Black Wednesday

Good Morning. Several new items, and the grimmest day yet in lebanon.

• Bush to Lebanon: Drop Dead. The Bush administration has decided to sit back and let the bombings carry on for at least a week, maybe many more, as Israel "vows to finish the job." Diplomacy is as dead as possibilities of peace, even when the bombing stops. Pierre writes about the degradation of American foreign policy's morality.
  

• The Perpetual Refugee is a terrific new blogger, a Lebanese businessman exiled in Canada who happens to be stuck in Beirut at the moment. Candide's Notebooks features two of his very best posts--one an obscene encounter with Irsaeli customs officials, the other, a moving tribute to his grandfather, Jido, shocked ouit of his house by the bombing campaign. See The Perpetual Refugee...
  

• Candide's Recommendations include the latest from Lebanon, including links to a Finacial Times interview with Lebanese PM Fouad Siniora, how the US government is charging Americans $300 to evacuate them, The Guardian's report on the destruction of an entire village in South Lebanon, Robert Fisk on seeing terror outside his Beirut window, The Toronto Globe and Mail Beirut correspondent blogging on an eerie walk through Solidere, the renovated Beirut neighbhood now gone dead again, and a London times report on the dead and rotting in Beirut's ruins. Also: The US deploying an anti-missile system in Okinawa, George Bush's stem-cell veto destroying hopes of curing Republicanism and its many derivative diseases any time soon, and the New York Times thinning out for shareholders' sake. All in Candide's Recommendations...

The Notebooks' Front Page updates throughout the day, in the recommendations box especially. Your suggestions and partricipation through comments are welcome.