Ok - so now you seem to be saying that you would really like it if it were the case that Lebanon could sue the US for the weapons sales to Israel. But here is what you initially posted In this you are saying that the Lebanese government has the right to sue the US government. Now, maybe you meant that they have the right to try to sue the US government. I am not an expert in international law so I don't know if this is true. However, I do not believe they could even try; I do not believe that there is any statute in international law which would allow Lebanon to sue the US government under the present circumstances. I will ask you again - if you know of some precedent for this, please cite it. I totally reject the idea that wartime reparations provide any type of precedent for the type of action you are suggesting. The two cases are not related.
SA Where I come from we have an expression: "Your rethoric is perfect but your facts stink". I also am remined of another expression: "Actions speak louder than words" If the impotent Christians in the Lebanese government would have abided by the UN resolution and disarmed the Muslim agitotors then none of this would have happened. It is as simple as that. And the actions of the Muslims in other countries tells me that it ain't the Jews that are agitating. Don't bother to reply, you are on ignore now and I am done with this subject. psycho analitics
Really it is not that simple. Israel backed by the US, will shortly invade Iraq. They will blow up the weapons and facilities across that country, decimating Iraq's army in the process. They will do this because it would be political suicide for Bush to send our troops there now. Depending on what happens, things could escalate and we might see the use of tactical nuclear weapons for the first time in the middle east. Personally I hope they knock Iraq into the stone age. Thank you Steve
Uhhh, I think you mean Iran. Our nation building in Afghanistan is floundering. Our nation building in Iraq is floundering. Now we are going to destroy Iran. What a plan for peace in the Middle East....
Israel's war separates the decent left from the indecent left By Dennis Prager Tuesday, July 25, 2006 I believe the Left has been wrong on virtually every great moral issue in the last 30 years. During that period, it was wrong on the Cold War -- it devoted far more energy to fighting anti-communism than to fighting communism. It was wrong for attacking Israel for its destruction of Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor. It was wrong on welfare. It was wrong in its demanding less morally and intellectually from black Americans than from all other Americans. It was wrong in advocating bilingual education for children of immigrants. It was wrong in generally holding American society rather than violent criminals responsible for violent crime. It was wrong in imposing its view on abortion on America through the courts rather than through the democratic process. It was wrong in teaching a generation of men and women that men and women differ because of socialization not because of innate sex differences. It was wrong in reducing sex to a purely biological and health issue for a generation of young Americans. It was wrong in identifying "flag waving" with fascism. It was wrong in supporting the teachers' unions rather than students and educational reform. It was wrong in allying itself with trial lawyers and blocking tort reform. It was wrong in blocking the military from recruiting on campuses and teaching a generation of young Americans that "war is not the answer" when war is at times the one moral answer. It was wrong in arguing that America is not based on Judeo-Christian values, but on secular ones like Western Europe. It was wrong in advancing multiculturalism, which is an extreme form of moral relativism that holds all cultures morally identical and which is a doctrine designed to undermine American national identity. In just about every instance, one could say that the Left was foolish, the Left was naive, the Left was wrong, even that the Left was dangerous. But in all of those cases, one could imagine a decent person holding any or even all of these positions. But we now have a bright line that divides the decent -- albeit usually wrong -- Left from the indecent Left. The Left's anti-Israel positions until now were based, at least in theory, on its opposition to Israeli occupation of Arab land and its belief in the "cycle of violence" between Israel and its enemies. However, this time there is no occupied land involved and the violence is not a cycle with its implied lack of a beginning. There is a clear aggressor -- a terror organization devoted to Islamicizing the Middle East and annihilating Israel -- and no occupation. That is why the Israeli Left is almost universally in favor of Israel's war against Hezbollah. Amos Oz, probably Israel's best-known novelist and leading spokesman of its Left, a lifetime critic of Israeli policy vis a vis the Palestinians, wrote in the Los Angeles Times: "Many times in the past, the Israeli peace movement has criticized Israeli military operations. Not this time. . . . This time, Israel is not invading Lebanon. It is defending itself from daily harassment and bombardment of dozens of our towns and villages. . . . There can be no moral equation between Hezbollah and Israel. Hezbollah is targeting Israeli civilians wherever they are, while Israel is targeting mostly Hezbollah." Likewise, another longtime liberal critic of Israel, historian and Boston Globe columnist James Carroll, wrote last week: "As one who rejects war, I regret Israel's heavy bombing of Lebanon last week, as I deplored Israeli attacks in population centers and on infrastructure in Gaza. . . . Yet, given the rejectionism of both Hamas and Hezbollah . . . is the path of negotiations actually open to Israel? . . . There is no moral equivalence between enemies here. . . . It seems urgent [to] reaffirm foundational support for Israel. . . . The fury of anti-Israel rage among Arabs and Muslims is accounted for only partially by the present conflict. It resuscitates . . . the long European habit of scapegoating Jews. . . . No one should think that embedded contempt for Jews -- anti-Semitism -- is not part of the current crisis." Amos Oz and James Carroll are men of the Left who have been tested and passed the most clarifying moral litmus test of our time -- Israel's fight for existence against the primitives, fanatics and sadists in Hezbollah and Hamas and elsewhere in the Arab/Muslim world who wish to destroy it. Anyone on the Left who cannot see this is either bad, a useful idiot for Islamic terrorists, anti-Semitic or all three. There is no other explanation for morally condemning Israel's war on Hezbollah.
. July 24, 2006 SouthAmerica: Yesterday I mentioned on this message board the following: âToday, July 23, 2006, A Folha de Sao Paulo had a front page article saying that: âMore than 40 social organizations and unions of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, countries that have a point of common land boundaries, they ârejected todayâ at the Ciudad del Este the supposed American militarized zone in that area. âWe are building an union of social movements to denounce the effects of the American militarization in that regionâ, said Orlando Castillo, member of the service Peace Justice (Serpaj) of Paraguay. The Forum started on Friday and more than 2,000 people who are attending the event are demanding that American troops leave the areaâ¦. And so onâ¦..â **** SouthAmerica: Today a changed the channel on my television for a minute during a commercial break to the channel next door to see what they were talking about â that was Fox News on cable and they were broadcasting a program called âOn the Record with Greta Van Susteremâ and she had a guest on her program that was talking about South America â Her guest was Marc Ginsberg â a former US ambassador to Marroco. Fox News did not waste time about the United States defeat in South America over the weekend â when American troops were asked to leave the area. Marc Ginsberg it is obviously a âMoronâ and on his speech he was trying to add fuel to the fire in South America. He obviously does not have an idea about the relationship that Jews and Arabs have in Brazil. I remember years ago reading articles on The New York Times documenting how Jews and Arabs live in harmony in Brazil and if they could live so well together in Brazil why they could not get along on other parts of the world. In Rio de Janeiro and in Sao Paulo the Jewish business district was located right next door where the Arabs also had their business district. Both groups were in the same area of town and they did business together, and it was not unusual to see a Jew and an Arab having a business lunch together â these two groups always have lived in harmony in Brazil. But that can change very fast with what is going on in the Middle East between Israel and Lebanon and idiots such as Marc Ginsberg going around and saying that American troops have to interfere in the area where Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina meet. The 3 countries have made very clear to the United States that they donât want American troops in the area. But Marc Ginsberg was saying that there are about 30,000 Arabs in that area who are sympathizers of Hezbollah. It seems to me that the Bush administration is not happy in screwing up only the Middle East beyond anyoneâs imagination â they also want to screw up South America. Does Idiots at Fox News and the most incompetent US government in US history should stop interfering in South Americaâs business. They should forget that South America even exists, because from the perspective from South America they wish that the US would get the point that US influence is declining at the speed of light and South America moved forward into the future â the new ball game it is called China. For South Americans the US is a story of the past and for the history books. I know these idiots donât have a clue about what is happening in South America including Brazil â today we have harmony in Brazil between the two groups (Jews and Arabs) but would not take long for things to change â and when things change the violence will be against the Jews, you can bet on that. Brazil has a large Syrian/Lebanese population, but just a hand full of Jews. By the way, the Brazilian government just sent a thank you note to the Syrian government, because the Syrians helped the Brazilian government get hundreds of Brazilian nationals out of Lebanon in the last few days. I know American foreign policy is completely screw-up today not only on the Middle East, but also around the world â American foreign policy is a disaster and it is run by incompetent people and amateurs. The Brazilians would prefer that the United States or anybody else for that matter let both groups alone in Brazil and let them continue living in peace and harmony. ********************************* July 23, 2006 SouthAmerica: Reply to Sam 123 I have news for you. The United States has not invented the capitalist system â even tough you seem to believe that Americans invented the capitalist system. You said: âYouâll surely blame America if Brazil falls.â Wrong again. If you have the chance to read the article that I wrote about the United States decline and the rise of China in Latin America â the article is listed somewhere on this thread when someone asked me the location of few of my articles on the web â After the collapse of the Soviet Union the United States started neglecting South America including Brazil. Instead of crying over spilled milk as you are claiming Brazil moved forward and found other markets around the world and made new friends. Today, from the Brazilian perspective the US became obsolete and the US is the one that seems like a cry-baby about the entire situation. â We lost our influence all over South America â they must hate us. Today, July 23, 2006, A Folha de Sao Paulo had a front page article saying that: âMore than 40 social organizations and unions of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, countries that have a point of common land boundaries, they ârejected todayâ at the Ciudad del Este the supposed American militarized zone in that area. âWe are building an union of social movements to denounce the effects of the American militarization in that regionâ, said Orlando Castillo, member of the service Peace Justice (Serpaj) of Paraguay. The Forum started on Friday and more than 2,000 people who are attending the event are demanding that American troops leave the areaâ¦. And so onâ¦.. This kind of news related to declining American influence in South America is not even make the news here in the US since there are so much other things happening around the world â basically, American influence is declining everywhere. Again, the Brazilians are not the whiners â the US is the main whiner around the world. **************** âOrganizações rejeitam presença dos EUA na TrÃplice Fronteiraâ da Efe, em Assunção A Folha de Sao Paulo â July 22, 2006 Mais de 40 organizações sociais e sindicais do Brasil, Argentina e Paraguai, paÃses que se encontram na região da TrÃplice Fronteira, rejeitaram hoje em Ciudad del Este a suposta militarização americana na área. "Estamos construindo uma unidade de movimentos sociais para denunciar os efeitos da militarização americana na região", disse Orlando Castillo, membro do Serviço Paz e Justiça (Serpaj) do Paraguai. O 2º Fórum Social da TrÃplice Fronteira começou na sexta-feira com uma mobilização de mais de 2.000 pessoas em Ciudad del Este, a 330 quilômetros de Assunção, para exigir a retirada de tropas dos EUA que levam ajuda humanitária à região. O fórum será encerrado amanhã e tem como lema "Pela Vida, a Soberania e a Integração Solidária dos Povos, Lutamos contra a Militarização, a DÃvida Externa, a Alca e os Tratados de Livre-Comércio". Castillo afirmou que um dos temas analisados foi a suposta tentativa de Washington de dominar os recursos naturais da região, principalmente o aqüÃfero Guarani. Segundo um comunicado da organização do fórum, o aqüÃfero Guarani --que abrange Brasil, Argentina, Paraguai e Uruguai-- é "a maior reserva de água doce do mundo, que pode abastecer mais de 6 bilhões de pessoas durante 200 anos", e um dos recursos cobiçados pelos Estados Unidos. O 2º Fórum Social da TrÃplice Fronteira enumerou possÃveis estratégias de "resistência e luta coordenada" contra polÃticas do Banco Mundial (BM), da Alca e dos tratados de livre-comércio. Participaram do fórum representantes da Central de Trabalhadores da Argentina (CTA), Movimento pela Paz e Solidariedade da Argentina, Sindicato de Jornalistas do Paraguai (SPP), Mesa Coordenadora de Organizações Camponesas (MCNOC) do Paraguai, e a Rede Brasileira de Integração dos Povos (Rebrip), entre outros. .
Southamerica, you were commenting on how the Americans had 100 lawyers to 1 Japanese lawyer. Guess what these American parasites have been up to? They've been busy making it easy for Patent trolls to generate useless and parasitic lawsuits on baseless patents. Americans need to be more scared of their lawyers than the taliban, their lawyers are coming up with increasingly innovative methods to leech off and kill productive manufacturing companies. http://security.ithub.com/article/I...You+Do+Before+Someone+Else+Does/167480_1.aspx Intellectual Security: Patent Everything You Do, Before Someone Else Does REVIEW DATE: 05-DEC-2005 By Rob Garretson Fortified IP portfolios are the best defense against proliferating "business-method" patents. Do you ever go online to reorder office supplies from Staples or OfficeMax? Are you a regular customer of the Internet grocery service Peapod.com? Then Kenn Fischburg wants a piece of the action.Last May, Fischburg was awarded U.S. Patent No. 6,895,389 for his "Internet Procurement Method." His patent describes a system that lets customers access an online order form that uses stored records of previous purchases and other data to simplify the buying process. He began developing the idea in 1998, to help his steady customers reorder goods on the Internet. Like Amazon.com's "1-click" purchase and Priceline.com's name-your-own-price reverse auction, Fischburg's is one of hundreds of "business-method" patents awarded each year that give the inventor a 20-year monopoly, not on the design of a machine or a physical product, but on a way of doing business. Fischburg's lawyers have begun contacting companies they believe have been using his innovation without the now-necessary license. "The U.S. Patent and Trade Office is a tremendous reason to love the U.S.," says Fischburg, owner of Consumers Interstate Corp., a $20 million seller of office, packaging and janitorial supplies based in Norwich, Conn. "The fact that you can apply for a patent and get protectionâit's tremendous. It's what makes a person want to invent something."Though it may have been more innovative when he filed his patent application, in September 2000, Fischburg's method for simplifying online orders based on past purchases is fairly common among e-commerce sites today. Still, he and his lawyers hope to assert his new intellectual-property rights broadly across a range of industries, not just with his competitors in the office-supply business. "It appears that [Staples and OfficeMax] are using the method," Fischburg says. "It's a legal exercise as to how close people like Peapod are to the claim. But they come close."Fischburg is not alone in his quest to assert intellectual-property rights over a business method that became commonplace in the time it took the PTO to grant his patent. His was among 7,800 applications in 2000 that fell into the PTO's Class 705, which covers most business methods. Among those applications was another patent, awarded to Amazon.com just last month, for its method of encouraging users to write reviews of products they've bought. On that same day, Amazon was also awarded a patent on its technique for ranking multiple-category search results, and another for its method for creating communities (called "purchase circles"), for which it filed patent applications in March 2003 and August 1999, respectively. What is a troll? The term "patent troll" is widely used in IP law circles, but its meaning varies depending on which side of the subpoena you're on. "Those unsavory characters who buy up obscure patents to extort money from innovative and law-abiding companies." âSteven Pearlstein, columnist, The Washington Post "Someone who takes a single patent or a small number of patents and makes an assertion of clearly dubious merit either because the patent is invalid on its face or does not bear on the product it's being asserted against, typically seeking nuisance value." âPeter Detkin, managing director, Intellectual Ventures LLC, who while an assistant general counsel at Intel Corp. coined the term "patent troll" A company that "exists solely to license its patents or sue to enforce its patents, and not to develop or commercialize them." â Jerome B. Friedman, U.S. District Court Judge, describing MercExchange, the Great Falls, Va., company and its injunction against eBay Inc.'s "Buy It Now" feature, found to infringe on its three patents Troll (trol) n. In Norse Mythology, repulsive dwarfs who lived in caves or other hidden places. They would steal children and property but hated noise. âThe New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. Houghton Mifflin Co., 2002
Hundreds of flights started by the American Taxpayer to Resupply the Israeli Armed forces with the latest laser guided bombs and long range missiles to kill from far away ( For free of course ) <a href="http://imageshack.us"><img src="http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/8396/airliftarmsno2.jpg" border="0" alt="Image Hosted by ImageShack.us" /></a> In the meantime Syria initiates a massive convoy of trucks filled with large stones for the Palestinians. These are the trucks that got through before Israel bombed every single road and bridge ( to be later rebuilt by American "aid". Which is a no bid contract for Halliburton at 100 x the actual cost to be repaid by the Palestinians at a later date at 100% interest per year) <a href="http://imageshack.us"><img src="http://img239.imageshack.us/img239/1475/shipmentstoneszi8.jpg" border="0" alt="Image Hosted by ImageShack.us" /></a>
In testimony before the House International Relations Committee in 2002, Mark F. Wong, the State Departmentâs Coordinator for Counterterrorism warned Congress, âHezbollah has a global reach and a bloody track record in this hemisphere.â The list of Hezbollah activities in Latin America is extensive: The greatest hub of terrorist activity in Latin America is in the border region of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, known as the Triple Frontier or Tri-Border Area, which has long been known as a haven for smuggling, counterfeiting, money laundering and drug trafficking. Officials estimate that at least 30,000 Middle Eastern immigrants reside in the Triple Frontier, with Hezbollah being the most active and dominant group in the area. In a detailed October 2002 New Yorker report, journalist Jeffrey Goldberg found that many immigrants in the area have established business with the help of loans provided by Hezbollah, businesses which are âtaxedâ by Hezbollah at 20 percent of gross revenues after the loans are paid off. Erick Stakelbeck of the Investigative Project cites Paraguayan Interior Minister Julio Cesar Fanego as saying that Hezbollah received anywhere from $50-$500 million from illegal activities in the Triple Frontier from 1999 to 2001 alone. http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=22249 Undocumented migrants from the Middle East and China--among others--had been living in the Tri-Border region between Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay; that is, until the police from these countries began to pursue smugglers and organizations with suspected links to Middle Eastern terror groups like Hezbollah and Gamaa al-Islamiyya. Some of these people could have been among those who emigrated to Venezuela. Two years ago, when General Marcos Ferreira resigned his position as chief of Venezuela's Border Patrol, he told the press that his government had laundered the identities of hundreds of Colombians and Middle-Easterners described as "Syrians." http://www.heritage.org/Research/LatinAmerica/hl859.cfm