the rules
with all due respect, i will not tolerate any use of foul language on this blog. all comments containing foul language will be deleted. this policy is followed by all international media sites, as well as my own personal standards.
thank you for understanding.
"Be the change you want to see in the world."
Mohandas Gandhi
thank you for understanding.
"Be the change you want to see in the world."
Mohandas Gandhi
posted by zena at 1:53 AM
66 Comments:
Hi Zena
We are all standing by you and hoping for a swift, peaceful resoultion to this mess. I love Lebanon and to hear about all those places and people really upsets me to the core. Beautiful statement from Ghandi - and I agree that an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. Please keep writing your blog and stay safe. Are you also frustrated at Hezbollah having provoked these attacks? I can definitely understand that the magnitude of the destruction you see evrywhere wrought by the Israeli army makes it hard to see it any other way. Praying for you and yours.
kathryn
you rock Zena!
the fact that you can still be a voice of reason in all the insanity is amazing and inspiring and beautiful and on and on...
peace be with you
thank you zena for being fair and civilized. Thank you for not letting the negative comments keep you away from writing. Please, everyone, lets for once use this space for once differently. Lets make it a healthy and respectful place for discussion and expressing all our views. Regards to all from all sides from Beirut.
Zena
I appreciate reading your blog and many of the replies though the political diatribes I can easily do without so I thank you for your rules of the board.
Are any of your friends sculptures? It would be wonderful to haul off some of the debris of war and sculpt it into anti-war pieces. Not sure why I thought of it (and I’m sure I’m not the first.) I just kind of like the idea of using the residue from wars to fight against wars.
zena,
you are my heroine.
we are having a concert on sunday night here in london to help raise money for the refugees.
i am thinking of you all the time.
how graceful you are in the face of all that hate, venom, and shameful ignorance.
how you continue to inspire no matter the circumstances.
love love and more love from here.
when this insanity ends, we will make up for all this death and waste and inhumanity.
whoever thought that blogs would save us in this way.
take good care.
all my love,
nadine
Hi Zena:
As a German, though born after World War II and therefore not personally guilty for the horrific crimes conducted against millions of Jews (as well as Communists, Sinti/Roma, homosexuals and others) by Germans, I do feel very much appalled and deeply embarrassed by what my parents' generation "achieved" out of blind hatred and based on a an insane racial ideology.
This does not mean, however, that we should not have the right to criticize the Israeli Government for its behavior in the ongoing war between Israel and Hezbollah and Hamas. I'm really afraid that Israel's military response and its strategy to fight Hezbollah in Lebanon will end up, rather than bringing Israel more safety and peace, in even more hatred against itself particularly from the Lebanese people and from most Arab countries in general.
I'm sorry for every single innocent person who died and is still going to die, on whichever side of the borders!
Peace now!!!
May God/Allah potect you, Zena, and all of you!
To Julie
I hope you continue your medical carreer. The world needs urgently more compasionate and peaceful doctors who dare to think.
Salam
God bless you Zena.
God loves you and is protecting you!
Hang in there!
what seems to be the most realistic assesment of the situation i've read thus far: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=1&cid=1154525801426&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
don't ignore it just because it's published on jpost.
no one has been a winner, and certainly not those living in lebanon/beirut.
Zena, i need to reply to Sophie Thouin
Sophie, my dear i too am canadian and live in Winnipeg. Harper was elected simply because the Liberals became too greedy and shady. none of us, the regular citizens, knew that Harper was just another Bush hiding in Canada. we have learned though and i am certain he will not last through another election.
i too sent him a letter along with our foreign minister and Mr. Jack Layton (NDP) the only response i have received is from Mr. Layton. if you like you can contact him at
Layton.J@parl.gc.ca
anybody else should also, maybe enough cries from us all, no matter what country, will convince Mr. Harper to become Canadian again!
Zena bless you and remain safe
Greg/winnipeg canada
Dearest Zena,
we are going to demonstrate in your support today
I posted this yesterday and I see that they have already attacked one of the site!!!
The other day soon after I posted a decent site, the site got attacked but got fixed a day later
and will boycott Apartheid Israel
Palestinians & Israeli Jews Call for Boycotting of Apartheid Israel
http://www.bojkotta-israel.nu/
http://www.boycottisraeligoods.org/
http://www.boykotisrael.dk/
http://stopthewall.org/news/boycot.shtml
http://www.matzpun.com/
http://www.maiap.org/maiap/petition/index.htm
http://www.bigcampaign.org/
http://www.petitiononline.com/bin
/petition.html
http://psc.za.org/pscsaourdeclaration.htm
some useful links:
www.democracynow.org
www.antiwar.com/
www.fromisraeltolebanon.info
http://www.boikottisrael.no/liste/
index.html
http://fas.org/asmp/fast_facts.htm
http://209.67.212.138/~lebanon
http://www.wsws.org/articles/
2005/feb2005/hari-f17.shtml
To the one who wrote “Towel Heads ……hate free speech! -----“ who does not dare naming himself
You complain about deletion of your obscene comments that fit in a porno site not a blog from Beirut reporting suffering of a young woman from Israeli atrocities.
You sound like one of your bodies (Steven Green) who rape and kill to spread their kind of democracy.
“Pfc. Steven Green, of the 101st Airborne Division, along with three or four buddies (one a sergeant), invaded a home in Mahmudiya to rape a fourteen-year old girl. They herded her parents and five-year old sister into a bedroom, where Green shot and killed them, after which he and at least one of the others, yet to be identified, raped the girl on the living room floor. Then Green alone repeatedly shot her. At this point there is no clear evidence how many of the group tried to burn her body as well as the house in order to destroy the evidence…..”
There are many decent Americans who speak up, yes even in california
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/
July06/Jayne20.htm
And by the way I forgot to remind your that your NO 1 terrorist in the world ( G W Bush) suck up to the richest towel heads in Saudi Arabia to get money to fund killing of the innocent children in Lebanon via his long arm Olmert. Whom are you kidding?
You are helpless
Look at this site
http://www.bu.edu/globalbeat/
index012003.html
See your Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam
Look at this site and see your president sucking up to towel heads:
http://www.hermes-press.com/BushSaud.htm
http://www.allhatnocattle.net/10-12-04_working_hard_president.htm
Your double standards and hypocrisy has ruined the image of America
you are a loser, you will be leaving Iraq worse than Vietnam and you are not welcomed in any part of the world for at least another generation
The Bush-Saudi Connection
By Michelle Mairesse
Ancestral Voices
In 1920, under a League of Nations mandate, officials from France and Great Britain carved up vast tracts of warlord-dominated territories in Arabia into what they imagined would be nation states devoid of the complex historical, cultural, and tribal realities of the Mideast.
Instead of establishing European-style nation states, the strongest warlords quickly entrenched themselves with the aid of standing armies and spy networks. In much of the Mideast, fealty is often accorded to tribal overlords and the Islamic sects they favor rather than to the territory and people within the boundaries of the nation state. Jonathan Rabin succinctly defines the reality, past and present, of the desert sheikdoms: "The systems of government that have evolved in Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia are paranoid family dictatorships with ancestral roots in a single city or village." (1)
Islamic fundamentalists like Osama bin Laden make their appeals to the nation or community of believers, not to any particular nation state, although the rich and powerful among the Muslims have founded Western-style businesses and formed corporations both inside and outside the boundaries of their native countries. Because Osama himself is a scion of a rich Saudi family with wide-ranging business interests throughout the world, the split Saudi personality is most evident in him and the bin Laden clan. Osama, who calls America "The Great Satan," has done business with the infidel Americans whenever it suited him.
Throughout the eighties, when the United States assisted the Saudis in a giant military buildup of airfields, ports, and bases throughout the kingdom, many of the contracts were awarded to the largest construction company in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Binladen Group, founded by Osama bin Laden’s father.
At the same time, the United States trained and armed troops in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. The United States and Saudi Arabia spent about $40 billion on the war in Afghanistan, recruiting, supplying, and training nearly 100,000 radical mujahideen from forty Muslim countries, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Algeria, and Afghanistan itself. Among the recruits were Osama bin Laden and his followers. (2)
With C.I.A. funding, Osama bin Laden imported engineers and equipment from his father’s Saudi construction company to build tunnels for guerrilla training centers and hospitals, and for arms dumps near the Pakistan border. After the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, the C.I.A. and the Pakistani intelligence agency sponsored the Taliban organization, a government composed of the fanatic Wahhabi Islamic sect, the same sect that is the state religion in Saudi Arabia. Although followers of the Wahhabi sect do not refer to themselves as Wahhabis, the label is useful because it applies to a single Muslim group with a set of beliefs peculiar to them alone: Wahhabis maintain that Shi'ites and Sufis are not Muslims, and that Muslims should not visit shrines or celebrate Mohammed’s birthday. (3)
The Saudi sheiks have been Wahhabis since they intermarried with the family of a puritanical Muslim scholar, Mohammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab, in 1774. Supported first by Britain and later by the United States, the Saudis captured the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina, easily gaining control of the entire Arabian peninsula.
Wherever they ruled, the Wahhabis imposed their medieval code on their hapless subjects, making public spectacles of stoning adulterers to death and maiming thieves, destroying decorated mosques and cemeteries, prohibiting music, sequestering women, and promoting war on infidels. The Saudi sheiks have lavished funds on anti-American and anti-Israeli terrorists-in-training while indoctrinating other Muslims through its worldwide network of religious schools, mosques, newspapers, and presses.
Jihad
The Wahhabi Taliban in Afghanistan had the blessings of the Saudi royal family and of The Big Three--the bin Laden family, the al Ahmoudi family, and the Mahfouz family--the richest clans in that medieval kingdom. (Khalid bin Mahfouz is bin Laden’s brother-in-law, according to the C.I.A.). The desert oligarchs profited from world-wide investments as well as sleazy banking schemes such as the infamous Bank of Credit and Commerce International.
Salem bin Laden, Osama’s brother, has conducted all his American affairs through James Bath, a Houston crony of the Bush family. Bath’s former business partner Bill White testified in court that Bath had been a liaison for the C.I.A. In 1979 Bath invested $50,000 in Arbusto, George W. Bush’s first business venture. Rumor had it that Bath was acting as Salem bin Laden’s representative. "In conflicting statements, Bush at first denied ever knowing Bath, then acknowledged his stake in Arbusto and that he was aware Bath represented Saudi interests." (4)
In addition to doing aviation business with Saudi sheiks, Bath was part owner of a Houston bank whose chief stockholder was Ghaith Pharaon, who represented the Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI), a criminal global bank with branches in 73 countries. BCCI proceeded to defraud depositors of $10 billion during the ‘80s, while providing a money laundry conduit for the Medellin drug cartel, Asia’s major heroin cartel, Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and Islamist terrorist organizations worldwide. (5)
Big Three wheeler-dealer Khalid bin Mahfouz, one of the largest stockholders in the criminal bank, was indicted when the massive BCCI banking scandal blew apart in the early 1990s. The Saudi royal family placed him under house arrest after discovering that Mahfouz had used the royal bank to channel millions of dollars through fake charities into bin Laden’s organizations, but Mahfouz was not so much punished as inconvenienced. (6)
Members of the Wahhabist Saudi oligarchy are driven by the sometimes conflicting emotions of power lust and religious fervor. Their support of radical Islamists follows from their ambition to dominate the Muslim world, but their fear that radical Islamists might overthrow the Saudi regime at home motivates them to fund and encourage holy warriors in countries other than their own.
As Daniel Pipes points out, jihad (holy war) is a central tenet of Muslim belief . "According to one calculation, Muhammad himself engaged in 78 battles, of which just one (the Battle of the Ditch) was defensive. Within a century after the prophet's death in 632, Muslim armies had reached as far as India in the east and Spain in the west. " (7)
Pipes traces the bloody advance of fundamentalist jihadists against their twentieth century co-religionists. "Islamists, besides adhering to the primary conception of jihad as armed warfare against infidels, have also adopted as their own Ibn Taymiya's call to target impious Muslims. This approach acquired increased salience through the 20th century as Islamist thinkers . . . promoted jihad against putatively Muslim rulers who failed to live up to or apply the laws of Islam. The revolutionaries who overthrew the Shah of Iran in 1979 and the assassins who gunned down President Anwar Sadat of Egypt two years later overtly held to this doctrine. So does Osama bin Laden."
In 1989, bin Laden established al Qaeda (the Base) in Afghanistan to organize extremist Wahhabis and disperse their networks throughout the country. A year later, he returned to Saudi Arabia and founded a welfare agency for Arab-Afghan veterans. Bin Laden hoped to mobilize the veterans as a kind of religious-military army, but King Faud discouraged the venture. When King Faud invited 540,000 American troops to the kingdom to fight in the Gulf War, bin Laden lambasted the royal family and urged religious authorities to issue fatwahs (religious rulings) condemning the American infidels.
In 1991, Osama bin Laden and a band of Afghan veterans agitated in Sudan for a holy war against the enemies of Islam. In 1992, he claimed responsibility for the attack on American soldiers in Yemen, and again for attacks in Somalia in 1993. He was mum about the terrorist truck bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, the explosion that killed six people and injured more than a thousand, but investigators knew bin Laden had donated heavily to the religious "charity" that financed the bombing operation.
Spiked Investigations
In February 1995, when he was appointed chief of the F.B.I.'s counter-terrorism section in Washington, John O’Neill immediately assembled and coordinated a team to capture Ramzi Yousef, who was en route from Pakistan to Afghanistan. Yousef was strongly suspected of planning and directing the World Trade Center bombing in 1993.
In three days, the kingpin of the World Trade Center bombing was in custody, and O’Neill went on to accumulate damning evidence against the 1993 World Trade bombers that led to their conviction in American courts. For the next six years, John O’Neill tirelessly investigated terrorist strikes against Americans and American interests in Saudi Arabia, East Africa, and Yemen, often encountering American officials’ roadblocks on the way. Even in 1996, after Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl turned himself in at the American Embassy in Eritrea and divulged details of bin Laden’s and al Qaeda’s organization and operations, the State Department refused to list al Qaeda as a terrorist organization.
In February 1998, bin Laden assembled a number of terrorist groups, including Islamic Jihad, and issued a fierce fatwa calling for the deaths of all Americans. On August 7, 1998, 226 people died in the simultaneous bombing of American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. Investigators blamed bin Laden for the attacks. On August 20, 1998, President Clinton amended Executive Order 12947 to add Osama bin Laden and his key associates to the list of terrorists, thus blocking their US assets--including property and bank accounts--and prohibiting all U.S. financial transactions with them. The United States conducted a missile attack against bin Laden's facilities in Afghanistan.
On October 12, 2000, two suicide bombers ignited their boatload of explosives next to the USS Cole, an American destroyer refueling in Aden, off the coast of Yemen. The blast killed seventeen sailors and wounded thirty-nine others. O’Neill and his crack investigating team were dispatched to Yemen and hit a stone wall. He had hoped satellite intercepts of phone calls between an al Qaeda operative in Aden and Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan would lead him to the mastermind of the Cole attack, but the American ambassador and the Yemeni officials blocked the investigation at every turn.
O’Neill resigned from the F.B.I. in July 2001 and signed on as security chief for the World Trade Center in September. He died in the WTC attack on September 11, 2001.
Oil Diplomacy
In Forbidden Truth: U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy and the Failed Hunt for bin Laden, two French intelligence analysts, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, claim that the Clinton and Bush administrations impeded investigations of bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist group in order to maintain good relations with Saudi Arabia and to maintain the stability of the oil market. "As the late John O’Neill told one of the authors [Brisard] of this book, ‘All of the answers, all of the clues allowing us to dismantle Osama bin Laden’s organization, can be found in Saudi Arabia.'" (8)
In articles and interviews, Brisard has expanded on this statement, pronouncing the official story about bin Laden’s exile from his native Saudi Arabia in 1994 and his frozen assets to be a canard. Not only did O’Neill and the F.B.I. have extensive information concerning the finances of bin Laden and al Qaeda, but the business connections between the bin Ladens, the Mahfouzes, the al Ahmoudis, the Saudi royal family, and the Bush family kept turning up in their investigations.
Mahfouz, who owns Nimir Petroleum, has conducted joint ventures with the al Amoudi family, which owns Delta Oil. Delta Oil and Unocal planned to build a pipeline through Afghanistan before the Taliban backed away. These Saudi companies are still partnered with bigger oil companies (such as Texaco and Unocal) in developing Central Asian oil projects.
Although Brisard’s interpretation of events has been disputed, the documentation of Forbidden Truth is impeccable. Clearly, the finances and fortunes of the Saudi oligarchs and the Bush family have been intertwined for many years, and oil has been the lubricant of choice, even non-existent oil.
In The Conspirators, Al Martin describes an instance of the latter. He says that the Gulf Oil Drilling Supply, of New York, Miami, and Bahrain, was Jeb Bush’s favorite artifice for oil and gas frauds:
"The fraud was rather simple. Richard Secord arranged through then Vice President George Bush Sr.’s old friend, Ghaith Pharaon, the then retired head of Saudi intelligence, for Gulf Oil and Drilling to purchase from the Saudi government oil and gas leases in the Gulf which were effectively worthless."
The leases would be embellished to appear extremely valuable and then used as loan collateral. Great American Bank and Trust of West Palm Beach subsequently failed under the weight of unpaid Iran-Contra loans.
"Also, in the case of Gulf Oil Drilling Supply, there was some moderately large international lending to that company. As you would suspect, it was principally out of the old George Bush friendly banks--Credit Lyonnais and Banque Paribas, which, combined lent $60 million dollars to Gulf Oil Drilling Supply, which, of course, was defaulted on later." (9)
Special Saudis
Michael Springmann, formerly chief of the visa section at the US Embassy in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, claims that he rejected hundreds of suspicious visa applications, but the C.I.A. officer overruled him and ordered the visas to be issued. Springmann protested to the State Department, the Office of Diplomatic Security, the F.B.I., the Justice Department and congressional committees, but in vain. (10)
Springmann observed that 15 of the 19 people who allegedly flew airplanes into buildings in the United States got their visas from the same CIA-dominated consulate in Jeddah. As a special favor to residents of Saudi Arabia (including non-Saudi citizens), applicants for non-immigrant visas can apply at private travel agencies and receive their visa through the mail. During the months following the 9-11 attack, 102 applicants received their visas by mail, 2 more were interviewed, and none were rejected.
The Saudis always got special treatment. In a November 6, 2001 BBC broadcast Greg Palast revealed just how special that treatment was. Even after Pakistan expelled the World Association of Muslim Youth (WAMY) and India claimed that the organization was linked to terrorist bombings in Kashmir and the Philippines military accused WAMY of funding Muslim insurgency, the F.B.I. got orders to leave the "charitable association" alone.
After 9/11, investigators of the Islamic charities discovered overwhelming evidence that Saudis at all levels worked in tandem with the terrorists. David Kaplin reports, “At the Saudi High Commission in Bosnia, which coordinated local aid among Saudi charities, police found before-and-after photos of the World Trade Center, files on pesticides and crop dusters, and information on how to counterfeit State Department badges. At Manila's international airport, authorities stopped Agus Dwikarna, an al Haramain representative based in Indonesia. In his suitcase were C4 explosives.” The interlocking charities make it difficult to follow the money trail. “Many share directors, office space, and cash flow. For two years, investigators have followed the money to offshore trusts and obscure charities which, according to court records, they believe are tied to Hamas, al Qaeda, and other terrorist groups.” (US News and World Report, December 15, 2003).
"The White House official line is that the Bin Ladens are above suspicion --apart from Osama, the black sheep, who they say hijacked the family name. That's fortunate for the Bush family and the Saudi royal household, whose links with the Bin Ladens could otherwise prove embarrassing. But Newsnight has obtained evidence that the FBI was on the trail of other members of the Bin Laden family for links to terrorist organisations before and after September 11th." (11)
In the Boston Globe, March 11, 20004, Carl Unger, author of House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World’s Two Most Powerful Dynasties, states that the 9/11 commission should ask who authorized the evacuation of 140 Saudi nationals on at least 8 aircraft making stops in 12 cities immediately following the attacks. “Many of the passengers were high-ranking members of the royal House of Saud. About 24 of them were members of the bin Laden family, which owned the Saudi Binladin Group, a multibillion-dollar construction conglomerate.” Unger obtained passenger lists for 4 of the flights, which are posted on his website: www.houseofbush.com and includes the name of Prince Ahmed bin Salman.
“As reported last year by Gerald Posner in 'Why America Slept,' Prince Ahmed not only had alleged ties to Al Qaeda, but may also have known in advance that there would be attacks on 9/11. According to Posner, Abu Zubaydah, an Al Qaeda operative who was part of Osama bin Laden's inner circle and was captured in 2002, made these assertions when he was interrogated by the CIA. The commission should ask Mueller about Zubaydah's interrogation. They should also ask whether the FBI interrogated Prince Ahmed before his departure.
"But Prince Ahmed will never be able to answer any questions because not long after the CIA interrogation, he died of a heart attack at the age of 43. Yet we do know that he was on one of the flights.”
Unger believes that this episode “raises particularly sensitive questions for the administration. Never before in history has a president of the United States had such a close relationship with another foreign power as President Bush and his father have had with the Saudi royal family, the House of Saud. I have traced more than $1.4 billion in investments and contracts that went from the House of Saud over the past 20 years to companies in which the Bushes and their allies have had prominent positions -- Harken Energy, Halliburton, and the Carlyle Group among them. Is it possible that President Bush himself played a role in authorizing the evacuation of the Saudis after 9/11? What did he know and when did he know it?”
www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/04/11/unasked_questions?mode=PF
In October 2001, the Treasury Department identified the Muwafaq Foundation, largely endowed by Khalid bin Mahfouz, as an al Qaeda front that had funneled millions of dollars to bin Laden. Some families of the 9/11 victims have named Mahfouz and dozens of prominent Saudis, including members of the royal family, in a lawsuit that accuses the Saudis of funding the 9/11 terrorists. Bush administration officials stated that they would seek to have the suit dismissed or delayed. (12)
Senators Bob Graham and Richard C. Shelby, leaders of the congressional panel ending an investigation of the 9/11 attacks, said the administration should declassify information concerning Saudi funding of terrorists.
"Citing ‘their people and a lot of their leaders and probably even the royal family,’ Shelby said: ‘I believe [the Saudis] cannot support so-called charities that support terrorism on a big scale, and then pretend that they're our friends or our allies.
"‘As we get into the money trail, it might be embarrassing, but the American people need to know; the victims and their families need to know,’ he added. Shelby and Graham said avoiding embarrassment and maintaining good relations with Saudi Arabia are not legitimate reasons to withhold information from the public.
"‘The question is,’ Graham said after the news conference, ‘will we get [the information declassified] in 30 years when the archives are open, or will we get it in time, before the next attack?’" (13)
Doubtless one of the connections the senators referred to was the Princess Haifa, the wife of Prince Bandar, Saudi ambassador to the United States for the last twenty years, the longest serving ambassador in Washington. Princess Haifa had been making monthly transfers, $130,000 in all, from her Washington bank account to a needy woman who relayed some of the checks to her husband and another man who assisted and funded the two hijackers who were based in San Diego. (14)
"The money moved into the family’s bank account beginning in early 2000, just a few months after hijackers Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi arrived in Los Angeles from an Al Qaeda planning summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, according to the sources. Within days of the terrorists’ arrival in the United States, Al Bayoumi befriended the two men who would eventually hijack American Flight 77, throwing them a welcoming party in San Diego and guaranteeing their lease on an apartment next door to his own. Al Bayoumi also paid $1,500 to cover the first two months of rent for Al Midhar and Alhazmi, although officials said it is possible that the hijackers later repaid the money." (15)
Prince Bandar and Princess Haifa professed their ignorance of the whole affair.
Mark Stein speculates about the recent visit Prince Bandar and Princess Haifa paid to George and Laura at the Crawford ranch, where they were received with the accolades usually reserved for heads of state. Bush must have known about the money transfers and Bandar must have known Bush knew, but apparently a good time was had by all.
"Meanwhile, Majeda Ibrahin, the woman the princess was sending all that money to, turns out to be married to Osama Basnan, another buddy of the al-Qa’eda duo, and one who subsequently celebrated 11 September as a ‘wonderful, glorious day’. But here’s an odd little thing: Mr Basnan is known to have been in Texas in April when Crown Prince Abdullah and his entourage flew in to the state to see Bush at the ranch. Just another coincidence? Well, sorta: he’s supposed to have had a meeting in Houston with some big-time Saudi prince who deals with ‘intelligence matters.’ This seems an unusual degree of access for some schlub from San Diego who’s in the US illegally, as it transpires. He is variously described as a Saudi government agent and al-Qa’eda sympathiser, as if these positions are mutually exclusive. The Saudi embassy say they’ve only received queries about this matter from the media, not from the FBI. Odd that. The federal government claims it needs vast new powers to track every single credit-card transaction and every single email of every single American, yet a prima facie link between the terrorists and Prince Bandar’s wife isn’t worth going over to the embassy to have a little chat about." (16)
Apparently it is not only the Saudis’ oil riches that insulates them from criticism, but also their calculated distribution of largesse. The Saudis have contributed to every presidential library in recent decades. Not surprisingly, former ambassadors to Saudi Arabia from the United States end up being apologists for the corrupt, despotic Saudi regime. The Saudis have arranged that American ambassadors to their country not speak Arabic. The American embassy in Saudi Arabia gets all its information about the reactionary regime from the rulers.
Some of the Washington politicians who found the Saudi connection lucrative include Spiro Agnew, Frank Carlucci, Jimmy Carter, Clark Clifford, John Connally, James Baker, George H. W. Bush, William Simon and Caspar Weinberger. (17)
Profits before Patriotism
The Bush dynasty has always been comfortable putting profits before patriotism. Prescott Bush, Bush Senior’s father, extended credit to Adolph Hitler and supplied him with raw materials during Word War II. The U. S. seized his assets under the Trading with the Enemy Act, but grandfather Bush found other ways to replenish the family coffers.
Bush Senior struck it rich in oil and in the defense industry. Mahfouz (yes, that Mahfouz), Prince Bandar and Prince Sultan (Bandar’s father) were also heavily invested in the defense industry through their holdings in the Carlyle Group, where Bush Senior served on the board of directors. Founded in 1987 as a private investment group with strong connections to the Republican Party establishment, Carlyle increased its original investment of $130 million to $900 million when it went public in 2001.
"In recent years, Carlyle has been successful both at raising and making money. It has raised $14 billion in the last five years or so, and its annual rate of return has been 36 percent. Its 550 investors consist of institutions and wealthy individuals from around the world including, until shortly after September 2001, members of the bin Laden family of Saudi Arabia. The family — which has publicly disavowed links with Osama bin Laden — had been an investor since 1995." (18)
"As the eleventh largest US defence contractor, Carlyle is involved in nearly every aspect of military production, including making the big guns used on US naval destroyers, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle used by US forces during the Gulf War and parts used in most commercial and military aircraft. United Defense has joint ventures in Saudi Arabia and Turkey, two of the United States’ closest military allies in the Middle East." (19)
It’s passing strange that even as the hijacked planes smashed into the World Trade Center, the Carlyle Group was holding its annual investor conference. Shafig Bin Laden, brother of Osama Bin Laden, attended.
Bush Junior once served as an executive with Caterair, one of hundreds of companies Carlyle has bought and sold over the past 15 years, but he removed the record of this period from his resume.
In 1986, Bush Junior, to date a flop as a businessman, joined Harken Energy Corporation as a director and was awarded 212,000 shares of stock and other plums.
In 1987, Khalid bin Mahfouz arranged for BCCI investor Abdullah Bakhsh to purchase 17% of Harken. A Harken official acknowledged that Bush’s White House connections had everything to do with the appointment. Somehow, the inexperienced, obscure firm was awarded a prime drilling contract by Bahrain, and Harken’s stock price soared.
In June 1990, Bush Junior sold his Harken stock for a juicy $848,000, enabling him to pay off the loan he had assumed on buying shares in the Texas Rangers. Never mind that the Harken stock promptly tanked when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, for Abdullah Bakhsh, a major Harken shareholder and an investor in BCCI, who had purchased 17% of Harken Energy in 1987, got his money’s worth. By 1990, Bakhsh’s representative on Harken’s board, Talet Othman, began attending Middle East policy discussions with President Bush Senior.
Now that Bush Junior occupies the White House, Bush Senior receives frequent CIA briefings (his prerogative as a former president). "In July 2001, Bush personally contacted Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to ‘clarify’ his son's Middle East policies. Also during the summer of 2001, Bush forwarded his son a North Korea policy plan penned by ‘Asia expert’ and former ambassador to Korea, Donald Gregg. Gregg is a 31-year CIA veteran and the elder Bush's former national security adviser whose expertise involved participation in the Vietnam-era Phoenix Program (death squads), Air America heroin smuggling, ‘pacification’ efforts in El Salvador and Guatemala, the ‘October Surprise,’ and the Iran-Contra operation (for which Gregg received a Bush pardon in 1992)." (20)
Bush Junior has received more than advice from his father. He has taken on the team of hustlers and criminals that worked with George Herbert Walker Bush when he was Vice President and President of the United States of America.
Just as his father did, he invokes executive privilege to hide all evidence of collusion with the petroleum pashas who have enriched the Bushes and intimidated the rest of us.
Sandy Tolan, an I.F. Stone Fellow at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley, asserts that what the Bush administration really wants in Iraq is a remapping of the Mideast. "The plan is, in its way, as ambitious as the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement between the empires of Britain and France, which carved up the region at the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The neo-imperial vision, which can be ascertained from the writings of key administration figures and their co-visionaries in influential conservative think tanks, includes not only regime change in Iraq but control of Iraqi oil, a possible end to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and newly compliant governments in Syria and Iran -- either by force or internal rebellion."
The Bushes are carriers of the deny-destroy-and-be-damned virus. Prescott Bush never apologized for trading with the Nazis. George Bush Senior professed to know nothing of the drug and arms dealing that funded the bloody, illegal Iran-Contra operations, although it was common knowledge that he directed them. He and his sons enriched themselves through shady real estate deals and financial manipulations that brought down entire banking and savings and loan institutions. They are all consummate inside traders, looting and leaving ruin in their wake.
President-Select George Bush is no exception. He has no scruples about exploiting his office for personal and family gain. The Texas governor who could joke about frying prisoners in the electric chair will not, as president, agonize over the decision to send young men and women into battle--or over denying them medical care when they are injured.
There is irrefutable evidence that highly-placed Saudis aided and supported the terrorists who murdered over 3000 American citizens on September 11, 2001. Yet George Bush persists in protecting and colluding with those who sponsor terrorists. Is this not an an act of treason?
George Bush should be impeached.
Notes:
(1) Jonathan Raban, "Western conceit of nation-building ignores culture and history of Arabia," Seattle Times, November 24, 2002
(2) Michael Parenti, 9-11 Terrorism Trap: September 11 and Beyond (2000) City Lights Books, San Francisco
(3) Laura Secor, "Which Islam?," Boston Daily Globe, December 15, 2002
(4) Wayne Madsen, "Questionable Ties: Tracking bin Laden's money flow leads back to Midland, Texas,"
(5) "The Press on the BCCI-bin Mahfouz-bin Laden Intelligence Nexus, " Boston Herald , December 11, 2001
(6) Jonathan Beaty & S. C. Gwynne, The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride Into the Secret Heart of BCCI, (1993) Random House, New York
(7) Daniel Pipes, "Jihad: How Academics Have Camouflaged Its Real Meaning," December 2, 2002
(8) Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, Forbidden Truth: U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy and the Failed Hunt for bin Laden (2002) Thunder's Mouth Press/Nation Books, New York
(9) Al Martin, The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider (2002) National Liberty Press, LLC
(10) Center for Cooperative Research, "Hijackers who were under surveillance before 9/11"
(11) Greg Palast and David Pallister, "FBI and US Spy Agents Say Bush Spiked Bin Laden Probes Before 11 September," The Guardian, November 7, 2001
(12) Jeff Gerth and Judith Miller, "Saudis Called Slow to Help Stem Terror Finances," New York Times, November 28, 2002
(13) Dana Priest and Susan Schmidt, "9/11 Panel Criticizes Secrecy on Saudi Links," Washington Post, December 12 2002
(14) Greg Miller, Greg Krikorian and H.G. Reza, "FBI Looks at Saudi's Links to 9/11," Los Angeles Times, November 23, 2002
(15) Michael Isikoff, Newsweek, November 22, 2002
(16) Mark Steyn, "Bush and the Saudi Princess"
(17) Daniel Golden, James Bandler and Marcus Walker, Wall Street Journal, September 27, 2001 Posted at globalresearch.ca 5 October 2001
(18) James Hatfield, "Why would Osama bin Laden want to kill Dubya, his former business partner?" Online Journal, July 13, 2001
(19) Steve Lohr, "Gerstner to Be Chairman of Carlyle Group," New York Times, November 22, 2002
(20) Tim Shorrock uncovers the Bush connection to US defence giant the Carlyle Group, New Internationalist 347, July 2002
and do not miss this cool site
http://www.leftflex.com/
bushwar/Total%20bush%0awareness.htm
A Dynasty of Mass Murderers:
Bush Family Nazis
Four generations of the sociopathic predator George W. Bush family have been attacking the human race through stealth practices, and contributing to the mass murder of millions of people. The Bush family has financed, aided and abetted, and collaborated with the most evil dictators and tyrants of the 20th century.
The story is too complicated as told by most historians, so this is an attempt to give a concise overview of the key points of this geneology of monsters which can be easily grasped by the general public. Of course this is a simplification and many links are provided to documentation online. More complete history is found in books in libraries which are copyrighted and therefore not on the internet.
George Herbert Walker -- a supreme predator, operating with top organized crime lords, devoured companies and people's life works for their private enrichment without honest work of the few cannibals hiding behind facades of feigned decency. [1] His allies, collaborators, and sometimes business partners included John D. Rockefeller (founder of Exxon way back then under the name of Standard Oil of New Jersey), [2] [3] E.H. Harriman (owned railroads) [4] [5] [6] and William Rockefeller (financed Harriman's railroad through Rockefeller's 'Citibank' predecessor). [7] [8] Walker is the architypal Wall Street War Profiteer, with office headquarters address at 1 Wall Street. [9] [10]
-----------------------------------
Samuel Prescott Bush -- He was son of a Episcopalian preacher converted over to the satanic side by George Herbert Walker. Walker and Bush would each contribute one child to the marriage of Prescott Bush and Dorothy Walker to produce grandson George Herbert Walker Bush, and great-grandson George Walker Bush.
Sam started out as low-management for railroads, where he made the connections needed to move over to Buckeye Steel Castings Company. Buckeye harbored railroad strike-breaker sentiment from the president on down. It's founder was member of the "Cleveland Gatling Gun Battery",[11] called a military and social organization, set up in 1878, the year after nationwide railroad strikes the year before. This guns and railroad connection returns for World War I, when Buckeye Steel produced gun barrels and shell casings,[12] and Sam Bush was moved by his employer-owners puppet-masters into the position of chief of the Ordnance, Small Arms and Ammunition Section of the War Industries Board. Bush took national responsibility for government assistance to and relations with Remington and other weapons companies.[13]
Preacher's son Bush looks innocent until you are informed that his patron, Percy Rockefeller [14] took control of Remington Arms in 1914. [15] Frank Rockefeller was president of Buckeye Steel for three years from 1905-1908, followed by Sam Bush from 1908-1937, throughout the WWI years and the gunbarrel sales era of Buckeye.[16] In 1915 a new Remington plant was constructed, operational by 1916 for the first world war, just in time to get a million rifle order from Russia.[17], [18] 67% of all the ammunition used in WWI by the US, Britain and Russia was sold by "Merchants of Death" Remington. [19] [20] [21]
Samuel Prescott Bush was an early president of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), which is has always been anti-worker, anti-consumer-rights, and ultra-conservative. Three past presidents of NAM helped Robert Welch form the John Birch Society, to uphold the tradition of Sam Bush -- Bush's Buckeye Steel employees worked seven days per week, 12 hours per day. It's not a far step for son Prescott Bush managing Auschwitz slave labor worked to death.
Prescott Sheldon Bush -- Best known for serving in the US armed forces in Arizona during WWI spent defacing Geronimo's grave and grave-robbing the skull for his germanic secret piracy club "Skull and Bones Society" headquartered at Yale, University. [22] [23] [24] What he is not famous for was his financier banker support of Adolph Hitler, the Nazi Storm Troopers, Auschwitz and death camps. In his quest to get rich Prescott Bush collaborated with the Nazis before war broke out and through the year after Pearl Harbor.
Prescott Bush became Hitler's banker when he became Fritz Thyssen's banker. [25] [26] The incredible loot Fritz's father made in steel, coal, and railroads during WWI was hidden in Holland. Shortly afterwards he was looking to spread some in America and opened a front operation through E.R. Harriman in New York City. [27] [28], [29] In fact, reports indicate that the Bush connections to Nazi money continued through 1951. [30]
The reason Auschwitz was located where it was is because that is near where Fritz Thyssen's coal, steel, and railroads were. [31] [32] That made it possible for I.G. Farben to synthesize fuel from coal gasification for the war machine there, which made it also possible to synthesize rubber there. [33] [34] I.G. Farben also made Zyklon B gas, enough to annihilate two million people according to the trial testimony of the Auschwitz camp commander Rudolf Hoess. [35] [36] [37]
Fritz Thyssen published a book titled "I Paid Hitler" in 1941. It described how Thyssen sponsored the Storm Troopers of Ernst Roehm as early as 1933, allowing them to build up to 4,500,000 strong to take over Germany. But in 1942, even after Pearl Harbor, Prescott Bush and his father-in-law George Herbert Walker, were administering Thyssen's money until forced by the US government to halt (temporarily).
The Bush family got rich stealing everything these people had. It stole their children, stole their homes, stole their belongings, stole their clothes, stole their hair, stole their freedom, stole their government, stole their work, stole their health, stole their lives.
The Nazi Bush family got rich
stealing the gold filings
out of murdered victims teeth.
Dear Zena,
first time I ll write to you and not just say hello through Wael.
Please keep on writing! Your blog is mdoing to people, what the news cannot do anymore: they are really troubling!!!
I have posted your link as a signature under my emails to spread your word.
Obviously the world does not cry out against this war as it should, but we still can mobilise all our forces for the time afterwards. I am ready to help Lebanon to be rebuild with all I can offer, that thought gives me comfort in moments I feel guilty of not being able to do more for peace in your countries right now. I wanted to come and visit you and Wael somewhen this year in Beirut and I am still up to that idea. More then ever.
I have no money but two hands and a brain that does work most ofthe time ;-),
so I should be of use.
Stay strong, stay safe and try to have smile in your face when ever possible,
Nena
dear zena
im a lebanese medical graduate resident in the northern suburbs of beirut writing to share with everyone what i have been whitnessing in the ER of my hospital for the past 2 weeks
as the number of refugees having left their homes upon israeli threats of systematic destruction, which is sadly happening, these people mainly children are living in disastrous conditions as we are seing more and more children suffering of diarhea dehydration malnutrition intoxications and several diseases as we are hearing on ads on tvs talking of cholera thyphoid scabbies and so on, but more than that we are seing every night frightened children coming in anxiety crises afraid of any strange sounds and of bombings even when these are a little far southern beirut, we had that kid of 10 yo having heard an airstriker flying by the region running into the door of glass severely hurting himself while running to shut down the lights of the classroom where he is sleeping on the ground not knowing of the infrared cams of these sophisticated war machines (he wanted to hide out not to be shut), or that other 2.5 yo boy comming for sutures of head screaming hillariously not because of the needle nore the stiches but because we wanted to wash his head from blood with water, water which now frigthens him to death for he had been washed for 2 weeks with cold water.
or these young girls comming with hyperventilation and cramps allover their bodies, this aside of the war wounded whom were not seing cause were a lit far from the southern suburbs of beirut
all of this whilst we recieve last wednesday a morning call on random fixed or mobile phones of taped speech threatening lebanese of bombing deeper in lebanon 2 days before striking, on last friday morning, the bridges of christian regions, while we hear this same day the spokeman of the UN in new york wishing reporters a nice weekend after not reaching any decision in the security counsil.
so have a nice weekend and wsonderful saturday night, wherever you are ! signed: LEBANON UNDER BOMBS.
ps: i confirm to you the rumors of closal of AUH and other central hospitals soon , because of lack of fuel and electricity.
Bertolt Brecht wrote this poem many years ago “To the Coming Generations”
It applies to our time and unfortunately you that we have not made much progress in morality and humanity, instead we have just misused technology
The original German follows the English translation as I see some kind Germans visiting here and leaving kind remarks
I
Truly, I live in dark times!
The innocuous word is fatuous. A smooth brow
Denotes insensitivity. If someone is laughing
It only means, that he hasn’t yet
Heard the dreadful news.
What sort of times are these, when
To talk about trees is almost a crime,
Because it is simultaneously silence about so many atrocities!
Someone placidly crossing the street
Is certainly not available for his friend
Who is in need?
It is true: I do earn my living.
But believe me: that is the merest accident. Nothing
That I do gives me the right, to be stuffing myself full.
I have been spared by accident. (If my luck runs out, I'm finished.)
They say to me: eat and drink! Be happy that you have!
But how can I eat and drink, when
Every bite that I eat is ripped from the mouth of a starving man, and
My glass of water is being denied to one dying of thirst?
And yet I eat, and I drink.
I would love to be wise as well.
You can find what is wise in the old books:
To hold yourself aloof from the strife of the world, and to spend
Your brief time without fear;
Also, to get by without violence,
To repay evil with good,
To relinquish desires, rather than fulfilling them,
These are all considered wise.
Of all this I am incapable:
Truly, I live in dark times!
II
I came to the cities in the Age of Disorder
When hunger was rampant.
I came among mankind in the Age of Turmoil
And I railed against it.
That is how my days were spent
That were given to me on earth.
I ate my food between battles
I lied down to sleep among the murderers
I attended diffidently to love
And looked upon nature with impatience.
That is how my days were spent
That were given to me on earth.
In my day, the streets led to the swamp.
My language betrayed me to the butcher.
There was little I could do. But the powerful
Sat more comfortably without me, so I hoped.
That is how my days were spent
That were given to me on earth.
The forces were weak. The goal
Was distant, remote.
It was plainly visible, even if I
Could never reach it.
That is how my days were spent
That were given to me on earth.
III
You, who will spring up from the flood
In which we have drowned
Think,
When you speak of our shortcomings,
Also of the dark times
That you have been spared.
We, who had to change countries more often
Than our shoes, walked in despair amid the class struggle,
When we saw only injustice, but no indignation.
And yet we do know:
Even hatred of baseness
Contorts the features.
Even wrath against injustice
Makes the voice hoarse. Ah, we
Who wanted to prepare the ground for friendship
Were ourselves unable to be friendly.
But you, if the world has come so far
That each person is now a helper to his fellows
Think of us
With forbearance.
-----------------------------------------------------
An die Nachgeborenen
I
Wirklich, ich lebe in finsteren Zeiten!
Das arglose Wort ist töricht. Eine glatte Stirn
Deutet auf Unempfindlichkeit hin. Der Lachende
Hat die furchtbare Nachricht
Nur noch nicht empfangen.
Was sind das für Zeiten, wo
Ein Gespräch über Bäume fast ein Verbrechen ist
Weil es ein Schweigen über so viele Untaten einschließt!
Der dort ruhig über die Straße geht
Ist wohl nicht mehr erreichbar für seine Freunde
Die in Not sind?
Es ist wahr: Ich verdiene nur noch meinen Unterhalt
Aber glaubt mir: das ist nur ein Zufall. Nichts
Von dem, was ich tue, berechtigt mich dazu, mich sattzuessen.
Zufällig bin ich verschont. (Wenn mein Glück aussetzt, bin ich verloren.)
Man sagt mir: Iss und trink du! Sei froh, dass du hast!
Aber wie kann ich essen und trinken, wenn
Ich dem Hungernden entreiße, was ich esse, und
Mein Glas Wasser einem Verdursteten fehlt?
Und doch esse und trinke ich.
Ich wäre gerne auch weise.
In den alten Büchern steht, was weise ist:
Sich aus dem Streit der Welt halten und die kurze Zeit
Ohne Furcht verbringen
Auch ohne Gewalt auskommen
Böses mit Gutem vergelten
Seine Wünsche nicht erfüllen, sondern vergessen
Gilt für weise.
Alles das kann ich nicht:
Wirklich, ich lebe in finsteren Zeiten!
II
In die Städte kam ich zur Zeit der Unordnung
Als da Hunger herrschte.
Unter die Menschen kam ich zu der Zeit des Aufruhrs
Und ich empörte mich mit ihnen.
So verging meine Zeit
Die auf Erden mir gegeben war.
Mein Essen aß ich zwischen den Schlachten
Schlafen legte ich mich unter die Mörder
Der Liebe pflegte ich achtlos
Und die Natur sah ich ohne Geduld.
So verging meine Zeit
Die auf Erden mir gegeben war.
Die Straßen führten in den Sumpf zu meiner Zeit.
Die Sprache verriet mich dem Schlächter.
Ich vermochte nur wenig. Aber die Herrschenden
Saßen ohne mich sicherer, das hoffte ich.
So verging meine Zeit
Die auf Erden mir gegeben war.
Die Kräfte waren gering. Das Ziel
Lag in großer Ferne
Es war deutlich sichtbar, wenn auch für mich
Kaum zu erreichen.
So verging meine Zeit
Die auf Erden mir gegeben war.
III
Ihr, die ihr auftauchen werdet aus der Flut
In der wir untergegangen sind
Gedenkt
Wenn ihr von unseren Schwächen sprecht
Auch der finsteren Zeit
Der ihr entronnen seid.
Gingen wir doch, öfter als die Schuhe die Länder wechselnd
Durch die Kriege der Klassen, verzweifelt
Wenn da nur Unrecht war und keine Empörung.
Dabei wissen wir doch:
Auch der Hass gegen die Niedrigkeit
Verzerrt die Züge.
Auch der Zorn über das Unrecht
Macht die Stimme heiser. Ach, wir
Die wir den Boden bereiten wollten für Freundlichkeit
Konnten selber nicht freundlich sein.
Ihr aber, wenn es soweit sein wird
Dass der Mensch dem Menschen ein Helfer ist
Gedenkt unsrer
Mit Nachsicht.
stay well you, Zena, and Allah help your country and land and life and lead wise people to freedom and justice ...
Dear Majd,
Thank you for posting your note.
I am a physician, live in Europe, and called doctors without border last week to volunteer; they said we have adequate # of doctors for now. Is this true?
I am willing to come help you. I also have experience in trauma medicine and I mean it when I say will come to help you.
you can write to me at savebeirut ( at ) operamail dotcom
Many decent people stand with you
I salute you for your strength
to the doctor who wrote to me ill be answering you on your mail later this day
thank you for your thoughts
I just found your blog. WOW! It is very powerful hearing the side of someone caught within this terrible, uncaring, indescriminate action. I am a foriegner living in USA, and all the people here know is the side of your occupiers. Stay strong, thank you for putting a human voice to the terror.
Thank you
Devin
Cool
Majd, maybe it is an idea to place some contact web addresses of those who organize volunteers and release schedules and lists of precise material help needed .. political demos are not of big help, people waste a lot of precious energy in the west thinking they have done something - yes, it is important to express solidarity, but packages of wellfare are more / i saw on tv MSF delievering sponge mats that people wouldn't get cold when sleeping on the bare floor .... i have strange experiences with Greenpeace, MSF, western feminist org. etc. when looked for work and years ago i organized myself and did well through thorns ... therefore i placed also my e-mail adress and wellcome anybody from Lebanon to write to me - i can forward any information to plenty of associations here in the Netherlands: there is a national war-protest weekend here / i rely on personal contacts and people who accept a duty
bayyna@maktoob.com
sign.grabar@amis.net
tomorrow, on sunday, the demo is in Amsterdam - if any information will be published here or received until 12.00 (noon), it is going to be outspoken on the main square in the city
Thanks for writing about how things are in Lebanon for you.
I am from the Netherlands, and yes my government is one of those pretending to not notice what is happening to your country. That does not mean the people of the Netherlands dont notice. We do and many of us are furious.
The systematic destruction of a country and the targeting of it's civilians to punish them, so they would turn against Hezbollah, is in my opinion criminal.
Stay strong and safe, I hope this will be over soon and though I know it probably wont happen, I still hope that those responsible for war crimes (of which there have been MANY over the past weeks) will be brought to justice.
http://web.amnesty.org/pages/lebanonisrael-action-eng
What can you do? Take action now!
1. Join Amnesty International in our Ceasefire vigil on Monday 7th August
We call for a ceasefire;
We demand that all governments stop the supply of arms to the conflict; and
We stand in solidarity with the victims and survivors on both sides of the Israel/Lebanon conflict.
Attend or organize a vigil in your community.
Here are some tips on how to organize your vigil, or contact your local AI section to find out about events in your country.
2. Spread the word about this conflict
We will keep posting information and actions on this conflict on amnesty.org so link to our pages!
http://web.amnesty.org/pages/lebanonisrael-index-eng
Download our banner and include it on your blog or website.
-----------------------------------
Ceasefire: No more war crimes
Red Cross paramedics carry body of Lebanese man recovered from the rubble of a building destroyed by Israeli air strike, Qana, near Tyre, Lebanon
© AP GraphicsBank
Civilians have been targeted in Lebanon by the Israeli Defence Forces and in northern Israel by Hizbullah leaving hundreds dead.
After weeks of fighting, bombs and rockets continue to fall indiscriminately on women, children, ambulances, rescue workers and other innocent victims of this escalating conflict. These deliberate attacks violate international humanitarian law and constitute war crimes.
Only an immediate, full and effective ceasefire will protect civilians on both sides, but calls for the warring parties to obey the laws of war and protect civilians have fallen on deaf ears.
Meanwhile, governments that could exert their influence to end the crisis have chosen instead to prioritize their own political and military interests over innocent lives of civilians.
We, the international community, are not powerless in the face of this crisis. We must stand up together to protect the lives of civilians and to ensure no more war crimes are commited.
My dear Zena,
Do not stop what you are doing, your point of view is valuable and will serve as teaching instrument for the rest of the world who gets access to this blog. My thoughts are with you and yours.Stay safe.
BEST WISHES
Nice work. Please look after yourself.
Dear Zena,
I am sending you my love and prayers. And I am, once again, calling my senators. I know it doesn't do much good, but I don't know what else to do.
Everyone morning, reading about the destruction of Lebanon in the New York Times, I feel sick to my stomach. Your blog helps me remind me to not descend into rage and hatred -- that for peace to exist in the world, I need to practice it in my own thoughts and actions.
It also reminds me that as an American, I am partially responsible for this war, and need to work my hardest to end it.
-Sarah in Brooklyn
Dear Zena
We do appreciate a lot your reports about the situation you live today. It is good to have people, artists like you...We do care in Europe about what is going on in your country despite there is not much we can do help....just to support you, boycott the goods comming from Israel....discuss with our friends....
There is not much to discuss as it is a shame on human and nature...Unfortunately, there is not much international help as all the comic politicians are in the same boat with the Israelis, all economic interest.
Religions are surely the reason for causing wars between humans...apologies from our side as we are atheist and do also face verbal attacs...
Keep going and let us know more about the situation...We have a lot of questions about the daily life how people can people survive in this situation...
The cause of this war is not 2 kidnapped soldiers..it is because your country was so beautifully prosperous and doing so well...We would have loved to visit it.
Please do continue with your writtings to open our eyes. Israel will never win they are just creating more hatery among the world against them.
Greetings from Europe
for those of you who understand swedish, i found another blog by Hanin Shakrah
Hanin Shakrah's report was published in local paper here today
http://lebanontrip.blogspot.com/
Hi Zena,
I red you blog first in a Finnish newspaper (translated into Finnish) and got the address from there. Hope you and your countrymen will survive this awful destruction. Please keep writing your blog. Stay safe.
Aki from Helsinki, Finland
you guys cannot stand israel because there NOT muslim. If they where muslim you would not do shit. But because there not your lil muslim friends its all satan. Sure stay in your lil world blaming evrything on israel. You guys started the war not israel. Hezbolla fires random bombs on people while israel gets the blaim on killing citizens.
I am not a jew or live in israel. I just think you muslims need to thake away that mask that islam = always good no matter what, and to blame EVRYTHING that goes wrong even WHEN YOU start the damn war on israel.
Anonymous - You ought to be working on your command of the English language instead of flaming someone's personal blog. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that judging from your vernacular, you're probably a teenager.
I don't know if you'll read these comments again, or if you even care - but just to reiterate, there is a difference between Hizbollah and Lebanon. Furthermore, neither Lebanon, nor Hizbollah for that matter, started the war. Israel started the war when it decided to kidnap two Palestinian citizens and began encroaching on the West Bank. Palestine then retaliated by kidnapping an IDF member. Then Israel acted like a spoiled brat and decided to retaliate 10x against Palestine. Hizbollah saw what was going on, and decided to create a diversion by kidnapping two more IDF members. Once again, Israel started acting like a little brat, and decided to retaliate against Hizbollah by dragging innocent bystanders (the Lebanese people) into the argument, and has retaliated 1,000,000 fold.
Israel is run by a bunch of spoiled brats who have all the problem-solving skills of a teenager, and the anger-management issues to boot. And just so you know, there used to be a sizeable Jewish population in Lebanon, and about 39% of the current population is Christian. So no, Lebanon "cannot stand israel because there [sic] NOT muslim" -- they can't stand them because they're bombing the hell out of their country, for something that the Lebanese people didn't even do.
You should really try educating yourself on matters before you speak so as to not make a fool of yourself.
My dear Zena,
thank you for your words. My heart goes out to all the wonderful, generous Lebanese people. There is hope that I might visit Beirut again (last time from Germany 1965), I love the country and its people.
Whenever you come to NYC, there is a bed for you - in the heart of Greenwich Village.
I'll keep in touch with you in the future - the children of Lebanon need us.
My god, Zena, what a stunning tribute you pay to your country and heritage! Thank you and thank you and thank you again for sharing your words, thoughts and feelings with us. We hear you and look forward to your further testimony.
You are absolutely right (from an earlier post) about someone making money off this war. I always want to believe that if other Americans *knew* about the atrocities and then the millions of dollars that some companies make off war that we citizens would not stand for it. But now, faced with such lethal apathy ("oh, another Mid East war, eh, whatever" sentiment) I just don't know... In the words of TheLebanonChronicle.com, I LOVE BEIRUT, too! ...and I will share that sentiment with those in my sheltered little community. I will do my part to make sure you, and others, get heard.
Please take care,
Maurica
California
btw, your article on artenews is wonderful. bloggin' has become the young person of color's weapon of choice. we need to disseminate and transform! I visited Lebanon, my first trip to the ME, in dec 2005, and I found it breathtaking. it is breaking my heart to see all of this destruction.
btw, your article on artenews is wonderful. bloggin' has become the young person of color's weapon of choice. we need to disseminate and transform! I visited Lebanon, my first trip to the ME, in dec 2005, and I found it breathtaking. it is breaking my heart to see all of this destruction.
Zena: I just want to know I still am thinking of you every day. Your spirit is beautiful. To stay true to yourself and your values in the face of the atrocious: this is heroic, this is what is means to be a fully-conscious human being. I live in the US, and when the newspapers come, reporting the Israeli casualties in headlines and not equal coverage for the Lebanese I'm so angry. Of course this is all "business as usual," only now, because of your writings, I feel in a much deeper way the human, personal story of this war. I wish our papers showed, every day, all the causalties for all sides in all the wars. I send you the hope from my heart: Zena be safe. Thank you for your writing, for caring for the earth and getting the word out about the oil spill, and thank you for staying clear and true to your very sane beliefs.
zena we are all with you,
no one can break the hearts of beirut
To serenade4strings
Read Labels, and ask when you shop
and visit the links:
http://www.boikottisrael.no/eindex.html
http://www.bojkotta-israel.nu/
http://www.boycottisraeligoods.org/
http://www.boykotisrael.dk/
http://stopthewall.org/news/boycot.shtml
http://www.matzpun.com/
http://www.maiap.org/maiap/petition/index.htm
http://www.bigcampaign.org/
http://www.petitiononline.com/bin
/petition.html
http://psc.za.org/pscsaourdeclaration.htm
copy and paste the link onto a new window and please pass on the message
I hear and read many American asking what they can do.
You Can Impeach President Bush, yes you can
You Can Impeach the President
By Dan DeWalt
In mid January of this year, in a moment of quixotic zeal, I wrote a five point resolution calling for the impeachment of G W Bush. With 5% of the towns registered voters signing on, it went to the selectboard and was included in the warning for Newfane Town Meeting on March 7.
By the end of Town Meeting day, five towns across Vermont had overwhelmingly adopted this resolution. My phone started ringing within an hour or two, and a day and a half later, I had given more than 30 interviews to media outlets, from FOX and CNN radio to several Boston and local Vermont radio stations, from a Massachusetts ABC-affiliate to Bloomberg News, the Washington Times (snake in the grass), Boston Globe and Reuters.
I soon found out that Vermonters had already been hard at work drafting the “Rutland Resolution," which is an impeachment resolution to be passed by the state legislature, and forces the federal House of Representatives to forward it to the Judiciary Committee. We are continuing our efforts and are making headway, with over half of the state's Democratic County Committees passing it. The state Democratic Committee will be considering this on April 10. Several legislators have expressed a willingness to go along, if not to lead.
I also discovered that all across the country, this call for accountability is being received with welcome and relief. People who have identified themselves as Republicans, evangelicals, many veterans, many elder Americans, contacted me or Newfane to say that they are supporting us and appreciate our speaking out.
Those who support this effort can bring it to their home towns. Whether you have Town Meeting, town council, county supervisors, or any other local political structure, you can petition them to adopt a resolution. Gathering signatures to persuade them may be easier than you would imagine. Support for this president’s actions is very thin. As more revelations dribble out from the mainstream press, more Americans are willing to reconsider their willingness to be unquestionably led by this malignant administration.
Already efforts are underway in California, Hawaii, Indiana, Arizona, Utah, as well as more in VT, just to name some locations where initiatives have sprung up in response to our Town Meeting actions.
If you want to read a concise primer on how to take on an initiative in your town,
Visit http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/3/29/193445/904.
Dan DeWalt is a woodworker and selectboard member in the town of Newfane, Vermont, and the author of a successful town resolution calling for the impeachment of President Bush.
I just watched some videos posted on http://www.youtube.com
If you write Beirut or Lebanon you will find several videos documenting the crimes of Israel
Sites Linking to This Video
972 clicks from http://www.fromisraeltolebanon.com/videos.php
321 clicks from http://board3.cgiworld.dreamwiz.com/view.cgi?id=telf...
296 clicks from http://www.8sutun.com/node/17464
192 clicks from http://www.fromisraeltolebanon.com/videos.html
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2 clicks from http://5-a.org/
1 clicks from http://www.myspace.com/
1 clicks from http://www.friendster.com/user.php
1 clicks from http://pursuitofthehappiness.blogspot.com/
I just watched Lebanon Qana 2006 video posted on http://www.youtube.com
http://www.tagesschau.de/aktuell/meldungen/0,,OID576
http://www.tagesschau.de/aktuell/meldungen/0,1185,OI...
http://www.tagesschau.de/aktuell/meldungen/0,,OID576...
http://tagesschau.de/aktuell/meldungen/0,1185,OID576...
I can not describe my horror
Israeli government is taking its last desperate breaths, Israel will be returned to Palestine, and this is was the very high price paid to gain justice
US-Israeli war aim is to annihilate Lebanon
By the Editorial Board
5 August 2006
from
http://www.wsws.org/
The sharp escalation of the attacks against Lebanon Friday have made it abundantly clear that the objective of this US-Israeli war of aggression is to demolish Lebanon as an independent and sovereign country.
The war is aimed at transforming the country into an occupied territory controlled by the US and Israel, perhaps through the medium of a NATO “peacekeeping” force. The destruction of Lebanon is being carried out quite deliberately, and with very definite designs. For Israel, it is yet again a matter of annexation of more territory. And for Washington, it is the preparation of new and even bloodier wars, directed in the first instance against Syria and Iran.
The pretense that this war is being waged to defend Israel from terrorism or even to destroy the Shiite Hezbollah movement is belied by the Israeli bombing campaign that is now striking targets and claiming victims far from the Shiite centers of south Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut.
In one of the worst atrocities since the war began, an Israeli air strike claimed the lives of over 33 farm workers, blown to pieces as they loaded plums and peaches onto trucks at a farm warehouse in the far north of the Bekaa Valley, near the Syrian border. At least another 20 people were wounded in the attack. Most of the victims were Syrian Kurds. They were taken across the border to Syrian hospitals, because previous bombing raids had demolished roads leading to hospitals in Lebanon itself.
This massacre of farm workers followed airstrikes that systematically demolished bridges on the main coastal highway linking Beirut and the Lebanese south to the northern half of the country. Marking the first major attacks on the predominantly Christian North, these attacks served to cut the country in two and to cut off the sole remaining lifeline for relief supplies from abroad. At least five people were killed in these bombings, which were conducted during the morning rush hour, including motorists who were crushed to death as the bridges were bombed from beneath them.
In the south of Lebanon, near the Israeli border, yet another horror was reported Friday, after Israeli airstrikes demolished two homes where civilians were apparently seeking refuge from the military offensive. According to Lebanese officials some 57 people were trapped beneath the rubble of the buildings, and it was unknown how many were dead and if there were survivors.
Meanwhile, Israeli warplanes have resumed their bombings of the urban Shiite neighborhoods of southern Beirut, demolishing apartment buildings, roadways and other structures. Planes have dropped leaflets demanding that all residents of the crowded urban districts flee for their lives.
After nearly four weeks of Israeli attacks, Lebanon’s Prime Minister Fouad Siniora declared in a speech broadcast to an emergency session of the Organization of the Islamic Conference convened in Malaysia, that 900 civilians have been killed in Lebanon, 3,000 wounded, and more than one million, a quarter of the Lebanese population, have been turned into internal refugees. A third of the dead, he said, were children under the age of 12.
The Israeli campaign to cut Lebanon off from the outside world while severing one part of the country from another is threatening to create a humanitarian catastrophe that could cause even more deaths than the bombs and shells being dropped on the country’s civilian population.
Israel has been enforcing a total air and sea blockade of Lebanon since mid-July. As a result, fuel supplies are running critically low, threatening to plunge the country into darkness. Fuel tankers have been turned away by Israeli warships. The most immediate catastrophic impact is that major hospitals, including ones that remained open during the civil war of the 1970s, are being forced to close because of lack of fuel and medicine, as well as the inability of staff to get to work. Medical personnel have warned that critical patients will likely die as a result of the blockade.
Throughout Beirut and the rest of the country, power outages are becoming commonplace, with some areas getting only two hours of electricity a day. Meanwhile, stores are running out of essential foodstuffs.
Lebanon’s President Emile Lahoud issued a statement accusing Israel of waging a “war of starvation” against the Lebanese people. “It is an aggression that has exceeded Israel’s declared objectives. Israel has now decided to destroy Lebanon,” he said.
The effect of Friday’s bombing of the key bridges linking the north and south of the country is to accelerate this destruction by cutting off the last route for aid entering the country.
The deliberate sabotaging of any attempts at relieving the suffering of the Lebanese people threatens to have catastrophic consequences. The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned that the contamination of drinking water due to the destruction of infrastructure and the cutoff of fuel supplies threatened south Lebanon and its displaced population in particular with the outbreak of deadly epidemics.
Lahoud’s statement is not merely an emotional denunciation of the savage Israeli attack on Lebanon, but rather an accurate appraisal of the real objectives of this war.
The Bush administration in Washington and the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Israel, have launched a war whose aim it is to smash Lebanon as a country, using mass terror to expel entire populations and to reduce the nation as a whole to the status of a semi-colonial protectorate, wholly subordinated to the interests of Washington and the Zionist regime.
Annexation and “regime change”
The war aims are emerging out of the barbaric methods that are being employed against the people of Lebanon. For Israel, it appears increasingly likely that the objective is the annexation of a significant portion of Lebanese territory, after it has been emptied of its civilian population through the means of massacres and terror. Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz has ordered the military to prepare to drive all the way to the Litani River, 15 miles north of the border. The control of this river has been a strategic objective of the Zionists since before the founding of the Israeli state.
The experience of the last 40 years have demonstrated that Israel is a state without fixed borders. The momentum of each new war expands its control over new territory to meet its supposed security needs. In Lebanon, the Israeli state is pursuing the equivalent of what was referred to under Hitler’s Third Reich as lebensraum—the killing or expulsion of populations viewed as inferior in order to repopulate their land.
For Washington, the Israeli offensive has a far broader significance. The destruction of Lebanon is seen as a stepping stone to the launching of new aggressive wars aimed at achieving “regime change” in Syria and Iran. The unconditional US support for Israel’s criminal war against the Lebanese people is driven most fundamentally by US imperialism’s strategic goal of establishing its undisputed domination of the Middle East and its oil wealth.
This was undoubtedly the same goal that motivated US support for last year’s so-called “Cedar Revolution.” That this event and the elections that followed only served to strengthen Hezbollah’s political influence was seen by Washington as an intolerable impediment to its aims, best remedied through the use of murderous military force.
The naked aims of US imperialism found expression in a column published Friday by Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post, one of the most consistent proponents of the Bush administration’s policy of militarism in the Middle East. “America’s green light for Israel to defend itself is seen as a favor to Israel,” he wrote. “But that is a tendentious, misleadingly partial analysis. The green light—indeed, the encouragement—is also an act of clear self-interest. America wants, America needs, a decisive Hezbollah defeat.”
Krauthammer criticized Israel not for the murderous character of its war against the Lebanese people, but rather for failing to utilize even greater force. Washington, he wrote, had “counted on Israel’s ability to do the job. It has been disappointed. Prime Minister Olmert has provided unsteady and uncertain leadership. Foolishly relying on air power alone, he denied his generals the ground offensive they wanted, only to reverse himself later.”
These are the real sentiments within the Bush administration. It wants Israel to get on with the business of mass killing in Lebanon, bringing the casualties into the tens if not hundreds of thousands to achieve US objectives.
That the brutality of this strategy is provoking massive upheavals throughout the Middle East is beyond dispute. Much of it is directed against the abject hypocrisy and criminality of the American role in planning and supporting this bloody enterprise. It should be recalled that not too many years ago official Washington and the American mass media was waging a massive campaign invoking “ethnic cleansing” in Kosovo as a pretext for war in the Balkans. Now it is rushing bombs and missiles to Israel in order to facilitate the rapid cleansing of south Lebanon of its entire Shiite population through the indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas.
Over 100,000 marched in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City in Baghdad on Friday denouncing Israel and the US for the war in Lebanon and vowing to fight the US occupation. Right-wing Arab regimes such as in Jordan and Egypt have been forced to distance themselves from Washington.
And the Beirut newspaper Daily Star warned in an editorial on Friday that the war is exacerbating “the conspicuous disenchantment of large segments—perhaps majorities—of Arab public opinion with their own government policies.” It added, “The consequences are ominous in a region with so much of the world’s energy reserves, and so many governments and ordinary citizens willing to use the most awful kind of violence to achieve their goals. The signs of radicalization that continue to manifest themselves in various Arab countries, as a consequence of the war between Lebanon and Israel, must not be ignored.”
The Bush administration seems oblivious to this apparently sound advice. Having led the country into the disastrous quagmire of Iraq, it is welcoming the possibility of new wars and new terrorist attacks as a means of reinvigorating its flagging “global war on terrorism.”
The growth of mass opposition to the policies of Israel and Washington will be attributed to “terrorism,” and the pretexts will be found for new and even more terrible wars.
The ostensible opposition party in Washington, meanwhile, is vying with the administration over which of them is the most enthusiastic supporter of the Israeli war on Lebanon.
Representative of this party is Hillary Clinton, the Democratic senator from New York and leading candidate for the party’s presidential nomination in 2006.
Speaking in Buffalo, New York on Tuesday, just days after scores of people, the majority of them children, were massacred in the village of Qana, Clinton reiterated her unconditional backing for the Israeli state. The US, she said, “needs to take the lead in protecting Israel. It has to guarantee Israel’s security...whether that means putting troops in or not, I don’t know.”
Not a word of sympathy or concern for the bleeding Lebanese population passed Clinton’s lips. This attitude is not the exception, but the rule, for the entire American political establishment as well as the mass media. Atrocities that recall nothing so much as the crimes of German and Italian fascism in the 1930s—Ethiopia, Guernica, the Blitzkrieg against Poland—are treated as perfectly acceptable and understandable acts of Israeli “self-defense.”
Underlying this utter lack of morality lie the class interests of America’s ruling oligarchy, which has determined that its global interests can best be furthered through the utilization of unrestrained militarism.
In the end, American working people will be forced to pay the price for this seemingly insane policy. The costs of US militarism will be increasingly felt in the destruction of living standards and what little remains of social services for working people at home.
Moreover, the ever-widening war in the Middle East cannot be sustained much longer without the imposition of the military draft. It is highly probable that once the 2006 midterm elections are over, a bipartisan effort will be mounted—no doubt spearheaded by the Democrats—to resurrect the dragooning of American youth into the expeditionary forces that are being prepared to wage the so-called “long war” for US imperialist hegemony.
The struggle against war can be advanced only through the independent political mobilization of working people based upon a socialist program that seeks the international unification of workers in every country in a common struggle against the global financial and corporate interests that dominate the planet. The Socialist Equality Party is intervening in the 2006 elections in order to advance such an alternative.
This war is so terrible.. If there is anything I could do, I sure would.. I appreciated reading your blog, finding a "face" / a voice in Beirut.. so much more valiuable than reading in newspapers..
all the best wishes&love
--amina
saw now that you are an artist.. I am too.. feel free to visit my spot on myspace: http://www.myspace.com/aminabech
from Norway
with love
amina
To "serenade4strings" Julie
You mentioned about Bush above in your note,
Today somehow I bumped into this site and even though this not a time for comedy, there is a lot of truth in this
http://www.loka.com/
Good luck to you in your career choice, have you thought about studying in Europe, think about it….
http://www.almanar.com.lb/
NewsSite/NewsDetails.aspx?id=780&language=en
Israeli aggression against Lebanon: Day 26
06/08/2006
Israeli combat jets pounded villages in south Lebanon on Sunday, killing at least six people, hours after the UN Security Council began debating a new resolution to bring a halt to the 26-day war. A day after unleashing the heaviest bombing against southern towns since the war began, Israeli combat jets were back in action Sunday with a barrage of strikes. Six civilians were killed when an air-to-ground missile hit a house in the village of Ansar, near the port city of Sidon. Warplanes returned as rescue teams tried to sift through the rubble searching for more victims and carried out a series of raids on other villages in the area. Three other civilians were killed and one more wounded when a missile slammed on a house in the coastal town of Naqura. Lebanese police also said Israeli artillery was systematically leveling 15 villages within five kilometers (three miles) of the border after the Jewish state vowed to create a security zone free of Hezbollah fighters in the area. Some 1,000 civilians including more than 300 children have been killed and over 3,320 others wounded in Lebanon since Israel launched its open war on Lebanon on July 12. A member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) was also killed and four others were wounded in Israeli air raids on their bases in Lebanon early Sunday. The jets bombarded four bases of in the coastal village of Naameh as well as Qussaya, Kfar Zabad and Sultan Yaacub in the eastern Bekaa valley.
I am watching late edition and listening to Shimon Peres who was born Shimon Perske on August 16, 1923 in Poland, makes me sick
please take back the peace prize he shared, he sure does not deserve it and send him back to Poland
I read this article and I am shocked how they can do this, but nothing surprises me anymore
-----------------------------------
Donors dumping expired drugs on Lebanon
Lebanon News.Net
Saturday 5th August, 2006
The World Health Organization is urging donors to be sure the medicines they send to Lebanon are ones that are needed and are not due to expire soon.
The WHO is warning that poor quality or incorrect medicines may cause more harm than good.
The World Health Organization says many of the donations of medicines for Lebanon are exactly what is needed. But, WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib says many of the drugs sent are no good, because they are expired, partially used or of uncertain quality. Sorting through all these medicines, she says, wastes valuable resources.
'This will have a burden on the warehouses of the country, which is already suffering from other problems,' she said. 'This will cost money, energy, resources to sort out these medicines, to destroy them, etc. So, it is very important to help, but to help in a rational way by knowing really the needs.'
WHO says medicines and supplies for surgical interventions and chronic conditions, such as diabetes, heart and kidney problems are in short supply. It says some of these can be purchased locally, but international donations also are needed to restock supplies.
WHO says donors should buy medicines from sources with reliable quality control that comply with international standards for packaging, labeling and other quality requirements. It advises potential donors to contact the national health authorities for updates on the latest needs and to consult WHO's Web site, which has a list of needed medicines and medical supplies.
Chaib also says Lebanon does not need any more field hospitals.
'Field hospitals are really very expensive,' she said. 'And, this money used to bring or to build these field hospitals could be more useful to help Lebanon, for example to repair any equipment or to provide urgently needed supplies, to pay some additional costs. So, we should know the needs and to provide it.'
The World Health Organization is coordinating the health response in Lebanon. It has set up early warning systems in 60 places around the country to detect disease and respond quickly.
A Hateful War Crime Committed by the Jewish Menace
Israel Has No Pity, No Remorse, No Regret, No Humanity
the more I dig the more I find
"Stalin was a Jewish Moscow coffee house radical
In the Georgian language "shvili" means son of, or son, as in Johnson. "Djuga" means Jew. Therefore Djugashvili means Jewison.
So Joe Stalin's real name, before he changed it, was Joe Jewison. It gets better, his name was Joseph David Djugashvili, a typical Jewish name. During his revolutionary days he changed his name to "Kochba", the leader of the Jews during one of the anti-Roman uprisings of the Jews. Russians don't change their names. Georgians don't change their names. Jews change their names.
Stalin had three wives, all of them Jewesses.
The first was Ekaterina Svanidze who bore him one son, Jacob. His second wife was Kadya Allevijah. She bore him a son Vassili, and a daughter Svetlana. His second wife died in mysterious circumstances, either by committing suicide, or murdered by Stalin. His third wife was Rosa Kaganovich, the sister of Lazar Kaganovich, who was the head of Soviet industry.
Stalin's daughter (who in 1967 fled to the USA) then married Lazar's son Mihail i.e. her step-mother's nephew. Svetlana Stalin had a total of four husbands, three of them Jewish.
Stalin's vice-president Molotov was also married to a Jewess, whose brother, Sam Karp, runs an export business in Connecticut. Just to complicate things even more, the Molotov's (half-Jewish) daughter also called Svetlana was engaged to be married to Stalin's son Vassili. "
http://judicial-inc.biz/Bush_Mossad11.htm
I'm holding my breath, waiting for you to post, suspecting you've lost power and internet connection as the bombing continues, feeling so very embarassed and angry that there seems to be nothing that I can do to help you except pass on your posts to the people who read me.
I hate how it is for you and for Lebanon. When I was a child, I always imagined I would be the hero who saved Anne Frank; the person who wouldn't stand for injustice in any form ... now I'm an adult and I'm discovering that it's more difficult to save people from the bullies who rule the world.
And I find that I'm posting anonymously because I've watched pro-Israeli people attack anyone who dares write against them.
I'm sorry ...
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7545.htm
Carl Cameron Investigates Part 1 - Israel Is Spying In And On The U.S.?
Author: Carl Cameron
Part I:
BRIT HUME, HOST: It has been more than 16 years since a civilian working for the Navy was charged with passing secrets to Israel. Jonathan Pollard pled guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage and is serving a life sentence. At first, Israeli leaders claimed Pollard was part of a rogue operation, but later took responsibility for his work.
Now Fox News has learned some U.S. investigators believe that there are Israelis again very much engaged in spying in and on the U.S., who may have known things they didn't tell us before September 11. Fox News correspondent Carl Cameron has details in the first of a four-part series.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CARL CAMERON, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Since September 11, more than 60 Israelis have been arrested or detained, either under the new patriot anti-terrorism law, or for immigration violations. A handful of active Israeli military were among those detained, according to investigators, who say some of the detainees also failed polygraph questions when asked about alleged surveillance activities against and in the United States.
There is no indication that the Israelis were involved in the 9-11 attacks, but investigators suspect that they Israelis may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance, and not shared it. A highly placed investigator said there are "tie-ins." But when asked for details, he flatly refused to describe them, saying, "evidence linking these Israelis to 9-11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It's classified information."
Fox News has learned that one group of Israelis, spotted in North Carolina recently, is suspected of keeping an apartment in California to spy on a group of Arabs who the United States is also investigating for links to terrorism. Numerous classified documents obtained by Fox News indicate that even prior to September 11, as many as 140 other Israelis had been detained or arrested in a secretive and sprawling investigation into suspected espionage by Israelis in the United States.
Investigators from numerous government agencies are part of a working group that's been compiling evidence since the mid '90s. These documents detail hundreds of incidents in cities and towns across the country that investigators say, "may well be an organized intelligence gathering activity."
The first part of the investigation focuses on Israelis who say they are art students from the University of Jerusalem and Bazala Academy. They repeatedly made contact with U.S. government personnel, the report says, by saying they wanted to sell cheap art or handiwork.
Documents say they, "targeted and penetrated military bases." The DEA, FBI and dozens of government facilities, and even secret offices and unlisted private homes of law enforcement and intelligence personnel. The majority of those questioned, "stated they served in military intelligence, electronic surveillance intercept and or explosive ordinance units."
Another part of the investigation has resulted in the detention and arrests of dozens of Israelis at American mall kiosks, where they've been selling toys called Puzzle Car and Zoom Copter. Investigators suspect a front.
Shortly after The New York Times and Washington Post reported the Israeli detentions last months, the carts began vanishing. Zoom Copter's Web page says, "We are aware of the situation caused by thousands of mall carts being closed at the last minute. This in no way reflects the quality of the toy or its salability. The problem lies in the operators' business policies."
Why would Israelis spy in and on the U.S.? A general accounting office investigation referred to Israel as country A and said, "According to a U.S. intelligence agency, the government of country A conducts the most aggressive espionage operations against the U.S. of any U.S. ally."
A defense intelligence report said Israel has a voracious appetite for information and said, "the Israelis are motivated by strong survival instincts which dictate every possible facet of their political and economical policies. It aggressively collects military and industrial technology and the U.S. is a high priority target."
The document concludes: "Israel possesses the resources and technical capability to achieve its collection objectives."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
A spokesman for the Israeli embassy here in Washington issued a denial saying that any suggestion that Israelis are spying in or on the U.S. is "simply not true." There are other things to consider. And in the days ahead, we'll take a look at the U.S. phone system and law enforcement's methods for wiretaps. And an investigation that both have been compromised by our friends overseas.
HUME: Carl, what about this question of advanced knowledge of what was going to happen on 9-11? How clear are investigators that some Israeli agents may have known something?
CAMERON: It's very explosive information, obviously, and there's a great deal of evidence that they say they have collected — none of it necessarily conclusive. It's more when they put it all together. A bigger question, they say, is how could they not have know? Almost a direct quote.
HUME: Going into the fact that they were spying on some Arabs, right?
CAMERON: Correct.
HUME: All right, Carl, thanks very much.
Dearest Zena,
I am watching CNN and hearing attacks on the apartment complex in Beirut and am very worried about you.
I hope you and your loved ones are safe. any thing I write, I end up deleting as I really do not know what would be safe for you at this point, going to the mountains, ...?
PLEASE PLEASE ALL LWBANESE PEOPLE PLEASE ASK HEZBOLLAH NOT FIRE ANY MORE ROKETS TOWARDS ISRAEL, IT ONLY LEADS TO MORE ANGER AND RETALIATION
LOVE YOU ALL
please write a single line and see that you are ok
soory for the typo, my tears did not allow me to write properly
bushit,
Hope the flag waving God "Bless Republican Bush" supporters get to read it..
I am starting to suspect the first presidential election when he ran against Al Gore was meddled with, to ensure his victory..
"PLEASE PLEASE ALL LWBANESE PEOPLE PLEASE ASK HEZBOLLAH NOT FIRE ANY MORE ROKETS TOWARDS ISRAEL, IT ONLY LEADS TO MORE ANGER AND RETALIATION"
And please do ask your country to stop smashing up another country ,people, and ensure your country respects borders of sovereign countries.
Soldiers are always a casualty in strife.
Deal with it according to the international law.
You are not the only nation who have the right to live.
If you have people blowing themselves to drag some of you along with them to death..imagine the magnitude of helplessness, despair and anger you subject them to..
For no man is born saying " Down with Israel" But living in your proximity or reading about ur injustices is enough to spawn a thousand..
Only a strong man a with much unconditional love and forebearance can do it..
Only a strong man a with much unconditional love and forebearance can do it.. (I meant forgive you.)
to the proud JewdoFascist who copies other's notes
First do not copy other's note
2nd write your link/blog/site and I for sure have a lot of questions for you,
3rd you occupied other's land and now occupying other's blog to distribute your lies and incoherent thoughts!!!!
No I for one will not answer your BS until you have the guts to stop being faceless, nameless,
Dear Zena
I have just been to the launch of lebanon, Lebanon, a book published by Al Saqi books in London, it was an evening of music, dance, poetry and other excerpts, and Karim Saleh read from your blog, and it got a wonderful reaction from the audience. he read the bit about you stopping at a red light and hoping other drivers would too, and they did (we cheered) and about shopping in the supermarket and taking three long life milks from the shelf and then putting them back for the children and buying instead the pesto and triple sec. Hearing these excepts was for me the best bit of the evening. I hope you are well.
All the best, Anna
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