by Hezbollah, make up about 40%. The Maronites make up about 30%. The Druze and Orthodox Christians make up about 10%. There has been no census taken in about 50 years, because everyone is afraid of how things are going to turn out.

The Christians used to be the majority - in fact, Lebanon was originally split off from Syria by the French to give the Christians their own country. Partly for this reason, it's very existence is resented by a number of Lebanese Muslims, especially Sunnis, who figure that Syria and Lebanon are all one country.

Syria itself has long regarded the severance of Lebanon from Mother Syria as illegitimate, and her behavior in recent years has been motivated in part by these feelings. The Shia were long-downtrodden, especially by the Sunnis. The Sunnis were the Muslims who were pretty much in charge of the place in terms of who was in charge of the Muslims in the country. The Sunni held the reigns, and discrimination against the Shia was rife.

Shia were regularly attacked by Sunni gangs in Beirut up into the 1970's. The Shia complain that the Sunnis would only allow them to be garbagemen - that was the best job they could get. After the late 1950's, when a Christian lost the election and Lebanese Christians feared that their power would be constricted, there has been a power-sharing agreement in place.

The Prime Minister must be a Sunni, another high post must be a Christian, etc, etc. As the Christians have gone from majority to minority, this system has become less and less fair. In particular, Muslims, especially the Shia, are dramatically underrepresented. The Christians did not want to give up their power in the late 1950's, so the US Marines landed to enforce illegitimate Christian rule over Lebanon.

The Civil War began in part once again over demands that Lebanese democracy be derived more on one man one vote and that the excessive power of the Christians be curtailed. Further, the Christians have always run the Lebanese economy, at least in recent years.

I say all of this because in the US there is a strong tendency to side with the Lebanese Christians against the evil Muslims. Further, the Lebanese Maronite Christians (the largest sect) have made an important alliance with the Zionist Jews in Israel, an alliance that helped to drive the Civil War.

So US Zionist propaganda, which floods our media night and day, strongly favors the Maronites once again. As an example of this alliance, one of the highest ranking neoconservatives of all is a Maronite Lebanese lawyer named F. Michael Maloof who is very close to uber-neocons Douglas Feith and Richard Perle. He is up to his eyeballs in the planning of the war on Iraq.

With the Lebanese Civil War and the rise of Hezbollah, the Shia have finally been given a place at the table of Lebanese politics. The Druze are a real wild card. They shift all over the place on the whim of their erratic leader, Walid Jumblatt, from anti-Israel and anti-US to anti-Syrian and pro-US.

The Shia, and Hezbollah along with the more secular Amal Party, are allied with Syria and Iran. Syria keeps Hezbollah armed in Southern Lebanon as a tool to threaten Israel with in order to try to get the Golan Heights back. That's all Syria gets out of the game. If Hezbollah is disarmed in Lebanon, Syria loses it's most powerful weapon and may never get its land back.

Hezbollah has since taken up the cause of Lebanese nationalism, agitating for the return of the Shebaa Farms and some nearby hills that they say Israel is occupying. It is probably Lebanese land, but Israel seems to have captured that land from Syria when it grabbed the Golan.

For its purposes, Syria wants to say that the Shebaa is Lebanese for purposes of keeping Hezbollah armed, and to say it's Syrian as soon as Hezbollah tries to make peace with Israel or vice versa. So Syria must play a double game here, but everyone is in this crazy part of the world.

As a condition of ending the Civil War, Syria was tasked with ruling the place. Syria had actually entered the war to save the Maronite Christians from defeat, but the Christians soon forgot about this and turned on the Syrians. The Taba Agreement, constructed with the help of the US and other powers, put Syria in charge until the Lebanese could figure out how to stop killing each other.

Syria quickly started meddling in Lebanese politics bigtime, and an independence movement arose to get Syria out of Lebanon. This was ignored by the US until George Bush came to office. Now the same US that put Syria in power started demanding that Syria leave. Not only that, but there were increasing demands on Lebanon to "disarm all militias", code words for disarm Hezbollah.

Now, Syria needs Hezb in Lebanon until it gets the Golan back, so them's fighting words to the Syrians. At the same time, the US invaded Iraq and threatened Iran, Libya, and Syria, while Israel killed Arafat by poisoning him.

This whole process was set into motion by the neocons who were operating in the interests of the Israeli government. It was an Israeli plan to deal a powerful blow to some of their worst enemies in order to secure the realm, as Xymphora lays out brilliantly here.

Part of this Zionist plot was to knock out Hezbollah in Lebanon as part of a triple blow against Syria, Iran and Hezbollah. Hezbollah kept getting more powerful on Israel's northern border, and the Israelis were getting more upset.

So the US and France pushed through a UN resolution, UN Security Council Resolution 1559, calling for Syria to get out of Lebanon and for the disarming of Hezbollah. Note that France is still an imperialist power in the region, defending the interests of the Christians who they put in charge of their former colony.

Also, the US Congress pushed a bill called the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003, a bill that may as well have been written by the Israeli Knesset. It's so pro-Israeli, it's almost impossible to comprehend that the US Congress wrote it. Apparently, it imposes sanctions on Syria for a variety of mostly-bullshit reasons.

The US is in Iraq, apparently forever, threatening Syria and Iran, for the most part in order to benefit the Israelis, since Syria and Iran have no particular beefs with the US. Iran and Syria clearly want the US out of Iraq and US guns away from their doorstep. They have no interest in keeping the US in Iraq at all.

Anyway, the US status of forces agreement that they are trying to negotiate with the Iraqis is explicitly meant to use Iraq as a base for attacking neighboring countries, mostly Iran but possibly Syria too. So rage at Syria and Iran for not being overjoyed about the US military in Iraq is misplaced. No sane Syrian or Iranian leader would want us there.

Amidst this backdrop, Hariri supported UN Resolution 1559, probably because finally even the Lebanese Sunnis were getting fed up with Syria's high-handedness. They had supported Syria for a long time, but Syria kept trying to push people to their limits.

It was the Maronite Christians who really hated the Syrians being there. Why is uncertain. The Maronites despise the Shia and Hezbollah and want the Palestinian refugees gone too.

By the way, the reason that the Palestinians have never been allowed to work or become citizens in Lebanon is because of the Maronites. The Maronites fear that allowing the Pallies to become citizens will increase the Muslim population at the expense of the Christians.

So the Hariri crowd was riding the wave of anti-Syrianism. At the same time, he was closely allied with the Saudis. The Saudis' whole role in the region is to support the Sunnis and screw the Shia, in a word. So the Saudis were backing Hariri solely because he is Sunni, and also to stop Iran and Hezbollah and increasingly Syria, who is allied with Iran and Hezbollah and hence in the enemy camp as far as the Saudis see it.

There really is not much sane reason for the Saudis to fear Iran. All the hate in the region goes from Sunni to Shia, pretty much. Perhaps the Iranians could energize the long-downtrodden Saudi Shia to rebel against the Saudis, but the Saudis ought to give them more rights anyway. Sunni fears of Iran attacking the region are simply insane, kind of like Nazi fears of the USSR overrunning Europe, so the Nazis had to attack first.

Iran has never attacked another state in at least 100 years and possibly longer. The Shia are on the outs in the Arab World, and the Sunnis have all the power. There are no nefarious Shia plots to evangelize Shia Islam and convert all the Sunnis - this is just mad Sunni paranoia. But the Saudis do work hard in Iran to convert the Shia Ahwaz Arabs to Wahhabi Sunnism, and they have had some success at this.

The Shia have been killing a lot of Sunnis in Iraq, but the Sunnis started it. Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, started the war against Iran for no good reason, and received volunteers and money from most of the Sunni states in the region.

Against this backdrop, as Syria was leaving Lebanon (though a spy network remains behind) Hariri was killed in the very professional car bomb attack. An Al Qaeda type radical Salafist Islamist associated with Jund al-Sham (Army of the Levant) was promptly fingered in the attack, though there were a lot of questions about whether or not Syria was actually involved.

The US and France got a UN commission to actually send a law enforcement team to investigate the killing. A couple of teams were sent out there and a couple of reports came back. One team was headed by Detlev Mehlis, a German.

Jürgen Cain Külbel, a journalist in Germany, is an acquaintance. He's a former member of the STASI and is associated with the former East German government and the political party that came afterwards. Külbel is a Leftist, and for a long time he was pushing theories saying that US imperialism was in back of a lot of the shenanigans in the ME, including I guess the invasion of Iraq.

He showed a profound disinterest in investigating any Israeli or Jewish Lobby involvement in many of the conflicts over there. This is standard Leftist line that absolves Israel of everything and pushes it all off on imperialism.

So it is interesting that Külbel has now come around to the notion that Israel killed Hariri and then tried to pawn it off on Syria. He has also shown links that Mehlis had with the US AIPAC. Mehlis, as it turns out, used to work for WINEP, which is nothing AIPAC as a research arm. So his finding that Syria was involved has been attacked by Külbel.

Külbel was subsequently imprisoned for ten days for violating a court order by printing some East German STASI papers on his website. I'm not sure of their contents, but it may have shown how Mehlis was associated with WINEP. So the Voltaire Network has taken up the cause of Külbel, about which I feel they are making a mountain out of a molehill.

Of interest to our Maronite discussion above, a group called UNIFL, which has interests that are almost precisely in line with the Israeli government, figures in all of this. These are the most hardcore radical rightwing Maronites, who are for all intents and purposes a quasi-fascist movement.

They were deeply involved in the War Against Iraq and other great big messes. They've been selling this BS story about how the Christians are so persecuted in Lebanon, and the persecution is being done by evil fundamentalist Islamic Syria (run by ultra-secular Alawis).

It's mostly just a pack of lies, but there were arrests, tortures and killings under Syrian rule, it is true. That's all over now, and the Maronites did tons of killing in their own day.

After all, they committed the most and worst massacres of all during the Civil War.

Maloof is in with these guys, so is a guy named David Wurmser (Israeli agent neoconservative with dual citizenship) and his evil witch of the West wife Meyrav (read Hebrew for "Mary", no? Israeli agent neoconservative with dual citizenship).

So is Richard Pele (Israeli agent neoconservative. Dual citizenship?), and worst of all, Daniel Pipes (Israeli agent neoconservative. Dual citizenship?) of Middle East Watch and Campus Watch and all of that Zionist fascist censorship, harassment and firing crap leaping up all over our land). Nice long sentence.

Pipes, whose father was an evil Cold War maniac and professional liar about the Soviet Union, inherited the evil maniac part, but all he cares about is Israel. Paul Wolfowitz (Israeli agent neoconservative with dual citizenship) is also in deep with these guys.

Harold Rhode (Israeli agent neoconservative. Dual citizenship?) is another one, but no one has ever heard of him, so I will make him famous today for all time. Rhode is a Jewish guy who is religious and was obsessed with attacking Iraq. He was in on the plot to attack Iraq with all the rest of them from the very start.

Afterward, he became obsessed with the Jewish religious relics that the evil anti-Semitic Arab-Nazi government had somehow, through a sudden stroke of anti-Semitism, managed to preserve, despite their genocidal intentions towards all the world's Jews.

Saddam wanted to kill every Jew on Earth, of course, but damn right he was going to save those Jewish holy books. That proves Saddam was a madman all right, just like the yahoos screamed before the invasion.

Rhode ran over to Iraq as soon as the war was done and got himself a big team put together right away while the museums and archaeological relics of the nation were being devastated. After all, the history of Jews receives precedence of the history of those lowly, dirty Arabs and over the very history of mankind itself, right? Jews take precedence over Arabs. Jews take precedence over humanity. You get the picture.

Well, anyway, a lot of money was spent grabbing every single Jewish relic in Iraq and "storing" it away in the US (in Jewish hands, I guess). Well, that's sort of illegal. Now that Iraq is more stable, the Iraqi government wants their Jewish stuff back. It belongs to Iraq, not to the world's Jews. Whoops, I forgot. No nation is allowed to own Jewish relics. Jews take precedence over all real nations on Earth.

Also, it's funny that the US (Are we the second Jewish state?) bent all over backwards to grab all that old Jewish stuff, while we sat back and watched, first, while the whole non-Jewish history of Iraq was looted and destroyed to Hell, in particular the History of the Ottoman Empire.

Well, screw the Ottomans, they were just evil Muslims who ruled the Arab World and treated the Jews like crap, right? Or they were just scummy Muslims, screw em. Anyway, obviously the Jewish history of Iraq got nabbed by the nimble hands of the Jewish "Americans", but the non-Jewish history of Iraq was scatted to the Seven Winds and the Seventy Thousand Thieves.

After all, in any country with lots of Jews, only the Jewish history matters ,and the non-Jewish history is just, pshaw! Right? Trash the museums and the libraries and re-burn the Library of Alexandria if the US and Israel are in the book-burning and library-sacking business, which apparently they are.

Funny how the US can't spare a soldier to save the history of Muslim Ottoman Iraq from being ruined. Those records have been flooded and subjected to all sorts of abuse, and the US can't spare one sentry to guard that stuff. Wow, gee, why do they hate us anyway?

They must be jealous of all of our stuff, and our freedoms, and you know, our stuff.

Ever notice that the far-Right jingoist dickheads who scream the loudest about "our freedoms" and "they hate us for our freedom" are the first ones to start shutting freedoms down? Scooter Libby (Israeli agent neoconservative. Dual citizenship?) is in with UNIFL too. So are Steven Hadley and Donald Rumsfeld. Hadley's some weird poli-sci ultra-rightwing Vulcan dude.

Külbel also accuses UNIFL along with Israel of killing Hariri.

And it's surely possible that a Maronite or UNIFL-type spy was used by the Mossad in Syria to kill Iranian super-agent Imad Mughniyeh. My theory, yes, I read up on that one too.

Why can't Syria uncover the Mossad network deep in its very bowels?

Why can't Iran either? Iran did catch one Mossad agent, and they just sentenced him to death after one of the shortest trials in recent history. If he's really Mossad, hang him high, go ahead.

And I know that Iran is full of US spies and even US undercover troops (500 total? How many?). Same with British spies. Iran can't catch these guys? The US guys are running around blowing up stuff up, and the British are giving bombs to Iranian rebels, including Al Qaeda types called Jundallah in Balochistan.

I guess Mossad, the US and probably the UK too, are all trying to get at Iran's nuclear sites, and yes, I am certain the Iranians are making a nuclear bomb right now. I think they already have one, but it's just a uranium bomb, and that isn't good for anything but making one square mile of Earth uninhabitable for 70 years.

Actually, just to be a completely evil and horrible scumbag and make people hate me even more than they already do, I will right now officially support Iran's efforts to get a nuclear bomb.

Is that an evil position or what?! Not to shoot one, just to get one.

Also to make a whole bunch of evil biological and chemical weapons and WMD-this and WMD-that. Also, just to be even more of an ass and arouse more hatred, I will say that I was deeply sad when North Korea blew up their reactor, because I wanted them to make more nukes to threaten people, namely the US, my country with. Not to shoot at us. Just to even it up.

Why be an ass? Long argument, but it has to do with imperialism's gross abuse of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreement.

I'm not saying this is what happened or anything, Maronites and Mossad killing Hariri. No one on Earth will ever know what happened. Figure it out yourself, I give, and I spent many long hours reading and poring over this mystery until I finally just gave up and don't want to read about it anymore.

Such are the homicidal intrigues of the Middle East, like vines in a jungle, no beginning, no end, no middle, nothing much to grab, and every new lead carries you off on more red herrings and impossibilities and possibilities, and everything seems possible, but still nothing ever totally adds up. God I love a mystery. To a point.

Sorry this went on, but I never wrote a Hariri post. Now it's done, and hopefully I won't need to write any more. Believe it or not, I could have written way more, but I'm not into putting readers to sleep. I'm long-winded enough, as it is.

Try the Angry Arab blog (I've talked to this guy; As'ad, a Leftist Arab nationalist professor at a university very close by) if you can't get enough of this maddening Lebanon stuff.

Or Joshua Landis' (an acquaintance) great Syria Comment if you want to dip into the Syrian mystery casserole, where nothing makes sense either, and you think you can see the fish in the bowl, but the more you look, the more you can hardly make them out, and plus they always change.

Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.

Imad Mughniyeh is Dead

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

Updated February 19, 2008. This post has just been accused, as usual, of racism, in this case anti-Semitism. See here for my position statement on racism and anti-Semitism.

One of the only known photos of the super-elusive and ultra-mysterious Imad Mughniyeh, Hezbollah mastermind. He was so slippery he was dubbed Hezbollah's Carlos, after the famous terrorist Carlos from the 1970's. This is a great picture of him, suspicious, haunted, looking over his shoulder, as a man on the run should. And he was a man on the run for most of his life.


A more recent photo of Mughniyeh in military fatigues, against a camouflage background, issued by Iran after his death. Between the earlier photo and the later, it looks like he hasn't missed a meal. Some are also saying that the two plastic surgery operations did not alter his appearance much, but I am not at capable of judging that.

I can't stress the importance of this news.

Imad Mughniyeh, Supreme Commander of Hezbollah for the past 25 years, has been killed in a car bomb in Damascus last night, February 12, at 10:45 PM. He was on the CIA's Most Wanted List with a $25 million bounty on his head.

He was the only person killed when a silver Mitsubishi Pajero vehicle (apparently Mughniyeh's car) exploded in the upscale Kafar Soussa District in the vicinity of a Iranian school that teaches religion to Iranian pupils. Several other cars were damaged and windows of surrounding buildings were blown out. Residents gathered in their pajamas to look at the scene. A single body lay in the street, covered by a white sheet.

Kafar Soussa has many apartment buildings constructed in recent years, along with a large shopping center and the main offices of the formidable Syrian Intelligence Services.

Mughniyeh was wanted for a number of attacks during the US invasion of Lebanon in 1982, said to be to keep the peace, but actually ending up as usual, supporting the Israelis. Mughniyeh orchestrated the bombing of the US Marine Barracks and French Headquarters in Beirut in 1982 that killed 227 Marines and 58 French troops.

He also supervised the bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut in 1983 that killed 63 and wiped out the entire top tier of US CIA Middle East agents. He also pulled off the bombing of the Israeli command center in Tyre that killed scores of Israeli troops. He was involved in the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 and the execution of US Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem in 1985.

He was involved in the kidnappings of many Americans in Beirut during the 1980's, including Terry Anderson and CIA officer and US Army Colonel William Buckley, who Hezbollah executed. In 1988, the top US CIA agent in Lebanon, Colonel William Higgins, was kidnapped by Hezbollah and tortured to death.

He was also involved in the truck bomb attack on the US military residence facilities at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, targeting US servicemen who were guarding Saudi oil fields. 19 Americans were killed in that blast and 200 more were wounded.

There are suggestions that he was involved along with Hezbollah and/or Iran in the dual bombings in Buenos Aires, one at the Israeli Embassy 1992 that killed 29 people, and another at the Jewish Cultural Center in 1994 that killed 95 people. Three Israeli soldiers, Benny Avraham, Adi Avitan and Omar Souad were captured along the Lebanon border in 1999, taken POW, and possibly later executed.

The border incident that set off the 2006 Lebanon War led to the capture of two more Israeli POW's, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser. Mughniyeh was believed to be behind both of these abductions of Israeli soldiers.

Debka has long claimed that Mughniyeh was on very close terms with both bin Laden and Al Qaeda and the Iranian leadership. This seems bizarre. Al Qaeda's project is nothing less than Hitlerian extermination of every Shia Muslim on Earth.

Mughniyeh has been described as Hezbollah's Head of External Operations and it is believed that he stays in contact with cells that Hezbollah has all over the world. He is also described as a senior Hezbollah intelligence official, head of the group's security wing and the founder of the group. In the event of a US or Israeli attack on Iran, Mughniyeh would have been relied upon to be in charge of any response.

Angry Arab feels that Mughniyeh's role and feat were largely exaggerated, but I am not so sure about that; he also feels that Robert Fisk could not possibly have interviewed the actual Imad Mughniyeh in Lebanon in 1991, but I think he did.

The interview is worth reading: Fisk in yet another superb, incisive piece. When it comes to Middle East, few are better than Robert Fisk. I guess that is why International Zionism is on a crusade to crucify him.

Mughniyeh was Lebanese, born in Tyre in South Lebanon, not Palestinian as many people are saying. He joined Arafat's Force 17 elite bodyguard unit in Lebanon at a young age. He joined Amal, and then went to Iran for training, where he excelled. He then conducted daring behind enemy lines operations in the Iran-Iraq War.

Most of the operations in Lebanon that he is most famous for were actually conducted by a group called Islamic Jihad. This group later was folded into Hezbollah, which was not formed at any rate until 1988 anyway. Mughniyeh personally executed Stethem during the hijacking in 1985. In 1990, he had plastic surgery done in Iran to change his facial features.

Then he went back to Beirut, where he lived underground using a variety of fake passports. At some point, his cover got blown and he returned to Iran again for a second plastic surgery operation that completely changed his appearance. He was said to have been in Basra in early 2006 helping Mahdi Army fighters go to Iran for military training.

He then returned to Lebanon, where he took part in the Lebanon War. Lately, he was still living in Beirut, but traveling to the Damascus neighborhood where he was killed for meetings on a regular basis.

A top Israeli military official said, "He's the brains behind Hezbollah's military wing." Hezbollah's casualties in the 2006 War are not known. Israel claims that 1/3 of its fighters were killed, but that seems excessive. It seems clear that Hezbollah has now completely restocked its missile supplies and has tripled them from 15,000 in the 2006 War to 45,000 now. Further, it now has missiles that can reach Tel Aviv.

In recent days, Hezbollah teams disguised as reporters were said to be photographing the area on the Israel-Lebanon border.

Mughniyeh definitely committed some acts of terrorism - notably the bombing of the Jewish Cultural Center in Buenos Aires - but most of his so-called crimes were simply acts of war, legitimate acts of war I might add.

Guerrilla armies lack spy satellites, $500 billion/year defense budgets, smart bombs, cruise missiles, F-16's and all of the other expensive military hardware that enables advanced states to carry out precision states during war. Guerrilla groups have to make do with what they have. I do consider embassies, especially those swarming with espionage agents, to be legitimate targets for guerrillas in wartime.

Surely spies may be executed, but I don't think enemy troops should be. None of the attacks on US, French or Israeli bases in Lebanon were terrorist attacks. The killings of the three Israelis and the US servicemen were war crimes, but the US and Israel have certainly executed plenty of POW's and the Israelis continue to do so. The attack that set off the Lebanon War was hardly an act of terrorism.

Hence, Mughniyeh's mantle as the king of terrorism is largely nonsense. Most of his acts were simply very well planned and executed attacks on the enemy in wartime, and within what I consider to be the rules of war.

Mughniyeh was one of the most underground people on Earth and no one seemed to know where he was most of the time, and Hezbollah was not talking. He was probably one of the world's most highly protected and most secretive guerrilla fighters. Whoever killed him by penetrating his multiple circles of Syrian and Iranian intelligence officers and bodyguards surely pulled off a coup de etat.

All fingers are pointing to the Israeli Mossad, which is expert at these kind of attacks. However, the Israeli government is denying any role in killing Mughniyeh, for what it is worth. Would not Israel either admit it or refuse to comment? I originally felt that Israel did not carry out this attack, but on second thought, there does seem to be evidence pointing to their involvement.

For one thing, the MO of the operation matches closely the MO of the Mossad assassination of top Hamas operative Izz El-Deen Sheikh Khalil. In fact, a book written as fiction by a former Mossad agent, though set in the Shia suburbs of South Beirut, appears to describe the MO used in the killing of Mughniyeh closely.

If the book had been translated into Arabic and Mughniyeh had read it, perhaps he could have avoided this. Khalil was a founding member of Hamas and a senior member of the Hamas military wing. Actually, there are probably two Hamases. One is the Hamas that runs the Gaza government. The other Hamas is based out of Syria and could be called Hamas-Khaled Meshal.

This could be seen as an arm of Hamas run out of Syria, and probably a more militant one at that. Sheikh Khalil was close to Meshal. However, note that Israel "neither confirmed nor denied" that killing of Khalil. Has there ever been a case of an Israeli assassination that they did not take credit for, indeed that they even said explicitly that they did not do?

Also note that retired CIA officers are saying that Israel did it. Other theories suggest that either supporters of the pro-government faction in Lebanon, at odds with Hezbollah and Syria, or Iran themselves, killed Mughniyeh.

The Syria and Iran theories hinge on those countries giving up Mughniyeh to the US or Israel in order to get the heat off of them and deliver a wanted militant that had a $5 million US price tag on his head in return for an unspecified US quid pro quo.

This theory is called into question because Bush placed new sanctions on Syria the day after the bombing. If this was a quid pro quo to get the US to back off Syria, that would not have happened. Mughniyeh was also wanted by some of the Lebanese Christian factions and the Saudi, Lebanese, Jordanian, Iraqi and Kuwaiti governments.

Adding weight to the theory that Israel did it are reports from Palestinians in Fatah who have regular contact with Israeli intelligence. The Fatah sources indicate that Israeli intel is saying that they have settled their account with Mughniyeh. Further analysis of Israel's denial shows that it may not even be a denial at all - Israel rejects terrorist groups blaming Israel for the killing, but does not deny that Israel committed the act.

If Israel indeed killed Mughniyeh, which seems likely, that looks very bad for Syria. It means that Mossad has been able to penetrate into the heart of Hezbollah, and it means that the Mossad can operate apparently with impunity deep in the most secure parts of Damascus. Their next target is surely Nasrallah himself. It also implies that Israel has penetrated Syrian intelligence itself, a tough nut to crack.

Hezbollah will now probably undergo purges looking for the Israeli agents in Hezbollah. People will be arrested and executed.

Mughniyeh is said to have replaced Hassan Nasrallah as head of the Hezbollah after the 2006 war and he was rumored to have enemies in Lebanon, maybe even inside Hezbollah. Hezbollah TV is reporting his death and blaming Israel.

Nasrallah will speak at his funeral in Beirut, which will be very heavily guarded. This does not look good for Damascus. They were supposed to protect this guy, who is after all one of their main assets, but they failed.

His death is huge news in the roiling stew pot called the Middle East, and there will surely be counter-responses by Hezbollah, probably against Israel. Nasrallah is already thundering threats in the direction of Israel. The wild conspiracy stories are already spreading like vines. This is the Middle East, where intrigues are as normal as sand and hummus and anything that can happen, probably does happen.

We have not see the end of this.

Middle East War Report for Sunday, August 13

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here.

Updated November 30, 2008:

Israel suffered 183 casualties on Sunday, 10 killed and 173 wounded.

9 IDF troops were killed and 90 more were wounded. 9 soldiers were killed and 85 more were wounded in Lebanon in extremely heavy fighting. 5 Israeli soldiers were wounded inside Israel in a rocket attack on their outpost in a town in the Western Galilee.

1 Israeli civilian was killed and 83 more were wounded by Katyusha rockets in Israel.

*****
172 Israelis were killed in this war, 119 soldiers and 52 civilians. In addition, 1 Israeli was killed in the Diaspora as a result of the conflict.

At least 30 of Israel's famed "indestructible" Merkava tanks were destroyed, mostly by Italian MILAN and Russian M-13 METIS-M anti-tank missiles. AT-3 Saggers were also used to good effect. The version used was an upgraded version called the AT-3 Sagger-2. Hezbollah rained down 3,970 rockets on Israel.
*****

There is no information yet on how many Hezbollah fighters were killed Sunday, except that Hezbollah said that they lost 1 fighter. They probably lost a lot more than that. There is also no information on Lebanese civilian casualties today.

*****
Over 1,000 Lebanese were killed so far in this war. Precise figures are not available. At last count, about Hezbollah casualties were 200 KIA. There are no more recent figures for Hezbollah and no wounded figures for Hezbollah.

I feel that Hezbollah sustained some pretty serious losses in this war, maybe not the 525 claimed by Israel but surely more than 200. Let us say between 200-525 for now. The Lebanese military suffered about 30 killed.

A few other combatants were killed - for instance, the Lebanese Communist Party armed wing lost at least 2 fighters, the Amal militia lost at least 10 or so fighters and the PFLP-GC lost at least 1 fighter. Over 3,200 Lebanese were wounded.
******

The IDF helicopter that was shot down near Yater on Saturday night still had not been recovered 24 hours later on Sunday night. The crash killed 5 Israeli soldiers, whose bodies had not been recovered yet either. There is very heavy fighting going on around the town that has made it impossible to recover the aircraft or the bodies. It was not until Monday that troops were able to reach the site.

*****
A UN-brokered cease-fire is due to go into effect early on Monday morning. This resolution has many problems. One is that Hezbollah has to hand over its POW's but Israel does not have to hand over theirs. Since when in wartime, do we demand that one side hand over its POW's without an exchange by the other side.

Also, the Lebanese army is to move into southern Lebanon and disarm Hezbollah. Why must Hezbollah be disarmed but not the IDF? Why are only states permitted to have a monopoly on the use of force? Is this not state imperialism saying that there will be no more rebellion anywhere on Earth?

Why do all state militaries automatically have legitimacy but all non-state forces automatically lack legitimacy? Does it say so somewhere in the UN Charter? The same Charter that insists that people have a right to resist military occupation by force?

All supplies to Hezbollah are to be cut off. Ok, but since when, in wartime, must one side by unilaterally disarmed and cut off from all supplies and the other side left armed and with its supply lines intact?

The major issues are unresolved.

Israel's criminal occupation of the Lebanese Shebaa Farms is not resolved. Crooked US negotiators allied with Israeli colonialism assured Israeli colonists that they would not be forced to surrender their colony in the Shebaa Farms.

The issue of land mines is not resolved. Israel says they will hand them over, but there is no mechanism to force this. Israel has always said they will hand over the land mine maps of the 300,000 land mines they scattered through the south of Lebanon. They never have.

The issue of the 19 Lebanese prisoners held by Israel is left unresolved.

There are some remaining issues, such as that Israel is allowed to engage in defensive warfare, while Hezbollah is order to halt all attacks. Since when, in war, is one side ordered to stop fighting while the other can still wage defensive attacks? Note that all of Israel's wars have been waged as defensive wars. I am not sure if this bit about allowing Israel to wage defensive attacks is still in there, but if it is, that is not good.

In short, plenty of problems, and I do not foresee an end to the fighting soon.
*****

*****
When the IDF entered the Christian town of Marjayoun at 3:30 AM on Thursday, they were quickly attacked by members of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party. This party (description here) is popular in town and they have flyers up all over town on telephone polls and walls. Marjayoun is a mixed Druze, Sunni, Maronite and Greek Orthodox town.

Yet the Greek Orthodox are the largest community here, and the town is described as predominantly Greek Orthodox.

The SSNP is a secular Leftist political party. The party fought against Israel alongside the Leftist, nationalist, and PLO forces during the Israeli invasion and later against the Phalangists in the Lebanese Civil War. The party actually engaged in many suicide bombings, proving that those who do such things are not all Islamist fanatics.

A party member assassinated Bachir Gemayal, the Phalangist President of Lebanon, in 1982. It is a member of the Resistance and Development Bloc in Lebanese Parliament alongside the Shia Hezbollah and Amal parties. The party has always been popular with Christians, and in Lebanon it is associated with Greek Orthodox Christians, and it is even said to represent "Greek Orthodox particularism".

The party's founder, Antun Saddeh, was a Greek Orthodox Christian. The party originally borrowed from the principles of fascist parties, as did many political parties formed in the 1920's and 1930's. However, the SSNP was always been ferociously secular - in fact, that has always been its one defining principle.

The party originally strongly opposed both Arab nationalism and Communism, although it was a nationalist and Leftist party. Its popularity amongst Greek Orthodox in Lebanon stemmed from their resentment over the Maronites' domination of the country.

By the time of the Lebanese Civil War, the party had toned down much of its opposition to Communism and Arab nationalism and was fighting alongside both Communists and Arab nationalists against Israel, the Phalangists, and later Israel's puppet South Lebanon Army.

Since Syria's entry into the Civil War, the SSNP has strongly supported Syria. In Syria, the party was legalized in 2000 and is now seen as an ally of the ruling Baath Party.

During the furor over Syria's role in Lebanon in recent years, the SSNP has strongly supported the Syrian role in Lebanon. A beautiful portrait of the town of Marjayoun by Washington Post writer Anthony Shadid is here. Note that even before the latest fighting, the town had lost 92% of its population and was considered to be dying. Most of the residents seem to be immigrating to the West.

After a short battle in Marjayoun, Israel seized the Lebanese Army barracks where 250 Lebanese police and soldiers promptly surrendered. A convoy out of town was later bombed by the IDF in the Bekaa Valley.
******

In addition to the MILAN, TOW, AT-3, AT-4, AT-13 and AT-14 anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM's) that Hezbollah has been using, we have also learned that they are using an Iranian version of the Russian AT-5 Konkurs ATGM. This seems to be an improved version of the AT-3 and AT-4, although the AT-13 and AT-14 are probably better still.

In Abu Tawil, near Aita Al-Chaab, Hezbollah fired an anti-tank missile at infantry forces, killing 4 soldiers and wounding 20 more. Abu Tawil could not be located on any map.

In Tel Nachs, just north of Metulla, Hezbollah fired a mortar that scored a direct hit on a Merkava tank, destroying it and killing 1 soldier while wounding 3 more. How does a mortar round destroy a tank anyway?

Night: Hezbollah fighters fired an anti-tank missile at at IDF infantry forces in Kantara, killing 2 soldiers and wounding 10 more. Kantara is 5 miles east of the border near Metulla.

10:42 PM: The IDF shot down 2 Hezbollah unmanned drones fired from Beirut , one over the town of Kabri in northern Israel near Nahariyah and the other over Lebanon.

9:06 PM: A Hezbollah rocket wounded a motorcyclist in Haifa.

7:34 PM: The son of famous Israeli leftwing author David Grossman was killed in the fighting in Lebanon. Grossman's work appears in the US leftwing magazine The Nation. Like many other leftwing authors, Grossman has drifted to the right with the latest Palestinian intifada.

8:06 PM: The IDF announced that its forces had reached the Litani River. Actually, this claim is somewhat dubious. They have reached the river in some parts but not in others.

7:49 PM: 2 more rockets landed in Nahariyah, bringing the total for today to over 250 rockets. 81 Israelis were wounded in the nightmarish, Hellish barrage.

7:32 PM: The IDF is pounding the Dahia District of southern Beirut once again.

7:29 PM: 230 Hezbollah rockets have slammed into northern Israel so far today. 6 rockets fell on Haifa, damaging a building and a number of vehicles. 14 Israelis were wounded in the attack. 7 vehicles are on fire and firefighters are working to put out the blaze.

6:22 PM: Hezbollah rockets landed in open fields near Accra. There were no injuries.

5:40 PM: The IDF destroyed 20 Hezbollah weapons caches in Aita al-Chaab and Taybe. Aita Al-Chaab is right on the border. The IDF is still right on the border?

5:46 PM: 75 IDF troops have been wounded so far today in extremely heavy fighting in Southern Lebanon.

5:30 PM: Over 200 Hezbollah rockets have rained down on Israel so far today. In the past hour, rockets hit Haifa, Krayot, the Jezreel Valley and the Western Galilee.

5:17 PM: 2 Khaibar-1 302mm long range missiles landed in Mishmar Ha Emek, in the Jezreel Valley south of Haifa. The rockets landed in open areas and there was only minor damage.

4:32 PM: A rocket barrage hit Krayot, north of Haifa. 2 Israelis were wounded in the attack.

4:22 PM: A Hezbollah rocket wounded 1 Israeli in Accra.

3:16 PM: Several Israelis were wounded in Kiryat Shemona following the last Hezbollah Katyusha attack.

3:15 PM: An idiot from the US died in custody when he went on a hunger strike. The man, apparently Jewish, declared that he was King David. He was arrested after making a nuisance of himself around Jerusalem in recent days. Thereupon, he went on a hunger strike that killed him.

2:45 PM: There were large rock-throwing attacks against Jewish settlers' vehicles southwest of Hebron. Glad to hear it. Unfortunately, there were no injuries.

2:06 PM: A rocket hit a power line in Safad, resulting in a power outage. Good, now they know what it feels like.

1:53 PM: A suspicious Arab male was arrested after trying to enter the Prime Minister's office. Authorities feel that there is something suspicious on his shoes. This later turned out to be a false alarm.

1:49 PM: Over 150 rockets have slammed into Israel so far today - 75 of them in less than 2 hours since noon.

1:47 PM: A large wave of Hezbollah rockets landed in northern Israel, but caused no damage or casualties.

1:14 PM: There is very heavy fighting north of Metulla right now.

1:13 PM: 40 IDF soldiers have been wounded so far in extremely heavy fighting in Lebanon.

12:11 PM: There were 3 more wounded civilians from the latest Katyusha barrage from Kiryat Shemona. 19 rocket attacks in northern Israel have killed 1 person and wounded 21 others so far. 77 rockets have been fired so far, 35 in Kiryat Shemona, 11 around Maalot, 15 around Nahariya, 10 around Safad and others hitting in the Golan Heights (Yaay for rockets in the Golan).

12:08 PM: Large fires were burning in the Western Galilee after the latest Hezbollah rocket barrage it.

11:48 AM: A number of people were wounded by the rocket barrage that hit Shlomi a little while ago.

11:42 AM: Palestinian guerrillas opened fire on IDF forces near the Central Gate in Gaza, but there were no casualties.

11:28 AM: A Hezbollah rocket landed near Shlomi and wounded 1 Israeli civilian. A Galilee panhandle community was damaged by another rocket. The civilian, a man, later died of his wounds.

11:26 AM: A Katyusha rocket slammed into a home in Kiryat Shemona and set it on fire.

11:22 AM: A Katyusha rocket hit a military base in northern Israel. It landed in the parking lot and damaged dozens of vehicles.

11:13 AM: A huge rocket attack is raining down rockets on the entire north of Israel. Explosions were heard around Zichron Yaacov, which is south of Haifa. This is one of the farthest south the rockets have hit so far.

10:55 AM: A number of wounded have been reported in the rocket attack on Safad .

10:45 AM: A Katyusha rocket slammed into a building in Safad. There appear to be injuries.

10:25 AM: A Hezbollah rocket hit a home in Misgav Am, damaging it.

8:56 AM: Hezbollah fired a number of rockets that landed in open areas in northern Israel.

8:08 AM: Guerrillas threw a large number of firebombs at IDF forces in the Jenin area during the night.

7:18 PM: The IDF arrested a Fatah guerrilla Nablus..

2:22 AM: 3 Arabs were wounded in Hebron when a bomb they were making in their home went off.

Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.

Middle East War Report for Wednesday, August 9

Updated January 29, 2008:

*****
Over 160 rockets pounded into Israel today. Rockets hit Haifa, Afula, Kiryat Shemona, Shlomi, the Hula Valley, Nahariyah, Maalot, Carmiel, Safad, Beit Shean, Accra and the Jezreel Valley. 11 Israeli civilians were wounded.

Kiryat Shemona was hit with 80 rockets during the day, making it impossible to carry out the proposed evacuation. Every time the evacuees got on buses, another barrage would come in and they would have to run for the shelters.
*****

****
15 IDF troops were killed and 37 more were wounded today. This is the worst days so far for IDF casualties.

9 were killed in Dibel when an anti-tank rocket on a building housing IDF troops caused an arms cache to blow up and collapsed the building. 4 were killed when their tank was destroyed in Ayta Al-Shaab. 1 was killed by friendly fire in Taybeh. Another was killed in a mortar attack in Qulayah, near Marjayoun. Qulayah is 3 miles due north of Metulla in Israel and 2 miles southwest of Marjayoun.

At least 17 soldiers were wounded in Dibel and at least another 8 were wounded in Ayta Al-Shaab. Another 12 soldiers were wounded, 2 in Klia, 7 in Taybeh and the rest in unknown locales.
*****

The IDF says they killed at 50 Hezbollah fighters today.

117 Israelis have been killed so far in this war, 80 soldiers, 36 civilians in Israel and 1 civilian in the Diaspora.

The Lebanese death toll still stands at around 1000

****
I would like to take this time to point out, if I have not done so already, a very good blog, No Quarter, written by former CIA analyst Larry C. Johnson.

I know that sounds bad, but he is part of the reality-based community, he has superb knowledge of the Middle East, and he and his co-author(s) have nothing but contempt for the neoconservative madness that reigns in Washington and Tel Aviv.

Johnson runs a counterterrorism consulting firm, but before you get twisted out of shape about that, note that it continues to be focused on Sunni Salafists and Takfiris associated with Al Qaeda.

This is a menace, despite the disgusting lies from Muslim (fundamentalist) apologies that only Muslims can understand Muslims, that there is no such thing as Salafism, or Wahhabism, or Salafi-jihadism, and that all of these are the fervid lies of Western "Orientalists".

This lie that is echoed by Arab ethnocentrists like Angry Arab, who ignorantly and arrogantly insists that any attempt to understand Arabs or the Arab World in any way by anyone who does not have 100% pure Arab blood is a case of "Orientalism".

Despite this ethnocentric BS, outsiders are indeed capable of observing, analyzing and yes (gasp) even understanding Arab and Muslim cultures without converting to Islam or getting Arabic blood transfusions.

For instance, it is not "Orientalism" to note, astutely, that there is a variety of radical Sunni Islam, loosely allied with the ideology of Al Qaeda, that must be fought to the death and destroyed everywhere it menaces its enemies on this planet, no matter how matter Takfiri maniacs are slaughtered in the process. I am serious. If a million dangerous Takfiris need to die, let's get on with it. Hama, Part 2, let's rock and roll.

Edward Said, for all his fine work, did the world a disservice with his ethnocentric lead balloon "Orientalism", and poisoned the minds of a generation of Arab intellectuals.

Larry Johnson understands who the Salafi and Takfiri enemy is and who are the Muslims and Arabs who need to be left in peace.
****

*****
Let us start out with a very important article by journalist Robert Parry, who did some important research on Iran-Contra. A voice of calm reason, we need to listen carefully to him. The topics of this piece have also appeared in a variety of other pieces lately, but this article sums things up pretty well.

First of all, whether or not Hezbollah attacked the Israeli forces inside Israel or inside Lebanon is not really important because this war was planned for months by the US and Israel. On May 23, Bush met with Olmert and Israeli sources say the go-ahead was given to fight the Lebanon War.

All they needed was a pretext. Three days later, a bomb went off in Lebanon, killing 2 Islamic Jihad activists. Hezbollah was furious and responded to the attack with a rocket barrage on Israel. Israel responded with bombardments of Hezbollah positions. This sort of thing has been going on from time to time ever since 2000.

The objective here was to increase the tensions along the border, to provoke the enemy into attacking, and then to use the attack to launch the Destroy Hezbollah War. This is the sort of thing that Israel has done over and over all throughout its history. As this comment here notes:

Israel is a freak nation founded on ethnic cleansing and war - that cannot exist without war.

I realize that that comment sounds insane, but my years of research have concluded that there is a lot of truth to that. Anyway, on June 10, Lebanese authorities rolled up a Mossad cell in Lebanon that had conducted the assassination of the Islamic Jihad officials.

The objective here was to provoke a situation of tit for tat violence that would escalate the pressure on Hezbollah, the Palestinian guerrillas, Syria and Iran.

At the May 23 summit, Olmert and Bush agreed to make 2006 the year to deal with the Iranian nuclear issue (even though an Iranian bomb is at least 3-10 years away). The way to get to Iran is through Syria and Hezbollah.

Although I do not like to make predictions, a US or Israeli or US-Israeli attack on Iran before the Bush Presidency is up is possible and may even be likely. Both the Americans and the Israelis seem to be determined to pull off this attack. Now whether their plans will actually come through or not is uncertain, but that an attack on Iran is clearly their objective.

The idea here, the piece notes, is to create a wider conflict. The brilliant but erratic Xymphora sketches out the neoconservative plan to transform the Middle East here into 10 steps. Some of them are quite unlikely, but others are already done.

We have seen repeated neoconservative blueprints for these plots in the past decade.

Just take a look at various documents out of Daniel Pipes' Middle East Forum, especially this eye-opening document called, Ending Syria's Occupation of Lebanon: The US Role, by Pipes and Ziad Abelnour (former Lebanese Phalangist and head of the neoconservative US Committee for a Free Lebanon - web site here).

Listing all of the players in these schemes goes beyond the scope of this post, but the Right Web links above contain lists of many of the relevant plotters and the organizations they are involved with.

The single paper that sums up the whole neoconservative game plan well is A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, prepared for former Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu in June 1996.

It is essential that anyone who wants to understand the Middle East madness that has ensued since George Bush came into office read this paper.

In this paper, the invasion of Iraq is plotted. In the same paper, the destruction of Hezbollah is urged. It's not too often that conspirators lay out exactly what they intend to do before hand, and when they do, is important that all concerned citizens read up on these mad plots, understand them, and formulate strategies to resist them.

In fact, reading through any of the papers on the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies page should give a careful reader tremendous insight into the thinking of the current US and Israeli governments.

Reading Securing the Realm shows you the mad vision of "The New Middle East" that these ultra-Zionist psychos contemplate. With that knowledge in mind, we can understand Condoleeza Rice's slip of the tongue when she called the orgy of mad death and destruction in Lebanon as "the birth pangs of the New Middle East".

As I have noted previously, since this pre-planned Lebanon War began (just looking for an excuse to trigger it off), the Bushies have been urging Israel to attack Syria. If you read Securing the Realm, you will note that Syria is targeted for regime change after Iraq. The Israelis have balked, reportedly because they lack an immediate excuse.

However, perusing the rightwing blogs, websites and Israeli comments section in the past few weeks, I have been inundated with calls to attack Syria and also to attack Iran. Turn on Fox News, and one breathless, psychopathic Zionist talking-head nutcase after another urges an attack on Syria, Iran, or both.

Clearly, the "Destroy Hezbollah War" is meant to be a way to get at Iran and/or Syria, either by provoking them into the conflict, or just attacking them for their logical behavior in resupplying their Hezbollah ally. Indeed, Israeli sources note that Bush is praying that Iran and Syria will get overtly involved in the Hezbollah War, in order to give a green light to attacks on them.

It is useful to note that Bush tried a similar "pretext war" against Iraq before he attacked it. Endlessly, with no-fly zones and continuous bombings of Iraqi targets, the US and Britain (British imperialism to be precise, apparently trying to long-lost colonial glory) tried to goad Saddam into a war.

Wisely, Saddam refused to react to the countless smacks to his face by defending himself. Not that it mattered, as he got attacked anyway. Which suggests a similar end for these similar provocations, if it comes down to that endgame. It is clear that the US is determined to attack not only Iran, but also Syria.

At this point, judging by the Iraqi experience, it is not clear what these 2 countries can do to stop these planned attacks, short of complete surrender to US and Zionist hegemony.

Although the Iraq War seems to have set the neocons back a bit, with the ascension to power of rightwing hack Olmert in Israel, Bush apparently saw a kindred spirit who believed that Zionist and imperialist ultraviolence could solve the problems of the region.

It is useful to note here Paul Krugman's brilliant formation of the neoconservatives and Bushies as revolutionaries, based on his analysis of Henry Kissinger's astute dissertation about revolutionary powers. We must also bear in mind Hillary Clinton's comments at a private fundraiser in Los Angeles when she described the Bushies as "relentless and ruthless".

They are! You cannot understand these people until you get that through your head. Have you noticed that when the Bushies have a goal, they just keep pushing it and pushing it, even after failure upon failure, no matter how little support it has, until they finally bash the door down and get what they want? They don't stop, they don't take no for an answer, and they never quit.

You will never understand the Bushies until you figure this out.

Anyway, back to the US-Israeli ratchet game. The day after this fateful May 23 meeting, Olmert stood up and said "a moment of truth" had come for addressing Iran's purported nuclear bomb program.

The very next day, Olmert went to the US Congress and gave a surreal speech in which he described the nonexistent Iranian nuclear bomb as an "existential threat" to the Zionist racist settler-colonial rogue state that is itself armed with 300-400 nuclear weapons.

In this bizarre speech, Olmert was interrupted scores of times by standing ovations by a Congress in deadly thrall to the Zionist outlaw killer state. This does not usually happen when a foreign leader addresses Congress. It is like a surrealist play by Alfred Jarry.

On June 23, the IDF kidnapped 2 sons of a Hamas legislator, who are apparently completely innocent, and despite the cacophonous Zionist screeching that they are "terrorists", they seem to be guilty of nothing more than having a father who is a Hamas leader. A day later, Hamas tunneled out of the Gaza open air prison, attacked a Zionist base, killed 2 IDF soldiers and took 1 more POW.

This was apparently the pretext needed to destroy Gaza and wipe the democratically elected Hamas government out completely. At the time, Palestinian President Abbas had apparently coaxed Hamas into accepting a 2-state solution, formally anyway (they have repeatedly said they would accept such a solution).

The Israeli response, as we have seen over and over whenever any kind of peaceful settlement comes up that seems to curtain the ongoing Zionist colonization project, was massive violence. In the midst of the madness, Israel kidnapped 1/3 of the elected Hamas Parliament, who have nothing to do with military operations at all. These are apparently some kind of sick bargaining chips for the IDF POW.

The tension mounted, and on June 12, Hezbollah attacked, apparently partly in solidarity with the Palestinians, for which they ought to be commended. Israel responded to the attacks, deaths, injuries and POW's with a wild bombardment of Lebanon from one end to the other. Hezbollah responded by launching a Katyusha barrage.

Israel responded with a 10,000-man ground invasion and plans to occupy land all the way up to the Litani River, along with creepy warnings telling all civilians to flee the area.

These warnings are creepy because many times in past, Zionists have told the civilian population to flee, then attacked cities and villages, conquered them and annexed them to the Zionist colonial state, while permanently preventing the natives from returning to their homes and lands.

While we do not have any clear evidence that Israel intends to annex southern Lebanon to the Litani River, or steal the water from the Litani, at this point, we need to consider this out of control madman state as capable of these things, whether or not they actually do it or not.

Parry's article notes that the US-French-Israeli UN plan is apparently designed to fail from the start, thereby creating a pretext called,"Hezbollah (and Iran and Syria) are violating UN resolutions". Recall from the Iraq War what nefarious purposes Machiavellian US imperialists and Zionists use failure to comply with UN resolutions (it's a green light to attack the parties not in compliance).

Specifically, the resolution calls for Hezbollah to completely disarm, hand back the POW's and cease all hostilities. In return, they get zero.

They don't get their 15 Lebanese POW's back, Israel does not have to hand over the Lebanese land they are occupying, colonizing and stealing water from (the Shebaa Farms), and most insane of all, Israel does not even have to leave Lebanon!

Not only does the racist, colonialist, militarist, belligerent Israeli state get to camp out on occupied land again, but they have a right to engage in "defensive" attacks" (Hezbollah has no such right). Any student of Israeli history knows what mad offensive operations Israel has endlessly engaged in the name of self-defensive.

So, while the US is purporting to try to stop a war that the US in fact started, and relieving a humanitarian crisis that the US caused in the first place, the devious machinations here appear to be to force some sort of a showdown (apparently an armed one) with the axis of Hezbollah-Syria-Iran-Hamas in some kind of wild roll the dice endgame.

The reason those four parties are targeted is simple. Those are the last holdouts in the Arab World that not only oppose Zionist racist colonialism, expansionism and apartheid, but are well-armed and willing to stand up to this evil with gun in hand.

Strangely, the US and Israel actually feel that they have the support of so-called "moderate" regimes - regimes that have abjectly surrendered to Zionist colonization and occupation of Arab lands - in taking on the recalcitrant parties above.

As hard as that is to believe, looking at the cringing, terrified, supplicant, pro-US regimes that litter the sands of the Arab World, it is actually possible the Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia may be urging the US and Israel to attack the principled radicals above.
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11:23 PM: The IDF destroyed 500 homes in Bint Jbeil (in other words, they flattened the entire town). But all of those homes were really Hezbollah headquarters and bases. So, just about every home in the town was a Hezbollah headquarters or base, right?

10:51 PM: 25 IDF troops were wounded in extremely heavy fighting in Dibel and Ayta Al-Shaab.

10:39 PM: A large number of IDF tanks started moving into Lebanon, as the start of the mad "expansion of the war" by the crazed rightwing Israeli regime.

10:30 PM: 2 Katyusha rockets landed in Maalot. There were no casualties.

10:01 PM: The IDF attacked a guerrilla training camp in Gaza in the Shajeyah District. 2 Palestinians were killed and others were wounded.

9 PM: Fox News, on the border with Lebanon, has footage of a burned out Merkava tank where reportedly 4 IDF troops were killed. The reporter, Shephard Smith, said they had been watching IDF casualties, killed and wounded, go by all day long. The sound of heavy fighting could be heard in the background. Smith said that today looked to be the worst day so far for IDF casualties.

8 PM: 1 IDF soldier was killed and 2 others were wounded in a mortar attack in Kalia, near Marjaroun.

6:04 PM: The IDF bombarded the studios of Al Manar TV in Beirut. Several other buildings were also hit. Al Manar broadcasts "incitement and war propaganda", so therefore it got hit. In that case, Hezbollah has a right to attack the Jerusalem Post, Ha'aretz , Ynet, Maariv and Arutz Sheva offices with missiles, correct? Not to mention all Israeli TV stations. Fair is fair.

3:29 PM: The IDF said they killed 20 Hezbollah fighters in very heavy fighting in Bint Jbeil.

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3:01 PM: Several IDF troops are wounded in fighting in southern Lebanon. Fighting is ongoing in Bint Jbeil, Aita Al Shaab, Qantara, Tayba, Aytarun, Debel and Rajmin.

The IDF said they killed 2 Hezbollah fighters in Rajmin. Qantara is 5 1/2 miles west of the border near Metulla and 3 miles west of Taybeh. Rajmin is actually known as Ramyah on most maps. It is located 1 mile north of the Zarit on the border.
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2:50 PM: Heavy fighting was reported in Debil, west of Bint Jbeil.

2:46 PM: Fires continue to burn out of control from Katyusha attacks at Kiryat Shemona and Maalot. A building in Nahariyah sustained a direct hit by a missile but there were no casualties. Several Israelis in the Galilee were wounded.

2:42 PM: 2 rockets slammed into a populated area of Carmiel. There were no casualties.

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2:21 PM: The Khaiber-1 330mm Syrian-made rockets fired on Afula landed mostly in the West Bank near Jenin, in general along the Green Line.

One rocket landed in the Palestinian village of Faqua, which could not be located on a map. Another such rocket hit that town a week ago. There are apparently no casualties from these strikes, although they rained shrapnel all around. They carry a 200-pound warhead, whereas, the Katyushas only carry 40-pound warheads.
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2:17 PM: A Katyusha rocket barrage hit Safad but landed in open areas. Nevertheless, 5 Israelis were wounded.

2 PM: Over 6 Katyushas rained down on Maalot and Kiryat Shemona. There are no casualties but fires are burning in the area.

1:12 PM: A number of IDF soldiers have been wounded in the intense fighting with Hezbollah guerrillas in Aita Al Shaab and Taybeh. There are no details on the number of casualties or their nature. In fighting elsewhere, the IDF said they killed 4 Hezbollah fighters.

12:25 PM: Hezbollah fired over half a dozen missiles at Haifa and Nahariyah, but they all landed in open areas. A Khaiber-1 rocket blew up over Haifa before it hit ground.

12:06 PM: Hezbollah fired missiles at a number of targets across southern Lebanon. Missiles hit Haifa, Nahariyah,and Kiryat Shemona. For the second time, Hezbollah fired Khaiber-1 rockets on Israel. This time, the rockets hit in the Gilboa Hills, 1/2 way between Afula and Beit Shean, just north of the West Bank.

12 PM: Hezbollah guerrillas fired anti-tank missiles into a building where Israeli soldiers were hiding in Dibel, killing 9 IDF troops. The missile caused an arms cache to blow up inside the building. A short while later, the building collapsed. 17 troops were wounded. IDF forces had a hard time digging them out for some reason. It is not known if some of the wounded are still trapped there.

AM: The IDF killed 2 Hezbollah guerrillas in Aita Al Shaab, another village the IDF has been in for weeks. Let me know when the mighty IDF takes this measly village?

11:30 AM: The IDF says it killed a top Hezbollah official and 6 members of his family in an air strike on his home in the town of Masjara (I am not sure where that is). If this is ok, then why is it not ok for, say, "terrorists" to rocket homes where Israeli soldiers reside. If their family gets killed too, then so what?

11 AM: Hezbollah fired a Kornet anti-tank missile at IDF forces in Ayta Al-Shaab, killing all 4 crew members. The tank burst into flames and other soldiers were not able to approach it.

10:38 AM: IDF gunships shelled targets in southern Lebanon.

10:02 AM: Palestinian guerrillas opened fire on IDF troops in Jenin. There were no casualties.

9:55 AM: An IDF helicopter fired a missile at 2 Islamic Jihad in a home in Jenin. Both of them were killed in the air strike. Both were wanted for suicide bombings.

9:40 AM: 1 IDF soldier was wounded in fighting in Bint Jbeil. Excuse me, but the IDF is still in Bint Jbeil? They have been there for how long now? A month? Come on, now.

8:22 AM: The IDF arrested 3 Palestinian guerrillas in Nablus and Ramallah. The guerrillas were in Tanzim and the PFLP. This blog strongly supports the PFLP and DFLP in Palestine and urges all progressives to consider doing the same.

8 AM: 1 IDF soldier was killed and 7 more were wounded in a "friendly fire incident in Taybeh.

7:31 AM: The IDF hit what they said was Hezbollah's headquarters in in home in Bint Jbeil. There were reportedly 10 Hezbollah fighters in the home at that time.

7:23 AM: Palestinian fighters threw firebombs at IDF troops in Nablus in two separate attacks. There were no casualties.

Early AM: A number of Katyusha rockets rained down on Kiryat Shemona. There was damage but no injuries. Kiryat Shemona is devastated. 50% of its population has fled and there are plans to evacuate another 10,000 residents.

4:28 AM: There is heavy fighting ongoing in Ayta Al Shaab, which should have been conquered long ago. Hezbollah fighters are using antitank weapons.

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3:59 AM: The IDF bombarded the Ein Al Hilwe refugee camp in southern Lebanon. One shell hit the camp and another hit an amusement park next door. 1 Palestinian was killed and 3 more were wounded. The IDF attacked the offices of the Fatah in the camp.

Can someone please tell me why that office is a legitimate target in this war? The IDF seems to be out to settle scores across the board, as they do in most of their ramped up offensives. Israel claims they hit a Hezbollah fighter in the camp.
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1:15 AM: Palestinian fighters threw rocks at IDF troops near Nablus. The troops responded by firing at the feet of the protesters. 3 Palestinians were wounded.