Interesting Stuff

Hezbollah and Israel are still firing rockets/missiles at each other. The Arab world has called on Israel to restrain itself, though the United States appears to support the Israeli retribution. This could very well turn into a fairly significant war, since the official Lebanon government still seems to be doing nothing about the conflict.

In the meantime, the UN Security council has unanimously voted to impose sanctions against North Korea forbidding any country from importing or exporting missile-related materials into/out of the country. To be perfectly honest, this is a pleasant surprise for me; I expected the UN’s response to be much more ambiguous. This should send a strong message to Korea.

Here’s some more good news: Pepsi, when offered a chance to buy Coke’s trade secrets, did the right thing and notified both Coke and the FBI. Three suspects have been arrested. This puts Pepsi on my short list of “good” companies, along with Google, CostCo, and DEKA (who make the Segway, a home dialysis system, lots of other great products, and major supporter of FIRST).

Friday evening, Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah declared “open war” on Israel. This comes 3 days after Hezbollah apparently kidnapped 2 Israeli soldiers. In response, Israel bombed the Beirut airport, so Hezbollah attacked an Israeli warship and started launching rockets across the Israel-Lebanon border. Israel then bombed the Hezbollah headquarters, though the leaders of the group apparently escaped without injury. Israeli strategists think that a land incursion into Lebanon would turn into an imbroglio with no end in sight, so they continue to use air strikes. Civilians on both sides of the border are having their homes destroyed, and many civilians are now living in bomb shelters. Anderson Cooper is in Beirut right now reporting the whole thing, and he’s doing a great job (if you’re not familiar with him, he’s quite possibly the best reporter right now: he did much of the coverage of Hurricane Katrina, and has come to fill the role that Connie Chung used to hold. He can be seen on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360^o“). In the meantime, the Lebanese government has done nothing to stop the fighting. This indicates to many people including myself that the Lebanese government is powerless and Hezbollah has much more of an influence over the populace.

Something I had not previously realized is that Hezbollah is almost completely funded by Iran, which is a growing influence in the area now that Syria has withdrawn from Lebanon. Hezbollah has been firing Iranian rockets into Israel, and they attacked the warship with an Iranian unmanned drone. At this point, my opinion of Iran has sunk pretty far, since they seem to be trying to destroy other countries in the region and advocating genocide along with Hezbollah (kill the Jews!—link provided by mikasaur2000. I realize the movie shows Palestinians while Hezbollah is Lebanese, but the ideology of the two groups is remarkably similar. Except that Hezbollah is full of adults who are actually killing civilians instead of just dreaming about it). I knew Hezbollah was into this whole anti-Israel thing, but I hadn’t realized Iran was hardcore on this issue too.