From: The Sunday Telegraph

TWO Sydney schoolboys are missing, feared dead, after the south Lebanon
village in which they were trapped was destroyed by Israeli missiles.
The father of Ali Sayed, 11, and his brother Abbas, 8, said yesterday he
held little hope the Bexley Public School students had survived Friday's
attack, which destroyed 30 homes in Aitaroun.

"It is very bad news. It is with God now," Rockdale excavator Fadel
Sayed said.

If his worst fears are realised, Ali and Abbas - who were born in Sydney
and on their first visit to Lebanon - would be the first known
Australian casualties of the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in
southern Lebanon.

According to the New York Times, "The Bush administration is rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon."

The Times article states that "The decision to quickly ship the weapons to Israel was made with relatively little debate within the Bush administration."

 Report raps Pentagon for equipment sales

By ANDREW MIGA, Associated Press WriterFri Jul 21, 11:10 PM ET

Undercover government investigators purchased sensitive surplus military equipment such as launcher mounts for shoulder-fired missiles and guided missile radar test sets from a Defense Department contractor.

Much of the equipment could be useful to terrorists, according to a draft report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

In June, two GAO investigators spent $1.1 million on such equipment at two excess property warehouses. Their purchases included several types of body armor inserts used by troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, an all-band antenna used to track aircraft, and a digital signal converter used in naval surveillance.

"The body armor could be used by terrorists or other criminal activity," noted the report, obtained Friday by The Associated Press. "Many of the other military items have weapons applications that would also be useful to terrorists."

Thousands of items that should have been destroyed were sold to the public, the report said. Much of the equipment was sold for pennies on the dollar.

The list included circuit cards used in computerized Navy systems, a cesium technology timing unit with global positioning capabilities, and 12 digital microcircuits used in F-14 Tomcat fighter aircraft.

At least 2,669 sensitive military items were sold to 79 buyers in 216 sales transactions from November 2005 to June 2006.

"DOD has not enforced security controls for preventing sensitive excess military equipment from release to the public," the report concluded. "GAO was able to purchase these items because controls broke down at virtually every step in the excess property turn-in and disposal process."

In the report, the GAO said it had briefed Pentagon officials on its findings but that the Pentagon had no response because it had not had time to perform a detailed review.

Rep. Christopher Shays (news, bio, voting record), R-Conn., chairman of the House Government Reform Committee's national security panel, will hold a hearing on the matter Tuesday. Earlier GAO reports also had found lax security controls over sensitive excess military equipment.

"During previous hearings we learned DOD was a bargain basement for would-be terrorists due to lax security screening of excess military equipment," Shays said in a statement Friday. "Based on GAO's most recent undercover investigation it looks like the store is still open."

Shays added: "We've seen partial changes that have resulted in over $34 million savings, but they still have a long way to go to make this system functional."

The GAO findings were first reported by CBS News and ABC News.

Bush has abdicated the role of the USA as a broker of peace in the Middle East by failing to call for a UN sponsored cease-fire between Israel and Hezbullah. He and America are no longer viewed as a neutral player in this debacle, but then they never were truly neutral.

On Tuesday Bush told reporters that Hezbullah was the "root cause" of the strife in the Middle East. Anyone with any knowledge of the region will tell you that the problems in this region are the result of nearly 60 years of oppression of the Palestinian People by Israel.

While the situation in the region has continued to fester, Bush has been obsessed with his disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq, a continually esculating melay of death and destruction brought on by his and his cronies lies about WMD and Iraq's non existant connection with the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Centre.

 Bush has effectively condoned the isolation of the democratically elected government of Palestine, the "kidnapping" of more than two dozen ELECTED government officials in Palistine and the depriving of the Palestinian Government of it's own tax revenues. Bush also raised no objections when Israel destroyed the only energy plant in Gaza, leaving thousands of Palestinians without electricity.

‘What is transpiring in the Holy Land is anathema to human civilization; it is an embarrassment to six billion people who are good, decent human beings. If our governments refuse to act, then so we must, for the sake of innocent and peaceful Palestinian and Israeli people, for the sake of human decency and for the sake of our future generations. Walls and fences that imprison and dehumanize cannot stand, for they help set mankind back in time to days dark and repressive, unenlightened and barbaric. Together, united as one we can become the massive tremor that helps bring walls and tyranny down.

from the pen of Richard Neville …..

‘Familiar lies are music to our nation’s ears.

Australians always punch above their weight. We are the most generous people on earth. Our soldiers are the most professional in the world. In fact, we’re so professional, that even when our troops shot at the Iraqi Trade Minister’s bodyguards in June, killing two people and wounding four others, our military carried out an investigation without bothering to interview any Iraqis. Defence Force chief, Angus Houston, found that our soldiers had “acted in accordance with their rules of engagement”. In November, when the US Marines murdered Iraqi women and children in their homes in Haditha, this action was also said to comply with the “rules of engagement”. In that case, the toll was 24. Perhaps it was this death disparity that led Air Marshall Houston to conclude, “the Australian soldiers might have been over-cautious”. While the government has agreed “in principle” to pay compensation, it has decided “in principle” not to apologise.

From the ABC …..

Hicks outcry falling on deaf ears, father says

The father of Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks says he is afraid public outcry against his son's detention is continuing to fall on deaf ears.

More than 400 people have signed an open letter that will be sent to the Prime Minister John Howard calling for Hicks's release.

Another 35,000 have signed an online petition.

‘The lives of Muslims mean nothing. They’ve become the “expendable” people whose security simply doesn’t matter. Their wholesale slaughter appears regularly on the evening news while heart-wrenching stories are spun about the suffering of Israeli fathers and mothers who lost loved ones in retaliatory attacks.

Don’t Muslims have mothers and fathers? Is it so important to demonize them that they must be stripped of every trace of humanity including parents?

The Centre for American Progress reports …..

“Americans are worried about debt and believe it is just going to get worse. "The public is more worried about falling into debt, particularly from medical bills, than about being the victim of a terrorist attack or a natural disaster." According to a new poll sponsored by the Center for American Progress, 86 percent "insist the number of Americans having trouble with household debt has gone up in the last five years." Unfortunately, their worries are well-grounded in reality. The average American savings rate in 2005 was negative 0.5 percent, "the lowest since the Great Depression."  As everyday expenses continue to rise, the problem of debt will continue to burden working Americans.

‘In Iraq, officials said Wednesday that U.S. and coalition forces as well as an increase in sectarian violence were behind the surge in civilian casualties cited in a U.N. report.

The report by the U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq said nearly 6,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in May and June in a wave of assassinations, bombings, kidnappings, torture and intimidation.

‘When we last left off, our gallant crusaders, Bush Wayne and his trusted confidant, Dick Grayson-Cheney - oil executives by day, freedom fighters by night - had earned yet another significant victory in their divinely inspired war on terror. 

Another “corner was turned” as our heroes sent on a one-way trip to paradise that diabolic villain, the elusive, brilliant mastermind of the evil Iraqi insurgency, the once-invisible man known only to us mortals as al-Zarqawi: the (unelected) leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. 

 
‘US Ambassador John Bolton said there was no moral equivalence between the civilian casualties from the Israeli raids in Lebanon and those killed in Israel from "malicious terrorist acts".

Asked to comment on the deaths in an Israeli air strike of eight Canadian citizens in southern Lebanon Sunday, he said: "it is a matter of great concern to us ...that these civilian deaths are occurring. It's a tragedy."