[on July 20] "Earth occupies one of the most fragile positions in its orbits for the last 100 years." According to the site, the shift in orbit will "stop global warming, extend daytime hours and create a more homogeneous climate."The site and project -- but of course -- is a a joke, but nevertheless managed to garner the estimated participation of 600,248.012 "registered jumpers."
Link by Shawn at Everything I Know Is Wrong.
Multiple statements of grave concern do not, with all sincerely due respect, protect Israel from terrorism. The bitter experience of Israel is that after they withdraw from contested areas, whether under international blessing as from Lebanon or unilaterally from Gaza, these areas are then used as operating areas to launch more terror attacks. I don't expect the Catholic Church to advocate for war. I hope it is not too much to expect some kind of recognition that Israel faces an existential threat.
IDF enters Lebanon: A New Buffer Zone? - Bill Roggio examines Israel's intent in the IDF's brief entrances into Lebanon "to target Hizbullah bases along the border in order to push the terrorist group out of rocket-firing range" (Jerusalem Post); included is a disturbing graphic by Kathryn Cramer depicting the extent to which Israel falls within the sights of Iranian built missiles possibily in Hezbollah's arsenal. According to London-based, Saudi-owned newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, "Teheran has supplied Hezbollah with approximately 11,500 missiles and projectiles" and "more than 3,000 Hezbollah members have undergone training in Iran." In The Israeli Rocket Blitz (Winds of Change July 17, 2006), we learn that "more than 70 percent of Israel's population and 80 percent of the country's idustrial base within Katyusha [rocket] range from hostile borders."
Substantial analysis of Israel's incursion into Lebanon by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross (with help from counterterrorism consultant Daniel Darling) is available from the CounterTerrorism Blog.
So many civilians are dying because this war is being conducted against an enemy who launches missiles from the safety of non-combatant population centers at Israeli cities, towns, and villages with the explicit goal of harming civilians. As much as the equivocators will try to deny this, the IDF does not aim to kill non-combatants. Even if you want to believe that the Israeli army is morally indifferent, you have to concede that civilian deaths cause tremendous harm to the reputation of the country and its ability to operate in the international arena. It is against the IDF's own strategic interests to harm civilians.
Major E, my formation leader walks into the briefing room, still in his jeans. He's been called to come ASAP. What's happening? He asks me. I update him, and we brief for our mission quickly. He is concerned about making mistakes, and bombing the wrong targets. He is experienced, and has been around long enough to see mistakes happen and innocent civilians killed. A friend of his, a helicopter pilot once mistook a letter in a target's name, and ended up shooting at the wrong target, killing a whole family. Major E does not want the same thing to happen to us. He emphasizes that there is no rush, that we must check and recheck every coordinate we receive, make sure we understand EXACTLY what we are supposed to target.We land in the base, and are relieved to learn that we went for a Hizbullah post. Probably unmanned. It's strange how the focus in these missions is not to succeed, hit the target precisely, but rather - not to make any mistakes. The message is clear all the way from the Squadron commander to the last pilot. One mistake can jeopardize the whole war, like in Kfar-Kana, in one of the last operations in Lebanon, where artillery bombarded a refugee camp, killing over 100 people, which resulted in international pressure that halted the operation. Hitting the target is expected, no misses are acceptable. There aren't any congratulations for a well-performed mission. Only a hammer on the head if something goes wrong. Personally, I think it's a healthy attitude; it causes the whole system to be less rash and hot on the trigger.
Roadblocks have been set up outside some of the villages to prevent residents from leaving, while in other villages Hizbullah is preventing UN representatives from entering, who are trying to help residents leave. In two villages, exchanges of fire between residents and Hizbullah have broken out. (Hanan Greenberg)
Hezbollah's attacks in Israel on Sunday and Monday were at best indiscriminate attacks in civilian areas, at worst the deliberate targeting of civilians. Either way, they were serious violations of international humanitarian law and probable war crimes, Human Rights Watch said today. In addition, the warheads used suggest a desire to maximize harm to civilians. Some of the rockets launched against Haifa over the past two days contained hundreds of metal ball bearings that are of limited use against military targets but cause great harm to civilians and civilian property. The ball bearings lodge in the body and cause serious harm(Lebanon: Hezbollah Rocket Attacks on Haifa Designed to Kill Civilians Human Rights Watch July 18, 2006).
Michael Kraft at Counterterrorismblog comments:
The story was unusual in that it was one of the few that have reported that the terrorist groups attacking Israelis are not using only explosives but also pieces of metal intended to deliberately cause pain and suffering to victims who are not killed outright. The Hamas makers of the suicide bomb belts routinely pack the bombs with nuts and bolts and nails. There also have been reports that the metal fragments are sometimes dipped into a pesticide, in order to maximize the damage to the victims and make it more difficult for doctors to effectively treat their patients. However there has been little public reporting in the western media of this tactic, which causes torture to the victims who survive the original blast and additional agony for their families and friends.
In fact, however, Israel clearly is targeting not just Hezbollah, but also Lebanon's official military, and, most important for our purposes, Lebanon's basic civilian infrastructure. The Beirut airport has been closed by Israeli attacks. Bridges, ports, roads, and power stations are all being targeted. As this column was being written, more than 100 civilian fatalities -- including some citizens of neutral countries, most notably Canada -- already had been reported. More surely will have occurred before this column is published.Rob Driscoll at The Remedy responds to Prof. Bainbridge on Proportionality in War:In short, even a just war must be waged justly. Israel is entitled to defend itself, but is not entitled to do so disproportionately or to wage war on civilians. Yet, that is precisely what Israel appears to be on the brink of doing.
I'm hardly convinced that Israel's attacks are disproportionate. When fighting an enemy that consciously blends civilians and military actors in order to disguise themselves and use civilians as human shields, the death of innocents is inevitable. How is it, asks Wretchard, that those who use indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets are considered to have the moral high ground over those who use precision strikes to minimize civilian deaths?Further, it is not clear to me that attacking infrastructure is per se disproportionate. Roads and fuel depots are as easily used for rocket attacks on Israeli cities as they are for legitimate civilian ends. If the infrastructure is not a legitimate target, and precision strikes aimed at terrorists who hide amongst women and children are not acceptable, just what may the Israeli military do without violating just war doctrine?
. . . I think it's abundantly clear Israel operates far more according to values of compassion and human dignity; and who can say that about Hamas, Hizbollah, Iran or Syria, with a straight face?
Some 30 Catholic educators from the United States found themselves in the line of fire in northern Israel as the recent crisis between Israel and Lebanon began, but several said it gave them a new perspective on the Middle East. [. . .] The group was traveling in the north and was to spend the evening of July 14 in Tzfat when word came that Katyusha rockets had fallen on the city . . .
To supplement his post, some further news and commentary culled from the web, which may be of interest to our readers:
Because in all other Middle East crises, Israel's main rivals were the P.L.O., Egypt, Iraq and Syria, but in this crisis the main rivals are the jihadists in Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and, most important, Iran. In all other crises the nutjobs were on the fringes, but now the nutjobs in Hamas and Hezbollah are in governments and lead factions of major parties.The Weekly Standard's editor William Kristol has a similar take ("It's Our War" Volume 011, Issue 42 ):In all other crises, the Palestinians, thanks to Yasir Arafat's strenuous efforts, owned their own cause, but now the clerics in Iran are taking control of the Palestinian cause and turning it into a weapon in a much larger struggle.
In all other crises there was a negotiation process, a set of plans and some hope of reconciliation. But this crisis is different. Iran doesn't do road maps. The jihadists who are driving this crisis don't do reconciliation.
In other words, this crisis is a return to the elemental conflict between Israel and those who seek to destroy it. And you can kiss goodbye, at least for the time being, to some of the features of the recent crises. . . .
. . . it's not an Arab-Israeli war. Most of Israel's traditional Arab enemies have checked out of the current conflict. The governments of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia are, to say the least, indifferent to the fate of Hamas and Hezbollah. The Palestine Liberation Organization (Fatah) isn't a player. The prime mover behind the terrorist groups who have started this war is a non-Arab state, Iran, which wasn't involved in any of Israel's previous wars.What's happening in the Middle East, then, isn't just another chapter in the Arab-Israeli conflict. What's happening is an Islamist-Israeli war.
Iran thumbs its nose at Western diplomats and continues nuclear enrichment. Hamas's chief, speaking from Damascus, boasts about kidnapping an Israeli soldier. Hezbollah launches a cross-border raid, prompting Israeli retaliation in Beirut and a return volley of rockets on northern Israel. Just another bleak week in the hopeless Middle East? Regrettably, no. This one was different. This was the week the Dark Side went on the offensive.
Domenico Bettinelli offers further analysis of the Vatican's statement: "I haven’t been shy about criticizing certain Vatican diplomats’ past embraces of Palestinian terrorists at the expense of Israel, but I think the criticism may be a bit unwarranted here."
Deutsche Welle has an interesting little roundup of European press reaction to Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah, most of which appears to condemn the Israeli actions as “disproportionate.” As a corollary, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero (of Spanish Flee fame) went on record stating that the results of the Israeli response to the agents of radicalization, fanaticism, conflict and instability will be “radicalization, fanaticism, conflict and instability.” The European reaction is instructive for several reasons: First, because it is indicative of the extent to which nationalism and national feeling has declined — there is simply little understanding of why a state would seek so dramatically to protect its own. Second, because it illustrates the European mindset on Islamism — that it is indestructible, and by implication, that its agents cannot be repelled or thwarted. Third, because it lets us know, again, that the Europeans do not see Israel as one of its own — even though, in the cultural and historical sense, it is — and that they blame Israel in a manner reminiscent of those who would blame a provocatively-dressed woman for her rape.European received wisdom is wrong on all counts.
The world demanded that Israel leave Lebanon, so in 2000 it did. The world demanded that Israel leave Gaza, so in 2005 it did. Rather than planting date trees, Lebanese extremists turned their country into an outpost of Iranian and Syrian aggression. Rather than plant olive trees, the Palestinians in Gaza planted mortar tubes in the soil and strapped suicide belts on their children. Neither aggression against Israel - Lebanese or Gazan - can possibly be chalked up to Israeli “occupation” because there was no occupation two weeks ago. No, what the present hostilities demonstrate is that the goal of the Islamists - the destruction of Israel - has not changed and cannot change.
For a roundup of news on Iran, see Regime Change Iran: A Daily Briefing on Iran.
So here's an honest question I posed to some friends recently: When does "anti-Zionism" become "anti-Semitism"? The dilemma was provoked when an author at left-wing blog Daily Kos mused Imagine a world without Israel -- which, if you think about it, is more or less the formal policy objective of Hezbollah, Hamas, and other terrorist organizations who would like nothing better than to make that dream a reality.
Hat tip to the conservative-blogging collective Little Green Footballs, who points out that the Daily Kos may be getting their talking points from the "non-profit, non-bias, non-political" -- but decidely pro-Islamic and conspiracy-minded -- Media Monitors Network (MNN): What If Israel Had Never Been Created?, by William Hughes (Tuesday July 11 2006).
"Well, many of the songs, they aren't sad, they're hopeless."
Townes Van Zandt, after being asked why he only wrote sad songs."Aloneness is a state of being, whereas loneliness is a state of feeling. It's like the difference between being broke and being poor." -- Townes Van Zandt
"Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that. -- Steve Earle
Having just seen the documentary Be Here To Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt, I feel like I've just discovered a long-lost musical friend and a man after my own heart. The movie's not quite as good as Dig (still the greatest musical documentary of all time), but it's still a great introduction to a great artist.
