The five days of shameless, nauseating speculation by the right side of the ‘sphere that the massacre in Qana was somehow staged now comes to a crashing halt. The official Israeli inquiry into the gruesome murder of dozens of civilians has now concluded and the IDF takes responsibility for the tragedy. At least, sort of. [...]

I’m up at a professional conference in San Francisco until Friday, so blogging will be light over the next few days. I’m pleased, however, to announce some good personal news.

Jeff Morley, blogging for the Washington Post, has a round-up on the sputtering blogosphere conspiracy theory that Hezbollah staged the Qana massacre. Jeff also has a few basic questions for the Tin Foil Battalion that they don’t seem able to answer, surprise, suprise. This particular “theory” presumes some sinister collusion in which many of the [...]

Update: U.S. military analyst Tony Cordesman lays down a rhetorical barrage, calling Israeli policy in Lebanon and U.S. policy in Iraq “stupid, incompetent, and obsolete.” (Via Eric Umansky). Finally, some real straight talk. Also… I found this Los Angeles Times’ lead, unsigned editorial to be refreshingly frank in its bracing language about Israel. “Israel Can’t [...]

By the way, my memoir of time spent in Chile opens up on the day in 1971 Fidel Castro arrived in Chile. You can read those first few pages for free as a teaser on Amazon. For the record, those passages were originally written in 1974, when I was 23.

I read of Fidel Castro temporarily stepping down and — more like a monarch than a Marxist– appointing his 75 year old, younger, brother Raul as his stand-in and I think of the following: When I first met my recently departed pal, Cuban writer Justo Vasco, in his crowded, hot-box Havana apartment almost 20 years [...]