Condolizzard Rice Rejects Cease Fire in Lebanon

[Laura]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060721/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_mideast_53

By ANNE GEARAN, AP Diplomatic Writer Fri Jul 21, 7:06 PM ET

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice rejected the "false promise" of an immediate cease-fire in the spreading war between Israel and Hezbollah on Friday and said she would seek long-term peace during a trip to the Mideast beginning Sunday.

The top U.S. diplomat defended her decision not to meet with Hezbollah leaders or their Syrian backers during her visit.

"Syria knows what it needs to do, and Hezbollah is the source of the problem," Rice said as she previewed her trip, which begins with a stop in Israel.

Rice said the United States is committed to ending the bloodshed, but not before certain conditions are met. The Bush administration has said that Hezbollah must first turn over the two Israeli soldiers whose capture set off the 10-day-old violence, and stop firing missiles into Israel.

"We do seek an end to the current violence, we seek it urgently. We also seek to address the root causes of that violence," Rice said. "A cease-fire would be a false promise if it simply returns us to the status quo."

The United States has resisted international pressure to lean on its ally Israel to halt the fighting. The U.S. position has allowed Israel more time to try to destroy what both nations consider a Hezbollah terrorist network in southern Lebanon.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan demanded an immediate cease-fire Thursday, and denounced the actions of both Israel and Hezbollah. Lebanon's beleaguered prime minister has also asked for an immediate halt to the fighting.

Daniel Ayalon, Israel's ambassador to Washington, told The Associated Press that Israel has destroyed about 40 percent of Hezbollah's military capabilities.

"Most of the long-range (missiles) have been hit, a lot of the medium range, but they still have thousands and thousands of rockets, short-range and others," Ayalon said in an interview.

He described the Israeli military assault as a "mop up" operation, and said that Israel had no desire to repeat its 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon that ended in 2000.

"They overplayed their hand, they miscalculated," Ayalon said of Hezbollah militants based in southern Lebanon and supported by Syria and Iran.

Rice's mission would be the first U.S. diplomatic effort on the ground since the Israeli effort against Lebanon began.

Asked why she didn't go earlier and engage in quick-hit diplomacy to try to end the death and destruction that has gripped the region, she replied, "I could have gotten on a plane and rushed over and started shuttling and it wouldn't have been clear what I was shuttling to do."

The crisis started last week when Hezbollah, an Islamic militant group that operates in southern Lebanon, captured two Israeli soldiers. Israel retaliated by carrying out bombing across Lebanon and slapping a naval blockade on the country. Hezbollah fired hundreds of missiles into Israel.

At least 335 people have been killed in Lebanon in the Israeli campaign, according to the Lebanese health minister. Thirty-four Israelis also have been killed, including 19 soldiers.

Rice plans meetings in Jerusalem and the West Bank with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, as well as sessions in Rome with representatives of European and moderate Arab governments that are meant to shore up the weak democratic government in Lebanon's capital Beirut.

Rice's trip resumes a role the United States has long played as the key Mideast peace broker, but Rice is not expected to try to get a signed deal during her brief visit.

"I know that there are no answers that are easy, nor are there any quick fixes," Rice said. "I fully expect that the diplomatic work for peace will be difficult."

The United States is relying on Arab and other intermediaries to pressure Hezbollah and Syria. The United States considers Hezbollah a terrorist group, and has cut high-level ties to Damascus in a dispute over what it says is Syrian meddling in Lebanon.

Hezbollah also exerts political control in southern Lebanon, overshadowing the democratic central government. The U.N. and U.S. plan for long-term stability would give international help to the Beirut government to expel Hezbollah and install its own Army troops, something it has been unable to do.

Hezbollah "extremists are trying to strangle it in its crib," Rice said of the Lebanese government.

President Bush, asked what he hopes Rice will achieve on her trip, said he would discuss it with her when he returns to the White House on Sunday. He was speaking at a restaurant in Aurora, Colo., as he met with 10 members of the military who recently returned from
Iraq.

Announcing plans earlier for a weekend meeting that Bush and Rice will have with Saudi officials, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said, "This is part of the president's broader diplomatic outreach on the developing situation in the Middle East."

Bush and Rice will meet at the White House with Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, chief of the Saudi National Security Council.

The plans emerged following two days of meetings in New York with Annan and envoys he sent to the region this week. Annan outlined basic terms of a proposed cease-fire and the longer-range goals to remove the Hezbollah threat in southern Lebanon in a speech on Thursday.

 

[Laura]

The Real Enemy
http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/editorials/signs20060720_TheRealEnemy.php

Joe Quinn
Signs of the Times
20/07/2006

At present, many writers in the alternative media are feeling extremely angry, depressed and frustrated at what is happening in Palestine and Lebanon. Despite hundreds of editorials and essays eloquently decrying Israeli aggression and provocation and spelling out the very obvious reason for the long-standing violence in the Middle East, Israel continues its murderous rampage, killing almost 70 Lebanese civilians yesterday. Yesterday's attacks involved Israeli bombing of entire Lebanese villages, such as Srifa in the south west of Lebanon where Israeli F-16 jets, supplied free of charge by the US government, destroyed 15 houses, killed at least 20, and wounded at least 30, men women, young and old alike. The truly horrifying thing however is that the inhabitants of the villages were fleeing on the orders of the Israeli government itself, yet as the villagers attempted to leave in their cars and vans, they were targeted by Israeli jets and blown to pieces...

At the beginning of the current crisis in Palestine, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stated clearly that the lives of Israeli civilians were more important than the lives of Palestinian civilians and that the bombing of the Gaza strip and Lebanon is designed to wipe out the threat to Israeli citizens from Hamas and Hezbollah. In the past 5 years, 5 Israeli civilians have been killed in one town as a result of Hamas rockets, and none have been killed as a result of Hizbollah attacks. Yet in the past week and as a result of Israeli attacks on Hamas and Hezbollah, 14 Israeli citizens of Haifa have been killed. Clearly, and despite his words, Olmert cares little more for the lives of Israeli Jews than he does for the lives of Arabs.

Is It Really About Defence?

As an explanation for the murder of 300 Lebanese civilians over the past 7 days and the murder of over 3,000 Palestinian civilians and 800 Israeli civilians over the past five years, Bush and Olmert repeatedly state that "Israel has a right to defend itself". When the facts are analysed, this claim is nonsensical and an outright lie. The Israeli military has been occupying Palestinian, Lebanese (the Chebaa Farms area) and Syrian (Golan heights) for almost 40 years. In the Palestinian land that it occupies, the Israeli government had reduced the Palestinian population therein to little more than slaves. Israel holds these lands in defiance of international law. This is the major source of Palestinian and Hezbollah resentment towards and attacks on Israel. The continuation of an enforced occupation of the sovereign territory of another people and nation simply cannot be described as "defence". If a person comes and throws you out of your home and occupies it by force of arms, he may claim that he is "defending" it, but it is a defence of something acquired through illegal means and is therefore an unlawful and aggressive act. It is not defence.

The history of Israeli tactics in the occupied Palestinian territories over the past 50 years make it very clear that the ultimate goal of the Israeli power brokers has always been the removal, in one way or another, of all Palestinians from their land.

Consider the below image of illegal Israeli settlements in the West.

Now remember, other than the miniscule Gaza strip, this is all of the land available for a Palestinian state! The Israeli government began building the illegal settlements in 1967, they same year that it annexed Lebanese and Syrian land. Today, Israeli settlers live in plush comfortable houses with all amenities on 40% of Palestinian land in the West Bank, while Palestinians regularly have their meager houses destroyed by Israeli bulldozers. All crossings out of Gaza and the West Bank are strictly controlled by Israeli troops, with most Palestinians being denied the right to leave. Poverty in Gaza and the West Bank is rife with 65% of the population living below the poverty line i.e. on less than $2 per day.

What is very clear to Palestinians, and has been for a very long time, is that the Israeli government never intended to allow the Palestinians to have a state of their own. Palestinians are painfully aware of the fact that, since 1967, the Israeli government has been preparing what was left of Palestinian land for a final annexation into Israel, with the only impediment to the fulfillment of this plan being the Palestinians living there. With the recent staged crisis, Israel hopes to find the opportunity to deal with this last 'obstacle' to Greater Israel, once and for all. Clearly then, it is the Palestinians, and now the Lebanese, who are, and have always been engaged in defence against a long-term and ongoing Israeli plot to dispossess them of their land and homes forever.

How do you feel about this?

When you look at the bodies of Lebanese babies, their little bodies lying mangled, scattered around the ground beside the burnt-out van they were travelling in only minutes before, what do you feel? Is this a just end to this child's life?! Did he deserve it?!

When you realise that these children were ordered to leave their homes by the Israeli military in a deliberate ploy to "flush them out" in order to blow them to pieces with their bombs, what do you feel?

When you see the once beautiful brown curls of a 5 year old Lebanese girl, now matted with her own blood, her clothes torn, her head hanging lifeless, what do you feel?

When you look at the image below of another Lebanese "terrorist" girl 'taken out' by Israeli war planes, do you think of your own children? Do you imagine how you would feel if this were your child?

When you see the burning bodies of two lebanese civilians, the victims of Israeli and American 'defence', is it pride you feel?

Imagine for a moment that you are the President of America, or a member of his administration, or the Israeli Prime Minister, or a member of his administration. Having seen these pictures, would you, as "Commander in Chief", continue to order more air strikes on civilian targets? If you retained even an ounce of your own humanity - your ability to empathise with the suffering of another - you most definitely would not. You could not. Bush and Olmert see these pictures and they remained unmoved, supremely detached from any emotion at the sight of a dead child, and they give the order to continue the bombing.

Apparently, they want to see more dead children.

Am I being inflammatory when I say this? Am I exaggerating? Can it really be possible that our leaders are so inhuman, so different from you and I?

No one wants to consider such a concept, but what else are we to conclude when the bombing continues? When 270 of 300 Lebanese killed in the past week were innocent civilians, are you going to tell me that Israeli (and therefore American) war technology is so crude that it repeatedly hits the wrong target? In which case, why do they keep using such devices? Are you trying to tell me that missiles that hit the fleeing civilians were not deliberate? How far can your credibility be stretched?

The Real Enemy Of Mankind

The 'crisis' in Palestine and Lebanon comes at a bad time for the alternative media. Up until a few weeks ago, we could still entertain the idea that we were making a difference. The dogged blogging and posting of articles and editorials on web sites seemed to be having an effect. We felt we had a voice and that it was being listened to by an ever increasing number of people. We thought the pressure we were bringing to bear would surely stay the hand of the war mongers, that they would 'see the light', that we could 'bring them to their senses'. But we were wrong it seems.

If there is one glaring problem with the alternative media today it is that they do not know the true nature of the enemy. In fact, no one seems to realise that we are fighting an enemy at all. Most still believe that we are dealing with a few misguided political leaders who just seem to have a really hard time realising that their actions are causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. If they could only be made aware of this, the world would turn the corner towards peace and prosperity for all, right?

Unfortunately, there is a serious problem with this assumption.

If we, the information-deprived masses, are able to get a glimpse of the carnage that our political leaders are causing, is it not a certainty that these same political leaders are significantly more aware of the results of their actions? After all, they are in possession of detailed intelligence reports on demographics, details of targets selected and the nature and destructive power of the weapons they employ against those targets. When we hear of an Israeli or American bomb scoring a direct hit on a residential house that kills dozens of innocent men women and children, our lack of knowledge of military affairs and planning allows us to believe that maybe it was a mistake, that they didn't really mean to kill civilians. Indeed, we need to believe this, because to believe otherwise is to face ourselves into a very frightening scenario indeed - that our political leaders, the men and women who sit in almost absolute power over us, are fully conscious of their actions and therefore lack the one characteristic that defines a person as truly human: empathy for the suffering of another human being.

So we force ourselves to believe that the men and women with the power to kill millions would never take delight in exercising that power. We think that because we recoil in horror and grief at the sight of the lifeless body of a small child lying beside the burnt out shell of the car she was travelling in before it was hit by an Israeli or American missile, that the men who fired the missile, or those who ordered them to fire it, are also deeply moved by such a tragic scene. Yet we run into a problem the very moment that a second missile, then a third and then a fourth, extinguishes more innocent lives. How many more bodies of dead children, how many more weeks of Israeli military bombing campaigns on civilian targets are needed before we come to the conclusion that the members of the Israeli, American and British governments who, in full knowledge of their actions continue to sanction or order such attacks, simply do not, cannot, feel the same way about the massacring of innocent children as you and I?

Understandably, this is a hard one for many people to accept. To accept it heralds the end of our cozy world-view where basically good and decent leaders, people just like you and I, are at least striving to do what is best for the world and its people. In its place, we find ourselves in a world where the global power brokers, the people who control every aspect of our material lives, appear not to care about human life at all, save their own.

How long might an impala on the serengeti expect to survive if, despite all evidence to contrary, it continues to believe in the innate benevolence of a lion towards its species?

This is an appropriate analogy. Scientific studies have shown that when normal human beings are presented with a disturbing image of human suffering, an area of the brain associated with emotion and empathy "lights up". Similar studies carried out on known psychopaths show that they appear to lack the normal range of human emotion. When a psychopath is shown a picture of a car, followed by a picture of a dead child and a grieving mother, there is no difference in brain response. There is no feeling it seems.

Psychopathy

Dr Hervey Cleckley spent years studying psychopaths up close and personal. His book, The Mask of Sanity, shows that, outwardly, the average intelligent psychopath bears no resemblance, neither in appearance nor actions, to Hannibal Lecter or Ted Bundy. Neither is he in jail. On the contrary, the average psychopath appears to be conscious of the fact that he lacks the basic human ability to feel deep emotion and empathy for another. Early on in his life, the psychopath learns that displays of complete indifference to the suffering of others are reacted to with concern and sometimes anger by his family and peers. So he learns to conceal it. At the same time, he recognises and gravitates towards others who share his deficiency.

It is not hard to imagine that psychopaths do very well in business and politics where the promotion of self-interest and the accrual of personal and group power is the name of the game. Where you or I, in possession of a conscience, would surely balk at, for example deliberately getting a work colleague fired for no reason other than facilitate our own ascent of the corporate ladder, no such impediment to success exists for the psychopath who simply cannot put himself in the place of another human being and therefore feel empathy. While it has been estimated that approximately 6% of the global population falls into the category of psychopath (about 360 million people), their extreme self-interest and the fact that such "ambition" is a key ingredient of success in the world of politics and business, we assume much more than 6% of top level corporate, government and military positions are held by people who possess no ability to empathise with the needs or suffering of another human being.

A perusal of the last few thousand years of the history of our world quickly reveals to us that, more than anything else, war has defined our 'evolution' (if it can be called that). Equally obvious is the fact that, in war, soldiers and civilians die while the men and women responsible for waging war (on both sides) generally neither fight in the war nor are punished for their part in it encouraging it.

Does that tell you anything?

Throughout history, small groups of people have risen to power over the masses, and by the promotion of religious, ethnic or political divisions, they have set large groups of ordinary human beings against each other in order to further their personal goals. More often that not, ideologies such as 'freedom' are used to rally the masses to fight. But history testifies that the only real net result of war is the consolidation of power into the hands of an 'elite' few. After the allies were victorious in WWII, Stalin went on to murder 50 million Russians. World War II led to the creation of the state of Israel and the ongoing persecution of Middle Eastern Arabs. World War II also facilitated the USA's rise to a position of global preeminence, a situation which has caused more death and suffering over the past 60 years than at any other time in our recent history.

Now more than ever, there is an opportunity for each of us to recognise who the true enemy is. Why should we or our sons and daughers continue to fight and kill each other on the command of a small group of people whose only contribution has been to enrich themselves at our expense, at the expense of our very lives? Are we stupid? Or are we just misinformed? The reality of our world has always been a very clear case of Us and Them, yet we have failed to see it. We fail to see the predatory, unfeeling nature of these people because we ourselves lack such a nature. We project on to them our own human values of empathy and conscience when, time and again, they have proven that they possess no such qualities. We have allowed them to divide us, and set us at each others throats in the name of freedom, a value that we hold dear, not they (save for their usefulness in manipulating us).

Now more than ever, the very real yet hidden phenomenon of psychopathy needs desperately to be uncovered. We need to avail ourselves of the evidence that suggests that many of our political leaders are clinical, yet very smart and careful psychopaths. There is no other plausible explanation for their smug brutality, their deadly lies, their utter indifference to the pitiful sight of the lifeless body of small child for whose death they are responsible.

Lest anyone begin the process of rationalising what I have said, realise that to do so is evidence that your own humanity is being robbed from you by the propagation of our 'leaders' psychopathic values and ideologies. "War is peace", "Black is White" "Muslims are Terrorists" "Our government is protecting us". Before you fall for such paramoralisms, know this; psychopaths feel no empathy for any other human being. Race or creed does not figure into the equation. There is significant evidence that the psychopaths in power in the US and Israel knowingly murdered 3,000 American citizens on September 11th 2001, few were Muslim. At present the Israeli government is placing the lives of Israeli Jews in clear danger precisely because they simply cannot care about the life of any other human being, Christian, Muslim, Jew they are concerned for none but themselves.

'Armgaeddon' Approaches

As a conclusion, I would like here to present a theory for your consideration, and while you may immediately reject it as implausible, I suggest you watch events in the Middle East and notice the direction they take. My suggestion is that the ultimate goal of the plan that is being currently implemented in Lebanon and Palestine is the destruction of a majority of the population of the modern-day Middle East.

Far from attempting to rid the world of a previously more or less non-existent anti-Semitism, the policies pursued by successive Israeli governments have gone a long way to increasing ill-feeling towards Jews and Israel. By repeatedly condemning anyone who speaks out against the increasingly brutal actions of the Israeli government as anti-Semitic, Israeli leaders and lobbyists are coming close to making the word anti-Semitism respectable. When that happens, the demise of Israel, the Jews and the Arabs of the Middle East will be all but assured. That day is closer than any of us realise.

We have but one hope to prevent what appears to be an approaching major war in the Middle East that will not be limited to that region and which will result in the deaths of millions of innocents: we must understand the truth about the men and women that call themselves our 'leaders', yet who offer nothing but war, suffering and death. We must realise that they are not like you and I, they do not feel as you and I feel, they do not love as you and I love. They are psychopaths, and under their stewardship death and destruction is 100% assured.

 

[Laura]

Psychopathy in Action: How Bush Plans to Build an Arab "Umbrella" Against Hizballah

http://time.blogs.com/allen_report/2006/07/how_bush_plans_.html

Time's White House Correspondent, Mike Allen

Although some conservatives have been fretting that Lebanese rocket fire and Israeli warplanes are making President Bush look helpless, administration officials revealed to TIME today that they have plans to harness the chaos as a "leadership moment" for Bush that could wind up helping his flagging goal of transforming the Middle East.

These officials said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will leave Sunday night for a week of diplomacy in the region and will go with the modest goal of forming an "umbrella of Arab allies" in opposition to the militant group Hizballah that incited the conflagration by kidnapping two Israeli soldiers.

"She's not going to come home with a ceasefire, but stronger ties to the Arab world," an administration official said. "It's going to allow us to say that America isn't going to put up with this and we have Arab friends that are against you terrorists. What we want is our Arab allies standing against Hizballah and against Iran, since there is no one who doesn't think Iran is behind this. We're going to say to Hizballah and the terrorist groups, 'This will not stand.' That is the way to bring real change to the Middle East. If you just have a ceasefire, then soon or later, they go back to fighting."

Rice was to announce her plans at a briefing this afternoon, officials said. Officials were using the word "umbrella" instead of "coalition" to avoid reminders of the struggling coalition the U.S. led into Iraq. Administration officials said the plans Rice will discuss include security, humanitarian relief and reconstruction in Lebanon. "We do not want Hizballah to get the opportunity to rearm and rebuild," a Bush aide said.

Another administration official told TIME this morning that the diplomacy "is going remarkably well," pointing to phone calls the President has had with Middle Eastern leaders, the journey by two envoys to the region, and frequent conversations between National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and his counterparts.

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow appeared on network morning shows to urge patience with the administration approach and to point out how active the Bush team has been. "The president never said this would be easy," Snow said on NBC's "Today" show, speaking of the wider war on terror. "Everybody who wants this kind of egg timer diplomacy, who thinks, okay, these things ought to happen quickly -- you don't understand human nature. Terrorists are not going to say, 'You know what? That's right. I'm going to pick another career.' Many times, they're going to fight to the death. We hope that is not the case in Lebanon."