Cspan airs 911 symposium "Scholars for 911 Truth"

rtsp://video.c-span.org/60days/ap072906_theories.rm?mode=compact

PICTURES FROM QANA ****VERY DISTURBING*****

IF TERRORIST WERE SHOOTING ROCKETS FROM THIS BUILDING WHY ARE NO TERRORIST DEAD? I GUESS THERE IS NO TIME FOR INVESTIGATIVE WORK WHEN YOU ARE IN A PLANE JUST DROPPING BOMBS ALL OVER THE PLACE.

"We want this to stop," shouted villager Mohammed Ismail. " May God
have mercy on the children. They came here to escape the fighting.
They are hitting children to bring the fighters to their knees."

07/30/06

Video Report From Qana Massacre 2006

Video: Scenes Of Israeli Massacre In Qana 1996

WARNING

Graphic images depicting the reality and
horror of Israel's Invasion and destruction of Lebanon.

Please wait a moment for images to load. Click
image to enlarge.

Israel continues Lebanon Strikes Despite Cease Fire for 48 hourse

Israeli Air Force Continues Lebanon Strikes
By Thomas Wagner and Kathy Gannon
The Associated Press

Monday 31 July 2006

Jerusalem - The Israeli air force carried out strikes Monday in southern Lebanon despite an agreement to halt raids for 48 hours after nearly 60 Lebanese civilians were killed in an Israeli bombing, the army said.

The airstrikes near the village of Taibe were meant to protect ground forces operating in the area and were not targeting anyone or anything specific, the army said.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah guerrillas attacked an Israeli tank in southern Lebanon, wounding three soldiers, the military said. The attack occurred near the villages of Kila and Taibe on border, where Israeli ground forces have been fighting Hezbollah guerrillas for nearly two weeks.

Israel Radio also reported that Hezbollah rockets hit the northern town of Kiryat Shemona. No casualties were reported in the rocket attacks, the radio said.

Hours before the fighting started up again, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged the U.N. Security Council to arrange for a cease-fire agreement by week's end that would include the formation of an international force to help Lebanese forces control southern Lebanon.

But Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz made clear in a speech to parliament that Israel would not agree to an immediate cease-fire and had plans to expand its operation in Lebanon.

"It's forbidden to agree to an immediate cease-fire," Peretz told parliament, as several Arab legislators heckled him and demanded an immediate halt to the offensive. "Israel will expand and strengthen its activities against the Hezbollah."

Israel's top ministers were to discuss expanding the army's ground operation at a meeting later Monday, while thousands of reserve soldiers trained for the possibility that they will be sent into Lebanon to participate in the battle, now 20 days old.

It was unclear whether the senior ministers would approve a broader ground assault at their meeting, defense officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Israel had announced the suspension of airstrikes for 48 hours starting at 2 a.m. Monday. But Hezbollah legislator Hassan Fadlallah had questioned Israel's motivation, telling Lebanese television it was just "an attempt to absorb international indignation over the Qana massacre."

The bombing of the Lebanese village of Qana on Sunday led to demands around the world for an immediate cease-fire.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Rice over the weekend that Israel would need 10 to 14 more days to finish its offensive, and Justice Minister Haim Ramon told Army Radio on Monday that he did not think the fighting was over yet.

"I'm convinced that we won't finish this war until it's clear that Hezbollah has no more abilities to attack Israel from south Lebanon. This is what we are striving for," Ramon said.

The stunning bloodshed in Qana increased international pressure on Washington to back an immediate end to the fighting and prompted Rice to cut short her Mideast mission to return home Monday.

In a nationally televised speech before leaving Israel, Rice said she will seek international consensus for a cease-fire and a "lasting settlement" in the conflict between Lebanon and Israel through a U.N. Security Council resolution this week.

"I am convinced that only by achieving both will the Lebanese people be able to control their country and their future, and the people of Israel finally be able to live free of attack from terrorist groups in Lebanon," Rice said.

An Israeli army spokesman left open the possibility that Israel might still hit targets to stop imminent attacks on the country, despite the airstrike suspension. He also made clear the Israelis could end the suspension depending on "operational developments" in Lebanon.

The army said that the temporary cessation of aerial activity would allow the opening of corridors for Lebanese civilians who want to leave south Lebanon for the north and would maintain land, sea and air corridors for humanitarian assistance.

By early afternoon Monday, roads from villages into the port city of Tyre and heading north along the coast were packed with thousands of refugees in pick-up trucks and cars. With many of the main roads too shattered for use, cars took to dirt side roads, still waving white flags out their windows or covering the vehicles roofs with white sheets.

Lebanese Red Cross teams escorted by U.N. observers went to the village of Srifa to dig up more than 50 bodies believed still buried under rubble since Israeli strikes wiped out an entire neighborhood on July 19. The bodies have began decomposing, the Red Cross said.

The largest death toll from a single Israeli strike before Sunday was around a dozen, and the Qana attack, where at least 34 children and 12 women died, stunned Lebanese. Heightening the anger were memories of a 1996 Israeli artillery bombardment that hit a U.N. base in Qana, killing more than 100 Lebanese who had taken refuge there from fighting. That attack sparked an international outcry that forced a halt to an Israeli offensive.

Hezbollah vowed retaliation on its Al-Manar television, saying: "The massacre at Qana will not go unanswered." It hit northern Israel on Sunday with 157 rockets - the highest one-day total during the offensive - with one Israeli moderately wounded and 12 others lightly hurt, medics said.

Israel apologized for the deaths and promised an investigation, but said Hezbollah had fired more than 40 rockets from Qana before the airstrike, including several from near the building that was bombed. Foreign Ministry official Gideon Meir accused Hezbollah of "using their own civilian population as human shields."

More than 750,000 Lebanese have fled their homes in the fighting. But many thousands more are still believed holed up in the south - many of them too afraid to flee on roads heavily hit by Israeli strikes.

The attack on Qana brought Lebanon's death toll to more than 510 and pushed American peace efforts to a crucial juncture, as fury at the United States flared in Lebanon. The Beirut government said it would no longer negotiate over a U.S. peace package without an unconditional cease-fire.

At the United Nations, the Security Council approved a statement expressing "extreme shock and distress" at the bloodshed and calling for an end to violence, stopping short of a demand for an immediate cease-fire.

In a jab at the United States, U.N. chief Kofi Annan told the council in unusually frank terms that he was "deeply dismayed" his previous calls for a halt were ignored. "Action is needed now before many more children, women and men become casualties of a conflict over which they have no control," he said.

After news of the deaths emerged, Rice telephoned Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and said she would stay in Jerusalem to continue work on a peace package, rather than make a planned Sunday visit to Beirut. Saniora said he told her not to come.

--------

Kathy Gannon contributed to this story from Qana, Lebanon.



Go to Original

A Night of Death and Terror for Lebanese Villagers
By Sabrina Tavernise
The New York Times

Monday 31 July 2006

Qana, Lebanon - The dead lay in strange shapes. Several had open mouths filled with dirt. Faces were puffy. A man's arm was extended straight out from his body, his fingers spread. Two tiny children, a girl and boy, lay feet to head in the back of an ambulance, their skin like wax.

In the all-day scramble to retrieve the bodies from the remains of this one house - backhoes dug for hours at the site after an early-morning airstrike - tallies of the dead varied, from as many as 60 to 27, many of them children.

This was the single most lethal episode in the course of this sudden war. The survivors will remember it as the day their children died. For the village, it is a fresh pain in a wound cut more than 10 years ago, when an Israeli attack here killed more than 100 civilians. Many of them were children, too.

The Israeli government apologized for that airstrike, as it did for the one here on Sunday. It said that residents had been warned to leave and should have already been gone.

But leaving southern Lebanon now is dangerous. The two extended families staying in the house that the Israeli missile struck - the Shalhoubs and the Hashims - had discussed leaving several times over the past two weeks. But they were poor - most worked in tobacco or construction - and the families were big and many of their members weak, with a 95-year-old, two relatives in wheelchairs and dozens of children. A taxi north, around $1,000, was unaffordable.

And then there was the risk of the road itself.

Dozens, including 21 refugees in the back of a pickup truck on July 15, have been killed by Israeli strikes while trying to evacuate. Missiles hit two Red Cross ambulances last weekend, wounding six people and punching a circle in the center of the cross on one's roof. A rocket hit the ambulance convoy that responded in Qana on Sunday.

"We heard on the news they were bombing the Red Cross," said Zaineb Shalhoub, a 22-year-old who survived the bombing. She was lying quietly in a hospital bed in Tyre.

"What can we do with all of our kids?" she asked. "There was just no way to go."

They had moved to the house on the edge of a high ridge, which was dug into the earth. They thought it would be safer. The position helped muffle the sound of the bombs.

But its most valuable asset was water. The town, mostly abandoned, had not had power or running water in many days. A neighbor rigged a pumping system, and the Shalhoubs and Hashims ran a pipe from that house to theirs.

Life had taken on a strange, stunted quality. In a crawl-space basement area near the crushed house, five mattresses were on the floor. A Koran was open to a prayer. A school notebook was on a pillow. Each morning, the women made breakfast for the children. Ms. Shalhoub gave lessons. And they all hoped for rescue.

The first missile struck around 1 a.m., throwing Mohamed Shalhoub, one of the relatives who uses a wheelchair, into an open doorway. His five children, ages 12 to 2, were still inside the house, as was his wife, his mother and a 10-year-old nephew. He tried to get to them, but minutes later another missile hit. By morning, when the rescue workers arrived, all eight of his relatives were dead.

"I felt like I was turning around, and the earth was going up and I was going into the earth," said Mr. Shalhoub, 38, staring blankly ahead in a hospital bed in Tyre.

Israeli military officials said the building did not collapse until the early morning, and that "munitions" stored in the house might have brought it down. But the house appeared to have been hit from above, and residents said the walls and ceiling came down around them immediately after the first bomb.

"My mouth was full of sand," Ms. Shalhoub said. She said doctors had told her family that those who died had been suffocated and crushed to death.

"They died because of the sand and the bricks, that's what they told us," she said.

At least eight people in the house survived, and told of a long, terrifying night. Some remained buried until morning. Others crawled free. Ms. Shalhoub sat under a tree with Mohamed Shalhoub, without his wheelchair, and three others, listening to the planes flying overhead in the dark.

"You couldn't see your finger in front of your face," said Ghazi Aidibi, a neighbor.

Ms. Shalhoub said she tried to help a woman who was sobbing from under the wreckage, asking for her baby, but she could not find the child. A neighbor, Haidar Tafleh, said he heard screaming when he approached the debris, but that bombing kept him away.

"We tried to take them out, but the bombs wouldn't let us," Mr. Tafleh said.

The area took several more hits. A house very close to the Shalhoubs' was crushed. A giant crater was gouged next to it. Residents said as many as eight buildings had been destroyed over two weeks.

Collapsed buildings have been a serious problem in southern Lebanon. Dozens of bodies are still stuck under the rubble. The mayor of Tyre, Abed al-Husseini, estimated that about 75 bodies were still buried under rubble in Slifa, a village on the border.

A grocer, Hassan Faraj, stood outside his shop, near a monument to those killed in the 1996 attack. He said that Hezbollah fighters had not come to Qana, but that residents supported them strongly. There was little evidence of fighters on Sunday, but Hezbollah flags and posters of Shiite leaders trimmed the streets. "They like the resistance here," he said.

He cautioned people not to stand in the street in front of his shop, because that was where the ambulance convoy was hit in the morning.

At the Hakoumi Hospital in Tyre, Mr. Shalhoub sat in bed. His face was slack, stunned. His relatives poured him spicy coffee, and the room filled with its scent. The survivors spoke of their faith as a salve. The children, Mr. Shalhoub said, were in paradise now.

But 24-year-old Hala Shalhoub, whose two daughters, ages 1 and 5, were killed, was moaning and rocking slightly in her hospital bed.

"I want to see them," she said slowly. "I want to hold them."

A relative said, "Let her cry."

Zaineb Shalhoub, in the next bed, rested quietly.

"There's nobody left in our village," she said. "Not a human or a stone."

-------

The Qana Massacre

Another ADE video. Please note: the video contains disturbing images of dead children.

Here are the victims of a war we are told was started by Hezbollah, despite the fact that it was Israeli soldiers who entered Lebanon illegally before they were captured. Israel's policy of deliberately targeting the weakest and most innocent members of humanity proves that they are desperately trying to provoke a major terrorist attack within Israel to justify their agenda to completely subjegate the middle east.

Qana slaughter of 06 and in 96 at UN Post***Pictures***

THE MOST RECENT ATTACK ON THE LEBANESE MIGHT HAVE BEEN AVOIDED IF TERRORIST WEREN'T AROUND, BUT IN 1996 IN THE SAME TOWN ISREAL DROP BOMBS ON A UN "REFUGE" CAMP, WHERE NO TERRORIST WERE AT AND WHERE NO ONE HAD WEAPONS NOR HAD THEY FIRED ANY WEAPONS.


Global Research Editorial Note

On the 30th of July 2006, a massacre was perpetrated at the village of Qana in southern Lebanon. The victims had taken refuge at a United Nations shelter, which suggests that the UNIFIL facility was the object of a specific IAF attack.

Ten years ago, on April 18, 1996, at the same village in Southern Lebanon, the Israeli Air force bombed and killed 106 Lebanese civilians who had taken refuge in a UN shelter inside the UNIFIL compound.

The July 2006 attack on the Qana UN shelter replicates with meticulous accuracy the April 1996 IAF operation, entitled as "The Grapes of Wrath".

The Badil Resource Center published the following report on the 1996 Qana Massacre, which was the object of a UN investigation.

The initial report concluded that the shelling of the shelter inside the UNIFIL compound by Israel was deliberate. "When former UN Secretary General Boutros Ghali wanted to publish the report, he was threatened that this would cost him his job and forced to publish a revised report."

Photographic evidence of the Qana I is provided below by from www.israeltolebanon.info

The 1996 UN Investigation into Israel's War Crime at Qana, South Lebanon (excerpt of Badil Report)

"On 18 April 1996, during a massive Israeli military offensive on Lebanon code-named "Operation Grapes of Wrath," approximately 800 civilians were sheltering in a United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) base in the village of Qana, South Lebanon. They had assumed - incorrectly - that since international law strictly prohibits the targeting of civilian structures and UN facilities they would be safe under UNIFIL's protection. Just after 2 PM on April 18, a barrage of proximity-fuse shells crashed directly into the pre-fabricated building. Minutes later 106 people lay dead, many burned and dismembered beyond recognition.

On 25 April 1996 the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution (UNGA Res. A/RES/50/22 C) characterizing Israel's actions in the "Grapes of Wrath" offensive as "grave violations of international laws relating to the protection of civilians during war." Then UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali appointed a team to investigate Israel's bombing of the UNIFIL compound. The team was composed of military experts and headed by the Dutch General Franklin Van Kappen. It conducted an official on-site investigation of the Qana incident, interviewed all available witnesses, including UNIFIL staff and Israeli officials, and obtained maps and ballistic evidence. According to experts familiar with this UN investigation, the initial report concluded that the shelling and killing of 106 civilians inside the UNIFIL compound by Israel was deliberate and that there was no possibility of an accident. When former UN Secretary General Boutros Ghali wanted to publish the report, he was threatened that this would cost him his job and forced to publish a revised report. This report concluded that "while the possibility cannot be ruled out completely, it is unlikely that the shelling of the UNIFIL compound was the result of gross technical and/or procedural error." The Van Knappen report also indicated that IDF officials of "some seniority" were involved in orders to fire upon the base, which they knew was sheltering hundreds of civilians. International human rights organizations also conducted investigations and concluded that the shelling of the UNIFIL compound was most likely deliberate, not mistaken.

The United States and Israel vigorously contended that the attack had been an unfortunate mistake. No further action was taken by the United Nations. Moreover, the United Nations has yet to act upon a petition filed by families of the victims of Qana with the UN Human Rights Commission. The families' petition requests the UN to re-open its investigation."

(Badil Resource Center, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BAD205A.html)

Will the Qana II massacre, which was also the result of an IAF attack on a UN facility, at the same location, be the object of a war crimes investigation? The underlying pattern cynically replicates the 1996 "Grapes of Wrath Operation".



Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 30 July 2006

Qana is the place where, according to the Fourth Gospel, Jesus performed his first miracle, the turning of a large quantity of water into wine at a wedding feast (John 2:1-11)

 

Qana Massacre I
18 April, 1996
The Israeli Air force bombed and killed 106 Lebanese civilians (almost all either women, children or old men) who had taken refuge in a UN shelter in the village of QANA. A further 110 civilians were injured

 

>

34 youths among 56 dead in Israeli strike

THIS PROVES WHY WAR IS TRUELY NOT EFFECTIVE. ALL THIS IS DOING IS CAUSING MORE ARABS AND LEBANESE TO JOIN THE RANKS OF TERRORIST GROUPS TO DEFEND THERE PEOPLE, WHERE THE GOVT, ARMY AND INTERNATIONAL COMMUNTITY(US) HAVE FAILED. THIS ALSO SHOW THE TACTIC BY MILITARIES TO USE PLANES TO TARGET PEOPLE IN CIVILLIAN NEIGHBORHOODS INSTEAD OF USING GROUND TROOPS. ISREAL WHEN ON THE GROUND IS FINDING THEMSELVES OUT MATCHED SO THEY HOP IN THEIR PLANES AND DROP BOMBS FROM MILES UP WHILE SITTING BACK AND WATCHING THE CARNAGE. THEN, THEY HAVE THE NERVE TO SAY WELL HEZBOLLA IS THERE SO WE HAVE TO BOMB AND IF CHILDREN GET KILLED THAT IS PART OF WAR.



By KATHY GANNON, Associated Press Writer 1 minute ago

Israeli missiles hit several buildings in a southern Lebanon village as people slept Sunday, killing at least 56, most of them children, in the deadliest attack in 19 days of fighting.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed "great sorrow" for the airstrikes but blamed Hezbollah guerrillas for using the area to launch rockets at Israel.

The Lebanese Red Cross said the airstrike in Qana, in which at least 34 children were killed, pushed the overall Lebanese death toll to more than 500. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice postponed a visit to Lebanon in a setback for diplomatic efforts to end hostilities.

Infuriated Lebanese officials said they had asked Rice to postpone the visit after Israel's missile strike. But Rice said she called Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora to say she would postpone the trip, and that she had work to do in Jerusalem to end the fighting.

Saniora asked U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to hold an emergency Security Council meeting to arrange for an immediate cease-fire after the Qana strike.

A GOOD SATIRE ON ANN COULTER AND HER FRIENDS

http://www.current.tv/pods/supernews/PD03830

Republican Says We Need a Dem Congress

SeeingTheForest.com

Thursday 27 July 2006

The following is a letter from former Republican Congressman and Presidential candidate Pete McCloskey.

The Need for a Democrat majority in the US House of Representatives in 2007

I have found it difficult in the past several weeks to reach a conclusion as to what a citizen should do with respect to this fall's forthcoming congressional elections. I am a Republican, intend to remain a Republican, and am descended from three generations of California Republicans, active in Merced and San Bernardino Counties as well as in the San Francisco Bay Area. I have just engaged in an unsuccessful effort to defeat the Republican Chairman of the House Resources Committee, Richard Pombo, in the 11th Congressional District Republican primary, obtaining just over 32% of the Republican vote against Pombo's 62%.

The observation of Mr. Pombo's political consultant, Wayne Johnson, that I have been mired in the obsolete values of the 1970s, honesty, good ethics and balanced budgets, all rejected by today's modern Republicans, is only too accurate.

It has been difficult, nevertheless, to conclude as I have, that the Republican House leadership has been so unalterably corrupted by power and money that reasonable Republicans should support Democrats against DeLay-type Republican incumbents in 2006. Let me try to explain why.

I have decided to endorse Jerry McNerney and every other honorable Democrat now challenging those Republican incumbents who have acted to protect former Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who have flatly reneged on their Contract With America promise in 1994 to restore high standards of ethical behavior in the House and who have combined to prevent investigation of the Cunningham and Abramoff/Pombo/DeLay scandals. These Republican incumbents have brought shame on the House, and have created a wide-spread view in the public at large that Republicans are more interested in obtaining campaign contributions from corporate lobbyists than they are in legislating in the public interest.

At the outset, let me say that in four months of campaigning I have learned that Jerry McNerney is an honorable man and that Richard Pombo is not. Mr. Pombo has used his position and power to shamelessly enrich his wife and family from campaign funds, has interfered with the federal investigation of men like Michael Hurwitz, he of the Savings & Loan frauds and ruthless clear-cutting of old growth California redwoods. Mr. Pombo has taken more money from Indian gaming lobbyist Jack Abramoff, his associates and Indian tribes interested in gaming than any other Member of Congress, in excess of $500,000. With his stated intent to gut the Endangered Species and Environmental Protection Acts, to privatize for development millions of acres of public land, including a number of National Parks, to give veto power to the Congress over constitutional decisions of the Supreme Court, his substantial contributions to DeLay's legal defense fund, and most particularly his refusal to investigate the Abramoff involvement in Indian gaming and the exploitation of women labor in the Marianas, both matters within the jurisdiction of his committee, Mr. Pombo in my view represents all that is wrong with the national government in Washington today.

It is clear that the forthcoming campaign will be a vicious one, with Mr. Pombo willing to stretch the truth as he has in the past with respect to the elderberry beetle, levee breaks, his steadfast opposition to veterans' health care, including prosthetics research for amputees from Iraq and other wars, the impact on Marine lives of endangered species protection at Camp Pendleton and other issues. That Mr. Pombo lied in testimony to the Senate in 1994 is an accepted fact. He testified that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service had designated his farm near Tracy as habitat for the endangered California kit fox. This was untrue, and Pombo admitted to the untruthfulness a few months later when questioned over public television, an agency for which he recently voted to cut federal funds. Such a man should not be allowed to be in charge of the nation's public lands and waterways, a position to which he was elevated by the now-departed Tom DeLay.

Some 18 months ago, my former law partner, Lewis Butler, an Assistant Secretary of HEW in the Nixon Administration and subsequently the distinguished Chair of California Tomorrow and the Plowshares Foundation, and I initiated an effort we called The Revolt of the Elders. All of us were retired and in the latter years of Social Security entitlement. Most of us were Republicans who had served in the Congress or in former Republican administrations with men like Gerry Ford, John Rhodes, Bob Michel, Elliot Richardson, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan and the president's father, George H. W. Bush, all men of impeccable integrity and ethics.

We had become appalled at the House Republican leadership's decision in early 2005 to effectively emasculate the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct by changing the rules to protect Majority Leader Tom DeLay. DeLay had been admonished three times by the Committee for abuse of power and unethical conduct. It was our hope to persuade Speaker Hastert and the Republican leadership, of which Northern California Congressman Richard Pombo and John Doolittle were prominent members, to rescind the rules changes and to act in accord with the promise of high ethical standards contained in Speaker Gingrich's Contract With America which brought the Republicans majority control in 1994. We failed. Letters to the Speaker from an increasing number of former Republican Members were ignored and remained unanswered. Then, only a few weeks ago, the House leadership refused to allow even a vote on what could have become an effective independent ethics monitor. Instead of repudiating the infamous Pay to Play program put in place by DeLay to extract maximum corporate campaign contributions to Retain Our Majority Party (ROMP), DeLay's successor as Majority Leader called for a continuance of the free luxury airline trips, mammoth campaign contributions to the so-called Leadership PAC and the continuing stalemate on the Ethics Committee. Strangely, even after the guilty pleas of Abramoff, Duke Cunningham and a number of former House staffers who had been sent to work for Abramoff and other lobbyists. The Republican House leaders don't see this as corruption worthy of investigation or change. That their former staff members and Abramoff were granted preference in access to the legislative process is not seen as a problem if it helps Republicans retain control of the House. It reminds one of the contentions of Haldeman and Ehrlichman long ago that the national security justified wire-tapping and burglary of Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office and the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate. Republicans are happy with this new corporate lobby/House complex, which is far more dangerous that the Industry/Defense complex we were long ago warned about by President Eisenhower.

I have therefore reluctantly concluded that party loyalty should be set aside, and that it is in the best interests of the nation, and indeed the future of the Republican Party itself, to return control of the House to temporary Democrat control, if only to return the House for a time to the kind of ethics standards practiced by Republicans in former years. I say reluctantly, having no great illusion that Democrats or any other kind of politician will long resist the allure of campaign funds and benefits offered by the richest and most profitable of the Halliburtons, oil companies, tobacco companies, developers and Indian gaming tribes whose contributions so heavily dominate the contributions to Congressmen Pombo and Doolittle.

As an aside, it seems to me that the Abramoff and Cunningham scandals make it timely for the Congress to consider public matching funds for small contributions to congressional candidates, the same type of system we adopted some time ago for presidential elections. It may be cheaper for the taxpayer to fund congressional elections than to bear the cost of lobbyist-controlled legislation like the recent Medicaid/Medicare drug bill.

There is another strong reason, I believe, for Republicans to work this fall for Democrat challengers against the DeLay-type Republicans like Pombo and Doolittle. That is the clear abdication by the House over the past five years of the Congress' constitutional power and duty to exercise oversight over abuses of power, cronyism, incompetence and excessive secrecy on the part of the Executive Branch. When does anyone remember House Committee hearings to examine into the patent failures of the Bush Administration to adhere to laws like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, or to the arrogant refusal of the President to accept the congressionally-enacted limits on torture of prisoners? When can anyone remember the House's use of the subpoena power to compel answers from Administration officials? Why have there been no oversight hearings into the Cunningham bribery affair or Abramoff's Indian gaming and exploitation of women labor in the Marianas?

When three former congressional staff aides join Abramoff in pleading guilty to attempting to bribe Congressmen, and a fourth takes the 5th Amendment rather than answer Senator McCain's questions about his relationship with Abramoff and Indian gaming, with all five having given substantial campaign contributions to Mr. Pombo, with Indian tribes alone having given more than $500,000 to Pombo, would it not seem reasonable to ask him to conduct an appropriate oversight committee Hearing into these matters, as long demanded by members of both parties, notably including his neighbor, George Miller?

For all of these reasons, I believe and hope that the Republicans who voted for me on June 6 will vote for Mr. McNerney and against Mr. Pombo in November.

The checks and balances of our Constitution are an essential part of our system of government, as is the public faith that can be obtained only by good ethical conduct on the part of our elected leaders.

If the Republicans in the House won't honor these principles, then the Democrats should be challenged to do so. And if they decline to exercise that privilege, we can turn them out too. I appreciate that I had serious deficiencies as a candidate, and that four months of campaigning and the expenditure of $500,000 of the funds contributed by old friends and supporters were unsuccessful in convincing Republicans of the 11th District to end the continuing corruption in Washington. I hope, however, to partially redeem my electoral failure by working, as a simple private citizen, to rekindle a Republican sense of civic duty to participate in the electoral process this fall. The goal of The Revolt of the Elders was and is to educate voters to the need for a return of ethics and honesty in Washington. That goal was right 18 months ago, and seems even more worthwhile today.

Shell Earnings Rise 40 Percent

By Toby Sterling
The Associated Press

Thursday 27 July 2006

Amsterdam, Netherlands - Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Europe's second-largest oil company, said Thursday its second-quarter earnings jumped 40 percent as high oil prices offset production difficulties in Nigeria and the Gulf of Mexico.

Net profit rose to $7.32 billion from $5.24 billion a year earlier. Sales rose less than 1 percent to $83.1 billion from $82.6 billion.

Chief Executive Jeroen van der Veer said in a statement the earnings were "underpinned by overall good operational performance and not simply high energy prices."

Still, the main reason for the increase was higher oil prices, with earnings at Shell's oil exploration and production arm leaping to $4 billion from $2.75 billion, despite an 8 percent drop in production to 3.25 million barrels a day.

Prices for benchmark North Sea Brent crude averaged $69.51 a barrel in the quarter, compared with $51.65 a barrel a year earlier.

That was in line with other major oil companies reporting results this week. BP PLC said its second-quarter profit rose 30 percent to $7.3 billion, while ConocoPhillips reported a 65 percent increase to $5.18 billion. Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's largest publicly traded oil company, is due to report its earnings later Thursday.

Keith Bowman, equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown Stockbrokers, said it was "good news" that Shell had beaten forecasts, in contrast to BP.

"But going forward, high oil prices will not continue to mask" if Shell's management makes mistakes, he said.

Shell said that excluding the damage caused by militant attacks on its operations in Nigeria and the fallout from hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the Gulf of Mexico, production would have been flat.

Shell is missing around 180,000 barrels per day in Nigeria because of recent attacks, and said Thursday it couldn't confidently predict when production will resume.

Van der Veer said that despite a pipeline rupture this week, possibly due to an attack by militants, the company has no intention of scaling back operations in the West African nation. "We are not afraid to invest in Nigeria," he said.

The Niger Delta region has been the scene of frequent disputes for years between oil companies and communities that demand a greater share of the wealth of Africa's largest crude producer. At least 31 expatriate workers have been held hostage by a variety of militant groups so far this year.

Shell's results Thursday beat earnings estimates compiled by Dow Jones, which had predicted a 17 percent rise in earnings, helped by strong refining margins. Shares rose 2.5 percent to 28.05 euros ($35.43) in Amsterdam trading.

At Shell's second-biggest division, which refines oil and sells it to consumers at the pump, profits increased 13 percent to $3.02 billion.

"Higher earnings due to stronger refining margins particularly in the United States, and increased trading profits from a positive trading environment were partially offset by the impact of lower retail marketing margins and reduced refinery utilization mainly in Europe," Shell said.

Shell's 2004-2005 accounting scandal, in which it was forced to repeatedly reduce the size of its proven oil reserves, continued to affect the company's earnings and prospects.

The company said Thursday it had reserved $500 million in the second quarter to pay shareholder class action lawsuits.

Shell has also been spending heavily to restore reserves, planning investments of $19 billion in 2006, and $21 billion in 2007, most of it in exploration and production.

But in 2005, the company pumped more oil than it added to proven reserves, and in Shell's 2005 annual report those reserves stood at around 11.5 billion barrels.

With Thursday's earnings, Shell said it has added "at least" 48 billion barrels of oil to unproven reserves via acquisitions in Canada in the first half of 2006, at a combined cost of some $2.6 billion.

In a conference call, Chief Financial Officer Peter Voser repeated that the company has a "fair prospect" to replace as much as it pumps between 2004-2008 as a whole.

"But we will not be shy to delay projects or even cancel projects because of the economic situation, cost inflation, and delay the recognition of proved reserves if that is the best economic outcome" for the company, he said.

While production in 2006 has been below analysts' expectations, he repeated that Shell's production is expected to rise to 3.5 million to 3.7 million barrels per day in 2007.

Tide of Arab Opinion Turns to Support for Hezbollah

By Neil MacFarquhar
The New York Times

Friday 28 July 2006

Damascus, Syria - At the onset of the Lebanese crisis, Arab governments, starting with Saudi Arabia, slammed Hezbollah for recklessly provoking a war, providing what the United States and Israel took as a wink and a nod to continue the fight.

Now, with hundreds of Lebanese dead and Hezbollah holding out against the vaunted Israeli military for 15 days, the tide of public opinion across the Arab world is surging behind the organization, transforming the Shiite group's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, into a folk hero and forcing a change in official statements.

The Saudi royal family and King Abdullah II of Jordan, who were initially more worried about the rising power of Shiite Iran, Hezbollah's main sponsor, are scrambling to distance themselves from Washington.

An outpouring of newspaper columns, cartoons, blogs and public poetry readings have showered praise on Hezbollah while attacking the United States and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for trumpeting American plans for a "new Middle East" that they say has led only to violence and repression.

Even Al Qaeda, run by violent Sunni Muslim extremists normally hostile to all Shiites, has gotten into the act, with its deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, releasing a taped message saying that through its fighting in Iraq, his organization was also trying to liberate Palestine.

Mouin Rabbani, a senior Middle East analyst in Amman, Jordan, with the International Crisis Group, said, "The Arab-Israeli conflict remains the most potent issue in this part of the world."

Distinctive changes in tone are audible throughout the Sunni world. This week, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt emphasized his attempts to arrange a cease-fire to protect all sects in Lebanon, while the Jordanian king announced that his country was dispatching medical teams "for the victims of Israeli aggression." Both countries have peace treaties with Israel.

The Saudi royal court has issued a dire warning that its 2002 peace plan - offering Israel full recognition by all Arab states in exchange for returning to the borders that predated the 1967 Arab-Israeli war - could well perish.

"If the peace option is rejected due to the Israeli arrogance," it said, "then only the war option remains, and no one knows the repercussions befalling the region, including wars and conflict that will spare no one, including those whose military power is now tempting them to play with fire."

The Saudis were putting the West on notice that they would not exert pressure on anyone in the Arab world until Washington did something to halt the destruction of Lebanon, Saudi commentators said.

American officials say that while the Arab leaders need to take a harder line publicly for domestic political reasons, what matters more is what they tell the United States in private, which the Americans still see as a wink and a nod.

There are evident concerns among Arab governments that a victory for Hezbollah - and it has already achieved something of a victory by holding out this long - would further nourish the Islamist tide engulfing the region and challenge their authority. Hence their first priority is to cool simmering public opinion.

But perhaps not since President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt made his emotional outpourings about Arab unity in the 1960's, before the Arab defeat in the 1967 war, has the public been so electrified by a confrontation with Israel, played out repeatedly on satellite television stations with horrific images from Lebanon of wounded children and distraught women fleeing their homes.

Egypt's opposition press has had a field day comparing Sheik Nasrallah to Nasser, while demonstrators waved pictures of both.

An editorial in the weekly Al Dustur by Ibrahim Issa, who faces a lengthy jail sentence for his previous criticism of President Mubarak, compared current Arab leaders to the medieval princes who let the Crusaders chip away at Muslim lands until they controlled them all.

After attending an intellectual rally in Cairo for Lebanon, the Egyptian poet Ahmed Fouad Negm wrote a column describing how he had watched a companion buy 20 posters of Sheik Nasrallah.

"People are praying for him as they walk in the street, because we were made to feel oppressed, weak and handicapped," Mr. Negm said in an interview. "I asked the man who sweeps the street under my building what he thought, and he said: 'Uncle Ahmed, he has awakened the dead man inside me! May God make him triumphant!' "

In Lebanon, Rasha Salti, a freelance writer, summarized the sense that Sheik Nasrallah differed from other Arab leaders.

"Since the war broke out, Hassan Nasrallah has displayed a persona, and public behavior also, to the exact opposite of Arab heads of states," she wrote in an e-mail message posted on many blogs.

In comparison, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's brief visit to the region sparked widespread criticism of her cold demeanor and her choice of words, particularly a statement that the bloodshed represented the birth pangs of a "new Middle East." That catchphrase was much used by Shimon Peres, the veteran Israeli leader who was a principal negotiator of the 1993 Oslo Accords, which ultimately failed to lead to the Palestinian state they envisaged.

A cartoon by Emad Hajjaj in Jordan labeled "The New Middle East" showed an Israeli tank sitting on a broken apartment house in the shape of the Arab world.

Fawaz al-Trabalsi, a columnist in the Lebanese daily As Safir, suggested that the real new thing in the Middle East was the ability of one group to challenge Israeli militarily.

Perhaps nothing underscored Hezbollah's rising stock more than the sudden appearance of a tape from the Qaeda leadership attempting to grab some of the limelight.

Al Jazeera satellite television broadcast a tape from Mr. Zawahri (za-WAH-ri). Large panels behind him showed a picture of the exploding World Trade Center as well as portraits of two Egyptian Qaeda members, Muhammad Atef, a Qaeda commander who was killed by an American airstrike in Afghanistan, and Mohamed Atta, the lead hijacker on Sept. 11, 2001. He described the two as fighters for the Palestinians.

Mr. Zawahri tried to argue that the fight against American forces in Iraq paralleled what Hezbollah was doing, though he did not mention the organization by name.

"It is an advantage that Iraq is near Palestine," he said. "Muslims should support its holy warriors until an Islamic emirate dedicated to jihad is established there, which could then transfer the jihad to the borders of Palestine."

Mr. Zawahri also adopted some of the language of Hezbollah and Shiite Muslims in general. That was rather ironic, since previously in Iraq, Al Qaeda has labeled Shiites Muslim as infidels and claimed responsibility for some of the bloodier assaults on Shiite neighborhoods there.

But by taking on Israel, Hezbollah had instantly eclipsed Al Qaeda, analysts said. "Everyone will be asking, 'Where is Al Qaeda now?'" said Adel al-Toraifi, a Saudi columnist and expert on Sunni extremists.

Mr. Rabbani of the International Crisis Group said Hezbollah's ability to withstand the Israeli assault and to continue to lob missiles well into Israel exposed the weaknesses of Arab governments with far greater resources than Hezbollah.

"Public opinion says that if they are getting more on the battlefield than you are at the negotiating table, and you have so many more means at your disposal, then what the hell are you doing?" Mr. Rabbani said. "In comparison with the small embattled guerrilla movement, the Arab states seem to be standing idly by twiddling their thumbs."

Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting from Cairo for this article, and Suha Maayeh from Amman, Jordan.

Series of Woes Mar Iraq Project Hailed as Model

By James Glanz
The New York Times

Friday 28 July 2006

Baghdad, Iraq - The United States is dropping Bechtel, the American construction giant, from a project to build a high-tech children's hospital in the southern Iraqi city of Basra after the project fell nearly a year behind schedule and exceeded its expected cost by as much as 150 percent.

Called the Basra Children's Hospital, the project has been consistently championed by the first lady, Laura Bush, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and was designed to house sophisticated equipment for treating childhood cancer.

Now it becomes the latest in a series of American taxpayer-financed health projects in Iraq to face overruns, delays and cancellations. Earlier this year, the Army Corps of Engineers canceled more than $300 million in contracts held by Parsons, another American contractor, to build and refurbish hospitals and clinics across Iraq.

American and Iraqi government officials described the move to drop Bechtel in interviews on Thursday, and Ammar al-Saffar, a deputy health minister in Baghdad, allowed a reporter to take notes on briefing papers on the subject he said he had recently been given by the State Department.

The United States will "disengage Bechtel and transfer program and project management" to the Army Corps of Engineers, the papers say. Bechtel, the State Department agency in charge of the work and the Health Department in Basra all confirmed that the company would be leaving the project, but the reasons are a matter of deep disagreement.

The Iraqis assert that management blunders by the company have caused the project to teeter on the verge of collapse; the American government says Bechtel did the best it could as it faced everything from worsening security to difficult soil conditions.

A senior company official said Thursday that for its part Bechtel recommended that the work be mothballed and in essence volunteered to leave the project because the security problems had become intolerable. He also disputed the American government's calculation of cost overruns, saying that accounting rules had recently been changed in a way that inflated the figures.

The official, Cliff Mumm, who is president of the Bechtel infrastructure division, predicted that the project would fail if the government pressed ahead, as the briefing papers indicate that it would. Because of the rise of sectarian militias in southern Iraq, Mr. Mumm said, "it is not a good use of the government's money" to try to finish the project.

"And we do not think it can be finished," he said.

Beyond the consequences for health care in southern Iraq, abandoning the project could be tricky politically because of the high-profile support from Mrs. Bush and Ms Rice. Congress allocated $50 million to the Basra Children's Hospital in late 2003 as part of an $18.4 billion reconstruction package for Iraq. Now the government estimates that the cost overruns are so great that the project will cost as much as $120 million to complete and will not be finished before September 2007, nearly a year later than planned. Some other estimates put the overruns even higher. Kadhim Hassan, general director of the Basra Health Department, said the project would be no more than 40 percent complete once the original $50 million, much of which is going to subcontractors, had been used up. He said little work had been done for months.

While Bechtel pointed to security problems in delaying the project and increasing its cost, the Iraqis generally rejected that view.

"The pretexts given by Bechtel to the Iraqi government to justify its failure in finishing the project are untrue and unacceptable, especially the ones regarding the rise in security expenses," said Sheik Abu Salam al-Saedi, a member of the Basra provincial council.

Western engineers were seldom seen at the project, Mr. Saedi said, adding that it was simply mismanaged. Mr. Saffar, of the Health Ministry in Baghdad, and an Iraqi contractor in Basra both asserted that Bechtel's use of a complicated chain of subcontractors was part of the problem.

Bechtel hired a Jordanian company, for example, to oversee work by local Iraqi construction companies. The American government wasted money by going through such a complex chain of companies rather than working directly with the Iraqis who would do the work anyway, Mr. Saffar said.

"Our counterparts should have full faith in the Iraqi companies," Mr. Saffar said.

That kind of turmoil was far from the minds of planners and supporters when the hospital project was conceived and promoted. Mrs. Bush and Ms. Rice were unwavering supporters, and Project HOPE, a charitable organization, planned to provide at least $50 million in medical equipment.

In a gala for Project HOPE last October, Mrs. Bush praised the project, describing its plan for 94 beds, a state-of-the-art neonatal unit, a linear particle accelerator for radiation therapy and CAT scanners. Ms. Rice added that the hospital "will make a real difference, a life-saving and lasting difference, to the thousands of children and their families."

But like so many other reconstruction projects in Iraq, the hospital was blindsided by changing realities on the ground. Once considered a relatively tranquil section of Iraq, the south has become increasingly dangerous with the rise of Shiite militias in the past two years - so much so, said Mr. Mumm, the Bechtel official, that construction was often forced to shut down.

With those delays came increasing costs as the company absorbed the expenses of housing, feeding and protecting its work force while the work sat idle, Mr. Mumm said. One consequence was that the nonconstruction costs usually referred to as overhead or administrative costs skyrocketed.

Bechtel estimated that as much as 50 percent of its expenses on the project were overhead costs, which were paid with American money separate from the $50 million construction contract.

David Snider, a spokesman for the United States Agency for International Development, the State Department agency in charge of the project, said that technically, Bechtel's contract was not being terminated because the contract did not actually require the company to complete the hospital.

"They are under a ‘term contract,' which means their job is over when their money ends," Mr. Snider said. So despite not finishing the hospital, he said, "they did complete the contract."

A confidential report commissioned by the development agency criticizes it for failing to properly account for all of the costs of building a functioning hospital. The agency is likely to face further criticism as it seeks additional money to complete the hospital as part of an Iraq reconstruction program that has increasingly come to be seen as overpriced and ineffective.

The State Department briefing papers describing problems with the hospital project say the United States has been approached by Spain with a potential offer to donate some of the money needed to finish it. If that money is not forthcoming, the papers say, the United States will shift funds now allocated to the crucial oil infrastructure reconstruction to complete the hospital.

MATTHEWS SHOW

I DON'T AGREE WITH MATTHEWS ALL THE TIME BUT HE HIT IT ON THE NAIL NOW.

YOU CAN'T KILL US ALL

CONTRARY TO POPULAR MEDIA THESE PEOPLE ARE BEING USED AS CANNON FAUGHTER FOR THE TERRORIST. tHEY ARE JUST PEOPLE IN THEIR HOMES, TRYING TO GET OUT, SOME HAVE NO WHERE TO GO AND ISREAL IS USING US MADE AND IMPORTED "SO-CALLED PERCISION GUIDED SMART BOMBS" THAT ARE KILLING EVERYTHING IN SIGHT B/C THEY ARE BEING AIMED AT A WIDE RANGE OF TARGETS, FROM MEN, WOMEN, CHILDREN TO TERRORIST AND EVEN A UN OUTPOST WHICH WAS TARGETED AND CLEARLY MARKED.

This is a must listen interview with Tina Naccache in Beirut

The Silence of the good people of the United States is deafening! How can they not do anything?

Audio from Flashpoints - Dennis Bernstein

Broadcast Date: 07/2506

1996 of Isreali Massacre in Qana

THE LINK BELOW IS THE VIDEO OF THE MASSACRE THAT THE UN MADE UPON THEIR VISIT. PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO THE BABY WITH ITS HEAD BLOWN OFF.




Spotter Plane Seen Over UN Compound

By ROBERT FISK

05/06/96 "The Independent" -- Qana: It is a soldier's videotape, recorded -- at the start at least -- as just another incident to remember back home by a United Nations trooper after his six months' tour of duty in southern Lebanon are over.

Indeed, when the camera first records the Israeli shells tearing into the UN base at Qana, the other soldiers who appear in the film, most of them Norwegians in the UN's Force Mobile Reserve opposite Qana, seem unaware of its implications. One of them makes a joke, another looks gawkily into the camera even as it tapes the clouds of smoke obscuring Qana. The camera pans through barbed wire as more brown puffs of smoke emerge from the white-painted buildings of the UN's Fijian battalion headquarters.

The UN officers can be seen at an observation post staring at Qana as the Israeli shells rain onto their colleagues and the helpless refugees across the valley. A group of Norwegian soldiers talk excitedly and the camera, its owner obviously growing aware of the gravity of the situation, moves in close-up towards Qana with a zoom lens until the videotape is filled with drifting smoke. Shortly afterwards, the sound-track picks up the familiar buzzing sound of the Israeli "drone", final and irrefutable evidence that later Israeli denials were false -- until the Israelis changed their story last night.

Refugees and UN officers had all talked of hearing the Israeli artillery "spotter" aircraft before and during the Israeli attack on the UN base. But her at last, in living colour, was the proof: distinct pictures of the small Israeli aircraft over Qana, the plane that the Israelis -- for two weeks -- claimed was never there.

One of the UN soldiers who saw the video being made says that neither he nor his colleagues understood in the first few seconds what was happening at Qana. "We know the Israelis are perfect in their accuracy. The previous day, when Katyushas had been fired a couple of miles away, we saw the Israeli return fire come back on the launch site with complete accuracy. We felt so safe about the Israeli artillery that we never went indoors when shells flew over.

"They knew we were here and so they never hit us. So we didn't even wear flak jackets when there were shell warnings. The Israelis knew what they were doing. And then we saw Qana and by the end, none of us believed it was an accident. Yes, the Israelis knew what they were doing. What do you think the drone' was for?"

A UN officer from a NATO nation who saw the videotape -- a copy of which has been obtained by the Independent -- before it was handed over to UN investigating General Frank van Kappen, was more emotional. "If the UN report is diluted to please the Israelis and the Americans, how is the UN going to live with it? How are we on the ground here supposed to pass by that mass grave [of more than 100 civilians in Qana] with a clear conscience?

"I and many others have risked our lives under constant Israeli shelling. We put up with their lies and the arrogance of their explanations. They blame us because we let unarmed Hizbollah men visit their families in our base. But back in 1984, Israeli soldiers were ambushed near my base and we let them in and protected them. Of course, the Israelis don't mention that now. But even if it means the end of my military career, I'll never say this was an accident. The Israelis knew they were firing at innocent people."

The UN have noted that an Israeli officer is also ensuring that his military career remains unblemished. For although the Israeli Prime Minister, Shimon Peres, denied knowing that more than 800 civilians were sheltering at the UN base at Qana on 18 April, Major General Moshe Yaalon, the Israeli army chief of intelligence, stated on the day of the massacre that the Israel Defense Forces knew of the civilian presence at Qana and that it was the Israeli army's Northern Command under General Amiram Levine -- already reprimanded after his artillery fired into the village of Shaqra last year and killed a young Lebanese woman -- which ignored the intelligence information.

"Yaalon knows something smells and he's keeping himself out of it," a European UN soldier said. "The Israeli investigation that Dan Harel [the brigadier commanding the Israeli Artillery Corp] carried out was cursory. He said they fired at the Katyushas and that only two rounds hit the UN base. This is bullshit. We know that at least 12 rounds hit the base, seven of them fitted with proximity fuses which explode the shells seven metres from the ground and are designed to kill the maximum number of people by inflicting amputation wounds."

Towards the end of the 8-minute videotape that has so transformed the UN's official investigation, the horror of Qana has been understood by the UN soldiers watching from the neighbouring hillside and by the amateur military cameraman. Just after he films the drone, he focuses the camera on a fire that is raging in the heart of the UN compound, the Fijian battalion conference room that was home to dozens of Lebanese refugees.

The flames burn white and red in the centre of the frame -- the Israeli pilotless drone spotter-plane can still be heard on the sound-track -- and then a pall of black smoke rises from the building in which the Lebanese civilians are being burned alive.

On the videotape, the soldier is now recording the UN radio. An Irish voice says: "Fijibatt headquarters is still under shelling." One of the UN soldiers who stood close to the cameraman was to tell me later that in one observation post a colleague could hear -- a mile away across the valley at Qana -- "a sort of chorus of screaming". A set of still photographs of the shelling, which the Independent has also obtained, shows only one shell falling outside the compound -- in the opposite direction to the Katyusha launch site at which the Israelis claim they were firing.

The last sequences of the tape are taken as the cameraman and his colleagues in the UN's Force Mobile Reserve -- including Irish, Norwegian and Fijian soldiers -- race in armoured vehicles to the Qana base amid a convoy of ambulances. In confusion, a medevac team drop an empty stretcher on the ground and then, drip-feed held over a figure on another stretcher, haul a wounded refugee into an ambulance. The camera moves to a hill where a white-painted UN helicopter with wounded on board is preparing to take off. On the ground in front of it stands an injured Lebanese woman, a bandage round her head, holding two small children by their hands.

As the rotor blades swish the air above them, the Italian pilot climbs out of the plane, shooing them away, moving his arms back and forth, ordering them back from the helicopter.

With a kind of desolation, the woman, in a blue dress, half her face in bandages, leads the two children down the hill from the helicopter, accompanied by two shocked Fijian UN solders.

Lebanon's 9/11 or Why Do They Hate Us? Picture Album

What exactly do our politicians mean when the say we support Israel in its action against Lebanon? What is it that they support? Surely not this carnage?

I GUESS THIS WAS JUSTIFIED FOR CAPTURED SPY SOLDIERS THAT WERE IN ANOTHER COUNTRY. THE PROPAGANDA IS BUILDING AND IN THE US THERE IS NO FAIR OR CRITICAL MEDIA, BUT THE TRUTH MUST COME OUT AND THE PICTURES AND VOICES MUST BE HEARD. PEOPLE NEED TO STAND. IT IS NOT ANTI-SEMITISM TO SPEAK OUT ON WHAT IS WRONG AND THE WAR CRIMES. THESE ARE JUST A FEW PICTURES OF SOME CIVILLIANS, THIS IS NOT 1% OF WHATS GOING ON.