Batrak Rai: Can Someone Please Tell this Idiot to Shut up?

Here we go again. The Maronite Patriarch Bechara Al-Rai - a jackass like never before seen, whose stupidity is only matched by the uselessness of his fucking church - is echoing the Syrian dictatorship's totalitarian slogans.

In a statement he made today to some visiting Syrian assholes from Tartous, he repeated a slogan long held by the Syrian Baath Party to the effect that LEBANON DOES NOT DESERVE TO BE A DISTINCT NATION from Syria and should be annexed to the Syrian entity. He said that the Lebanese and Syrian peoples are ONE PEOPLE, (but SEPARATED) INTO TWO COUNTRIES. In other words, a Lebanon that is independent from Syria is an anomaly that can only be repaired by a Syrian Anchluss of Lebanon.

Thank you, Batrak Rai, for another asinine comment that you will have to backtrack for years to repair.

Can someone around this idiot tell him to SHUT UP and stop making stupid comments?

Hanibaal

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Raï : Les Libanais et les Syriens, un seul peuple dans deux pays

olj.com | 27/12/2011 | 14h40

Le patriarche maronite, Mgr Béchara Raï, a refusé, mardi, que l'Orient se transforme en une "terre de fer et de feu", rejetant la violence d'où qu'elle vienne. Recevant à Bkerké une délégation des avocats de la ville syrienne de Tartous, le patriarche maronite a soutenu toutes réformes qui viennent de l'intérieur, celles qui viennent de l'extérieur étant, selon Mgr Raï, destructrices. Le chef de l'Eglise maronite a assuré, par ailleurs, que tout ce qui touche à un pays arabe touche toute la région ajoutant que les Libanais et les Syriens sont "un seul peuple dans deux pays".

This blog gets regular visits from "b'Abda"....

As a critic of the backward and ultra-religious Lebanese society, and of course the primitive, feudal, theocratic political system in Lebanon, I check every day to see where the thousands who visit my blog come from.

I get regular visits from Dearborn Heights in Michigan (US) where there is a high concentration of Lebanese Shiite lovers and operatives of the Lebanese terrorist organization. I get visits from Damascus, where I suppose the Mukhabaraat try to control what Syrians read about their "dear leader", the butcher Assad. But the one most interesting visit this blog receives regularly is from a place near Beirut called "  b'Abda  " (in Arabic = بعبدا ), whose spelling (instead of the more conventional "Baabda") indicates a fanatic attachment to the Arabic language and the "glorious Arab-Islamic Umma" (sic).

Now, for those who are not from here and who have no idea what b'Abda is, let me explain. b'Abda is a town on the outskirts of Beirut where the Presidential Palace, the Ministry of Defense, and General Security headquarters are concentrated. This is the place where, for the past three or four decades, what used to be the pride of a liberal democratic Lebanon has become a cesspool of Syrian Baath-trained ruthless intelligence criminals and other abusers of human rights. As in Syria, military intelligence and an assortment of security services (general, special, internal, external....) keep the Lebanese population in check: arbitrary arrests, mysterious disappearances and killings, corruption and bribes whenever a foreigner needs a residence permit or visa...and of course, keep every ant and sheep in Lebanon towing the line behind the Syrian dictator next door in the decomposing country of Syria.

For one, the Presidential Palace has become the place where traitor generals from the Lebanese army (who barely graduated from Military School), end up as "consensus" presidents because this super-divided, tribal and ultra-religious country can never elect a decent civilian. The political process is bankrupt and dysfunctional, divided as it is between 18 religious sects, each led by an unelected Patriarch or Mufti or Mullah working on behalf of a foreign country, that compete for money and power, have and run their own militias that go to war every generation or so committing massacre after massacre, and thus control the destiny of the nation with religious fear-mongering and primitive style cronyism.  Around these religious dinosaurs from the Stone Age of humanity is an assortment of political lackeys who go around pretending to defend their own "people" (i.e. the Christians of the north or the Christians of the central Kesrouan district, or the Sunnis of Beirut versus the Sunnis of Tripoli or Sidon, or the Shiites or the Druze..etc.)  in their own little mountain village cantons, while transferring this political power (that they obtain by colluding and working for the religious dinosaurs) across generations of sons and grandsons in typical Middle Age feudalism. Each religious sect is in fact divided within itself into tribal, regional, familial clans, which is proof of the primitive and backward nature of Lebanese society. Each of these feudal lords has his own "palace" (Lebanese leaders must live in "palaces" to prove that they are better than their own constituency who live in houses) perched somewhere in the Lebanese hills, and are worshiped by illiterate peasants and villagers who, whenever their feudal leader dies or is killed in one of unending political vendettas, pledge allegiance to the feudal bloodline and then, and only then, elect them blindly at so-called elections in this false democracy that Lebanon has become.

So Lebanon, in its 60 plus years of "independence" since 1943 has had 11 presidents, three of whom were former generals of the Lebanese Army who no one believed are capable of running the country, but end up as presidents because the political system fails to elect one after the country was broken apart by bloody massacres and civil war. A compromise is usually reached over the least qualified, the weakest, the most incompetent person with a semblance of strength (i.e. a former military idiot) to be the "consensus" president, who to boot, must also receive the blessing of the Syrian dictatorship in Damascus. Yes, Lebanon cannot choose its president or prime minister or speaker of parliament without the Syrian dictator approving these choices. Imagine this "sovereignty" enjoyed by the "country" of Lebanon!

You see, the Lebanese people do not directly elect their presidents in universal suffrage; they elect their feudal lords as members of parliament on the basis of religion, and then these religious-feudal lords - who have no clue about the national interest other than preserving their political power base and their grip on their peasants - elect the president in parliament. But because these "members of parliament" are elected on the basis of their religious affiliation, they have stronger allegiances and ties to outside political and religious decision makers (from whom they derive their own legitimacy) than to their country and countrymen. For example, such Faustian deals with outside powers are made as follows, depending on the religious affiliation:
- Maronites and Catholics: The Vatican and France, occasionally the US.
- Greek Orthodox: Russia, Greece, and other centers of Eastern Christianity generally opposed to the West.
- Sunnis: Saudi Arabia and Egypt (hence the US when the latter two countries are in cahoots with the US).
- Shiites: Iran, and therefore Syria because of the Syrian-Iranian alliance.
- Druze: Sometimes Syria, sometimes Israel, sometimes the US... basically the Druze will take their orders from whoever happens to be the stronger outside player.
- Armenians: Russia and Armenia.
- etc.
Depending on the existing international and regional political climate and balance of power, the Lebanese feudal lords take their orders from these outside powers and translate them into domestic policy, which means that the country of Lebanon essentially has no "native" will. There are no Lebanese decisions per se. All political and policy decisions are made outside the country and are executed by the mercenary political leaders.  The political peregrinations of the nation are all dictated by whatever the balance of power around the world and the region happens to be at any given time. This is why, throughout its existence, the country keeps ricocheting from one crisis, one war, one stalemate, one standoff, etc. to another. The country never seems to find a stable "native" indigenous basis on which to operate. As an example, the current stalemate inside Lebanon, now about 10 years old, is a power play between the US, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and others on a background of Iran's nuclear crisis and other regional issues. In other words, Lebanon may be a country (i.e. a patch of land with borders and a population), it may have the semblance of a State (with institutions and such), but it is not a nation of people bound by a defined and common sense of history and destiny. As a result, the country and the State are dysfunctional, do not serve their people, and never find with solutions to problems because the allegiances and the decision-making are both located outside the framework of the constituents of a nation.

Right now, the country's political tribulations have nothing to do with the will of the Lebanese people as a whole. They have to do with the split in the Islamic world between Muslim Sunnis (led by Saudi Arabia, supported by the US, and a horde of acolytes and mercenary countries linked into this bizarre coalition by economic and other political interests), and Shiites (led by Iran, backed by Russia and China and a horde of mercenary countries with their own little interests). None of these countries' interests have anything to do with the welfare of the Lebanese people, as would be in normal countries, on matters such as basic services, economic opportunity, education, etc. Lebanon, for example, has not had reliable running electricity for close to 40 years, since the current "crisis" began in 1975. There is no reliable running water. Roads are barely maintained. There are no sidewalks. Crime is rampant and not one crime (among thousands of crimes, some huge, others petty)  has ever been solved or a guilty party identified and prosecuted. The only instance where a crime has ever been investigated and solved is the assassination of the former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and the reason that this one crime was ever investigated is because Hariri was a billionaire who bought everyone and everything around him, and because the international community, through the UN Security Council, got involved. Imagine what it is to be an ordinary citizen in Lebanon where you know that there is no recourse to the State's institutions to seek redress against harm or injustice. What do the Lebanese do? Most give up and live lives of resignation and fatalism, resorting to God, saints, divine interventions, and chiromancy.... Others leave the country (by the millions), and others take matters in their own hands and get weapons, and/or join the ranks (for protection) as blind followers of the same feudal-religious lords that are the root cause of the problem to begin with.  

Nothing in Lebanon is done with the human in mind; the last factor that the country's governments and institutions consider when they pretend to enact policy is the Lebanese individual, the human component of the country. Public education never really existed to begin with, as the country's education is monopolized by the religious orders of the Muslim and Christian sides. The country has gone through numerous wars, killings, massacres, invasions, occupations.... The country's army serves as the police, hunting petty criminals only when this has no impact on the political-religious divide because it if it did, then the army would splinter into religious militias overnight. And so the country as a state relies on outsiders for defense purposes: the Syrian army was the country's army for several decades. The Palestinian PLO was the army of the Lebanese Sunnis during the 1970s and 1980s. Israel invaded several times, allying itself with various groups depending on the moment, from Christians to Druze and, yes, the Shiites. The Multinational Force of the 1980s. The large UN contingent in the south of the country - UNIFIL - that has been stationed there since 1978 because the Lebanese never agreed if they should send their pathetic army to the southern border because of a political division over what to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict next door.

Back to "   b'Abda   ". It is also the headquarters of the Defense Ministry where basement dungeons reek of persecution and torture. Military Intelligence, thanks to three decades of Syrian rule, has become a clone of the Syrian totalitarian security apparatus: They watch their own people for any dissent; they arrest arbitrarily for so called "threats to the nation" or "disrespect for the president" etc... Last year, three teenage bloggers were arrested because they criticized the Lebanese Syrian-puppet president Michel Suleiman, who is nothing more than a powerless emasculated "consensus" personage who sits in his "palace"  dispensing grandmotherly advice to his otherwise terrified people because he can't do anything else. Suleiman is married to the Syrian regime's Assad family, and will never do anything to upset the Syrian tyrant now killing his own people. He says he is with sovereignty, but supports the illegal Iranian terrorist organization of Hezbollah in its usurping of sovereignty by running its own parallel army, security zones, barracks, telecommunications network, and its launching wars against Israel independently of the State.

The General Security apparatus in Lebanon is also housed in b'Abda, and is essentially the Intelligence arm of Hezbollah which now runs the Lebanese government of castrated President Suleiman and Prime Minister Miqati. The latter is himself a politically powerless Sunni numskull who made it simply because he was "acceptable" to all the competing militias and parties, and is also a billionaire, as if money somehow is going to give him the balls he doesn't have. For some reason, the Lebanese Sunnis like to have billionaires represent them as prime ministers, even though history has shown that billionaires often fail as political leaders because they think they can buy people's allegiance sufficiently well to run the country. It hasn't worked for Rafik Hariri who, after a career as a puppet prime minister and top collaborator with Syria and Saudi Arabia, was killed by the same Syrians once he realized that his stupid bet (that he could run the country like a grocery store without paying the Syrian mafia) could not work.

And so, from this paradise on earth that Lebanon is - political dysnfunctionality, religious barbarity, chronic national discord, chaotic and unregulated urbanism, servile mercantilism of the worst kind, a ruined environment, periodic warfare and assassinations, one of the most corrupt countries on earth (check the UN's ranking), a country the size of a finch's asshole that produces more saints, holy men, sayyids and fornicating, child-molesting priests and nuns than any other on earth, a place that looks more like the bald and disfigured mountains of Afghanistan than those of Switzerland, a crucible of deep barbarity and backwardness happily married to a superficial and utterly commercial modernity that the country sells to credulous tourists.... - my blog is visited regularly by " b'Abda " because the Syrian Shiite Neanderthals and Cro-magnons of Lebanese Security fear blogs like this.

To those bastards at b'Abda: ايري فيكم . One day, the people of Lebanon will rise up like their brothers are doing across the Arab world, and they will come knocking at your doors....And they will bring an end to this charade of a country that you have turned Lebanon into.

Hanibaal

Defense Minister Ghosn and Michel Suleiman's Puppet Regime in Lebanon: Accomplices of the Syrian Dictatorship. Should be Included in Indictments of Crimes Against Humanity

The Lebanese puppet regime of Syrian stooge Michel Suleiman and his Hezbollah mercenaries Najib Miqati and Nabih Berri should be included in any future indictments of crimes against humanity, as they are accomplices in the brutal repression and mass murder by the Assad regime of the Syrian people.

As the NOW Lebanon report below points to, Lebanese Defense Minister Fayez Ghosn coordinated with the Syrian regime's latest bombings of its own Security Services buildings in downtown Damascus by paving the way for the accusation by Damascus of al-Qaeda involvement.

Two days prior to the bombings, the puppet Lebanese Minister, who operates under orders from the Hezbollah government in Beirut, leveled fabricated stories to the effect that "al-Qaeda terrorist cells had infiltrated Syria through the Lebanese Bekaa Valley border town of Aarsal." The fact is that this so-called "Defense Minister" should be in charge of security in the Bekaa Valley, and he failed. His accomplice in terrorism and crime, Hezbollah, does control the Bekaa Valley, and denies this control to the legitimate Lebanese Armed Forces. For decades since the 1970s, Syria has used the borders with Lebanon as a free for all, since successive Lebanese governments were always subservient and criminal accomplices with Syria , and allowed the Syrians to transport weapons and terrorists INTO LEBANON, destined to its proxy terror organizations from the PLO and the PFLP and on to the Amal and Hezbollah terror organizations.

A sudden shift in direction of smuggling across the border is a mere fabrication destined to help the Syrian dictatorship engineer the blasts in Damascus on the day of the arrival of the Arab League observers, by providing themselves with a "I told you so" deniability.

As such the Lebanese government and the Lebanese regime of Suleiman, Berri and Miqati stand as guilty and accomplices to the criminal enterprise in Syria. The heads of the Lebanese puppet regime should all be referred to the International Court of Justice and be included in any future indictments currently being prepared for the eventual trials of the Syrian regime criminals, Assad, Buthaina Shaaban, Farouq Al-Shara, and other Assad family members and members of the inner circles of the Damascus regime.

For one, sanctions should be applied to the Lebanese government and its leaders because they are aiding and abetting the mass murder, genocide, and crimes against humanity currently being committed against the Syrian people. For too long, the criminals of the Lebanese regime haven collaborated, colluded and served the Syrian dictatorship. Time has come for the international community to make them pay for all that they have done to their own people and to the Syrian people.

Thousands of Lebanese prisoners continue to languish in Syrian jails, having being kidnapped from Lebanon and transported illegally into Syria. Nothing was ever done by the Lebanese puppet governments to free their own people. In fact, many of the Lebanese leaders, from Nabih Berri to Michel Aoun, have all denied the existence of their own prisoners in Syria.

How long before the Lebanese people rise up against their own criminal dictators and the Hezbollah enterprise that has ruined the country on behalf of Syria and Iran?

Hanibaal

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Free Syrian Army Chief of Staff blames regime for twin blasts

Free Syrian Army Chief of Staff, Colonel Ahmad Hijazi told Al-Rai Kuwaiti newspaper on Saturday that the twin blasts that rocked Damascus on Friday were “the work of the Syrian regime [that were committed in order to blame] oppositionists [of involvement in] terrorism, score points in front of international public opinion and portray itself as the victim [before the eyes] of the Arab observers.”

He also accused the Syrian regime and the Lebanese government of “paving the way to the two blasts through announcing that Al-Qaeda members infiltrated Syria.”
Earlier this week, a report quoted Lebanon’s Defense Minister Fayez Ghosn as saying that Al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist cells infiltrated Syria through the Bekaa border town of Aarsal.
Ghosn’s statements were followed by twin suicide bombings against security service buildings in Damascus on Friday which left over 30 people dead. Syria blamed Al-Qaeda for involvement in the attacks.

The blasts came as an advance team was in Damascus to prepare the logistics for an Arab League observer mission to oversee a plan to end nine months of unrest, which has killed more than 5,000 people, according to the United Nations.
Damascus blames the unrest on "armed terrorist groups" and has unleashed military operations against border towns and protest hubs.
-NOW Lebanon

Where Was the World? Assad's Brutality: 35 years in Lebanon vs. 9 months in Syria.

Where was the world when the Assad Regime was genociding the Lebanese people during 35 years of occupation?

Where were the accusations against the Assad family of committing crimes against humanity when the same Syrian security and armed forces that are brutalizing the Syrian people today were brutalizing the Lebanese people from 1972 to the mid-2008?

Why were the Lebanese people put at the mercy of this criminal regime under the pretext of "peacekeeping" by an "Arab Deterrence Force"? And why was the Lebanese Resistance against the Syrian occupation and its proxy terror organizations (PLO, PFLP, and all the hoodlum Palestinians) deemed a "right-wing" conspiracy against the "poor Palestinian refugees"?

Why was the Damour massacre of January 1976 ignored by racist liberals like Robert Fisk and his ilk, while the Sabra-Shatila continues to this day to be a subject of much debate?

Why the double standards? Why is it that the destruction of Lebanon for more than 40 years at the hands of filthy Arabs (including today's "awakened" Gulf Arabs from Qatar, the Emirates and Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and all the neanderthals of pan-Arab nationalism) who colluded with Yasser Arafat and paid him and armed him to destroy Lebanon and bring it to its knees, is ignored and dusted under the rug?

Was it to secure Israel - who today is already mourning the impending fall of the brutal dictator in Damascus because he protected Israel's Golan annexation of his own Golan Heights - against the Right of Return by offering Lebanon as a substitute homeland for the Palestinians?

What conspiracy theory are we to believe as an explanation for the collusion of the international community at destroying the only decent country in the Middle East to the claws of Arab Nationalist Socialist dictators, Islamic theocracies, and the Jewish theocracy next door? The West and the international community at large knew what the Syrians and the Arabs and the Israelis were doing in Lebanon; yet they kept telling the Lebanese that all their occupiers and tormentors were "factors of stability".... until September 2011, when everyone woke up to the monster they had all created. It was only in March 2003 that then Secretary of State Colin Powell uttered the word "occupation" to describe what had heretofore been called a mere Syrian "presence"?

From 1972 onward, Syria committed massacre after massacre in remote Christian villages along its border with Lebanon. It fueled, financed and armed all the Palestinian factions into destabilizing Lebanon. It assassinated foreign and Lebanese dignitaries and diplomats, including Louis Delamare the French Ambassador, and Francis Meloy the US Ambassador. It bombed the Iraqi Embassy in Beirut in 1981 (because the Syrian Baath of the Assads did not like the Iraqi Baath of Saddam Hussein). Syria later bombed the US Embassy in Beirut TWICE, not once, and the French Embassy in 1983. It carried out the bombing of the US Marines compound and the French Paratroopers compound in 1983 as well, forces that had come to Beirut as peacekeepers to supervise the withdrawal of Yasser Arafat's PLO criminals. Syria was behind every kidnapping in Lebanon of the dozens of Western hostages throughout the 1980s, some of whom were murdered in captivity while others were later released in a trickle, appearing suddenly in Syria under portraits of the same Assad who ordered their kidnapping in the first place. Syria essentially evicted the West from Lebanon in order to secure its grip on its neighbor, ensure that the instability in it continued under the pretense of fighting Israel while along its own borders with Israel on the Golan Heights not one bullet was ever shot from 1974 to date.

Meanwhile, the lives of the Lebanese people were shattered. Not one Lebanese family did not see their house destroyed, their son killed or kidnapped to Syria to rot in Syria's notorious prisons, their village uprooted, their city bombed for months on end, their children emigrate, and the entire country becoming the longest held hostage country to a resolution of the otherwise insoluble Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even today, the Lebanese continue to live at the mercy of Syria's foremost ally in Lebanon, the terrorist organziation of Hezbollah which has hijacked the government and state institutions, and maintains Lebanon forcibly in a state of war, simply as a pressure card in the hands of Syria and Iran.

Whatever happens in Syria can never erase the harm and the hurt that the crime committed by the international community against the tiny defenseless country of Lebanon. In its heyday, Lebanon was the only island of tolerance and multiculturalism. Today it is a backwater cesspool of religious intolerance and a haven for terrorist organizations.

Had the world intervened to rescue Lebanon from the claws of the Assad regime in the 1970s, it could have averted the evolution of radicalism that ultimately led to September 11 and the worldwide terror we live in today. Had the world intervened forcefully in the 1970s and 1980s to prevent the takeover by Syria, Iran and Hezbollah of Lebanon, perhaps we would not be fearing Iran's development of nuclear weapons. Lest it be forgotten, the first suicide bombing ever that caused the most dead among Americans prior to September 2011 is the 1983 Beirut twin suicide bombings of the US Marines and French Paratroopers compounds. What did the French and US (Reagan) governments do? They fled like rabbits, hopping onto their ships and returning home with their tails between their legs. Who was behind their defeat? Syria.

It took the world 30 years to begin reacting to the horrendous record of the Syrian Regime in human rights and genocidal crimes in the region. Why? What is it about Syria that is so "strategic" for the West to have protected this monster for so long? After all, the Syrian army is more pathetic than Saddam Hussein's battle-tested army, and Syria no longer has the protection it once had of the Soviet Union. Yet, the criminal tyrant in Damascus continued to be received in Geneva every year by US presidents and state department secretaries, and his crimes against the Lebanese people continued to be ignored. Why?

The only explanation is unfortunately a conspiracy theory: The Syrian regime provided Israel with the stability it needed on the Golan, and it muzzled the Palestinians of Lebanon sufficiently, to allow Israel to continue swallowing up the West Bank and erode all the foundations of a future State of Palestine. Had Yasser Arafat succeeded in taking up the Lebanese government, he would have turned Lebanon into his Palestine, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would have ended.

With American idiots like Newt Gingrich subscribing to the fallacy of the Palestinians as an "invented" people, it would then have made sense for the world to accept Lebanon as a substitute Palestine. But, luckily, things did not work that way. Sooner or later, people act in their interest, no matter the cost. The Lebanese stood up to Arafat and Assad, and though losing all the battles, they have won the war of preserving Lebanon for the Lebanese, albeit at a horrendous price. And now, the Syrian people have stood up. I wish them luck for the next 30 years or so, because they are going to need it.

Hanibaal

Lebanon's Fake Freedoms Under a Military Dictatorship

Lebanon is a lie. Everything about the country is a lie.

It is not a democracy, it is a federal theocracy.

It is not beautiful, it is an ugly disfigured polluted third world garbage dump.

It is not free; books and films are censored, and General Security can do what it wants. It goes after artists and writers, but protects criminal politicians and never investigates any real crimes against ordinary citizens. The function of law enforcement in Lebanon is to to be a crony for the political and religious establishment.

People are not civilized and "modern" as they want you to believe: The Lebanese believe in gods, saints, mullahs, prophets.... they are as backward as people in Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia are, with the difference that they don't wear traditional clothes. So they look modern, when in fact they are essentially primitive neanderthals. Beneath the veneer, there is nothing but rotten substance.

People in Lebanon are racist to the core: They import maids from poorer countries and treat them like slaves.

There is no respect for the the environment: Ugly buildings everywhere built on where tress and forests used to be.  Entire mountains are dug out to build a road leading from the seacoast to the palace of a retired former Lebanese president who was a puppet for the Syrian occupation. Beaches are taken by private developers who built ugly building right on the water for the exclusive use of the rich and filthy and wealthy.

Lebanese lead a hypocritical life: They are ashamed of themselves and spend their time pretending they are not who they are. They spend their time and money being crappy imitations of what they think is best about the west, yet they never import what is good about the west (true freedom, true democracy, a belief in human dignity, etc). In many ways, the Lebanese are like Western-dressed Saudis or Afghans. I have yet to see one Lebanese walking around in traditional dress. The Lebanese are not authentic: Everything you see in them is a fake imitation of someone else. They way they wine and dine or party; they way they lead their everyday lives, they way they dress. Nothing that a Lebanese does is done out of genuine interest or belief; it is always done to prove something to others. Look at me, I drive a Mercedes (ergo, I am rich, while the truth is that I am deep in debt). I have a maid (ergo, I am successful and upper class, not like the other scum Lebanese around me, when the fact is that my maid is a more decent civilized human being then me). Look at me, I go to the best restaurants (ergo, I am sophisticated and civilized, unlike the rest of the peasants around me, when in fact I am as barbaric and unsophisticated as can be). etc...

One instance of the lies propagated by the Lebanese about their so-called freedoms is that their General Security is constantly banning books and films, and interdicting political activists who stray away from the dictates of religion and traditional politics... Below is a movie by a Lebanese movie-maker: It has just been banned by General Fucking Security. The current democratically-elected president of Tunisia used to be an activist for freedom and democracy: The Lebanese General Security prohibited him from entering Lebanon a couple of years ago when he was a freedom activist. He had been invited to Lebanon to speak on freedom and democracy.

The Lebanese never invent anything worthwhile. They do not make their own clothes or their own food. They live off begging rich Arabs, Americans and Europeans to constantly bail their failing economy, and never say thank you. To the contrary, they turn around and make racist remarks about they, the Lebanese, are superior to the Arabs, or smarter than the Europeans and the Americans, etc...

We are a disgusting people. We have no core. We are a prostitute nation that raises the banner of whomever we are in bed with, but never find anything of substance inside us to raise our own domestic native indigenous banner. We have nothing to contribute to the world. The only time that a Lebanese makes any contribution to humankind is WHEN HE/SHE LEAVES LEBANON AND ENCOUNTERS GENUINE PEOPLES AND SOCIETIES.... Lebanese who live in Lebanon are crushed by the religious-political oppression that surrounds them and live like cattle in a barn. They are herded from one dictatorship to another, and never rise up against their predicament. Imagine: Here is a people who have been living in a state of war for 40 years, they have been killed and maimed, their children have emigrated to the far flung corners of the world, they have been abused like no other people ever have... yet, they have never attempted to do anything about it. After abuse like this, even animals have a reaction. But not the Lebanese: I guess kebbe and tabboule have a narcotic effect on their stupid brains....

Hanibaal
__________________________________
FORM: LEBANON NOW:
http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=342304&MID=14&PID=2
Sunday, December 18, 2011 | 16:06 Beirut

 

Talking To 

Banning Beirut, again

Talking to Danielle Arbid

Hanin Ghaddar, December 13, 2011

To read more:
http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=342304&MID=14&PID=2#ixzz1gtdrBlKq
Only 25% of a given NOW Lebanon article can be republished. For information on republishing rights from NOW Lebanon: http://www.nowlebanon.com/Sub.aspx?ID=125478

Lebanese director Danielle Arbid’s latest film, Beirut Hotel, has been banned in Lebanon. The film’s release originally scheduled for January 19 was canceled after General Security’s censorship committee argued that “the film’s depiction of the political situation would endanger Lebanon’s security.” It insisted that all the sequences mentioning the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Premier Rafic Hariri should be removed. Arbid vehemently refused to cut out any scene and decided to take things a step further by taking legal action against General Security.
The plot revolves around Zoha, a young Lebanese singer who’s trying to break free from her ex-husband. She meets Mathieu, a French lawyer on business in Lebanon and has a wild love affair with him. However, Mathieu is suspected of being a spy.
Originally produced for French-German TV channel Arte, Beirut Hotel, which is rich in political references, sex scenes and violence, is scheduled to air prime time on January 20 with an expected audience of some 1.5 million viewers.
It was also selected for the 2011 Locarno Film Festival official competition and was recently shown in Glasgow and Edinburgh as part of the 2011 French Film Festival UK.
Is it the politics in the movie or the erotic nature of it that caused it to be banned?
Danielle Arbid: General Security asked us to remove the scenes which talk about the political situation [in Lebanon]. I am against removing any scene from any movie; if we remove them, one will no longer understand the story because the [events] are interrelated. General Security knows very well that the scenes cannot be cut, and they also know that I will not agree to it.

Is this the first time you’ve had to deal with General Security censoring your material?
Arbid: No, it is not the first time. I have mentioned this on my Facebook page and in press releases that it has happened many times before.
The movie is currently showing at the Dubai Film Festival. What are some of the reactions you’re getting from the Lebanese audience there?
Arbid: This is the first time my movie is shown at the Dubai Film Festival. Last week, I was in Edinburgh and Glasgow showing Beirut Hotel. There were two types of reactions: some really liked the movie, while others thought it was bad for Lebanon’s reputation. My movies are like that; they portray strong emotions, violence and sex… It is very simple, people either like my movies or they don’t.

I’m not commercial, and I refuse to advertise my movies. My goal is to involve my viewers. I don’t want them to forget my work in an hour, I want it to stay with them.
We know that the movie will air on [the French-German TV channel] Arte. When should we be expecting it?
Arbid: It will run starting January 20, prime time. During the competition in Le Carnot, the movie was shown two more times due to popular demand. We will most probably run in the Lebanese press the exact day and time of when the movie will be showing on Arte.
What will you do regarding the ban of your movie in Lebanese theatres?

Arbid: We will take legal action against General Security. We have a lawyer in Lebanon working on the case. This is a matter of freedom of expression. The movie has no blasphemy in it, there is no cursing of religions, no cursing of any person alive, and the movie does not serve the interest of anyone.
When I was shooting in Solidere [in downtown Beirut], we were paying $500 a day to film there, so the movie was not made to serve a certain party’s interest. We are neutral. That is why there is no justification for the ban.
You Facebook page posts ask users to spead the news of the film’s banning. What is the purpose of taking such a step?
Arbid: So that General Security stops treating us like dogs. We’re trying to show how artists are being demeaned by General Security personnel, who I regret to say, barely have [an art] education. They perceive art as a non-cash generator, so to them, it has no value.
The movie is fiction, and so the [dynamics of the] politics in the story are fictional too. But politics was the only thing General Security could see in it, they couldn’t see beyond it. It remains unacceptable for an artist, a writer or a composer to use politics as material under the pretext of causing incitement.
Meanwhile, the Lebanese are expected to sit there and listen to politicians rambling for hours and accept it. General Security objected to me mentioning PM Hariri’s murder in the movie, and they questioned my intentions when I was simply using it as material.
Many Lebanese who are following the issue are requesting that the movie be shown online, in the same manner as seeing it in theatre. Would you consider this option?
Arbid: It is not my right to do so. The producers have to decide whether or not they want to stream it online. There can be a mechanism we can adopt to show the movie, but this is not the issue at hand.
If I do that, I will be solving my problem with General Security and getting around the ban, but this does not address censorship in Lebanon. This is why we decided to take legal action against General Security and take it to the courts. If General Security has a right to censor the movie then let it be. But if they don’t, then they should pay the price.
Why do you believe foreign films that tackle similar issues of sex, violence and politics pass by General Security without censorship while Lebanese films do not?
Arbid: Because I believe it is more about the person making the movie here, whether or not the filmmaker has connections. It is only in Lebanon that films are censored and scenes are removed... In the rest of the world, movies are just rated. The irony of it all is that Beirut Hotel is showing on TV at 8:30 p.m., which means children are permitted to see it in France, which means the West did not even rate it or see a need to.
Do you see it necessary that there be some cultural activism to tackle these issues of censorship?
Arbid: For sure. I think Lebanese need to know where we’re living, whether or not we are living in a civilized society. If we are, then we should have the freedom to express ourselves... But if we’re not and if I am obliged to be censored, then censorship should apply to across the board, especially to politicians who go on television and start the real incitement.
I am the first director who is willing to take legal action with regard to film censorship. I have been facing censorship issues with most of my movies: In the Battlefield, A Lost Man and now, Beirut Hotel.
Honestly, I have had enough and that is why I decided to take this step.
After your experience with the General Security, would you consider doing another movie about Beirut?

Arbid: I don’t think they will allow me to do another movie in Lebanon or about Lebanon, because I am defying the system. My next movie will not be about Lebanon. But I am going through with [the legal action] because I need to know where I, as an artist, stand in this system.
I have put three years of my life into Beirut Hotel, 50 persons worked in this movie and 30 of which were Lebanese and were able to put food on the table out of what they were earning. When the system disregards these efforts and its effects, then this only points to its contempt of art.
There is little awareness about art, how it is formed and what it generates, which is why it remains very easy for censorship to take place [and be accepted].
Hanin Ghaddar is the managing editor of NOW Lebanon
http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=342304&MID=14&PID=2 

FRANCE and UNIFIL: Get the hell out of South Lebanon. LEBANON: Grow up and become a decent country!

France has informed Lebanese officials that it will downsize its troops in the UNIFIL force in the Lebanese south.

It's about time the farce and the charade that has been perpetuated in south Lebanon since 1978.

It is time for the asshole Lebanese to have a real country and a real army and a functioning state, instead of the pathetic banana republic that they have decided to have.

The asshole Lebanese want to fight Israel and liberate Palestine and play the Arab Antar, the Don Quixote, the Tartarin de Tarascon, the Jack the Slayer of Dragons... all with shit in their pants, no electricity or water in their homes, corruption up to their eyeballs, and then go cry baby at the UN for help against Israel when the latter retaliates.

The international community is responsible for the state of affairs in the South. By intervening WITHOUT EVER BRINGING A SOLUTION, they have perpetuated a situation of instability and conflict that has devastated and ruined the country for 40 years. UNIFIL is a mockery. Its soldiers are like babysitters brought in to change the diapers of the Lebanese every time they poop on themselves.

It is enough. France, Ireland, Ghana, Spain, Nepal,... and all the countries contributing to UNIFIL: Cut the umbilical cord of the pathetic Lebanese and go home. Leave the asshole Lebanese handle their own shit. And if the end of this tragedy is for the Lebanese Army to finally do its job, then let it be. Let the Lebanese army battle Hezbollah to the death, and whoever wins would have won, and we would all know which fuck of a life we are going to have. Please leave us alone so we face our demons by ourselves.

From the 1970s to the 1990s, the Lebanese Army was forbidden from doing its job by Lebanon's SUNNI sons-of-bitches (including Rafik Hariri himself) who were protecting Yasser Arafat and his fucking PLO.

Then from the 1980s onward, when Hezbollah and Hassan Khara Nasrallah and Nabih Ras Ayri Berri took over from the PLO, the Lebanese Army was forbidden by the SHIITE jackasses from again doing its job.

All the while, from the 1970s till today, the motherfucker Muslims of Lebanon prefer everyone else - UNIFIL, Hezbollah, Palestinians, Syrians, and even the Israelis when they invaded in 1982... - to their own fucking army. Why? Because they want to spite their fellow Christian Lebanese. And the UN and the international community ant the Arab League... They have all contributed to this state of affairs by buying the Lebanese with money, with protection, with bribes...

Now is the time to end all this charade. UNIFIL: Leave the south because Hezbollah and Syria (in their dying days) are going to attack you and cause more harm.

Leave Lebanon altogether, and let the Lebanese assume their own responsibilities and stop being the cry babies. Let the Lebanese grow up and own up to their duties, which are to send the Lebanese army to the south, disarm the fuckers of Hezbollah no matter what the cost, because after 40 years of instability, millions of people have been killed, maimed, displaced and an entire country ruined.

This is the final act in this tragedy. If the Lebanese cannot handle their own shit, then there is no point in pretending to have a country worthy of this name. This is Lebanon's final test as to whether is can be a country, govern itself functionally, and move into the modern world, rather than remain the pathetic dysfunctional banana republic that lives off by begging others for money, for protection, and for everything else.

Until the Lebanese can stand on their own feet, I will remain ashamed to be a Lebanese. And the international community should cut off the umbilical cord and let Lebanon prove that it is a country.

Hanibaal

____________________________________________________

Report: Paris Informs Lebanese Officials about Troops Downsize

by Naharnet Newsdesk

6 hours ago

France has decided to decrease the number of its troops serving with UNIFIL despite pledges by French Prime Minister Francois Fillon that last week’s attack on his country’s peacekeepers would not dampen Paris’ commitment to the mission, An Nahar daily reported Tuesday.
The newspaper said consultations are underway between French army generals to set the number of the downsize before informing the U.N. peacekeeping leadership that is reviewing UNIFIL’s strategic mission about their decision.
Five French members of UNIFIL were wounded on Friday when a bomb targeted their patrol on the outskirts of the southern coastal city of Tyre. Two passers-by were also injured.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, the third this year on UNIFIL soldiers.
In July, six French troops were wounded, one of them seriously, in Sidon, in an attack similar to Friday's. In May, six Italian peacekeepers were wounded in the same city, also in a roadside bombing.
Three Spanish and three Colombian peacekeepers were killed in June 2007 when a booby-trapped car exploded as their patrol vehicle drove by.
Lebanese leaders were officially informed about the French decision on Monday, An Nahar said.
But Fillon, who spoke at a military base in the northeastern French town of Saint Dizier, paid homage to the injured soldiers and said the attack “will not shake our determination.”
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said on Sunday that Syria and Hizbullah were probably behind the bombing. But Damascus and the Shiite party denied the accusations.

UNIFIL: The Beginning of the End

France Rejects Leading UNIFIL Mission Fearing ‘Situation Might Deteriorate’ 
--->  With the Syrian regime now in its death throes and Hezbollah about to be dismantled, the French know this is the beginning of the end. Good news for Lebanon. The fucking UN force that has been in the south since 1978 because the Lebanese governments under all the fucking Sunni prime ministers since Karami, Yafi, Salam etc... wanted to give the PLO and Hezbollah a free rein in south Lebanon and so would not allow their own Lebanese Army there. Instead, they allowed the PLO and Hezbollah - prompted by Syrian regime - to stage attacks against Israel, which then retaliated, and the Lebanese went begging the UN for help, and UNIFIL was created.


It took the motherfucker Sunnis 40 years to become nationalist Lebanese, and this was only after their fat pig Syrian collaborator  - Rafik Hariri - was killed by his Syrian masters. What a waste of a country that the Lebanese Sunnis caused to Lebanon. And the international community waited 40 years before it broke its collusion with Syria against Lebanon. For 40 years, they told the Lebanese Christians that Syria was "a factor of stability" in Lebanon, while the Syrians were doing to the Lebanese population what they are doing to their own people today. The billions of dollars spent on UNIFIL + All the dead soldiers of UNIFIL + a destroyed Lebanon were all a huge price to pay.... Hopefully, the international community will have learned its lessons in Lebanon.

UNIFIL should be disbanded, and the Lebanese Army should be deployed in full force in the south, and if Hezbollah doesn;t like it, then let the Lebanese Army and Hezbollah fight it out and let us get over 40 years of bullshit. 

Assad ‘Personally’ Intervened to Fund the UN Special Tribunal for Hariri (STH)
---> The coward Syrians and their poodles like Hezbollah, Nabih Berri, Michel Aoun and others... have finally kissed the hand of their enemy. This is proof that no one can stand up to the international community. Like dogs, they have cowered in the corner and accepted to fund the "Israeli-US" conspiracy, because if they don't, the beggar fucked up country of Lebanon they have created will be starved to death by the West and by the Gulf Arabs, and a dead Lebanon cannot "Liberate" and "Resist" on behalf of Syria and Iran, and the khara Michel Aoun, the ibn esh-sharmouta Hassan Nasrallah, w ibn al-Kalb Nabih Berri will be out of work and out of money.

This is the beginning of the end for Lebanon's suffering. It took the real resistance of the Christian Lebanese in the 1970s and 1980s to get rid of the PLO, then it took the Hariri Sunni conversion from Syrian collaborators to nationalist Lebanese to bring the end of the Hezbollah terror organization.

UNIFIL: Please pack up and go home. Thank you for perpetuating a problem for 40 years when it could have been solved in 1 year if the international community had any balls. But a beggar country like Lebanon cannot be a chooser. So thank you and sorry for all your deaths. But we all could have been better off if the international community stood up to Syria and to the PLO back in 1970, and then stood up to Syria, Iran and Hezbollah in the early 1980s, instead of allowing the cancer to metastasize and grow to the monster we have today. Thanks to the Syrian people, the head of the snake is being strangulated in Damascus, and it won't be long before its Hezbollah tail is cut off and thrown over the compost pile and the dung heap.

Lebanon Plunges into Darkness after Zahrani Power Plant is Shut Down

 

--->Welcome to the future. Lebanon has been without regular electricity since 1976, and no Zaim or Rais or General or Sayyid or Docteur or Bek or Sheikh or Batrak ... Has been able to do anything against the corruption, the primtiveness, and the backwardness. 

Why? Because they are the corruption, the primiteveness and the backwardness.

The Lebanese have so much ego to brag about what a great country Lebanon is, even as they live in excrement up to their eyeballs. Like most Mediterranean people, they think with their asses, and believe that the purpose of life is to dress well, drive a nice car, and have a maid, in order to prove to the other scum around you (your neighbors and compatriots) that you got it made. SUPERFICIALITY is the primary concern of the Lebanese.... Having electricity, running water, a sense of citizenship, telephones, Internet, clean environment, less corruption, public beaches, a real democracy (and not the multi-theocracy that the Lebanese political system is), rights for women, paying taxes... All the things that make a country strong and civilized.....all these things are irrelevant for the average jackass Lebanese

Hanibaal