No Title + WB: Looking for Mr. Neutron

August 5, 2006

Billmon:

Looking for Mr. Neutron

Bernhard:

Israeli planes dropped leaflets over the city of Sidon, south of here, warning people to evacuate before expected airstrikes on “terrorist infrastructure”

Sidon is an overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim city, rather distant from Hezbollah strongholds further south. In recent weeks it has been a collection point for many of the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the fighting.

The Israeli Army also issued a statement saying it did “not consider the Lebanese people to be its enemy and does not want to harm them.”
U.S. and France Back Plan to End Fighting in Lebanon

Posted by b on August 5, 2006 at 17:17 UTC | Permalink

Comments

b
i’m not optimistic, in the least

Posted by: r’giap | Aug 5 2006 17:26 utc | 1

And yet another action of collective punishment against the moderates. Yesterday they bombed the only road for aid, plus a bridge in a purely Christian Maronite town. And all gratuitous, as apparently there’s some “solution” (haha) in the works about to be announced to the world. What the heck for? What are they proving here? What’s the point?

Posted by: 2nd anonymous poster | Aug 5 2006 17:28 utc | 2

More death and destruction to come. The U.S. is making a mockery of the U.N. and the concept of “diplomacy”.

Posted by: Rick Happ | Aug 5 2006 17:43 utc | 3

Apparently this leaflet dropping is a myth. According to http://lebanonupdates.blogspot.com , Lebanse security forces deny that leaflets were dropped and claim to have arrested those who spread the rumors.
Of course the Israeli warning is real. However the claim that Hezballah rocket launchers exist in Saida/Sidon is ludicrous. The warning itself already constitutes a war crime, as Michel Aoun has said, whose mainly Christian CPL party is allied with HA.
I think this is one more attempt to scare the Beirut population and the parliament into freaking out and distancing itself from HA and Nasrallah.

Posted by: Guthman Bey | Aug 5 2006 17:48 utc | 4

Aoun is allied with Hizbullah? That’s one funny development, I missed it.
Whatever, IDF has begun to serously bomb Maronite areas, and that one will go pretty badly with the American-Lebanese. If they are any smart, they will push this angle in the US to ask why Israel is persecuting Christians, and why the so-called Christians in the US are supporting the bombing of their brothers in the Middle East. Not that I expect this to change much of the current US position, but it’s worth a try.

Posted by: CluelessJoe | Aug 5 2006 18:12 utc | 5

cockburn on the demented blair

Posted by: r’giap | Aug 5 2006 18:42 utc | 6

The Christian Israel Firsters in the US are deeply embarassed by the existence of Christians in the Middle East and are doing their damn best to pretend they don’t exist. The reason is to be found in the so-called Dispensationalist doctrine held by much of the Christian Right, which is really like movie script and claims that God is with Israel (for now) and that all non-Israelis are evil heathens who are to be destroyed later in the script (before the Israelis and most everybody else goes up in flames too during the “tribulation” period). The oldest surviving Christian communities in the world don’t fit into this tale.
So there (I can’t linger on this nonsense too long, because it drives me nuts): solidarity from Reverend Pat for their Christian brothers in Lebanon and Palestine?
No fucking way. (And maybe that’s a plus: You already have Israeli bombs to deal with, so who wants to be embraced by malodorous Pat).

Posted by: Guthman Bey | Aug 5 2006 18:52 utc | 7

Apparently this leaflet dropping is a myth.
I’ve read several bloggers saying they read or saw the leaflets – they make fun of them. Who knows at this distance. The Israelis do send clumsy messages of that type over radio and TV.
Ethnic cleansing with forewarning!
Leave so as to save your life – no box cars and gas chambers for you, we are civilised! Syria, Jordan, the international community will take care of you. Huddle in tents care of the Red Cross. We need to defend ourselves!
Tha Nazis and the Khmer Rouge were so Yesterday!

Posted by: Noirette | Aug 5 2006 19:07 utc | 8

I believe the leafletting is a legal CYA from war crime prosecution.
Seems the Israelis have missed the Druze areas.
And Torquay (Monty Python Fans).
Note my post and link on the last thread – ach, so many threads – that Saudi businessmen, with 10B in holdings in the country, are planning to sue Israel for damages. This should be fun.

Posted by: Malooga | Aug 5 2006 19:25 utc | 9

Malooga,
Yeah, I think too that this is a CYA to insulate against war crime accusations.
But even with leaflets and warnings, it is still a war crime.
Noirette calls it as it is: “Ethnic cleansing with forewarning! .The Nazis and the Khmer Rouge were so Yesterday!”

Posted by: Rick Happ | Aug 5 2006 19:49 utc | 10

terrorist infrastructure
Pictures of the Beirut planned before the bombs – not to be
Many high res. images, slow even with broadband, well worth it:
Link
before and after gif, Beirut, from google earth:
Link
One Lebanese or Israeli life is worth any number of buildings. But people cannot live without them, and Leb. was very dependent on the tourist trade.

Posted by: Noirette | Aug 5 2006 20:00 utc | 11

Well wouldn’t it depend on the content of the leaflets? (Though apparently there weren’t any — not that it matters).
If I send a leaflet to my neighbor telling him to leave his house, because I am going to put it on fire, then that leaflet is already criminal. Agreed though, it is a CYA too, because now I can say in court “look I only intended to commit arson, the burned people are an accident!”.

Posted by: Guthman Bey | Aug 5 2006 20:08 utc | 12

The leaflets are crap. Over and over again journalists (even on CNN) and relief and human rights workers have emphasized that people can go nowhere even if they get leaflets: the roads have been destroyed by the Israelis, people are too poor to go anywhere, it is too dangerous for them to move.

Posted by: 2nd anonymous poster | Aug 5 2006 20:30 utc | 13

For some reason billmons last picture under (Looking for Mr. Neutron) reminded me of Vedran Smailovic, a cellist with the Sarajevo String Quartet.

On May 27, 1992, Smailovic witnessed the massacre of 22 of his neighbors who were hit by a bomb as they stood in a breadline outside a bakery in Sarajevo. The next day, Smailovic, dressed in a tuxedo, took his cello to the bomb crater and began to play. He played for 22 days, one day for each person slaughtered, despite the sniper fire and the bombs rocking the city. One day he got up from playing and a huge bomb fell right here he had been sitting. Smailovic’s actions attracted the world’s attention and he became a symbol of hope for Sarajevo.

THE ABSURDITY OF WAR
I was so moved by this when I read it, I burst into tears, and immediately went on a search to find a photo print of it, as goulish as it sounds as I wanted to frame it and hang it on my living room wall.
p.s. here’s one pic but the one I saw and wanted was grainy and in black and white, he was down in a crater looking untidy and disheveled.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 5 2006 20:31 utc | 14

what a picture Uncle Scam…thx

Posted by: Noirette | Aug 5 2006 20:58 utc | 15

there can be no question that israel has committed war crimes & multitude of them. the bombing of civil populations & the collective punishment ought by any sort of justice practiced ms arbour & ms dela ponte – end up at the hague
but that will not happen
instead they will be given laurels my nations & empires too stupid to see their own future

Posted by: r’giap | Aug 5 2006 21:19 utc | 16

UN reports no way out for Palestinians (UN News Service, 4 August):

“An IDF (Israeli Defence Force) incursion around the Gaza International Airport is continuing,” [said UN spokesman Ahmad Fawzi] …
“On the West Bank the external closure has continued for a fifth day – that is, since 31 July. Palestinians with West Bank ID cards and valid permits to enter Israel have not been allowed to enter Israel, including workers and traders.”

Posted by: Dismal Science | Aug 5 2006 21:41 utc | 17

After the Axis of Evil and the Arc of Extremism comes the … wait for it … the Rhombus of Wrong Doing (c) reader to today’s The Independent’s letters page.
Adjacent to the Sunni Triangle, of course.

Posted by: Dismal Science | Aug 5 2006 21:53 utc | 18

(South African intellectual Steven Friedman has observed wryly that the way to bring down any established settler-colonial regime is to make it choose between profits and identity. Profits, he says, will win every time.)

boycott Israel
no excuses, this is your choice

Posted by: citizen | Aug 5 2006 22:01 utc | 19

IAF not just leafletting Sidon, also been at it in Gaza since 2005:

Israeli aircraft dropped on Thursday [3 August] thousands of flyers over Gaza City to incite the Palestinians’ discontent with politburo chief of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) Khaled Mashaal, Palestinian witnesses said. …
Israel has been using the airborne propaganda to foment the discontent with the Palestinian militant groups among the Gaza residents since it finished a major withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in September 2005.

Posted by: Dismal Science | Aug 5 2006 22:02 utc | 20

While the fucking media heads talk on BBC and CNN about the joy of a resolution to be passed tomorrow (expect an Israeli victory PR move tonight, last night in Tyre was not….) So good to see the Lebanese Govt reject the resolution, they know Hezbollah are fighting a war for Lebanon.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Aug 5 2006 22:05 utc | 21

Non-proliferating John Bolton (Bloomberg, 4 August):

“There is, no doubt, a very extensive Chinese co-operation with the Iranian ballistic missile program,” John Bolton, US ambassador to the UN told a Senate hearing last week.
He said it’s critical China adopt the same non-proliferation objectives as the US because sales of such technologies and weapons “ultimately are threatening to them as a destabilizing force in the world as a whole.”

Plus in the same piece, Rachel Ehrenfeld sez Hizbollah is in bed with those Colombian commies, the FARC.
Connect the dots, people!

Posted by: Dismal Science | Aug 5 2006 22:22 utc | 22

War crimes? What planet are you from? Do you really think that anybody who’s in bed with Uncle Sam is gonna get tried for war crimes anywhere?

Posted by: LA Confidential Pantload | Aug 5 2006 22:25 utc | 23

The war crimes trials of the current neoconservative rulers of America will never take place in the Hague, or even at the UN.
They are OUR war criminals, after all. Nobody hangs Americans except Americans, by cracky!
Those trials can rather easily be arranged here at home, on the inevitable day that the neoconservative revolution ends up in the crapper, right in the crapper alongside our economy, our military, our reputation, and our shattered pride and identity as a nation.
Payback is a bitch, baby.
They WILL face the rage of the entire nation at some point. Their bumbling produces disasters as reliably as rabbits make poopy. The day will come.
And where will they run to then? Ironically, they will not be safe anywhere overseas except Paraguay.
So I think one of our top priorities this year is an extradition treaty with Paraguay.
Ya gotta think ahead on these things . . .

Posted by: Antifa | Aug 6 2006 0:45 utc | 24

Antifa, you seem to be enjoying a smoke this wkend 🙂
Seriously, they’ll set off another 911, officially end the Republic; implement the draft for everyone up to 42 – older ones w/special skills – this’ll just add to the massive wave of bankruptcies; the financial disasters will break so fast upon each other, that no one will remember; and those who do will be too exhausted/frightened to speak…plus it’ll have been rendered moot.
But yr. optimism is most delightful…

Posted by: jj | Aug 6 2006 0:52 utc | 25

with friends like these

Posted by: r’giap | Aug 6 2006 1:02 utc | 26

with friends like these

Posted by: r’giap | Aug 6 2006 1:06 utc | 27

Even among all this mayhem r’giap, don’t forget: “Soylent Green is people!”

Posted by: Guthman Bey | Aug 6 2006 1:18 utc | 28

& with enemies—

Posted by: r’giap | Aug 6 2006 1:40 utc | 29

guthmen
i never saw that film – partly beacuse i have a congenital allergic condition to charlton heston

Posted by: r’giap | Aug 6 2006 1:44 utc | 30

Guthman Bey: Screaming laughter. (And in Soylent Green he wears a pathetic wig too… but Edward G. Robinson is great).

Posted by: Guthman Bey | Aug 6 2006 2:17 utc | 31

The Portmanteau Resolution
Billmon quotes the proposed US/French SC resolution, apparently from the Washington Post, as requiring

A full cessation of hostilities based upon, in particular, the immediate cessation by Hizbollah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations.

I read that and see that Israel is required to do nothing. All Israeli military operations are defensive by definition.
Billmon glides right over this point. The Lebanese seem already to have classified this proposal as DOA.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Aug 6 2006 2:17 utc | 32

Joh Francis Lee–
Thank you. It IS obvious, and Billmon missed it.
And it is all so the USirael can say, “See? We tried!”

Posted by: Gaianne | Aug 6 2006 4:37 utc | 33

This reminds me of a team of peripatetic country preachers, dressed as marx brothers nee ringling brothers clowns in coke bottle glasses and electric pink-blue drag wigs, arguing over how to push the splattered intestines back into the corpse.
Keystone Cops shaking fists at the Wehrmacht.
Myself included. Last night, after posting MoA, I fell asleep on the couch, ’til some change in sonic texture woke me at 2AM
to see two shadows creeping through our den. Break-in artists.
Sure, I jumped up, and off they ran, kicking off the screen
door, then pell-mell down the street, laughing hysterically.
Twenty minutes later, there they were, back across the street,
playing basketball and smoking crack at 2:30AM. What could I do? Hammer away at my little MoA keyboard full of sarcasm?
Israel is beginning World War III.
So what’s your protest, and what do you intend to do about it?
Boycott Israel is a good start. Vote out all incumbents is a good start. But Israel couldn’t care less, and Pugs will steal your vote. So now what? It’s 2007, the Pugs have increased in numbers, the economic statistics are kaloo-kalay, even though everyone is walking on eggshells and wearing perfume.
Then GWB issues his fatwah against Iran, and it’s on.
Now f’king what? Throw blood on draft files? Stand in front of Strykers being loaded at US ports? Block the freeways into the Boeing/Raytheon/General Electric/Lockheed/ plants? Watch as Tehran burns, rending your panties in a perambulatory rage?
Now what?!

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 6 2006 5:47 utc | 34

Back to Main