Hezbollah captured the Soldiers inside Lebanon

This fact seems to have been ignored by most of the media. It is awfully inconvenient to those who claim that Hezbollah started this.

The militant group Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers during clashes Wednesday across the border in southern Lebanon, prompting a swift reaction from Israel, which sent ground forces into its neighbor to look for them. The forces were trying to keep the soldiers' captors from moving them deeper into Lebanon, Israeli government officials said on condition of anonymity.

So, Israel had sent soldiers into Lebanon and now must bomb Beirut until it is a pile of rubble. Perhaps it is so nobody will be left to complain that it was Israel itself which started this mess.

Video from Lebanon

Static Brain has posted a chilling video from Lebanon. No worries, you won't see graphic depictions of deaths. But it is worth watching. One day, if the neocons in and around the White House have their way, it could be coming to a city near you. Somebody please vote these sociopaths out of office and replace them with people who actually care about the stated principles of this nation.

By the way, does anyone else find Israel's claim (parroted today by the drug-addled Rush Limbaugh) that the Beirut airport is a valid military target, to be utterly psychotic?

Ron Paul Tells the Truth

Ron Paul, one of the only, if not the only Congressman in America who tells the truth said this on the house floor yesterday (Click on item 53 and then Page: H5453):

Between 1997 and 2004, and that doesn't even count the last 2 years, we gave over $7 billion in weapons grants. It wasn't a loan. It was a weapons grant.

Now, the neat thing about this, this was an economic deal because it was beneficial because under the foreign military financing program that we have, Israel is required to spend 74 percent of that back here. So you are talking about a military-industrial complex, a pretty good deal. You know, we subsidize them, send the money over here, it comes over here, and our arms manufacturers make even more money and then dig a bigger hole for us in foreign policy and contribute to the many problems that we have. And that amount of money, they get $2.3 billion of these military grants, and they automatically increase it $60 million per year. So it is locked in place.

Now, you say, well, that is money for our ally. And fine, if it was used for defense, maybe. But if it is used to antagonize 1 billion Muslims and there is no willingness to even consider the fact that we should look at it in a balanced way, and instead it is ridiculed and said, oh, this is ridiculous to think of neutrality or balance and think about both sides, and the innocent people dying on both sides should be considered.

So we are moving toward a major crisis, a major crisis financially and a major crisis in our foreign policy. I don't believe we can maintain this.

So even if you totally disagree with our aggressive empire building and policing the world, let me tell you, I am going to win the argument, because we are running out of money. We are in big debt, and we are borrowing it. We borrowed $3 billion a day from countries like China and Japan and Saudi Arabia to finance this horrendous debt. And it won't be, it can't be continued. The dollar will eventually weaken. You are going to have horrendous inflation. Interest rates are going to go up, and it is going to be worse than the stagflation of the 1970s.

There's the reason things are so messed up in the middle east.

I am glad I turned off the TV 12 years ago. I can only imagine the pro-Israel screeds broadcast over every station disguised as news. Invest in gold. You're going to need it.

Revenge, Hubris and World War III begins...

The recent events in the Middle East should remind us just how morally bankrupt is the current administration of the U.S. "republic." In an almost verbatim (canned?) response to reporters during the G8 summit, Bush parrotted his May 2004 speech to AIPAC (one which was interrupted 67 times by applause and chants of "Four more years."):

"As a sovereign nation, Israel has every right to defend itself against terrorist activity,"

Daniel Ayalon, Israel's Ambassador to the US apparently thinks that barbequeing innocent civilians is the means to "show restraint."

"If we do not want to see further escalation, deterioration, violence, this is the time to stop Hizbollah and what we are doing is the most effective (way) to stop them."

Gee, Danny, do you actually think that bombing apartment buildings and fleeing civilians is a means to stop Hezbollah? The Washington Post confirms that the US administration and Israel share the same interests when it comes to current events:

For Israel, the goal is to eliminate Hezbollah as a security threat -- or altogether, the sources said. A senior Israeli official confirmed that Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah is a target, on the calculation that the Shiite movement would be far less dynamic without him.

For the United States, the broader goal is to strangle the axis of Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran, which the Bush administration believes is pooling resources to change the strategic playing field in the Middle East, U.S. officials say.

As somebody who is old enough to remember, this all looks like revenge. Israel was by most accounts, whooped by Hezbollah which gained a reputation amongst those who have noticed facts rather than Israeli propaganda, of targetting the military rather than civilians.

The US still hasn't gotten over Iran's rebuff and the debacle that was the Iran hostage crisis. Contrary to popular opinion, Carter actually did not appease "terrorists" in 1979. He refused to negotiate which is why the hostages were taken. When Carter let the Shah of Iran enter the US and refused to extradite him to Iran to be charged for crimes the Iranians believed he had committed against the people, violence erupted.

The entire affair was a foreign policy disaster going back to 1953's Operation Ajax in which the CIA influenced Iranian elections.

Iran is still much maligned and there is plenty of leftover resentment to support their acts of revenge. The truly sad part about all of this is that the US administration, which takes grandiose claims about its striving to acheive freedom and democracy the world over, won't even comment on Israel's targetting of civilians.

It's deja vu all over again. During the Iranian hostage crisis, the US under Carter was ramping up to supply Mujahadeen fighters to battle the Soviet infadels who had invaded Afghanistan. Even to the point of ( in collusion with the ISI Pakistan's intelligence agency) schools which taught young boys the importance of Jihad so they could be recruited into the war later.

It was announced yesterday that the US has blocked Russia from entering the WTO. Putin is not amused. He has even taken to stating publically that Iran has the right to defend itself using Bush's own rhetoric in a sardonic twist.

WWIII Anyone?

Home of the Free

I just got a frantic call from a friend.

She and her husband are buying property and have a large sum of cash that they've saved over the years for just such an event.

The problem is that nobody will take the cash as payment. They might be terrorists. They might be tax cheats. They might not have done anything at all exept to do what millions of Americans have done in the past and hoard away federal reserve notes in a closet somewhere.

But today, they risk the upturned noses of nosy bank personnel, IRS audits and worse for merely using the money they've saved over the years to purchase a piece of property on the river.

The powers that be, want you and I to insure that our financial situation be one of living paycheck to paycheck. Getting out of the rat-race by buying a piece of property that might sustain us without having to work for somebody else or start a highly regulated business, is potentially criminal. So don't do it. Never defy the slave-masters or your money will be confiscated. After all, we don't know where you got that money. Nobody saves money of any substantial amount without plotting criminal activity.

My friend is now considering driving around to over 30 different locations to obtain money orders under the legal limit. Thanks to the patriot act and other banking laws, she can't rightfully spend more than 1000 "dollars" without intense scrutiny.

I sure am glad the terrorists aren't winning. What would it be like for a country targetted  by "freedom haters" if its citizens were actually free?