THE TWO-STEP NON-SOLUTION

Step 1: Israel invades Lebanon with the aim of destroying Hezbollah.

Step 2: The US, Israel's sponsor, calls for the "full implementation of the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords and of resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1680 (2006) that require the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so that, pursuant to the Lebanese cabinet decision of July 27, 2006, there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state."

Reality standing in the way: Israel, with its bombing campaign, has basically made Lebanon ungovernable. Maybe the IDF thinks it has good reasons for doing so; nevertheless, that is the reality on the ground. If there were "no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state," tomorrow, there would be no weapons or authority in Lebanon, period. Israel (or Syria, if Israel flinched) could just walk in and take over.

Does anyone really imagine that Hezbollah will unilaterally disarm with only the hope that the UN will make good on the resolution's promise that it will "consider further assistance in the future to contribute to the reconstruction and development of Lebanon"? Remember, Israel has not retracted its promise to "destroy Hezbollah."

Seems pretty unlikely to me.

It also seems to me that if Israel can't or won't "destroy Hezbollah" through military force, having vowed to do so, that it's not going to get permission from Hezbollah to do so through a US-sponsored "peace treaty." See billmon for further enjoyable punditry.

According to John Gibler, Oaxaca is rockin'. Do read.

MORE FROM ZEEV MAOZ

Read here -- one can read all the blather on the commentary pages without anyone realizing that Maoz is simply calling for peace, while at the same time trying to "talk the warmongerers (on his side) down" much as one would dissuade a kidnaper who has taken hostages.

From http://nkusa.org/, thanks to Polizeros:

July 30, 2006: Anti Zionist Orthodox Jews protested in Trafalgar Square, London, England against the recent invasion of Lebanon and Gaza.

Anti-semites? The worst that can be said of these people is that they are not "realistic"...

THE MAP

picture too big

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1096/3412/1600/Lebanon_map_july12-aug02.jpg

HOPEFULLY THE TWILIGHT OF CAPITALISM ZONE

This was a fun thing on Pieman's page:

OPINIONFEST ON LEBANON



There's a blog on Lebanon called Siege of Lebanon -- the Lebanese are organizing their own blogosphere, apparently. And much in that vein, the Socialist Worker has this cheery little article. I hope much of it is true; I have no idea. I'm sure we anti-capitalists would like to see the revolt against capitalism in every social formation we like. I have to wonder how much of it really amounts to anything. It seems to me that all of our philosophical idealisms regarding "dialogue" are more than thoroughly addressed by Deborah Cook's critique of Habermas. The irrelevance of dialogue before power must weigh heavily upon the Lebanese, and so to be sure they are closer than the rest of us. At any rate, "self-empowering, 'freedom-founding' acts" appear to be the only redemption from this irrelevance.

And kudos to Lenin's Tomb for finding this piece in the Heathen Science Monitor, and this quote off of the Beeb:

Israeli Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told Israeli Army Radio it would take the army 10 days to two weeks "to complete the job, and by that I mean that the area in which we want [an] international force to deploy is cleansed of Hezbollah".

Now what was that Bosnia thing all about, again?

SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN STATES THE OBVIOUS

"The U.S. does not want democracy to flourish in the region. Nor does Israel. What it wants are partners who are too weak, isolated or pliant to insist on their rights." Nevertheless, this article does contain much to debunk the standard Borg view of events.

THINGS ARE ROCKIN' IN MEXICO

or so John Ross reports. Collins and Holland concur.

CLEARING SOME VERY BASIC AIR

Lara Deeb has put out a basic primer on Hezbollah (or Hizballah) for the reader confused by the glut of speculation...

THE NEO-CON PUPPET MASTERS

Cursor.org has most recently spotlighted two blog entries on Israel's war in Lebanon: Tony Karon suggests that the driving force behind this war is office politics, not in Israel, but in Washington DC -- the neocons need another war to disguise the civil war they've started in Iraq, and this was the open war possibility... also Joshua Micah Marshall thinks that the neocons are behind this too, even from his anti-Hezbollah perspective. Meanwhile, Raw Story suggests that nobody is there to fill Bush's extra troop demands for Iraq.

May I remind the amateur analysts blogging away at this matter that the search for puppet masters (which in this case means the neocons in the White House) is always dependent upon the assumption of a pre-existing hive mentality, which I discussed in my piece on The Borg's relevance to politics. Indeed, when Alex Jones (Infowars.net) complains of "the Neocon brainwashing that the world has been subjected to over the last few years," the hive mind is implicated. Dispelling the assumption of a hive mind, which is to say thinking and acting divergently, is the antidote to the "conspiracy theory" analyses which so pessimistically outline the continuity of elite rule. No hive mind, no puppet masters. Perhaps one of the crowning aspects of the Bush Administration is its testing of the limits of this hive mind, thus the inadequacy of US troop reserves for what it wants to do, thus his lousy poll ratings, and so on...

PREMONITIONS

According to Max Blumenthal, the ceasefire is a sign that something worse will happen soon... Billmon agrees...

THIS IS THE TIME FOR ALL GOOD PEOPLE TO GET IT TOGETHER

John Ross reports from Mexico that there is a pretty serious rift in the leadership of the Zapatistas... meanwhile, two Oakland PD spies infiltrating an antiwar organization were elected to leadership positions within the organization... come on, people... you can do better..

EXPOSURE TO MARKET IMPERATIVES IN CAPITALIST HISTORY

A recent blogpost by Stan Goff comes recommended -- Goff takes the idea of "exposure to market imperatives" to signify a primary mechanism for the capitalist system's cancerous growth, and shows how it has been combatted by subversive entities such as Common Ground in this day and age. A must-read.