Wednesday, July 19, 2006
The Endless Loop - E-Mail between An Israeli and A Lebanese
Henry Kissinger, Former Aider and Abetter of Torture and Murder, Pontificates * India Blocks Bloggers
Gordon Orr in Shlomo, Israel, and Saleem Khoury in Beirut, Lebanon. The BBC deserves praise for publishing them but the e-mail messages between an Israeli and a Lebanese made me despair of any lasting solution to the crisis in the Middle East. Their minds are set; they talk without listening and,unfortunately, there is no leading voice on either side to set the right tone.
Saleem Khoury
Gordon Orr
Saleem Khoury
- I do not believe that Israel ever had the intention of fighting Hezbollah. From the first day of their attack, they only wanted to destroy our civilian infrastructure.
- The fighters of Hezbollah are in the south and Israel hasn't sent a single tank there. Instead they destroy the civilian airport, bridges and power plants. How can they justify that?
- Lebanon has lost many civilians - children, old people, all trying to escape. In Beirut, we haven't been able to go to work. Life has stopped.
- Maybe Israel has a special obscure and twisted logic that nobody else understands I do not know how such actions will free their two soldiers.
- I live in Shlomi on the border with Lebanon. I can see a Hezbollah lookout post from my balcony.
- Shlomi was among the settlements shelled on Wednesday morning. This shelling brought Israeli soldiers to the border area where they were ambushed: seven were killed and two were kidnapped.
- What option did Israel have? Should we have said: 'Well done Mr Nasrallah, got us this time, we'll do whatever you want' And for what purpose?
- This was Nasrallah [Hezbollah's chief] trying to improve his standing in the Arab world.
- It is difficult to believe that the interest of the Lebanese people was in his mind when he gave the order for this.
- What others call negotiating is really a call to give in blindly to his demands, and that puts my life and the life of every other Israeli at risk.
On and on ad infinitum. In the news this morning: "At least 49 civilians have been killed in Israeli air strikes in Lebanon.At least 12 people died and about 30 were wounded in the southern village of Srifa, near Tyre, where residents said several homes were flattened."
--- BBC
--- BBC
One of Our Elder Statesmen, A Friend of Butchers
Dr. Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State, who was the architect of our Latin American policy under which thousands of dissidents were killed and tortured in Chile and Argentina, appeared on Newshour to talk about negotiating peace in the Middle East. He had also supported General Suharto's repressive measures against the East Timorese. Kissinger is truly a man without shame and conscience.
Censorship Raises Its Ugly Head in India
BBC 19th July 2006:
"India's burgeoning blogging community is up in arms against a government directive that they say has led to the blocking of their web logs.The country's 153 internet service providers (ISP) have blocked 17 websites since last week on federal government orders. " BBC
- Internet professionals and lawyers believe that blocking sites really serves no purpose in a large country like India with an increasingly thriving blogging community.
- "The ISPs can block a specific site, but the person who runs it can easily tweak its name a bit and return," says Mr Tiwari.
- There are an estimated 50 million internet users in India, according to ISP industry estimates.
- Only seven million people subscribe to the internet, of whom 1.5 million receive broadband services.
