Very very long

Work is going to be hectic for the next couple of weeks. So I'll basically just be posting huge amounts of info in one go and not commenting much.
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Statistics about Lebanon (shared by Bruce)
1. Lebanon has 18 religious communities
2. It has 40 daily newspapers
3. It has 42 universities
4. It has over 100 banks (that is banks and not branches of a bank)
5. 70% of the students are in private schools
6. 40% of the Lebanese people are Christians (this is the highest percentall the Arab countries)
7. There's 1 doctor per 10 people in Lebanon (In Europe & America, there's1 doctor per 100 people)
8. The name LEBANON appears 75 times in the Old Testament
9. The name CEDAR (Lebanon's tree) appears 75 times too in the OldTestament!!
10. Beirut was destroyed and rebuilt 7 times (this is why it's compared toThe Phoenix - the mythic bird that rises from its own ashes).
11. There's 3.5 Million Lebanese in Lebanon
12. There's around 10 Million Lebanese outside Lebanon!!!
13. The country was occupied by over 16 countries: Egyptians-Hittites-Assyrians- Babylonians- Persians- Alexander the greats Army- the Roman Empire-Byzantine- the Arabian Peninsula-The Crusaders-the Ottoman Empire Britain- France- Israel- Syria)
14. Byblos (city in Lebanon - a stone's throw away from where the Israelis bombed a "transmission tower" in Aamchit; also where all the beaches have been destroyed as you saw a couple of emails ago) is the oldest, continuously inhabited city in the world.
15. Lebanon's name has been around for 4,000 yrs non- stop (it's the oldest country/ nation's name in the world!)
16. Lebanon is the only Asian/African country that doesn't have a desert.
17. There are 15 rivers in Lebanon (all of them coming from its ownmountains)
18. Lebanon is one of the most populated countries in its archeologicalsites, in the world!!!
19. The first alphabet was created in Byblos (city in Lebanon)
20. The only remaining temple of Jupiter (the main Roman god) is in Baalbeck, Lebanon (The City of the Sun)
21. The name of the BIBLE comes from the name of our city BYBLOS!!!
22. Lebanon is the country that has the most books written about it.
23. Lebanon is the only non-dictatorial country in the Arab world (Yes,wedo have a President!)24. Jesus Christ made his 1st miracle in Lebanon, in Sidon (The miracle ofTurning water into wine)
25. The Phoenicians (Original People of Lebanon) built the 1st boat, andthey were the first to sail ever!
26. Phoenicians also reached America long before Christopher Columbus did.
27. The 1st law school in the world was built in Lebanon, in Downtown Beirut.
28. People say that the cedars were planted by God's own hands (This is why they're called "The Cedars of God", and this is why Lebanon iscalled "God's Country on Earth")
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I don't remember who sent this to me ... I think it was my aunt but it could have been someone else... either way, the source is reliable.

Paul Saba, a dear friend and colleague, is hoping to run the ad below in the Boston Globe. I think it is an excellent ad and am sending it to you in the hope that you will sign it. If you are willing to join us, please send Paul (http://by101fd.bay101.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/compose?curmbox=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000001&a=8ae4f095393d260ad5374cf7db75de7e86c20c3bf009ca034ade46fde0c1b5df&mailto=1&to=pfs@neaccess.net&msg=7EF16C8B-AC3D-46D2-80E8-55E1EE259F5C&start=0&len=2779&src=&type=x) your name and affiliation (see disclaimer below regarding organizational affiliation).

Many thanks
Sara

Ad for The Boston Globe

End The Killing In Lebanon We call for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire.
Political negotiations should follow, not precede, a general cease-fire.
The killing must be stopped now.

Signed: Names

*Disclaimer: Individuals have signed as individuals and not on behalf of any institution or organization.
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Israelis Rain Down Deadly DU On Lebanese Civilians
Written by Paul Joseph Watson
Saturday, 29 July 2006

Esteemed depleted uranium expert Dr. Doug Rokke is pointing the finger at Israel for using deadly and illegal depleted uranium munitions against the Lebanese people which were sold to them by the U.S. government - and calls for an immediate halt to the practice.

Dr. Doug Rokke's military career spanned four decades before he was appointed as the head of the US Army's investigative team into the assessment and teaching of the dangers of depleted uranium.

Dr. Rokke has been called upon as an advisor for the Centers of Disease Control, Department of Defense, National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine, U.S Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Department of Transportation, FAA, U.S. Department of Defense. U.S. General Accounting Office, Department of Veterans Affairs, British Royal Society, British House of Lords and House of Commons, United Nations, and Presidential Special Oversight Board. Depleted uranium is a radioactive toxic poison - according to Wikipedia, "Depleted uranium is a byproduct of the enriching of natural uranium for use in nuclear reactors. When most of the fissile radioactive isotopes of uranium are removed from natural uranium, the residue is called depleted uranium."

Depleted uranium is indiscriminate in who it targets. During an appearance on the Alex Jones Show, Dr. Rokke described some of the effects of depleted uranium - a battlefield weapon that once used can never be cleaned up and remains in the atmosphere for eternity. Dr. Doug Rokke's military career spanned four decades before he was appointed as the head of the US Army's investigative team into the assessment and teaching of the dangers of depleted uranium.
Dr. Rokke has been called upon as an advisor for the Centers of Disease Control, Department of Defense, National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine, U.S Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Department of Transportation, FAA, U.S. Department of Defense. U.S. General Accounting Office, Department of Veterans Affairs, British Royal Society, British House of Lords and House of Commons, United Nations, and Presidential Special Oversight Board. Depleted uranium is a radioactive toxic poison - according to Wikipedia, "Depleted uranium is a byproduct of the enriching of natural uranium for use in nuclear reactors. When most of the fissile radioactive isotopes of uranium are removed from natural uranium, the residue is called depleted uranium."

Depleted uranium is indiscriminate in who it targets. During an appearance on the Alex Jones Show, Dr. Rokke described some of the effects of depleted uranium - a battlefield weapon that once used can never be cleaned up and remains in the atmosphere for eternity.

"What we know from first hand experience and what happened to those of us in Gulf War I and when we did our research for the US Army - the first thing that hits you is respiratory problems, then you have the rashes, then you start having permanent lung damage within a few months because of radiation and chemical toxicity, then you have neurological problems, then you have gastrointestinal problems."

"You have decalcification of the bones and the teeth - then you have all the eye problems due to the alpha and beta damage to the eyes - and then the cancers, the leukemia and everything else," said Rokke.

"It's catastrophic, the US Army briefing the Pentagon leaders prior to Gulf War II in 2002 flat out acknowledged all of the problems yet they disregard them and say that they don't exist in public."

Following the bombing of Afghanistan a scientific study by British scientists Dr. Chris Busby and Saoirse Morgan concluded that high levels of depleted uranium had contaminated Europe, having drifted on air currents from the Middle East and Central Asia.

Rokke said the Israelis first used depleted uranium munitions against the Egyptians during the Arab-Israeli war in 1973-74.

He outlined the path to the Israeli use of depleted uranium munitions, the 'civilized world's' dirty bombs, in Lebanon over the last two weeks.

Extreme birth deformities across Iraq and the Balkans are attributed to indiscriminate use of depleted uranium.

"The US Army confirmed they had used over 500 tons of uranium munitions just in the first two months in Iraq - that's the shock and awe - the US Army thoroughly confirmed in that the GBU 28 - which is a precision guided bomb if you will - 5,000 pounds of explosives contains a uranium warhead - again these are the bunker busters," said Rokke.

"Well low and behold last week guess what the United States delivered to Israel - over 100 GBU 28's to use against targets in Lebanon."

"The Army thoroughly confirmed that its a radioactive bomb and the shrapnel is there after its use and it's a problem and everything else so it's all there."

"So now we have photographic confirmation - and I want to repeat - photographic confirmation of Israeli tankers loading uranium rounds into Israeli tanks and using them in Lebanon," Rokke told Jones.

"What we have now is deliberate use of radioactive munitions, depleted uranium munitions, which are illegal according to the United Nations."

"We've got all the Lebanese being effected, all the women and children being affected, all the Israelis being effected, and the areas over there are so small you're going to have the whole region effected and contaminated."

"We knew about the GBU 28 delivery, we knew that was a given thing - now we were looking at the damage that's being done to Lebanon and all the damage indicates DU but until we actually got the full photograph of the DU round being loaded by an Israeli tank gunner we didn't have that and that came in yesterday," said Rokke.

The photographs of Israeli soldiers loading DU munitions were strangely deleted from numerous different news websites shortly after they were published but we were able to retrieve these smaller versions from the Getty archive which are captioned below.

LEBANESE BORDER, ISRAEL - JULY 14: An Israeli army soldier carries armor-piercing ammunition as he loads his tank ahead of possible action against Hezbollah militants July 14, 2006 on Israel's northern border with Lebanon. Israel has stepped up its action against Hezbollah targets in an effort to drive the Islamic militants from the border and to force the return of two soldiers captured by the group in a cross-border attack two days ago on July 12. (Photo by David Silverman/Getty Images)

LEBANESE BORDER, ISRAEL - JULY 14: Israeli army tank crew load their Merkeva tanks with armor-piercing ammunition as they prepare for possible action against Hezbollah militants July 14, 2006 on Israel's northern border with Lebanon. Israel has stepped up its action against Hezbollah targets in an effort to drive the Islamic militants from the border and to force the return of two soldiers captured by the group in a cross-border attack two days ago on July 12.

Rokke expands on Israeli use of depleted uranium mission in an article in which he states that, "the use of uranium weapons is absolutely unacceptable, and a crime against humanity. Consequently the citizens of the world and all governments must force cessation of uranium weapons use. I must demand that Israel now provide medical care to all DU casualties in Lebanon and clean up all DU contamination."

On Tuesday we carried a video of Lebanese doctors describing injuries to children as showing all the hallmarks of phosphorous - a chemical weapon also highly contentious in battlefield use. In a related development, former NSA official Wayne Madsen was told by his sources that the Israelis deliberately targeted and killed four UN observers because they had obtained knowledge of Israeli atrocities being perpetrated against the Lebanese population.

(Source: PRISONPLANET.com)
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*Reporters Without Borders in Beirut to express solidarity with Lebanese media*

Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert Ménard has gone to Beirut, where he has met with executives and editors of news media that have been the victim of Israeli air strikes including the LBC, New TV and Al Manar television stations. He also met with representatives of the National Council of media.

Since the start of the fighting, the Israeli military has destroyed the transmitters of several TV stations, killing an LBC technician, reduced the premises of Al Manar, the Hezbollah TV station, to ruins, inflicted injuries on a three-member New TV crew and killed a young woman photographer, Layal Nagib, near Tyre.

In the case of the air strikes on LBC's installations, neither the official or unofficial explanations have been in any way satisfactory. The usual Israeli excuses do not suffice, and Reporters Without Borders calls for a transparent investigation to determine who has been responsible. Despite the air strikes, the broadcasts of all of the Lebanese TV stations can again be received in Lebanon. The goal of this visit, for Reporters Without Borders, is to demonstrate its solidarity with Lebanon's journalists - regardless of the positions of the media concerned - and to stress that there can be no grounds for targeting journalists, who like all civilians are protected by the Geneva Conventions, or for targeting any news media, which - according to international conventions - cannot be viewed as military targets.

Reporters Without Borders is therefore preparing to ask the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission (IHFFC) to investigate these Israeli attacks on the grounds that they are violations of the Geneva Conventions. (This Berne-based commission was created to investigate any alleged serious violation of the conventions.)

The Reporters Without Borders secretary-general took advantage of the trip to meet with Nayla Tueni, whose father, Gebrane Tueni, the chief executive of the Arabic-language daily Al-Nahar, was murdered in a car-bombing on 12 December 2005. They spoke about the investigation in her father's case, in which the Lebanese judicial authorities have just appointed an investigating judge to handle the case.

Ménard also talked to Gisèle Khoury, the wife of Samir Kassir, a journalist with French and Lebanese dual citizenship who was killed in a bombing on 2 June 2005. In the investigation of this case, French anti-terrorism judge Jean Louis Bruguière travelled to Beirut for the first time on July 4.

Finally, Ménard was also able to see May Chidiac, the LBC presenter who was badly injured by a bomb on 25 September 2005. Despite losing a leg and an arm in the attack, she has just gone back to work as a programme host on July 25. Ménard hailed her courage. He also reiterated that the investigations into all of these bombings must be pursued to the end in order to establish who ordered them.

--
Maghreb & Middle-East Desk
Lynn TEHINI
Reporters Without Borders
5 rue Geoffroy-Marie F - 75009 Paris
33 1 44 83 84 78 -- 33 1 45 23 11 51 (fax)
middle-east@rsf.org
www.rsf.org
www.leblogmedias.com (en français)
Sections mailing list Sections@reporters-sans-frontieres.org
https://reporters-sans-frontieres.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sections
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About sponsorship
Middle East policy

To Israel with love
Aug 3rd 2006 WASHINGTON, DC

From The Economist print edition
AP

Why America gives Israel its unconditional support

ANYBODY who doubts the size of the transatlantic divide over Israel should try discussing the Middle East conflagration in Britain and then doing the same in America. Everybody watches much the same grisly footage. But, by and large, people draw very different conclusions. The emphasis in Britain is overwhelmingly on the disproportionate scale of the response. Americans are much more inclined to give Israel the benefit of the doubt‹and to blame Hizbullah. Some Jewish organisations are so confident of support for Israel that they even take out slots during news programmes, pleading for donations.

Opinion polls confirm that Americans are solidly on Israel's side. A USA Today/Gallup poll conducted on July 28th-30th showed that eight in ten Americans believed that Israel's action was justified‹though a majority were worried about the scale of the action. A plurality (44%) thought that America was doing "about the right amount" to deal with the conflict. An earlier USA Today poll found that 53% put "a great deal" of the blame for the current crisis on Hizbullah, 39% put the blame on Iran and only 15% blamed Israel. Similarly, Americans are far more likely than Europeans to side with Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A Pew Global Attitudes survey taken between March and May found that 48% of Americans said that their sympathies lay with the Israelis; only 13% were sympathetic towards the Palestinians. By contrast, in Spain for example, 9% sympathised with the Israelis and 32% with the Palestinians. The political establishment is even more firmly behind Israel than the public is. Support for Israel stretches from San Francisco liberals like Nancy Pelosi to southern-fried conservatives like Bill Frist. The House and Senate have both passed bipartisan resolutions condemning Hizbullah and affirming Congress's support for Israel. The House version passed by 410 to 8 (of which three were from districts in Michigan with concentrations of Arab-Americans). The Senate resolution, sponsored by 62 senators‹including the leaders of both parties‹passed unopposed.

Indeed, the parties are engaged in a competition to see who can be the most pro-Israeli. Twenty or so Democrats, including Ms Pelosi, the House leader, and Harry Reid, the Senate leader, demanded that Iraq's prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, retract his criticisms of Israel or have his invitation to address Congress cancelled. (Mr Maliki, strongly backed by the administration, was eventually allowed to go ahead.) Several leading Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, have addressed pro-Israeli rallies. The contrast with the simmering rage within the Labour Party over Tony Blair's support for George Bush could hardly be more marked. Pro-Israeli forces command the intellectual high ground as well as the corridors of power. Commentators such as Charles Krauthammer issue column after column ridiculing the notion of proportionality and stressing Hizbullah's responsibility for civilian casualties. Most middle-of-the-road commentators question the effectiveness, rather than the morality, of Israel's actions. Out-and-out critics of Israel are relegated to the sidelines.

Why is America so much more pro-Israeli than Europe? The most obvious answer lies in the power of two very visible political forces: the Israeli lobby (AIPAC) and the religious right. AIPAC, which has an annual budget of almost $50m, a staff of 200, 100,000 grassroots members and a decades-long history of wielding influence,is arguably the most powerful lobby in Washington, mightier even than the National Rifle Association.

"Thank God we have AIPAC, the greatest supporter and friend we have in the whole world," says Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister. The lobby, which is the centrepiece of a co-ordinated body that includespressure groups, think-tanks and fund-raising operations, produces voting statistics on congressmen that are carefully scrutinised by political donors. It also organises regular trips to Israel for congressmen and their staffs. (The Washington Post reports that Roy Blunt, the House majority whip, has been on four.) The Christian right is also solidly behind Israel. White evangelicals are significantly more pro-Israeli than Americans in general; more than half of them say they strongly sympathise with Israel. (A third of the Americans who claim sympathy with Israel say that this stems from their religious beliefs.) Two in five Americans believe that Israel was given to the Jewish people by God,and one in three say that the creation of the state of Israel was a step towards the Second Coming. Religious-right activists are trying to convert this latent sympathy into political support. John Hagee, a Texas televangelist who believes that supporting Israel is a "biblical imperative", recently founded Christians United for Israel. Last month he brought 3,500 people from across the country to Washington to cheer Israel's war against Hizbullah. Mr Hagee's brigades held numerous meetings on Capitol Hill; both Mr Bush and Mr Olmert sent messages to his rally. These pressure groups are clearly influential. Evangelical Christians make up about a quarter of the American electorate and are the bedrock of Mr Bush's support. Congressmen take on AIPAC at their peril. But they deal with well-heeled lobbies every day. And the power of the religious right can hardly explain why Democrats are so keen on Israel. Two other factors need to be considered: the war on Islamic radicalism, and deep cultural affinities between America and Israel.

Seeing themselves in Israel

Americans instinctively see events in the Middle East through the prism of September 11th 2001. They look at Hizbullah and Hamas with their Islamist slogans and masked faces and see the people who attacked America‹and they look at Israeli citizens and see themselves. In America the "war on terror" is a fact of life, constantly reiterated. The sense that America is linked with Israel in a war against Islamist extremism is reinforced by Iranian statements about wiping Israel off the surface of the earth, and by the political advance of the Islamists of Hamas in Palestine.But the biggest reason why Americans are so pro-Israel may be cultural. Americans see Israel as a plucky democracy in a sea of autocracies‹a democracy that has every right to use force to defend itself. Europeans, on the other hand, see Israel as a reminder of the atavistic forces‹from nationalism to militarism‹that it has spent the post-war years trying to grow beyond. Americans are staunch nationalists, much readier to contemplate the use of force than Europeans. A German Marshall Fund survey in 2005 found 42% of Americans strongly agreeing that "under some conditions, war is necessary to obtain justice" compared with just 11% of Europeans. A Pew survey found that the same proportion of Americans and Israelis believe in the use of pre-emptive force: 66%. Continental European figures were far lower.

Yet all this unquestioning support does not mean that America will give Israel absolute carte blanche to do whatever it wills. Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, was visibly shaken after the tragedy in Qana where at least 28 civilians, half of them children, were killed by Israeli bombs.

There are growing worries both about Israel's conduct of the war and its wider impact on the Middle East. Many of these anxieties are expressed by the "realist faction". Chuck Hagel, a Republican maverick, has given warning that America's relationship with Israel "cannot be at the expense of our Arab and Muslim relationships". Richard Haass, a State Department official under George Bush senior who now heads the Council on Foreign Relations, has laughed publicly at the president's "birth of a new Middle East" optimism about the crisis. Some of the worries extend to conservatives. Tony Blankley, a former press secretary for Newt Gingrich and a fire-breathingcolumnist for the Washington Times, says that "We ignore world opinion at our peril."

A few cracks are starting to appear. But they are still insignificant in the mighty edifice of support.

(LET'S DISPROVE THIS STATEMENT!!! LET'S BRING DOWN THIS EDIFICE ONCE AND FOR ALL!!!!!)