Lebanese Jekylls and Hydes - Sleeping with the Enemy

Over the past several weeks, several spy rings have been discovered in south Lebanon operating on behalf of Israel and aiming at monitoring the Iranian-funded Shiite terrorist organization's operations north of the Litani River.

The numbers of people involved in the espionage, many of whom are Shiite Lebanese residing in areas under Hezbollah's direct control, is staggering. This raises the question of how solid is Hezbollah's claim to represent the Lebanese Shiite community, if the organization's own people are spying against it for its arch-enemy Israel.

This also indicates that Hezbollah is perhaps unable to use money to keep its base loyal to its goals, since that base is easily lured by Israeli offers. Declining oil revenues worldwide and in Iran in particular have tightened the funding that Hezbollah receives from Iran, which may be prompting Hezbollah to become very creative at generating funds from a number of sources: Cocaine from Curacao, Diamond trade in Africa, and even Hashish and heroin trade across the same Israeli-Lebanese border which Hezbollah claims to protect against the "Zionist enemy".

Hanibaal

Hezbollah Funding Part 6: Cocaine in Curacao

Curacao Drug Ring Funds Terrorist Hezbollah

Police from seven countries arrested 17 people in the island of Curacao Tuesday suspected of involvement in an international drug ring with links to the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah, Dutch authorities said.

The group is suspected of trading upwards of 2,000 kilograms of cocaine per year, the Dutch prosecution service said in a statement.

"The group shipped containers with cocaine from Curacao to the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Jordan," it said. "From Venezuela, containers with drugs went to West Africa and then to the Netherlands, Lebanon and Spain. Carriers smuggled the cocaine as airline passengers from Curacao and Aruba into the Netherlands."

The proceeds were allegedly invested in several countries, said the statement.

"The organization had international contacts with other criminal networks that financially supported Hezbollah in the Middle East. Large sums of drug money flooded into Lebanon, from where orders were placed for weapons that were to have been delivered from South America."

The suspects were from Curacao, the largest of the Dutch Antilles islands, as well as from Venezuela, Colombia, Lebanon and Cuba, said the statement.

The arrests were the result of a joint operation between the police and judicial authorities of Curacao, the Netherlands, Belgium, Colombia, Venezuela and the United States.

For its part, the British government's Foreign Office issued a statement in which it said that the drug-dealing elements of Hezbollah, while criminal in nature, are not necessarily terrorism-related. The statement said that further evidence of a connection between Hezbollah's drug network and its military-terrorist wing is needed before the British government reconsiders its ongoing rapprochement with what it calls the organization's "political wing". Hezbollah leaders have in recent weeks visited Great Britain and held talks with senior British government officials.

[From Naharnet, AP, and other sources]

Hezbollah's Hype and Lies

Hezbollah MP Mohammed Raad on Tuesday said that Lebanon must go on high alert in anticipation of Israel's largest-ever military maneuvers on May 31. The exercise, dubbed Juniper Cobra, aims to test the Arrow (Hetz) system as well as the THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) and the ship-based Aegus Ballistic Missile Defense System. This will be followed by a joint US-Israeli operation dubbed "Turning Point 3" consisting of missile defense drills aimed at testing three anti-ballistic missile systems. No date has been set for this latter operation.

"Lebanon is one of Israel's targets during the exercises. The country must be fully prepared for such an emergency," Raad told the pathetic, endless, pointless and sterile Lebanese so-called "national dialogue", now in its 7th session.

The subtle lie in Raad's ominous warning is that the target of these maneuvers is not Lebanon, but his own dirty, beardy, smelly fundamentalist Muslim organization. It is with lies like this that Hezbollah has managed to brainwash and convince large segments of Lebanese society (including the idiots of Michel Aoun's FPM) to be on board of his "Resistance Forever Against Anything" bandwagon.

In their hearts and minds, the vast majority of the Lebanese don't give a fart about Hezbollah's resistance platform and its warmongering propaganda. They yearn for a tranquil, peaceful and neutral Lebanon that keeps a safe distance from all the warring Arabs and Israelis, Muslims and Jews and every other bearded, skull-capped, Qublah-praying, Wailing Wall-catatonic, chosen-people, seal-of-the-prophets, religious sons of bitches of the calamitous near eastern monotheistic God-worshiping, Messiah/Mahdi-returning end-of-days cults.

Hezbollah, Ooohhhh Hahahaha.... your end is near. The missiles are falling. Your beards will burn, and God will infect you with the Swine flu.....Ooohh hahahahaha......

Hanibaal

Lebanese Developer Saleh Wants to Fart Higher than his Asshole

Here is a textbook example of a jackass Lebanese businessman who wants to fart higher than his asshole.

He wants to ruin the Lebanese coast off the town of Damour with a mega-kitschy project that will attract "wealthy" Lebanese expats who "have nostalgia for their country" and who "are used to Lebanon's system, its ups and downs."

Let me translate:

- Mr. Saleh, the megalomaniac Sunni Muslim Lebanese money worshiper, wants to "milk" the Lebanese expats off their money.

- He fails to tell people that more Lebanese corruption and filth and garbage will be the main attraction of this project, in addition to the thousands of equally "wealthy" Arab "friends" of Lebanon who have been buying up the country thanks to Saad Hariri and other billionaire Lebanese who sell their mothers and their wives just to make a deal.

- My hometown of Damour used to be a pretty coastal town of stone houses, beaches, a river, a fertile alluvial plain rich in citrus, banana and sugar cane. Thanks to Mr. Saleh, Damour will be destroyed again (the first time being at the hands of the criminal hordes of the PLO and the Baathist regime in Syria in January 1976), this time for good, by transforming it into an ugly city where "wealthy and exclusive" assholes like him and his Arab friends will coexist with the wretched scum that such a project will undoubtedly attract. No Expat will or should invest in this atrocity.

- It's true that the Lebanese expats "are used to Lebanon's system, its ups and downs" (translation: its backroom deals, bribery, kickbacks, cronyism, and other forms of corruption) because they not only ran away from the war in Lebanon, they also escaped the backstabbing, the humiliation, the corruption, the money-worshiping, the endemic religious-sectarian idiocy of the God-fearing Lebanese, as well as Lebanon's equally filthy neighbors to the east (Muslim Arab Syria) and to the south (Jewish Zionist Israel) who spent much of the past three decades dismembering Lebanon into pieces.

I suggest that Mr. Saleh find some other fucked up corner of the world to build his megalomaniacal dreams of making even more money than he has.

WE DON"T WANT HIS CEDAR TREE ISLAND ANYWHERE NEAR LEBANON. LEAVE LEBANON ALONE.

Hanibaal
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Developer hopes to plant island draw for expat Lebanese
Monday Apr 27, 2009 (AP)

BEIRUT - Mohammed Saleh is convinced: if he builds it, Lebanese expatriates will come. The Beirut-based developer envisions a 3.3sq km artificial island shaped like a cedar tree as an attraction off Lebanon's coast.

The massive chunk of dredged seabed or transported earth - converted into a $14 billion paradise with luxury villas, apartments, shops, restaurants, white-sand beaches, parks, schools and hospitals - would nurture national pride, says Saleh, chairman of Noor International Holding.

It's the kind of splashy megaproject that gave Arab boomtown Dubai its outsized profile but left it drowning in debt. And in Lebanon, a tiny country known more for war than tourism, critics see the project as folly. But Saleh says Cedar Island is the kind of self-financed gamble the nation needs to lure back wealthy Lebanese who moved abroad as they grew weary of conflict.

"I am not worried about the global crisis, because my main target is Lebanese expatriates who have nostalgia for their country and would like to invest in it," said Saleh. "Unlike foreign investors, these people are used to Lebanon's system, its ups and downs."

Saleh - many of whose projects boast outsized stature, like the Rose Tower in Dubai, which calls itself the world's tallest hotel - points in particular to a $3.5 billion memorandum of understanding he's signed regarding Cedar Island with Turkey's Ihlas Holding. The rest of the money will come from other developers and investors, Saleh says.

Sceptics run the gamut from a coalition of 25 groups worried about the environmental impact of dredging to some prominent Lebanese economists who doubt funding will be stable. Saleh says the project's planned artificial coral reefs and other measures will offset the environmental impact of building the island.

Loose US Screws Tightening on Hezbollah

For every venture and adventure that Hezbollah makes, Lebanon pays the price, then Hezbollah learns not to do it again.

After the July 2006 War that destroyed Lebanon, Hezbollah learned the lesson: It does not dare fire rockets at Israel across the Lebanese south. Last December, as Israel was pounding Hamas in the Gaza Strip, all that Hezbollah's high priest Hassan Nasrallah could do was bark from behind the fence on the Israeli-Lebanese border. There was noticeable drool and foam coming out of his mouth and dripping from his beard, but he could not - and did not - fire his missiles at Israel.

In 2003, three Hezbollah suspects were arrested in Jordan on charges of smuggling arms to the West Bank. Under threats from the Jordanian government, a deal was reached in which Hezbollah was forced to pledge not to do it again. And that too seems to have worked, again proving that a rabid dog like Nasrallah can be tied and kept behind the fence.

And now in Egypt, interrogation of a Hezbollah cell caught this month reveals that the cell was sent by Nasrallah to undermine the Egyptian government (because it failed to support Hamas last December), launch attacks against Israeli tourists, monitor boat traffic on the Suez Canal, smuggle weapons to Hamas into Gaza, etc...
The Hezbollah cell includes 49 suspects – including Egyptian, Lebanese, Palestinian and Sudanese – and was planning three major car bombing attacks in tourist cities on the Red Sea and the Sinai area using explosive belts and booby-trapped cars in Taba.

Sources in Lebanon are saying that Hassan Nasrallah's standing in the terrorist organization has been seriously damaged by the Egypt scandal. Not only does it show failure on his part to carry out successful terrorist operations, but also his willingness to harm other Arab countries only to please his Iranian paymasters. Nasrallah is desperately trying to make a deal with the Egyptians, just to limit the damaging information being generated by the interrogations of the cell members by Egyptian security. The sources say that Hizbullah is willing to engage in Lebanese-Egyptian talks to find a "proper exit" similar to that of the 2003 Jordanian episode.

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed concern yesterday at Congressional hearings about a possible win by Hezbollah in the June 7 parliamentary elections. Yet, Clinton showed contradicting positions on Hamas and Hezbollah and a willingness by the Obama administration to open channels with the two terror organizations.

For example, Clinton said, "We are currently supporting the Lebanese government, which has Hezbollah in it and we are doing that because on balance it is the interest of the U.S." to back efforts against extremism. While the US government is obviously willing to give money to the Lebanese government and weapons to the Lebanese army, it knows that in doing so, it is indirectly supporting Hezbollah which has heavily infiltrated the government and the army in Beirut.

On the other hand, she reiterated that the Obama administration expected any new Palestinian government that included Hamas to meet three conditions -- to recognize Israel, renounce violence and sign on to previous Palestinian peace accords, yet she also said that some flexibility might be needed, using the U.S. funding for Lebanon as an example. In stark contradiction to her position on Hezbollah, Clinton said "no U.S. aid will flow to Hamas or any entity" controlled by the group, which the United States considers a terrorist organization, even if Hamas ends up in a unity government with the Palestinian authority.

In other words, CLinton and Obama are willing to let Hezbollah succeed in Lebanon, but to prevent Hamas from succeeding in Israel. Back to the old double standard in which the protection of Israel against terrorism takes precedence over the protection of Lebanon against the same terrorism.

Hanibaal

Lebanese Democracy: Corruption, Filth and Beggars

The Lebanese often wonder why other countries - or their own expatriate emigrants - often criticize them for corruption, for being backwards and primitive, for voting either to the highest payer or as slaves to their feudal lords, and for having a propensity to selling their own mothers if they can make a buck out of it.

The candidacy of Walid Maalouf is a perfect example of this deep chasm between resident Lebanon and emigrant Lebanon. Here is a guy who more than succeeded on his own - and without any help from resident Lebanon - as an emigrant who fled the war, worked hard, and climbed the ladder and became a US diplomat representing both the US and Lebanon at the UN, and taking the Lebanese Cause to the highest of forums, and demanding to the face of Syria's UN Ambassador that the Baathist regime of Damascus withdraw his forces from Lebanon. Walid NEVER forgot his country of birth. Not because of money, not because of family. On principle. Because he loved his country. Like all of us emigrant Lebanese.

Walid Maalouf is a candidate for a seat in the Lebanese PArliament at the upcoming elections on June 7. He is funding his campaign with the little money he was able to raise from otherwise very wealthy, but very stingy, Lebanese. He is trying to inject a dose of modernity to the primitive way the LEbanese have traditionally run campaigns, but it is an uphill battle. (Read the accompanying New York Times report). Walid is not asking the Lebanese to elect him as they usually do, i.e. as a godfather or the head of a feudal family where politics is inherited rather than earned (like the Hariris, Gemayels, Tuenis, Chamouns....). He is asking them to vote for someone who will SERVE them. Their answer: Give us money to vote for you, or go back to America.

Thank you, "Modern" and "Democratic" Lebanon. Hello, PRIMITIVE, BACKWARDS and CORRUPT Lebanon.

Hanibaal
_____________________________________________________
By ROBERT F. WORTH
Published: April 22, 2009
The New York Times

BEIRUT, Lebanon — It is election season in Lebanon, and Hussein H., a jobless 24-year-old from south Beirut, is looking forward to selling his vote to the highest bidder. Walid Maalouf, an independent candidate for Parliament, is trying to buck the political culture by visiting towns and trying to persuade the Lebanese to see candidates as potential employees.

“Whoever pays the most will get my vote,” Hussein said. “I won’t accept less than $800.” He may get more. The parliamentary elections here in June are shaping up to be among the most expensive ever held anywhere, with hundreds of millions of dollars streaming into this small country from around the globe.

Lebanon has long been seen as a battleground for regional influence, and now, with no more foreign armies on the ground, Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region are arming their allies here with campaign money in place of weapons. The result is a race that is widely seen as the freest and most competitive to be held here in decades, with a record number of candidates taking part. But it may also be the most corrupt.

Votes are being bought with cash or in-kind services. Candidates pay their competitors huge sums to withdraw. The price of favorable TV news coverage is rising, and thousands of expatriate Lebanese are being flown home, free, to vote in contested districts. The payments, according to voters, election monitors and various past and current candidates interviewed for this article, nurture a deep popular cynicism about politics in Lebanon, which is nominally perhaps the most democratic Arab state but in practice is largely governed through patronage and sectarian and clan loyalty.

Despite the vast amounts being spent, many Lebanese see the race — which pits Hezbollah and its allies against a fractious coalition of more West-friendly political groups — as almost irrelevant. Lebanon’s sectarian political structure virtually guarantees a continuation of the current “national unity” government, in which the winning coalition in the 128-seat Parliament grants the loser veto powers to preserve civil peace.

[THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT THE LEBANESE MEAN WITH THEIR "CONSENSUAL DEMOCRACY". This usually means that elections, voting, and the choice of their representatives are irrelevant and are done only for show. What matters when it comes to enacting legislation and running the executive or the legislative is the deals that leaders make among themselves, often in contravention of rules, laws, the constitution, and the will of their constituents.]

Still, even a narrow win by Hezbollah and its allies, now in the parliamentary opposition, would be seen as a victory for Iran — which has financed Hezbollah for decades — and a blow to American allies in the region, especially Saudi Arabia and Egypt. So the money flows.

“We are putting a lot into this,” said one adviser to the Saudi government, who added that the Saudi contribution was likely to reach hundreds of millions of dollars in a country of only four million people. “We’re supporting candidates running against Hezbollah, and we’re going to make Iran feel the pressure.”

As it happens, Lebanon has campaign spending limits this year for the first time, and the Arab world’s first system to monitor that spending, by the Lebanese chapter of Transparency International. But the limits — which are very loose to begin with — apply only in the last two months of the campaign. And they are laughably easy to circumvent, according to election monitors and Lebanese officials.

Reformers have tried and failed to introduce a uniform national ballot, which could reduce the influence of money and make the system less vulnerable to fraud. Currently, political parties or coalitions usually print up their own distinctive ballots and hand them to voters before they walk into the booth, making it easier to be sure they are getting the votes they have paid for.

Some voters, especially in competitive districts, receive cold calls offering cash for their vote. But mostly the political machines work through local patriarchs known as “electoral keys,” who can deliver the votes of an entire clan in exchange for money or services — scholarships, a hospital, repaved roads and so on.

In a country where the average public school teacher earns less than $700 a month, these payments are a significant source of support for many communities. And because each seat in the Lebanese Parliament is designated by religious sect, the elections tend to reinforce the essentially feudal power structure of Lebanon, with a network of men from known families providing for each sect and region.

All the major political groups deny buying votes, which is illegal under Lebanese law, but election monitors acknowledge that it is a routine practice. “Since the 1990s, more money has been coming in,” said Paul Salem, the director of the Carnegie Middle East Center here. “Unfortunately, the system adjusts to that and in a way comes to expect it, especially among the poor.”

In fact, many poorer Lebanese look to the elections as a kind of Christmas, when cash, health-care vouchers, meals and other handouts are abundant.

The largess extends across the globe. From Brazil to Australia, thousands of expatriates are being offered free plane trips back home to vote. Saad Hariri, the billionaire leader of the current parliamentary majority and a Saudi ally, is reputed to be the biggest election spender. It may not have helped that he kicked off his campaign with a gaudy televised event that resembled the set of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” But members of his movement say that the accusation is unfair, and that their own money is outmatched by the hundreds of millions of dollars Iran has given to Hezbollah over the years.

Candidates and political parties generally will not admit to receiving money from abroad.

One of them, however, recently broke with convention by acknowledging it openly. Ahmed al-Asaad, 46, said that Saudi Arabia’s government was a “significant source of support” for his campaign against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. He said his goal was to pull the Shiites of Lebanon away from Iran.

“I need tools to fight back, and if the Saudis have an interest in building a state here, why shouldn’t I take advantage of that?” said Mr. Asaad, an American-educated businessman, during an interview at his office just outside Beirut.

Candidates who do not ally themselves with a powerful patronage machine are almost unheard of here.

Walid Maalouf, a banker who worked briefly as a diplomat while living in the United States, is running an independent campaign on a shoestring budget, barnstorming from town to town in his mountain district. He says most people in the villages tell him he is the only politician who bothers to visit them. They are grateful, but he does not offer cash or patronage, and they are unsure what to think of him.

Recently, Mr. Maalouf said, he was trying to explain to a village leader that he should think of candidates as employees, not patrons — someone they would hire to represent them effectively in the government.

“He looked at me,” Mr. Maalouf recalled, “and then he said, ‘Go back to America.’ ”

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting.

A version of this article appeared in print on April 23, 2009, on page A1 of the New York edition.

Lebanon: An Environmental Disaster

"Hidden dangers in Lebanon's coastal waters" is the title of a report by the Daily Star (April 15, 2009). According to the author, the sea off the Lebanese coast is so contaminated that even walking barefoot on some beaches poses risks.

During the Lebanese War, bodies of people kidnapped and killed by the various militias (Lebanese Forces, Amal, Hezbollah, Jumblatt's Druze militias, the Syrian army, and the Palestinian terrorist groups) used to be dumped into the ocean. Also during the war, corrupt politicians and militia leaders took money from Italian companies in exchange for allowing them to dump their toxic and radioactive waste up in the mountainous highlands which leached into the rivers and streams flowing into the ocean.

Later when the War was "officially" over (1990), the corrupt billionaire and prime minister Rafik Hariri forced the business owners of downtown Beirut to surrender their properties to his company Solidere, and then proceeded to bulldoze everything (rubble, metals, dead bodies etc...) into Beirut's ocean front to clear it for rebuilding. Not to be outdone by Lebanon's religious crass and tit-for-tat politics, Hariri built an immense mosque right against the wall of the ancient Maronite Catholic church of St. George.

Lebanon's trucks, taxis, busses and other commercial vehicles are still allowed to run on very dirty and polluted diesel, while all private vehicles run on gasoline, supposedly to encourage business with cheaper fuel. The net result is that Lebanon's air - particularly in the cities - is so polluted that people suffer from acute respiratory problems and a number of pollution-related diseases of the lungs, throat and mouth. Not to mention the Lebanese proclivity for smoking: Even as they once in a while engage in boycotts of "Zionist" and "American" businesses, the Lebanese are the best supporters of these businesses through their abundant consumption of American tobacco products, which they do at the expense of their own health.

According to the Daily Star article, romantic strolls along Beirut's "Corniche" including the stench of "...a putrefied odor of raw sewage wafting by..", while "...fishermen peacefully cast their rods to catch fish swimming in a cocktail of toxic waste."

Also, the Lebanese - like all their fellow Arabs, in a reflexive anti-Semitism - blame Israel for every ill on the surface of the earth. So for example, the recent bitter dispute between Egypt and Hezbollah is attributed to the "Israeli enemy", and the Lebanese Army's pursuit of drug dealers and gangsters operating from behind Hezbollah lines in the BEkaa Valley is also assigned to a "Zionist plot" aiming at destabilizing the country.

So, when it comes to pollution, according to the Daily Star, there was "uproar over damages caused by Israel's 2006 bombardment of the Jiyyeh power plant..." along the coast north of Beirut... and the resulting oil spill was Lebanon's worst environmental disaster". Yet the report's author says that the impact of that oil spill "pales in comparison to the contamination caused by wastewater pouring into the sea on a daily basis." So the Lebanese can only blame themselves for the environmental disaster that their country has become.

Just as an aside, but to highlight the primitive mindset with which the Lebanese establishment deals with pollution, when Lebanon's cabinet was being formed last June, after months of wranglings over "lucrative" cabinet posts, one of Lebanon's most corrupt politicians, Michel Murr, who hails from the neanderthal cave-dwelling tribe of Bteghrine, said that offering the Environment Ministry post to his most beloved son Elias, was an insult and beneath his dignity. He aimed for his son to be Minister of Communications or Defense (where the kickbacks and bribes are rampant), and he got it: Elias is today Lebanon's Minister of Defense!

It appears that "...the main cause for sea pollution in Lebanon is raw sewage, both before and after the oil spill in 2006 ... and sewage is much more damaging than oil... 3,000 tons of solid waste and over 500,000 cubic meters of wastewater find their way daily to Lebanon's coastal waters."

Dr. Mark Saadeh is an academic researcher and consultant to the Litani River Authority and head of its Environmental Unit for the monitoring of water resources in the Litani basin. "...drawing on his 11 years of experience testing samples in Lebanon, Saadeh stated that 'contaminant levels of water sources are often far above the internationally recognized guidelines, both inland and on the coast'."

"One gram of human feces contains ten million viruses and up to two million species of bacteria," Saadeh said, explaining that "while salinity disinfects to a certain extent, it does not sterilize ... and viruses do not respond to salinity." Adding a final extreme example to underline his point, he stated: "Even walking barefoot on the beach in a contaminated area presents a risk - there are tapeworms which can pass easily through the skin of your foot."

Wael Hmaidan, the executive director of IndyAct, a Lebanese NGO devoted to environmental awareness and change, supported the statement, stressing that these "trace metals from industrial waste are highly toxic even in small quantities ... and even with high dilution, these trace metals continue to accumulate up the food chain, and are highly carcinogenic.

"Enforcement is a problem in Lebanon," he acknowledged, pointing to the fragmentation of responsibility across multiple actors as a primary reason for why appropriate action remains stalled.

"In this case, the Environment Ministry needs to cooperate with the Industry Ministry and the Interior Ministry to penalize infringements. The Environment Ministry alone does not have the power to close down factories until problems are fixed, or withhold permits to factories who do not comply with regulations ... cooperation and coordination is a major issue," he said. Saab pointed to the ignorance of offenders as another aggravating factor."

I do not agree that the Lebanese are ignorant of what they are doing to their environment. They know it because they can see it. The major driver of the ongoing environmental destruction of Lebanon is political and economic corruption, and it is knowingly and deliberately criminal. Just a couple of examples:

The same neanderthal politician Michel Murr operates dozens of quarries in the Metn and elsewhere. A mere look at these sites by even uneducated eyes, one can see the damage to the scenery as well as the pollution being visited upon the once lush and green Lebanese Mountains.

An entire mountainside was carved up a few years ago to build a highway running from the coast at Nahr El-Mot (aptly named, since the name of this river is "Death River") up to the town of Baabdat, hometown of the former imbecile and Syrian puppet President Emile Lahoud. This highway was a gift Lahoud gave himself upon ending his term, so he can easily commute from his new "castle" in Baabdat down to the coast without being bothered by having to circle through Beirut and its heavily polluted traffic. As you drive up and down that highway, you note the following: It is a useless highway because it follows the natural curvature of the terrain, with very difficult to navigate 180 degree turns and small bridges over the ravines. The bird's flight distance is otherwise very short, and a beautiful long span bridge would have esthetically served the purpose with minimal impact on the forests and valleys. The mountainsides were dug with explosives, and were left bare without any effort at reforestation. Entire slabs of sandy rock at different locations along the highway appear to hang dangerously, ready to crash at the slightest trigger (rain, quake, etc.). Finally, the highway was dug up in a pristine area that had escaped the ugly and chaotic urbanization of the rest of the country. It had lush forests and there are no villages or towns along the path. Because of its relative isolation, the highway has now become a haven for kidnappers and highway robbers, and people driving at hinght have been murdered, robbed or their cars stolen.

Such is the state of the environment in Lebanon. The problem is from the top: The corrupt political establishment is at the source and heart of it.

Hanibaal

AUB President Malcolm Kerr's Assassination: One of Hezbollah's Many Exploits in Lebanon

Like all assassinations, kidnappings and other acts of terrorism in Lebanon targeting westerners, everyone knows that Syria and its proxies like Hezbollah are behind them. Yet, only once in the history of the Lebanese War (1972 to the present time) was the perpetrator identified and arrested, and that was Habib Chartouni, a member of the Fascist Syrian Social National Party (Al-Hizb Al-Awmi Al-Suri) who placed the bomb that killed Bashir Gemayel in September 1982, at the behest of the Syrian Baath regime in Syria,. As if to admit their guilt, the Syrians promptly released Chartouni from jail when they completed their occupation of Lebanon in 1990.

So as the American University of Beirut this week commemorates the assassination of its President in 1984, let all the Lebanese stop the hypocrisy of pretending to ignore what led to the demise of Lebanon, and confront the fact that it was Hezbollah that was behind all acts of terror of the 1980s: Bombing of the peacekeeping Marines and French troops; twice bombing of the US Embassy and the bombing of the French embassy; the bombing of the Iraqi Embassy; the kidnapping and killing of AUB professors, Christian clergymen, negotiators, journalists, UN personnel, etc., that ultimately drove all Westerners out of Lebanon and plunged Lebanon deep in the Syrian Goulag.

The Lebanese should never forget who did their country harm. Let the criminal Salim Hoss who graduated from AUB and taught there stop praising Syria (as he did this past weekend in Damascus - see my previous posting on t his blog).

Hanibaal
_________________________________________________________________
AUB marks quarter century since the passing of Malcolm Kerr, its 9th president

Members of the AUB community gathered on Monday January 19 to commemorate the 25th anniversary for the assassination of the ninth president of AUB, Dr. Malcolm Hooper Kerr, who was shot dead by unknown assailants outside his College Hall office on January 18, 1984.

AUB President Peter Dorman placed a bouquet of flowers on the Kerr Memorial Stone, outside College Hall, where Kerr's ashes rest, under the sheltering branches of the huge and historic banyan tree.

Dorman called on everyone to observe a few moments of silence in memory of a "tragedy that affected all our lives."

He also read a passage from Susan van de Ven's book, One Family's Response to Terrorism: A Daughter's Memoir, which was written by Kerr's daughter.

The passage recounted van de Ven's day "before the world changed for good," because of her father's assassination. Van de Ven was then living in Taiwan with her husband, Hans, and received a phone call two hours after her father's untimely death.

During a memorial service in 1984, shortly after Kerr's death, his wife, Ann, read a statement in which she highlighted her husband's faith in the University.

"But, for his death to have any meaning at all, it must be to leave a legacy for this university and for Lebanon." Ann Kerr had written. "It was his fervent wish that all students at AUB put their loyalty to their university before their loyalty to their political and religious backgrounds; that they work together for the common good of AUB; study hard, play hard, and leave the university well prepared to become mature, liberally educated, public minded citizens of their own countries. It is only such people who can help to bridge the deep cultural misunderstandings that led to my husband's death."

Malcolm Kerr was born in 1931 in the American University hospital. His father was a professor of chemistry at the University; his mother served briefly as dean of students. After secondary school in the United States, he took his BA in international relations at Princeton University. After MA studies at AUB he continued at Harvard and Johns Hopkins, where he received his PhD in 1958.

After three years of teaching in the Department of Political Studies and Public Administration at AUB, Kerr taught for almost twenty years at the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies and the Department of Political Science, but during those years he taught and researched frequently in the Arab world -- in Cairo, Beirut, and North Africa. Kerr's brief tenure as president of AUB began in 1982. He was killed by an unknown assassin on 18 January 1984 in front of his office in College Hall.

Kerr's body was cremated, and the ashes were buried under the banyan tree on campus. A memorial plaque was placed at the burial site, and a letter from his children was preserved in a glass encasement near his tomb. The letter read: "Dear Dad, We are proud of you and glad you came to AUB."

Salim Hoss: Dumbass Should Drop Dead

Dumbass Sunni Hoss

Lebanon's Sunni politicians are absolute jackasses who will always bow their heads and their behinds to the Syrian dictatorship. One example is Salim Hoss, the traitor Prime Minister who ran a collaborator puppet pro-Syrian government in 1989-1990 against the legitimate government of Michel Aoun, and backed Syria's savage shelling of Beirut's populated areas.

Hoss has been, like the dick that he is, in and out of government, and in and out of a passé and obsolete pan-Arab nationalism. Even as Syria killed his own Mufti, Hassan Khaled, back in 1989 and then his traitor buddy Rafik Hariri, Hoss has developed an uncanny proclivity for Syrian asses which he continues, even in his old ripe age, to lick ad nauseam.

He was in Damascus this past week to attend and participate in a conference on, mind you, "Lebanese-Syrian relations", in the capital city of a country whose entire ruling Baath dictatorship is under indictment by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon for the Hariri assassination, still proclaiming the everlasting incestuous special fuckbuddy-type of relations between Lebanon and Syria.

Some of the gems Hoss was laying in Damascus (you need to hire a Baathist language translator to interpret the doublespeak of the vulgar hoodlums like Assad, Shaaban, Al-Sharaa, et al.), but there is poetry in the blatherings of the Damascus desert crowd:

Jeddo Hoss dixit:

1- "Lebanon's Arab identity passes practically through Damascus"
- I am not sure whether Hoss is referring metaphorically to the rectal gastro-intestinal passages that Syria periodically imposes on Lebanon or to tunnel-like passages under the border between the two countries, but somehow Lebanon's repulsive Arab identity is metabolically or geographically coupled to Damascus. Other interpretations are welcome on this blog.

2- "...the peoples of Lebanon and Syria are one nation in two states...", and asserted that "...relations between the two countries are natural when they are distinct-special".
- Presumably, Hoss is still living (in his alzheimering mind) under the Syrian occupation when the dogs and bitches in Damascus proclaimed through their lackeys (like Hoss) in Beirut that Lebanon and Syria are "separated twins", or "one people in two states", bound inextricably by "unity of path and destiny", all formulas dear to the Baathist theory that Lebanon is a renegade province of Syria that should be brought back (i.e. annexed" to Syria. Somehow, Hoss does not believe in Lebanon's distinctness as a nation to be independent and sovereign, but in his traitor Sunni dog of a mind, Lebanon can only be allowed to exist as long as it entertains "special and distinct" relations with Syria (read: Syria can fuck Lebanon whenever it wants and it can kill its leaders, imprison its citizens, and destroy its economy without any accountability).

3- "...the role of the Syrian army was to support the Lebanese army to restore security and stability to Lebanon..."
- This is unbelievable. Since 1972 when Syria invited its Arab Army of Palestine, its Yarmouk Brigades, and its hordes of Palestinian criminals and terrorists into Lebanon and carried out massacre after massacre of Christian villages located along the Syrian border, Syria has ransacked Lebanon, killed close to hundreds of thousands of people in shelling Lebanon's large cities indiscriminately in 1977, 1978, 1981, 1989, 1990 (I was there. I lived through it all. I am a witness of Syria's crimes against the civilian population of Lebanon), pilfered the country's resources, imprisoned thousands of innocent Lebanese who either died or remain imprisoned while Syria denies they even exist, and over the past 4 years assassinated one politician after another in car bombs throughout Lebanon, including Hariri for whom the Syrian regime is about to be convicted in The Hague.

And this imbecile Salim Hoss still says that Syria helped Lebanon's restore stability and security? What were the one million Lebanese who marched in 2005 demanding Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon doing then? Were they wrong?

Hoss should be mobbed upon his return to Beirut, dragged out of his car, and hanged upside down like Mussolini in downtown Beirut!

Lebanon's predicament is not the neighborhood or the Middle East crisis. It is not that it is a small and weak country. It is not Lebanon's people who are lacking. It is by far in the criminality of its leaders and politicians like Salim Hoss and his ilk.

Hanibaal

Hezbollah: Clean & Purely Lebanese? Think Again.

The image that defenders of Hezbollah (like General Aoun's FPM bazaar merchants) as a clean, purely Lebanese, social-welfare organization whose sole mission on earth is self-sacrifice for the liberation of a sliver of land now occupied by Israel, but originally forcibly annexed by Syria, is becoming tarnished. A fig leaf to hide the Mahatma Hassan Nasrallah's nakedness can only last so long before the winds of truth and reality blow beneath his putrid beard.

Not that there was not enough evidence already, but some people are truly blinded by their political ambitions that they are willing to say just about anything to justify their positions. After all, Hezbollah would be nothing in Lebanon without Iran's millions and weapons, and without Syria's provision of a lifeline of support and weapons-smuggling across the Lebanese-Syrian border. Be that as it may, the bazaar merchants (who would sell their mothers if politically convenient) wore the blinders on their eyes so tight that they could not see clearly enough, and went on believeing in Nasrallah's patriotism and purity of purpose.

After dragging Lebanon into a war of absurdity in 2006 with Israel, Hassan Nasrallah proved to the Lebanese that he could anger Israel enough to get it to kill 1300 innocent Lebanese and destroy the infrastructure of the country. Though he claimed "divine" victory", all the Lebanese, including his captive hostage Lebanese Shiite population, know that his victory was a huge setback for Lebanon's image and recovery from 30 years of war. In fact, this is the same war of "liberation" into which the infamous Yasser Arafat of the PLO, the vulgar dictators of Damascus and a few other Arabs (who have since repented for their sins against Lebanon) dragged Lebanon since 1975. While the Lebanese were being killed by the hundreds of thousands and their country ravaged to liberate fucking Palestine, all these Arab heroes of calamity were living the good life and their countries were enjoying peace and negotiations with Israel. But not Lebanon. When the Sunni Lebanese woke up from their Arab nationalist stupor and realized that they were used like dirt rags by the other Arabs (PLO, Syria and then some) and their collaborator-in-chief Rafik Swine Hariri was murdered, they relented and became true patriots.

So among all the Lebanese factions, only the Shiites (and those like Aoun who are using them for political purposes) are still clinging to the Quixotic liberation theology of Hezbollah that all other Muslims in Lebanon have finally abandoned. Alone in his bolthole these days, Hassan Nasrallah still wants to liberate Palestine at Lebanon's expense, and emerges once in a while to bark as loud as he can before retreating back to his hole like a rat and before getting caught by Israel. He can no longer "officially" send his butchers to the Israeli border and incite Israel to reprisals, because the Lebanese this time won't forgive him. When Israel was bombing Gaza this past fall, Hassan barked and barked, but could not bite. You could tell how frustrated he was by not being able to drag Lebanon into another round of mayhem, pillaging and plunder of which he is so adept.

If the 2006 war was not enough for some Lebanese to see through their blinders, here are some further evidence of the putrefaction beneath Hassan's feet. In a way, it is good that the emperor is slowly shedding his clothes and is almost naked by now, but it also means that the Hezbollah beast, if cornered too much, could become enraged and dangerous.

Less than a year ago, Hassan Nasrallah's goons descended into the streets of Beirut with their weapons and imposed their will on the rest of the Lebanese population and on the inept Lebanese government of one imbecile Fuad Siniora. Thus, the image of a Hezbollah that will use its weapons only against the windmill enemy Israel, and never internally against other Lebanese, was thus shattered.

As the June 7 elections approach, Nasrallah is feeling the decomposition beneath his veneer of respectability giving way. So his goons have attacked the other Shiites, the non-Hezbollah Shiites who offer a modern and genuinely rational - no "divine" crap - alternative to Hezbollah. Ahmed al-Assaad's Belonging Movement is this alternative. It holds diametrically opposed views to every one of Hassan Nasrallah's positions: On the welfare of the Shiite community, on a Lebanon-first/Palestine-second policy, on modernization and reform versus anachronistic religious beliefs and their injection into political life, etc.

For dictators and totalitarians like Hezbollah, the ballot box is their worst enemy. And so Hezbollah has burned cars, kidnapped and then released (i.e. intimidated) members of Al-Assaad's movement. Hezbollah is scared. Not because Al-Assad can win the elections. He can't, yet; because there is too much momentum on Hezbollah's side. But Al-Assaad does not need to win the elections to make his mark. All he has to do is make a dent, however small, into Hezbollah's monopoly over the Shiite population, because this would prove to the Shiites and to the Lebanese in general that Hezbollah is vulnerable and is losing ground, that there are alternatives to Hezbollah's Iranian-inspired "liberation theology", and that it's just a matter of time before the fundamentalist beast is finally slain.

Finally, Hezbollah is now branching out their activities. About 50 Hezbollah members were arrested in Egypt between last November and last week, trying to destabilize the Egyptian government and smuggling weapons into Gaza to Hamas.

So much for a purely Lebanese organization whose objectives are the liberation of Lebanese land... Hezbollah was created by Iran in 1980 in south Lebanon, right after the Iranian revolution. Since that time, it has done nothing but harm to Lebanon. It evicted all foreign institutions from Lebanon - military ones as well as educational and humanitarian ones - by force of terror, car bombs, kidnapping and murder. Today, Hezbollah may have varnished its image to fool some stupid people in Lebanon, but its ties to its past are still as strong as the day it was created as an appendage of Iran in Lebanon.

The best proof to that fake metamorphosis is in how Hezbollah denied for decades that Imad Mughniyah, its terrorist-in-chief who engineered the murder of US and French peacekeeping troops in Beirut, even belonged to Hezbollah. Hassan Nasrallah himself said that Mughniyah is not a member of Hezbollah and that Hezbollah has nothing to do with what Mughniyah did in the 1980s and 1990s. But when Israel finally found out, thanks to the Syrians in Damascus, where Mughniyah was hiding, they killed him. He knew too much, and Syria needed to protect itself as the Special Tribunal for Lebanon was opening its proceedings in the Hague, and so the Syrians and the Israelis killed him, like they killed the other Lebanese criminal of the Lebanese Forces, Elie Hobeika, because he also knew too much. As soon as Mughniyah was killed, Hezbollah acknowledged that he was its chief military guy and has vowed to avenge his death.

To Lebanese voters: Let the ballot box and your votes express your true opinion of Hezbollah. Do not be afraid of terrorists. You have lost so much, there is little left to lose. Tell them what you think.

Hanibaal

Welcome to Primitive Lebanon

1. Women's Rights.
It sucks to be a Lebanese woman. They educate you to the hilt, then they make you think you'll have it all when you marry and have children. When you realize there is nowhere to go in this patriarchal society where men can kill any female in their family to preserve their "honor" (of which the men have none when you really think about they conduct their lives), you turn to consumerism, buying kitsh and crap to fill your otherwise empty life. You even get yourself a maid, even when you really don't need one: It's like the car, it makes you look successful. Never mind that, with or without a maid, you still have to serve your man like a dog.

To top it all, if you happen to marry a non-Lebanese to escape the oriental goulag of matrimony, the government punishes you: It won't give the Lebanese citizenship to your children. So you spend the rest of your life renewing their residence papers every year with all the ass-kissing and bribes you have to dole out to the lazy corrupt bums that Lebanese politicians appoint to the bureaucratic posts that manage in your life.

I have a cousin who married a man from Mali. Her son grew up most of his life in Lebanon, went to Lebanese schools, earned the baccalaureat and can't think of himself as any other than Lebanese. One problem: The government won't give him the citizenship. So he cannot work. He cannot join the Syndicates. He basically lives on the margin of society, unable to achieve all his potential.

2. Education.
I found out yesterday, after meeting a female PhD student from Lebanon, that the Lebanese government forbids universities - private and public - from admitting students into graduate programs of a different major than their undergraduate major. In other words, let's say that you majored in chemistry for your undergraduate studies. Then, in order to widen your horizons, improve your ability at work and thinking by combining two different disciplines, you decide to earn a Masters or a doctorate in economics. STOP. The government does not allow universities to admit you. Your only avenue is to get a Masters or a doctorate in chemistry, i.e. to overspecialize, and that is in a country that can't even provide electricity for its citizens. Not only does the government impose this stupid rule on public universities, but it also imposes it on the private sector.

3. Corruption.
In the Lebanese bureaucracy which is manned, as I said earlier, by cronies and clients of the politicians who appoint them to these posts, the burden when applying for any official paper is on the citizen, not on the government, to do due diligence. For example, the following is a contrast between the process of applying for a passport in the US versus in Lebanon.

In the US, you fill one form consisting of one page in which you enter all your personal information and enclose a photo with a check and mail it to the passport center. Two weeks later, your new passport arrives to your doorstep by mail. What has happened in between? The government does the work of checking your background information. That is why bureaucrats are paid: to do the work.

In Lebanon, the burden is reversed. Yes, first there is a passport form, but along with it you have to fill a dozen other forms and wait at doors of dirty government buildings manned by rude, smoking, stinking, sweaty bureaucrats who treat you like a piece of scum.

All these additional forms are a means for you to prove to the government that you are an honest citizen. And each of these forms is an opportunity for the scums of the government to get you into an endless maize of bribes and kickbacks from which they make money off your back.
In the process of obtaining these other forms, you also have to wait at doors in humiliating and degrading places where you are treated like a dog.

These additional forms are, for example, a statement from the Mayor of your town (which may or may not exist anymore, or where you don't dare go, because of ethnic cleansing carried out by the same politicians or because one of the politicians' militia still controls the area under pretense of "liberation" or "resistance") in which the Mayor says that he knows you. Now, you have to get a photo to the mayor, other than the photo you have to bring for the passport. Then you have to obtain a police criminal report (casier judiciaire, Sijill Adli) to prove to the General Security (who are issuing the passport) that you have not committed any crime. Notice that you have to obtain a form from General Security to prove to General Security that you did not commit a crime. It's the same fucking bureaucrats who could do the check without you even knowing. But no; not in Lebanon. In Lebanon, you have to stand in line, buy some Ottoman-era stamps from shady offices located around the General Security building, and lick both the stamps and the boots of the bureaucrat, and then hope to get a passport on time. Also, note that the passport fee is equal to one month's salary on minimum pay. So if you are poor, forget it.

Enter corruption. If you manage to get all these forms in order, and show up at the final bureaucratic destination, and hand over the precious stash of papers, nothing will happen. The final bureaucrat will tell you to come back in 5 days. Which you do: Five days later, you shown up only to hear, "It's not done yet; it is still being processed by some other office somewhere else; come back in 3 days." And on and on, the process goes with no end in sight. For those of us expatriates who trust government to be reliable and decent, we start wondering why did we even think we could come back to this dump called Lebanon in the first place. After all, it's polluted, it's dirty, there is garbage everywhere, drivers are rude and suicidal, you can't even start a business without kissing half a dozen asses of politicians and their ilk.... In the end, someone tells you the key to solving the stalemate of obtaining the passport: Bribe! You see the corrupt bureaucrat has dignity: He won't even ask for the bribe. He just sits on your file until it dawns on you or someone prods you to learn the Lebanese way. And as soon as the money is handed in, while preserving the corrupt bureaucrat's dignity, the passport gets done.

I feel disgusted every time I think of going for a visit to Lebanon. Visits as a tourist are fine, for the most part, excepting the physical abuse of the environment and traffic. But to think of settling back in the fucking motherland is a gigantic leap of faith into the abyss.

Hanibaal

One Man-One Suitcase: Hezbollah's Travel Policy

Two Lebanese Found in Suitcases Crossing into Iraq

Two Lebanese nationals were taken into custody by Iraqi police after they were found being smuggled into Iraq from Kuwait in two large suitcases, the Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) reported on Wednesday.

KUNA Said that Iraqi Interior Minister, Jawad al-Bolani, ordered the two unidentified individuals to be brought to Baghdad under tight security for interrogation.

Lt. Gen. Abdulkareem Khalaf, a spokesman for Iraq's Interior Ministry, said the arrests were made at the Safwan border crossing.

The Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah is suspected of using this route to infiltrate into Iraq and carry out terrorist acts against US forces and to train insurgents.

Obama's Speech to the Muslim World

“Let me say this as clearly as I can: the United States is not – and will never be — at war with Islam”

These were the words uttered by US President Obama in remarks delivered today in Ankara, Turkey. The question is: Will the Arab and Muslim worlds reciprocate and stop preaching hatred to everything Western and everything American. Will the hand extended for a fresh start by a brand new US President whose father was a Muslim and who could have grown to be himself a Muslim, be met with an open and humble hand by the Muslim world?

President Obama's message did not differ radically from the messages of former President George W. Bush to the Muslim world. Bush said many times that Islam is a religion of peace and extended a hand of friendship, notwithstanding his condemnations and declarations of war against Islamic terrorism. In a 2003 interview with the Arab news network Al Arabiya, he said: “I believe that all the world, whether they be Muslim, Christian, or any other religion, prays to the same God. That's what I believe. I believe that Islam is a great religion that preaches peace.

Lebanon Iznogood is skeptical that the Muslim world will reciprocate, simply because the Muslim world refuses to co-exist with other religions, other beliefs, other creeds, without the supremacist ideology that is built into the religion of Islam. President Obama is saying all the right things, but we have to wait till the first difference on policy arises to test whether the Muslims and the Arabs can be trusted to make the leap that most of the world's cultures and religions have already made, which is to consider themselves equals with all other religions and cultures, and stop trying to prove to themselves and to the rest of the world that they - the Muslims - hold the ultimate truth about the world. That is at the core of the problem.

I, for one, will drop my skepticism the day when Christians, Jews, Buddhists or atheists can freely worship in Saudi Arabia or choose not to worship anything; the day that anyone can build a church in Riyadh, in the same manner that anyone today can build a mosque in Rome or in Washington DC.

Hanibaal
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The following is President Obama’s speech in its integrity:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mr. Speaker, Madam Deputy Speaker, distinguished members, I am honored to speak in this chamber, and I am committed to renewing the alliance between our nations and the friendship between our people.

This is my first trip overseas as President of the United States. I have been to the G-20 Summit in London, the NATO Summit in Strasbourg and Kehl, and the European Union Summit in Prague. Some people have asked me if I chose to continue my travels to Ankara and Istanbul to send a message. My answer is simple: Evet. Turkey is a critical ally. Turkey is an important part of Europe. And Turkey and the United States must stand together – and work together – to overcome the challenges of our time.

This morning I had the privilege of visiting the tomb of the great founder of your Republic. I was deeply impressed by this beautiful memorial to a man who did so much to shape the course of history. But it is also clear that the greatest monument to Ataturk’s life is not something that can be cast in stone and marble. His greatest legacy is Turkey’s strong and secular democracy, and that is the work that this assembly carries on today.

This future was not easily assured. At the end of World War I, Turkey could have succumbed to the foreign powers that were trying to claim its territory, or sought to restore an ancient empire. But Turkey chose a different future. You freed yourself from foreign control. And you founded a Republic that commands the respect of the United States and the wider world.

There is a simple truth to this story: Turkey’s democracy is your own achievement. It was not forced upon you by any outside power, nor did it come without struggle and sacrifice. Like any democracy, Turkey draws strength from both the successes of the past, and from the efforts of each generation of Turks that makes new progress for your people.

My country’s democracy has its own story. The general who led America in revolution and governed as our first President was George Washington. Like you, we built a grand monument to honor our founding father – a towering obelisk that stands in the heart of the capital city that bears Washington’s name.

It took decades to build. There were frequent delays. Over time, more and more people contributed to help make this monument the inspiring structure that still stands tall today. Among those who came to our aid were friends from all across the world, who offered their own tributes to Washington and the country he helped to found.

One of those tributes came from Istanbul. Ottoman Sultan Abdulmecid sent a marble plaque that helped to build the Washington Monument. Inscribed in the plaque was a poem that began with a few simple words, and I quote: “So as to strengthen the friendship between the two countries.” Over 150 years have passed since those words were carved into marble. Our nations have changed in many ways. But our friendship is strong, and our alliance endures.

It is a friendship that flourished in the years after World War II, when President Truman committed our nation to the defense of Turkey’s freedom and sovereignty, and Turkey committed itself to the NATO alliance. Turkish troops have served by our side from Korea to Kosovo to Kabul. Together, we withstood the great test of the Cold War. Trade between our nations has steadily advanced. So has cooperation in science and research.

The ties among our people have deepened as well, and more and more Americans of Turkish origin live and work and succeed within our borders. As a basketball fan, I’ve even noticed that Hedo Turkoglu and Mehmet Okur have got some pretty good game.

The United States and Turkey have not always agreed on every issue. That is to be expected – no two nations do. But we have stood together through many challenges over the last sixty years. And because of the strength of our alliance and the endurance of our friendship, both America and Turkey are stronger, and the world is more secure.

Now, our two democracies are confronted by an unprecedented set of challenges. An economic crisis that recognizes no borders. Extremism that leads to the killing of innocent men, women and children. Strains on our energy supply and a changing climate. The proliferation of the world’s deadliest weapons, and the persistence of tragic conflict.

These are the great tests of our young century. And the choices that we make in the coming years will determine whether the future will be shaped by fear or by freedom; by poverty or by prosperity; by strife or by a just, secure and lasting peace.

This much is certain: no one nation can confront these challenges alone, and all nations have a stake in overcoming them. That is why we must listen to one another, and seek common ground. That is why we must build on our mutual interests, and rise above our differences. We are stronger when we act together. That is the message that I have carried with me throughout this trip to Europe. That will be the approach of the United States of America going forward.

Already, America and Turkey are working with the G-20 on an unprecedented response to an unprecedented economic crisis. This past week, we came together to ensure that the world’s largest economies take strong and coordinated action to stimulate growth and restore the flow of credit; to reject the pressure of protectionism, and to extend a hand to developing countries and the people hit hardest by this downturn; and to dramatically reform our regulatory system so that the world never faces a crisis like this again.

As we go forward, the United States and Turkey can pursue many opportunities to serve prosperity for our people, particularly when it comes to energy. To expand markets and create jobs, we can increase trade and investment between our countries. To develop new sources of energy and combat climate change, we should build on our Clean Technology Fund to leverage efficiency and renewable energy investments in Turkey. And to power markets in Turkey and Europe, the United States will continue to support your central role as an East-West corridor for oil and natural gas.

This economic cooperation only reinforces the common security that Europe and the United States share with Turkey as a NATO ally, and the common values that we share as democracies. So in meeting the challenges of the 21st century, we must seek the strength of a Europe that is truly united, peaceful and free.

Let me be clear: the United States strongly supports Turkey’s bid to become a member of the European Union. We speak not as members of the EU, but as close friends of Turkey and Europe. Turkey has been a resolute ally and a responsible partner in transatlantic and European institutions. And Turkey is bound to Europe by more than bridges over the Bosphorous. Centuries of shared history, culture, and commerce bring you together. Europe gains by diversity of ethnicity, tradition and faith – it is not diminished by it. And Turkish membership would broaden and strengthen Europe’s foundation once more.

Turkey has its own responsibilities. You have made important progress toward membership. But I also know that Turkey has pursued difficult political reforms not simply because it’s good for Europe, but because it is right for Turkey.

In the last several years, you have abolished state-security courts and expanded the right to counsel. You have reformed the penal code, and strengthened laws that govern the freedom of the press and assembly. You lifted bans on teaching and broadcasting Kurdish, and the world noted with respect the important signal sent through a new state Kurdish television station.

These achievements have created new laws that must be implemented, and a momentum that should be sustained. For democracies cannot be static – they must move forward. Freedom of religion and expression lead to a strong and vibrant civil society that only strengthens the state, which is why steps like reopening the Halki Seminary will send such an important signal inside Turkey and beyond. An enduring commitment to the rule of law is the only way to achieve the security that comes from justice for all people. Robust minority rights let societies benefit from the full measure of contributions from all citizens.

I say this as the President of a country that not too long ago made it hard for someone who looks like me to vote. But it is precisely that capacity to change that enriches our countries. Every challenge that we face is more easily met if we tend to our own democratic foundation. This work is never over. That is why, in the United States, we recently ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed, and prohibited – without exception or equivocation – any use of torture.

Another issue that confronts all democracies as they move to the future is how we deal with the past. The United States is still working through some of our own darker periods. Facing the Washington monument that I spoke of is a memorial to Abraham Lincoln, the man who freed those who were enslaved even after Washington led our Revolution. And our country still struggles with the legacy of our past treatment of Native Americans.

Human endeavor is by its nature imperfect. History, unresolved, can be a heavy weight. Each country must work through its past. And reckoning with the past can help us seize a better future. I know there are strong views in this chamber about the terrible events of 1915. While there has been a good deal of commentary about my views, this is really about how the Turkish and Armenian people deal with the past. And the best way forward for the Turkish and Armenian people is a process that works through the past in a way that is honest, open and constructive.

We have already seen historic and courageous steps taken by Turkish and Armenian leaders. These contacts hold out the promise of a new day. An open border would return the Turkish and Armenian people to a peaceful and prosperous coexistence that would serve both of your nations. That is why the United States strongly supports the full normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia.

It speaks to Turkey’s leadership that you are poised to be the only country in the region to have normal and peaceful relations with all the South Caucusus nations. And to advance that peace, you can play a constructive role in helping to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which has continued for far too long.

Advancing peace also includes the dispute that persists in the eastern Mediterranean. Here, there is cause for hope. The two Cypriot leaders have an opportunity through their commitment to negotiations under the United Nations Good Offices Mission. The United States is willing to offer all the help sought by the parties as they work toward a just and lasting settlement that reunifies Cyprus into a bizonal and bicommunal federation.

These efforts speak to one part of the critical region that surrounds Turkey. And when we consider the challenges before us, on issue after issue, we share common goals.

In the Middle East, we share the goal of a lasting peace between Israel and its neighbors. Let me be clear: the United States strongly supports the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security. That is a goal shared by Palestinians, Israelis, and people of good will around the world. That is a goal that that the parties agreed to in the Roadmap and at Annapolis. And that is a goal that I will actively pursue as President.

We know that the road ahead will be difficult. Both Israelis and Palestinians must take the steps that are necessary to build confidence. Both must live up to the commitments they have made. Both must overcome longstanding passions and the politics of the moment to make progress toward a secure and lasting peace.

The United States and Turkey can help the Palestinians and Israelis make this journey. Like the United States, Turkey has been a friend and partner in Israel’s quest for security. And like the United States, you seek a future of opportunity and statehood for the Palestinians. Now, we must not give into pessimism and mistrust. We must pursue every opportunity for progress, as you have done by supporting negotiations between Syria and Israel. We must extend a hand to those Palestinians who are in need, while helping them strengthen institutions. And we must reject the use of terror, and recognize that Israel’s security concerns are legitimate.

The peace of the region will also be advanced if Iran forgoes any nuclear weapons ambitions. As I made clear yesterday in Prague, no one is served by the spread of nuclear weapons. This part of the world has known enough violence. It has known enough hatred. It does not need a race for ever-more powerful tools of destruction.

I have made it clear to the people and leaders of the Islamic Republic that the United States seeks engagement based upon mutual interests and mutual respect. We want Iran to play its rightful role in the community of nations, with the economic and political integration that brings prosperity and security. Now, Iran’s leaders must choose whether they will try to build a weapon or build a better future for their people.

Both Turkey and the United States support a secure and united Iraq that does not serve as a safe-haven for terrorists. I know there were differences about whether to go to war. There were differences within my own country as well. But now we must come together as we end this war responsibly, because the future of Iraq is inseparable from the future of the broader region. The United States will remove our combat brigades by the end of next August, while working with the Iraqi government as they take responsibility for security. And we will work with Iraq, Turkey, and all of Iraq’s neighbors, to forge a new dialogue that reconciles differences and advances our common security.

Make no mistake, though: Iraq, Turkey, and the United States face a common threat from terrorism. That includes the al Qaeda terrorists who have sought to drive Iraqis apart and to destroy their country. And that includes the PKK. There is no excuse for terror against any nation. As President, and as a NATO ally, I pledge that you will have our support against the terrorist activities of the PKK. These efforts will be strengthened by the continued work to build ties of cooperation between Turkey, the Iraqi government, and Iraq’s Kurdish leaders, and by your continued efforts to promote education and opportunity for Turkey’s Kurds.

Finally, we share the common goal of denying al Qaeda a safe-haven in Pakistan or Afghanistan. The world has come too far to let this region backslide, and to let al Qaeda terrorists plot further attacks. That is why we are committed to a more focused effort to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda. That is why we are increasing our efforts to train Afghans to sustain their own security, and to reconcile former adversaries. And that is why we are increasing our support for the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan, so that we stand on the side of their security, their opportunity, and the promise of a better life.

Turkey has been a true partner. Your troops were among the first in the International Security Assistance Force. You have sacrificed much in this endeavor. Now, we must achieve our goals together. I appreciate that you have offered to help us train and support Afghan Security Forces, and expand opportunity across the region. Together, we can rise to meet this challenge like we have so many before.
I know there have been difficulties these last few years. I know that the trust that binds us has been strained, and I know that strain is shared in many places where the Muslim faith is practiced. Let me say this as clearly as I can: the United States is not at war with Islam. In fact, our partnership with the Muslim world is critical in rolling back a fringe ideology that people of all faiths reject.

But I also want to be clear that America’s relationship with the Muslim work cannot and will not be based on opposition to al Qaeda. Far from it. We seek broad engagement based upon mutual interests and mutual respect. We will listen carefully, bridge misunderstanding, and seek common ground. We will be respectful, even when we do not agree. And we will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over so many centuries to shape the world for the better – including my own country. The United States has been enriched by Muslim Americans. Many other Americans have Muslims in their family, or have lived in a Muslim-majority country – I know, because I am one of them.

Above all, we will demonstrate through actions our commitment to a better future. We want to help more children get the education that they need to succeed. We want to promote health care in places where people are vulnerable. We want to expand the trade and investment that can bring prosperity for all people. In the months ahead, I will present specific programs to advance these goals. Our focus will be on what we can do, in partnership with people across the Muslim world, to advance our common hopes, and our common dreams. And when people look back on this time, let it be said of America that we extended the hand of friendship.

There is an old Turkish proverb: “You cannot put out fire with flames.”

America knows this. Turkey knows this. There are some who must be met with force. But force alone cannot solve our problems, and it is no alternative to extremism. The future must belong to those who create, not those who destroy. That is the future we must work for, and we must work for it together.

I know there are those who like to debate Turkey’s future. They see your country at the crossroads of continents, and touched by the currents of history. They know that this has been a place where civilizations meet, and different peoples mingle. And they wonder whether you will be pulled in one direction or another.

Here is what they don’t understand: Turkey’s greatness lies in your ability to be at the center of things. This is not where East and West divide – it is where they come together. In the beauty of your culture. In the richness of your history. In the strength of your democracy. In your hopes for tomorrow.

I am honored to stand here with you – to look forward to the future that we must reach for together – and to reaffirm America’s commitment to our strong and enduring friendship. Thank you.

The Arab Murderer of Sudan المجرم العربي في السودان

المجرم الكلب العربي في السودان في كل ألوانه الدكتاتورية: عمر الحسن بشير

Omar Bashir is the perfect prototype of the Arab Muslim dictator who kills hundreds of thousands of his own people, but is defended by his buddies, the other Arab dictators...

Saddam Hussein (a Sunni Muslim dog) killed millions of Shiites and Kurds, and not one Arab fucker complained. When the Americans evicted Saddam from power, all the Arab fuckers cried and wept, and blamed the Americans for the hundreds of thousands of Muslims who were killed by Saddam's Baathist terrorists and al-Qaeda's deranged Muslims and their bombs. Muslims are cowards: They can never admit that Muslims kill more Muslims than any other non-Muslim.

Similarly, Bashar Assad (A Alawi Muslim jackass) and before him his filthy father Hafez, the Syrian Arab dogs in Damascus, have been in power since 1970. They have killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians (for example, in 1981, 20,000 Sunnis were massacred overnight by the siege of the city of Hama by Hafez's forces) and many more Lebanese during the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. Syrians too are cowards: They want to liberate the Golan Heights from Lebanon: They do not have the courage to fight the Israeli occupation of the Golan from Syria because they fear retaliation. But they incite the idiot Lebanese (like Hezbollah) to fight and resist on their behalf. The result: in 30 years, Lebanon has been reduced to rubble, while Syria has yet to fire one bullet against Israel.

Back to Omar Bashir (another Sunni Muslim Arab dog), the Sudanese Arab monster. This man is responsible for the genocide of 300,000 Sudanese people - Africans, not Arabs - in the Darfur region. I am eager to see what the West will do when they realize, 10 years hence, that the arrest warrant amounts to nothing. Will they cower like they did with Saddam and let him run amok? Or will they, like Bush did, invade Sudan to liberate the Sudanese people? It may take decades, but in the meantime the 300,000 victims would have mushroomed to the millions, and there will be liberal westerners who would say: Who are we to tell the Sudanese what to do? We should just leave them alone, dictators and all, and let them figure it out on their own, even at the cost of millions of dead and displaced and refugees. That is the humane, liberal left-wing logic.

Even as Bashir continues to kill his own people, all the Arab dictators have bandied around him to defend him against this "indignity" against the "Arab nation" - Arab nation, my ass: A nation of religious fanatics, sexually repressed boy-fuckers, politically impotent and irrelevant, jealous of the rest of the modern world, and perfume-drinkers (in search for a trace of alcohol).... Even "modern", "advanced", and "democratic" Lebanon stands by Omar Bashir! Wow... I am in awe at my fucking country of birth where they still ration electricity 20 years after the end of the war in a country of 3 millions and the size of only one of the burroughs of New York City. A country that can't provide the basics to its people should not be allowed to be a country. It should be seized by the UN and the Lebanese trained in good behavior like dogs before they are given back their "independence, sovereignty and freedom".

No wonder then that all the Arab leaders - all dictators and criminals - now are defending Bashir against the arrest warrant issued against him by the international criminal court. I am not surprised: They will defend him because if he is arrested, then their turn will come next. They are exactly like him, so they are shitting in their pants, especially the Syrian tyrant Bashar Assad because the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (in the Hague) will soon indict him in the Hariri assassination. Soon, there will be an arrest warrant against the Syrian dog, and Omar Bashir will defend him, of course...

Hanibaal

Kataeb's New Generation

I came of age in the early 1970s when Pierre Gemayel (Senior) led the Kataeb and tried to talk Yasser Arafat's Palestinians and their traitor allies the fucking Sunni Muslims of Lebanon (Karame, Salam, Yafi, Solh, Hoss...) out of destabilizing Lebanon for the sake of the Palestinian Cause. No one listened to him. I remember his daily remonstrances and pleas to the Muslims of Lebanon not to betray their country....

But the fucking Sunnis wanted power and they wanted it cheap. They broke Lebanon's back and reneged on the National Pact by fighting their fellow Christians using the weapons of the PLO. Pierre Gemayel was a statesman: The proof is that he never became President and never wanted to be President.

Unfortunately, his two sons turned out to be either criminals (Bashir) or idiots (Amin). Bashir unified the Christian militias by slaughtering every other Christian militia leader around him, and turned the Christian militias into the Lebanese Forces which became an organized gang of criminals bent on establishing themselves as bloody rulers over the Christian enclaves of Lebanon and pushing the State institutions out (exactly what Hezbollah is doing today). Bashir was elected President, but the Syrians killed him before he took office.

In Lebanon we have political farms where leaders breed and produce future leaders. The main criterion for merit as political leader is one's genes, or the testicles and ovaries from which he was fertilized into existence. It does not matter if you are retarded, criminal, idiot, uneducated or a complete bum; as long as your father or mother once held political office, then you automatically are qualified for office. So Bashir's brother Amin inherited the presidency from his dead brother and became president. He was already known as a weak spineless corrupt jerk, and his presidency proved it. He had the international community backing him, and he squandered the opportunity to save Lebanon by turning the country into his own personal supermarket. The Lebanese used to call him "Monsieur 4%" because he levied a 4% kickback on any transaction he could control over Lebanese territory. His term ended with the debacle of the international community's intervention in the 1980s, the withdrawal of the Israeli forces with whom Amin failed to sign a peace agreement that could have shielded Lebanon forever from further wars and torment, and surrendered a handicapped, headless country to General Michel Aoun whose brash methods sealed the complete fall of Lebanon into Syria's hands in 1990. It would take Lebanon another 15 years to come out of the Syrian Gulag.

And now we have Sami Gemayel, Amin's son, wanting to take custody of the political mantle from his father in the Gemayel farm in Bickfaya. Like many other candidates for parliament in the upoming elections this June 7, Sami is a "Sperm Candidate" (see a previous posting on this blog: http://lebanoniznogood.blogspot.com/2009/03/pride-of-lebanon-its-sperm-candidates.html). He has no experience whatsoever, no merit, no leadership qualities that he has demonstrated in any context, no service to his country, other than the primitive faith that the uneducated Maronite villagers around Bickfaya have in him.

We are supposed to fall in love with Sami simply because he is a Gemayel. That is at the heart of the tragedy of the primitive country that is Lebanon because its people accept this tribal manner of choosing their leaders. I am not singling out the Gemayels or the MAronites. Everything I say about them is also true of all the other communities of Lebanon, since we have many other Maronite farms (Chamoun, Lahoud, Aoun...), Sunni farms (Hariri, and all the names I listed above), Shiite farms (Assaad, Hamadeh...) Greek Orthodox farms (Tueni, Murr...) and so on and so forth.

As I read Sami Gemayel's declaration of his candidacy, he obviously talks about sentimental crap, patriotism, attacks his enemies... all of it in nice appealing language. Yet, there is nothing of substance in his "program" that shows that in Lebanon people and their leaders understand that the relationship between the voter and the representative is one of "service", namely that the representative is elected to serve the voter by striving to provide security, water, electricity, health, protection of the environment, jobs, equal opportunities, access to political power, equity and justice, etc... No, none of these things is part of the political discourse or program of the majority of candidates, es[pecially those who stand to inherit power from their papa, i.e. the "SPERM CANDIDATES". In their view of the world, they think like royalty: They are entitled to lead the Kataeb (Gemayel) or the Liberal Party (Chamoun) or the Progressive Socialist Party (Jumblatt) or the tribe (since some of them don't even pretend to be organized into a party, like the Murrs, Lahouds, etc.

These candidates try to appeal to the voter by inciting them at the level of their tribal or religious instincts, i.e. by appealing to their fears. This is easier than having to think about serious programs of how to improve roads, reduce pollution, provide running water, make sure there's no electricity shortages anymore, ensure the State's administration functions without corruption, cronyism, patronage... And so, my dear readers, I present to you another Sperm Candidate, Mr. Sami Amin Gemayel, once a sperm in Amin's right testicle.

Yet, Sami makes some interesting statements - we'll see if he has thought of the consequences. For example, he says "... there could not be consensus and democracy simultaneously “or else what are the elections for?” I like that because I have been saying for years that Lebanon's "consensual democracy" is a fallacy, an oxymoron, one thing and its contradiction in one word... Many in Lebanon's political establishment who do not want anything to change - so as to protect their turf and ensure the genetic transmission of power to their children - defend this so-called "consensual" democracy. So I am hopeful that Sami realizes what he is talking about, for if Lebanon can be ruled by consensus amongst the established Mafia bosses backed by their own religious institutions, then the Lebanese people by definition have no say in what happens to the country. Which means, what is the point of elections if one's vote is going to be preempted by some shady agreement between a Gemayel and a Jumblatt or some other retarded numskull from the inbred political farms of Lebanon?

If Sami Gemayel knows what he is talking about, why doesn't he then step down from his candidacy, tell the Lebanese people that others who are less known than him, who are better educated, smarter, more experienced, and have other credentials than their genes should lead the country or even the Kataeb Party.

In other statements, Sami said: "The Syrian occupation was a de facto situation and was supported by all the countries around the world... We did not carry weapons, but we won and we struggled in the streets.” Yet the Kataeb, under the leadership of Bashir and Amin Gemayel, were among the first to carry weapons and to lose, and then later to support the Taef Agreement giving Syria its mandate over Lebanon. I don't remember the Kateb taking to the streets during the post-Taif Agreement years of the 1990s; it was only the pro-Michel Aoun students who did. The Kataeb were in fact part of the pro-Syrian government of Rafik Hariri, and Amin Gemayel was Hariri's top Maronite poodle, as he still is today...

"Though the Kataeb supported every party’s right to its own view, no party has the right to impose its view on other by the use of weapons.” Strange, but the Kataeb of Amin and the Lebanese Forces of Bashir spent most of the 1970s and 1980s imposing their gangster-style rule, by force of weapons, over their own Christian constituents in a manner straight out of fascist Italy and Germany.

Hanibaal

----------------------------------------------------
[From NowLebanon]:
Sami Gemayel announces candidacy in Northern Metn
April 3, 2009

Lebanese Kataeb Central Committee coordinator Sami Gemayel, and son of former President Amin Gemayel, announced on Friday his candidacy for the Maronite seat in Northern Metn.

During a press conference at Le Royal Hotel in Dbayyeh, Gemayel told the crowd that “these moments remind me of the moment we burnt the Syrian flag in Saint Joseph University back in 1999 and the return of former President Amin Gemayel from exile. It reminded me of the students’ struggle amid the Syrian security system, and reminded me of Martyr Pierre Gemayel [his brother]. All the experiences I had passed through had formed my principles that I will remain committed to for the sake of unity.”

Gemayel also said he would seek the establishment of the state, because “without a state there is no civil life. This is the challenge between the ‘jungle’ state we live in and the ‘dream and hope’ state.”

Gemayel asked, “What state in the world would accept illegitimate weapons?”

There was a Palestinian state in Lebanon that had its own sovereignty over Lebanese territories, and there were also Lebanese armed groups that appeared in the North around a year and a half ago and sought to establish their own state, Gemayel added.

Syrian occupation was a de facto situation and was supported by all the countries around the world, he said, adding, “We did not carry weapons, but we won and we struggled in the streets.”

Gemayel said there could not be consensus and democracy simultaneously “or else what are the elections for?”

Though Kataeb supported every party’s right to its own view, he said, “no party had the right to impose its view on other by the use of weapons.”

Gemayel criticized how the anniversary of some assassinated officials was a designated national holiday, while others did not receive the same recognition, “despite the blood they sacrificed in Lebanon.”

“It is our right to have September 14[the anniversary of the assassination of former President Bachir Gemayel in 1982] designated as an official holiday just like February 14,” he said.

“The state did not take care of some people back in the 1980s, and so they were forced to took to Israel. Is it their fault?” he asked.

“Where is the investigation of the murder of the [Lebanese Army] captain in the South,” he asked, in reference to the murder of Samer Hanna by Hezbollah gunmen in Soujoud.

Gemayel also called for Christian unity and commitment to principles in order to build a state, adding, “We believe in a Christian-Christian project on the basis of which Lebanon is built. Corruption is not fought from outside the state, naturalization [of the Palestinians] is not fought from outside the institutions and the constitution should be amended so that naturalization would need unanimity of parliament.”

He called on everybody to be “civilized” in the elections and to initiate a calm dialogue after elections.

The voters in Metn should not allow their MP to “surpass his privileges, because his duty was service to the state,” Gemayel said.

“Because I believe in all these principles and that true change begins from inside the institutions, I announce my candidacy… and I promise to be loyal to history under the leadership of former President Amin Gemayel.”