Analysis: Is Aoun Closer to Baabda than Ever Before?

Translated from Arabic - From: http://www.elnashra.com/news/show/844658/مصادر-الرابية-للاخبار-عون-اليوم-أقرب-الى-قصر-الشعب

Wednesday February 25, 2015

Sources close to Rabieh have shared with Al-Akhbar their belief that the March 14 camp and its regional allies remain unable to force any breach in the presidential election stalemate, break through the veto imposed by the other side, and dislodge General Michel Aoun from his present position. This was manifest in Future Movement leader Saad Hariri’s February 14 speech in which he admitted that “these people are not in a hurry as far as the presidency is concerned, and their posture effectively means a postponement of any discussion on the matter,” thus conceding to the impossibility of closing this file without Aoun’s consent. 

The sources further note that the international priorities in the region have shifted from bringing down the Assad regime to combating terrorism which is knocking at the doorstep of the West and, as a result, there is a momentary intersection of interests between Hezbollah and the Americans who realize that any battle against terrorism cannot be waged on the Lebanese front without an essential role for Hezbollah now in control of most of the Syrian swath surrounding Lebanon. In this context, the sources note that over the past 6 months there has not been a single Western statement of import denouncing or condemning Hezbollah’s participation in the fighting in Syria.

The Rabieh sources also spoke of the American need to “involve” the moderate Sunni component represented by Saad Hariri in the battle against Takfiri terrorism, when it decides to effectively wage this battle. This requires Hariri’s return as prime minister in the Serail. Such a return would not be possible without a comprehensive agreement between Hezbollah and Aoun on all issues, including the presidency. 

The sources further point to the absolute mandate given to Aoun by Hezbollah, and with it the entire Shiite bloc, in the matter of the presidency, a mandate that is not merely an expression of loyalty or a payback or even a tactical posture. Rather, it stems from a strategic vision articulated by Hezbollah’s Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in his “commemoration of fallen leaders” speech, when he spoke of the maps that are being drawn at the “tables of the big guys.” For Hezbollah realizes, amidst the battle raging in the region, that any role that sects and nations might play will be in proportion to their presence and influence. As such, an office like the Presidency of the Republic may not be handled today as a minor tactical move or be given to someone like Michel Sleiman. In the sources’ opinion, the “Shiite community fought an existential battle on its soil during the July 2006 aggression, and in today’s ongoing battle it is fighting a strategic battle to cement a role for itself at the regional level. While the Christian wing in the Hezbollah coalition does give that role national and global dimensions, it in turn benefits from the surplus in Shiite power to preserve its own role. Therein lies Aoun’s importance to the presidential office.”

The Taif regime has reached a dead end in light of the continuous crises that have followed its inception. As roles are being “cooked up” in the region, and as the Christians have become more vocal in demanding change and the recovery of their rights, particularly in light of what the Christians of the region have endured as of late, “political Sunnism”, for whom Taif was a major gain, will have to relent and accept to mend the crookedness that accompanied the implementation of the Taif Agreement, indeed adopting for its own sake a policy of damage control to try and limit its losses, and averting the demands for a new constitutive assembly that will wipe out those gains.

As the region seethes under the current sectarian wars, the Christians have indeed become the most able to play the “buffer” between Sunnis and Shiites. Since the Shiite bloc is hermetically sealed against the second strongest Maronite presidential candidate, Samir Geagea, it appears that Aoun’s chances have skyrocketed to unprecedented levels given the absolute backing he gets from the Shiites and his openings vis-à-vis the Sunnis and the Druze.

The Rabieh sources also noted a conviction in the Aoun camp that the head of the Lebanese Forces, more than anyone else, stands to gain the most from Aoun’s moving into Baabda. Such a situation would grant Geagea: a reconciliation with a large segment of the Christian public; a thaw in the Shiite hardening against him; the establishment of the precedent of a strong Christian president, which opens the door for Geagea in the future to the expense of other Maronites who have marketed themselves as consensus candidates; not to mention that any agreement with Rabieh would shuffle the distribution of electoral and governmental shares in a way that gives Meraab a greater independence from the custody of the Future Movement. In the opinion of the sources, the LF leader knows all this, even before the start of the ongoing dialogue, to the same extent that he realizes that Aoun has no one but Aoun himself to field him as a candidate.

The Rabieh sources believe that Riyadh is not that oblivious of these circumstances, as evidenced by the warm reception given to Aoun during his condolences visit for King Abdallah’s death. Nor is Riyadh ignorant of the virtually uninterrupted one-year long Aoun-Hariri dialogue, despite the occasional coolness. Riyadh must have also given its blessing to the Aoun-LF dialogue that would not have occurred without it, just as is the case with the Future-Hezbollah dialogue.

In sum, it is clear that Aoun is today closer to the “People’s Palace” in Baabda than at any time in the past.

Au Liban: Je ne suis pas Charlie - In Lebanon: I am not Charlie

Here in Lebanon, the bigots are out in force. They are all Charlie, of course, demonstrating not because they actually believe in the cause of Charlie Hebdo, but simply because it looks good in the eyes of others to pretend that they do. People in other countries will say, "Oh look. The Lebanese demonstrated for Charlie Hebdo. They must be "just like us". They must be sophisticated, western-like, and not like the other barbaric Arabs...." You get the point. In Lebanon, everything is done for the perception, not the substance. We have maids because it makes us look successful. We have fast expensive cars because they make us look successful and important. We have automobile plate numbers with 3 or 4 or 5 numbers because the lower the number, the more important people think you are. Flashing these signs of success and importance is critical because we live in a jungle. In a jungle, you have to constantly display aggression and a threatening posture to deter others who may attack you. We are constantly lashing out preemptively. 

All these "educated" Lebanese are for freedom of expression, so they say, except they don't know what they are talking about. Here in Lebanon freedom of expression is not what Charlie Hebdo stood for. Here in Lebanon, the notion of freedom of expression is a corrupted notion, a distorted notion. Here in Lebanon, freedom of expression is qualified; it is not absolute like it is France. Here in Lebanon, magazines and newspapers like Charlie Hebdo are banned. In the 1960s and 1970s, when Lebanon was truly liberal, a true jewel in a sea of barbarism, we used to have a magazine of the caliber of Charlie Hebdo, called AD-DABBOUR. It poked fun at Arabs, Europeans, Jews, Muslims, Christians, political leaders and religious leaders, with jokes and cartoons "below the belt". Nowadays, a young man writes a criticism of the Syrian collaborator former President of Lebanon Michel Sleiman, and the young man is dragged to court and prison for "insulting the prestige of the president or of the country". On a puppet show on television, one of the puppets once personified a certain Hassan Nasrallah, and Beirut erupts into a bloodbath and violence because the show "insulted a religious personality".

No, my friends. We claim to have freedoms, but we do not have freedoms. We either don't know what we are talking about or we lie and pretend.To a journalist in any of Lebanon's newspapers or media outlets, freedom of expression means to be paid specifically to insult the opponent of the politician who is paying me. Every newspaper and television channel in Lebanon is owned by a politician, a political party or a religious establishment. Everyone else is denied the right to have a newspaper or a television channel because that right is held by the Syndicates which are controlled by the politicians. There are no truly independent media or newspapers in Lebanon. From Al-Mustaqbal (Hariri) to Geagea (LBCI) to Aoun (Orange TV) to Al-Manar (Hezbollah) to Telelumiere (Christian religious establishment)... they each represent a political or religious grouping. Not one media or television channel represents ordinary people. The reason is that our identity is not individual, it is tribal. Our existence as individual human beings is subsumed under our identity as members of a religious, and therefore political, group. Freedom, for a Lebanese Christian for example, is to know he or she can ring the church bell on Sundays. It does not mean the freedom for that individual to criticize, mock, or poke fun at religious leaders, or religions, just as Charlie Hebdo does. Here in Lebanon we have no individual freedoms. As individuals, we live chained inside our respective communities with the freedom to hurl insults at the other communities, but never at the root cause of our problems, namely our religions. Religions in Lebanon are off-limits. They are, no pun intended, sacred cows. No one can challenge their domination of every aspect of our lives in the most corrupt and dehumanizing ways that can be imagined.

So my friends, here in Lebanon WE ARE NOT CHARLIE - NOUS NE SOMMES PAS CHARLIE - although we say we are. We are either ignorant imbeciles who like to repeat and copy like monkeys whatever westerners do, or we are devious bigots who know what we really are but choose to pretend we are something else. WE HAVE NO INDIVIDUAL FREEDOMS IN LEBANON. AS INDIVIDUALS WE ARE IMPRISONED AND ENSLAVED BY OUR RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS THAT ALLOW US ONLY THE FREEDOM TO ATTACK THE OTHER RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS.

Lebanon, still, iz no good

Christmas comes along and the barbarian Christians of this country put up their trees, their creches, their "Merry Christmases" that have replaced their "Joyeux Noels" (in testament to their prostitution to the most prevalent and superficial western trend), yet engage in none of the behaviors that Christmas ought to encourage in them. They still hate one another, display no sense whatsoever of civic conduct toward each other, and exhibit the most primitive of social behaviors where appearance, not substance, matters the most.

One Michael Young, a self-declared intellectual, a hybrid Lebanese (Christian) and American, who is the editor of the online Lebanon NOW news source, was recently complaining about the creeping ban on alcohol in Muslim parts of Beirut and Lebanon at large. Mr. Young has, for the most of the past 20 years, been a groupie of the Sunni Rafik Hariri and his empire in Lebanon, an empire built with billions that the illiterate Hariri made building disgusting palaces with golden toilets to the Saudi Wahhabi neanderthals. Michael Young obviously is enjoying the trickle down dollars from the golden toilets of the Saudis, purveyed by their Hariri poodles to Mr. Young so he can write endless diatribes against the Shiites while promoting a non-existent facade of Sunni "liberalism" suddenly discovered circa February 2005 when the Hariri godfather of the empire was assassinated by his Syrian masters in downtown Beirut.

As a Lebanese Christian-American-Saudi mongrel, Mr. Young has no idea where his loyalty should go first. In his blatherings, including a nostalgic pointless book (Ghosts of Martyrs Square), Mr. Young sometimes critiques Hariri's enemies, sometimes waxes nostalgic about the defunct liberal Lebanon that the Christians had built before Young's Sunni masters began their systematic destruction of the country and its state institutions in the late 1960s and early 1970s (supposedly in their defense of Arafat's PLO), and occasionally makes cogent points about one thing or another. But his overwhelming panacea to Lebanon's constitutive and chronic ills is as vague as Hariri's ideas on the same subject, namely some obtuse reference to the same state institutions that Hariri and his Sunni herd systematically destroyed and undermined. Mr. Young, for example, is careful not to attack the religious establishment vermin that is the major obstacle to Lebanon's evolution from a third world cesspool to something resembling - even as a caricature - a democracy. Mr. Young never critiques the Sunni establishment and its paramount role in Lebanon's decline. Mr. Young never tells us why, for instance, the Hariris never threaten to deny their dollars to those of their corrupt followers who operate out of Lebanon's filthy public administrations. The list is too long, but those who know Lebanon, should know that Mr. Young's western name and good English do not make him a respectable journalist for he is a paid hack for the Hariris, just like every other Lebanese journalist is to his or her paymaster among the politicians of Lebanon. As such, Mr. Young continues a long line of "court jesters" whose mercenary journalism is to either promote their paymasters or to defend them against attacks by their opponents.

In his latest piece, in which he complains about a ban on alcohol in various Muslim areas of Lebanon, Mr. Young avoids tracing the root of this zenith of Muslim rule in Lebanon back to the Sunnis and the Hariris. Yet, he finds ample opportunity to lay the blame squarely on the Shiites (Hezbollah) because - what else - they are Hariri's number one enemy.

Just like many pundits in Lebanon, Mr. Young does not see the big picture, and does not really care for it either. If, for instance, the impending dialogue between Hariri and Hezbollah ushers a new era of Sunni-Shiite collaboration, Mr. Young will be the first to stop critiquing Hezbollah and expand the scope of his praise to both Sunnis and Shiites.

Hanibaal Atheos

Stupid & Shorty Bassil Goes Streety

Gebran Bassil, the Enfant Gâté of the Free Patriotic Movement is building himself a curriculum vitae of which generations of brainwashed low class Christian Lebanese peasants can be very proud, as they pray to Mary, Jesus, Saint Charbel and all the Maronite pantheon of religious idiots that litter the landscape of this tormented country.

1- He failed repeatedly at getting elected in his hometown of Batroun, and despite promises by the psychotic General Aoun, Mr. Bassil's mentor and father-in-law, that no one in the FPM will hold political office unless he or she proves himself by getting elected to Parliament, Aoun keeps shoving his jackass son-in-law down the throats of his stupid followers and all Lebanese citizens and annoint him as Minister in failed Lebanese government after failed Lebanese government.

2- Somehow the civil engineer Bassil, who never practiced engineering, is today the owner of a grandiose palace in Batroun. One wonders what trough of corrupt money this Grand Thief pig has been eating from to be able to afford such ostentatious display of wealth. He, just like all the other politicians and military chiefs ruling today in Lebanon, must steal. He must have girlfriends to whom he dispenses apartments, cars, and gasoline coupons. He must receive kickbacks from every contract awarded right and left....

3- The inept Bassil, whose only merit in the eyes of Michel Aoun is that he fucks (in theory) Aoun's daughter by the mere fact of his marriage to her. I wonder if the rationale for Aoun to justify trusting this idiot so much is really: He fucks my daughter, therefore I can trust him, and I can impose him against the principles I enunciated and against the wishes of my other followers who must hate me for preferring Bassil to them. Yet, we never hear them complaining; they must still think they have a shot, the lowly scumbags that they are (De Chadarevian, Abi-Ramia, Raffoul, and others...), as long as they keep licking Aoun's ass and following him in every Syrian and Hezbollah political cesspool...

4- Bassil recently showed us yet another side to him: The vulgar streety thug أزعر who, as foreign minister of Lebanon no less, is seen on a video at the United Nations welcoming the Emirates ambassador while calling on his butler to call and bring in "Caroline", and gesturing to the befuddled ambassador with a broad hand gesture symbolizing the feminine attractiveness of one of Bassil's major aides at the UN, one Caroline Ziadeh who, truth be told, has literally bent over backwards over the years to betray her country and sell it wholesale to Syria, Iran and Hezbollah, all Bassil's allies. The climax of the video comes at the exact moment when Bassil finishes his gesture with a broad stupid smile on his face as he looks at the ambassador, and Caroline Ziadeh walks in, having heard and witnessed the moment, and she is clearly not amused. I don't think there ever was a more vulgar display of sexual discrimination and harassment in the world of diplomacy than Bassil's blatant failure as a dignified representative of Lebanon. In so doing, Bassil has removed any doubt left that he is just another Mafioso of the elite political scum that rules Lebanon. He and his "change and reform" (yeah, sure!) can go to hell.

Aoun's turnabouts in politics, in principles, in his alliances and in his discourse was enough of an injury to those who believed in him. Now that he has integrated the filthy family of Lebanon's political pantheon, and having enthroned his family around him as ministers and the like (nephew Alain Aoun, Bassil, and others), he adds insult to injury. May his upcoming death be soon enough so we no longer have to put up with his failures, his criminality, and his cronies like Bassil.

Hanibaal Atheos

The Phoenix is a donkey and NOW editors are asses

In a recent piece published on NOW (https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/548484-the-phoenix-is-a-jackass), a certain Eli Khoury proclaims that the "Phoenix" - often used as an allegory for Lebanon's Phoenician past - is really a "Jackass". I wholeheartedly agree.

But in an earlier comment by myself a few days earlier elsewhere on NOW, I qualified some of Lebanon's politicians as "jackasses". In their sophomoric prudish zeal the editors of NOW - who often come across as amateurs who recently graduated from any of Lebanon's many "American" colleges and universities, and whose English language skills are closer to pidgin than to real English - decided that the word "jackass" was inappropriate and proceeded to delete it from my comment. Censorship is a very common feature of the Lebanese press, which it inherited from 30 years of publishing under the Baathist Syrian occupation. For those who do not know, the definition of "free" in the self-styled "free" press in Lebanon is not what "free" means in countries that have genuine respect for freedom of speech and opinion. In Lebanon, there is no objective journalism. Every newspaper, every news outlet, is a mouthpiece for a political sect, party or boss, created and funded by the said sect, party or boss for the specific purpose of hurling insults at the other sects, parties or bosses. There are no independent thinkers, no objective reporting, and no reliable news in the Lebanese media: Whatever you read or hear is dictated by the interests of the political or religious entity that owns and funds the medium. NOW, for instance, is a chicken coop in the Hariri Empire whose current mission is to lay golden eggs bashing Shiites and praising Sunnis in the grand slaughter games of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and elsewhere in the Arabian and Near-eastern cesspools of religious warfare.

Upon reading the jackass piece of Eli Khoury, I felt compelled to reply to and point out the double standard, namely how come Eli Khoury is allowed by the editors of NOW to blast the word "jackass" in the title of his piece and otherwise pepper that word in his piece, while I was denied the use of the term and this simple exercise of free speech. So I wrote 5 lines in reply to Khoury's piece, in which I asked whether the editors of NOW are themselves jackasses for haphazardly enforcing censorship or if they are an integral part of the jackass republic of Lebanon (to use Khoury's own reference) in which certain elites (e.g. communications mogul Eli Khoury) are allowed privileges (printing the word "jackass") that are otherwise denied ordinary Lebanese (myself).

A little research (for I had never heard of Eli Khoury) revealed indeed that Mr. Khoury is a patrician of the Lebanese pseudo-intellectual money elite, self-styled :Chief Executive M&CSaatchi NENAM&C Saatchi (I tremble at this title), whose third-tier groveling at the feet of the rich & famous of this world makes them believe they are in the pantheon of such worlds of communication, fashion, movie-making and the like, in which these superficially educated Lebanese elites typically succeed with little import or impact on the real miserable lives of their fellow ordinary Lebanese. Instead, the successes of these fast-but-stupid men and women in the flashy, money-laden, steel-and-glass glamor merely serve to propping up these Lebanese  imitators of the Western rich & famous higher in the Darwinian pecking order of Lebanese society, lest they fall and their coattails swipe against the scum and the riffraff beneath them. 

The interesting thing is that - again to my earlier point of the haphazard nature of NOW's censorship - my reply to Eli Khoury's piece was published, and I felt grateful for NOW's open-mindedness and hoped they may have learned that the word "jackass" is really not bad after all, referring merely to our beloved donkey albeit with a word whose caudal half refers also to our own anatomical posterior end.

Then, to demolish any hope I had mustered, I open up Eli Khoury's page this morning, only to find that NOW's editors had deleted my reply in toto. They must agonize over these crucial decisions, I thought to myself. I still feel hurt by this amateurish stupidity of the pseudo-intellectual, second rate journalism, kindergarten-level editors of NOW. And in this half-hurt, half-grateful state (for they publish many of my comments), I conclude that while the Phoenix turned out to be a jackass, NOW's editors too turned out to be even more the jackasses than I ever suspected.

Hanibaal Atheos
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The Phoenix is a jackass

Lebanon needs a new model

I, for one, have reservations about the phoenix. It burns to a crisp, only to readily resurrect. Always has, always will. Not once. Not twice. But always and forever, since the beginning of time. And from the looks of it, ad infinitum.

As if that weren’t enough, the fowl is so treasured and gets so much critical acclaim for its peculiarity that the “great people of Lebanon” have assumed it as their symbol, if not their envoy.

[Read the rest of this far-reaching opinion on:

(https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/548484-the-phoenix-is-a-jackass)

Women leaders in "advanced" Lebanon

In Lebanon, as is the case with all Arab countries, the backward monarchies and emirates, as well as the "progressive" republics of Egypt, Syria and others, the inheritance of political power through the vertical transmission of golden genes from father to son is alive and well. In Libya, Tunisia, and in Egypt, some of the revolutionary demands were in fact to put an end to "genetic cronyism". In Lebanon, however, the practice remains hallowed and has in fact been extended to "lateral familial cronyism" whereby an up and coming political rookie, with no experience and no merit whatsoever for political office, simply marries into a genetic political farm, and thus acquires the necessary credentials.

For our foreign readers, this practice is not limited to Muslims. It is in fact much more prevalent among the self-styled "more enlightened" or "more advanced" Christians of Lebanon, somewhat reminiscent of the Borgias of the Vatican of the late 1400s and early 1500s, where Popes married, had concubines, and bestowed political and religious power onto their sons and daughters, and indeed married off their daughters and sons to secure political allegiances among their vassal kings and duchies in Italy.

In Lebanon, one Strida Geagea is put forth as an example of how the Lebanese are more advanced than their fellow Arabs simply because a couple of women have "made it" into the political pantheon. The problem is that these couple of women "made it" politically either because they are the sisters or the wives of established male politicians. Bahia Hariri (feu Rafik Hariri's sister), Strida Geagea (wife of war criminal Samir Geagea), and Nayla Mouawwad (wife of feu Rene Mouawad) are essentially all the females that are or were active politically active in recent years. Never has a woman in Lebanon ascended to political power simply because of her credentials or merit. It seems therefore that Lebanon's women continue to accept their status as chattel to their male kin, only occasionally succeeding vicariously into political roles because they either share half the genes of a male relative or because they have opened their legs to a male politician. And the super-educated cosmopolitan trilingual well-traveled Lebanese do not seem to mind. They too accept to be a herd of sheep in the grand political grazing fields of Lebanon.

Males too can make it politically by marrying the daughters of political bosses who happen not to have male sons. Michel Aoun, despite his machismo and high-testosterone political grandstanding, never begot any male heirs to whom he could transmit political power. Instead he relies on nephews (Alain Aoun) and on sons-in-law (Gibran Bassil) whose ability to have sexual intercourse with Chantal Michel Aoun seems sufficient to make up for his obvious stupidity and repeated failures at getting elected to parliament. So Aoun resorts to imposing him as Minister in various Lebanese governments as a way to keep him relevant politically.

I personally disagree with the vertical passage of political power genes down from father to son. Yet, because monarchies survive around us in Arabia and in Europe, I somewhat understand it as a dying vestigial primitive cultural meme. But I just cannot understand how having sex with someone makes you their equal in politics. So I never understood why on earth an imbecile like Strida Geagea can claim political merit simply because she had/has sex with criminal warlord Samir Geagea, or even worse how Gibran Bassil can claim political merit because he has sex with Michel Aoun's daughter. If Bassil was having sex with Michel Aoun himself, he'll at an equal distance from that merit than Strida Geagea. But Bassil simply fucks Aoun's daughter... so he is two layers of separation away from earning political merit. . 

The question really in the end is: How can the super-educated, super-advanced, Lebanese claim to have democracy and be more evolved Arabs when their politics is mired in tribal, sectarian, feudal, blood-ties criteria for access to political power that are worthy of primitive neanderthals and homo erectus than to modern homo sapiens?

The Voyage au Bout de la Nuit of Hezbollah and the Sunnis of Lebanon

The string of suicide bombings targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon ushers the beginning of the end of the Shiite fundamentalist organization's 30+ years of terror and undermining of the Lebanese state. From kidnappings foreign civilians, hijacking planes, car bombing peacekeeping troops, massacring Palestinians by the thousands in refugee camps, to inventing a non-existent Israeli occupation only to justify its claims of "liberating" Lebanon from that occupation and "resisting" the so-called Zionist enemy...Hezbollah's curriculum vitae is a long list of harrowing criminality whose reach went as far as West Africa's diamond trade, drug smuggling in North America, car bombings in Argentina and Bulgaria..... The list is too long.

Now that the tide has ebbed, that Hezbollah's true face and intentions have been exposed, now that the stupid Lebanese (Aoun's FPM imbeciles and Hariri's Sunni traitors) who believed Hezbollah's lies and elevated it to the level of a deity, an invincible and highly organized Mafia, with all the aura and romanticism... Hezbollah for once is on the receiving end of the same kind of violence it has inflicted on so many other people for 30 years. I am dispensing with the Israeli attacks against Hezbollah because they never really targeted Hezbollah, and instead - just as is always the case with the coward Israelis - they were intended to punish the Lebanese for having Hezbollah in their midst.

Hezbollah, it is rumored, has now moved its nerve centers to Syria where it believes it will be better protected. In so doing, Hezbollah is abandoning its Lebanese "nationalist" lie that it fed the idiots for so many years, and therefore has lost all its claims to being Lebanese, and is now avowedly what we always knew: a Syrian-Iranian proxy terror organization, founded in 1982 at exactly the same moment that Yasser Arafat's PLO terrorists were evacuating Beirut, and created for the exact same purpose that the PLO served in the 1960s and 1970s, namely to fight Israel from Lebanese territory, invite Israeli retaliations, cause Lebanon to suffer and be undermined, while those leading the charge for the "battle against the Zionist enemy" were basking in peace and tranquility, maintaining quiet on their own borders with Israel.

It is a time for those of us who knew the lies, who refused to believe them, who knew that the traitors of their country were the Lebanese Sunnis who used the Palestinians and burned Lebanon to achieve pathetic political goals, the Sunnis who then - under the criminal Hariri - used the Syrians and Hezbollah to cement their newly acquired power in Lebanon, only to discover a mere decade later that the price of treason can be steep: Hezbollah and Syria, whose occupation of Lebanon and whose turning Lebanon into the only Arab war front against Israel, killed the filthy traitor dog Hariri who bought himself into power with his Saudi money.

The Lebanese Sunnis are now at a fork: They can genuinely become Lebanese nationalists, and finally join - FOR REAL - their fellow Lebanese Christians in creating a neutral Lebanon, divorced from all Arab and Muslim causes, a Lebanon that makes peace with Israel just like the Palestinians, Egyptians and Jordanians, and finally cement this Lebanese entity as their final and definitive identity; or they can fall into their own form of radicalism and follow the al-Qaeda terrorists who are now attacking Hezbollah. As long as the Lebanese Sunnis blindly obey the directives of the Saudis and their American masters, they will never rise to the level of nationalism needed to build a nation. As long as their hatred of Syria and Hezbollah is based only on the fact that Syria and Hezbollah killed Hariri, and is not couched in a genuine ideological transformation that makes them only Lebanese, and not Sunnis, Muslims, and Arabs BEFORE they are Lebanese, then Lebanon will not recover from the Shiite-Sunni split it is experiencing.

Contrary to falsehoods propagated in the 1970s and 1980s by a stupid liberal western press and by Arab nationalists, the Christians of Lebanon have no other identity than their Lebanese identity. This is a constitutive character that is built into them because their Christian identity negates their Arab and Muslim identities, but also as easterners, it is not enough to make them anything else. The evidence to this is multiple: The Lebanese Christians were able to be allies of everyone at one time or another, including Syria, Israel, and the West, but they were also betrayed by everyone, including the Syrians, the Israelis, and the West. This is ample proof that they can never have any other identity by their Lebanese identity.

The Muslims of Lebanon continue in their schizophrenic search for an identity. They always placed Syrian, Arab, and Muslim causes ahead of the Lebanese. The time has come for them to make up their minds. Lebanon is a distinct nation with a distinct history, geography, and demographic constitution. It is not a temporary Arab country destined for an eventual union with Syria or Egypt or whatever other Baathist or Syrian Nationalist Socialist (Qawmiyyeh) fantasies out there. The Christians want neutrality, they want secularism, and they are ready to relegate religion to the realm of the private... Have the Lebanese Muslims, and the Sunnis in particular, reached a point in their political evolution where they can separate their religious identity from their national one?

Hanibaal Atheos

Tammam Salam and the Proverbial Bald Man

The new Prime Minister of Lebanon is a Lebanese "politician" with an average-to-mediocre background that, thanks only to his genetic background (as once a male gamete in his father's gonads that lucked out in scoring!), catapulted him into political power.

Not unlike the majority in the Lebanese political pantheon where the mechanism of hereditary transmission of political power rules supreme, regardless of inbreeding, imbecility, propensity for treason, incompetence, and other such feudal qualifications. Not to be unfair to Lebanon, this is something Lebanon shares with its Arab brothers (you know, the Assads, Mubaraks, Qaddafis.... etc, in the so-called republics, and the Sauds, the Sabbahs, etc. in the monarchies).

The sad thing, though, is that the Bald Man just dawning on us, just like all the others, will continue by incompetence and tradition to keep Lebanon the familiar cesspool of corruption and violence. I think the Lebanese proverb will aptly apply to Mr. Salam: جبنا الاقرع ليشجعنا، كشف عن قرعته وفزعنا which translates into "We brought the bald man to encourage us, instead he uncovered his bald head and scared us."

But let us not be too negative (despite all the signs): Let us give the Bald Man a chance and see whether he can make a dent in Lebanon's galactical problems.

Hanibaal Atheos.
From the Island of Sri Lanka

President Sleiman, the Virgin Mary, and the Censor-in-Chief

February 14, 2014

Lebanon's President Slime-man Calls for Prosecution of the Not-so-Virgin Mary picture kisser!

The Slimy Consensus President of the Lemon Republic of Lebanon, the one-time Syrian occupation-appointee as Army Chief, Michel Suleiman, whose country has been a cesspool of violence, genocides, massacres, ethnic cleanings, terrorism, car bombs, suicide bombs, assassinations, kidnappings and hostage-holding, all in the name of either religion or the "liberation of Palestine" for 40 years, and under whose administration, the said cesspool of Lebanon is doubled by a pit a corruption, Mafia bosses rule, feudal leadership of primitive religious sects, and an abysmal infrastructure from late 19th century vintage, that President called on Friday for the prosecution by Lebanon's corrupt and politicized kangaroo justice of a man allegedly named Ali Eitawi whose photo was aired on television kissing a statue of the Virgin Mary and saying "she is no longer a virgin."

Ponder with me, please, the "crime" on one hand, and the "environment" of Lebanon where that said crime took place. Hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, have been living in fear in Lebanon itself for close to 40 years because of all the forms of violence listed above, not to mention the massive emigration, the displacements, the disrupted lives..... the catclysmic events taking place in Syria and elsewhere in the region, and the President of the country has nothing better to do than worry about a harmless, in fact, comical skit about the Virgin Mary

And this is happening right after the other storm of the week in which the Tourism & Sports Minister of the same Killing Field of Lebanon (parading itself as a republic), one Faisal Karami - an imbecile and an idiot who became a Minister because everyone in his feudal family is entitled at birth to political power, regardless of merit, IQ, credentials and other normal criteria - called for an investigation of the "crime" committed by Lebanon's single female athlete competing in Sochi, namely to pose semi-nude for a calendar with a bunch of her fellow olympians.

And this is in a country that brags constantly about being a land of freedom in the otherwise repressive Middle East. There is something fundamentally wrong with the Lebanese: They are either absolute idiots, or they are smart but are so devious that they are capable of believing their own lies.

Under these daily threats, Lebanon's "free press" (another massive lie propagated by the Lebanese to show off how much more advanced and liberal than the surrounding Arab brutes) does in fact practice self-censorship to avoid being dragged into court by zealous ministers presidents and other politicians. One example is the English-language web site Lebanon NOW. Not only is this pipeline of Saudi-funded Wahhabi-cum-vassal Hariri English language drivel dedicated to gushing out from the Lebanese Sunni septic tank all the anti-Obama vomit for not intervening on the side of Syria's Sunni Muslim fundamentalists (you know, Al-Qaeda, America's best friend!!), but it also censors comments by ordinary Lebanese whenever it feels that publishing such comments might get it (NOW) in trouble with the Censor-in-Chief Michel Slime-man. It just tows two lines: The Saudi line of badgering the Americans for not invading Syria, and the political establishment line because it wants to stay in business.

More later....

Hanibaal Atheos

Shweifat Suicide Fiasco and Lebanon Recap

I love watching the two culprits in the destruction of my beautiful country of Lebanon - its Shiite shithead traitors to Iran, and its Sunni numskull traitors to Saudi Arabia - bludgeon one another like this. Not only are these idiots wrong ideologically, they are as incompetent as my arse at executing a mission properly. It's either innocent targets, or very nervous perpetrators that miss their targets, or any number of stupid actions that supposedly are mandated by God.

In any case, enough time has elapsed since the 1950s and 1960s (the Golden age of modern Lebanon under Christian rule),  the 1970s-1980s (when the Sunnis fought the Christian-dominated Lebanese State using the Palestinian PLO terrorists of Yasser Arafat), the 1990s to the present (when the stupid Sunnis who, having won the Lebanese War, replaced the PLO with the imbecile Hezbollah Shiites to keep the Christians down, and in the process created a monster that nhas now turned against them.)

Enough time has passed so that anyone who has followed the past 40 or so years of Lebanon's history should reach the following conclusions:
1- What is referred to as Christian rule wasn't anything close to Christian rule, since the President was Christian, the Prime Minister a Sunni, and the Speaker of Parliament a Shiite, but none of these people could do anything without the approval of the others. Even today, when the system has supposedly been reformed after the Sunni victory of 1990, nothing has really changed except that the Christian president has become a powerless queen of England like figure with his powers having been transferred to the Sunni Prime Minister and some powers to the Shiite Speaker of Parliament. But before the 1975 war, the Christians set the tone for the country, and for better of for worse, they invited tourism, promoted culture and openness to the entire world. Those were the days when Beirut was literally beautiful and liberal, when gays and hippies roamed the streets alongside Arab sheiks who came for some libidinal release from their repressive societies just as Russian or American sailors who roamed the Red Light District for booze and prostitutes. I grew up in that Beirut and I know it well.
2- As soon as the Muslims took over, the merchant Sunnis and their Qaeda affiliates, then the terrorist Iranian Shiites of Hezbollah, and the Christians were pushed aside, Lebanon gradually began a descent into a third-worldliness typical of Islamic countries where personal initiative and responsibility is delegated to God, with the ensuing consequence of public and private disrepair, filth, corruption, repression, squalor, and fear. Lebanon today is a horrible place, disfigured physically by chaotic unregulated urban sprawl, horrendous traffic jams, pollution galore of the air and every body of water, super corruption under the training of Assad's army of occupation from neighboring Syria, censorship of books, movies, and anything considered "offensive" to just about anything, etc. The list is too long.
3- Lebanon can never regain its glory under Muslim rule. The problem is that Muslims know that very well, which is why they want to dominate the Christians and treat them like shit, but at the same time, they know that without the Christians, Lebanon will just be a pathetic rundown third-world country. So there is this constant balancing of the act of promoting the Christians by giving them just enough to keep them hanging in for hope, but never allowing them to resume a position of strength that would in fact restore the country on a path to prosperity.

And so it goes... Lebanon is in this limbo for decades now. Neither community is strong enough to weed out the others. Lebanon is like a real bad menage-a-trois, with everyone of the three fuckers fornicating with the other two, AND also fornicating with outsiders at the same time. Everybody is super horny and hot and bothered for action, but none of them finds satisfaction with his other bedfellows, so they seek the comfort of strangers. Now the strangers are in it not for the beautiful eyes of the Lebanese harlots, but they are in it for their own selfish base interest. Saudi Arabia is the pimp of the Sunnis. Iran is the pimp of the Shiites. And the Christians - since they believe in forgiveness and atonement - keep changing their swinging partner depending on which way the wind blows: France, then Syria, then America, then Israel, then Syria again, then America again, which shows they are desperate, even though those same partners keep betraying them and they (The Christians) keep changing partners after each betrayal.

So I will conclude with this take on one of Fairouz's songs that came to my mind upon learning of yet another Muslim anti-Muslim suicide bombing near Beirut. It is like folklore... a tradition, something that always comes back in the same way.... so instead of

w3ammir ya m3allim l3maar  w 3aamir Haretna ya ba

How about:

wfajjir ya m3allim lfjaar  w fajjir Haretna ya ba

Hanibaal Atheos
From Tierra del Fuego in southern Chile

Biology Homework - republished

Per popular demand, I re-publish this comparison of two dicks. One is a biological organ, the other is a human cognate of a biological dick going by the name of Hassan Nasrallah.

Why Obama changed his Syrian policy

There are many conspiracy theories running around in the Middle East. People, politicians and pundits alike never take things at face value: They always imagine several layers of labyrinthine, convoluted, and cryptic explanations for events, always invoking what the "real" reason is for policies, assassinations, statements, etc. Just as people in the Middle East really believe that its was REALLY Israel, not Al-Qaeda, that engineered the September 11 attacks, in order to provoke the US into invading and destabilizing the Middle East. So the US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan was not REALLY an act of self-defense but a Zionist-concocted devious way of causing a rift between Muslims and the West, etc...

Given this mindset, many in the Arab world are cooking up insidious multi-layered explanatory schemes for the REAL reasons why Obama is refusing to help the Syrian rebels against Assad. In this piece, I posit myself as a pundit and provide such a convoluted explanation for this puzzle, without any evidence whatsoever other than the logic of my own thinking.

Simply put, Obama figured in the middle of the Syrian crisis - circa 2012-2013 - that he could leverage the crisis to solve the Palestinian-Israeli problem. What he did initially was the usual simplistic American way of approaching similar situations: Threaten with the use of force, and Assad will back down, and then force him out of office by the combined outside threat and popular thrust on the ground, as happened in Libya. Also, one needs to keep in mind that US foreign policy - despite all appearances of otherwise - is dictated by a single paramount objective: The security and interests of the State of Israel. So, when Obama looked a little more carefully at the Syrian chessboard, he saw who the real actors were. He basically saw Sunnis asking for help against non-Sunnis. Since the Sunnis are led by Saudi Arabia, Obama sought a tradeoff for assisting the Sunnis against Assad. He asked the Saudis to recognize the state of Israel and force the Palestinians to a compromise solution with Israel, in exchange of which the US will not only pressure Israel into accepting this solution, but also agree to the use of force in Syria to kick Assad out of office and otherwise enable a victory by the Syrian rebels.

The Saudis balked and refused the deal. They insisted on keeping the Syrian situation separate from the broader Middle East question. And that is when relations between the US and Saudi Arabia began deteriorating, and that is also when Obama washed his hands from the Syrian crisis. Once this proposal fell through, the US reverted back to the traditional peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, and Kerry began his renewed efforts between the two parties. Meanwhile, on the Iranian front, the US kept giving assurances to Israel over a nuclear Iran and asking it to hold off on any impending attack by Israel against Iran's nuclear facilities, for the simple reason that it was waiting for the Saudi response. If the US had succeeded, then the bulk of the Arab and Islamic worlds would follow the Saudi leadership, leaving behind an isolated Iran without its Syrian and Lebanese extensions. An isolated Iran would thus be dealt with separately from the complicated Syrian and Israeli-Palestinian issues.

The Saudi rejection of the American plan changed things radically. The Saudis became angry at the Americans for wanting to couple a US anti-Assad stance with Saudi help on Israel-Palestine. By walking away from the threat of force in Syria, the American unleashed Saudi retaliation which has taken several forms: Increased funding for Al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria, and Saudi funding for the Lebanese Army (which is a puppet of Hezbollah), as though the Saudis were now funding BOTH sides in the Syrian conflict. The Saudi rejection of the American proposal made the Americans angry at the Saudis and found in it a justification for walking away from any military intervention in Syria against Assad, which in turn led to turning the Syrian issue into a simple chemical weapons control question, and to the rapprochement with Iran.

In sum, if this theory is true, then the only ones to blame for the stalemate in Syria are the Saudis. They were given the opportunity to isolate Iran, solve the Syrian crisis to the advantage of the Sunnis, prevent an Al-Qaeda resurgence in Syria, and most importantly contribute to the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once and for all.

Right now, the ascendancy of Iran in US foreign policy can be seen as a tectonic shift in that policy. No longer will the "friendship" between the US and the Saudis be over oil interests because those are really archaic considerations. The Americans no longer fear a cost to displeasing the Saudis, but instead they now demand concessions from the Saudis in exchange for this friendship. And to make this new policy more readily understood by the Saudis, the Americans have arranged for a rapprochement between themselves, Iran and Israel. Given that 21 Arab countries are in the throes of revolutions, Islamic upheavals, and long term instability, the Americans find it easier to deal with two regional superpowers, both potentially nuclear-armed, strategically hemming the Arab world: Iran and Israel. Just two countries to whom it can outsource American security interests without putting a single boot on the ground. The only two downsides to this: 1 - An insoluble Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which may continue to sputter on and off for a few more decades until there is no more Palestine to negotiate over (an Israeli supreme interest by which the US will certainly abide); and 2 - a simple coup or popular uprising in Iran could topple the theocracy overnight and render it an even stronger ally of the US. The Arabs, the Sunnis, the Saudis etc. will be busy for a few decades with their own social and political upheavals that they will not pose a threat to Israel or anyone for that matter.

The Syrian war could go on for several years, if not decades. This too will be to the advantage of the Americans who must snicker silently over their joy at seeing their two worst enemies - Islamic fundamentalists of the Shiite and Sunni brands, as well as Baathists and other dictatorship-prone "rebels" - bleed each another to death.

For those idiots - Tony Badran, Hanin Gahddar, Hussein Ibish, Michael Weiss, etc. - who keep writing angry verbiage (see Lebanon NOW at:  https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en) against Obama for not helping the Syrian rebels, the above should be a plausible explanation for the Syrian status quo and it should temper your Saudi-paid drivel down to a reasonable pitch.

Hanibaal Atheos

I am not a martyr

Global Voices Online

January 3, 2014

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Lebanon: I Am Not A Martyr

Lebanon is no stranger to violence. Bombings are frequent and perpetrators are never held accountable. On December 26 and January 2, two car-bomb attacks have left at least 13 people dead and many more injured. In addition, a dual bombing in November that left over 20 dead and ongoing violence in different areas around the country make it difficult to be optimistic about 2014. Yet, after each bombing, people just go back to their everyday lives and innocent victims are soon forgotten. Because this is wrong, the #NotAMartyr movement encourages people to take a stand:

A place for all those who believe that death is not a solution.
A place for all those who do not want to be called martyrs in vain.
A place to pay tribute for all those who died; are dying and will unfortunately keep dying in the future.
A place where we show the world that we care.
A place where we show everyone that we want change.

Lebanon needed a wake up call from the state of lunacy well described on Hummus for Thoughts:

We have become a nation of justified claustrophobia and justified paranoia; we have stopped hoping that this bomb would be the last because we know that another bomb will soon follow; we are living in the not-so-discreet shadow of our catastrophic civil war and are aimlessly waking up every morning not really understanding what the hell is going on; we are engulfed in our own sectarian lunacy exacerbated by our own (suffocating) corrupted religiopolitical class; and we have never failed to remind ourselves how we’re failing to do anything about it.

Many of us are cursed with persistent hope, and more and more of us are cursed with hopelessness. Whatever your current state of mind is, let us at least be clear: we are not martyrs. We’re not dying for a cause. We’re just dying.

Continue reading at www.globalvoicesonline.org

October 23, 1983: Hezbollah truck-bombs US and French Marines in Beirut

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the twin suicide bombings by Hezbollah, Iran and Syria against the US Marine barracks (241 US servicemen) and the French Paratroopers compound (58 French soldiers) in Beirut on October 23, 1983. These two attacks were carried out against a peacekeeping multinational force that had come to Beirut, not as a crusading or occupation force, but to escort the Palestinian terrorists of the PLO out of their Israeli-besieged bunkers. This unprovoked attack by Syria, Iran and their appendage Hezbollah was, unfortunately, met with the cowardly retreat of the Republican US president Reagan who packed up what remained of his Marines, loaded them on their ships and withdrew in the face of Iran and Syria, betraying the mission and his own soldiers, and never ever sought any retribution against the killers of his own soldiers. His own Vice-President, George HW Bush, was a few years later to recruit the Syrian Assad regime (that had murdered the US Marines in Beirut) as an ally against the other Baathist dictator in Iraq, Saddam Hussein. To add insult to injury, Reagan ordered the invasion of the Caribbean island of Grenada the very next day after the bombings in an attempt to deflect public attention from the disaster unfolding in Beirut. By retreating like a coward, Reagan abandoned the last bastion then still standing in the Arab world against the Islamic onslaught, namely Lebanon, to the Syrian occupation (that was to last till 2005). By so doing, the cowardly American retreat from Beirut after the slaughter of the Marines signaled the following message to future terrorists: If you bomb us, we will flee like rabbits. The bombing of the Multinational Force in October 1983 in Beirut, while being the first ever Islamic terrorism suicide bombing against a Western target, in effect was the inspiration for Osama bin Laden and drew a straight line to the 9-11-2001 bombings in the US. Abandoning Lebanon in 1983 to Syria and Iran was by far the gravest failure of US foreign policy in modern times for which we are - thirty years later - still paying the price around the globe. And there are those "patriotic" Republicans who have the gall to accuse President Obama of inaction in Syria, when their own fucking Republican hero Reagan is solely responsible for allowing, by his retreat from Beirut in 1983,  Islamic terrorism to gain so much ascendancy and cause so much havoc in our world.

Jihad Al-Nikaah or the Muslim Whore Brigades

It is now an undeniable fact that Muslim women, herded like chattel as they always have been, have now been mobilized as professional whores who provide their services to Muslim fighters around the world. After Muslim women from Chechnya, Germany, Morocco, France, Egypt, and Iraq have contributed their share to making God's rule on earth a reality, the latest evidence is pouring out of Tunisia these days, where hundreds of Tunisian girls have been repatriated from Syria, many pregnant, after serving their fellow Muslim men in the glorious Islamic uprising in Syria.

There are historical precedents, but usually the invader enslaves the enemy's women to serve its soldiers - Germany did it with Jewish women, Japan did with Korean women, and rape as a war instrument has been very common in a number of African conflicts in recent times. But to enlist your own females in the use of their expertise as whores to serve your own soldiers is a rarity. Generally, women are enlisted to serves as nurses or cooks on the war front, or as factory workers and male substitutes in all kinds of office-bound jobs. But Islam, this latest - and purpotedly the most magnificient and final prophecy of God to humans - of the monotheistic cults (Judaism, Christianism, and Islam) that have killed more people in their history than anyone can tally, is forging ahead with vanguard ideas.

I think all Muslim countries, all preparing and dreaming of the day that the Caliphate (which, by the way, disappeared 100 years ago at the onset of World War I) will rule the entire planet under the aegis of Islam, should establish formal female brigades in their armies. Such brigades would be set up for the specific purpose of providing sexual services to the Muslim fighters along the fault line of battles and hotspots around the world where Islam is trying to destroy or subjugate everyone else. These brigades would be named, for example, "The Muslim Whores Brigades" or the "Sluts for Muhammad (صلى الله عليه وسلّم) Brigades" or the "Umma Tramps Brigades" or "Islamic Harlots Brigades", etc... The possibilities are endless. To be sure, the enlistees into these brigades will not necessarily have a choice, since women in Islam have no real say in their lives, and families will be asked to volunteer one of their daughters or sisters, who will be subjected to intense professional training by internationally-reknowned prostitutes. This training would, in fact, be best conducted in Mecca itself under the supervision of the Ulemas and Sheikhs of the Saudi Kingdom, and where inspiration on the road to paradise will be entwined with orgasmic levitation to the heavens. There will be no need for any "safe sex" training because clearly the goal is to die while fighting for God and Muhammad. So dying from any sexually transmitted disease is a boon. Not to mention the windfall of millions of pregnancies that will obtain as a result of all this energy-consuming fornication, and the resulting addition of millions of future generations of Mulsim fighters and whores, thus ensuring the ultimate victory of Islam and its dominion over all the other lesser religions and cults.

Hanibaal Atheos