The Daily Background

Middle East Turmoil
Current death toll: 355 killed by Israel, 34 killed by Hezbollah (about half of whom are civilians). Both sides have repeatedly violated international law, and the White House’s support for Israel has not changed.

Syria, Syria, Syria. That’s the latest turn that the middle east conflict has taken.

The irony is this. While the US says it wants Syria to stop supporting Hezbollah, and there are suggestions that the neighbor of Lebanon might step in with a military force to stop Hezbollah from attacking Israel, but after the US forced Syrian military forces to leave Lebanon, this is not possible. Not to mention the fact that with Israel in southern Lebanon, there’s no chance Syrians could go in and try to placate the situation.

Still, Syria is interested in talking with the US (Secretary Rice arrives in Israel today– assuming she hasn’t put it off again). And other Arab nations in the region think that Syria should take a leading position. The idiot representing us in the United Nations, diplomacy-hater that he is has said that it is “hard to see” anything that could be good that might come out of US-Syrian talks, but then again nobody takes him seriously anyways (maybe they will if the Senate confirms him a year late this week, but it’s doubtful he’ll ever be taken seriously, because he once said that the UN doesn’t exist– multiformat video).

So what does Syria want out of the deal? Well in exchange for negotiation as a middleman between Hezbollah and everyone else (Hezbollah says its ready to talk), the last article linked to suggests, Syria is interested in regaining territory it wants back from Lebanon, after the White House demanded that it pull out of the region last year.

According to reports the White House has secretly approved another week for Israel to pound Lebanon.

While Israel is opposed to a United Nations force in Lebanon, a NATO one would be okay according to them. President Bush’s buddies the Saudis think that the US should intervene.

Meanwhile, Senator John Kerry has said that if he were President the situation in the middle east would have never occurred. Kerry isn’t the only one who’s trying to use the situation for political gain; so is the Vice President.

The good news from Iraq– More than 60 were killed, and over 200 wounded yesterday.

Bits and Pieces
Gas prices– Associated Press reports that “Nationwide gas prices hit an all-time high in the last two weeks, rising nearly 2 cents to just over $3 per gallon.” While the article I just linked to cites the highest gas price in the nation as $3.28/G, GasPriceWatch says that the highest is in fact $3.64/G.

Stem cells– Stephen Hawking, widely regarded to be the most brilliant scientist alive today, who is tragically cursed with the extremely, extremely debilitating Lou Gehrig’s disease (Wikipedia bio), has spoken out against President Bush’s veto of federally funded embryonic stem cell research a few days ago, saying that the rest of the world should not follow Bush’s “reactionary” actions against medicine and science.

And finally…
Watch Dennis Hastert makes a fool of himself on Fox.

And also…
Does North Korea’s super-secretive dictator Kim Jong Il have a super-secret wife?

Filed under: Z-TDB Blog