Sunday - July 30

DISGUSTING - COWARDS - TERRORISTS PUT WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN HARMS WAY TO FURTHER THEIR GOAL. PLACING THESE PEOPLE AS HUMAN SHIELDS. HEZBOLLAH SHOULD BE 100% DISMANTLED AND THE WORLD SHOULD BE OUTRAGED AT THEIR BEHAVIOR.  INSTEAD THE WORLD WANTS TO BLAME ISRAEL?  GIVE ME A BREAK.  Israel is fighting for peace.  They didn't ask for this battle. 

Hezbollah needs to be 100% DESTROYED.  Nothing less will be acceptable.  The terrorists wanted this war and the terrorists are getting this war.  It is about time that Israel stood up to these guys and stood up to the United Nations.  The U.N. has allowed this to go on for SIX long years.  This is World War III and this is just one of many fronts.  Radical Islam has decided to declare war on all of us.  What is at stake is not only the future of Israel but the future of all freedom loving countries.  Now is not the time for a cease fire.  Now is the time to take the terrorists out.  We all WANT peace but you are not going to get peace from these terrorists.  We either take them on or we allow ourselves more attacks.
 

Israel: Hezbollah Responsible For Lebanon Qana Civilian Deaths
The Israel News Agency

Israel: Hezbollah Responsible For Lebanon Qana Civilian Deaths

Thousands of Israeli civilians take cover in bomb shelters

By Joel Leyden
Israel News Agency

Jerusalem-----July 30.....The following communication was transmitted from the Israel Defense Forces to the Israel News Agency.

"This morning, the Israel Air Force attacked Hezbollah missile launch sites in the area of the village of Qana, Lebanon. An area from which hundreds of Katusha missiles were launched towards the Israel city of Nahariya and the Israel communities in the western Galilee."

The IDF will defend the citizens of Israel from terror attacks by the Hezbollah and the responsibility for any civilian casualties in Lebanon rests with the Hezbollah who have turned the suburbs of Lebanon to a war front by firing missiles from within civilian areas.

Residents in this region in Lebanon and specifically the residents of Qana were warned several days in advance by both Israel and Lebanon radio to leave the village.

Eighteen Israelicivilians have been murdered and over 400 have been wounded from these rocket attacks which have disrupted the lives of thousands in Israel.

A Canadian UN officer serving as a military observer in the United Nations base hit by an Israel strike last Tuesday emailed his former commander that Hizbullah was using his UN post as a human shield. Major Paeta Hess von Kruedener was also clear that the Israel Air Force was not targeting the observers.

The UN commander, Major General Louis Mackenzie said in an interview with a Canadia radio station that his former soldier had written to him six days before his death about the recent developments in Lebanon. According to a report in The Jerusalem Post, Kruedener wrote that the IAF strikes near the post were “necessary”. He also noted that the IDF fire was not aimed specifically at the UN post, but rather at the terrorists.

(Photo) A young Israeli girl is evacuated from Nahariya hospital after a Hezbollah rocket attack made a direct hit on the hospital. Photo: AFP

Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post described the killings of civilians in Qana and other villages in south Lebanon as such: "What other country, when attacked in an unprovoked aggression across a recognized international frontier, is then put on a countdown clock by the world, given a limited time window in which to fight back, regardless of whether it has restored its own security? What other country sustains 2,000 indiscriminate rocket attacks into its cities--every one designed to kill, maim and terrorize civilians--and is then vilified by the world when it tries to destroy the enemy's infrastructure and strongholds with precision-guided munitions that sometimes have the unintended but unavoidable consequence of collateral civilian death and suffering?"

Krauthammer continues: "Hearing the world pass judgment on the Israel Hezbollah war as it unfolds is to live in an Orwellian moral universe. With a few significant exceptions (the leadership of the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada, and a very few others), the world--governments, the media, U.N. bureaucrats--has completely lost its moral bearings. The word that obviates all thinking and magically inverts victim into aggressor is "disproportionate" as in the universally decried "disproportionate Israeli response."

When the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor, it did not respond with a parallel "proportionate" attack on a Japanese naval base. It launched a four-year campaign that killed millions of Japanese, reduced Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki to a cinder, and turned the Japanese home islands to rubble and ruin. Disproportionate? No. When one is wantonly attacked by an aggressor, one has every right--legal and moral--to carry the fight until the aggressor is disarmed and so disabled that it cannot threaten one's security again. That's what it took with Japan.

Britain was never invaded by Germany in World War II. Did it respond to the blitz and V-1 and V-2 rockets with "proportionate" aerial bombardment of Germany? Of course not. Churchill orchestrated the greatest land invasion in history that flattened and utterly destroyed Germany, killing untold innocent German women and children in the process.

The perversity of today's international outcry lies in the fact that there is indeed a disproportion in this war, a radical moral asymmetry between Hezbollah and Israel: Hezbollah is deliberately trying to create civilian casualties on both sides while Israel is deliberately trying to minimize civilian casualties, also on both sides. In perhaps the most blatant terror campaign from the air since the London blitz, Hezbollah is raining rockets on Israeli cities and villages. These rockets are packed with ball bearings that can penetrate automobiles and shred human flesh. They are meant to kill and maim. And they do. But it is a dual campaign. Israel innocents must die in order for Israel to be terrorized. But Lebanese innocents must also die in order for Israel to be demonized, which is why Hezbollah hides its fighters, its rockets, its launchers, its entire infrastructure among civilians. Creating human shields is a war crime. It is also a Hezbollah specialty."

Krauthammer adds: "On Wednesday, CNN cameras showed destruction in Tyre. What does Israel have against Tyre and its inhabitants? Nothing. But the long-range Hezbollah rockets that have been raining terror on Haifa are based in Tyre. What is Israel to do? Leave untouched the launch sites that are deliberately placed in built-up areas? Had Israel wanted to destroy Lebanese civilian infrastructure, it would have turned out the lights in Beirut in the first hour of the war, destroying the billion-dollar power grid and setting back Lebanon 20 years. It did not do that. Instead, it attacked dual-use infrastructure- bridges, roads, airport runways--and blockaded Lebanon's ports to prevent the reinforcement and resupply of Hezbollah.

Ten-thousand Katyusha rockets are enough. Israel was not going to allow Hezbollah 10,000 more. Israel's response to Hezbollah has been to use the most precise weaponry and targeting it can. It has no interest, no desire to kill Lebanese civilians. Does anyone imagine that it could not have leveled south Lebanon, to say nothing of Beirut?

Instead, in the bitter fight against Hezbollah in south Lebanon, it has repeatedly dropped leaflets, issued warnings, sent messages by radio and even phone text to Lebanese villagers to evacuate so that they would not be harmed. Israel knows that these leaflets and warnings give the Hezbollah fighters time to escape and regroup. The advance notification as to where the next attack is coming has allowed Hezbollah to set up elaborate ambushes.

The result? Unexpectedly high Israeli infantry casualties. Moral scrupulousness paid in blood. Israel soldiers die so that Lebanese civilians will not, and who does the international community condemn for disregarding civilian life?"

Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said today that Israel had told the residents of the Lebanese village of Qana to leave before the raid. "All the residents were warned and told to leave. No one was ordered to fire on civilians and we have no policy of killing innocent people. The village and its surrounding areas were a source for launching hundreds of rockets."

Israel News Agency

Sunday Evening

Lebanon's PM thanks Hezbollah
Herald Sun ^ | 31 July 2006
 

LEBANESE Prime Minister Fouad Siniora thanked Hezbollah for its "sacrifices" in its war against Israel.

"We are in a strong position and I thank the Sayyed for his efforts," Mr Siniora said when asked about a statement by Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah calling on the Government to take advantage of Hezbollah's steadfastness against Israeli military might.

"I also thank all those who sacrifice their lives for the independence and sovereignty of Lebanon," he said.

Iran 'should prepare to fight Israel'
Herald Sun ^ | 31 July 2006
 

THE head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards called on his troops today to "prepare themselves to get even" with Israel and the US, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

"Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards and Basij should prepare themselves to get even with Zionists and Americans," General Yahya Rahim Safavi was quoted as saying.

"The supreme leader will announce the time for this," he said, referring to Iran's top cleric and commander-in-chief, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

It was not clear if the comments represented the latest shot in what Iranian officials describe as an ongoing "psychological war" with Israel and the United States, or the public revelation of an actual order for Iranian troops to mobilize for war.

Monday (July 31)

Heading for Ohio for Red Cross Training.

Tropics are about to heat up.  Could have a Florida system by the end of the week.  Hurricane season normally heats up in August.  Looks to be right on time.
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Made it to Cincinnati...started getting tired so that was it for me.  At a hotel now :)  Will head for Central Ohio tomorrow.  This is a long drive.  I was hoping not to do it alone.  :)  Next year I think I will make sure someone else is going.  Should be some good classes though...soooooooo that is good.

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Why is this war important?  This war is important because millions of people are going to be killed if we do not win this.  If we don't stop the radical Islamics then they are going to use nukes against not only Israel but other countries as well.  What is at stake here is the future of our kids, grandkids, nephews, and nieces.  This is WW III and should be fought with all our might.  Israel is showing the world how to fight a real war.  They are doing what we did in WW II.  They are out to win.  Nothing less.  These wars that are fought with political correctness are not going to get us anywhere.  We either fight to the end or we lose the war.  It is that simple.  I don't think most people realize what is at stake.  They just don't get it.
 

Tuesday (August 1)

TROPICAL STORM CHRIS FORMS IN THE ATLANTIC

Chris could strengthen as she moves towards Florida and
possibly the Gulf of Mexico.


Forecast Track of Chris

NHC believes Chris will not strengthen much.  I disagree.  I believe Chris WILL become a hurricane and could impact the United States.  Stay tuned.

Iran's President Rejects U.N. Resolution...

Israel continues to pound Lebanon and destroy the terrorists.  This is likely in order to prepare for the coming war with Iran.  There is little doubt that Iran intends to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons.  Israel MUST prevent this by destroying the nuclear infrastructure of Iran and possibly Syria.  This is likely the only way to save the world from the intentions of Iran.  Nuclear war.

Israel is fighting our war.  We should be thankful.  Let's all hope that the Hezzies are destroyed and Syria and Iran will be next.  Long war ahead...years if not decades.  Radical Islam isn't going to go away overnight.  I wouldn't be surprised if this war lasts for decades and takes on many shapes and fronts.

MOST OF THE NATION IS IN DROUGHT - AMAZING

All the yellow and orange are areas of drought.  Most of our area is now considered drought.  The only part that is not is Western Kentucky and Southeast Illinois and Indiana.  All points west are in drought.
 

Florida goes wild today on the news that Castro could be out of power...

Unfortunately his brother could be worse than him. 

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And from the EU (cowards)

EU: No intent yet to add Hizbullah to terror list

Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja says, ‘Given the sensitive situation, I don't think this is something we will be acting on now’
News Agencies

The European Union does not intend to place Hizbullah on its list of terrorist organizations for the time being, EU President Finland said on Tuesday.

"Given the sensitive situation, I don't think this is something we will be acting on now," Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja, told a news conference following an emergency meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels.

Tuomioja's comments were in response to a letter signed by 213 members of the United States Congress sent to EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana asking that the EU add Hizbullah to its terrorist list.

Russia recently published a list of 17 groups it regards as terrorist organizations and did not include the Palestinian movement Hamas or Lebanon's Hizbullah group, both of which are regarded as terrorists in Washington.
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Europe will see the face of real terror.  Worse then what has already been experienced.  They can't even find the strength to call a spade a spade.  The terrorists are not going to care about what country they attack.  They attack all of them - including their own.

Lebanese report: Hezbollah planted disabled children in basement to die
Israel Insider ^ | Aug. 1, 2006 | Israel Insider Staff & Partners
 

A French language Lebanese publication, citing an unnamed source in Hezbollah, has claimed that the organization placed a rocket launcher on the roof of the notorious building in Qana to provoke an Israeli attack and brought invalid children inside to serve as victims and blacken Israel's name.

The Lebanese magazine LIBANOSCOPIE, associated with Christian elements which support the anti-Syrian movement called the "March 14 Forces," report that Hizbullah masterminded a plan that would result in the killing of innocents in Qana, in an attempt to foil Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's "Seven Points Plan" calling for deployment of the Lebanese army in southern Lebanon and the disarming of Hizbullah. The magazine reported:

"We have it from a credible source that Hezbollah, alarmed by Siniora's plan, has concocted an incident that would help thwart the negotiations.... Hezbollah gunmen placed a rocket launcher on the roof in Qana and brought disabled children inside, in a bid to provoke a response by the Israeli Air Force. In this way, they were planning to take advantage of the death of innocents and curtail the diplomatic initiative," the site stated.

The site's editors claimed that Hezbollah staged the event because of Qana's symbolic significance: "They used Qana because the village had already turned into a symbol for massacring innocent civilians, and so they set up 'Qana 2'." The incident has indeed been dubbed "The second Qana massacre" by the Arab media.

The scenario described, which has yet to be confirmed by a named source, would explain the fact that the victims were not residents of the building and also the disproportionate number of small children and the lack of adult males among them.

Meanwhile, the Lebanese Red Cross reported on Monday that only 28 bodies, 19 of them children, were removed from the rubble. The count is half that of the 50-60 bodies still being reported by news agencies, quoting Lebanese security officials.
 

Wednesday (August 2)

TROPICAL STORM CHRIS NEARING HURRICANE STRENGTH.  CHRIS SHOULD BECOME A HURRICANE LATER THIS MORNING.

CHRIS IS LIKELY TO HIT SOUTHERN FLORIDA AND THEN COULD MOVE INTO THE GULF OF MEXICO.


Tropical Storm Chris Strengthens

 

In Jerusalem, Israel, at the Western Wall,
a special prayer marking a year since
Israel was lulled into a pullout of the Gaza Strip
and four West Bank settlements, yielding only endless terrorist
rockets in the EU/UN "Land-for-Terrorists'-Rockets" Deal with the ROP.
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Massive damage now in Lebanon.  A large area of the southern portion of Beirut has been leveled.  This is the area where the terrorists have been living and working out of.  That area has been off limits to even the Lebanon Government.  The Hezzies have been in control of that area for way to long.  Israel finally did something about it.

Israel continues to pound the terrorists.  Fighting one of the many fronts on the War on Terror.  The very life of the State of Israel is at stake.  Meanwhile Iran continues to push forward in working on their nuclear weapons.  Their goal - to destroy Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities.

Israel resumes bombardment of Beirut: reports
Australian Broadcasting Corporation ^ | 3 August 2006

Israeli warplanes have resumed the bombardment of suspected Hezbollah positions in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut, carrying out three strikes overnight, Lebanese police said.

Wednesday Evening...

Chris continues to push towards the northwest.  Hurricane watches are now in effect for portions of the Bahamas.  Chris is struggling tonight but is almost a hurricane.  He has run into some dry air.  We will have to see if this will impact the direction he is headed.  Chris still could become a hurricane if he can survive the islands and the dry air.  There is a possibility that Chris could move into the Gulf of Mexico.

Forecast Track - subject to change.  Chris is moving west/northwest tonight.
 

Thursday (August 3)

Chris is moving more west now.  Weakening - winds are down to 45 mph.  The islands could help disrupt the storm and let's HOPE that it weakens even further.  Lot of warm water ahead.  Conditions would be more favorable in the Gulf - IF Chris can survive the next 48 hours.  

From Iran this morning

Iranian President: Solution to Middle East crisis is to destroy Israel
Haaretz ^ | 8/3/06 | ap

PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Thursday the solution to the Middle East crisis was to destroy Israel, Iranian state media reported.

In a speech during an emergency meeting of Muslim leaders in Malaysia, Ahmadinejad also called for an immediate cease-fire to end the fighting between Israel and the Iranian-back group Hezbollah. "Although the main solution is for the elimination of the Zionist regime, at this stage an immediate cease-fire must be implemented," Ahmadinejad said, according to state-run television in a report posted on its Web site.

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The U.N. Dept Secretary says Hezbollah IS NOT A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION.  He says that yes Hezbollah is involved in terrorist activity and they are an organization but they are not a terrorist organization.  Once again we see the foolishness of the United Nations.  People wonder why we hate the United Nations?  THIS IS WHY.  They are incapable of telling the truth.  They can't even SEE the truth.  This is what is going to cause more deaths. 

Thursday Afternoon...severe storms here

Apparent tornado hit 2 miles from me here in Mt Vernon, Ohio.  Some roofs off of businesses and a lot of trees down in the city of Mt Vernon.  Tornado sirens blew on the campus where I am taking classes for the Red Cross.  Close call for the campus.  I am staying in Mt Vernon at a hotel.

Friday (August 4)

WTNT33 KNHC 041138
TCPAT3
BULLETIN
TROPICAL DEPRESSION CHRIS INTERMEDIATE ADVISORY NUMBER  15A
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL   AL032006
800 AM AST FRI AUG 04 2006

...CHRIS WEAKENS TO A TROPICAL DEPRESSION...
 

NATO IS AT WAR


 

Canada Report

Seriously, this means war

GLOBE AND MAIL

Seriously, this means war

CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD From Friday's Globe and Mail

The bleeding was barely stopped when the bleating began.

On the day of Canada's most appalling losses yet in Afghanistan -- four soldiers killed in three separate but linked attacks and 10 injured -- it took but an hour for the open-line radio talk shows in Toronto to fill up with the cries of those who would pull the plug on the mission there, yank the troops home immediately, have the nation revert to its mythical, if cherished, peacekeeping role and go back to that sterling foreign policy of keeping fingers crossed.

I thought of what Lieutenant-Colonel John Conrad, the boss of the combat logistics arm of the Canadian battle group, said not so long ago in Kandahar.

We were talking about the Canadian mission when Col. Conrad said, "Each man and woman has asked, 'Why am I here? Why did I volunteer?' " but most, he guessed, had come to the same conclusion he had. "For all that we're here to help Afghans," he said, "we're also here to protect our country."

It was only later, when I was going through the notes of that conversation, that I realized he was the first person I know to put it so squarely.

If it is a thought that might offer some comfort to the families of the dead -- that their sons did not die only in service of a Biblical-era faraway foreign land where violence is as reflexive as breathing, but also in service to our own -- it might also stand as a reminder that notwithstanding the absence of a formal declaration, Canada is at war.

So are the other seven nations of the now-NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan, and so are the Americans and British in Iraq, and so is Israel in Lebanon.

So are the Western democracies which do not have troops in any of these hot spots, but which also prize freedom, opportunity, education, tolerance and diversity.

And so in his way was Tarek Fatah, the moderate Canadian Muslim who this week resigned from the Muslim Canadian Congress, citing threats and a climate of intimidation that led him to fear for his safety and the safety of his wife and children.

The common denominator is thuggery -- whether it is the Taliban yesterday gleefully claiming credit for the spate of attacks that also left 21 Afghan civilians dead and 13 wounded, or Hezbollah launching rockets from private homes, or Mr. Fatah being labelled an apostate by those who know full well the peril that engenders -- and a nihilism so naked it is stunning.

The rocket-propelled grenade attack that yesterday left three Canadians dead, for instance, was launched from a school. In most civilized parts of the planet, schools are places of learning, places for children, places of peace; to the Taliban, and to all those who would keep their fellow Muslims in perpetual poverty and ignorance so that they might be made into martyrs, schools are buildings to be burned down, trashed, defiled and turned into launch pads by those who, if they understand nothing else about the West, understand that Western soldiers, with their regard for education and soft spot for children, must struggle on some level to seriously regard the school as a likely spot to set up an ambush.

Some of the fighters in Afghanistan are hardline Taliban ideologues, and some are drugs bosses and tribal warlords who align themselves out of convenience.

But some are from other countries, fighting for a pan-Islamic cause. The first time I was in Kandahar, last spring, two would-be suicide bombers blew themselves up prematurely in a graveyard: They were from Pakistan, as documents and cellphones retrieved from their bodies proved. When I was in Kandahar last month, in what has become known as the Battle of Pashmul and was also the site of yesterday's attacks, one of the arrested fighters was a Chechen man.

What business does a Chechen have trying to kill Canadians in Afghanistan? Oh yes, I forgot: The glory of Islam.

Mr. Fatah's sin was to be an outspoken liberal in a religion that has increasingly little stomach for it, even in Canada.

His resignation came after he was singled out in a recent e-mail campaign aimed at painting him as an illegitimate voice for Muslims, but he says the threats against him -- including an instance where he was surrounded by a mob of shrieking young Muslim men in Toronto -- go back years. It appears he was particularly unsettled by a June 30 article, written by Mohamed Elmasry, the director of the Canadian Islamic Congress. In the piece, headlined "Smearing Islam and Bashing Muslims, Who and Why," Mr. Fatah was identified, as was my fellow Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente, as one of four people who are anti-Islam.

Mr. Elmasry was describing a panel discussion, held in the wake of the arrest of 17 Muslim men in Toronto alleged to be terrorists, at which Mr. Fatah participated; Mr. Elmasry directly accused him of smearing Islam and bashing Muslims, which Mr. Fatah regards "as close as one can get to issuing a death threat, as it places me as an apostate and blasphemer."

Mr. Elmasry had a busy few weeks there: More than a month after I wrote a column about the arrests of the Toronto 17, and after my byline conveniently had appeared from Afghanistan, he devoted an entire article to me in which he described me as having made a name "by writing about Islam and Muslims in a manner that consistently lacks accuracy, fairness and balance." While I was in Kandahar, a reader alerted me that the piece had been picked up by a U.S. website and an Egyptian newspaper: Golly, I wonder what Mr. Elmasry was hoping for with that?

My point is, the war is on. Canada did not declare it, but it has come to our shores as surely as it came to Manhattan's five years ago. Our soldiers are dying for it, in Afghanistan, but they are also fighting for Canadians.

The least we can do -- and we do, in this country, prefer to do the least -- is stiffen our collective resolve, face up to the truth, and recognize that the soldiers' terrible sacrifice is in our name.

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