CINA

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VICTORY!! ...but for whom??

8.08 in the morning(CET) the Israeli online news magazine ynet reported, related to the Lebanese cease fire proposal, following: "At the press conference... Olmert stated that there were some 'interesting points' in the Lebanese prime minister's proposal for a ceasefire, and added he knew full well Hizbullah was interested in a cessation of the fighting, mainly because the group was no longer able to continue its resistance to the Israeli army.

And only few hours the Israeli news agencies were forced to report that again IDF soldiers were killed and injured in "fierce clashes with Hizbullah units" in south Lebanon.

Since noon Israel's northern villages and towns were/are once again under massive attacks by Hizbullah's Katyusha rockets.

And a short while ago(pm 7:30, CET) this was written by Israeli media:

Minister Ezra: Hizbullah is breaking down (^^)

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3288371,00.html

Also yesterday the Israeli rightwing daily Jerusalem Post published following:

Analysis: Hizbullah still strong

Operation Change of Direction was launched last month with the declared goal of weakening Hizbullah to the point where it would be possible to create a new political reality in south Lebanon. On Monday, almost four weeks into the fighting, a high-ranking Military Intelligence officer said the IDF was still far from reaching its goal.

While Israel waited for a United Nations Security Council resolution on a cease-fire, not now expected to come up for a vote until at least Thursday, the next stage will be a second resolution - one that calls for the deployment of a multinational force to replace the IDF in southern Lebanon and to prevent Hizbullah from reestablishing itself there.

Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz, have spoken with enthusiasm about a multinational force, but the high-ranking officer said Monday that Hizbullah had not been damaged enough and still retained enough "diplomatic power" to thwart the deployment of such a force.

"Hizbullah has not been sufficiently weakened," the officer said. "And there may be no choice but to expand the ground operation in the direction of the Litani River to achieve that goal."

According to intelligence information, the Hizbullah command-and-control array is still functioning even after nearly four weeks of fighting. So are the logistical command centers - still operating and succeeding in directing the smuggling of weapons into Lebanon from Syria.

The officer said that Hizbullah still had the ability to fire short-range rockets, of which the guerrilla group has already fired 2,500 since the beginning of the war.

The only way to stop the short-range rockets, he said, was for the IDF to deepen its incursion north to the Litani and to sweep through cities like Tyre, estimated to be the hiding place for most of the short-range 122mm Katyusha rockets.

But despite the concern that the Hizbullah could succeed in thwarting a diplomatic effort to deploy an international force in Lebanon, the IDF can still pat itself on the back. Over 400 guerrillas have been killed in IDF operations, most of the long-range rocket arrays have been destroyed and the organization's stronghold in Beirut - Dahiya - has been almost completely demolished in IAF air strikes.

Senior IDF officers said Monday that they needed more time to continue striking at the guerrilla group to really weaken Hizbullah. The big question now is whether Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will give the green light for an IDF incursion up to the Litani, a move that could save Israel face and provide it with the the victory it has been seeking since the outset of a conflict that has proven to be far more difficult than initially expected.

At the moment, the IDF is holding onto positions in a security zone eight kilometers deep into Lebanon and is waiting to see if it will be ordered to push northwards to the Litani. Senior officials in the Northern Command said Monday that the chances the the IDF would reach that far in the coming days were slim, since with fighting still going on in villages like Bint Jbail - where three soldiers were killed Monday - within the IDF-created security zone, the military could not move on.

"We need to first finish clearing out the security zone and only then can we move north," a high-ranking officer in the Northern Command explained.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1154525826349&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

*****

The German daily die tageszeitung wrote yesterday(8.08) that, according to the Near East Consulting Institute, the predominant majority of the Palestinians in Gaza and the W. Bank are supporting the "struggle of Hizbullah against Israel" - 97 percent of the entire population. And even 95 percent of the Christian minority are supporting Hizbullah, so the German daily.

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Nepal peace talks close to collapse, rebel chief warns (Guardian, 8.08)

 
The peace process in the Himalayan state of Nepal between Maoist guerrillas and Nepalese politicians is on the verge of collapse over the future of the monarchy and disarmament, a senior communist leader said yesterday.

The comments, by deputy rebel chief Baburam Bhattarai, were the first signs of a split in the alliance between the seven political parties and the Maoists that effectively removed the king from power in April. "The talks are very close to collapse," Mr Bhattarai told business leaders in Kathmandu. "The dialogue process is stuck at a very sensitive stage. The government is trying to force us to war again."

More than 13,000 have been killed during a decade of Maoist revolt, but the rebel leader ruled out an immediate return to battle, saying that if the talks failed the Maoists would "launch a new peaceful, popular movement in the cities, and not go back to the jungles".
Despite previous Maoist statements that they would accept a ceremonial monarchy if the people wanted one, Mr Bhattarai criticised the interim prime minister's recent statement in favour of a ceremonial monarchy. "We caution and warn the prime minister that we may have to leave him if he continues to protect the monarchy - and that protest will not only finish the king, it will also finish all those who are siding with the monarchy," Mr Bhattarai said.

The Maoists and the government agreed a ceasefire in May after Nepal's King Gyanendra was forced from power by weeks of street protests. He ceded power to a multi-party administration that does not include any rebel members. Since then, the two sides have been inching towards an agreement for a future elected constituent assembly that could write a new constitution for the country.

The negotiations appear to have stalled because the Maoists are unwilling to give up their guns unless the Nepalese army is disarmed. The UN had proposed that armouries could be built in barracks for the rebels where weapons could be kept under two sets of locks. One set of keys would be held by the Maoists, the other by the UN. However, the Maoists would not accept the plan unless the country's military was similarly constrained.

"What was being proposed was dissolving the [Maoist] People's Liberation army. It is not acceptable to us," Maoist chief negotiator, Krishna Bahadur Mahara told the Guardian. "We are not for the status quo. How can we accept demilitarisation only for us, and not for them?"

Analysts say that the Maoists were attempting to strengthen their hand in the negotiations by talking tough. "The international community has been quite firm. India, the US, the EU have all told the Maoists they cannot join the interim government with guns in hand," said Kanak Mani Dixit of Himal magazine.

"What they need is a face-saving measure (for the Maoists), because Nepal does not want to return to war."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1839248,00.html

Dr Bhattarai warns of another struggle if peace talks breached (eKantipur, 8.06)

Maoist leader Dr Baburam Bhattarai said on Monday that Prime Minister Girija P Koirala's comments a day earlier on giving space to the king would hamper the ongoing peace talks.

 
Dr Bhattarai made the comments at a programme organised by Nepal's commerce and industrial fraternity in the capital on the occasion of the 40th Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI).

Prime Minister Koirala had, on Sunday, made his opinion public regarding the monarch saying that even he should be given some room in a democracy.

Warning of a third people's movement in the country, Dr Bhattarai said that if the government and the parties kept on “humming the same monotonous tune” calling for the Maoists to lay down their weapons without even trying to enter the preliminary stages of peace talks, then it would be inevitable for the peace process to take a backseat.

"All of you present here (industrialists and businessmen) have wished for a lasting peace in the country. My statements don't mean that if the peace talks don't succeed, the country would again head towards war. You don't need to have any confusion about that," he explained adding, "Our chairman Prachanda too has pledged time and again that we would not go back to the jungle again. Even if we have to carry on our struggle, we will do that here in the capital and cities. We will struggle peacefully."

Maoist supremo Prachanda was earlier scheduled to address the second and concluding day of the FNCCI's AGM but instead the number two in the Maoists' chain-of-command, Dr Baburam Bhattarai addressed the meeting.

Dr Bhattarai said, "If they (government and the parties) breach the peace talks, if they stick to the old notion of preserving the "royal army" and the king, we will detach ourselves from the peace talks and continue our struggle right here in the city but peacefully."

Warning of another “big” movement if things didn’t go as per the agreements, Dr Bhattarai said, "We will form another "front" -- "republican front" -- comprising the people of Nepal that would bring another enormous change which would not only sweep monarchy but also all forces who support monarchy."

Reiterating that there would not be another conflict again, he also made clear that it should not spread the message that the Maoists have lost their will and power. "We are not tired, we have not lost," said Bhattarai adding, "The people of Nepal (from rural areas) have already made sacrifices for the betterment of the country. Now it's your turn (people from urban and city areas, including the capital) to show the same spirit to bring a massive and positive change in the country."

http://www.kantipuronline.com/kolnews.php?&nid=82036

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THE STRUGGLE OF

CONSTRUCTION WORKERS IN POHANG

IS STILL CONTINUING!!

Workers' rallies in southern city reach breaking point (Hankyoreh, 8.07)

Rallies in Pohang increasing in number and violence

Although a union workers' occupation of POSCO headquarters in Pohang, North Gyeongsang province, has come to an end, the crisis at the large steel manufacturer continues. Police and unionists clashed at a mass rally on August 4 organized by the construction labor union and Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), the country's second-largest umbrella labor group. About 100 were injured. The union plans to hold another large-scale rally on Wednesday(*). Pohang is in a full state of crisis.

Construction workers in Pohang expressed hopelessness and rage at the situation when talked to by the Hankyoreh. Lee, 47, who has worked for 13 years at POSCO construction sites, became furious when someone mentioned Ha Jung-geun, who died after being hit on the head by shields wielded by riot police. "There is only a person who was beaten to death; there was 'no one' who hit him," Lee said, referring to the fact that no blame has been placed so far in the incident. "I want to turn over the government and POSCO" to be prosecuted, said Lee.

It has been 37 days since construction workers in Pohang went on strike. But there is not any sign of an impending solution. The workers were asking for raise and improvement in labor conditions, but now new issues have emerged, such as worker's compensation disputes and how arrested unionists will be dealt with. Added to this is dispute over Ha's death.

POSCO construction projects at the Hyeongsan River have been stopped for about 20 days. After the workers' occupation of the POSCO main office ended, the strike was expected to wane. The number of participants in the strike, however, is still at over 3,500.

Oh Hi-taek, an official of the Korean Federation of Construction Industry Trade Unions (KFCITU), said that "negotiations with subcontractors are likely to be made, but POSCO, which has the key to the solution, has refused to budge an inch. Unless POSCO moves, there cannot be any improvement in negotiations."

Some experts suggested the hard-line approach: to make POSCO move, another clash between the union and authorities is unavoidable. Park, 52, a civil engineering worker, said, "Many unionists think that we should stage a sit-down demonstration."

According to industry experts, the problem stems from all sides. The government, labor, management and all citizens should practice self-examination and make an effort to solve the conflict, the experts said.

http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/147406.html

Here a report by Voice of People about last Friday's demonstration and clashes in Pohang:

Laborers' Rally against Riot Police's Violence 

* 하중근열사 정신계승! 살인경찰폭력 규탄! 전국노동자대회

시간: 2006-08-09 오후 3:00

장소: 포항 동국대병원 앞 (**)

KCTU published 6 days ago(8.02) following:

KCTU/KFCITU Action Alert : Union Member dies due to severe beating by riot police

"포항 전투!!"

자본가, 지배계급의 노동자착취 구조

강화하고 있는 노무현 정권의 오만한 무력진압에 맞선 투쟁
(8월 4일 포항 상황)

Documentary by 숲속홍길동同志

For more informations, but "only" in Korean, please check out

KFCITU's(전국건설사무노동조합) home page: http://www.kfcitu.org

****

** PS(8.09):

Here you can read(in Korean) the first report about today's demonstration in Pohang:

하중근 살인 경찰폭력규탄 전국노동자대회 개최 (Voice of People)

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VICTORY!! ...but for whom??

Well, before I'll publish here my own "opinion" I'll collect and upload several different voices(Israeli, Arab..) about this issue. I'll TRY to continue this daily until I'm ready to write my own stuff(..its a little difficult for me to find the right words without to confuse you/my readers completely^^).

Here, at first, some Israeli voices but from different point of fews. And these are just opinions - without to be the "only, real truth"...(and in some points this voices are failing to explain the - likely - "real" reason of Israel's defeat ..in my opinion).

Israel is losing World War III (Haaretz, 8.07)
 

There has never before been a war like this.

That is why we are losing it.

We don't know how to fight it. Not yet, at least.

From the start, the whole world has been watching this war, and for good reason:

This is the next great battle of World War III. And, as in Iraq, the war is not going well for the West.

There are parallels to the last world war, of course, beyond the newspaper cartoonists' and worldwide Israel-haters' first reflex of calling the Jews Nazis.

There is the danger that we are seeing a tipping point, in Iraq as well as in Lebanon, which will embolden radical Islam, and Iran in particular, to extend the battlefield of jihad indefinitely.

At its outset, the Second World War went staggeringly well for the Axis. German and Japanese tacticians were legions ahead of their Allied adversaries. Smarter, more creative, more innovative, more motivated, much more deadly.

The blitzkrieg caught all of Europe unawares and, within weeks, reeling. Pearl Harbor, the Twin Towers of its era, struck at an isolationist United States that was profoundly unprepared for war.

Allied military defeats followed in series for years, until endurance, faith, and appropriate fighting methods turned the tide.

Certainly there are those in Israel and the Jewish world who are perversely pleased by the way things have gone wrong for us. There is the Told You So brigade on the far right, which misses no chance to declare that withdrawal is the cause of this war, and is a mortal error that must never be repeated, no matter what, ever.

There is the supremely self-satisfied Not In My Name battalion on the far left, which suggests in its knee-jerk protests and pride at being called traitors, that Israel may have a right to defend itself, but should never really exercise it.

Why are we losing? It is because, in our haste to confront Hezbollah before Iran went nuclear, we went to war before we had the ways and means to win.

Give us the tools, the British said at the outset of WW II, and we'll finish the job. We now know that we went to this war without the tools.

After years of Military Intelligence warnings of Hezbollah's missile arsenal and vaguely comforting news items about the mystery-shrouded Nautilus Katyusha-killer, we now know that we knew next to nothing.

We are losing it because our prime minister, defense minister, and army chief, who are new at their jobs and have proven it at every opportunity, made outlandish, grandiose, and boastful claims at the outset of the campaign, speaking of disarming Hezbollah, creating a new order in Lebanon, creating a reality in which the Lebanese people themselves would turn on the terrorists and diminish their influence.

Even before we ran aground in the north, the words had a perversely familiar ring. They are the sound track of debacle. They are as dated and as current as a 16 mm version of Apocalypse Now screened in IDF forts in Lebanon in the '80s.

We've gone after infrastructure, and in so doing, caused immeasurable suffering to as many as a million Lebanese, a thousand of them dead, thousands of them maimed, hundreds of thousands of them displaced.

And there are still those, and they are many, who argue for More of the Same. Much more. For a start, "Erasing villages where Hezbollah operates."

But more of them same is likely to yield only more of the same failure.

With thousands of thousands of soldiers already in Lebanon, seven brigades and counting, after 4,600 IAF bombing runs , 150 of them Sunday night alone, 80 to 90 percent of Hezbolah's 2,500 fighters are alive and shooting. They are still capable of firing 200 rockets a day into Israel.

We are losing the war, in part, because our actions have only gained sympathy for Hezbollah.

Polls are now showing that nearly 90 percent of Lebanese ? including many who had serious doubts about Hezbollah in the past, now support the organization's war with Israel.

The war has so elevated Hezbollah in the eyes of the world, that terrorism authority Prof. Robert A. Pape, writing in The New York Times, could without flinching compare the group to "the multidimensional American civil-rights movement of the 1960s."

Oddly, one of the lessons of the war is that the government, fearing a backlash over the deaths of soldiers, has directed an offensive which has relied on remote control warfare, effectively causing the needless deaths of hundreds of civilians in Lebanon, and, in the process, putting a million Israelis in range of Katyushas and Fajrs.

It's true, this is World War III. And we are losing.

Cabinet minister Avi Dichter, head of the Shin Bet for much of the Intifada, suggested Monday that the government is heading for a change in direction in Lebanon, and not a moment too soon.

"Curtailing to the point of halting the rockets is the quintessential mission of the IDF. The IDF will need to find the formula to carry out this mission, whether from the air or by other means.

"The fact that this hasn't happened as yet, doesn't mean that this will not happen."

We have to fight smarter. We have to use diplomacy with more skill. But we don't have the option of rolling over and playing righteous. In a world war, you have to choose a side.

Our job now is to survive.

If the Second World War taught the Jews anything, it is this: History is not, fundamentally, written by its victors. History is written, and made, by its survivors. Hezbollah knows this. All they have to do to declare victory, is to survive.

The survival of the Jews is our victory as well. But we're going to have be a whole lot smarter than we have been, to come out of this.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/747340.html

When Moshe Dayan flew to Vietnam… (Yedioth Ahronoth, 8.06)

Perhaps solution to Middle East crises lies in creating a single American address that would exert international pressure on Lebanese government. Perhaps, then, this bruised and battered government would bring salvation

In the middle of the 60's Moshe Dayan, the man and the legend, flew to Vietnam to cover the war. On ending his visit to the war trenches, the former chief-of-staff was summoned for a talk with the commanding officer of the American forces, General William Westmoreland. "Nu," his host urged him, "what were your impressions from there?" "You have already lost this war," Dayan said, "but you don't know it yet…"

"Over what and why?" responded General Westmoreland. His guest fixed his one eye on him and said: "The Vietcong has gone underground, and you are flying at an altitude of 37,000 feet. From such an altitude you can't see the trenches, tunnels and sewers where they are hiding out." The Americans, as we know, lost the war.

Similar assumptions shouldn't be applied to our situation at this stage of the war against the Hizbullah. This story relayed to me by Gad Yaacobi, however, should be told at the beginning of the military inquest the day after the war.

What's next?

The fourth week of the war is likely to be critical for the future of Israel in the coming years. So much so, that the efforts to reach a ceasefire are accelerating, and the sand in the military hourglass is running out. Another two or three days, then what? A victory campaign? An endless trauma? Will Iran set its borders (God forbid, its military as well) next to Rosh Hanikra, at the gates of Metullah? Will Hizbullah cease to exist?

While these words were being written Saturday night, visions of the end of the war were still fuzzy. Some people, such as Major General Giora Eilland, believe that the army is fighting in the wrong place: that the infantry is carrying out its offensive 8-7 kilometers from the border, that the air force is spitting fire far into Lebanese territory and into Beirut, and that the Katyusha rockets are being fired from exactly this range, where no offensive is taking place.

Two scenarios

Katyusha rockets are being fired into Israel 10 kilometer from the border. We are, therefore, likely to face two difficult and perhaps unbearable scenarios:

On the one hand, in the event that there is no ceasefire and the IDF reaches the waters of the Litani River, but the Katyusha rockets continue to be fired at the Galil and Haifa from a point beyond the Litani, the army will not go that far, sparking off a war of attrition: Here a Katyusha, there a Katyusha, the situation will be frozen, time will freeze, and the world will become apathetic. Let them kill each other over there. After all, it's only Jews killing Arabs and vise versa.

On the other hand, if there is a ceasefire, it will take a long time until an effective multi-national force with a clear mandate is assembled. The Hizbullah will most likely demand that the IDF first redeploy to its borders. The IDF, and rightfully so, will not accede to redeploy its forces before the multi-national force takes control of the south of Lebanon.

In this situation, the IDF will remain put. Where? In the security zone it left six years ago. And now as then, every two or three days a roadside bomb will go off, Hizbulla ambushes will be set up and soldiers will fall. We shall do everything in our power to prevent violating the ceasefire, and if a decision is made to respond after all, the Katyushas will be back.

The situation, to say the least, is highly complex. Perhaps, the solution lies in creating a single American address that would exert international pressure on the Lebanese government. Perhaps, then this bruised and battered government will bring the salvation.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3287009,00.html 

Defeat and victory (ynet, 8.05)

We lost because of euphoria and bragging, but we shall ultimately win because we have learned Israeli society is stronger, smarter than its political, military leadership 

We lost because on the first day of the war the prime minister said that "we shall win."

We lost because on that same day the defense minister said, "Nasrallah will not forget the name Amir Peretz."

We lost because of the euphoria and the bragging, the aggressiveness and the vindictiveness.

We lost because instead of launching an immediate offensive against Hizbullah posts, we destroyed half of Beirut.

We lost because the IDF has become accustomed to operating in modes of policing, oppression, arrest and conquest.

We lost because we praised the home front's resilience without really assisting it. We lost because we didn't win. How simple...

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3286706,00.html
 

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THE ROAD OF REVENGE

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A residential area in the southern part of Beirut. Left: 7.12, the day when the new Lebanon war started. Right: only twenty days later(8.01) after several heavy bomb attacks by IAF.

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..Fighting for Peace and

Against Capitalism..

found on manic's blog

http://blog.jinbo.net/manic/?pid=167

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Here the - interesting, but possibly controversially - opinion of one(a kind of famous) German-Jewish writer about the war in Lebanon and the position of the Germans in this case(published some days ago in the German magazine Der Spiegel):

The Harmless Children of Hezbollah?

By Henryk M. Broder

Germans are squabbling about whether Israel's military strikes against Lebanon are justified. But how else can Israel defend itself against Hezbollah rockets? By staging sit-down protests along the Israeli-Lebanese border, perhaps?

Should Israel quit defending itself?

It was more than 20 years after the end of the Second World War, during the 1960s, when Germans realized that the Nazis had murdered a large number of Jews as part of their proposed "final solution of the Jewish question." The Frankfurt Auschwitz trial, which continued for two years (1963-1965) and involved 183 court sessions, resulted in an extensive documentation of what had occurred in the concentration camp near the Polish city of Oswiecim. The German public was shocked, horrified -- and most of all, surprised.

Apparently no one had ever read Hitler's "Mein Kampf," heard Hitler's speeches, subscribed to the Nazi newspaper Stürmer or even noticed that their Jewish neighbors had "moved out" without taking the furniture.

More than a decade later, in 1978, German television aired the four-part TV series "Holocaust." Once again the Germans reacted with horror, shock, and endless surprise. The fate of the Jewish family portrayed in the film brought tears to German eyes. They asked questions for which there were no answers. "How was that possible?" And: "Why did the Jews allows themselves to be led like lambs to the slaughter? Why hadn't they defended themselves?"

This question dominated debates on the Holocaust for almost 20 years, until Daniel Goldhagen published his book "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust" in 1996. The book caused another wave of shock and horror. But this time the upheaval was not over what the book described, but about its author, who spoke of "eliminatory anti-Semitism" and claimed that the "final solution" was the logical endpoint of a development implicit in German identity.

Ever since Goldhagen's book, the debate is no longer about what the Jews experienced and didn't survive, but about what the Germans knew or didn't know -- about how many of them were more or less willing accomplices in the Holocaust. The focus of the discussions has shifted from the victims to the perpetrators, and the perpetrators are trying to present historical proof that they too were victims, at least in the end, when Dresden was bombed -- an event the political chief of the neo-Nazi NPD party has likened to the Holocaust -- and when the Gustloff, a converted cruise ship filled with German refugees, was sunk by a Soviet submarine.

Shifting the blame
 
By this point in the public conversation, Berlin-based political scientist named Ekkehard Krippendorf had already contributed an original thought. He claimed that if the Jews hadn't allowed themselves to be deported -- if they had practiced passive resistance and organized sit-down strikes -- the Germans would have rallied to their cause, the Third Reich would have been shaken to the core and the worst catastrophes would have been avoided.

So historical blame was re-distributed. In Krippendorf's analysis, the Jews were not only to blame for anti-Semitism -- there wouldn't be any anti-Semitism if there weren't any Jews -- but for the Third Reich as well. They had the power to destabilize the system and missed out on that unique opportunity.

Today the debate has advanced by a few rounds. Every day you read and hear people saying the Israelis have done to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to the Jews. Meanwhile the Germans -- or rather the "non-Jewish Germans," as the new expression goes -- take it to be their historical duty to ensure that the Jews learn from their own history and behave decently. Sociologist Wolfgang Pohrt's remark on the perpetrators who turn into probation assistants and make sure their victims don't relapse was never more topical and accurate than today.

The old question "Why didn't the Jews defend themselves?" is no longer fashionable. Today the Jews are accused of defending themselves. They're blamed for concluding from the last-attempted "final solution" that it's better to defend yourself early than to let yourself be pitied afterwards. As nice as the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin may be -- it's a place "one likes to visit," according to former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder -- a day on the beach in Tel Aviv or in Nahariya beats it hands down.

Now Germany -- where even a convicted cannibal can successfully sue for violation of his constitutional rights -- is witnessing a lively debate over the means by which Israelis should be allowed to defend their basic right to lie on the beaches of Nahariya or Tel Aviv. Politicians such as Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul from the Social Democrat party SPD, researchers such as Udo Steinbach from the Orient Institute and journalists such as Heribert Prantl from the center-left daily Süddeutsche Zeitung are among those who argue that Israel's reaction to the rocket attacks from Lebanon is exaggerated and "disproportionate." "No one is denying Israel the right to defend its borders. But rockets fired across the border don't threaten the existence of a state," writes Claudia Kühner in the Swiss daily Zürcher Tages-Anzeiger, for example.

Stop shooting and start shopping?

But if rockets designed to fly across borders don't threaten a state's existence, then who or what does? Excessive payroll fringe costs? Excessively low taxes? Too many unemployed people? Too few children? And how would the Swiss react if one of their border regions were attacked with rockets? Would they retaliate by firing "Luxemburgerli" pastries from their famous confectioner? Or would they airdrop coupons issued by the Migros grocery chain and urge their attackers to "Stop shooting and start shopping"?
 
Of course the question of a "proportionate response" is entirely justified -- and it's justified when asked about Israel or any other state. And: Those who ask the question have to be ready for an unexpected answer. It's a sign of reasonableness and moral maturity that Germans like to solve problems by sitting down at a round table to talk. The approach has worked for workplace conflicts and squabbles within clubs and associations, but it turned out to be ineffective in Northern Ireland and Kosovo. And it amounts to committing suicide for fear of dying when you're dealing with an enemy that loves death more than life.

The late King of Jordan had no qualms about using his might to put down a Palestinian uprising during "Black September" in 1970. He ordered refugee camps to be bombed. Between 3,000 and 5,000 people died. The PLO then moved its headquarters to Lebanon. Arafat moved to Cairo and later to Tunis.

Former Syrian President Hafis al-Assad, the father of Syria's present ruler, pulled no punches in fighting insurgent members of the Muslim Brotherhood. He devastated the city of Hama in February 1982, killing between 10,000 and 30,000 civilians. No one accused him of "genocide" -- and if someone had, al-Assad would have asked his critics not to meddle in the domestic affairs of his country.

When one considers what Israel is doing one has to admit that it is behaving quite moderately -- notwithstanding the bloodbath in Qana, in which dozens were killed including children. What happened in Qana just shows that the precision of high-tech wars can lead to catastrophic results. The war isn't between two regular armies, but one between an army and a guerrilla group that doesn't hesitate to use civilians as a human shield. At least the Israeli army warns the civilian population of imminent bombings by dropping leaflets, whereas Hezbollah fires Katyusha rockets without warning, in order to terrorize a civilian population.

"It'll work out somehow."

The most powerful army in the Middle East is fighting with one hand tied behind its back -- and paying for the mistakes of politicians. Everyone in Israel who had something to do with defense knew Hezbollah wasn't building holiday camps for Palestinian orphans in southern Lebanon -- it was preparing for military action. Instead of sounding the alarm because UN Resolution 1559, which calls for Hezbollah to disarm, wasn't being implemented, the choice was made to ignore the danger. The Israelis were glad to have turned their backs on the Lebanese quagmire. You could once again go shopping in Kiryat Shmona and swim in Lake Genezareth without having to hear the sounds of combat.

Of course it would have been better to disarm Hezbollah when it was still possible to do so relatively easily. But such a decision would have been difficult to justify within Israel -- and it would have caused the world to brand Israel as an aggressor. And so UN Resolution 1559 vanished into the mists of history, and the Israelis -- who can only think and plan in the short term -- said to themselves: "Ichije tov" -- "It'll work out somehow."

And since they didn't commit the necessary atrocities straight away, they're now paying twice the cost. They're fighting an enemy they underestimated and they're being pilloried as aggressors. It's not just on the nationalist and radical-left fringes of German civil society where people agree that Israel is the "new center of genocide" -- similar noises can be heard from the political center. Israel should negotiate with Hezbollah instead of shooting innocents, some commentators say.

You'd think Hezbollah was a group of children who had been playing with matches in the barn -- and that the Israelis insanely stoked the fire until the whole farm burned down. That kind of view is widespread in Germany. This is a nation where people will seriously debate whether a civilian airplane hijacked by terrorists should be pre-emptively shot down. But Israel is supposed to wait for Hezbollah to fire its rockets and then go complain to Kofi Annan.

Common roots

So the Germans' "becoming-good-again" -- predicted by essayist Elke Geisel 20 years ago -- enters its final stage. The "Holocaust" has been outsourced; now it's taking place in the Middle East. What started with the question "Why didn't you defend yourselves?" ends with the cool observation that the Jews have learned nothing from history, and that they are doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to them. And it's apparently the task of Germans to admonish and educate them. Ahmadinejad's willing executioners only want the best for Israel.

Theologian and itinerant preacher Jürgen Fliege reminds Israel of the "common cultural and religious roots" that "our ancestors laid down in the Torah." The principle of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" is "no call for abandoning restraint in an emergency situation and swearing revenge, come hell or high water," writes Fliege. According to him, what the principle really means is: "Only one soldier for one kidnapped soldier" -- everything else would be going too far. In a ludicrous reversal of cause and effect, action and reaction, perpetrator and victim, Fliege calls on the Israelis to act moderately. But why doesn't he direct his appeal at Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah? Perhaps because in Hezbollah's case the "common cultural and religious roots" are still so fresh they should be given time to develop.

Even though Germany's former Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer has now relaized that the conflict with Hezbollah and Hamas is not about "occupied territories" but about Israel's existence, Middle East expert Michael Lüders finds it lamentable that "the Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories" west of the border "are not perceived as a problem," unlike the "terror" that threatens Israel's existence. And he really does place "terror" in quotation marks -- suggesting it doesn't exist outside the subjective perception of Israelis. Western policy "in the region," he writes, creates "its own counterpowers, especially in the form of Islamic fundamentalism." With those words, Lüders justifies everything that Islamic fundamentalists do.

But what logical conclusion would have to be drawn from this insight that Lüders is still hesitant to utter? In order to eliminate the fuel of Islamic fundamentalism, the West would have to abandon Israel. The message is clearly there between the lines, and it's only a question of time before it's raised explicitly. For now, Lüders contents himself with Schadenfreude. "Even if Israel were to succeed in defeating Hezbollah and Hamas tomorrow -- the day after tomorrow there would be new groups with different names, ready to continue the struggle against the omnipotence of the Washington-Jerusalem axis."

Unlike the word "terror," Lüders doesn't place "the omnipotence of the Washington-Jerusalem axis" in quotation marks -- to him, that phenomenon is perfectly real. It used to be referred to as the "Jewish-American claim to world dominance." Today, it's not just Iranian President Ahmadinejad who is wishing for "a world without Zionism" in order to preserve world peace.

The situation is getting uncomfortable for the Israelis. They're beginning to suspect that they can't win this war, because they're dealing with an international public that demands a "proportionate" reaction even in an "asymmetrical conflict." And the appeals to respect international law and the rules of the game are always directed at Israel, never at those who believe that all means are justified in the struggle against Israel.

If the Israelis don't succeed in defeating Hamas and Hezbollah, they will have to come up with other forms of resistance. How about sit-in strikes along the Israeli-Lebanese border?

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638 ways to kill Castro (Guardian, 8.03)

The CIA's outlandish plots to bump off the Cuban dictator would put 007 to shame ... poison pills, toxic cigars and exploding molluscs. Once he even offered to shoot himself..

For nearly half a century, the CIA and Cuban exiles have been trying to devise ways to assassinate Fidel Castro, who is currently laid low in Cuba following an operation for intestinal bleeding. None of the plots, of course, succeeded, but, then, many of them would probably be rejected as too fanciful for a James Bond novel.

Fabian Escalante, who, for a time, had the job of keeping El Commandante alive, has calculated that there have been a total of 638 attempts on Castro's life. That may sound like a staggeringly high figure, but then the CIA were pretty keen on killing him. As Wayne Smith, former head of the US interests section in Havana, pointed out recently, Cuba had the effect on the US that a full moon has on a werewolf. It seems highly likely that if the CIA had had access to a werewolf, it would have tried smuggling it into the Sierra Maestra at some point over the past 40-odd years.

The most spectacular of the plots against Castro will be examined in a Channel 4 documentary entitled 638 Ways to Kill Castro, as well as in a companion book of the same name written by the now-retired Escalante - a man who, while in his post as head of the Cuban secret service, played a personal part in heading off a number of the plots. While the exploding cigar that was intended to blow up in Castro's face is perhaps the best-known of the attempts on his life, others have been equally bizarre.

Knowing his fascination for scuba-diving off the coast of Cuba, the CIA at one time invested in a large volume of Caribbean molluscs. The idea was to find a shell big enough to contain a lethal quantity of explosives, which would then be painted in colours lurid and bright enough to attract Castro's attention when he was underwater. Documents released under the Clinton administration confirm that this plan was considered but, like many others, did not make it far from the drawing-board. Another aborted plot related to Castro's underwater activities was for a diving-suit to be prepared for him that would be infected with a fungus that would cause a chronic and debilitating skin disease.

One of the reasons there have been so many attempts on his life is that he has been in power for so long. Attempts to kill Castro began almost immediately after the 1959 revolution, which brought him to power. In 1961, when Cuban exiles with the backing of the US government tried to overthrow him in the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the aim was to assassinate Fidel and Raul Castro and Che Guevara. Two years later, on the day that President Kennedy was assassinated, an agent who had been given a pen-syringe in Paris was sent to kill Castro, but failed.

On one occasion, a former lover was recruited to kill him, according to Peter Moore, producer of the new film. The woman was given poison pills by the CIA, and she hid them in her cold cream jar. But the pills melted and she decided that, all things considered, putting cold cream in Castro's mouth while he slept was a bad idea. According to this woman, Castro had already guessed that she was aiming to kill him and he duly offered her his own pistol. "I can't do it, Fidel," she told him.

No one apparently could. This former lover is far from the only person to have failed to poison Castro: at one point the CIA prepared bacterial poisons to be placed in Castro's hand-kerchief or in his tea and coffee, but nothing came of it. A CIA poison pill had to be abandoned when it failed to disintegrate in water during tests.

The most recent serious assassination attempt that we know of came in 2000 when Castro was due to visit Panama. A plot was hatched to put 200lb (90kg) of high explosives under the podium where he was due to speak. That time, Castro's personal security team carried out their own checks on the scene, and helped to abort the plot. Four men, including Luis Posada, a veteran Cuban exile and former CIA operative, were jailed as a result, but they were later given a pardon and released from jail.

As it happens, Posada is the most dedicated of those who have tried and failed to get rid of the Cuban president. He is currently in jail in El Paso, Texas, in connection with extradition attempts by Venezuela and Cuba to get him to stand trial for allegedly blowing up a Cuban airliner in 1976. His case is due to come back before the courts later this month but few imagine that he will be sent to stand trial, and he appears confident that he will be allowed to resume his retirement in Florida, a place where many of the unsuccessful would-be assassins have made their homes.

Not all the attempts on Castro's life have been fancifully complicated: many have been far simpler and owe more to the methods of the mafia who used to hang out in the casinos and hotels of Havana in the 40s and 50s, than they do to James Bond. At one time the CIA even approached underworld figures to try to carry out the killing. One of Castro's old classmates planned to shoot him dead in the street in broad daylight much in the manner of a mafia hit. One would-be sniper at the University of Havana was caught by security men. But the shooters were no more successful than the poisoners and bombers.

Officially, the US has abandoned its attempt to kill its arch-enemy, but Cuban security are not taking any chances. Any gifts sent to the ailing leader as he lies ill this week will be carefully scrutinised, just as they were when those famous exploding cigars were being constructed by the CIA's technical services department in the early 60s. (They never got to him, by the way, those cigars contaminated with botulinum toxin, but they are understood to have been made using his favourite brand. Castro gave up smoking in 1985.)

All these plots inevitably changed the way Castro lived his life. While in his early years in office, he often walked alone in the street, but that practice had to change. Since then doubles have been used, and over the decades Castro has moved between around 20 different addresses in Cuba to make it harder for any potential hitmen to reach him.

Meanwhile, jokes about Castro's apparent indestructibility have become commonplace in Cuba. One, recounted in the New Yorker this week, tells of him being given a present of a Galapagos turtle. Castro declines it after he learns that it is likely to live only 100 years. "That's the problem with pets," he says. "You get attached to them and then they die on you".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/cuba/story/0,,1835930,00.html

More articles/reports about Cuba and the current situation you can read here:

Propaganda war grips a land crippled by shortages (Guardian)

U.S. Prepares for Showdown in Cuba (AP/Guardian)

The White House and Congress, caught unaware by Fidel Castro's illness, prepared Wednesday for a possible showdown in Cuba as lawmakers drafted legislation that would give millions of dollars to dissidents who fight for democratic change.

``The message will be, `The United States stands with you,''' Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., one of the bill's authors, said in an interview. ``Be ready to assert your independence.''

There was no sign of upheaval in Cuba on Wednesday, two days after Castro stunned U.S. officials and many of his own countrymen with the news that he had temporarily ceded power to his brother, Raul, in order to undergo surgery.

The handover was a surprise to the White House and Congress, one senator said...

Please read the full article here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-5991159,00.html

What now for Cuba? A guessing game over Castro (IHT/NYT, 8.02)

And now, even the "serious" bourgeois madia, such as the German magazine Der Spiegel are starting with extreme agitating against Cuba.. They are all waiting for REGIME CHANGE, "hopefully very soon"... F*** them all!!