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 26 Jun 2007 @ 23:56, by quinty. Violence, War
My Google web crawler brought up this piece I wrote two years ago, which appeared on Bemusings on July 14, 2005. For whatever it’s worth, here’s a glmpse at the past, and through the past at the present, since nothing appears to have changed in two years. Except the mounting dead and destruction. And the opposition to the war, which has only increased over time. And will continue to increase.
How many American soldiers were dead by July 2005? Nearly 1800.
Today's statistic is 3565. ( [link] for that source.)
When it comes to Iraqis there is no way of measuring. The number, though, is enormous.
Buddy’s Bemusings then: [link]
Buddy’s Bemusings today: [link]
BACK TO JULY, 2005............... More >
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30 May 2007 @ 01:03, by a-d. Violence, War
but don't take my word for it!.... Just read the first page of this web-site
[ [link] ]
See if you feel as "jazzed" about it happy as I did when I found it! : )
Feel free to comment on anything said in this link, eh? We need to discuss and share our experiences and thoughts around this Awakening "Thinggggg"...: ) More >
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 21 May 2007 @ 15:51, by nraye. Violence, War
After Athens fell first in 400 BC to the Spartans for 3 years, and later to Philip, and then sundry other ruling persons, the schools of learning set up across the Hellenized world.
The light of the authors paramount continued to shine even 550 years later for the Alexandrines who continued the traditions in their own styles to add yet more diversity to the whole development of thought.
Two final themes emerge in the embers of this Art which commenced outside the walls of Troy immortalised by Homer. The themes are the emergence of Romance, Love simple and pure for the people, king and peasant alike, and the incomparable works of St John the Divine, The Revelations, for which inspiration is considered the epitome of Love Sublime and Divine. More >
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21 Apr 2007 @ 23:43, by vaxen. Violence, War
Nefarious War
Last year we fought by the head-stream of the Sang-kan,
This year we are fighting on the Tsung-ho road.
We have washed our armor in the waves of Chiao-chi lake,
We have pastured our horses on Tien-shan's snowy slopes.
The long, long war goes on ten thousand miles from home,
Our three armies are worn and grown old.
The barbarian does man-slaughter, not plowing;
On this yellow sand-plains nothing has been seen but
blanched skulls and bones.
Where the Chin emperor built the walls against the Tartars,
There the defenders of Han are burning beacon fires.
The beacon fires burn and never go out,
There is no end to war!—
In the battlefield men grapple each other and die;
The horses of the vanquished utter lamentable cries to heaven,
While ravens and kites peck at human entrails,
Carry them up in their flight, and hang them on the branches of dead trees.
So, men are scattered and smeared over the desert grass,
And the generals have accomplished nothing.
Oh, nefarious war! I see why arms
Were so seldom used by the benign sovereigns. More >
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12 Apr 2007 @ 14:33, by vaxen. Violence, War
"Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators. Your wealth has been stripped of you by unjust men... The people of Baghdad shall flourish under institutions which are in consonance with their sacred laws." (General F.S. Maude, commander of British forces in Iraq, 1917)
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"Peoples of Egypt, you will be told that I have come to destroy your religion. Do not believe it! Reply that I have come to restore your rights!" (Napoleon Bonaparte, 1798)
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If... the machine of government... is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law: Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobediance, 1849
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Thought I'd 'putz' this in here just for the fun of it. Not that I, in any way, countenance Eugene Iacocca, but herein you can see some fundamental hypocrisy mixed in with the mans' burden of seeing the monster 'Amerika' for what it is now and always has been.
I grew up in this land and saw the fundamental insanity close up from an early age. This is not my government that sits in the marble halls of an Architectural monstrosity (The "White" House)...
Anyone with half a brain can see the writing on the wall. I will not allow myself, ever again, to participate in the insanity of a supposed 'political' process nor will I listen to supposed 'leaders' shout out their calumny and vapidness expecting me to 'pay' for their errant foolishness at thinking that what they have to say is worth a peanut in a hull rotten with the wasted lives of countless generations of fools who believed that someone else could ever have their best interests at heart.
No, Washington, you've never been ought by pomp and circumstance for me. My earnest desire is to see you and all your denizens sink into the darkest of holes like the ones you create for all earths peoples everyday with your traitorous assumptions to and usurpations of 'our power.'
To me you'll always be nothing but flotsam blowing in the wind and I yearn for the day when we free our planet forever from the likes of you whether you sit in the Kremlin, Jerusalem, or Timbuktu.
Iacoccas' Shpiel: More >
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 4 Apr 2007 @ 09:58, by jazzolog. Violence, War
The squeaking of the pump sounds as necessary as the music of the spheres.
---Henry David Thoreau
Do not recite sutras. Do not make portraits of me. Just bury my body in the back mountains. It is enough that you cover me with earth.
---Takuan's final wishes to his students
How could the drops of water know themselves to be a river? Yet the river flows on.
---Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Photo by Matt Taibbi of tattoo on the foot of Sgt. Stephen Wilkerson, Baghdad 2006
I once heard a friend make a case for oil and its markets having been the fundamental cause of all the wars of the past century. I had begun the conversation, I guess, by proclaiming loudly the need for conservation of the resource. My friend replied, "The sooner the earth runs out of oil the better!" I was amazed to hear this, and it was then he launched his theory.
At this hour Tony Blair continues his call for "direct" negotiation between Britain and Iran over UK sailors picked up for prowling around some ocean borderlines. [link] Yesterday he said he'd give the process another couple days before matters become "fairly critical", whatever that means. Iran has replied they're glad to talk...but at the same time we have these curious rumors floating via "Russian intelligence" that the US is ready to let fly with the missiles on Friday (or thereabouts). [link]
Are we poised for another "regime change"? Halliburton has moved its headquarters to Dubai, perhaps so trade deals for oil can be accomplished with Iran whether there's peace or war. I believe the United States has not had relations with Iran in about 25 years, and Halliburton can't do deals with them from here. If oil is the deal and soldiers are needed to secure the wells for Exxon/Mobil, time is of the essence. But should we be doing better at our occupations...despite all the claims of progress by Madman McCain and the Bushie loyalists?
The last few days I've been catching up with an article from last summer in Rolling Stone by Matt Taibbi. The long piece is called Fort Apache, Iraq, and it took me some days to read it. The writing is intense and Taibbi often launches off into a kind of loony poetry that made me stop and think a lot. Last May he spent some days tooling around the bloody roads of Iraq in a Humvee with a group of National Guardsmen from Oklahoma, and followed that up with 3 days locked in a jail cell in Abu Ghraib. Out of these experiences he fashioned this article that expresses vividly for me just what it's like for us Yanks to be over there...and how we look. This isn't the first time Matt Taibbi has put himself into very radical situations for the sake of journalistic truth. Someone has put up a Wikipedia article about him that gives his history along with a ton of links. [link] For our purpose today I'll select some excerpts from Fort Apache, Iraq, and give you the online link to the whole thing. More >
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27 Mar 2007 @ 16:30, by bushman. Violence, War
A model of efficency? So far only in China. Anyone ever see that scary church film? I think it came out way back in the early 1970's. Basicly a christian 666 film, where they had these retroed UPS vans that went around forcing people to get the mark of the beast, and if you didn't get the mark, they had this guilatine. A really scary film to show to preteens.
Full story:
[link] More >
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24 Mar 2007 @ 17:24, by vaxen. Violence, War
Of course this has all been said before and anyone who knows the American Military knows that the situation for the 'grunt' is far worse than Karen can portray here. The question, then, is why do so many think they have to play this dirty game whose winners are those who bankroll every single war and make obscene 'profits' whilst the fools that fight the wars die in ignominy like the good little slaves that they are!
I like Karens style and could, theoretically, see someone like her running for the Office of the President in the Big Shit House in Washington D.C. otherwise known as the "White House."
So here is one of her latest articles which I hope will make you think as you contemplate the liers in wait who are running for the highest office in the land.
Abject liars every single one! Vote? Tear the damned White House down and stop posturing!
Her article: More >
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18 Aug 2006 @ 18:27, by spells. Violence, War
From another newslog....
"May all sentient beings be happy and free of suffering".
[The Buddha]
what appears to be left unsaid is this....unless you are Muslim, Arabic, of different culture, different religion, different color, (many different aspects could be mentioned here) or disagree with "me" in any way. Let's stop the hypocracy people and look at the truth of our woes in the world.
Does anyone dare to be honest? Don't you know that nature is there for everyone...NO ONE owns land or has claim to it. Nature cares not who "was there first".
Let's also be honest about the superior technology of one country over another. Us/Israel against Lebanon is almost like nukes against catapult. How can you begrudge the Lebanese their "techniques" of suicide bombers or use of the internet? What else can they do? They don't have the same caliber (if any) fighter jets with nuclear missles...
So how about it? any honest person out there? Anyone have any inkling that we are all one and all these differences and disputes are petty on a cosmic basis? I've got news for all of you....the Universe doesn't revolve around any of us and the truth doesn't change or disappear just because we would like it to.
FYI...
WSWS : News & Analysis : Middle East
WSWS : News & Analysis : Middle East
Refugees flood back to devastated southern Lebanon
By Rick Kelly
18 August 2006
Hundreds of thousands of refugees have returned to what is left of their homes in Lebanon in defiance of Israeli warnings and threats to stay away. Openly expressing their support for Hezbollah, residents have rushed to reclaim their land in a display of mass opposition to US-Israeli aggression.
Developments since the UN-sponsored ceasefire took effect on Monday have underscored the failure of the US and Israel to achieve their war aims. The Bush administration and the Israeli government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert hoped to destroy the Hezbollah militia, reduce Lebanon to the status of a semi-colonial protectorate, and drive out the predominantly Shiite population from an Israeli-occupied “buffer zone” in the south.
None of this has eventuated. Lebanese refugees have made their way past destroyed roads and bridges, despite the dangers posed by unexploded cluster munitions and other ordinance, to return to their land. People fear becoming permanent refugees and losing their homeland to Israeli annexation, and are determined not to suffer what the Palestinians experienced. The Lebanese population has first-hand knowledge of the Israeli dispossession of Palestinians—hundreds of thousands of refugees flooded into the country in 1948 and again in 1967.
Returning refugees angrily denounced Israel and the US for the destruction wreaked during the 34-day bombardment. In Beirut’s southern suburbs, almost every building was either destroyed or seriously damaged. Over the ruins of one collapsed structure, a resident hung a banner which read, “Made in the USA”. Another banner in a southern Lebanese village had the words, “Rice, they will not see your new Middle East”. This was a reference to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s now infamous statement on July 22 in Beirut that the war represented the “birth pangs of a new Middle East”.
Almost one million people—a quarter of Lebanon’s population—were forced to flee their homes during the conflict. According to Lebanese estimates, Israeli warplanes carried out more than 4,500 bombing raids. An estimated 35,000 homes and businesses were destroyed by missiles and artillery shells, along with 400 miles of roads and highways, and about 150 bridges and interchanges, one out of every four in the country.
“Southern Lebanon is a travelogue of destruction: town after town pummelled by bombs and mortars that left them in shambles,” the Los Angeles Times reported. Entire towns and villages have been turned to rubble. In Siddiqine, local businessman Ali Bakri described the scene. “It’s like a tsunami, or a second Hiroshima,” he told the Christian Science Monitor.
Almost 1,200 Lebanese were killed, though this figure will probably rise, as corpses are still being pulled from the rubble of destroyed buildings. In Srifa, scene of two Israeli massacres of civilians, another 32 bodies have been recovered. Authorities in Tyre yesterday buried more than 120 victims in a mass grave. In Ainata, Red Cross workers found 18 bodies, including children. The stench of decomposing bodies forced rescue workers to wear multiple facemasks as they travelled between Ainata and Bint Jbeil, scene of much of the heaviest fighting.
Hezbollah militants have openly re-emerged in the south and their banners and flags are again visible to Israeli residents living on the border. Refugees flew Hezbollah flags from their vehicles and homes and expressed their determination to resist Israeli aggression against their country. Numerous media reports have acknowledged the mass support Hezbollah now enjoys. “We are not terrorists,” Faras Jamil, a 39-year-old resident of Aita Shaab, told the Los Angles Times. “My wife is Hezbollah. My children are Hezbollah. Hezbollah is all the people from this town.”
The demonstrations exposed the US-Israeli lie that Hezbollah is nothing but a terrorist arm of Syria and Iran. As is evident from news reports, the organisation has become the focal point for the anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist sentiments of the Lebanese and Arab masses. Hezbollah has a mass base among Lebanon’s Shiites, for whom it provides education, health, and other social services, and has won widespread support among Sunni, Christian, and Druze Lebanese for its resistance to the Israeli offensive.
Hezbollah is also leading the reconstruction efforts. It has promised to provide a year’s rent and new furniture for every family whose home was destroyed. Hundreds of refugees in Beirut have spent the past few days queuing to register for assistance. “There is no central government presence here,” Hamed Harab, a local government official, admitted. “Hezbollah is doing everything.”
The situation is similar in the south. “There is no government here,” Abdul Muhsen Husseini, a government official in Tyre, said. “At least [Hezbollah] are on the ground helping. If you call them at midnight, they come out to help. They are the government.”
There is little prospect of Hezbollah disarming and withdrawing from south of the Litani River, as the Bush administration and the Olmert government demand. The Israeli military was unable to eliminate Hezbollah fighters during the month-long war, and no one expects that either the Lebanese army or the 15,000-strong multinational force being readied will be in a position to enforce US and Israeli dictates.
The Lebanese government has indicated that it will not order the army to disarm Hezbollah. Such a move would risk provoking a civil war throughout the country and a mutiny within the military. “The Shiite population in Lebanon is almost 50 percent,” Yiftach Shapir, of the Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies, told Israeli Arutz Sheva Radio. “In the army the proportion is even greater, particularly among the officers. Those numbers reach about 60 percent. While not all of them are extremists, the question is whether or not they would have any desire to violently confront Hezbollah.”
European countries preparing to contribute troops to the UN force have insisted that they will not be responsible for taking on guerrilla fighters. “It is wrong to say that our soldiers are going to disarm Hezbollah,” Italian foreign minister Massimo D’Alema said yesterday. Italy has promised to deploy 3,000 soldiers. France was expected to send about 5,000 troops to Lebanon and lead the UN operation, but President Jacques Chirac has refused to commit more than 200 French forces until clear rules of engagement with Hezbollah militants are established.
Condoleezza Rice was forced to acknowledge the European powers’ concerns. “I don’t think there is an expectation that this [UN] force is going to physically disarm Hezbollah,” she told USA Today. “I think it’s a little bit of a misreading about how you disarm a militia. You have to have a plan, first of all, for the disarmament of the militia, and then the hope is that some people lay down their arms voluntarily.”
The setback suffered in southern Lebanon has heightened the political crisis in Washington and Tel Aviv but it is already clear that the Bush administration intends to pursue its broader strategic plans to subjugate the Middle East. Washington was closely involved in Israel’s plans for invading Lebanon, and for weeks blocked demands for a ceasefire. As journalist Seymour Hersh recently revealed in the New Yorker, the Bush administration welcomed the war as a preliminary step towards an attack on Iran.
In comments in the USA Today, Secretary of State Rice ominously pointed out that the UN resolution on Lebanon imposed an international arms embargo and thus a ban on foreign states supplying arms to Hezbollah. The provision gives the Bush administration ample pretexts for new diplomatic and military provocations against Iran and Syria.
In Israel, Haaretz published an op-ed piece today by Avraham Tal, titled “Preparing for the next war now”. “A war that has ended in a tie and without an agreement between the sides being signed is destined to flare up again, sooner or later,” Tal wrote. “In the conflict between Israel and Iran, by means of its proxy, Hezbollah, neither side achieved its strategic aim... One must start from the working assumption that the next confrontation will erupt relatively soon; for purposes of the discussion, let us assume two years from the eruption of the previous confrontation and to act in all areas as though this will happen with absolute certainty. Possibly there will be another round in the format of the second Lebanon war, but we must prepare for the possibility of something larger and more dangerous: an all-out war with regular armies, including the army of a regional power.”
The current ceasefire remains uncertain and fighting could quickly erupt again. Israel still has thousands of soldiers occupying southern Lebanon and is maintaining its illegal naval blockade of the country. In these conditions, it would not be difficult for the Olmert government to resume the war by staging a provocation and declaring that Hezbollah had breached the ceasefire terms.
See Also:
The president gives a press conference
[16 August 2006]
Recriminations erupt in Israel in aftermath of Lebanon ceasefire
[16 August 2006]
On eve of Lebanon ceasefire deadline: US, Israel face political debacle
[14 August 2006] More >
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3 Aug 2006 @ 18:54, by spells. Violence, War
WSWS : News & Analysis : Middle East
US-Israeli onslaught on Lebanon intensifies
By Mike Head
3 August 2006
Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author
Backed by the Bush administration, Israel has poured thousands more troops into Lebanon and escalated its aerial bombardment in its bid to crush all resistance and take control of the south of the country. With the US blocking all calls for an immediate ceasefire—to give the Israeli military more time to complete the job—Israeli leaders have openly declared that the offensive will continue for weeks.
Aided by the lack of any opposition from the UN and the European Union, the objectives set by the US and Israel from the outset of the war are being pursued methodically and with barbaric devastation. Hezbollah’s capture of two Israeli Defence Force (IDF) soldiers has been used as a pretext to attempt to kill or drive out the population of south Lebanon and bring the entire country under its political sway.
Up to 20,000 IDF troops have invaded Lebanon on multiple fronts, backed by tanks, military bulldozers and ferocious air power. There is no indication that the offensive will necessarily stop at the Litani River, the northern border of Israel’s self-proclaimed “security zone”. IDF infantry have already crossed the river in several places, going beyond the territory that Israel occupied for 18 years from 1982 to 2000.
Throughout southern Lebanon, south Beirut and the eastern Bekaa Valley, the IDF is pursuing a scorched earth policy, reducing towns and villages to rubble, leaving the remaining residents—those too old or weak to escape—without water and food. Far from “surgical incursions” to dismantle Hezbollah command posts, as claimed by Israel, the operation is systematically blowing up and bulldozing houses, apartment buildings, community facilities and essential services to make whole areas uninhabitable.
Following the end of the 48-hour cessation of air strikes, Israeli war planes carried out a wave of bombings throughout Lebanon on Wednesday. Air strikes resumed in the battered outskirts of Beirut in the early hours of today. Residents heard the impact of large explosions about every five minutes starting at 2.30 a.m. as missiles hit Dahieh, a Shiite Muslim suburb that has been repeatedly shelled by Israel since fighting began three weeks ago.
Yesterday IDF commandos provocatively landed near the eastern city of Baalbeck, 100 kilometres into Lebanon and close to the Syrian border. Seizing a Hezbollah-run hospital, they captured several alleged Hezbollah militants under the cover of an Israeli bombardment that killed at least 19 civilians, including five children. Lieutenant General Dan Halutz, the IDF chief of staff, told reporters at a briefing that the raid was intended to show that Israel could strike anywhere in Lebanon.
There is open speculation in the US media that the ground war will not be limited to the south but could lead to a wider military operation if Israel decides to push toward Beirut. Brigadier General Shuki Shahar, the deputy chief of the military’s Northern Command, was quoted saying: “The farther north we can push them, the fewer Israeli citizens they can put under threat with these rockets.”
Further south, in Tyre, the mass burial planned for 90 victims of the Qana massacre and other atrocities had to be postponed because of the intensity of the Israeli missile barrage. Tens of thousands of people are streaming out of the ancient Mediterranean city. In recent days, its population had swollen to 100,000 because of the influx of refugees from villages inland. By Tuesday, only about 15,000 remained.
It is now obvious that the slaughter of innocents at Qana was part of a wider plan to terrorise and force people to flee. With the official Lebanese civilian death toll already nearing 1,000 and the number of displaced people one million—a quarter of the country’s population—Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert yesterday boasted that this was a mark of success in the war. “All the population, which is the power base of the Hezbollah in Lebanon, was displaced,” he declared.
In other words, the strategy—agreed with Washington from the start—is the systematic de-population of south Lebanon, where the three-week onslaught has only increased popular support for Hezbollah as a national resistance movement. With IDF troops meeting further fierce opposition and Hezbollah firing more rockets into Israel on Wednesday than on any previous day of the 22-day-old war, Olmert declared that the army would not stop fighting or withdraw until a “robust” international force moved into southern Lebanon on Israel’s terms.
His government is confident that this could take weeks or more because of the insistence of the US, joined by Britain and Germany, that no truce be permitted until Israel has conquered the area. A cabinet minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, said on army radio he expected the offensive to take up to two weeks. Israeli generals are publicly predicting an even longer war. Brigadier General Alon Friedman of Israel’s Northern Command said seizing control of south Lebanon could take a week, and securing it “could take from three to eight weeks, depending on the size of the area.”
Israel is intent on retaining a free hand to carry out military operations throughout Lebanon even after a peace-keeping force is put in place. Writing in Haaretz today, Israeli military analyst Ze’ev Schiff commented: “Meanwhile, there is a delicate situation emerging over the mandate of the future multinational force... The danger is that sanctions will apply to both sides. This may make it very difficult for Israel to defend itself, even if it argues self-defence.”
Whatever tactical differences exist with France over the timing and composition of the planned international “stabilisation force,” there is no disagreement over its basic function, which will be to obliterate all opposition to Lebanon being reduced to a protectorate, completely subservient to US and Israeli interests.
White House spokesman Tony Snow said an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon was not on the agenda, and downplayed differences with France on the urgency of ending the fighting. “An immediate ceasefire is something that at this point doesn’t seem to be in the cards. Neither side is headed that way,” he told a press briefing.
The truth is that Washington is urging the Israelis to get on with the slaughter as quickly as possible, as Schiff alluded to in his Haaretz comment yesterday. A fervent advocate of the war, he complained that the Olmert government had not yet provided the US with the “military cards” it needed to ensure the permanent eradication of Hezbollah.
“US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is the figure leading the strategy of changing the situation in Lebanon, not Prime Minister Ehud Olmert or Defense Minister Amir Peretz. She has so far managed to withstand international pressure in favor of a ceasefire,” he wrote.
The Lebanese government has continued to denounce Israel’s war crimes. Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh called Tuesday for an immediate ceasefire and the creation of an international tribunal to try the Israeli officials. Speaking of Qana, Justice Minister Charles Rizk said: “Israel committed a hideous crime against children, women and elderly and [there should be] an international and independent committee to probe the crime.”
In Beirut, Lebanon’s High Relief Committee (HRC) said it had counted 828 people killed and 3,200 wounded so far. “These are identified bodies, and the toll does not count the people still believed to be under the rubble,” an HRC spokesman said. The number of displaced has reached 913,760. Economic losses caused by the destruction of the country’s infrastructure are now estimated at $4 billion.
Such is the “new Middle East” promised by the White House. The barbaric war on Lebanon, alongside the worsening bloodletting in US-occupied Iraq, are the product of a neo-colonial policy directed at suppressing all resistance to American dominance of the region’s massive oil and gas reserves and US imperialism’s wider goal of achieving unchallenged global hegemony.
See Also:
Slaughter in Lebanon enters fourth week
What way forward in the struggle against war?
[2 August 2006]
Following Qana massacre
Israel escalates Lebanon offensive with US backing
[1 August 2006]
The Qana massacre: Slaughter of innocents in Lebanon
[31 July 2006]
Rice leaves bloody footprints in Lebanon
[26 July 2006]
The real aims of the US-backed Israeli war against Lebanon
[21 July 2006] More >
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