By URI AVNERY - July 19/20, 2008

On Wednesday, [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah became the most important and powerful person in Lebanon. Three months after the crisis that almost caused a civil war, when [Lebanese] Prime Minister Fuad Siniora demanded that Hezbollah turn over its private communication network, Lebanon has become a unified country. Demands like the disarming of Hezbollah have become a pipe dream. Lebanon is also united in the demand for the liberation of the Shebaa farms [from Israel] and for the delivery by Israel of the maps of minefields and the deadly cluster bombs left by [Israel's] army after the second Lebanon war.

by Ted Rall - Common Dreams

When [Republican Presidential candidate and Senator John] McCain was shot down during his 23rd bombing sortie, he was happily shooting up a civilian neighborhood in the middle of a major city. Vietnamese locals beat him when they pulled him out of a local lake; yeah, that must have sucked. But I can’t help think of what would have happened to Mohammed Atta had he somehow wound up alive on a lower Manhattan street on 9/11...Maybe he would have made it[?]...But I do know this: no one would ever have considered him a war hero.

By Pervez Hoodbhoy - July 02, 2008

There is, of course, reason for people in Pakistan and across the world to feel negatively about America...[T]he United States has for decades waged illegal wars, bribed, bullied and overthrown governments, supported tyrants, undermined movements for progressive change...American hypocrisy has played into the hands of Islamic militants. They have been vigorously promoting the notion that this is a bipolar conflict of Islam...versus imperialism. Many Pakistanis, who desperately want someone to stand up to the Americans, buy into this...This is a fatal mistake...A Taliban victory would transport us into the darkest of dark ages.

America's darkest hour under George W. Bush.

July 16, 2008 - The Australian

The US's ability to defeat insurgents in Afghanistan has been thrown further into doubt after Sunday's deadly Taliban attack on a US outpost in the east of the country - an area recently touted as a counter-insurgency success...Increasingly bold attacks on US and NATO forces have forced them on to the defensive and analysts say coalition forces are now stretched to deal with deteriorating fronts both in the south and the east.

by GRAEME SMITH - July 16, 2008

More districts of Kandahar are controlled by the Taliban than by the Afghan government, according to a U.S. assessment that casts doubt on Canada's upbeat view of the war...A detailed analysis by U.S. security officials shows that foreign troops and their local allies hold sway over the core, highly populated districts of Kandahar, but the zone of government control remains a small part of the vast territory assigned to Canadian responsibility two years ago.

By Toni Solo - July, 16 2008

It may well be time to start taking NATO's role as an aspiring global enforcer of Western Bloc economic strategy more seriously. However true it may be to argue that it is still the United States government that makes the running, the US is less and less able to do so without the willing support of its allies. Their joint global military activity can well be interpreted as an effort to compensate for the growing discomfort they feel at the increasing power and influence of other countries like China and Russia, globally, and Iran and Venezuela regionally.

JERUSALEM - Shopping malls. Schools. Medical centres. Charities, orphanages. Soup kitchens. These are the latest targets in the campaign the Israeli military is waging against Hamas in the West Bank. Israeli military officials have identified Hamas’s civilian infrastructure in the West Bank as a major source of the Islamic group’s popularity, and have begun raiding and shutting down these institutions in cities like Hebron, Nablus and Qalqilyah.

Veteran Israeli peace activist, journalist and author Uri Avnery weighs in on the debate over whether a U.S./Israel attack on Iran is imminent.

By JASON STRAZIUSO AND GLEN JOHNSON - Monday, July 14, 2008

A multipronged militant assault on a small, remote U.S. base close to the Pakistan border killed nine American soldiers and wounded 15 yesterday in the deadliest attack on U.S. forces in Afghanistan in three years, officials said...The attack on the American troops began around 4:30 a.m. local time and lasted throughout the day. Militants fired machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars from homes and a mosque in the village of Wanat in the mountainous northeastern province of Kunar...

By John Pilger - Znet

An...imposing wall of silence ensures that the British public remains largely unaware of the industrial killing of civilians in Britain's modern colonial wars...[T]his is in keeping [with] what the Americans call "the national security state", which seeks the control of domestic dissent while pursuing military aggression abroad.

By ROBERT FANTINA - July 12/13, 2008

This week Canada’s Foreign Affairs Department detailed the torture that [Omar] Khadr, a Canadian citizen, has received at the hands of the U.S. government. While it is no longer news that the U.S. tortures its prisoners, the Harper government’s response to this horrific victimization of one of its own citizens is news. Mr. Harper, when asked about the situation, demonstrated nothing but loyalty to Mr. Bush...Why has every other Western nation rescued their citizens from Guantanamo, but Mr. Harper is content to let a citizen of his nation be tortured there?

By MIKE WHITNEY - July 8, 2008

While George Bush was breezing through photo-ops at the G-8 summit in Japan; his Ethiopian proxy-army in Somalia was grinding out more carnage on the streets of Mogadishu. More than 40 civilians have been killed in the last 48 hours...US foreign policy in Somalia has resulted in disaster. Millions of Somalis have been forced to flee their homes and relocate to tent cities in the south to escape the fighting.

By Uri Avnery - June 23, 2008

AND SUDDENLY: quiet. No Qassams. No mortar shells. The tanks are not rolling. The aircraft are not bombing...And nobody says: Thank God, the killing has stopped!...WHY? WHAT causes this almost unanimous reaction of disappointment? Why is there a general feeling of humiliation, almost of defeat?...The aim of Olmert's war was to topple the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip and to destroy the organization itself. This has not been attained. On the contrary, according to all reports, Hamas is stronger than ever, and its hold on the Strip is solid. Even in Israel that is not questioned.