Victory over any opponent is the result of functionally superior values and strategies not advanced technologies as is often imagined; wars today continue to be fought by men and women. The relative strengths and weakness of combatants and cultures determine outcomes in today’s conflicts. The recent conflict in Lebanon demonstrates that military might is no match for superior strategy and tactics – superior technology is the intoxicant of technocrats and the drug of weak and incapable fighters/soldiers.

“Israel has a right to defend itself” was the inane excuse offered to the world by the Bush administration for the murder and vandalism committed by Israel in Lebanon – what price ‘defensive warfare’ in today’s world? The unprecedented vandalism and indiscriminate slaughter in Lebanon was (we are supposed to believe) the measured response to a border incursion and two kidnapped soldiers! Hundreds of dead children, wanton destruction and the criminal oil pollution of the Mediterranean coast are the results of Israel ‘defending’ itself?

For seven days each year, beginning on August 21, we celebrate the Nat Turner Rebellion, a vicious slave uprising in Virginia in 1831 when a small army of black women and men, most enslaved but some “free”, rebelled against American bigotry. Gen. Nat Turner and his rebels hoped to organize the black nation and to crush racist slavery in America. This year, during the 175th anniversary of that rebellion, we hope to celebrate for three weeks.

Today, it’s basically the same! Freedom fighters from the Black Panther Party and other organizations languish in prison after fighting against racism and injustice from about 1970 to about 1985. Like Nat Turner, these freedom fighters don’t get pardoned; they get prison! We need to liberate them from prison. In D.C. and Baltimore, we must do this for Marshall Eddie Conway and Jack Johnson, two Black Panthers imprisoned since 1970 for their political work in Baltimore. Find out how to help Marshall Eddie Conway and Jack Johnson. FOR INFORMATION, CALL THE NAT TURNER REBELLION: (202) 561-2898.

Is the Hague court a joke or have we just lost our sense of perspective? The latest indiscriminate slaughter of children and innocent civilians in Lebanon by ‘God’s chosen’ seems not to warrant the attention of the Hague court. Carla Del Ponte’s latest remonstration against the Serbian leadership for not delivering war criminals to her court seems ‘slightly’ dissociative in view of recent events. Her obsession with Serbs now borders on the pathological. Would the civilian death toll in Iraq warrant her attention? Iraq now approaches one hundred thousand innocent civilian deaths – eighty percent directly attributable to the forces of occupation!

During the past month, Hezbollah's rockets killed 18 Israeli Arabs among the 41 Israeli civilians who died in the war. Clearly, Hassan Nasrallah didn't mean to kill them. But as someone who knows that many Arabs live in northern Israel, and as someone who knows that the launchers for his inaccurate rockets cannot choose the target they will hit—the fact that it was unintended is meaningless. More than anyone, Israelis should understand Nasrallah's claims that this was "unintended," identify with the primacy he attaches to the "unintendedness" relative to the fatal results, and identify with the disjunction he creates between the rationale that is inherent in the war machine he has built and his subjective will. Read more from Israeli journalist Amira Hass….

Most people are familiar with the popular tales of the half-dead venomous snake that bit the man who saved its life and the scorpion that stung the frog that ferried it (on its back) away from floodwaters that threatened to drown it. Both stories share a similar moral; the beast remains true to its nature regardless of noble, humanitarian, mitigating factors – serpents will always strike and scorpions will always sting, regardless!

FAILURE is emblazoned on the foreheads of all those involved. The VICTORY of the day is for PEACE and there is nothing any power, state, or group could do to prevent the (future) peaceful intentions of the people. Human civilisation and the blood of innocents demand it!

Al Jezeera has the story