Foreign Tourists: Do not go to Lebanon this summer. War preparations between Hezbollah and Israel are underway, and if that was not enough, the Lebanese themselves will rob you blind. You might die in one of Lebanon's daily horrific car crashes, since the Lebanese drive like absolute demented maniacs.
Hanibaal
--------------------------------
Friendly taxi drivers and gunpoint robbery
BEIRUT, By Nada Akl | iloubnan.info - January 29, 2010
The streets of Beirut are considered to be relatively safe but these last few weeks have seen a rise in crime, namely gunpoint robbery.
Pickpockets and gunpoint robbery were never hazards tourist thought about as they walked the streets of Hamra or Gemmayze; Nothing comparable to places like New York or Paris where tourists and locals keep their purse secure and are careful never to flaunt too many bills. The most common kind of street crime here is theft of luxury cars. In our local version, the victim even gets to buy their car back from the thief according to a scenario orchestrated in the Bekaa valley. But if you didn’t own a Porsche Cayenne and moved around in service taxis late at night, you were ok… well not anymore.
These last few months, a worrying number of gunpoint robberies have been reported. The victim gets in a “service taxi”, a typical Mercedes with the red license plate and where there is already one passenger. The driver takes them to a quiet street then one of the two men pulls out a gun to strip the victim of their cash, watch, camera and anything of value…
Pedro, a Spanish student studying Arabic was robbed at gunpoint in November 2009. He took a service taxi that was waiting at the bus stop in front of Barbar in Hamra at 8:00 pm. “He didn’t try to discuss the service fare or take me as a taxi instead which is uncommon. There was a passenger in the front seat of the black Mercedes, and the driver kept asking me question: where I’m from, what I’m doing in Lebanon… he drove for a long time and I couldn’t recognize the streets so when I asked why he was taking this road, the driver said we had to drop off the other passenger first. At some point the car slowed down and the passenger turned around, pulled out a gun from his jacked and pointed it at my hip saying “massari massari” (money). I gave him the $60 I had on me but he asked me for Euros too, which I didn’t have. He ! then asked me for my watch, but I showed him I didn’t have one, and then for my phone but I pretended I didn’t have it on me. He kept insisting so I opened my bag and showed him I had nothing but papers. All that time, the taxi driver did not react.
These are not isolated incidents anymore; in November 2009 Head of the Internal Security Forces Major General Ashraf Rifi told The Daily Star that investigations have revealed that more than one gang of armed robbers stood behind the muggings. However, he adds that he does not think there’s a serious threat to security. Head of Internal Security Forces General Ashraf Rifi told iloubnan.info that they received 15 complaints in the last six month, the ISF did arrest some people but they’re! still investigating. Most of the victims are Lebanese but there are some foreigners among them. The license plates are painted in red to look like a taxi license. Pedro didn’t even go to the police since he figured it wouldn’t be worth the trouble. Many others like him also chose not to file a complaint.
Some embassy like the British, the US and the French embassy note a rise of delinquency and thievery lately and advise travelers to be careful. In an email, the American University of Beirut urged its students and employees “to exercise extreme caution when making use of service taxis”. It may well be the end of an age of innocence. With the tourism boom in 2009, it was probably bound to happen.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Friday, January 29, 2010
Aoun to visit Syria on Saint Maroun's Day
Then, my comment is:
FUCK AOUN and his FPM
FUCK SAINT MAROUN, the BATRAK, and the retarded MARONITE CHURCH
FUCK SYRIA and the BAATH PARTY
and of course
FUCK CHRISTIANITY and JESUS - FUCK ISLAM and MOHAMMAD - and FUCK JUDAISM and ABRAHAM.
They can all fuck each one another as much as they want.
But we, the ordinary Lebanese people, will one day prevail over the lies, the deaths, the massacres, the betrayals, the backstabbings, the shellings, the kidnappings, the prisons, the elitist institutions, the corruption, the barbaric religions and those who run them and lord it over us, the feudal lords from the Middle Ages....
We just need to wake up from our fears, our enslavement, our focus on the superficial and irrelevant, our false pretenses of being a nation when we are a bunch of primitive tribes....
Somewhere in the future, somewhere in this East, tormented and retarded by antiquated beliefs and religions, lies a break, a spark, a revolution perhaps to change this miserable condition of ours.
Hanibaal
FUCK AOUN and his FPM
FUCK SAINT MAROUN, the BATRAK, and the retarded MARONITE CHURCH
FUCK SYRIA and the BAATH PARTY
and of course
FUCK CHRISTIANITY and JESUS - FUCK ISLAM and MOHAMMAD - and FUCK JUDAISM and ABRAHAM.
They can all fuck each one another as much as they want.
But we, the ordinary Lebanese people, will one day prevail over the lies, the deaths, the massacres, the betrayals, the backstabbings, the shellings, the kidnappings, the prisons, the elitist institutions, the corruption, the barbaric religions and those who run them and lord it over us, the feudal lords from the Middle Ages....
We just need to wake up from our fears, our enslavement, our focus on the superficial and irrelevant, our false pretenses of being a nation when we are a bunch of primitive tribes....
Somewhere in the future, somewhere in this East, tormented and retarded by antiquated beliefs and religions, lies a break, a spark, a revolution perhaps to change this miserable condition of ours.
Hanibaal
Finally A Break in the Lebanese Gulag
Domestic Workers Fight Back at Abuse in Lebanon
Abused, humiliated and deprived of the most basic rights, foreign maids in Lebanon are starting to fight back against their employers in court and, in rare cases, they are winning.
Nanda, from Sri Lanka is one of the few to break the silence. The 22-year-old arrived in Beirut in 2009 to work as a housekeeper, hoping to help support her eight-year-old daughter and soldier husband back home with her meager monthly salary of 180 dollars (127 euros).
Instead she found herself trapped in an abusive household with no way out. Nanda's employer confiscated her passport and forced her to work seven days a week, although her contract stipulated eight-hour workdays and a recent decree adopted by the Lebanese government that calls for domestic workers to be given one day off a week. "I worked from 5:30 in the morning until midnight, non-stop and without pay," she recalled. "And what's worse is I was never allowed to call my family."
Nanda was particularly shocked when her employer's six- and 12-year old children took to beating her when she did not cater to their whims.
"I did not understand Arabic and now I know I was often being treated as a 'sharmouta'," the Arabic word for whore, Nanda said, fighting back tears.
"For my first two months in Lebanon, my boss gave me one slice of bread a day to eat because she said I was too fat, and sometimes leftovers. I was always hungry," she told AFP, sitting in a shelter at Caritas Lebanon, a charity group that offers refuge to victims of domestic abuse.
But today, Nanda has joined a growing number of foreign workers who are filing lawsuits against their employers in a bid to improve their lot.
"We hope that justice will find her," said Dima Haddad, a social worker at Caritas which is giving Nanda legal assistance. Haddad said she especially hopes Nanda will repeat the success of 29-year-old Filipina Jonaline Malibagu, whose employer was sentenced in December to 15 days in prison by a Lebanese court for abuse and ordered to pay 7,200 dollars (4,950 euros) in damages.
"Another worker who had not received her salary for years also managed to win compensation in court in 2009," Haddad said.
Many of the estimated 200,000 foreign domestic workers in Lebanon hail from the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Ethiopia.
The Philippines, Ethiopia and Madagascar now ban their citizens from traveling to Lebanon due to the country's poor labor rights record.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Tuesday that Middle Eastern governments were failing to improve their human rights records, including for the hundreds of thousands of migrant workers.
The HRW World Report 2010 highlighted the poor treatment of workers in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Jordan, where they face "exploitation and abuse by employers, including excessive work hours, non-payment of wages and restrictions on their liberty."
But there are signs, albeit small, that the Lebanese state and society are waking up to the problem.
In January 2005, Lebanon's immigration authorities agreed to grant Caritas the right to house abused workers and provide them with medical and legal counsel.
And last year the government issued a decree that requires employers to abide by a set of rules including paying workers their salary in full at the end of each month and giving them one day off a week.
But advocacy groups say few employers respect these conditions.
"These rules stipulate one day off a week, but many employers still refuse to allow their housekeepers to leave the house," Haddad said.
"The issue is definitely becoming more visible," said Nadim Houry, HRW senior researcher in Beirut. "But many workers still do not dare complain because of fear, or because they have no papers."
Houry said widespread abuse, and sometimes rape, has caused an alarming number of suicides.
HRW estimates that one domestic worker commits suicide in Lebanon every week on average.
"When you're cornered, suicide becomes a real option," said Nanda.(AFP)
Abused, humiliated and deprived of the most basic rights, foreign maids in Lebanon are starting to fight back against their employers in court and, in rare cases, they are winning.
Nanda, from Sri Lanka is one of the few to break the silence. The 22-year-old arrived in Beirut in 2009 to work as a housekeeper, hoping to help support her eight-year-old daughter and soldier husband back home with her meager monthly salary of 180 dollars (127 euros).
Instead she found herself trapped in an abusive household with no way out. Nanda's employer confiscated her passport and forced her to work seven days a week, although her contract stipulated eight-hour workdays and a recent decree adopted by the Lebanese government that calls for domestic workers to be given one day off a week. "I worked from 5:30 in the morning until midnight, non-stop and without pay," she recalled. "And what's worse is I was never allowed to call my family."
Nanda was particularly shocked when her employer's six- and 12-year old children took to beating her when she did not cater to their whims.
"I did not understand Arabic and now I know I was often being treated as a 'sharmouta'," the Arabic word for whore, Nanda said, fighting back tears.
"For my first two months in Lebanon, my boss gave me one slice of bread a day to eat because she said I was too fat, and sometimes leftovers. I was always hungry," she told AFP, sitting in a shelter at Caritas Lebanon, a charity group that offers refuge to victims of domestic abuse.
But today, Nanda has joined a growing number of foreign workers who are filing lawsuits against their employers in a bid to improve their lot.
"We hope that justice will find her," said Dima Haddad, a social worker at Caritas which is giving Nanda legal assistance. Haddad said she especially hopes Nanda will repeat the success of 29-year-old Filipina Jonaline Malibagu, whose employer was sentenced in December to 15 days in prison by a Lebanese court for abuse and ordered to pay 7,200 dollars (4,950 euros) in damages.
"Another worker who had not received her salary for years also managed to win compensation in court in 2009," Haddad said.
Many of the estimated 200,000 foreign domestic workers in Lebanon hail from the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Ethiopia.
The Philippines, Ethiopia and Madagascar now ban their citizens from traveling to Lebanon due to the country's poor labor rights record.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Tuesday that Middle Eastern governments were failing to improve their human rights records, including for the hundreds of thousands of migrant workers.
The HRW World Report 2010 highlighted the poor treatment of workers in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Jordan, where they face "exploitation and abuse by employers, including excessive work hours, non-payment of wages and restrictions on their liberty."
But there are signs, albeit small, that the Lebanese state and society are waking up to the problem.
In January 2005, Lebanon's immigration authorities agreed to grant Caritas the right to house abused workers and provide them with medical and legal counsel.
And last year the government issued a decree that requires employers to abide by a set of rules including paying workers their salary in full at the end of each month and giving them one day off a week.
But advocacy groups say few employers respect these conditions.
"These rules stipulate one day off a week, but many employers still refuse to allow their housekeepers to leave the house," Haddad said.
"The issue is definitely becoming more visible," said Nadim Houry, HRW senior researcher in Beirut. "But many workers still do not dare complain because of fear, or because they have no papers."
Houry said widespread abuse, and sometimes rape, has caused an alarming number of suicides.
HRW estimates that one domestic worker commits suicide in Lebanon every week on average.
"When you're cornered, suicide becomes a real option," said Nanda.(AFP)
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Plane Crash, Hezbollah and Angola's Diamond Trade
Suspicions have been amply reported about Hezbollah's involvement and financing from the diamond trade in Africa.... As a large number of the Ethiopian Airlines crash victims were Shiites going to Angola....one wonders....
Hanibaal
_______________________________________________________________________________
20 Lebanese Plane Crash Victims Worked in Angola
Twenty of the Lebanese nationals on board the Ethiopian Airlines plane which crashed into the sea early Monday lived and worked in Angola, state media in Luanda reported Tuesday.
The government-owned Jornal de Angola named one of the victims as Hasan Tajideen, who was the administrator of Angolan-based food import company Arosfram.
Four other Arosfram staffers also died in the crash, the company's general administrator Kito dos Santos told the newspaper.
Dos Santos was due to travel to Beirut on Tuesday to attend the victims' funerals, it said.
A large number of Lebanese nationals work in oil and diamond-rich Angola, mostly running food import businesses but with some involvement in the diamond industry.(AFP)
Hanibaal
_______________________________________________________________________________
20 Lebanese Plane Crash Victims Worked in Angola
Twenty of the Lebanese nationals on board the Ethiopian Airlines plane which crashed into the sea early Monday lived and worked in Angola, state media in Luanda reported Tuesday.
The government-owned Jornal de Angola named one of the victims as Hasan Tajideen, who was the administrator of Angolan-based food import company Arosfram.
Four other Arosfram staffers also died in the crash, the company's general administrator Kito dos Santos told the newspaper.
Dos Santos was due to travel to Beirut on Tuesday to attend the victims' funerals, it said.
A large number of Lebanese nationals work in oil and diamond-rich Angola, mostly running food import businesses but with some involvement in the diamond industry.(AFP)
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Saad Hariri's Bosses: Saudi Arabia not the Lebanese People
I always thought the British "The Guardian" newspaper, much like its alter ego "The Independent" was a brown-nosing ass-wipe paper that stood for anything counter-intuitive to people's common sense about the world, politics, and the issues of our time. But once in a while, those "journalists" (as Robert Fisk and his ilk like to refer to their degenerate ante-colonial nostalgic English selves) have a brief, but enlightening, break in their otherwise monotonous boring English drivel.
Here's own example. For the Lebanese readers of this blog, keep in mind that your current prime minister, Saad Hariri, is beholden to the Saudi Islamic fundamentalist empire. So much so that when fucking Saudi Arabia decided to make up with Syria, they ordered little Saad to crawl to Damascus on his knees, kiss the hand of his own father's killer, Bashar Al-Asad, in Damascus and ask for his forgiveness. Never mind the "Cedars Revolution", never mind Lebanon's dead, maimed and still imprisoned in Syrian prisons; never mind that Syria illegally occupies more Lebanese territory than Israel is said to occupy. That's how it goes in Lebanon: All the jerks of Lebanon's political pantheon - Aoun, Jumblatt, Gemayel... - are kissing ass to the Syrians these days like perfect collaborators who have sold their people and their country....And the idiotic Lebanese people who follow them like sheep to their own death and demise, and who keep voting back into power.... What a disgrace....
Hanibaal
---------------------------------------------------
With friends like these
The House of Saud may insist they're allies against fanaticism, but the reality is much more disturbing.
Jason Burke
The Guardian, Wednesday 31 October 2007
In the spring of 2003, local imams in northern Iraq were worried. Not just about the impending war, but about the inroads that ultra-conservative, intolerant and aggressive strands of Islam were making among their traditionally moderate congregations. The enemy in this particular struggle was not Saddam, they said, but Saudi Arabia.
Since the Kurdish regions had established a de facto autonomy in the wake of the first Gulf war, the imam at the main mosque in Sulaymaniyah explained, hundreds of mosques had been built by Saudi Arabian religious foundations, their ultra-conservative imams imported from the Arabian peninsula. He and his fellow clerics simply did not have the means to compete with the massive aid being distributed by Saudi-based charitable organisations - aid contingent on attendance at special Qur'anic lessons, on wives or sisters wearing a veil and leaving secular political parties. Most damaging of all, he said, was the flood of pamphlets and books that pushed a worldview in which Jews, Christians, Shias and the west were cast as Muslims' sworn enemies.
The rolling hills and grassy plains of Kurdistan are a long way from Whitehall, the Mall and the trappings of a state visit. Yet they ought not to be so far from the thoughts of the various dignitaries warmly shaking the hands of the Saudi royals than they no doubt are.
What I heard in Sulaymaniyah should surprise no one. For many decades, Saudi Arabia has used its prodigious profits from oil not just to buy off domestic dissent but to fund the export around the world of one of the most conservative, rigorous and intolerant strains of Islam.
The origins of Saudi Arabia lie in an alliance between a tribal chief, Muhammad Ibn Al-Saud, and a fiery revivalist theologian and preacher, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahab. The former needed fired-up, holy warriors to weld together a state. The latter needed shelter and a logistic base. When the new nation of Saudi Arabia solidified after two centuries of on-off conflict that deal was translated into a new arrangement by which the House of Saud kept secular power but al-Wahab's followers had a free religious hand. In foreign policy, the goal of disseminating Wahabism throughout the Islamic world has coincided perfectly with more secular aims such as countering the influence of Arab nationalism, revolutionary Shia, Iran and communism or, more recently, of extending influence into Africa, Asia and Europe.
In Britain, a struggle between religious doctrines has gripped immigrant communities, sharpened by propaganda bankrolled out of the Arabian peninsula. We have also suffered individuals educated in Saudi universities such as Sheikh Faisal, who was imprisoned for his anti-semitic and anti-western comments, and Omar Bakri Muhammad, the leader of the al-Muhajiroun group, whose members have been linked to militant activities ranging from jihadi fund-raising to suicide bombing. Bakri told me proudly, if somewhat bizarrely, that he was a "hardcore Wahabi" as we sat on Richard and Judy's green room sofa.
It would be wrong to go too far. The Saudis have made some reforms of school and university curriculum, have tightened up monitoring of funding and have attempted to co-opt radical local clerics. Others have been imprisoned. There is an innovative rehabilitation programme.
But the impression remains that the House of Saud has one strategic message for internal consumption, one for the west and one for the broader international Muslim community. And though the Saudis insist they are allies against intolerance, fanaticism and prejudice, for the moment it is understandable if the Kurdish clerics and millions of others who follow centuries-old moderate traditions of Islam remain unconvinced.
· Jason Burke is the author of Al-Qaeda: the True Story of Radical Islam
Here's own example. For the Lebanese readers of this blog, keep in mind that your current prime minister, Saad Hariri, is beholden to the Saudi Islamic fundamentalist empire. So much so that when fucking Saudi Arabia decided to make up with Syria, they ordered little Saad to crawl to Damascus on his knees, kiss the hand of his own father's killer, Bashar Al-Asad, in Damascus and ask for his forgiveness. Never mind the "Cedars Revolution", never mind Lebanon's dead, maimed and still imprisoned in Syrian prisons; never mind that Syria illegally occupies more Lebanese territory than Israel is said to occupy. That's how it goes in Lebanon: All the jerks of Lebanon's political pantheon - Aoun, Jumblatt, Gemayel... - are kissing ass to the Syrians these days like perfect collaborators who have sold their people and their country....And the idiotic Lebanese people who follow them like sheep to their own death and demise, and who keep voting back into power.... What a disgrace....
Hanibaal
---------------------------------------------------
With friends like these
The House of Saud may insist they're allies against fanaticism, but the reality is much more disturbing.
Jason Burke
The Guardian, Wednesday 31 October 2007
In the spring of 2003, local imams in northern Iraq were worried. Not just about the impending war, but about the inroads that ultra-conservative, intolerant and aggressive strands of Islam were making among their traditionally moderate congregations. The enemy in this particular struggle was not Saddam, they said, but Saudi Arabia.
Since the Kurdish regions had established a de facto autonomy in the wake of the first Gulf war, the imam at the main mosque in Sulaymaniyah explained, hundreds of mosques had been built by Saudi Arabian religious foundations, their ultra-conservative imams imported from the Arabian peninsula. He and his fellow clerics simply did not have the means to compete with the massive aid being distributed by Saudi-based charitable organisations - aid contingent on attendance at special Qur'anic lessons, on wives or sisters wearing a veil and leaving secular political parties. Most damaging of all, he said, was the flood of pamphlets and books that pushed a worldview in which Jews, Christians, Shias and the west were cast as Muslims' sworn enemies.
The rolling hills and grassy plains of Kurdistan are a long way from Whitehall, the Mall and the trappings of a state visit. Yet they ought not to be so far from the thoughts of the various dignitaries warmly shaking the hands of the Saudi royals than they no doubt are.
What I heard in Sulaymaniyah should surprise no one. For many decades, Saudi Arabia has used its prodigious profits from oil not just to buy off domestic dissent but to fund the export around the world of one of the most conservative, rigorous and intolerant strains of Islam.
The origins of Saudi Arabia lie in an alliance between a tribal chief, Muhammad Ibn Al-Saud, and a fiery revivalist theologian and preacher, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahab. The former needed fired-up, holy warriors to weld together a state. The latter needed shelter and a logistic base. When the new nation of Saudi Arabia solidified after two centuries of on-off conflict that deal was translated into a new arrangement by which the House of Saud kept secular power but al-Wahab's followers had a free religious hand. In foreign policy, the goal of disseminating Wahabism throughout the Islamic world has coincided perfectly with more secular aims such as countering the influence of Arab nationalism, revolutionary Shia, Iran and communism or, more recently, of extending influence into Africa, Asia and Europe.
In Britain, a struggle between religious doctrines has gripped immigrant communities, sharpened by propaganda bankrolled out of the Arabian peninsula. We have also suffered individuals educated in Saudi universities such as Sheikh Faisal, who was imprisoned for his anti-semitic and anti-western comments, and Omar Bakri Muhammad, the leader of the al-Muhajiroun group, whose members have been linked to militant activities ranging from jihadi fund-raising to suicide bombing. Bakri told me proudly, if somewhat bizarrely, that he was a "hardcore Wahabi" as we sat on Richard and Judy's green room sofa.
It would be wrong to go too far. The Saudis have made some reforms of school and university curriculum, have tightened up monitoring of funding and have attempted to co-opt radical local clerics. Others have been imprisoned. There is an innovative rehabilitation programme.
But the impression remains that the House of Saud has one strategic message for internal consumption, one for the west and one for the broader international Muslim community. And though the Saudis insist they are allies against intolerance, fanaticism and prejudice, for the moment it is understandable if the Kurdish clerics and millions of others who follow centuries-old moderate traditions of Islam remain unconvinced.
· Jason Burke is the author of Al-Qaeda: the True Story of Radical Islam
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Freedoms in Lebanon: Banning books
In the "World Book Capital", they ban books! Yes, Beirut was anointed by kiss-ass Westerners as the "World Book Capital a couple of years ago, and yet, they ban books in Lebanon, many books. Just ask the censor; he'll give you a long list of banned books and movies, especially books that implicate Syria and Hezbollah in murders and terrorism. You see the Lebanese have an inferiority complex to the Syrians and to Islam, and they crawl on their knees to kiss the hand of the Syrian dictator whose father and himself have literally destroyed Lebanon over 40 years of interference, occupation and brutality.
Did you know that that the censor in Lebanon glues or tears pages from school books and textbooks that show the word "Israel" on maps. This is how Arabs and other degenerate people think. This is how the Arabs lost Palestine: By living in denial and believing that to defeat your enemy, all you have to is pretend that he does not exist...
What kind of "free" Lebanon is this where a book suggesting who Hariri's killers might be is banned, and where the son of assassinated Rafik Hariri goes and asks "forgiveness" from his father's killers in Damascus because his Saudi patrons told him to do so.... Lies, fallacies, hypocrisy...Lebanon is a slave country, a fucked up country of antiquated religions and tribes, a country of barbarism and racism, a country of materialistic mercantile and superficial people; a country that should never have been allowed to become a country. Lebanon is a failed state where people are very religious and think like cavemen... Lebanon is as artificial as Israel is, made up of a hodge podge of ignorant, fanatic, racist, ultra-religious people who believe that God prefers them over other people because they are so special and so smart...
Hanibaal
_______________________________________________________________________________
Lebanese Authorities Ban French Book on Hariri Murder from Entering Lebanon
The Lebanese authorities banned a French book titled La Liste Hariri from entering into Lebanon, the French daily Le Figaro revealed on Wednesday.
The book, written by French author Gérard de Villiers, included information hinting to the involvement of a top Shiite Lebanese leader in murdering the late premier Rafik Hariri in 2005.
The Lebanese General Security considered the information mentioned in the book as an accusation to Hizbullah with murdering Hariri, according to Le Figaro.
Did you know that that the censor in Lebanon glues or tears pages from school books and textbooks that show the word "Israel" on maps. This is how Arabs and other degenerate people think. This is how the Arabs lost Palestine: By living in denial and believing that to defeat your enemy, all you have to is pretend that he does not exist...
What kind of "free" Lebanon is this where a book suggesting who Hariri's killers might be is banned, and where the son of assassinated Rafik Hariri goes and asks "forgiveness" from his father's killers in Damascus because his Saudi patrons told him to do so.... Lies, fallacies, hypocrisy...Lebanon is a slave country, a fucked up country of antiquated religions and tribes, a country of barbarism and racism, a country of materialistic mercantile and superficial people; a country that should never have been allowed to become a country. Lebanon is a failed state where people are very religious and think like cavemen... Lebanon is as artificial as Israel is, made up of a hodge podge of ignorant, fanatic, racist, ultra-religious people who believe that God prefers them over other people because they are so special and so smart...
Hanibaal
_______________________________________________________________________________
Lebanese Authorities Ban French Book on Hariri Murder from Entering Lebanon
The Lebanese authorities banned a French book titled La Liste Hariri from entering into Lebanon, the French daily Le Figaro revealed on Wednesday.
The book, written by French author Gérard de Villiers, included information hinting to the involvement of a top Shiite Lebanese leader in murdering the late premier Rafik Hariri in 2005.
The Lebanese General Security considered the information mentioned in the book as an accusation to Hizbullah with murdering Hariri, according to Le Figaro.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Haiti: Lebanon Iz...good
31 Tons of Lebanese Emergency Aid to Haiti on Tuesday
A Middle East Airlines plane takes off for Haiti at dawn Tuesday to carry 31 tons of humanitarian aid to the quake stricken Caribbean country, Consul Walid Haidar told LBC TV network on Sunday.
Five physicians will be aboard the plane, which will carry tents, milk and medicine, Haidar said from his office at the foreign ministry in Beirut.
The plane would also bring back to Port-au-Prince Lebanese expatriates living in Haiti who were still on holidays in Lebanon when the earthquake struck on Tuesday.
The 7.0-magnitude quake has killed tens of thousands of Haitians and was also the worst ever disaster to befall the U.N. with 40 staffers confirmed dead and nearly 330 others still unaccounted for.
LBC said 8,000 Lebanese live in Haiti. There were no reports of casualties among them.
MTV reported, in its turn, that the owner of Port-au-Prince's biggest hotel is Lebanese and that most Lebanese living in the country work in the production of cheese.
Beirut, 17 Jan 10, 20:46
A Middle East Airlines plane takes off for Haiti at dawn Tuesday to carry 31 tons of humanitarian aid to the quake stricken Caribbean country, Consul Walid Haidar told LBC TV network on Sunday.
Five physicians will be aboard the plane, which will carry tents, milk and medicine, Haidar said from his office at the foreign ministry in Beirut.
The plane would also bring back to Port-au-Prince Lebanese expatriates living in Haiti who were still on holidays in Lebanon when the earthquake struck on Tuesday.
The 7.0-magnitude quake has killed tens of thousands of Haitians and was also the worst ever disaster to befall the U.N. with 40 staffers confirmed dead and nearly 330 others still unaccounted for.
LBC said 8,000 Lebanese live in Haiti. There were no reports of casualties among them.
MTV reported, in its turn, that the owner of Port-au-Prince's biggest hotel is Lebanese and that most Lebanese living in the country work in the production of cheese.
Beirut, 17 Jan 10, 20:46
Israeli Hypocrisy on Lebanon Ongoing
For forty plus years, Israel knew that its many wars on Lebanon were actually wars against Syria manipulating groups in Lebanon - First the PLO in the 1970s and 1980s, then Hezbollah from the 1980s to the present time.
Yet, Israel chose never to fight Syria and eradicate the problem from its roots. It continued battering Lebanon and beating up on its people as a way to get back at Syria, which is essentially the same game that Syria was playing: To harass Israel via Lebanon and Lebanese groups.
Which is why since 1974, when Kissinger engineered the ceasefire agreement between the Syrians and the Israelis, not one bullet was fired across the demilitarized zone on the Golan Heights. Which is why, even when Israel decided to send a more direct message to "the terror regime" and "evil empire" Syria than through Lebanese blood (by bombing a bogus training camp and a bogus nuclear site), Syria never retaliated despite its Arab nationalist claims to "defend" or "stand fast" against the "Zionist aggression".
The bottom line is that Syria and Israel have had an agreement never to fight directly, but restrict their butcheries to the Lebanese arena. Not to exculpate the Lebanese in any way, since the divided Lebanon played their role very well as proxies, as the village idiots of this game, and as the country that ended up paying the ultimate price.
In fact, many have argued over the decades that Lebanon's agony was an engineered play to weaken the country so much with these endless and pointless battles (Hezbollah being the most recent Quixotic idiot to wage such battles) that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be largely solved at Lebanon's expense by settling the Palestinian refugees permanently in Lebanon, thus relieving Israel of its responsibility to them and eliminating one of the two last hurdles to a Palestinian-Israeli settlement: Jerusalem and the refugees Right of Return.
For Israel and the US to now threaten of bombing Syria if Hezbollah attacks Israel is too little too late, if this threat is to even be believed. We have heard it many times in the past, yet Israel never did attack Syria, even when it knew that all the so-called "threats" it faced in Lebanon were Syrian-made.
One wonders then why have Israel and the US been so keen on preserving the Alaouite dictatorial minority regime in Syria (oppressing the vast Sunni majority) all these decades, despite its lack of progress on making peace with Israel, on ceasing its support of terrorism, on its flagrant abuses of human rights, on occupying Lebanon, on wrecking the peace process time and time again....
Why? There must be a reason for the US and Israel to want to preserve the Syrian regime, and that reason is inescapably that the Syrian dictatorship is probably the best partner with which to make a deal in the end, a deal that would be basically unfair to the Palestinians by selling off the last fragments of Palestine at the price of dismantling Lebanon.
Syria and Israel are in collusion; they have always been in collusion; and I will never believe any Israeli threats against Syria. They are cheap lies that the Israelis have been making for decades. As Lebanese, we recognize the mistakes we made, but we will never forgive Syria or Israel for what they have done to Lebanon.
Hanibaal
------------------------------------------------
Arm Hezbollah, and Israel will strike Damascus: US official
January 17, 2010
In an interview with Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Rai published on Sunday, a US official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that “if Syria supplies Hezbollah with surface-to-air missiles (SA-2), war will break out and Tel Aviv will directly strike Damascus.”
In addition, the official said Syria trained Hezbollah members in Damascus on how to use the SA-2 missiles.
Israel has previously warned the country not to supply Hezbollah with the missiles, according to the US source.
“Any possible military attack by Hezbollah against Israel will be met by a ‘harmful war’ on Lebanon. Israel made a mistake in 2006 by not striking Syria during the war with Lebanon, and any new attack from Hezbollah against it will not spare Damascus from a strike,” he added.
Israel’s top priority, the official said, is preventing Syria from supplying Hezbollah with the SA-2 missiles.
During the 2006 war in Lebanon, Damascus told Tel Aviv it wanted peace and was not going to side with Hezbollah, the official said. Following the war, however, the United Nations and international intelligence community have been monitoring attempts to smuggle weapons from Syria to Hezbollah, he added.
The official also compared South Lebanon after the 2006 war to the situation in the Golan Heights in Syria, which he said has enjoyed a calm climate after a cease-fire agreement was signed between Israel and late Syrian President Hafez al-Assad in 1974.
He said Hezbollah’s desire to liberate the Shebaa farms, which is occupied by Israel, does not justify military attacks against the country.
“Launching war with Tel Aviv is not an excuse for Hezbollah.”
The official said he does not think a war will break out anytime soon, “unless Syria crosses the line.”
[From Lebanon Now]
Yet, Israel chose never to fight Syria and eradicate the problem from its roots. It continued battering Lebanon and beating up on its people as a way to get back at Syria, which is essentially the same game that Syria was playing: To harass Israel via Lebanon and Lebanese groups.
Which is why since 1974, when Kissinger engineered the ceasefire agreement between the Syrians and the Israelis, not one bullet was fired across the demilitarized zone on the Golan Heights. Which is why, even when Israel decided to send a more direct message to "the terror regime" and "evil empire" Syria than through Lebanese blood (by bombing a bogus training camp and a bogus nuclear site), Syria never retaliated despite its Arab nationalist claims to "defend" or "stand fast" against the "Zionist aggression".
The bottom line is that Syria and Israel have had an agreement never to fight directly, but restrict their butcheries to the Lebanese arena. Not to exculpate the Lebanese in any way, since the divided Lebanon played their role very well as proxies, as the village idiots of this game, and as the country that ended up paying the ultimate price.
In fact, many have argued over the decades that Lebanon's agony was an engineered play to weaken the country so much with these endless and pointless battles (Hezbollah being the most recent Quixotic idiot to wage such battles) that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be largely solved at Lebanon's expense by settling the Palestinian refugees permanently in Lebanon, thus relieving Israel of its responsibility to them and eliminating one of the two last hurdles to a Palestinian-Israeli settlement: Jerusalem and the refugees Right of Return.
For Israel and the US to now threaten of bombing Syria if Hezbollah attacks Israel is too little too late, if this threat is to even be believed. We have heard it many times in the past, yet Israel never did attack Syria, even when it knew that all the so-called "threats" it faced in Lebanon were Syrian-made.
One wonders then why have Israel and the US been so keen on preserving the Alaouite dictatorial minority regime in Syria (oppressing the vast Sunni majority) all these decades, despite its lack of progress on making peace with Israel, on ceasing its support of terrorism, on its flagrant abuses of human rights, on occupying Lebanon, on wrecking the peace process time and time again....
Why? There must be a reason for the US and Israel to want to preserve the Syrian regime, and that reason is inescapably that the Syrian dictatorship is probably the best partner with which to make a deal in the end, a deal that would be basically unfair to the Palestinians by selling off the last fragments of Palestine at the price of dismantling Lebanon.
Syria and Israel are in collusion; they have always been in collusion; and I will never believe any Israeli threats against Syria. They are cheap lies that the Israelis have been making for decades. As Lebanese, we recognize the mistakes we made, but we will never forgive Syria or Israel for what they have done to Lebanon.
Hanibaal
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Arm Hezbollah, and Israel will strike Damascus: US official
January 17, 2010
In an interview with Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Rai published on Sunday, a US official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that “if Syria supplies Hezbollah with surface-to-air missiles (SA-2), war will break out and Tel Aviv will directly strike Damascus.”
In addition, the official said Syria trained Hezbollah members in Damascus on how to use the SA-2 missiles.
Israel has previously warned the country not to supply Hezbollah with the missiles, according to the US source.
“Any possible military attack by Hezbollah against Israel will be met by a ‘harmful war’ on Lebanon. Israel made a mistake in 2006 by not striking Syria during the war with Lebanon, and any new attack from Hezbollah against it will not spare Damascus from a strike,” he added.
Israel’s top priority, the official said, is preventing Syria from supplying Hezbollah with the SA-2 missiles.
During the 2006 war in Lebanon, Damascus told Tel Aviv it wanted peace and was not going to side with Hezbollah, the official said. Following the war, however, the United Nations and international intelligence community have been monitoring attempts to smuggle weapons from Syria to Hezbollah, he added.
The official also compared South Lebanon after the 2006 war to the situation in the Golan Heights in Syria, which he said has enjoyed a calm climate after a cease-fire agreement was signed between Israel and late Syrian President Hafez al-Assad in 1974.
He said Hezbollah’s desire to liberate the Shebaa farms, which is occupied by Israel, does not justify military attacks against the country.
“Launching war with Tel Aviv is not an excuse for Hezbollah.”
The official said he does not think a war will break out anytime soon, “unless Syria crosses the line.”
[From Lebanon Now]
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Lebanese Beg Israel Not to Withdraw from their Village
One more proof as to what the Lebanese people REALLY think about the situation in South Lebanon: They prefer the Israeli occupation to the terrorist Hezbollah, the incompetent Lebanese Army, and the traitor pro-Syrian government of Fucker Suleiman and Asshole Hariri. The villagers of the Lebanese town of Ghajar are begging the Israelis not to withdraw and abandon them to their own Lebanese government...
Hanibaal
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Ghajar Residents to Israeli Army: Don't Withdraw
Ghajar residents have urged Israeli forces not to withdraw from the Lebanese part of the border village during a meeting with Foreign Ministry Director-General Yossi Gal.
The Jerusalem Post quoted a ministry official as saying that Tuesday's meeting should not be interpreted as an indication that a withdrawal from the northern part of the village was imminent.
Discussions between Israel and the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon have centered on how U.N. peacekeepers would be deployed in and around Ghajar to prevent Hizbullah from smuggling men or arms into Israel through the village, the Israeli daily said Wednesday.
The Israeli government has reportedly approved a plan to turn over control of the northern half of the village to UNIFIL. No physical barrier would be built between the northern and southern parts of the village, but rather U.N. peacekeepers would patrol both the northern half and the perimeter.
The Jerusalem Post said that Ghajar's residents delivered to Gal and other officials from the Israeli army and the foreign, defense and justice ministries maps which they said proved that the town was never split in half by the international border.
The residents reportedly said that an Israeli pullout from the Lebanese part of Ghajar would make life unbearable, adding they would have to go through security checks every time they need to work in their fields, go to the store or the supermarket.
"They also warned of violence from Hizbullah if Israel pulled back from the northern part of the village," The Post said.
Beirut, 13 Jan 10, 07:50
Hanibaal
____________________________________________________
Ghajar Residents to Israeli Army: Don't Withdraw
Ghajar residents have urged Israeli forces not to withdraw from the Lebanese part of the border village during a meeting with Foreign Ministry Director-General Yossi Gal.
The Jerusalem Post quoted a ministry official as saying that Tuesday's meeting should not be interpreted as an indication that a withdrawal from the northern part of the village was imminent.
Discussions between Israel and the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon have centered on how U.N. peacekeepers would be deployed in and around Ghajar to prevent Hizbullah from smuggling men or arms into Israel through the village, the Israeli daily said Wednesday.
The Israeli government has reportedly approved a plan to turn over control of the northern half of the village to UNIFIL. No physical barrier would be built between the northern and southern parts of the village, but rather U.N. peacekeepers would patrol both the northern half and the perimeter.
The Jerusalem Post said that Ghajar's residents delivered to Gal and other officials from the Israeli army and the foreign, defense and justice ministries maps which they said proved that the town was never split in half by the international border.
The residents reportedly said that an Israeli pullout from the Lebanese part of Ghajar would make life unbearable, adding they would have to go through security checks every time they need to work in their fields, go to the store or the supermarket.
"They also warned of violence from Hizbullah if Israel pulled back from the northern part of the village," The Post said.
Beirut, 13 Jan 10, 07:50
Monday, January 11, 2010
Hezbollah: No Resistance to Cocaine
Der Spiegel: Hizbullah Moving Cocaine Trade Profits Via Frankfurt Airport
German investigators are probing Hizbullah's alleged cocaine smuggling in Europe and the transfer of the profits to Lebanon via Frankfurt airport, a German magazine said.
A report in Der Spiegel magazine on Saturday said initial suspicion that Hizbullah was raising funds by smuggling cocaine was raised in May 2008 when around 8.7 million euros in cash were found in the luggage of four Lebanese men at Frankfurt airport.
A further 500,000 euros were found in the apartment of one of the suspects in the Rhineland Pfalz town of Speyer.
Two Lebanese men were arrested in October 2009 when customs officers and federal criminal police agents raided a house in Speyer, the magazine said.
According to Der Spiegel, suspicion is that family members have been regularly moving millions of euros raised in the European cocaine trade, via Frankfurt to Beirut.
Those receiving the money in Lebanon are said to be members of a family with contacts with the highest levels of the Hizbullah command, including leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
A close relative of the suspects has rejected all the allegations, the magazine said.
German investigators are probing Hizbullah's alleged cocaine smuggling in Europe and the transfer of the profits to Lebanon via Frankfurt airport, a German magazine said.
A report in Der Spiegel magazine on Saturday said initial suspicion that Hizbullah was raising funds by smuggling cocaine was raised in May 2008 when around 8.7 million euros in cash were found in the luggage of four Lebanese men at Frankfurt airport.
A further 500,000 euros were found in the apartment of one of the suspects in the Rhineland Pfalz town of Speyer.
Two Lebanese men were arrested in October 2009 when customs officers and federal criminal police agents raided a house in Speyer, the magazine said.
According to Der Spiegel, suspicion is that family members have been regularly moving millions of euros raised in the European cocaine trade, via Frankfurt to Beirut.
Those receiving the money in Lebanon are said to be members of a family with contacts with the highest levels of the Hizbullah command, including leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
A close relative of the suspects has rejected all the allegations, the magazine said.
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