- Paul Mason
- 17 Jul 06, 12:43 PM
An open microphone at the G8 photocall picked up the following exchange between President Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. Blair's comments are in brackets:
BUSH: "See the irony is what they need to do is to get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over...
(BLAIR: yeah yeah...Syria)
BUSH: Right ...Felt like telling Kofi to get on the phone to Assad and make something happen.
(BLAIR: right)
BUSH: (words indistinct)..we're not blaming the Lebanese Government...
This is not a spoof! It really happened a couple of hours ago. What puzzles me is that if we are at the "trying to get Syria to do something" stage at the end of the summit, where were they at the beginning of the summit?
- Paul Mason
- 17 Jul 06, 07:51 AM
A quick trawl through the blogosphere on the Lebanon crisis produces the following. has a comprehensive blog-of-blogs, which sorts out those on the ground from those not on the ground, and includes both sides. I will be monitoring this during the conflict and want to know of anything better if you come across it.
Though this is not the first Blogging war, it remains the case that Iraq did not have a fully functioning free media + internet when invaded and therefore you were not able to get virtually realtime postings showing what happens when you bomb civilians. Now you are, and thankfully the images are below the scroll-line at Letters Apart.
Also, this is turning out to be the first Youtube war. This home from Haifa brings to life the fear of those caught up in the conflict as vividly as any news report.
Plus, in no particular order:
Canadians getting about the death of Lebanese Canadian civilians under Israeli bombardment.
Thomas Friedman's Friday , linking the rise of pro-Iran Islamist groups in the democratically elected assemblies of Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian Authority much debated during the weekend.
Robert Fisk's reporting much copied/pasted, including . And his revelation of the behind Hizbollah's offensive, plus a report that Israeli censors blacked out a Hizbollah attack on the northern military command post.
For the battle technology-heads, there is plenty of , as here.
Occasional whiffs of humour, as .
On Friday Newsnight covered the way the Lebanese and Israeli media are covering the war. We will go on trying to give you a picture of what people on the ground are hearing and seeing and how it is shaping their response to the war, particulary in Lebanon where the population has been divided over its attitude to Hizbollah. Get in touch if you are an Israeli, Palestinian or Lebanese blogger in the war zone.
