Hi. I went to yesterday's peace vigil outside the Israeli Consulate particularly because it would and did involve people beyond protest regulars. Around 50 of us - not bad for a 2 day promo, but the total surprise was the chorus of supportive car honks and thumbs-up in this Jewish neighborhood and, swear, not a single curse, 'finger' or denunciation. Obviously, the Consulate security gang photographing us will now call on their Arab-hater regulars to counter-demo across the street for Friday's demo, but though the Jewish community is very intimidated, this semi-private, positive response to our call for an immedate cease-fire is tremendously encouraging, on many levels. Details of Friday's demo are at the bottom. Please join us, chevre. Ed
=== Number Of Iraqi Civilians Slaughtered In America's War? As Many As 250,000 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11674.htm Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In Bush's War 2570 http://icasualties.org/oif/ The War in Iraq Costs $298,930,153,993 See the cost in your community http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182 === The Immutable President By MAUREEN DOWD Published: July 26, 2006 Washington It's too bad President Bush spurns evolution - both in his view of the universe and his view of himself. Scientists see more and more evidence that human evolution not only exists but is ongoing, as people adapt to changing circumstances with shifts in everything from skin color to the protein structure of sperm. But with W., it's more a matter of survival of the stubbornist. If you turn on TV, you see missiles flying, bodies lying, nuclear missiles unleashed and a slaughterhouse in Iraq. But don't despair, because yesterday President Bush announced the establishment of "a joint committee to achieve Iraqi self-reliance." He called it a "new partnership," as if it were some small business. Isn't it a little late, in July 2006, to be launching a new partnership for such an old mess? Isn't it a little late to realize that Baghdad, a city where 300 garbage collectors have been killed in the last six months, according to press reports, has spun out of control? In a press conference at the White House with his rogue puppet, the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, Mr. Bush explained that "our strategy is to remain on the offense, including in Baghdad." Then why, after three and a half years, does our offense look so much like a defense? The president sounded like a Jon Stewart imitation of himself when he assured reporters that Mr. Maliki had "a comprehensive plan" to pacify Iraq. "That's what leaders do," W. lectured, in a familiar refrain. "They see problems, they address problems, and they lay out a plan to solve the problems." If only the plan were a little less robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul, and a little more road-to-Damascus epiphany. Taking troops out of Anbar Province, where the insurgency is thriving, to quell violence in Baghdad doesn't inspire confidence that the plan is truly "comprehensive." And despite W.'s praise of Mr. Maliki's leadership, the plan to start from scratch, in essence, stabilizing neighborhood by neighborhood in Baghdad is, as The Times's Michael Gordon writes, "an implicit acknowledgment of what every Iraqi in Baghdad already knows": the prime minister's "original Baghdad security plan has failed. In the past two weeks, more Iraqi civilians have been killed than have died in Lebanon and Israel." Mr. Bush also sent Condi Rice to lay out a plan to the Arabs and Europeans about the destruction and refugee flight in Lebanon, but the plan turns out to be a plan to do nothing until Israel has more time to kick the Hezb out of Hezbollah. W. says he supports more diplomacy, but it's the diplomacy of sanctimony. He now grudgingly notes that "the violence in Baghdad is still terrible," but doesn't seem to grasp the tragic enormity of an occupation that is sliding into civil war and constricting his leverage to deal with all the other crises crackling around the world. The U.N. reported last week that in May and June no less than 5,818 Iraqi civilians were killed. Although he talked about whether America could be "facile" and "nimble" enough to change with the circumstances in the Middle East, in fundamental ways, he has not changed his attitude at all. Newsweek's Richard Wolffe says he conducted four "freewheeling" interviews with the president last week, and concluded: "Bush thinks the new war vindicates his early vision of the region's struggle: of good versus evil, civilization versus terrorism, freedom versus Islamic fascism. He still believes that when it comes to war and terror, leaders need to decide whose side they are on." The president sees Lebanon as a test of macho mettle rather than the latest chapter in a fratricidal free-for-all that's been going on for centuries. "I view this as the forces of instability probing weakness," he said. "I think they're testing resolve." The more things get complicated, the more W. feels vindicated in his own simplified vision. The more people try to tell him that it's not easy, that this is a region of shifting alliances and interests, the less he seems inclined to develop an adroit policy to win people over to our side instead of trying to annihilate them. Bill Clinton, the Mutable Man par excellence, evolved four times a day; he had a tactical and even recreational attitude toward personal change. But W. prides himself on his changelessness and regards his immutability as the surest sign of his virtue. Facing a map on fire, he sees any inkling of change as the slippery slope to failure. That's what's so frustrating about watching him deal - or not deal - with Iraq and Lebanon. There's almost nothing to watch. It's not even like watching paint dry, since that, too, is a passage from one state to another. It's like watching dry paint. *** http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060725_robert_scheer_labor_pains/ Labor Pains of a Stillborn Foreign Policy Posted on Jul 25, 2006 By Robert Scheer The Bush foreign policy, from coddling Pakistan's nuclear bomb-making to cheerleading Israel's attacks on the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, is in a free fall of such alarming consequence that it may be difficult to grasp. Certainly that is the case for President Bush, who has been reduced to helplessly hoping the United Nations can get Syria "to stop doing this s---," and for U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who blithely announced Monday that we are just watching the "birth pangs of a new Middle East." By Rice's logic, Hurricane Katrina was just the labor contractions of the new New Orleans. All the Mideast needs now, apparently, is an epidural and some ice chips to suck on. The mass media similarly have lost the thread, treating the downward spiral of violent madness in the world as little more than an exciting - and profitable - war story, demanding slick logos and montages of explosions set to rock music. It's also convenient to the neoconservatives, who prattle on about this being World War III, allowing them to silence critics, justify torture and invade privacy while conveniently covering for the failure of their Iraq invasion to produce the U.S.-friendly democracies they promised. Any hope that Rice's ascendancy in the Bush administration signaled a more sensible direction for U.S. foreign policy has been exposed as wishful thinking. "I have no interest in diplomacy for the sake of returning Lebanon and Israel to the status quo ante. I think it would be a mistake," she told journalists. "What we're seeing here, in a sense, is the growing - the birth pangs of a new Middle East and, whatever we do, we have to be certain that we're pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old one." Funny how the new Middle East looks suspiciously like the old one: It is as if Rice doesn't know Israel already tried invading southern Lebanon, in 1982, with Hezbollah being the reactionary development to the Israel Defense Forces' 18-year-long occupation. Similar feelings of déjà vu surround the latest visit to Washington by a new Iraqi "government" leader who, practically speaking, rules nothing. The White House will cite the arriving Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki as a living example of the "new" Middle East being fostered by Saddam Hussein's overthrow. Never mind that the prime minister is himself a militant Shiite, long-sheltered in Syria and given political tutelage by the mullahs of Iran - or that he has pointedly attacked "Israeli aggression" in Lebanon, a position endorsed unanimously by the Iraqi parliament. After all, what choice does Bush have? His nation-building experiment has led to the destruction of the Sunni power elite, which was once embraced by U.S. leaders such as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as a boon ally against radical Shiite Iran. The Sunnis are, of course, quite upset that Bush has perversely managed to extend the arc of Shiite fanaticism from Lebanon to Iraq. Last week, Iraq's top elected Sunni politician, Parliament Speaker Mahmoud al Mashadani, denounced the "U.S. occupation" of his country as "butcher's work under the slogan of democracy and human rights and justice." Apparently not content to spark both conventional and ethnic-cleansing wars in the region, Bush is also heightening the risk of a nuclear war. On Monday, the Washington Post reported that our war-on-terror ally Pakistan is completing work on a secret reactor that can produce enough plutonium for 40 to 50 nuclear weapons . a year. The Bush administration apparently didn't tell Congress this little tidbit, perhaps embarrassed that its decision after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to lift sanctions imposed on Pakistan because of its nuke bomb tests had backfired so dangerously. Not only does this development threaten to accelerate a nuclear arms race among Pakistan, India and China, it further likens the possibility of nuclear proliferation to rogue nations. After all, it was Pakistan - not Hussein's Iraq - that, by its own admission, was the source of nuclear technology and fuel for North Korea, Libya and Iran. Don't expect the utter failures of Bush's policies to humble its neoconservative authors, however. Not content with having shattered the fragile peace of the Mideast, potential GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich and his ilk are now pushing for a dramatic escalation of U.S. militarism sold under the self-fulfilling banner of WWIII. Describing all this suffering as a necessary step on the path to a glorious future is a devilishly convenient strategy for excusing, in an election year, a reckless foreign policy that, so far, has been nothing short of disastrous. But aside from a few million hapless civilians caught in the middle, who really cares, right? Creators Syndicate Inc. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/27/world/middleeast/27mideast.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin Cease-Fire Talks Stall as Fighting Rages NY Times Headline Story, Thursday, July 27, 2006 AVIVIM, Israel, July 26 - Israel's two-front conflict saw its heaviest day of fighting on Wednesday, killing 9 Israeli soldiers, dozens of Hezbollah fighters and at least 23 Palestinians in Gaza. As the battles raged, a meeting of the United States and European and Arab countries in Rome failed to reach agreement on a plan to end the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah as the United States resisted calls for an immediate cease-fire. Israeli soldiers faced heavy casualties Wednesday in Lebanon as they tried to clear out Hezbollah fighters. Hezbollah kept up its sustained fire on northern Israel, with 130 rockets hitting the region, wounding more than 10 Israelis. The death toll has been at least 433 in Lebanon and 51 in Israel, according to Reuters. The death toll on Wednesday was Israel's highest since fighting began on July 12 after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers during a raid into Israel. The most intense ground combat came around the hilltop town of Bint Jbail, a Hezbollah stronghold just a few miles from the Israeli border. At the meeting in Rome, while the other nations pressed for an immediate cease-fire, the United States argued for a "sustainable cease-fire," with the Lebanese government regaining sovereignty over southern Lebanon, and militias like Hezbollah being disbanded. The lack of action prompted Prime Minister Fouad Siniora of Lebanon to lash out with a cry of despair. "Is the value of human life less in Lebanon than that of citizens elsewhere?" he asked. "Are we children of a lesser god? Is an Israeli teardrop worth more than a drop of Lebanese blood?" Accusing Israel of "barbaric destruction," he vowed to seek justice, announcing that Lebanon would begin legal proceedings for war reparations. European and Arab governments, as well as Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, and Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief, lined up behind him and pushed hard for an immediate cessation of hostilities or even a truce on humanitarian grounds, several participants said. But in a tense, sometimes stormy debate that went on for nearly an hour, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice dug in, and prevailed. Later, she defended the United States' refusal to call for an immediate ceasefire, saying: "It doesn't do anyone any good to raise false hopes about something that's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. I did say to the group, 'When will we learn?' The fields of the Middle East are littered with broken cease-fires." She said she expected that the issue would end up being resolved by the United Nations Security Council. --- http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/27/world/middleeast/27fighting.html?th&emc=th AVIVIM, Israel, July 26 - Two days ago, Israeli officers along the border were saying that they were in control of Bint Jbail, the biggest Hezbollah stronghold within easy striking distance across the border and an important symbolic target. Hezbollah's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, celebrated Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon with a parade there six years ago. But when Israel sent in its elite Golani Infantry Brigade to secure the town before dawn on Wednesday, hundreds of soldiers were quickly pinned down by a Hezbollah ambush. Eight soldiers were killed almost immediately, and it took until early afternoon to move the dead and wounded two miles under heavy fire to a safe spot where they were picked up by helicopter and flown to a hospital in Haifa. "It was a tough day," said Maj. Gen. Udi Adam, who heads Israel's Northern Command and is leading operations in Lebanon along with Maj. Gen. Benny Gantz, chief of the ground offensive. General Adam, who met reporters in a pine forest at dusk, acknowledged that after two days of bitter combat that had left 10 soldiers dead, Bint Jbail was still not under Israeli control. *** Call for an Immediate Ceasefire! Join LA Jews for Peace & Other Anti-War Actvists Friday, July 28th Noon - 1 PM Israeli Consulate 6380 Wilshire Blvd. LA, 90048 (on Wilshire east of La Cienega) Bring Signs & Banners Ceasefire Now! War is not the answer Humanitarian Crisis Looms in Lebanon & Gaza Violence Begets Violence In Solidarity With Anti-War Protestors in Israel Let us stand in solidarity with thousands of Israelis, Lebanese & Palestinians protesting the violence. 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