The Disgrace of the Sleiman-Siniora Regime and Aoun's Responsibility

Michel Sleiman and Fuad Siniora went out of their way last week to celebrate the return of the criminals, hoodlums, outlaws and murderers like Samir Kuntar and all the other Lebanese and Arab filth whose release from Israeli jails was negotiated by Hezbollah.

For Michel Sleiman to do this was expected. His military career was hatched in the incubators of the Syrian occupation. His discourse continues to tow the line behind the Hezbollah rhetoric of “resistance” and the “Zionist enemy” and all the crap that the Lebanese people continue to be fed, like fattened sheep to the slaughter. As a Maronite Christian, Sleiman is displaying the behavior of the ultimate dhimmi who is incapable of acting like a free man: He is a bonded Christian slave in the employ of a Muslim master.

For Fuad Siniora, it's not that much different: His political career as a poodle of Rafik Hariri was also fashioned in governments that were lackeys of the Syrian occupation. Siniora served Hariri who served the Syrians until the latter bombed Hariri to shreds in 2005. But Siniora has spent the years since 2005 supposedly as an “anti-Syrian” Lebanese politician who challenged Syria and Hezbollah. So for him to go crawling like a dog to shake the hand of Kuntar was not very surprising: Siniora is hopelessly returning to his roots of the filthy Lebanese Sunni who just cannot think and act independently of the primitive Arab tribal reflex. He will kiss the hand that is killing him as long as it is an Arab hand.

Meanwhile, the hundreds and thousands of Lebanese political prisoners who were kidnapped by the Syrians and taken over a period of 30 years inside Syria’s prisons and dungeons remain unaccounted for.

According to the Sleiman-Siniora regime’s political construct, Syria is not an “enemy”. Syria is an Arab “sister” even though it has killed hundreds of thousands of Lebanese during its occupation of Lebanon, made tens of thousands of Lebanese to “disappear”, refuses to recognize Lebanon’s right to exist as an independent nation, and is behind the assassinations of Lebanese political figures since its withdrawal from Lebanon in 2005. Therefore, the thousands of Lebanese prisoners who remain in Syria’s prisons are not “heroes”, nor are the 5,000 Lebanese citizens who fled to Israel out of fear from Hezbollah in 2000. These people will be taken to courts, prosecuted for “dealing with the enemy”, and maltreated as traitors, even though they are not guilty of any illegal or unlawful acts. They just happened to be politically against Syria’s occupation or against Hezbollah’s rape of the Lebanese State. Many of them in fact are soldiers in the Lebanese army who were doing their job under orders from former Lebanese governments who happened to fight the Syrian occupation and its local Lebanese and Palestinian proxy militias.

In contrast, Israel is an “enemy” because it is non-Arab, even though Israel’s occupation and interventions in Lebanon over the years have caused much less harm to Lebanon and the Lebanese than Syria’s occupation and interventions. At least, Israel formally recognizes Lebanon as a nation and is bound with Lebanon by international agreements. By extension, the criminals that Israel captured in various attacks, more often inside Israeli, not Lebanese, territory, and who were released last week, are “heroes”.

So, barely two days after the criminal Kuntar was welcomed like royalty by Hezbollah’s new Lebanese poodles Sleiman and Siniora, demonstrators for the release of the Lebanese prisoners from Syria were savagely beaten by Lebanese army and police as they tried to demonstrate against visiting Syrian official Walid al-Mouallem.

My final words go to Michel Aoun and his representatives in the Sleiman-Siniora regime: You have 9 months to secure the release of Lebanese prisoners from Syria and the return of the exiles from Israel before the next parliamentary elections. This is the time to demonstrate that you can deliver actions to the Lebanese people, not just words, memoranda, and sentimental hot air about how your superior nationalism and patriotism override sectarianism. The people want action, and they want it now. Gebran Bassil and General Abu-Jamra: Your political careers and your credibility are on the line. If you do not deliver on these two issues, you will lose the 2009 elections and the Lebanese people will discard you in the trashbin of history.

You gave Hezbollah all the support, you even shook the hand of the criminal Samir Kuntar. You have a memorandum of understanding with Hezbollah that says that the Lebanese exiles in Israel should return home unharmed. It is time to deliver on it. It has now become Michel Aoun’s responsibility to secure the release of the Lebanese prisoners in Syria and the return of the exiles from Israel. It is time for Aoun to make Hezbollah pay its share of the deal in what has so far been a one-way memorandum of understanding.

Hanibaal

Lebanese Diaspora Ashamed and in Mourning

On a day when the Lebanese President and Prime Minister, as well as the entire new government, are celebrating the return of the criminal Samir Kuntar as a hero, the Lebanese Diaspora worldwide is in shock and in deep shame at the spectacle unfolding in Lebanon.

Here is a country where the government allows a foreign-paid (Iran) militia like Hezbollah to cause the death of thousands of innocent Lebanese in order to secure the release of one child killer like Samir Kuntar, instead of working to secure the release of thousands and repatriate the remains of thousands more from Syria.

How can the supporters and apologists of Hezbollah claim that it is a "national resistance" when Hezbollah captured hundreds of their own fellow Lebanese who were fighting the Syrian occupation between 1980 and 2005 and handed them over to the Syrian occupiers. Not only do these people remain unaccounted for in Syria's dungeons and prisons, but Hezbollah has never asked the Syrian regime - or negotiated with that regime like it did with the Israeli government - to secure the release of these Lebanese, Palestinians and other Arab nationals who remain under torture or who have been killed over 3 decades inside Syria.

We thought that President Sleiman was going to make a difference in the "Resistance" charade of Hezbollah. Instead he, like Siniora, is kowtowing to Hezbollah and playing the "resistance" game along. The Lebanese government should not be celebrating the release of criminals. Instead, it should be demanding the release of our Lebanese prisoners and the return of the remains of the thousands killed by Syria and its operatives back to Lebanon.

Shame on a country that allows this masquerade to unfold on television. The Lebanese all over the Diaspora today are mourning and are ashamed of calling Lebanon our country of origin, because a country that ignores tens of thousands of its own citizens killed or imprisoned by one country, while celebrating the return of one criminal from another country, is not worthy to be called a nation.

If ever in the history of Lebanon has there been a moment when the Lebanese all over the world do not feel proud of being called Lebanese, it is today. The Diaspora should use its economic muscle to let the Lebanese government know the extent of its disgust at the spectacle today in Beirut. This is not the Lebanon that the Diaspora will work to help in the future. This is not the Lebanon of my ancestors. This is not the Lebanon that claims to be a crucible of cultures.

The Lebanon on spectacle today has become the cesspool where scum and filth like Hezbollah is taking with it President Sleiman, Speaker Berri, Prime Minister Siniora, and all the institutions of this country much beneath any level of human decency that Lebanon ever harbored in the past.

Shame, shame, shame.

Hanibaal

SHAME ON LEBANON

With the Israeli government's approval of the swap with Hezbollah, preparations are underway by Hezbollah to organize a popular welcome to the prisoners and "martyrs" at Naqoura, close to headquarters of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).

The freed prisoners would be later flown by a presidential helicopter to Beirut Airport for an official welcome by senior government and Hezbollah officials.

Hezbollah also is sponsoring a popular rally in south Beirut to celebrate the swap, during which its leader Hassan Nasrallah would deliver a speech. [From Naharnet]
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1. It is shameful for the Lebanese to glorify murderers and make heroes out of scum killers like Kuntar.

2. Hezbollah dragged Lebanon into a war in July 2006 in which the country was destroyed and 1,200 Lebanese civilians were killed, just to recover a criminal like Kuntar. This is not a military victory. This is a moral defeat. We lost 1,200 innocent and good citizens of Lebanon to rescue one criminal killer of children and make a hero out of him.

3. How can Hezbollah claim Kuntar as one of its own when he did his "operation" [killing a 4-year old girl by smashing her head with a stone] in 1979, long before the creation of Hezbollah itself and long before any Israeli occupation of the south? This goes only to show that Hezbollah is using Kuntar as a mere tool with which to provoke Israel and thus maintain the justification for Hezbollah's illegal stranglehold over Lebanon under the guise of a "resistance".

4. The Lebanese government of Sleiman and Siniora is wrong to go out of its way to "welcome the heroes and the martyrs", out of fear of Hezbollah and in total disregard for the message it sends to the world.

On days like today, I am ashamed to be a Lebanese. The behavior of Hezbollah and the Siniora government is not representative of the Lebanese people. In their vast majority, the Lebanese people are thinking exactly what this blog is writing, but they are afraid to voice their true opinion. Only the stooges of Hezbollah and those who have become Dhimmis to the Hezbollah regime in Lebanon will go celebrate the return of the criminal Kuntar.

Like it did in the 1980s with the kidnappings of innocent Westerners (teachers and clergymen), unarmed peacekeepers (US and French marines), hijacking planes (TWA847) and many many other acts of pure terrorism, Hezbollah is further staining the reputation of the good country that Lebanon was.

Hanibaal

Great Britain Wants Palestinian Refugees to Stay in Lebanon

UK Ambassador to Lebanon, Ms. Frances Mary Guy: Palestinians who are in Lebanon have perhaps become Lebanese.

In an interview yesterday with the Lebanese OTV television channel, the UK Ambassador to Lebanon, Ms. France Guy made the following comments:

“It is clear that a solution to the Palestinian problem should include the issue of the Palestinian refugees and reaching an agreement over a solution for them wherever they may be. Therefore, the question of those refugees’ right to return to their lands should be discussed, and perhaps the Palestinians who are in Lebanon have become Lebanese. They emigrated from Palestine in 1948, and therefore such negotiations should take place in the framework of the peace process. There won’t be compensations through the settlement of the Palestinians in Lebanon, but we have to be realistic in order to see the number of Palestinians who are able to return, and the number of those who really want to return. The Palestinians might indeed be given the right to return, but they may not want that. Therefore, we must discuss this matter.”

Guy continued: “We never talked about the possibility of giving the Lebanese citizenship to the Palestinians, but perhaps they could have the Palestinian citizenship and stay in Lebanon, like any foreigner living in this country. The bigger problem in Lebanon is in the fact that the Palestinian refugees are unable to exercise the same rights that any foreigner living on its soil enjoys, including the right to obtain work and other rights. There is discrimination between one foreigner and another, and this is the matter that must be discussed today, and not giving the Lebanese citizenship to the Palestinian refugee.”

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Our commentary:
- The British should offer to resettle the refugees in Leeds and other Islamo-British territories where they can integrate more readily than in Lebanon.
- The Palestinians are anglophones in their vast majority, since they were all evicted from Palestine in 1948 by the concerted action of European Jewish movements and the collusion of the Mandatory power in Palestine at the time, Great Britain.
- Lebanon has no moral responsibility towards the refugees and is under no obligation whatsoever to integrate them, even after 100 years.
- Once the refugees are allowed to exercise their right of return, pending negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, those who elect to return should be re-settled in the Jewish settlements that will be evacuated from the West Bank under a peace treaty.
- Those of the refugees who elect not to return to Palestine should be given the choice to emigrate to the following countries:
1. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Libya, Algeria etc. Like the Palestinians, all of these countries are Sunnis, Arabic-native speakers, and anglophones in culture. They will more readily fit and adapt into these societies than in the diverse and complex composition of Lebanese society. Lebanon has enough problems of its own than to add the Palestinian component to it. Also, the addition of half a million Sunnis to the Lebanese population will unsettle the very delicate demographic communitarian balance of Lebanon's 18 different communities.
2. Those of the refugees who elect, still, not to settle in any of the Arab countries (which is understandable given the dictatorial political systems there) should find a more humanitarian and respectable welcome in countries that are either responsible for their plight - Great Britain, Germany, etc... - or traditional countries of emigration such as America, Canada, Australia, Latin America etc...

Tiny Lebanon cannot, should not, and will not absorb the Palestinian refugees. If there is one consensus among the otherwise fractious Lebanese, it is the rejection of the permanent settlement of the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.

Lebanon cannot take the refugees because of its size, economic poverty, complex composition, and because of the fact that of all the Arab countries, Lebanon has already the highest population density in the Middle East. It just isn't feasible.

Lebanon will not take the refugees, because doing so will inevitably lead to a civil unrest and wars, such as the 1975-1990 war between the Lebanese and the Palestinians. This will be a recipe for future wars, massacres, ethnic cleansing, and instability, and no one should be advocating for this scenario.

Lebanon should not take the refugees because it is not responsible for their plight. Lebanon has paid dearly so far by welcoming the refugees, giving them temporary shelter, fighting their terrorist movements that tried to take Lebanon over in the 1970s, and therefore Lebanon will not stand the idea of their permanent settlement on its soil.

For Ms. Guy to be discussing such details as giving them certain rights (to work) but not others (hold passports, vote etc.) is a ridiculous proposal. To grant the refugees the right to work, but not Lebanese citizenship, is like creating a second class of citizens who will continue to live on the margins of society.

What we are calling for - by granting them the right to resettle elsewhere in modern, advanced, comfortable, humanitarian, tolerant and democratic countries like Great Britain, will give the refugees a better standard of living and a chance at growing and prospering far more than in decrepit, traumatized and destroyed Lebanon. With the very successful integration by Britain of millions of Pakistani and other Moslems, the Palestinian refugees will have an easy and smooth transition as they become British citizens.

Hanibaal

The New Lebanese Government

The New Lebanese government was announced today July 11, 2008:

Prime Minister: Fuad Siniora
Deputy Prime Minister: Issam Abu-Jamra
Defense: Elias Murr
Youth and Sports: Talal Arslan
Industry: Ghazi Zayter
Public Works &Transport: Ghazi Aridi
State Minister: Ali Qanso
Agriculture: Elias Skaff
Public Health: Mohamad Jawad Khalifeh
Energy and Water: Alain Tobarian
State Minister: Khalid Qabbani
Information: Tareq Mitri
Economy and Trade: Mohammad Safadi
State Minister: Mohammad Fneish
State Minister: Jean Ogassapian
Foreign Affairs & Emigres: Fawzi Salloukh
Education and Higher Instruction: Bahia Hariri
State Minister: Wael Abu Faour
State Minister: Nassib Lahoud
Culture: Tammam Salam
Refugees: Raymond Audeh
State Minister: Youssef Takla
Justice: Ibrahim Najjar
Finance: Mohammad Shatah
Social Affairs: Mario Aoun
Environment: Antoine Karam
Administrative Development: Ibrahim Shamseddine
Tourism: Elie Marouni
Interior & Municipalities: Ziyad Baroud
Communications: Gebran Bassil

Siniora: Anti-Hezbollah and an Israeli Agent too

Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has rejected Italy’s offer to mediate direct peace negotiations between Lebanon and Israel.

Siniora informed Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, who made the mediation offer during a visit to Jerusalem, that he would not be entering any talks with Israel.

Unlike his fellow Sunni Arabs in Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Tunisia, Mauritania, Lebanon's Prime Minister Siniora is anti-peace with Israel. No one knows why because he never says why he is against Lebanon settling all its problems with Israel by way of negotiations and peace treaties, like all civilized nations do. He even said that Lebanon should wait until all Arab countries sign peace with Israel before it does.

The only explanation is that Siniora, in spite of his posturing as anti-Hezbollah and anti-Syrian, is really allied strategically with Hezbollah in terms of a long term plan of hostility and war between Lebanon and Israel. Hezbollah wants Lebanon to remain the only Arab war front against Israel, even though this has cost Lebanon tremendous pain and suffering over 4 decades, and Hezbollah is insisting on a "defense strategy" to be adopted by the Lebanese State against Israel, including continuing the build up of missiles and rockets stockpiling in the south in anticipation of further wars and hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel such as happened in 2006.

If Siniora continues to reject peace negotiations with Israel, it also means he does not want a solution to the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. By insisting on maintaining Lebanon a violent place where everyone in the neighborhood settles their conflicts, Siniora is seeking to create those conditions that would inevitably lead to the permanent settlement of the 500,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, thus swelling the ranks of his own Sunni community in Lebanon.

For if Siniora genuinely desires peace in Lebanon he would negiotiate with both ISrael and Syria and settle all disputes (borders, prisoners, etc.) in a civilized manner. Instead, he says he does not want Hezbollah to drag Lebanon into war, yet he insists of not dragging Lebanon into peace either, which comes down to the same thing.

What is Siniora's plan for Lebanon's future? How does he think Lebanon can gain peace if it is constantly subjected to the status of a war front with Israel? Are Egypt and Jordan any less Arab because they signed peace treaties with ISrael and have now known peace for 20 years? Are Jordanians and Egyptians and Palestinians better or deserve more than the Lebanese? Why should the Lebanese continue to pay the price for all the Arabs who say they want to defeat Israel but never do anything except force Lebanon to do the job for them?

Siniora's major ally - the US - also seems to like this stance by Siniora because the Bush administration never pressures him into talking to the ISraelis. They continue to voice their support for Siniora even as he declares he does not want peace with Israel. Something is fishy about all this, and it is that the Americans are in cahoots with Siniora to keep Lebanon ablaze and tense and violent and never knowing peace in order to one day settle the Palestinian-Israeli conflict at the expense of Lebanon, primarily by settling all the Palestinian refugees permanently in Lebanon, thus solving Israel's problem of having to deal with the Right of Return.

In other words, Lebanon's Prime Minister Siniora is an Israeli agent.

Hanibaal

The Feudal Warlords of March 14 Obstruct Formation of New Lebanese Government

The Christian dogs of Hariri, like Geagea and Gemayel, have now only a few crumbs and a couple of bones left for them in the form of a couple of seats in the new government, and as expected, they are fighting over them, between one another and also with Hariri himself.

Since these dogs lost in the 2005 elections, they represent nothing in the Christian street. Their only claim to a "presence" on the political stage is the leash that Saad Hariri has around their necks. Once in a while he pricks them, and they started barking. Then he yells at them and they go silent. Very obedient and well-trained. They have to, because Hariri is their only survival.

Now the cracks have begun in the March 14 dung heap. With the government ready to be announced, the remaining two Christian seats in this fucked up political system that God gave Lebanon have become the battleground between the Christian dogs of Hariri, and Hariri himself. It is a matter of course that Hariri, the master of the two dogs Gemayel and Geagea, has the final say in who the two Christian ministers that supposedly represent his block ought to be. And he has decided it was going to be someone he likes, not the two dogs. And so now the two dogs are mad and they are barking and they are obstructing the announcement of the new government.

And so the March 14 feudal-financial-warlord-Saudi-Syrian hodge podge of traditionalists and opportunists and all manner of residuals from the Syrian occupation era is about to crack, as expected. These are the people who allied themselves with Hezbollah to barely make it in the 2005 elections, only to turn around and become anti-Hezbollah once they were done. And now Hariri is pulling the same on them. He has used them like toilet paper since 2005, and now they are beginning to stink so bad that he is discarding them.

The Lebanese people will be voting in 2009 under a new electoral law that is likely to grant Lebanese emigrants all over the world the right to vote for the first time in half a century. Those of the Lebanese people who truly love their country, who truly want to see a modern, advanced, functional Lebanon that serves them and prospers with them should NOT VOTE FOR THE TRADITIONALIST POLITICIANS like Gemayel, Hariri, Geagea, Jumblatt, Murr, and all those like them who not only caused the wars but also benefited from them through corruption, pilfering of the treasury, raising telephone rates to fill their own pockets, causing shortages in electricity in order to sell generators and fuel, and on and on... These are the people who killed your children, destroyed your villages, massacred your people, robbed you of every penny you had, while they enriched themselves, live now in palaces, drive around in expensive cars etc...all from your own money and life. DO NOT VOTE FOR THEM.

There will be candidates who will run from your own ranks - decent, honest, and smart people with education and experience - engineers, doctors, scientists, lawyers, university professors, etc. These are people who know how to manage administrations because they do it for a living very successfully, and without killing and stealing and bribing. Think of Riyad Salameh who held the Lebanese pound and the Central Bank under the most difficult of conditions. Think of Chibli Mallat and Mohammad Mugrabi, both world-renown lawyers who have been fighting for human rights and for good governance in Lebanon, etc. and many many others. These people WILL BE RUNNING AS CANDIDATES: So vote for them, vote for change, vote for a modern Lebanon and not a Lebanon from the Ottoman era. Vote for people who will respect you, who will respect the environment, your forests, your beaches. Don't vote for people like Michel Murr and his son Elias Murr, both of whom have ripped the Lebanese treasury off during ttimes of war, who were the allies of the Syrian regime when that regime was killing you every day, who make millions out of the quarries that they carved out of our beautiful mountains to line their pockets.

If we believe that Lebanon is a democracy, then it is through the elections that we will prove this right. Democracy is not cafes and drinking and making noise like idiots. Democracy is taking your own responsibility in hand to change your country for the better. It is not to follow like dogs this or that leader....

Hanibaal

Poor Patriarch Sfeir: Too Senile to Run his Flock

One of the religious mastodonts of the Lebanese sectarian form of government, "Patriarch" Nasrallah Sfeir of the Maronite Church, is now criticizing the Lebanese system of governance that merges both the majority and opposition in a unity cabinet, saying it paralyzes the nation.

"In other states, the majority rules and the minority practices opposition, but in Lebanon the two parties want to rule," Sfeir told believers in Sydney. The government, according to Sfeir, has become like a "carriage with two horses pulling it from the front and two horses pulling it from the rear." "So how can it move?" he asked. "When we last visited Australia (in 1993) we visited parliament and we saw the opposition on one side and the majority on the other. They discuss everything and who can martial more votes rules the nation," he added. "Since 1920 and until two years ago the system was functioning normally in line with a majority and minority base produced by election," Sfeir explained. "Why have they changed now?" he asked.

I would like to remind "Patriarch" Sfeir of two reasons why the system has changed now, both of which he is deeply responsible for:

1- The confessioanl-sectarian form of government in Lebanon, the so-called "consensual" democracy is a system that was created so that he and his fucking church - like all the religious dictators who run Lebanon and their religious orders - can maintain their control over people's lives. Sfeir knows very well that in Lebanon, one has to go through his church and his Mafia clergy for all matters that affect one's Lebanese identity. Unless the 18 religions recognized by the Lebanese constitution grant their admission to a human being into their ranks, the Lebanese state will not grant the Lebanese citizenship to that human being. People in Lebanon cannot be Hindu, Buddhist, Bahai, Zoroastrian, or even agnostic or atheists, because the State will not recognize them as human beings worthy of the fucking Lebanese identity. People are forced to change their religion every time they marry outside their religion. Every time someone in the Maronite church wants a divorce, the Maronite clergy demands tens of thousands of dollars in bribes, kickbacks, and other "divine" fees before issuing the divorce. I know this from personal experience. The Lebanese political system is rotten to the core because a representative of the people is NOT a representative of the people, he or she is a representative of the religious sect. People's national identity comes AFTER their religious identity. Unless this system is liberalized and secularized, primarily by separating religion from matters of State to become like Australia and all other modern civilized countries, then Lebanon will continue to be a backwards country like Iran and Israel, where religion defines people's national identity.

2. The second reason for why the system seemed to work up to a couple of years ago, but then stopped, is because Patriarch Sfeir was a coward who could not even defend his own flock for the past 20 or so years under the Syrian occupation. His collusion with the Syrians and his support of a pro-Syrian war criminal like Samir Geagea, made the system "appear" to work, like the Vichy government appeared to work under the Nazi occupation in France. When the Taif Agreement was engineered by Saudi Arabia and the United States - neither of them a Catholic, let alone a Maronite - to castrate the Maronite President and make him a figurehead while granting the Sunni Prime Minister and the Shiite Speaker of Parliament all the powers of the Head of State, "Patriarch" Sfeir endorsed it and supported it against the wishes of his own Maronite flock who rejected the Agreement. It is precisely that Agreement that made government in Lebanon the pitiful spectacle we see today: A three-headed monster, since each of the President, the Prime Minister and the Speaker - all referred to as "Presidents" to emphasize the equality - now had equal powers. Which means, because of the Islamic-Christian divide as well as all the smaller cleavages within the Christian communities (e.g. Catholics versus Orthodox) and within the Muslim communities (Shiite versus Sunni), all are fueled by the hatreds entertained by Sfeir and all the other patriarchs, muftis, mullahs, and people with titles from the Jurassic Age, the government cannot function. That is why it took 8 months - and injections of money and pressures and mediations from all over the globe - to elect a President, and now it is taking 6 weeks (so far) to form a government. That is why I have to bribe every jackass uneducated son of a bitch who is a crony of this Christian or that Muslim politician, to get a driver's license or a passport.

"Patriarch" Sfeir, you suck big time. Not just you, but also Qabbani, Hassan Nasrallah, Fadlallah and all the other smelly religious old men in robes and strange head gear who, unelected as they may be, still run the country from behind their pulpits. "Patriarch" Sfeir: You are too senile anyway to know what you are talking about. The Lebanese people need to understand that their future and their happiness are in walking away from religion, and doing what all the civilized free world has done: Leave religion in dusty churches and mosques, and get rid of archaic beliefs that keep you chained like animals.

Hanibaal

Syrian Muslim Soldiers Trample Quran

Even Muslims desecrate the Quran.

As reported by al-Quds Press from London today July 6, 2008, eyewitnesses of the riot that took place over the weekend in the Syrian prison of Saydnaya say that "prison guards trampled the Quran under their boots and killed 25 prisoners".

Al-Quds Press reports that the Syrian Committee for Human Rights did in fact receive a cell phone call from a live eyewitness inside the Syrian military prison (where political prisoners are kept, including hundreds of Lebanese citizens seized in Lebanon during the Syrian occupation) who said he saw a rebellion on July 5 by Islamist and political prisoners, some of whom were shot dead by prison guards.

The prison guards undertook a "provocative and offensive" search operation in which there were altercations with the prisoners, followed by an escalation that included putting copies of the Holy Quran (belonging to the Islamist prisoners) on the ground and stepping and trampling on them repeatedly. This apparently caused the Islamist prisoners to protest and "rush at the guards to retrieve the Quran copies, which led the military police to open fire."

Hanibaal

"Lebanese Forces" Joe Sarkis: An Ass in Extinction

Lebanese Tourism Minister Joe Sarkis, who is a member of the radical fundamentalist Christian "Lebanese Forces" militia that was responsible for hundreds of massacres and killings during the Lebanese War of 1975-1990, as well as the assassination of key Christian figures (Tony Frangieh, Dany Chamoun, etc.) of the Lebanese Resistance to the Syrian occupation, said yesterday that the first National Christian Gathering (NCG) conference which was held over the weekend in Lebanon was attended by “the faces of the past Syrian era, some of whom are still in a relationship with the Syrian regime.”

Mr. Sarkis seems to want to deceive the Lebanese people into forgetting that it was his own Lebanese Forces militia that defected from the Christian Resistance against Syria in 1989-1990, and joined the Syrian Army in bombarding the Christian sector of Beirut. The Lebanese Forces became Syria's allies during that period and supported the signing of the Taef Agreement, which surrendered Lebanon's sovereignty to the Syrian regime, and politically castrated the Christian President of the country to the benefit of the Sunni Moslem Prime Minister. So how can Minister of Tourism Joe Sarkis say that the NCG brings back faces from the Syrian era when he, his boss Geagea, and his March 14 allies Hariri and Jumblatt were Syria's top collaborators and consolidators of the Syrian occupation between 1990 and 2005?

Furthermore, the Lebanese Forces themselves were Hezbollah's allies during the parliamentary elections of May 2005 and joined them in the government that was formed then, and endorsed and signed the ministerial statement that gave Hezbollah the right to "resist, fight, and maintain a parallel army next to the Lebanese army."

Mr. Sarkis also said that General Michel Aoun (a member of the NCG) was Hezbollah’s “interface,” ignoring the fact that his own radical Christian fundamentalist militia is the cover and interface for Saudi Wahhabism through his alliance with Saad Hariri, the half-Saudi, half-Lebanese Sunni Muslim leader of the March 14 heap of dung.

Observers further say that the Christian "Lebanese Forces" militia is allied with the Saudis and the Hariri family for no other reason but to cling to a semblance of respectability, and it is believed that the militia is directly funded by the Saudis and the billionaire Hariri empire. It should be noted that in the May 2005 elections, which were run under an electoral law created by the Syrian occupation to favor their allies of the Lebanese Forces, the Lebanese Forces lost as representatives of the Christian population, while members of the NCG won by a 70% landslide. The NCG at the time was seen as the main opposition to the Syrian occupation.

The Lebanese Forces have in fact evolved to represent a radical Christian counterpart of Sunni Moslem radicalism. Despite their Christian-Moslem divide, they are joined at the hip when it comes to fighting the forces of modernity and secularism which aim at lifting Lebanon from under the robes of clergymen and feudal lords. This explains the alliance of the LF with Hariri and his Saudi bosses. It is believed as well that the LF see Sunnis as a counterweight to Shiites in Lebanon, and as such they support the Saudi-Hariri efforts at implanting the half-million Palestinian refugees permanently in Lebanon. This is consistent with the LF alliance with Israel, since the settling of the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon would relieve Israel of the Right of Return which is claimed by the Palestinians. In exchange, the Sunni allies of the LF would become a majority in the Lebanese population.

Photo: Saudi Prince Sultan Bin Abdel Aziz Bin Salman Al Saud and Minister Joe Sarkis.

In his capacity as Minister of Tourism, Joe Sarkis has been a strong advocate for a greater integration of Lebanon into its Moslem Arab environment, as evidenced by the following statements he made at conference held in Beirut last year:

"There is a need for more coordination among Arab experts for the creation of a strategy to improve tourism in the Arab world, increased representation of Arab tourism delegates at international conferences and exhibitions, the development of an Arab tourism dictionary, improved relations with the Arab Organization for Administrative Development, and for long term training workshops."



It is therefore expected that in the next parliamentary elections of 2009, the Lebanese Forces are likely to be crushed even further by the Christian voters because of their strong support for an Arab identity of Lebanon and their refusal to abandon their alliance with the Saudis and join their Christian fellows of the NCG. Which explains the desperate attempts by LF members Joe Sarkis and Antoine Zahra at discrediting the NCG. This posturing will further isolate the LF, and observers believe that the Lebanese Forces will in fact disintegrate and disappear from the Lebanese political scene, because the Lebanese people are tired of fanatics and radicals like the Lebanese Forces (on the Christian side) and Hezbollah and Hariri (on the Muslim side).

Hanibaal

March 14 Morons to Endorse Hezbollah's Right to "Resistance"

The March 14 morons - from Siniora, Hariri, Jumblatt and Geagea and Gemayel - will endorse Hezbollah's right to be a "resistance" in the soon-to-be new Lebanese government's ministerial statement, as reported by the As-Safir newspaper.

This is yet another example of the unprincipled and mercantile politics of the traditional political establishment in Lebanon. In this country, politicians are like grocery store owners: They will sell their mother if it helps them stay in power.

So here we are, after decades of Hezbollah's violating every norm and standard, putting Lebanon at the risk of disintegration and war, under the fake cover of "resistance" against an inexistent Israeli occupation - yet never complaining about the Syrian occupation of 30 years - the former Syrian and Hezbollah collaborators like Hariri, Siniora and Jumblatt, will one more time endorse Hezbollah's right to be a "resistance". These people are like chameleons on a checkerboard: They will never take a position on principle and stick with it, and yes, they will sell their own mother for a seat in the new government.

Hanibaal

Donkey Antoine Zahra: Bray No More! قف عن النهيق، يا حمار

MP Antoine Zahra of the Lebanese Forces said in an interview yesterday that Michel Aoun’s positions "provided Hezbollah with the required Christian cover for a sectarian project under the guise of national partnership”.

My question to this jackass donkey is: Isn't this the exact same thing that Samir Geagea, Amin Gemayel and himself are doing by "providing Christian cover to Hariri, Siniora and Jumblatt under the guise of March 14?" --- Hanibaal

Kuntar: What Hezbollah hero is he?

Samir Kuntar, to be imminently released by Israel in exchange for 2 Israeli soldiers corpses, carried out his "operation" (i.e. killing a 4-year old and a 6-year old Israeli girls) on April 22, 1979. This was a good 3 years before the Israeli invasion of 1982 and subsequent occupation which Hezbollah claims to be a "resistance" against.

1979 too is the year that Khomeini toppled the Shah and founded the Islamic Republic of Iran. Hezbollah wasn't even born yet.

So by what criterion is Hezbollah claiming Kuntar to be one of its own? Why is Hezbollah going so far to have him released, at the price of Lebanon's destruction by Israel in 2006? Kuntar was acting under the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), then a communist Syrian appendage, acting in the Lebanese south against all agreements between the Lebanese State and the Palestinian movements. In fact, when Israel invaded in 1982, Hezbollah's Shiites welcomed the Israeli troops as liberators, with flowers and rice, because the Shiites had had enough of the PLO and the PFLP and all the other Palestinian gangs by then.

So why is Hezbollah making a hero out of this scumbag? Why is the entire Lebanese government of Fuad Siniora, the new President Michel Sleiman, and Hariri's March 14 bastards celebrating and ass-kissing Hezbollah about this suddenly discovered "hero"? What country is this that makes murderers like Kuntar as heroes, war criminals like Jumblatt and Geagea as leaders, yet puts in jail innocent Palestinians like Youssef Chaabane for crimes they did not commit but whose confessions were extracted under torture by the pro-Syrian Lebanese Intelligence and the corrupt Lebanese judiciary?

Shame on Lebanon.

Hanibaal.

Propaganda and Reality: Hezollah's Lies and Siniora's Hypocrisy

The fact that a deal was reached between Hezbollah and Israel on an exchange of bodies and prisoners is being vaunted as another "divine victory" by Hezbollah, and the Lebanese government, from Siniora and Sleiman to the pro-government loyalists like Hariri and Jumblatt, are ass-kissing big time to Hezbollah by pledging to go welcome the "heroes" upon their release by Israel.

What is missing in this charade of "chic" terrorism, by Hezbollah, the March 14 hypocrites and all the spineless Lebanese politicians who are afraid of Hezbollah are the following facts:

- Negotiations work and yield results, even with Israel. Like it did with Jordan and Egypt, Israel holds its side of the bargain.

- Then, why can't negotiations work on the Shebaa Farms, on the 5,000 Lebanese refugees in Israel, on the Blue Line, a final delineation of the border, and all other outstanding issues between Lebanon and Israel?

- Why are the coward hypocrites Siniora, Hariri and Jumblatt riding the Hezbollah mule now for a few crumbs of dignity, as they try to exploit the deal to their own electoral advantage? Wasn't Hezbollah their enemy a few weeks ago when it ran over their turfs in Beirut and the Mountain?

- Why isn't someone among these traitors calling for a similar negotiation to take place with Syria, in order to settle the much much bigger problems Lebanon has with Syria: Syria does not even recognize Lebanon's right to exist as a nation, not to mention all the assassinations, the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese killed and injured by Syria's 30-year occupation of Lebanon, and the hundreds of Lebanese still held incommunicado in Syria's dungeons and jails?

Like they all did back when they were Syria's lackeys - because they were afraid for their lives, their money and their power over their people - these people - the Hariris, Jumblatts, Sinioras and all the other dogs of Lebanese politics - are doing the same thing now with Hezbollah. They are kissing Hassan Nasrallah's ass, even as his bosses in Syria and Iran assassinated their fellow ministers and parliamentarians.

Samir Kuntar killed a 4-year girl by crushing her head with a rock. The Lebanese people are being told that he is a hero for having done that. Same thing with Imad Mughniyeh, the kidnapper and killer of peacekeepers, clergymen, and teachers, Hezbollah's propaganda machine is telling the Lebanese people that he is now a hero. And the morons in Lebanon eat up Hezbollah's lies like a knefe bun in the morning, dripping and sticky and all.

A new restaurant opened in Beirut recently calling itself "Guns and Buns", where everyone dines in a "Civil war retro" style. The line between reality and fantasy is indeed very blurred in Lebanon these days, so much so that Hezbollah's lies and doublespeak have also become truth:
Terrorism is resistance , suicide is martyrdom, killing children is heroism, negotiating with the enemy is bad (except for us since we know best), sovereignty is relative: If Israel occupies 25 square kilometers that Syria stole by force from Lebanon, this is occupation. But when Syria occupies Lebanon for 30 years and kills thousands of times more Lebanese than Israel ever did, we call it a "brotherly presence".

Remember that Muslim Arabs (Lebanese and otherwise) never ever complained about the Turkish Ottoman occupation that lasted 400 years (from 1516 to 1918), even though the Turks were foreigners and Europeans. But they complain about the Western presence in Lebanon which lasted 20 years between the two world wars. Why? Because of Islamic fanaticism. Nothing else. After 400 years, the Turks left nothing behind in Lebanon, just a few words, a couple of dishes, and of course famine, hunger, oppression, and backwardness. They even stole the language. After World War I, the West left the Lebanese a constitution, economic prosperity, top educational institutions still thriving today and a way of life that made all the Arabs seething with jealousy and envy.

The problem in Lebanon is that the Moslems of Lebanon have a very poor idea of what citizenship is in a modern state. They confuse it with Islam, Arabism, anti-westernism, and so on. Their patriotism is based on negatives, on what they don't want, instead of positives, on what they would like. And they drag their fellow Lebanese down to the abyss of Arab Islamic scum. They have been doing this since the 1960s, ever since Nasser, Arafat, Khomeini, Assad, and all the pan-Arab and pan-Syrian political and ideological imbeciles like Antoun Saade and Michel Aflaq found it convenient to burn Lebanon because they could not get back at the West. Lebanon is the West by proxy, and they a are determined to kill it.

Hanibaal

With Apologies to Robert Fisk: UK lists Hezbollah as Terrorist

To the chagrin of Robert Fisk, whose career now has to depend strictly on defending the Syrian Baath regime and the remnants of the former Iraqi Baath regime, the British government yesterday declared the Lebanese political party Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation banned under the Terrorism Act of 2000.

It means it is now a criminal offence for anyone in the UK to be a member of the party's military structure, raise funds or encourage support for it.

'Supports terrorism'
Hezbollah's external security organisation was already banned, but this has been extended to a ban on the party's entire military structure. Home Office minister Tony McNulty said the party's military wing was providing active support to militants in Iraq, including training in the use of deadly roadside bombs.

"Hezbollah's military wing also provides support to Palestinian terrorist groups in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad," he added. "It is because of this support for terrorism in Iraq and Occupied Palestinian Territories that the government has taken this action.

"Proscription of Hezbollah's military wing will not affect the legitimate political, social and humanitarian role Hezbollah plays in Lebanon, but it sends out a clear message that we condemn its violence and support for terrorism."

Hanibaal

Hezbollah: A Life of Its Own

Hezbollah negotiates with Israel, but prohibits anyone else in Lebanon from doing the same, including the Lebanese government.
Hezbollah is training insurgents in Iraq, yet defenders of Hezbollah say it is a "legitimate" party with representatives in the Lebanese Parliament.
These same defenders - both foreign and domestic - reject the tagging of Hezbollah as "terrorist", even though the organization kidnapped, killed, tortured, hijacked, etc. hundreds of Lebanese and westerners in the 1980s, including the first ever suicide truck bombing of peacekeeping US Marines and French paratroopers.
Hezbollah wages wars on its own, in complete disregard of the Lebanese people and government. Is that what a "legitimate" party does in a sovereign country?
The anomaly and aberration of Hezbollah is too simply evident to ignore or find strange explanations for its existence.
Hezbollah works for, and takes it orders from, Iran. It serves Iranian interests, not Lebanese interests. Lebanon's interests are not in "resistance". They are in getting the country out of the state of war in which the PLO first (between 1967 and 1982), then Hezbollah (from 1979 to this date), forced it to be on behalf of other countries (Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran).
Hanibaal


Hezbollah link to Iraq militia alleged

Lebanese said to have led training camps; Iran seen as waging proxy war

By HAMZA HENDAWI and QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA

The Associated Press

updated 9:40 p.m. ET, Tues., July. 1, 2008

BAGHDAD - Hezbollah instructors trained Shiite militiamen at remote camps in southern Iraq until three months ago, when they slipped across the border to Iran — presumably to continue instruction on Iranian soil, according to two Shiite lawmakers and a top army officer.

The three Iraqis claim the Lebanese Shiites were also involved in planning some of the most brazen attacks against U.S.-led forces, including the January 2007 raid on a provincial government compound in Karbala in which five Americans died.

The allegations, made in separate interviews with The Associated Press, point not only to an Iranian hand in the Iraq war, but also to Hezbollah's willingness to expand beyond its Lebanese base and assume a broader role in the struggle against U.S. influence in the Middle East.

All this suggests that Shiite-dominated Iran is waging a proxy war against the United States to secure a dominant role in majority-Shiite Iraq, which has supplanted Lebanon as Tehran's top priority in the Middle East.

"The stakes are much higher in Iraq, where there is a Shiite majority, oil, the shrine cities and borders with Saudi Arabia," said analyst Farid al-Khazen, a Christian Lebanese lawmaker whose party is allied with Hezbollah.

"The big story is Iraq, and the Americans unwittingly opened it up for the Iranians" by their invasion in 2003, al-Khazen said.

The allegations come as the United States and Iran are engaged in a showdown over Tehran's nuclear program and each country's role in Iraq.

Iran, Hezbollah's mentor, denies giving any support to Shiite extremists in Iraq.

Arab advantage
The three Iraqis who spoke to the AP said the Iranians prefer to use Hezbollah instructors because as Arabs, they can communicate better with the Iraqi Shiites and maintain a lower profile than Farsi-speakers from Iran.

For Hezbollah, a high-risk role in Iraq could give the Lebanese movement leverage with the United States and broaden its appeal within the Arab world, where anti-American sentiment remains strong.

Iraqi officials have said little about a Hezbollah role in this country. However, President Jalal Talabani told U.S.-funded Alhurra television this week that "there have been several occasions" when Hezbollah members or those who "claim to belong to Hezbollah" have been detained in Iraq.

He gave no further details.

But the two Iraqi lawmakers and the military officer said Hezbollah instructors work only with members of the Iraqi Shiite "special groups," the U.S. military's name for splinter factions of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia. The U.S. believes that Iran's elite Quds Force, a branch of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, supports the special groups.

All three Iraqis spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not supposed to release the information.

Sources tied to al-Sadr
The lawmakers belong to al-Sadr's movement and were involved in the creation of the Mahdi Army in 2003. The military officer's job gives him access to highly classified intelligence information.

They said Hezbollah began training Shiite militiamen in the second half of 2006 at two camps — Deir and Kutaiban — east of Basra near the Iranian border. They fled across the border in late March or early April this year after U.S.-backed Iraqi forces launched a crackdown against militias in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city.

In Iran, training resumed in camps once used by Iraqi exiles who fought with Iranian forces during the 1980s war between the two countries, the lawmakers said. Instruction includes explosives, ambushes and use of rockets and mortars.

Citing testimony from special groups members in custody, the officer said the Hezbollah instructors never numbered more than 10 at any one time, kept a low profile and moved back and forth over the Iranian border.

Indications that Hezbollah was playing a role in Iraq first surfaced last July when the U.S. military announced the arrest of Ali Musa Daqduq, a Lebanese-born Hezbollah operative allegedly training Iraqi Shiite militiamen.

At least one other Hezbollah operative, identified only as Faris, was detained in Basra during fighting there in April and was handed over to the Americans, the Iraqi military officer said.

The U.S. military has said little publicly about Hezbollah's involvement here since announcing Daqduq's arrest, though it has frequently alleged an Iranian role in arming, equipping and training Shiite extremists.

"At this point in time, we do not have any new, releasable information regarding Hezbollah's involvement with special groups in Iran and Iraq," a military spokesman, Capt. Charles Calio, said in an e-mail to the AP.

A Hezbollah spokesman in Beirut, Lebanon, refused to comment on any role for his organization.

However, Ibrahim al-Ameen, a Lebanese newspaper editor close to Hezbollah, said in a recent interview in Beirut that Hezbollah's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, spends several hours daily dealing with "the situation in Iraq."

Nasrallah, who studied Shiite theology in Iraq, spoke at length about Iraqi "resistance" during a speech last May that analysts believed was aimed at bolstering his image as a godfather of Arab opposition to the United States and Israel throughout the Middle East.

Nasrallah as folk hero
Beside its alleged role in Iraq, Hezbollah is known to have ties to the Palestinian militant Hamas group. The charismatic Nasrallah has become a sort of folk hero in the mostly Sunni Arab world after his guerrillas fought Israeli forces to a standstill in a 34-day war in 2006.

A senior Western diplomat based in the Middle East said his government has information suggesting a growing Hezbollah interest in events in Iraq. However, the diplomat would say no more and insisted on anonymity because the subject is so sensitive.

Hezbollah's possible role in direct attacks against U.S.-led forces is murkier and more explosive.

The two Iraqi lawmakers said Hezbollah operatives planned and supervised both the Karbala attack and the brazen daylight kidnapping of five British nationals from a Finance Ministry compound in Baghdad in May 2007. The Britons are still being held.

In the Karbala attack, English-speaking militants wearing American uniforms and carrying American weapons stormed the compound, killing one U.S. soldier and abducting four. The four were later found dead.

A senior Mahdi Army commander in Baghdad, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, said Hezbollah's operations in Iraq had been supervised by Imad Mughniyeh, a top commander of the guerrilla group killed in a car bomb in Syria last February.

The shadowy figure was suspected of a role in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut and the 1992 attack on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25480176/