The Red Cross in Tyre said that five of its volunteers and three patients were wounded when Israeli aircraft attacked two ambulances on Sunday night. The attack took place near Qana when an ambulance from Tyre arrived to evacuate three patients from the border town of Tibnin.

The drivers said that two guided missiles were fired at each ambulance.

Ambulances are well-marked. How could this not be deliberate?

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Hot weather is expected to push electricity use in California Monday far beyond anything the state has seen before.

Temperatures where we are will be a mere 100 today, down from Saturday’s 117. There are bizarre rumors that temperatures by Thursday will be a frigid 88, but these outlandish claims no doubt are made by those who’ve been in the heat far too long.

California ISO tracks the power usage and issues alerts, however their servers are currently being hammered so the site is very slow. A Stage 3 alert now seems unlikely, so there will be no rolling blackouts.
St. Louis still has large areas without power after four days. Transformers blew out from the heat, then freak storms demolished buildings and power lines.

The power outage in parts of Queens, NY is now in its eighth day. NYC residents are expressing displeasure.

[tags]power outages[/tags]

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Electronic Intifada launches Electronic Lebanon

From John Robb: Israel only needs to make one mistake

As highly capable (but small) militaries throughout history have found when fighting a more numerous but less capable foe: a couple of mistakes and it is all downhill from then on.

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Saudis ask Bush to intervene in Mideast

Um, Bush already did intervene. He sent Israel more bombs and weaponry, remember?

What is it with the bizarro US media slant that the US is an innocent bystander in the invasion of Lebanon?

Israel would not have been created and Palestinians would not have been forced off their land at gunpoint without the direct help of the US. Israel receives more “foreign aid” (translation: guns and weapons) than any other country even though their per capita iincome equals that of Europe. It’s not like they need the money.

The Israeli tail does not wag the US dog. The invasion of Lebanon was done with the complete complicity of the US. The neocon agenda dovetails neatly with Zionism, the Bushies being an extreme example of an US policy that has continued unaltered for decades. US military and weaponry backs Israel so it can be the US proxy in the Middle East. That Zionism is inherently racist matters not to the US planners. But thinking that Israel is somehow going it alone in Lebanon is delusion.

Yet this delusion, deliberate or otherwise, can be found on the (pretend) left. Yesterday, Ian Masters on KPFK, a Pacifica station, actually said the US was a pitiful, helpless giant watching the Lebanon invasion happen. According to Masters, that bad ole Hezbollah and crazy Israel were duking it out while the poor little ole US of A just could not figure out what to do. Nonsense, the US is arming Israel, sending in weapons as fast as possible, blocking other countries from calling for a cease-fire, giving the ok for a week of bombings, all while making loud and bellicose noises, threatening other countries.
All of which is hardly the actions of a helpless giant but more like the actions of a co-conspirator. It’s going to blow up in their faces. Vietnam did. Afghanistan and Iraq are doing the same. Now they want to create more wars, and de-stabilize the entire Middle East in a desperate attempt to finally win a victory. Thousands of innocents will die because of their bloodthirstiness.

And they will lose.

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I have just watched on television sixty bodies being buried in a mass grave in Tyre, victims of Israeli bombing. At the same time I saw the odious Kim Howells, Foreign Office minister, arguing that a ceasefire would not solve the problem.

British diplomats at the UK Mission to the United Nations in New York - people I know personally - are putting massive effort into working against a ceasefire. They have the ultimate weapon that they and the US can veto any resolution at the Security Council, but are bending their backs into heading the sybject off the agenda.

Meanwhile Condoleezza Rice pretends she wants a ceasefire “but conditions had to be right.” Right for who, Condi? Not for Lebanon, I’m guessing.

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