Gillerman, telling the UN Security Council that Qana was "a hub for
Hezbollah", and that "Israel had urged villagers to leave". For a start, as he well knew, residents had no means to leave. A Spanish
journalist in Qana, Monica Leiva, told Focus News, "There are no Hezbollah activists in the village of Qana. Israel is bombarding buildings and vehicles. There are only civilians here,"
http://www.focus-fen.net/index.php?catid=138&ch=0&newsid=93149
Lies, spin, cruelty and greed; that's the mantra of our times.
AS I write, the IDF is attacking a hospital in the World Heritage city of
Tyre and ramping up the Lebanese civilian death toll, for which, employing the persuasive dexterity of Colonel Eisen, it will express regret. No wonder many of our young people are so daunted by today's global issues that they block them out, focussing instead on designer food and the antics of celebrities. Today's big media story is the rise in oil prices. The real story is the collapse of enlightened leadership in the West.
ENDS
POST SCRIPT
" "There is almost no evidence that Bush won the election in Ohio", and much evidence that he and Cheney stole the race, as in 2000. "This is not an allegation but a fact, notwithstanding the establishment refusal to discuss it". Mark Crispin Miller, Prof of Media Studies, NUY).
" 10,000 tons of heavy fuel oil has leaked from the Jiyye power plant, due to repeated air strikes by Israeli warplanes. A third of the Lebanese coast is polluted. According to Environment Minister Yaacoub Sarraf, "Chances are our whole marine ecosystem facing the Lebanese shoreline is already dead. What is at stake today is all marine life in the Eastern Mediterranean". http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=1&article_id=74428
1945: IT TOOK US AWHILE TO LEARN THE TRUTH
In the Second World War, three months after the defeat of the German army in May 1945, Europe was at peace and Japan was on the verge of surrender. At this time, on August 6, US President Harry Truman announced that an "American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base", though he was well aware the target was a city of 400,000 inhabitants. Despite Truman's pledge that the US wanted to "avoid, as much as possible, the killing of civilians", the world's first Atomic bomb was detonated without warning 600 meters above the Shima hospital in the center of the city during morning rush hour. Between a quarter and a half of its people were instantly incinerated, and over a thousand died slow agonising deaths. However, General Grove assured Congress that nuclear radiation caused "no undue suffering - in fact, they say it is a very pleasant way to die". (On the eve of the Baghdad invasion George W Bush assured the world that Iraqi civilians would be spared "in every way we can"). Three days after bombing Hiroshima, the US dropped a nuclear bomb over the Roman Catholic cathedral in Nagasaki, with incredible effect, but for no apparent reason. The official July 1946 report on the Pacific air war by the US Strategic Bombing Survey concluded: "Japan would have surrendered even if Atomic bombs had not been dropped".
The day before obliterating Nagasaki, the allies signed the London Agreement, which made crimes against humanity punishable in an international court. Awkwardly, the fourth Hague Convention of 1907, had banned the bombardment of civilians. However, the American war crimes prosecutor, Telford Taylor, decided that since air bombardment had become a "recognised part of modern warfare", such acts had become "customary law". As historian Sven Linqvist points out: rather than ruling that the allies - "especially the allies" - had committed this kind of war crime, "the American prosecutor declared the law had been rendered invalid by the actions of the allies". (See A History of Bombing by Sven Lindqvist, Granta Books, London, 2001)
http://www.richardneville.com.au/journal/2004/journal200405.html
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
