The Siniora-Sleiman regime in Lebanon considers Israel an enemy. In Tehran this past week, for example, "Consensus" President Sleiman discussed with his Iranian hosts "means to confront the Israeli enemy". Siniora, for his part, is pro-nothing because is anti-Israel, anti-Syria, anti-Iran, anti-Palestinian and anti-Hezbollah.
Yet, behind the scenes and in venues not covered by the media, the corrupt, feudal, religion-based beggar Lebanese regime, which continues to torture prisoners and violate human rights and lives off aid from Europe, the US, Arab countries, the UN and others, does sit and "deal with the Israeli enemy".
This week in Morocco, Israeli Foreign Ministry officials sat with, and were warmly welcomed by, Arab officials including the Lebanese, at an international conference in Morocco. The conference was organized by the Amadeus Institute, an independent Moroccan think-tank, with the goal of working towards normalization of ties with Israel. Now, that is all fine and dandy, except that Hezbollah, the terrorist organization now part of the Lebanese government, probably does not know what Siniora and Sleiman sent representatives to chat with Israelis over normalizing ties. Hezbollah has sworn to destroying ISrael and has amassed close to 50,000 missiles in the Lebanese south for that specific purpose.
The conference was attended by delegations from Lebanon, Morocco, the Arab Gulf nations, the Palestinian Authority and the Arab League, as well as by various European countries, including Spain represented by its foreign minister, Miguel Ángel Moratinos.
According to press reports, the Israeli delegation reported being warmly received by their hosts and fellow guests.
Now "dealing with the Israeli enemy" is a crime under Lebanese law. But somehow this crime is selectively applied by Siniora, Sleiman and their henchmen to scapegoats (people whom the regime wants discredited) and innocent Lebanese like a former Miss Lebanon who happened to stand next to Miss Israel because of the alphabetical order during the pageant once in Egypt, or to the thousands of Lebanese villagers along the Lebanese-Israeli border in the south who fought for their lives and their villages against the Islamic and Palestinian hordes of Syria and the PLO, against renegade Muslim brigades of the Lebanese Army, and Hezbollah.
On the other hand, warlords and war criminals like Geagea and Jumblatt, who are today pillars of Lebanon's political establishment - and pro-American to boot - are never questioned about their dealings with the Israeli enemy during the decades of the Lebanese War. They got to massacre and slaughter, ethnically cleanse, steal and pilfer, deal with Syria and Israel, and practice every manner of mayhem and plunder without ever being held responsible or accountable.
And now, like its patron Baathist regime in Damascus, the Lebanese regime is above the very laws it passes. Like the dictatorship in Syria, it can conduct negotiations with Israel, but arrests any of its citizens for expressing their opinions or for innocently dealing with Israelis. This week, Muhamad Mughrabi, a prominent Lebanese human rights defender who used to be constantly harassed and imprisoned by the Lebanese puppet regimes under the Syrian occupation, is again being dragged to court by the Siniora and Sleiman regime to humiliate, scare and discredit him because he criticized the kangaroo military courts and the corrupt judiciary in Lebanon, now free from the Syrian occupation. This is shameful and disgusting in a country that brags about its freedoms and its democracy, which we all know are only skin-deep, fake and just for propaganda. Lebanon is no different from Syria, or any of the other Arab "democracies" - secular and religious.
This is part and parcel of the traditionalist, elitist politics of the Middle East where political leaders and regimes treat their people like animals while they themselves get away with anything. Unless the peoples of the Middle East understand the dynamic of their own self-servitude to these archaic forms of political leadership, and unless they liberate themselves from them, the countries of the Middle East - including Lebanon - will continue to be some of the most backwards countries of the world.
Hanibaal
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Saturday, November 29, 2008
On Human Rights, Lebanese Government Worse than Syrian Dictatorship
Amnesty International calls on Lebanon to acquit Muhamad Mugraby
From Yalibnan.com
On the eve of the expected decision in the case against lawyer and human rights defender Muhamad Mugraby in which he is accused of slandering a public official, Amnesty International is calling on the Lebanese authorities to drop the charge.
Amnesty International is also appealing to the Lebanese authorities to end the pattern of repeated prosecutions brought against him. In the organization's view, these amount to harassment and appear to be aimed at intimidating him from carrying out his work as a human rights defender and punishing him for publicly criticizing the country's judicial institutions.
Given that the charge against Muhamad Mugraby relates to a speech he made before the European Parliament, Amnesty International is also calling on the European Union (EU) to make representations to the Lebanese authorities to halt the prosecution, as well as other harassment he is facing.
Muhamad Mugraby is being tried before a criminal court in Beirut on account of a speech on human rights he made on 4 November 2003 at the European Parliament in Brussels. This prosecution was brought despite the fact he had already been tried and acquitted of the same charge (Article 383 of the Penal Code), as well as of slander of the military establishment and its officers (Article 157 of the Military Penal Code), before the Military Court of Cassation in April 2006. Under international law, as set out in Article 14(7) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Lebanon is a party, no one may be tried or punished again for a criminal offense for which they have been finally acquitted in a previous trial in the same jurisdiction.
If convicted Muhamad Mugraby risks being sentenced to up to two years in prison. Were he be to be imprisoned, Amnesty International would consider him a prisoner of conscience detained solely for peacefully exercising his right to freedom of expression and would call and campaign for his immediate and unconditional release.
In his address to the European Parliament, Muhamad Mugraby criticized the military court system in Lebanon. He made particular reference to frequent allegations that suspects being brought to trial before military courts are tortured in order to force them to "confess" and to the lack of legal training of the courts' judges. Concerns that procedures before military courts fail to comply with international fair trial standards and that detainees are subjected to torture and other ill-treatment in pre-trial detention have been well documented by Amnesty International and the UN Human Rights Committee, among others.
Amnesty International would like to remind the Lebanese authorities of Principle 23 of the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers, which states:
"Lawyers like other citizens are entitled to freedom of expression, belief, association and assembly. In particular, they shall have the right to take part in public discussion of matters concerning the law, the administration of justice and the promotion and protection of human rights".
In addition, Muhamad Mugraby has rights as a human rights defender and the Lebanese state has an obligation to protect those rights, as stated in the UN Declaration on the Rights and Responsibilities of Individuals, Groups and Institutions to Promote and Protect Universally Recognized Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (Declaration on Human Rights Defenders):
"Everyone has the right, individually and in association with others, to promote and to strive for the protection and realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms at the national and international levels."
Background
Muhamad Mugraby has been charged and prosecuted on a number of occasions in the last two decades in cases -- some of which are still pending against him -- which appear to be linked to his work in defence of human rights and his public criticism of Lebanon's judicial institutions. In 1995 he was charged with defaming the state of Lebanon and its judiciary following the state's interception of a fax he sent to Amnesty International in which he complained of irregularities in military court trials. The case was finally dismissed in 2001. In another case, which dates back to 2002 but which just this month resurfaced, Muhamad Mugraby is facing what appears to be a politically motivated charge of "impersonating a lawyer". He was arrested on 8 August 2003, then released on bail three weeks later. For more details, see Amnesty International's public statement Dr al-Mugraby must be immediately released (Index: MDE 18/011/2003), issued on 13 August 2003.
The EU's relationship with Lebanon is largely based on an Association Agreement, a binding international treaty which includes an international legal commitment by the contracting parties to respect human rights. Accordingly, the EU must take all possible steps to ensure that human rights defenders can address European Institutions freely and without hindrance, and that they are not penalized for doing so. The EU Guidelines on Human Rights Defenders recommend that the EU intervenes on behalf of human rights defenders at risk and suggest practical means to support and assist them.
From Yalibnan.com
On the eve of the expected decision in the case against lawyer and human rights defender Muhamad Mugraby in which he is accused of slandering a public official, Amnesty International is calling on the Lebanese authorities to drop the charge.
Amnesty International is also appealing to the Lebanese authorities to end the pattern of repeated prosecutions brought against him. In the organization's view, these amount to harassment and appear to be aimed at intimidating him from carrying out his work as a human rights defender and punishing him for publicly criticizing the country's judicial institutions.
Given that the charge against Muhamad Mugraby relates to a speech he made before the European Parliament, Amnesty International is also calling on the European Union (EU) to make representations to the Lebanese authorities to halt the prosecution, as well as other harassment he is facing.
Muhamad Mugraby is being tried before a criminal court in Beirut on account of a speech on human rights he made on 4 November 2003 at the European Parliament in Brussels. This prosecution was brought despite the fact he had already been tried and acquitted of the same charge (Article 383 of the Penal Code), as well as of slander of the military establishment and its officers (Article 157 of the Military Penal Code), before the Military Court of Cassation in April 2006. Under international law, as set out in Article 14(7) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Lebanon is a party, no one may be tried or punished again for a criminal offense for which they have been finally acquitted in a previous trial in the same jurisdiction.
If convicted Muhamad Mugraby risks being sentenced to up to two years in prison. Were he be to be imprisoned, Amnesty International would consider him a prisoner of conscience detained solely for peacefully exercising his right to freedom of expression and would call and campaign for his immediate and unconditional release.
In his address to the European Parliament, Muhamad Mugraby criticized the military court system in Lebanon. He made particular reference to frequent allegations that suspects being brought to trial before military courts are tortured in order to force them to "confess" and to the lack of legal training of the courts' judges. Concerns that procedures before military courts fail to comply with international fair trial standards and that detainees are subjected to torture and other ill-treatment in pre-trial detention have been well documented by Amnesty International and the UN Human Rights Committee, among others.
Amnesty International would like to remind the Lebanese authorities of Principle 23 of the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers, which states:
"Lawyers like other citizens are entitled to freedom of expression, belief, association and assembly. In particular, they shall have the right to take part in public discussion of matters concerning the law, the administration of justice and the promotion and protection of human rights".
In addition, Muhamad Mugraby has rights as a human rights defender and the Lebanese state has an obligation to protect those rights, as stated in the UN Declaration on the Rights and Responsibilities of Individuals, Groups and Institutions to Promote and Protect Universally Recognized Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (Declaration on Human Rights Defenders):
"Everyone has the right, individually and in association with others, to promote and to strive for the protection and realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms at the national and international levels."
Background
Muhamad Mugraby has been charged and prosecuted on a number of occasions in the last two decades in cases -- some of which are still pending against him -- which appear to be linked to his work in defence of human rights and his public criticism of Lebanon's judicial institutions. In 1995 he was charged with defaming the state of Lebanon and its judiciary following the state's interception of a fax he sent to Amnesty International in which he complained of irregularities in military court trials. The case was finally dismissed in 2001. In another case, which dates back to 2002 but which just this month resurfaced, Muhamad Mugraby is facing what appears to be a politically motivated charge of "impersonating a lawyer". He was arrested on 8 August 2003, then released on bail three weeks later. For more details, see Amnesty International's public statement Dr al-Mugraby must be immediately released (Index: MDE 18/011/2003), issued on 13 August 2003.
The EU's relationship with Lebanon is largely based on an Association Agreement, a binding international treaty which includes an international legal commitment by the contracting parties to respect human rights. Accordingly, the EU must take all possible steps to ensure that human rights defenders can address European Institutions freely and without hindrance, and that they are not penalized for doing so. The EU Guidelines on Human Rights Defenders recommend that the EU intervenes on behalf of human rights defenders at risk and suggest practical means to support and assist them.
Monday, November 24, 2008
One Terrorist Promotes Another
Syrian Terrorist-In-Chief Bashar Assad promotes murderer Kuntar into the Syrian army.
The interesting thing is that Bashar made Kuntar only a sergeant, which does not match up with Kuntar's glorious achievements: Killing innocent people, including a 5-year old girl whose head he repeatedly smashed with a rock until she died, then spending decades behind bars. Assad should have made him a general. Just look at the hoodlums, drug traffickers, weapons and terrorist smugglers, torturers, and other bottom feeders and whores (Bouthaina Shaaban, for example) that make up the higher echelons of the Syrian enemy regime in Damascus.
The Israelis - who have become more asinine than their patrons the Americans over the years - released this Druze Frankenstein monster a few months ago in a deal with the terrorist organization Hezbollah, in exchange for dead bodies, as if begging Hezbollah and Kuntar to make more dead Israeli bodies for future exchanges with the emasculated, girlie sissies that the Israelis have become. Yalla, Western decadence began when the West abandoned the Christian Lebanese as early as the late 1960s to fend for themselves against the PLO, Syria, and a horde of radical Islamic movements, even going so far as to accuse the Lebanese of being fanatics for defending their country against the same enemy that the West and the sissified Israel are struggling with today.
Here is what Assad, the Syrian barbarian, said about Kuntar:
"Kuntar was not merely the most senior prisoner in jail, but is also senior among free and noble men. His being here with us [in Damascus] and his determination to promote Arab rights, despite everything he's been through, has turned him into a symbol of the struggle for freedom across the Arab world and the whole world."
For his part, the monster Kuntar was drooling over Syria: "The great thing about Syria is that when I was arrested 30 years ago, she was firmly struggling against Israel and, when I visit today, she still is."
Yup, Samir. 30 years ago, Syria was indeed struggling in Lebanon - the fucked up West and Israel too had called that Syrian "struggle" in Lebanon "a factor of stability" - killing thousands of innocent Lebanese civilians, bombing Lebanese cities over their inhabitants, grabbing Western hostages and bartering them for recognition from the West, supporting all manner of bedlam, mayhem and plunder under the guise of "helping" Lebanon, kidnapping thousands of Lebanese and torturing them at the Beau Rivage Hotel in West beirut, then in Anjar, before locking them up in the vast Syrian prison system where their names were changed so no one remembered who they were, and even as we speak, assassinating upwards of 17 Lebanese politicians and journalists who dare abandon the Syrian occupation with which they collaborated for decades over the dead bodies of ordinary Lebanese.
But, as much as I blame the Syrians and the Iranians and their clients for this charade, I blame the US, Europe and Israel even more for - even today - still treating Syria as a respectable country. Only last week, David Milliband, the UK Foreign Secretary was in Damascus praising Assad and Syria for their contributions and importance in bringing peace to the region. Every other week, we hear a degenerate Israeli politician urging his country to make a deal with Syria...
Like the PLO was rewarded for decades of terrorism by recognition and a Nobel Prize to boot to Arafat, Syria's terrorism is being rewarded by a hopeless West which can barely keep itself from being swamped by militant Islam. Yes, I tell my fellow Lebanese: The West is making yet another deal with the Syrian Baathist enemy regime against you. Don't believe the numskulls of the MArch 14 group who want you to believe that the US (and its poodle Europe) will not make a deal this time with Syria against Lebanon. Think about it: the West and Israel have been working with Syria against Lebanon and the Palestinians since the late 1960s. Their plan has always been to make Lebanon an Islamic outpost where the Palestinian Revolution can consume itself, as long as it does not bother Israel with rights to Jerusalem and the Right of Return. Why would that plan change today? Because the Baathist enemy regime killed Rafik Hariri? Who the heck is Hariri? He's just another Sunni traitor who worked with all of Lebanon's enemies against his own country, and when he realized the many mistakes he made, his bosses in Damascus killed him; like they do in the Mafia.
So greetings to Kuntar for his promotion. I would have made him a general, though. As a sergeant, he does not have much authority, and all the high-ranking officers of the Syrian army, who are all Alawis like Assad, can still fuck his Druze ass whenever they please.
Hanibaal
The interesting thing is that Bashar made Kuntar only a sergeant, which does not match up with Kuntar's glorious achievements: Killing innocent people, including a 5-year old girl whose head he repeatedly smashed with a rock until she died, then spending decades behind bars. Assad should have made him a general. Just look at the hoodlums, drug traffickers, weapons and terrorist smugglers, torturers, and other bottom feeders and whores (Bouthaina Shaaban, for example) that make up the higher echelons of the Syrian enemy regime in Damascus.
The Israelis - who have become more asinine than their patrons the Americans over the years - released this Druze Frankenstein monster a few months ago in a deal with the terrorist organization Hezbollah, in exchange for dead bodies, as if begging Hezbollah and Kuntar to make more dead Israeli bodies for future exchanges with the emasculated, girlie sissies that the Israelis have become. Yalla, Western decadence began when the West abandoned the Christian Lebanese as early as the late 1960s to fend for themselves against the PLO, Syria, and a horde of radical Islamic movements, even going so far as to accuse the Lebanese of being fanatics for defending their country against the same enemy that the West and the sissified Israel are struggling with today.
Here is what Assad, the Syrian barbarian, said about Kuntar:
"Kuntar was not merely the most senior prisoner in jail, but is also senior among free and noble men. His being here with us [in Damascus] and his determination to promote Arab rights, despite everything he's been through, has turned him into a symbol of the struggle for freedom across the Arab world and the whole world."
For his part, the monster Kuntar was drooling over Syria: "The great thing about Syria is that when I was arrested 30 years ago, she was firmly struggling against Israel and, when I visit today, she still is."
Yup, Samir. 30 years ago, Syria was indeed struggling in Lebanon - the fucked up West and Israel too had called that Syrian "struggle" in Lebanon "a factor of stability" - killing thousands of innocent Lebanese civilians, bombing Lebanese cities over their inhabitants, grabbing Western hostages and bartering them for recognition from the West, supporting all manner of bedlam, mayhem and plunder under the guise of "helping" Lebanon, kidnapping thousands of Lebanese and torturing them at the Beau Rivage Hotel in West beirut, then in Anjar, before locking them up in the vast Syrian prison system where their names were changed so no one remembered who they were, and even as we speak, assassinating upwards of 17 Lebanese politicians and journalists who dare abandon the Syrian occupation with which they collaborated for decades over the dead bodies of ordinary Lebanese.
But, as much as I blame the Syrians and the Iranians and their clients for this charade, I blame the US, Europe and Israel even more for - even today - still treating Syria as a respectable country. Only last week, David Milliband, the UK Foreign Secretary was in Damascus praising Assad and Syria for their contributions and importance in bringing peace to the region. Every other week, we hear a degenerate Israeli politician urging his country to make a deal with Syria...
Like the PLO was rewarded for decades of terrorism by recognition and a Nobel Prize to boot to Arafat, Syria's terrorism is being rewarded by a hopeless West which can barely keep itself from being swamped by militant Islam. Yes, I tell my fellow Lebanese: The West is making yet another deal with the Syrian Baathist enemy regime against you. Don't believe the numskulls of the MArch 14 group who want you to believe that the US (and its poodle Europe) will not make a deal this time with Syria against Lebanon. Think about it: the West and Israel have been working with Syria against Lebanon and the Palestinians since the late 1960s. Their plan has always been to make Lebanon an Islamic outpost where the Palestinian Revolution can consume itself, as long as it does not bother Israel with rights to Jerusalem and the Right of Return. Why would that plan change today? Because the Baathist enemy regime killed Rafik Hariri? Who the heck is Hariri? He's just another Sunni traitor who worked with all of Lebanon's enemies against his own country, and when he realized the many mistakes he made, his bosses in Damascus killed him; like they do in the Mafia.
So greetings to Kuntar for his promotion. I would have made him a general, though. As a sergeant, he does not have much authority, and all the high-ranking officers of the Syrian army, who are all Alawis like Assad, can still fuck his Druze ass whenever they please.
Hanibaal
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Dumbass Murr Junior: Kissing Ass to the Phalange
Lebanese Defense Minister Elias Murr, the junior Murr dumbass, son of the senior racketeer and profiteer Michel Murr, said something yesterday that is typical of the incompetent, inept, and impotent sold out mercenaries that traditonalist Lebanese politicians.
At a rememberance of the tadpole Phalangist, Pierre Gemayel Junior, who like Murr inherited political leadership from his father's testicles, and who was assassinated a year ago by Murr's own former bosses, the Syrian Baathist occupiers, with whom he and his criminal father made millions of dollars while the Lebanese people were starving, Murr Junior said - remember, he is the Defense Minister of this miserable country called Lebanon - that he "hoped that the criminals would be revealed, arrested and taken to court before the next anniversary".
While we all share this hope, most of the Lebanese people still have testicles, unlike Elias Murr who gave his testicles to the Syrian occupation and never got them back when the Syrians withdrew, and consequently, most of the Lebanese will laugh tongue-in-cheek at hearing Lebanon's Defense Minister express "hope" that somehow the criminals will be uncovered and arrested.
The reason is that in Lebanon, there are literally hundreds of thousands of ordinary Lebanese, in addition to megalomaniac thieves posturing as politicians, who have been assassinated, kidnapped, jailed for decades by Syria. The difference, though, is that while ordinary Lebanese hated the Syrians, did not collaborate with them and suffered tremendously from them, the politicians all slept with the Baathist regime and made millions off the back of the ordinary Lebanese while the SYrians ruled the country. So when Syria decides to kill one of the collaborators, the whole world raises hell, and in the case of Rafik Hariri, grand thief and collaborator with the Syrians, a UN resolution was passed to investigate his assassination.
No one ever bothered investigate the assassination and continued torture and imprisonment of ordinary Lebanese; people who lost their businesses, their children, their homes, and their lives, while Murr made money with the Syrians.
Indeed, not one suspect has been arrested by the Lebanese government in the 20 or so assassinations of politicians over the past 3 years. Because the dons of the Lebanese political establishment are all collaborators with the Syrians, they prefer not to make such investigations. Rather, they rely on the UN to do all the work, praying that their names do not come up as accomplices....
To the criminal politicians of Lebanon: There has to be justice. Like there was justice for the Syrians after 30 years of occupation, there will be justice one day for you after all you have done to the ordinary people of Lebanon.
Hanibaal
At a rememberance of the tadpole Phalangist, Pierre Gemayel Junior, who like Murr inherited political leadership from his father's testicles, and who was assassinated a year ago by Murr's own former bosses, the Syrian Baathist occupiers, with whom he and his criminal father made millions of dollars while the Lebanese people were starving, Murr Junior said - remember, he is the Defense Minister of this miserable country called Lebanon - that he "hoped that the criminals would be revealed, arrested and taken to court before the next anniversary".
While we all share this hope, most of the Lebanese people still have testicles, unlike Elias Murr who gave his testicles to the Syrian occupation and never got them back when the Syrians withdrew, and consequently, most of the Lebanese will laugh tongue-in-cheek at hearing Lebanon's Defense Minister express "hope" that somehow the criminals will be uncovered and arrested.
The reason is that in Lebanon, there are literally hundreds of thousands of ordinary Lebanese, in addition to megalomaniac thieves posturing as politicians, who have been assassinated, kidnapped, jailed for decades by Syria. The difference, though, is that while ordinary Lebanese hated the Syrians, did not collaborate with them and suffered tremendously from them, the politicians all slept with the Baathist regime and made millions off the back of the ordinary Lebanese while the SYrians ruled the country. So when Syria decides to kill one of the collaborators, the whole world raises hell, and in the case of Rafik Hariri, grand thief and collaborator with the Syrians, a UN resolution was passed to investigate his assassination.
No one ever bothered investigate the assassination and continued torture and imprisonment of ordinary Lebanese; people who lost their businesses, their children, their homes, and their lives, while Murr made money with the Syrians.
Indeed, not one suspect has been arrested by the Lebanese government in the 20 or so assassinations of politicians over the past 3 years. Because the dons of the Lebanese political establishment are all collaborators with the Syrians, they prefer not to make such investigations. Rather, they rely on the UN to do all the work, praying that their names do not come up as accomplices....
To the criminal politicians of Lebanon: There has to be justice. Like there was justice for the Syrians after 30 years of occupation, there will be justice one day for you after all you have done to the ordinary people of Lebanon.
Hanibaal
Tehran Rules Lebanon - British Treason Redux
After Michel Aoun went to Tehran last month to kiss the ass of the Mullahs (and is now preparing to kiss Bashar Assad's ass), here is the consensus President Michel Sleiman taking the road to Tehran to bend, bow and kiss.
Meanwhile, even as Hezbollah refused to attend Independence Day parades in downtown Beirut (as if to further prove to us that it does not believe in Lebanon's independence), representatives of the Shiite terrorist organization visited Sleiman on the eve of his departure to Tehran to give him its blessings.
What more does one need to understand that, for Hezbollah, Tehran matters more than Beirut, and one's own country can be insulted and ignored by obliging to the foreign and radical Islamic dictatorship in Tehran by demonstrating that bowing to the medieval asses in Tehran is more important than celebrating one's own country's independence.
In related events in the region, the UK Foreign Secretary Milliband went on a Mideast tour last week, praising the Syrian regime at every bend in the road. Yet, Milliband failed to demand from that regime to uphold the human rights and respect the freedoms of Syrian dissidents, and equally importantly for the Lebanese, to demand that the Syrian dictatorship finally come clean by releasing the thousands of Lebanese prisoners it still holds and divulging the fates of the many more thousands who perished in Syria's notorious dungeons and prisons under torture during the long 35-years that Syria occupied Lebanon. This is particularly poignant since the British government makes such a big fuss over the radical Islamists it harbors and protects under the guise of its own respect for these Muslim radicals' freedoms.
Shame on the British government for its duplicity, cowardice and cavorting to dictators. Not only does Great Britain bear enormous responsibility to the Middle East in having caused the catastrophe that is today the insoluble Israel-Palestine problem, like it did with the partition of India and Pakistan, but the residual stupidity that lingers in the brains of the British people (royalty, government, and ordinary people) from the days of the colonial empire is even more dangerous today because it has immunized and desensitized them against seeing themselves sinking in their own excrement.
Fuck the Queen! Fuck Albion! Fuck the Union Jack! And most of all Fuck Robert Fisk.
Hanibaal
Meanwhile, even as Hezbollah refused to attend Independence Day parades in downtown Beirut (as if to further prove to us that it does not believe in Lebanon's independence), representatives of the Shiite terrorist organization visited Sleiman on the eve of his departure to Tehran to give him its blessings.
What more does one need to understand that, for Hezbollah, Tehran matters more than Beirut, and one's own country can be insulted and ignored by obliging to the foreign and radical Islamic dictatorship in Tehran by demonstrating that bowing to the medieval asses in Tehran is more important than celebrating one's own country's independence.
In related events in the region, the UK Foreign Secretary Milliband went on a Mideast tour last week, praising the Syrian regime at every bend in the road. Yet, Milliband failed to demand from that regime to uphold the human rights and respect the freedoms of Syrian dissidents, and equally importantly for the Lebanese, to demand that the Syrian dictatorship finally come clean by releasing the thousands of Lebanese prisoners it still holds and divulging the fates of the many more thousands who perished in Syria's notorious dungeons and prisons under torture during the long 35-years that Syria occupied Lebanon. This is particularly poignant since the British government makes such a big fuss over the radical Islamists it harbors and protects under the guise of its own respect for these Muslim radicals' freedoms.
Shame on the British government for its duplicity, cowardice and cavorting to dictators. Not only does Great Britain bear enormous responsibility to the Middle East in having caused the catastrophe that is today the insoluble Israel-Palestine problem, like it did with the partition of India and Pakistan, but the residual stupidity that lingers in the brains of the British people (royalty, government, and ordinary people) from the days of the colonial empire is even more dangerous today because it has immunized and desensitized them against seeing themselves sinking in their own excrement.
Fuck the Queen! Fuck Albion! Fuck the Union Jack! And most of all Fuck Robert Fisk.
Hanibaal
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Jumblatt: Another Lebanon Criminal Warlord Treated Royally by the Bush Administration in Washington
After the criminal Christian warlord Samir Geagea was treated like royalty by the Bush administration last Spring, here comes another one of his ilk to Washington: Walid Jumblatt, the Druze leader who, in fact, was Geagea's own enemy.
Together in the mid 1980s, Geagea the Christian militia leader, and Jumblatt the Druze militia leader, fought each other with the blood of innocent Lebanese villagers, Christians and Druze alike. After their dispute was over in the late 1980s, tens of thousands of Christian villagers in the Shouf mountains had been massacred, raped, slaughtered, burned in their churches and displaced as refugees.
In the aftermath of that "dispute" between these two feudal lords of Middle Ages vintage - who squat in their hilltop palaces to the adulation of ignorant and illiterate followers - the southern half of Lebanon was emptied of all its Christian population (except those who were protected by the Israeli occupation of the southern strip) in one of the largest ethnic cleansing campaign carried out by Muslims against Christians in modern times. Jumblatt, who controls the Refugees Rehabilitation Fund (allocated over the years and decades by successive Lebanese governments to the return and rehabilitation of the Christian villagers whom he himself displaced) has in fact pilfered all the monies from that Fund. To this date, he denies the Christian villagers of the Shouf mountains their right to compensation, and he won't allow them to rebuild their houses and villages and return to their lands. I have personal friends in Jumblatt's own town of Mukhtara whose houses and lands he confiscated and who were never compensated. They do not even dare go to Mukhtara for a visit.
Not only does Jumblatt have the blood of thousands of Lebanese Christians on his hands, whose villages he razed to the ground, whose children were slaughtered as they huddled in their churches, and whom he won't allow even today to return and rebuild their homes, but he is the leader of a SOCIALIST party. He, and his father before him, were the puppets and clients of the Soviet Union. At the height of the Syrian occupation, Walid Jumblatt himself continued to make racist remarks about Condoleezza Rice's skin color which he described as, for example, her "ugly oil-colored skin". This was when he was the most prominent defender and agent of the Syrian occupation in Lebanon. Now, he is a "pro-independence, pro-Western" Lebanese nationalist. I just don't understand how certain people can buy up this rubbish and all those lies as genuine material.
Why does the Bush administration feel it is of such importance to deal with criminals like Jumblatt? Because of the usual shortsightedness of US foreign policy, turning like a sail in the wind. Like it did with Saddam against Iran, or with the Taliban against the Soviet Union, US foreign policymakers befriend people they know to be the most vicious enemies of the US only to stand up to some other enemy, only to "discover" a few years later that they had created monsters in the process. Jumblatt is yet another embodiment of this utter failure of US foreign policy.
Jumblatt is a chameleon, an opportunist. When Sharon invaded Lebanon in 1982, Jumblatt welcomed him and treated him royally in his palace, inviting to dinners and lunches and praising him for ridding Lebanon of the PLO. The Israelis found a staunch ally in him in the early years of the Israeli occupation. When the Israelis withdrew to the south a couple of years later, he became an ardent supporter of the Syrian occupation which had returned to fill the vacuum left by the Israelis. In the process, he conducted the largest campaign of ethnic cleansing to empty Lebanon's southern half of its Christians. Under the Syrian rule, Jumblatt became the loudest Pan-Arab, Pan-Syrian nationalist who advocated the Syrian annexation of Lebanon under the slogans of "one people in two states" and "unity of fate and path" between the two "brotherly" countries. Finally, when the tide turned against Syria after the Hariri assassination in 2005, he became the most vicious anti-Syrian politician, which is why the demented Bush administration is feasting him today in Washington.
My pity goes to the Lebanese people.
Hanibaal
[Excerpted news about Jumblatt's visit to Washington, Nov. 17 and 18]:
[...] Jumblatt also met on Monday with the Vice President’s National Security Advisor John Hanna as well as Assistant US Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Welch, and he is to meet on Tuesday with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, then US Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security advisor Steve Hadley. A source in the Secretary of State’s office told As-Safir newspaper on Tuesday that Jumblatt and Welch discussed Washington’s ongoing support to Lebanon and stressed on the need to conduct the 2009 parliamentary elections safely. [...] As-Safir reported that Jumblatt, along with MP Marwan Hamadeh, is set to hold a closed meeting with Martin Indyk, director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy in the Brookings Institution to discuss the impact of the election of Barack Obama on US policy in the Middle East, especially in Lebanon. An-Nahar daily reported on Tuesday that Jumblatt will telephone Dennis Ross, former US Special Middle East Coordinator, and one of President-elect Barack Obama’s advisers.
Together in the mid 1980s, Geagea the Christian militia leader, and Jumblatt the Druze militia leader, fought each other with the blood of innocent Lebanese villagers, Christians and Druze alike. After their dispute was over in the late 1980s, tens of thousands of Christian villagers in the Shouf mountains had been massacred, raped, slaughtered, burned in their churches and displaced as refugees.
In the aftermath of that "dispute" between these two feudal lords of Middle Ages vintage - who squat in their hilltop palaces to the adulation of ignorant and illiterate followers - the southern half of Lebanon was emptied of all its Christian population (except those who were protected by the Israeli occupation of the southern strip) in one of the largest ethnic cleansing campaign carried out by Muslims against Christians in modern times. Jumblatt, who controls the Refugees Rehabilitation Fund (allocated over the years and decades by successive Lebanese governments to the return and rehabilitation of the Christian villagers whom he himself displaced) has in fact pilfered all the monies from that Fund. To this date, he denies the Christian villagers of the Shouf mountains their right to compensation, and he won't allow them to rebuild their houses and villages and return to their lands. I have personal friends in Jumblatt's own town of Mukhtara whose houses and lands he confiscated and who were never compensated. They do not even dare go to Mukhtara for a visit.
Not only does Jumblatt have the blood of thousands of Lebanese Christians on his hands, whose villages he razed to the ground, whose children were slaughtered as they huddled in their churches, and whom he won't allow even today to return and rebuild their homes, but he is the leader of a SOCIALIST party. He, and his father before him, were the puppets and clients of the Soviet Union. At the height of the Syrian occupation, Walid Jumblatt himself continued to make racist remarks about Condoleezza Rice's skin color which he described as, for example, her "ugly oil-colored skin". This was when he was the most prominent defender and agent of the Syrian occupation in Lebanon. Now, he is a "pro-independence, pro-Western" Lebanese nationalist. I just don't understand how certain people can buy up this rubbish and all those lies as genuine material.
Why does the Bush administration feel it is of such importance to deal with criminals like Jumblatt? Because of the usual shortsightedness of US foreign policy, turning like a sail in the wind. Like it did with Saddam against Iran, or with the Taliban against the Soviet Union, US foreign policymakers befriend people they know to be the most vicious enemies of the US only to stand up to some other enemy, only to "discover" a few years later that they had created monsters in the process. Jumblatt is yet another embodiment of this utter failure of US foreign policy.
Jumblatt is a chameleon, an opportunist. When Sharon invaded Lebanon in 1982, Jumblatt welcomed him and treated him royally in his palace, inviting to dinners and lunches and praising him for ridding Lebanon of the PLO. The Israelis found a staunch ally in him in the early years of the Israeli occupation. When the Israelis withdrew to the south a couple of years later, he became an ardent supporter of the Syrian occupation which had returned to fill the vacuum left by the Israelis. In the process, he conducted the largest campaign of ethnic cleansing to empty Lebanon's southern half of its Christians. Under the Syrian rule, Jumblatt became the loudest Pan-Arab, Pan-Syrian nationalist who advocated the Syrian annexation of Lebanon under the slogans of "one people in two states" and "unity of fate and path" between the two "brotherly" countries. Finally, when the tide turned against Syria after the Hariri assassination in 2005, he became the most vicious anti-Syrian politician, which is why the demented Bush administration is feasting him today in Washington.
My pity goes to the Lebanese people.
Hanibaal
[Excerpted news about Jumblatt's visit to Washington, Nov. 17 and 18]:
[...] Jumblatt also met on Monday with the Vice President’s National Security Advisor John Hanna as well as Assistant US Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Welch, and he is to meet on Tuesday with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, then US Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security advisor Steve Hadley. A source in the Secretary of State’s office told As-Safir newspaper on Tuesday that Jumblatt and Welch discussed Washington’s ongoing support to Lebanon and stressed on the need to conduct the 2009 parliamentary elections safely. [...] As-Safir reported that Jumblatt, along with MP Marwan Hamadeh, is set to hold a closed meeting with Martin Indyk, director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy in the Brookings Institution to discuss the impact of the election of Barack Obama on US policy in the Middle East, especially in Lebanon. An-Nahar daily reported on Tuesday that Jumblatt will telephone Dennis Ross, former US Special Middle East Coordinator, and one of President-elect Barack Obama’s advisers.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Those F - - - - - - Brits: Ass-Kissers to the Hilt
Here we go again...As the Syrian dictatorship is on its death bed, here comes a British savior to resuscitate the Assad regime. Like what's his name, Fisk, the numskull Orientalist journalist from the Independent who waxes interesting every week from Beirut. When is this guy going to retire and spare us from the drudgery of his boredom?
The British colonials, in their imaginative approach to ruling their now defunct and stinking empire, had no solutions to the problems they created but to divide up countries. They created Israel and the Palestinian calamity by dividing "Palestine", like they divided India and Pakistan and many other places they ransacked and pilfered.
And now, decades after the death of their empire, they still stick their tail into other people's businesses. And here is their new imaginative approach in trying to "help" in the Middle East: propping up the criminal dictators in Damascus and kissing their asses.
Visiting British Foreign Secretary David Miliband on Monday described Syria as a "very important" country in the Middle East that plays a "basic" role in boosting stability in the region. He, however, did not ask the Syrian tyrants about the thousands of Lebanese that have been killed or are still held in the dungeons of the Syrian regime.
"I hope I will discuss this role through the talks that will be held with Syrian officials," Miliband said in a statement to reporters upon arrival in Damascus. Well put, David. Just wipe your mouth, though. It stinks digested Syrian falafels.
Hanibaal.
The British colonials, in their imaginative approach to ruling their now defunct and stinking empire, had no solutions to the problems they created but to divide up countries. They created Israel and the Palestinian calamity by dividing "Palestine", like they divided India and Pakistan and many other places they ransacked and pilfered.
And now, decades after the death of their empire, they still stick their tail into other people's businesses. And here is their new imaginative approach in trying to "help" in the Middle East: propping up the criminal dictators in Damascus and kissing their asses.
Visiting British Foreign Secretary David Miliband on Monday described Syria as a "very important" country in the Middle East that plays a "basic" role in boosting stability in the region. He, however, did not ask the Syrian tyrants about the thousands of Lebanese that have been killed or are still held in the dungeons of the Syrian regime.
"I hope I will discuss this role through the talks that will be held with Syrian officials," Miliband said in a statement to reporters upon arrival in Damascus. Well put, David. Just wipe your mouth, though. It stinks digested Syrian falafels.
Hanibaal.
Hezbollah, an Imminent Danger
By OLIVIER GUITTA (Middle East Times)
Published: November 17, 2008
CIA Director Michael Hayden said last week that al-Qaida was still the largest threat to the United States. He added, "If there is a major strike on this country, it will bear the fingerprints of al-Qaida."
But some analysts say that the focus should not go entirely on al-Qaida; stressing that the capabilities of the Shiite organization Hezbollah should not be underestimated.
Pre Sept. 11, 2001, Hezbollah was the organization that was believed to be responsible for the deaths of the largest number of Americans killed in terrorist attacks. Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage called Hezbollah "the A-team of terrorists, while al-Qaida may actually be the B-team." Today in a context of major tension with Iran regarding its nuclear program, Iraq and Lebanon, just to mention a few, intelligence analysts warn that the Hezbollah threat against the West should not be taken off the radar.
Hezbollah is believed to maintain a vast network of operatives across the world; from Europe to Africa to the Middle East, to Latin America and even North America.
In Africa, and in particular in the predominantly Suuni Maghreb, extremist Shiites are making inroads. The threat of potential Shiite terrorism is something Morocco knows something about, having dismantled earlier this year a large terrorist cell known as the Belliraj network. Members of this cell included a correspondent of the Hezbollah-run Al-Manar TV. According to intelligence sources they were planning terror attacks in Morocco.
Hezbollah has long had a presence in Latin America. It is believed to maintain a large base of operations in the tri-border area where the borders of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina converge.
Following the assassination by Israel of its leader Abbas Moussawi, Hezbollah launched in 1992 and 1994 two terror attacks in Buenos Aires against the Israeli embassy, killing 29 people and the Jewish community center, killing 85.
Intelligence sources say that Hezbollah's activities in Latin America have expanded into Venezuela and other countries. In October 2006 homemade bombs were left in front of the U.S. embassy in Caracas. Police subsequently arrested a student in possession of Hezbollah material in Spanish.
Europe presents other possible targets. Counterterrorism officials, especially in Europe, are sometimes privately more concerned by Hezbollah than al-Qaida. Intelligence officials say that infiltrating the movement is almost impossible, mostly because of the lack of a large Shiite population on the continent, and when compared to Intel on Sunni terrorist groups, European law enforcement officials say they are almost blind.
Hezbollah has an impressive network in Europe with, according to intelligence officials, operatives in Belgium, Bosnia, Britain, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Norway, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and Ukraine.
Germany is thought to have about 900 Hezbollah members and authorities fear it could become a target. A recent report issued by Germany's security services, says Hezbollah could launch damaging terrorist attacks in Germany, the UK and elsewhere in Europe. British authorities confirmed recently that Hezbollah sleeping cells disseminated throughout the UK are threatening to strike in case of attacks against Iran.
The Middle East remains the region where Hezbollah can inflict the most damage to the West. Being clearly in command in Lebanon, UNIFlL forces in southern Lebanon remains vulnerable to attacks.
Hezbollah's arsenal is impressive and includes some 40,000 rockets that have been supplied by Iran, Syria and Eastern European countries. These weapons could also end up in the hands of the insurgents in Iraq.
Finally, Hezbollah could also be a threat to the U.S. homeland. In February 2004, then-CIA Director George Tenet stated that Hezbollah had cultivated an extensive network of operatives on American soil and an "ongoing capability to launch terrorist attacks within the United States."
After its most successful operative, Imad Mughnieh, was assassinated in Damascus in February, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security warned state and local law enforcement agencies of a potential risk of Hezbollah's revenge against targets in the United States.
Hezbollah's activity in the United States has so far been limited to major fund raising through business ventures, criminal activity (such as cigarette smuggling) and donations from supporters. Some experts think that Hezbollah would never dare attack the United States on its soil because it would endanger its huge fundraising operations. This, say others, might be wishful thinking. A confrontation with Iran could well change that.
--
Olivier Guitta, an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a foreign affairs and counterterrorism consultant, is the founder of the newsletter The Croissant (www.thecroissant.com).
Published: November 17, 2008
CIA Director Michael Hayden said last week that al-Qaida was still the largest threat to the United States. He added, "If there is a major strike on this country, it will bear the fingerprints of al-Qaida."
But some analysts say that the focus should not go entirely on al-Qaida; stressing that the capabilities of the Shiite organization Hezbollah should not be underestimated.
Pre Sept. 11, 2001, Hezbollah was the organization that was believed to be responsible for the deaths of the largest number of Americans killed in terrorist attacks. Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage called Hezbollah "the A-team of terrorists, while al-Qaida may actually be the B-team." Today in a context of major tension with Iran regarding its nuclear program, Iraq and Lebanon, just to mention a few, intelligence analysts warn that the Hezbollah threat against the West should not be taken off the radar.
Hezbollah is believed to maintain a vast network of operatives across the world; from Europe to Africa to the Middle East, to Latin America and even North America.
In Africa, and in particular in the predominantly Suuni Maghreb, extremist Shiites are making inroads. The threat of potential Shiite terrorism is something Morocco knows something about, having dismantled earlier this year a large terrorist cell known as the Belliraj network. Members of this cell included a correspondent of the Hezbollah-run Al-Manar TV. According to intelligence sources they were planning terror attacks in Morocco.
Hezbollah has long had a presence in Latin America. It is believed to maintain a large base of operations in the tri-border area where the borders of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina converge.
Following the assassination by Israel of its leader Abbas Moussawi, Hezbollah launched in 1992 and 1994 two terror attacks in Buenos Aires against the Israeli embassy, killing 29 people and the Jewish community center, killing 85.
Intelligence sources say that Hezbollah's activities in Latin America have expanded into Venezuela and other countries. In October 2006 homemade bombs were left in front of the U.S. embassy in Caracas. Police subsequently arrested a student in possession of Hezbollah material in Spanish.
Europe presents other possible targets. Counterterrorism officials, especially in Europe, are sometimes privately more concerned by Hezbollah than al-Qaida. Intelligence officials say that infiltrating the movement is almost impossible, mostly because of the lack of a large Shiite population on the continent, and when compared to Intel on Sunni terrorist groups, European law enforcement officials say they are almost blind.
Hezbollah has an impressive network in Europe with, according to intelligence officials, operatives in Belgium, Bosnia, Britain, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Norway, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and Ukraine.
Germany is thought to have about 900 Hezbollah members and authorities fear it could become a target. A recent report issued by Germany's security services, says Hezbollah could launch damaging terrorist attacks in Germany, the UK and elsewhere in Europe. British authorities confirmed recently that Hezbollah sleeping cells disseminated throughout the UK are threatening to strike in case of attacks against Iran.
The Middle East remains the region where Hezbollah can inflict the most damage to the West. Being clearly in command in Lebanon, UNIFlL forces in southern Lebanon remains vulnerable to attacks.
Hezbollah's arsenal is impressive and includes some 40,000 rockets that have been supplied by Iran, Syria and Eastern European countries. These weapons could also end up in the hands of the insurgents in Iraq.
Finally, Hezbollah could also be a threat to the U.S. homeland. In February 2004, then-CIA Director George Tenet stated that Hezbollah had cultivated an extensive network of operatives on American soil and an "ongoing capability to launch terrorist attacks within the United States."
After its most successful operative, Imad Mughnieh, was assassinated in Damascus in February, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security warned state and local law enforcement agencies of a potential risk of Hezbollah's revenge against targets in the United States.
Hezbollah's activity in the United States has so far been limited to major fund raising through business ventures, criminal activity (such as cigarette smuggling) and donations from supporters. Some experts think that Hezbollah would never dare attack the United States on its soil because it would endanger its huge fundraising operations. This, say others, might be wishful thinking. A confrontation with Iran could well change that.
--
Olivier Guitta, an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a foreign affairs and counterterrorism consultant, is the founder of the newsletter The Croissant (www.thecroissant.com).
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Siniora and Sleiman: Jekyll and Hyde of the Lebanese Regime
Here we have the Siniora-Sleiman consensus government sitting on the fence again and again.
After much promises, we are back to these two dummies bending as far as they can their behinds to their Syria masters and obliging to every whim of the Syrian dictator without obtaining anything in return.
Yes, Syria said - after 60 years of rejection - it will open an embassy in Beirut. But that has yet to happen.
Yes, Syria said it recognizes Lebanese sovereignty over the Shebaa Farms, but it has refused to submit any documentation to the United Nations officially conceding to that fact (which would in essence remove any excuse for Hezbollah to disarm).
Yes, Syria said it will investigate the issue of the Lebanese civilians it has either killed under torture or continues to hold in its dungeons for decades, but it refuses to recognize in principle that such individuals exist, despite reports from hundreds of human rights organization.
Yes, Syria said it will cease to illegally cross the Lebanese border and smuggle weapons and terrorists to Hezbollah and the radical Palestinian movements in the camps in Lebanon, but it has been amassing troops along the border, threatening Lebanon with unrest in the northern city of Tripoli, assassinating Lebanese politicians and journalists, and otherwise making Lebanon as unstable as it can.
Syria seeks its own interest by interfering in Lebanon. One cannot blame one's enemy, because that is what an enemy is expected to do. But the Lebanese people must blame themselves for electing and supporting the Siniora-Sleiman government of traditional dummies who cannot make up their minds as to what they want for their country.
They are for sovereignty, but with Hezbollah.
They are for peace, but don't want to negotiate civilized peace with Israel.
They say they are against terrorism, but they support Hezbollah's terrorist network that denies the government its rightful sovereignty and exclusivity to enacting policy and using force.
They say they want Hezbollah to drop its weapons, but they sign off on a government program (the Ministerial Statement) that granted Hezbollah the "right to defend the country" and are collaborating with the Iranian terrorist organization on a "joint defense strategy".
They say they are with Lebanon's sovereignty and independence, but continue to allw the pimp Bashar Assad to treat them like the prostitutes that Siniora and Sleiman are.
And, to top this shining record of independence and farsightedness, these two dummies - Siniora and Sleiman - actually have a foreign policy on Abkhazia and South Ossetia.... Imagine that! The leaders of Lebanon, a tiny and largely insignificant country that has been unable to govern itself for 40 years and has been begging the UN, the US, Europe and the rich Arab States for money, security, and everything else, have declared - in the footsteps of their Syrian bosses who want to stick it to the Americans by siding with the Russians against the Georgians - that they support the secession of Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia. This is from politicians who can't even formulate a coherent policy on Lebanon, their own country.
More recently, the Siniora-Sleiman regime sent their Interior Minister Ziad Baroud to Syria, supposedly to work on normalizing relations between the two "enemy sister" countries. He came back with yet another Syrian-Lebanese joint committee on, mind you, terrorism, that gives Syria more power to interfere in Lebanon and import more terror into the country. And, to add insult to injury, Baroud obtained nothing from Syria. He could not even make Syria commit to doing anything about the hundreds and thousands of Lebanese it detains or has killed during its 30-year occupation of Lebanon. We thought Baroud was fresh blood into the decaying Lebanese body politic, but he is turning out to be a spineless SOB who promises much but delivers nothing, exactly like his "consensus" president Sleiman (whom he represents in the august Lebanese government) who has yet to show us any backbone other than bending his behind to his Syrian bosses.
Meanwhile, Olmert in Israel has declared he wants a deal with Syria, and again relegated a peace treaty or a treaty of non-belligerence with Lebanon to after a treaty with Syria. In other words, Lebanon will never know peace as long as the Syrian Baathist tyranny does not regain the Golan Heights from Israel. This has been the modus operandi for 40 years, and it has not changed.
Instead of Lebanese leaders who understand that Lebanon's independence and sovereignty mean that Lebanon should independently seek peace with Israel and finish the charade of "liberation" that has devastated the country for 40 years, Lebanon has leaders who are dogs that wag their tails every time their Syrian masters wave a bone at them.
I could pity the people of Lebanon, but they don't deserve pity. They have the leaders they deserve, because they elected them. Next May, there are parliamentary elections in Lebanon. That is one opportunity that the idiot people of Lebanon are not going to miss, because they will re-elect the same leaders that rob them, kill them, starve them, and give them neither security, nor stability, nor peace.
Hanibaal
After much promises, we are back to these two dummies bending as far as they can their behinds to their Syria masters and obliging to every whim of the Syrian dictator without obtaining anything in return.
Yes, Syria said - after 60 years of rejection - it will open an embassy in Beirut. But that has yet to happen.
Yes, Syria said it recognizes Lebanese sovereignty over the Shebaa Farms, but it has refused to submit any documentation to the United Nations officially conceding to that fact (which would in essence remove any excuse for Hezbollah to disarm).
Yes, Syria said it will investigate the issue of the Lebanese civilians it has either killed under torture or continues to hold in its dungeons for decades, but it refuses to recognize in principle that such individuals exist, despite reports from hundreds of human rights organization.
Yes, Syria said it will cease to illegally cross the Lebanese border and smuggle weapons and terrorists to Hezbollah and the radical Palestinian movements in the camps in Lebanon, but it has been amassing troops along the border, threatening Lebanon with unrest in the northern city of Tripoli, assassinating Lebanese politicians and journalists, and otherwise making Lebanon as unstable as it can.
Syria seeks its own interest by interfering in Lebanon. One cannot blame one's enemy, because that is what an enemy is expected to do. But the Lebanese people must blame themselves for electing and supporting the Siniora-Sleiman government of traditional dummies who cannot make up their minds as to what they want for their country.
They are for sovereignty, but with Hezbollah.
They are for peace, but don't want to negotiate civilized peace with Israel.
They say they are against terrorism, but they support Hezbollah's terrorist network that denies the government its rightful sovereignty and exclusivity to enacting policy and using force.
They say they want Hezbollah to drop its weapons, but they sign off on a government program (the Ministerial Statement) that granted Hezbollah the "right to defend the country" and are collaborating with the Iranian terrorist organization on a "joint defense strategy".
They say they are with Lebanon's sovereignty and independence, but continue to allw the pimp Bashar Assad to treat them like the prostitutes that Siniora and Sleiman are.
And, to top this shining record of independence and farsightedness, these two dummies - Siniora and Sleiman - actually have a foreign policy on Abkhazia and South Ossetia.... Imagine that! The leaders of Lebanon, a tiny and largely insignificant country that has been unable to govern itself for 40 years and has been begging the UN, the US, Europe and the rich Arab States for money, security, and everything else, have declared - in the footsteps of their Syrian bosses who want to stick it to the Americans by siding with the Russians against the Georgians - that they support the secession of Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia. This is from politicians who can't even formulate a coherent policy on Lebanon, their own country.
More recently, the Siniora-Sleiman regime sent their Interior Minister Ziad Baroud to Syria, supposedly to work on normalizing relations between the two "enemy sister" countries. He came back with yet another Syrian-Lebanese joint committee on, mind you, terrorism, that gives Syria more power to interfere in Lebanon and import more terror into the country. And, to add insult to injury, Baroud obtained nothing from Syria. He could not even make Syria commit to doing anything about the hundreds and thousands of Lebanese it detains or has killed during its 30-year occupation of Lebanon. We thought Baroud was fresh blood into the decaying Lebanese body politic, but he is turning out to be a spineless SOB who promises much but delivers nothing, exactly like his "consensus" president Sleiman (whom he represents in the august Lebanese government) who has yet to show us any backbone other than bending his behind to his Syrian bosses.
Meanwhile, Olmert in Israel has declared he wants a deal with Syria, and again relegated a peace treaty or a treaty of non-belligerence with Lebanon to after a treaty with Syria. In other words, Lebanon will never know peace as long as the Syrian Baathist tyranny does not regain the Golan Heights from Israel. This has been the modus operandi for 40 years, and it has not changed.
Instead of Lebanese leaders who understand that Lebanon's independence and sovereignty mean that Lebanon should independently seek peace with Israel and finish the charade of "liberation" that has devastated the country for 40 years, Lebanon has leaders who are dogs that wag their tails every time their Syrian masters wave a bone at them.
I could pity the people of Lebanon, but they don't deserve pity. They have the leaders they deserve, because they elected them. Next May, there are parliamentary elections in Lebanon. That is one opportunity that the idiot people of Lebanon are not going to miss, because they will re-elect the same leaders that rob them, kill them, starve them, and give them neither security, nor stability, nor peace.
Hanibaal
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Ralph Nader: Open letter to Senator Barack Obama
November 4, 2008
www.votenader.org
www.officialnaderstore.com
November 3, 2008
Dear Senator Obama:
In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words "hope and change," "change and hope" have been your trademark declarations. Yet there is an asymmetry between those objectives and your political character that succumbs to contrary centers of power that want not "hope and change" but the continuation of the power-entrenched status quo.
Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man?
To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires character, courage, integrity-- not expediency, accommodation and short-range opportunism. Take, for example, your transformation from an articulate defender of Palestinian rights in Chicago before your run for the U.S. Senate to an acolyte, a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which bolsters the militaristic oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization and land-water seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and their shrunken territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Eric Alterman summarized numerous polls in a December 2007 issue of The Nation magazine showing that AIPAC policies are opposed by a majority of Jewish-Americans.
You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, that years ago worked out a detailed two-state solution (which is supported by a majority of Israelis and Palestinians), will there be a chance for a peaceful resolution of this 60-year plus conflict. Yet you align yourself with the hard-liners, so much so that in your infamous, demeaning speech to the AIPAC convention right after you gained the nomination of the Democratic Party, you supported an "undivided Jerusalem," and opposed negotiations with Hamas-- the elected government in Gaza. Once again, you ignored the will of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll by the respected newspaper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis favored "direct negotiations with Hamas." Siding with the AIPAC hard-liners is what one of the many leading Palestinians advocating dialogue and peace with the Israeli people was describing when he wrote "Anti-semitism today is the persecution of Palestinian society by the Israeli state."
During your visit to Israel this summer, you scheduled a mere 45 minutes of your time for Palestinians with no news conference, and no visit to Palestinian refugee camps that would have focused the media on the brutalization of the Palestinians. Your trip supported the illegal, cruel blockade of Gaza in defiance of international law and the United Nations charter. You focused on southern Israeli casualties which during the past year have totaled one civilian casualty to every 400 Palestinian casualties on the Gaza side. Instead of a statesmanship that decried all violence and its replacement with acceptance of the Arab League's 2002 proposal to permit a viable Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in return for full economic and diplomatic relations between Arab countries and Israel, you played the role of a cheap politician, leaving the area and Palestinians with the feeling of much shock and little awe.
David Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, described your trip succinctly: "There was almost a willful display of indifference to the fact that there are two narratives here. This could serve him well as a candidate, but not as a President."
Palestinian American commentator, Ali Abunimah, noted that Obama did not utter a single criticism of Israel, "of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians. ...Even the Bush administration recently criticized Israeli's use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians [see www.atfl.org for elaboration]. But Obama defended Israeli's assault on Lebanon as an exercise of its 'legitimate right to defend itself.'"
In numerous columns Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, strongly criticized the Israeli government's assault on civilians in Gaza, including attacks on "the heart of a crowded refugee camp... with horrible bloodshed" in early 2008.
Israeli writer and peace advocate-- Uri Avnery-- described Obama's appearance before AIPAC as one that "broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning, adding that Obama "is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests. After all, the US has a vital interest in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace that will allow it to find ways to the hearts of the Arab masses from Iraq to Morocco. Obama has harmed his image in the Muslim world and mortgaged his future-- if and when he is elected president.," he said, adding, "Of one thing I am certain: Obama's declarations at the AIPAC conference are very, very bad for peace. And what is bad for peace is bad for Israel, bad for the world and bad for the Palestinian people."
A further illustration of your deficiency of character is the way you turned your back on the Muslim-Americans in this country. You refused to send surrogates to speak to voters at their events. Having visited numerous churches and synagogues, you refused to visit a single Mosque in America. Even George W. Bush visited the Grand Mosque in Washington D.C. after 9/11 to express proper sentiments of tolerance before a frightened major religious group of innocents.
Although the New York Times published a major article on June 24, 2008 titled "Muslim Voters Detect a Snub from Obama" (by Andrea Elliott), citing examples of your aversion to these Americans who come from all walks of life, who serve in the armed forces and who work to live the American dream. Three days earlier the International Herald Tribune published an article by Roger Cohen titled "Why Obama Should Visit a Mosque." None of these comments and reports change your political bigotry against Muslim-Americans-- even though your father was a Muslim from Kenya.
Perhaps nothing illustrated your utter lack of political courage or even the mildest version of this trait than your surrendering to demands of the hard-liners to prohibit former president Jimmy Carter from speaking at the Democratic National Convention. This is a tradition for former presidents and one accorded in prime time to Bill Clinton this year.
Here was a President who negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt, but his recent book pressing the dominant Israeli superpower to avoid Apartheid of the Palestinians and make peace was all that it took to sideline him. Instead of an important address to the nation by Jimmy Carter on this critical international problem, he was relegated to a stroll across the stage to "tumultuous applause," following a showing of a film about the Carter Center's post-Katrina work. Shame on you, Barack Obama!
But then your shameful behavior has extended to many other areas of American life. (See the factual analysis by my running mate, Matt Gonzalez, on www.votenader.org). You have turned your back on the 100-million poor Americans composed of poor whites, African-Americans, and Latinos. You always mention helping the "middle class" but you omit, repeatedly, mention of the "poor" in America.
Should you be elected President, it must be more than an unprecedented upward career move following a brilliantly unprincipled campaign that spoke "change" yet demonstrated actual obeisance to the concentration power of the "corporate supremacists." It must be about shifting the power from the few to the many. It must be a White House presided over by a black man who does not turn his back on the downtrodden here and abroad but challenges the forces of greed, dictatorial control of labor, consumers and taxpayers, and the militarization of foreign policy. It must be a White House that is transforming of American politics-- opening it up to the public funding of elections (through voluntary approaches)-- and allowing smaller candidates to have a chance to be heard on debates and in the fullness of their now restricted civil liberties. Call it a competitive democracy.
Your presidential campaign again and again has demonstrated cowardly stands. "Hope" some say springs eternal." But not when "reality" consumes it daily.
Sincerely,
Ralph Nader
www.votenader.org
www.officialnaderstore.com
November 3, 2008
Dear Senator Obama:
In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words "hope and change," "change and hope" have been your trademark declarations. Yet there is an asymmetry between those objectives and your political character that succumbs to contrary centers of power that want not "hope and change" but the continuation of the power-entrenched status quo.
Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man?
To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires character, courage, integrity-- not expediency, accommodation and short-range opportunism. Take, for example, your transformation from an articulate defender of Palestinian rights in Chicago before your run for the U.S. Senate to an acolyte, a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which bolsters the militaristic oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization and land-water seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and their shrunken territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Eric Alterman summarized numerous polls in a December 2007 issue of The Nation magazine showing that AIPAC policies are opposed by a majority of Jewish-Americans.
You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, that years ago worked out a detailed two-state solution (which is supported by a majority of Israelis and Palestinians), will there be a chance for a peaceful resolution of this 60-year plus conflict. Yet you align yourself with the hard-liners, so much so that in your infamous, demeaning speech to the AIPAC convention right after you gained the nomination of the Democratic Party, you supported an "undivided Jerusalem," and opposed negotiations with Hamas-- the elected government in Gaza. Once again, you ignored the will of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll by the respected newspaper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis favored "direct negotiations with Hamas." Siding with the AIPAC hard-liners is what one of the many leading Palestinians advocating dialogue and peace with the Israeli people was describing when he wrote "Anti-semitism today is the persecution of Palestinian society by the Israeli state."
During your visit to Israel this summer, you scheduled a mere 45 minutes of your time for Palestinians with no news conference, and no visit to Palestinian refugee camps that would have focused the media on the brutalization of the Palestinians. Your trip supported the illegal, cruel blockade of Gaza in defiance of international law and the United Nations charter. You focused on southern Israeli casualties which during the past year have totaled one civilian casualty to every 400 Palestinian casualties on the Gaza side. Instead of a statesmanship that decried all violence and its replacement with acceptance of the Arab League's 2002 proposal to permit a viable Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in return for full economic and diplomatic relations between Arab countries and Israel, you played the role of a cheap politician, leaving the area and Palestinians with the feeling of much shock and little awe.
David Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, described your trip succinctly: "There was almost a willful display of indifference to the fact that there are two narratives here. This could serve him well as a candidate, but not as a President."
Palestinian American commentator, Ali Abunimah, noted that Obama did not utter a single criticism of Israel, "of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians. ...Even the Bush administration recently criticized Israeli's use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians [see www.atfl.org for elaboration]. But Obama defended Israeli's assault on Lebanon as an exercise of its 'legitimate right to defend itself.'"
In numerous columns Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, strongly criticized the Israeli government's assault on civilians in Gaza, including attacks on "the heart of a crowded refugee camp... with horrible bloodshed" in early 2008.
Israeli writer and peace advocate-- Uri Avnery-- described Obama's appearance before AIPAC as one that "broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning, adding that Obama "is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests. After all, the US has a vital interest in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace that will allow it to find ways to the hearts of the Arab masses from Iraq to Morocco. Obama has harmed his image in the Muslim world and mortgaged his future-- if and when he is elected president.," he said, adding, "Of one thing I am certain: Obama's declarations at the AIPAC conference are very, very bad for peace. And what is bad for peace is bad for Israel, bad for the world and bad for the Palestinian people."
A further illustration of your deficiency of character is the way you turned your back on the Muslim-Americans in this country. You refused to send surrogates to speak to voters at their events. Having visited numerous churches and synagogues, you refused to visit a single Mosque in America. Even George W. Bush visited the Grand Mosque in Washington D.C. after 9/11 to express proper sentiments of tolerance before a frightened major religious group of innocents.
Although the New York Times published a major article on June 24, 2008 titled "Muslim Voters Detect a Snub from Obama" (by Andrea Elliott), citing examples of your aversion to these Americans who come from all walks of life, who serve in the armed forces and who work to live the American dream. Three days earlier the International Herald Tribune published an article by Roger Cohen titled "Why Obama Should Visit a Mosque." None of these comments and reports change your political bigotry against Muslim-Americans-- even though your father was a Muslim from Kenya.
Perhaps nothing illustrated your utter lack of political courage or even the mildest version of this trait than your surrendering to demands of the hard-liners to prohibit former president Jimmy Carter from speaking at the Democratic National Convention. This is a tradition for former presidents and one accorded in prime time to Bill Clinton this year.
Here was a President who negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt, but his recent book pressing the dominant Israeli superpower to avoid Apartheid of the Palestinians and make peace was all that it took to sideline him. Instead of an important address to the nation by Jimmy Carter on this critical international problem, he was relegated to a stroll across the stage to "tumultuous applause," following a showing of a film about the Carter Center's post-Katrina work. Shame on you, Barack Obama!
But then your shameful behavior has extended to many other areas of American life. (See the factual analysis by my running mate, Matt Gonzalez, on www.votenader.org). You have turned your back on the 100-million poor Americans composed of poor whites, African-Americans, and Latinos. You always mention helping the "middle class" but you omit, repeatedly, mention of the "poor" in America.
Should you be elected President, it must be more than an unprecedented upward career move following a brilliantly unprincipled campaign that spoke "change" yet demonstrated actual obeisance to the concentration power of the "corporate supremacists." It must be about shifting the power from the few to the many. It must be a White House presided over by a black man who does not turn his back on the downtrodden here and abroad but challenges the forces of greed, dictatorial control of labor, consumers and taxpayers, and the militarization of foreign policy. It must be a White House that is transforming of American politics-- opening it up to the public funding of elections (through voluntary approaches)-- and allowing smaller candidates to have a chance to be heard on debates and in the fullness of their now restricted civil liberties. Call it a competitive democracy.
Your presidential campaign again and again has demonstrated cowardly stands. "Hope" some say springs eternal." But not when "reality" consumes it daily.
Sincerely,
Ralph Nader
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