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Post by Kensterberg on Aug 17, 2006 15:23:38 GMT -5
What Kenny said. Highly recommended.
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Post by skvorisdeadsorta on Aug 17, 2006 15:45:32 GMT -5
Uh, RocDoc, I wish I could take a Churchill scholar seriously if only for that small fact that Winston Churchill was a huge anti-semite, so I'm a little wary of Churchill scholars telling me the sky is falling.
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Post by kmc on Aug 17, 2006 16:12:44 GMT -5
Well, now you're fucked, skvor. He's gonna bite your head off...
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Post by Galactus on Aug 17, 2006 16:21:05 GMT -5
Well, skvor technically for the anti-semite thing to matter he'd have to oppose the jews... I realise his main point is that America is right but America backs Isreal, the Jews. I'm not sure how Churchill being an anti-semite has anything at all to do with it.
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Post by kmc on Aug 17, 2006 17:03:06 GMT -5
But how does BatMantis feel about Jews?
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Post by Galactus on Aug 17, 2006 18:04:49 GMT -5
BatMantis will devour them... though BatMantis should point out that BatMantis will devour everyone.
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Post by Kensterberg on Aug 17, 2006 18:08:36 GMT -5
Can BatMantis fly? Or see? for that matter.
Which parts are bat and which parts are mantis? Enquiering minds want to know! ;D
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Post by Galactus on Aug 17, 2006 18:18:44 GMT -5
Of course BatMantis can see...no flying though. BatMantis can jump very far though and at the right angle could convince someone BatMatis is indeed flying. It's very popular with the ladies. As for the other all the important parts are Mantis but the fear that BatMantis instills is that of Mantis and Bat twofold. Does he bite? Well that's kind of silly question with al the devour talk...the only thing more menacing was El ChupaMantis or El Mantiscabra but that doesn't really roll off the toungue does it? Seriously though a giant man eating mantis conbined with El Chupcabra? You just pissed yourself. See.
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Post by Kensterberg on Aug 17, 2006 18:47:10 GMT -5
Oh god, El ChupaMantis! That is the ultimate chimera ... I think I'm gonna tell the neighbor kids about this one ... half Chupacabra, half giant Mantis, all man-eater.
Oh yeah, there's gonna be a new boogie-man this Halloween ... Michael Myers and Jason have nothing on El ChupaMantis. ;D
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Post by Dr. Drum on Aug 24, 2006 6:01:15 GMT -5
Hizbollah's reconstruction of Lebanon is winning the loyalty of disaffected Shia
Robert Fisk
The Independent
24 August 2006
Hizbollah has trumped both the UN army and the Lebanese government by pouring hundreds of millions of dollars - most of it almost certainly from Iran - into the wreckage of southern Lebanon and Beirut's destroyed southern suburbs. Its massive new reconstruction effort - free of charge to all those Lebanese whose homes were destroyed or damaged in Israel's ferocious five-week assault on the country - has won the loyalty of even the most disaffected members of the Shia community in Lebanon.
Hizbollah has made it clear that it has no intention of disarming under the UN Security Council's 1701 ceasefire resolution and yesterday afternoon, Major-General Alain Pellegrini, the commander of the UN Interim Force in southern Lebanon - which the Americans and British are relying upon to seize the guerrilla army's weapons - personally confirmed to me at his headquarters in Naqoura that "the Israelis can't ask us to disarm Hizbollah". Describing the ceasefire as "very fragile" and "very dangerous", he stated that disarming Hizbollah "is not written in the mandate".
But for now - and in the total absence of the 8,000-strong foreign military force that is intended to join UNIFIL with a supposedly "robust" mandate - Hizbollah has already won the war for "hearts and minds". Most householders in the south have received - or are receiving - a minimum initial compensation payment of $12,000 (£6,300), either for new furniture or to cover their family's rent while Hizbollah construction gangs rebuild their homes. The money is being paid in cash - almost all in crisp new $100 bills - to up to 15,000 families across Lebanon whose property was blitzed by the Israelis, a bill of $180m which is going to rise far higher when reconstruction and other compensation is paid.
In the 20sqkm of Beirut's southern suburbs which have been destroyed or badly damaged in 35 days of Israeli bombing, 500,000 residents - most of them Shia - lost their homes. But money is being poured in. For example, one Shia owning four floors of an apartment block, Hussein Selim, has already received $42,000 in cash for his possessions and lost furniture. And Hizbollah has pledged to rebuild the entire municipal area from its own - or perhaps Iran's - funds.
A frightening side to this long-term promise for believers in the UN ceasefire is that Hizbollah has encouraged its Shia population to rent homes in Khalde, south of Beirut, since it intends to delay its entire city construction project for a year - because of its conviction that the ceasefire will break down and that another Israeli-Hizbollah war will only wreck newly built homes.
Across the devastation of southern Lebanon, Hizbollah has now visited hundreds of thousands of Shia families for details of their losses. In some cases, Lebanese government officials - largely distrusted by the local population - have also made notes of compensation costs but all the authorities have done so far is to start the repair of water pipes and power lines. I found bulldozers working for Hizbollah's "Jihad al-Bena" company, clearing rubble from streets and tearing down half-destroyed houses. "We are doing this for nothing at the moment, but we know we will get paid because we trust Sheikh Hassan," a construction team leader told me. Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah leader, has promised to indemnify all survivors.
Driving more than 100 miles across the south of the country yesterday, the sheer enormity of Hizbollah's task - and of the Lebanese government's failure - becomes evident. Looking across thegreen countryside of southern Lebanon, the villages appear undamaged as they bask in thesun. But the closer you get, the more you notice vast grey fields of rubble that were once homes. Some villages - Bint Jbeil, for example, and Zibqin - have been half-destroyed.
In Zibqin itself, I found one especially poignant ruin: the bombed remains of a mosque well over 1,000 years old which the Lebanese believe contains the body of Zein Ali Yaqin, son of the Prophet Yacoub - Jacob in the Jewish faith - and grandson of the Prophet Ibrahim, or Abraham. Two of Abraham's sons - Yacoub and Ismail (Ishmael) - define the split between Islam and Judaism, the former believing God told Abraham to sacrifice Ismail and the latter contending it was Yacoub/Jacob who was to be sacrificed. Zein Ali Yaqin is thus of precious Jewish lineage - yet the casket containing his mortal remains actually moved on the floor of the shrine as Israeli bombs fell outside.
The explosives have blasted down an old façade and tumbled hundreds of rocks from the original outside wall of the green-domed mosque on the slope below, cracking open the interior walls and cascading wreckage on to the floor beside the cloth-covered tomb. "The Israelis did all this to their own man," Hussein Barakat said as he hobbled down the road below. "Everyone here knows the origin of our little shrine, but look at it now." Mr Barakat is 69 and was the only villager to remain in Zibqin when the rest of the villagers fled the Israeli bombardment. He has a wound on one finger and has been left half deaf from the sound of explosions.
Bodies of civilians and Hizbollah fighters were still being unearthed from the wreckage of southern Lebanon this week; four brothers, all members of Hizbollah it turned out, died together under Israeli fire in the eastern town of Khiam. Some civilian families searched in vain through the rubble for relatives. In Siddiqin, just east of Qana, I found one shopkeeper who had spent hours trying to discover the ruins of his two shops which had been turned to dust by aerial bombs. But he, too, believed that "Sheikh Hassan" would rebuild his home. A few miles away, I found a 65-year-old woman clambering like a cat over the pancaked roof of her home, looking for her family gold in clefts between the packed concrete.
It is Hizbollah's army of workers which has been told to rebuild these villages. The guerrilla army's political and economic organisation will hire the tens of thousands of men to reconstruct a virtual city within Beirut and turn south Lebanon's wasteland back into the farming and tobacco-growing villages that existed two months ago.
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Post by skvorisdeadsorta on Aug 24, 2006 10:13:22 GMT -5
Yay! Israel is going to go it alone against Iran!
Prepare for World War 4!
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Post by kmc on Aug 24, 2006 10:27:42 GMT -5
I am just glad I get to live in these times, so I can watch it on TV.
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Post by phil on Aug 25, 2006 8:51:22 GMT -5
Nice going geniuses !!
Lebanese oil slick hits ancient Phoenician port
Thursday, 24 August, 2006 @ 6:13 PM
Byblos, Lebanon - The Lebanese port of Byblos has survived the Romans, the Crusades and the armies of Alexander the Great but now it faces a 21st century menace, brought to its shores on a tide of war -- oil pollution.
A slick caused by Israel's bombardment of a power plant in Jiyyeh last month, dumping 15,000 tons of fuel oil that has spewed a black tide along a 87-mile stretch of the coastline.
Few places have been hit harder than Byblos, which dates back 7,000 years and lies 22 miles north of Beirut.
Thick black oil laps against the ancient stone wall of the harbor under the shadow of a 13th century watchtower. Workers use a mechanical digger to scoop it from the water and dump it into plastic tanks on the quayside.
From here it is taken to Beirut to be mixed with gravel and stone to make building material. Much of it will be used to patch up roads blown apart by Israeli bombs during the war, which ended with a United Nations-backed truce on August 14.
"Since we started, we've dredged over 100 tons of oil from these waters," said Nabil Saad of the Byblos town council. "We still have several more days' work to do."
A mile down the coast, around 100 volunteers are shoveling blackened sand from once-white beaches.
Israeli strikes on fuel storage tanks at the Jiyyeh power plant south of Beirut on July 13 and 15 led to a leaching of an estimated 10,000-15,000 tons of heavy fuel oil into the Mediterranean Sea, according to U.N. and Lebanese estimates.
Environmentalists say the slick could harm dolphins, Bluefin tuna fish and loggerhead turtles.
Baby turtles hatch on the Lebanese coast each summer and then crawl toward the sea. Campaigners fear that when they get there, some will die in the deadly black tide.
Marine Life Threatened
"The scene is horrific, the seabed is completely covered with fuel oil which will threaten marine life for many years to come if it is not contained and removed immediately" said Mohammed El-Sarji, Greenpeace activist and head of the Lebanese Union of Professional Divers who conducted several dives in Jiyyeh.
The Israeli air and sea blockade of Lebanon, imposed at the start of the 34-day conflict, significantly complicated the clean-up operation, making it impossible to assess the slick.
This week, Israel finally granted U.N. environmental experts permission for an aerial survey of the spill, described by Lebanese Environment Minister Yacoub Sarraf as the biggest environmental catastrophe in Lebanon's history.
Cleanup of a massive oil spill caused by Israeli air strikes on a fuel depot could take up to one year, the environmental group Greenpeace Mediterranean said
The United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) has compared it to a 1999 disaster off France when the tanker Erika spilled an estimated 13,000 tons of oil into the sea.
"We think it's around 15,000 tons which is a big spill by global standards," said Professor Rick Steiner of the University of Alaska, who is advising the Lebanese government on the spill.
Steiner, who has worked on some of the world's worst oil slicks including the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska, told reporters this was one of the worst he had seen.
"I was down on the coast here in Beirut this week," Steiner said. "Everything on it -- limpets, invertebrate fauna, algae, fish, crabs, mussels -- it was all dead."
Complicating the clean-up is the fact that the spill is heavy fuel oil.
"It moves in different ways from crude oil, it's thicker and it doesn't evaporate as easily," Steiner said. "This might the first time ever that seabed contamination has been documented this clearly. The oil is extensive and very toxic and we need to find a way to save the marine environment."
The spillage has spread as far north as Syria and, according to some environmentalists, has even reached eastern Turkey.
After Israel gave permission, UNEP said surveillance flights should be carried out as swiftly as possible. The United Nations has agreed an action plan to deal with the spill but says it needs to raise 50 million euros ($64.18 million) to pay for it.
Blow to Tourism
In Byblos, once a Phoenician port and one of the busiest trading posts in the eastern Mediterranean, the slick has helped decimate a tourist industry already hit by war. Beachside cafes and hotels are empty. Lounge chairs lie unused next to oily waters.
Thirty miles further north, on an island nature reserve off the coast, environmentalists have raked the sand clean in a bid to save turtles due to hatch any day now.
"There are 16 turtle nests at the reserve," said Manal Nader, director of the institute of the environment at Balamand University in northern Lebanon. "We're hoping that our action means they will survive."
Some Lebanese environmentalists say Israel should pay for the clean-up operation, although few believe this will happen.
In the meantime, the inhabitants of Byblos struggle to clean up the mess.
"The place got hammered," Steiner said. "To see this Phoenician harbor, this important archeological site covered in toxic oil, it really is heartbreaking."
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Post by phil on Aug 25, 2006 9:00:39 GMT -5
Catastrophic oil Slick pollutes eastern Mediterranean
Saturday, 5 August, 2006 @ 5:01 PM
Beirut- A major oil slick was spreading north from Lebanon along the Syrian coast last night and could devastate beaches as far away as Turkey and Cyprus, local ecologists and the United Nations have warned.
The slick, which has been growing since the start of hostilities, follows the bombing by the Israelis of fuel tanks at the Jiyyeh power station south of Beirut. Up to 35,000 tons of crude oil are believed to have escaped, making it one of the worst pollution incidents recorded in the eastern Mediterranean.
Tourist resorts along the Lebanese coast have been covered with a thick layer of sludge and fish spawning grounds have been destroyed. The slick is estimated to be more than 50 miles (80 kilometers) long and to have polluted six miles of Syrian coastline.
"Every day that passes will increase the potential damage of this tragic incident," said U.N. environment program director Achim Steiner. "The spill is rapidly taking on a regional dimension. We must also be concerned about the short- and long-term impacts on the marine environment, including the biodiversity upon which so many people depend for their livelihoods and living, via tourism and fishing."
WWF calls this catastrophic
Oil pollution in the Mediterranean following Israel's bombardment of the Lebanese Jiyeh power station has reached "catastrophic proportions", said a WWF statement in Vienna Thursday.
About 30,000 tonnes of heating oil had leaked into the sea. It could not be excluded that the oil slick would reach Turkey and Cyprus, said the WWF - Worldwide Fund for Nature - in a press release.
It said satellite photos made available by the UN Environment Programme had confirmed its fears. A 90-km-long and 10 km wide oil slick was drifting northwards from Lebanon, and had already contaminated ten kilometers of the Syrian coast.
The WWF said rare sea turtles were threatened with extinction, as well as fish stocks already decimated by over fishing, and migratory birds.
"By now the talk is of 30,000 tonnes of heating oil. That would without doubt be the biggest oil pollution in the history of the Mediterranean," said WWF expert Stephan Lutter.
He said he hoped that despite the war, cleaning work could begin as soon as possible. "The oil has been drifting in the Mediterranean for alomst three weeks. Each day more makes the situation worse for human beings and nature," warned Lutter.
If not removed, the oil would form lumps and sink to the bottom of the sea. From there, its poisons would get into the food chain, and could ultimately, via fish, get back to humans as well.
At the moment, Israel has yet to authorize planes or boats to get out there
to check out the exact magnitude of the damage
and the longer the oil stay there, the harder it will be to remove it.
Yeah ! Nice going geniuses !!
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Post by phil on Aug 25, 2006 9:08:01 GMT -5
More idiocies !!! Unexploded Cluster Bombs Prompt Fear and Fury in Lebanon
Tuesday, 22 August, 2006 @ 6:05 PM
By Declan Walsh
Four dead as mine-clearing teams fear death toll from Israeli weapons could soar
When the guns went silent in Aitta Shaab, a war-ravaged village close to the Israeli border, three children skipped through the rubble looking for a little fun.
Hurdling over lumps of crushed concrete and dodging spikes of twisted metal, Sukna, Hassan and Merwa, aged 10 to 12, paused before a curious object. Sukna picked it up. The terrifying blast flung her to the ground, thrusting metal shards into her liver. Hassan's abdomen was cut open. Merwa was hit in the leg and arm.
"We thought it was just a little ball," said Hassan with a hoarse whisper in the intensive care ward at Tyre's Jabal Amel hospital. In the next bed Sukna, a ventilator cupped to her mouth and a tangle of tubes from her arms, said even less.
Her mother watched anxiously. "The Israelis wanted to defeat Hizbullah," said Najah Saleh, 40. "But what did these children ever do to them?"
Israel may be pulling out of Lebanon but its soldiers leave behind a lethal legacy of this summer's 34-day war. The south is carpeted with unexploded cluster bombs, innocuous looking black canisters, barely larger than a torch battery, which pose a deadly threat to villagers stumbling back to their homes.
Mine-clearing teams scrambling across the region have logged 89 cluster bomb sites so far, and expect to find about 110 more. Meanwhile, casualties are being taken into hospital - four dead and 21 injured so far. Officials fear the toll could eventually stretch into the thousands.
"We already had a major landmine problem from previous Israeli invasions, but this is far worse," said Chris Clark of the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre in Tyre, standing before a map filled with flags indicating bomb sites.
Cluster bombs are permitted under international law, but UN and human rights officials claim Israel violated provisions forbidding their use in urban areas. "We're finding them in orange plantations, on streets, in cars, near hospitals - pretty much everywhere," Mr Clark said.
The bombs are ejected from artillery shells in mid-flight, showering a wide area with explosions that can kill within 10 metres (33ft). But up to a quarter fail to explode, creating minefields that kill civilians once the war is over. A decades-old campaign to ban them has failed.
Israel turned to cluster bombs in the last week of the war, apparently frustrated at the failure of conventional weapons to rout Hizbullah fighters from their foxholes. Mine-clearance teams are finding evidence pointing to their provenance: the US, the world's largest cluster bomb manufacturer, which gave Israel $2.2bn (£1.2bn) in military aid last year.
Read more - and see nice pictures !! yalibnan.com/site/archives/2006/08/unexploded_clus.php |
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