Critical Week Ahead in Lebanon: Hezbollah War or Israeli War?

After getting beaten down to a pulp in its latest stupid war against Israel, despite its hollering for decades that its missiles could reach, destroy and eliminate the Zionist state, Iran's militia Hezbollah in Lebanon agreed to a ceasefire. 

Before last fall's war, Israel had kept its occupation of the Shebaa Farms and part of the village of Ghajar following its withdrawal in 2000. Now after Big-Balls Hassan Nasrallah's war, defeat and death, Israel has increased its occupation. It now occupies five additional hills along its border with Lebanon, which goes to show that, in Iranian logic, you resist occupation of land by losing more land. Like George Costanza's "negotiating" with NBC for less money than originally offered.

But now that the smell of burning flesh and destroyed buildings has vanished, the loser Hezbollah is refusing to lay down its weapons as it promised it will do when it joined the latest government. The government, it must be given credit for it, has been generous and patient with the lawless unlawful militia of Iran in Lebanon: It has integrated five Hezbollah ministers and has refused to engage in retribution against the militia that has brought misery, wars, corruption, drug smuggling and overall corruption and lawlessness along the Lebanese-Syrian, and Lebanese-Israeli borders. 

The government and the vast majority of the Lebanese people want Hezbollah to disarm. Not out love for Israel as the US does, but out of the rational conclusion that Israel has much more firepower than anyone in the region. For decades, ever since the Palestinians tried the 'Big Balls' strategy against Israeli firepower and lost, then after Hezbollah borrowed the PLO's 'Big balls' and attempted to erase Israel from the map, the tiny and vulnerable country of Lebanon kept telling these maniacs that diplomacy and progress are the best option to combating Zionist expansionism. But to no avail. 

In fact, for a while it was Western treacherous diplomacy that served and helped Hezbollah grow: From Reagan's cowardly flight from Beirut in 1983 after 243 US marines were murdered by tiny one-year old Hezbollah, to the Bush Sr.'s license to the Assad regime, a sponsor of Hezbollah, to occupy and brutalize Lebanon for 30 years in exchange for Assad's rallying the anti-Saddam front in the 1991 Gulf war and also to get Assad to release the US hostages held by Hezbollah in 1980s Beirut, to the Bushes' special oil-stained friendship with the corrupt Saudi-puppet prime minister Rafik Hariri who kept defending the illegal retention by Hezbollah of its weapons after all other militias had deposed theirs....

After weeks of negotiations, and after the self-labeled irrevocable decision by the Lebanese government of Joseph Aoun and Nawwaf Salam to disarm Hezbollah, Hezbollah is reneging on all that it agreed to after its defeat and decimation. It refuses to disarm. The Lebanese government will receive today or tomorrow a detailed plan by the Lebanese Army on how to collect Hezbollah's weapons. By week's end, the Lebanese government is expected to approve the Army's plan, and then the big question: Will there be a confrontation between a reluctant Hezbollah and the Army?

Hezbollah has openly threatened to wage a civil war if the Army tries to disarm it by force. Tensions are rising and Hezbollah's pathetic pocket-bikes brigades have been running the streets, taunting citizens and the army, and otherwise challenging the will of the majority of the Lebanese people. 

Now, please note that Hezbollah's reluctance to disarm is not its own. Hezbollah is Iran's militia, and Iran is in a wait-and-see mode with respect to potential negotiations with the US despite massive sanctions imposed by the US and the EU. As long as Iran has any hope of securing a deal, it is keeping Hezbollah as a card with which to pressure the West. But the Lebanese government has established a timeline ending with year's end - a timeline that will be more concrete when the Army's plan is unveeile - and there is nothing in sight to suggest that Iran and the US will reach an agreement by that deadline.

This week and the next will make or break the government's decision to disarm Hezbollah. If this decision fails to materialize, then Israel would get the green light from the Trump administration to forcibly disarm Hezbollah, which means a new more devastating war by Israel against Lebanon, supposedly intended to eliminate Hezbollah. But just as the elimination of Hamas in Gaza remains more of a fantasy than a realizable goal, the elimination of Hezbollah might take months and years, during which Lebanon will, again, be reduced to rubble. 

If the Lebanese government decides to act on its own and confront Hezbollah on the ground, a full-fledged civil war would break out, and if the 1975 war is any precedent, then the Lebanese whould generally break into two camps, a pro-government one and a pro-Hezbollah one. In 1975, the Sunni Muslims of Lebanon were the seditious party fighting alongside the Palestinians against their own government and army. The Army broke apart into sectarians brigades, most notably the Saudi-backed, Syrian-armed, Palestinian-allied sedition of the Sunni Muslim Lieutenant Ahmad Khatib who created his own Arab Army of Lebanon. Nowadays it is the Shiite Muslims who are the traitors. It is enough for Hezbollah's leadership to call on the Shiite soldiers of the Army to secede and join Hezbollah with their weapons for the army to break apart, for other sects (Maronites, Druze, etc.) to form their own militias, and the whole episode of 1975-1990 to repeat itself. Not to mention the inescapable lust of the terrorist Jewish fundamentalist Zionists of the Israeli government and the Al-Qaeda barbarian Muslim fundamentalists now running Syria to join the bloody fiesta.

And so we wait: Will it be a Hezbollah civil war? Or will it be an Israeli Zionist war?

How many times will the international community abandon a small country like Lebanon to the savagery of its neighbors?  The international community came together to rescue East Timor from Indonesia's barbarity. It came together to rescue Bosnia from Serbian barbarity. Why is Lebanon, with all that it represents in diversity, democracy (albeit a mediocre one), communal living and attempt to reach accommodations between various religions, so immune to feasible concrete international assistance?

Unlike in the S---Show US, There's a Freedom of Self Here

The experiences of Americans moving out of the US to Canada or England or any other place resonate well with the feelings of anxiety and a sudden fall from grace into a cesspool of hate, cruelty, and racism that the US has become.

How could the land of the free become like a concentration camp, with the military on the streets arresting people because of how they look or speak, with customs police searching into your most intimate vehicle of free speech - your cell phone - to find out if you're loyal to a demented senile dictator?

In many countries around the world, less fortunate and less wealthy than the US, the individual feels genuine unadulterated freedom from

1- a totalitarian government in cahoots with big corporations. Americans have no idea how conformists and compliant they are to the dictates of their government, how much their personal life is programmed by giant entities, and how unfree they really are. They just don't see it, until they leave and look at it from the outside.

2- a culture that tells them what to think, how to think, and a culture of a herd in which each beast is branded and cast. A culture of extreme individualism and the mad obsessive pursuit of money.

The notion of freedom in the US is a made-up fantasy destined to blind the average American to the fact that he/she is a guinea pig in the giant laboratory - known as the US - of big corporations . They tell Americans that the American "way of life" (which condenses into religion, consumption, debt, and the sport of rugby that is ignorantly dubbed 'American football') is the best there is and that all the other cultures are inferior, socialistic, and such other qualifiers destined to instill xenophobia and fear of others.

Many Americans discover the truth of the superficiality of their lives when they travel overseas and discover how genuine and "natural" human relationships are in most other cultures. People are kind because they are kind and can put themselves in other people's shoes. Somehow, Americans are incapable of such compassion. They are told and trained to "smile" and "be positive" regardless of whether they want to smile or whether they feel positive about their lives. We live in a made-up cosmetically fixed "beautiful weather" facade when the reality is that many of us are unhappy and frustrated.

Living in the US always makes people constantly fear sickness and death. The barrage of commercials on television and in the media about the hundreds of new diseases and drugs to combat them is such a gigantic scam whose intent is to drill fear of disease and death, and of course steal people's money. Americans are told to constantly search for "their" disease because we all should have one or two, and then when they find it, to "fight" it and prove their American toughness by winning the battle. Losing to the disease brings shame and guilt on the person.

In other cultures, death is accepted as part of life, and diseases are handled like a simple setback whose outcome could go either way and that's OK. Americans are ultra-religious because they must be immortal in the eyes of their culture. Religion offers the fallacy of immortality after death, but in America we are brainwashed to fight for immortality on this earth and to reject death.

Similarly with money and the insurance industry scams. Americans spend their lives doing acrobatics about their health plans (that change every year), their mortgages (a lifelong debt from which they exit as they near death), and their 401Ks. I used to spend long hours every fall reading the hundreds of pages of my new health insurance plan because the insurer keeps changing them based on the profit or loss it incured the previous year. As a hypothetical example, whereas last year they covered breaks in both the tibia and the femur, this year they cover only breaks in the tibia but not the femur because they made less money covering the latter. So you have to decide each year whether you plan to break both tibia and femur or just one of them, and then which one? Covering both adds to your premium. It's like you are buying your health from a black market snake-oil dealer.

I still love the idea of America but I discovered over the years that it is just an idea, a fantasy. "Il n'y a plus d'Amérique" said the Belgian singer Jacques Brel. Donald Trump has stripped the fake facade of the American Dream and revealed the reality behind it. Maybe it is the silver lining behind his disgusting way of running the country. Maybe after Trump, America will come down from its cheap haughtiness and become a genuinely human society. 
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Robin Wright Says Leaving the U.S. for England Has Been 'Liberating': 'America Is a S---show'

"There's a freedom of self here," Wright said of England. "People are so kind. They're living"
Charlotte Phillipp
Mon, September 1, 2025



VALERY HACHE/AFP via Getty Robin Wright on June 16, 2025.

Robin Wright is opening up about her choice to leave the U.S. and rent a house on the English seaside

"America is a s---show," she said in a new interview with The Times. "There's a freedom of self here. People are so kind. They're living"

The actress also opened up about her new relationship with architect Henry Smith, saying: "He is a sweetheart and just a good, decent adult"

Robin Wright has a new country to call home — and she isn't regretting her decision to move in the slightest.

In a new interview with The Times, published on Sunday, Aug. 31, the actress, 59, shared that she and her boyfriend, architect Henry Smith, are renting a home on the English seaside.

"It’s liberating to be done," Wright told the outlet. "Be done with searching, looking and getting 60 percent of what you wanted."

The House of Cards alum, who was born in Texas and raised in California, was candid about wanting to get out of the U.S., telling the newspaper: "America is a s---show."

"I love being in this country," she added of England. "There's a freedom of self here. People are so kind. They're living. They're not in the car in traffic, panicked on a phone call, eating a sandwich. That's most of America. Everything's rush, competition and speed."

Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Henry Smith and Robin Wright.

According to the Forrest Gump star, her decision to move was partially influenced by the noise of Los Angeles.

"Everyone's building a huge house, and I'm just done with all that — I love the quiet. And I've met my person. Finally," she added, referring to 52-year-old Smith.

Wright recalled meeting her now-boyfriend — and joked that they had some choice words for each other the first time they crossed paths.

According to the model, she was sitting in a pub at the time, and asked a man if she could feed his dog when the man directed his attention to her now-boyfriend.

"He goes, 'No, it’s not my dog, it’s his dog,' " she recalled of their first meeting.


Darren Gerrish/WireImage Getty Robin Wright at Wimbledon on July 13, 2025.

"Henry was standing at the bar, 6'2", and he put his pint down, came over to me and grabbed my shoulders," the Here actress recalled. "He goes, 'Who the f--- are you?' And I said, 'Who the f--- are you?' And that was it."

"He is a sweetheart and just a good, decent adult. He's a man," she continued of Smith.

According to The Times, Wright said it was "so relaxing" to be "seen and loved for who I am" after she began her relationship with Smith.

"That's exactly what I wanted," she shared. "I'm turning 60 and I'm, like, 'Is this it?' I love being alone and I've done that many times. But I'm, like, 'I want to grow old with somebody, and travel and see the world.' "

The Princess Bride actress was previously married to Sean Penn from 1996 to 2010. The former couple share two children: daughter Dylan, 34, and son Hopper, 32.

Wright later wed Clement Giraudet in 2018, before filing for divorce from the fashion executive in the summer of 2022, citing irreconcilable differences. She also had a brief marriage to the late Santa Barbara actor Dane Witherspoon from 1986 until their divorce two years later.

Caesar Non Supra Grammaticos

"The Emperor is not above the grammarians", says the Latin proverb. Long before the illiterate moron Donald Trump's illiteracy splashed the screens, people knew the importance of speech in political office.

One of the first Trumpian grammatical pearl that I remember was when he tweeted about something which he described as "unpresidented", obviously an error since he meant "unprecedented". Now that is not a mere spelling error, in which case his finger would have slipped on the keyboard nor is it an automatic spell-check error because the word "unpresidented" does not exist. The error is engrained in his uneducated, unlettered, ignorant mind: He always thought that when people spoke the word "unprecedented", his brain flashed "unpresidented". In other words, the president of the United States, as the English usedto say, does not know his letters. He doesn't understand the basics of the language.

Maybe he was obsessed with becoming president and only hears what his moronic mind wants him to hear. 

Many Americans are embarassed by having an ignoramus for president. Bravado, machismo, and deceptively amplified big balls, may serve well in one of these assembly chain stupid Hollywood movies that makes heroes out of criminals and elevates violence to the level of a religion - no wonder the daily mass shootings in the US - but not for an official in charge of millions of people.

It may very well be that Trump doesn't really understand what other leaders are telling him. He doesn't even know his own language, how can he understand foreign leaders who often speak English in accented syllables or through an interpreter. That is why, as seems to be the case with his meeting in Alaska with his fellow criminal buddy Vladimr Putin, Trump comes out of these meetings with propositions and statements that do not reflect the reality. Maybe he's not that stupid, maybe it's his defective language skills.

"Caesar non supra grammaticos" means that going forward, after history defecates the Trump disaster into the toilet where it belongs, candidates for public office should be made to take a test. Having a college degree from the many medicore institutions of higher learning that the US harbors is not a sufficient marker of an official's fluency in their own language or their capability at making themselves understood or understand others.

The test would be like a giant geopolitical SAT test covering language, mathematical logic, history, geography and the like. Candidates who put down money to run should immediately take the test before they are allowed to run. Unfortunately, a majority of dumb Americans continue to think that wealth and money are the only criteria for successful candidacies to public office. Billionaires are not necessarily smart, they could be crooks who cheat and steal which does, admittedly, require a certain type of intelligence. But this sort of intelligence reflects the "ugly" component of the "dumb and ugly" pair of qualifiers by which Americans are perceived around the world. 

We see what happens when both "ugly" and "dumb" come together so well in such criminal (ugly) morons (dumb) as Donald Trump. I still prefer "dumb and nice" or "smart and ugly" to the textbook example of dumb and ugly that Trump is.

Finally, it is taken for granted in the US that the more money a candidate raises and spends in a campaign somehow increases his/her chances at succeeding. What this implies is that Americans in general are so dumb that throwing a silly campaign advertisement in the media and bombarding Americans with it will somehow change their minds. Really? Do you decide who to vote for based on a commercial? Are you so stupid to wait for two competing commercials of two rival candidates to make up your mind. Really? Have you no principles? Have you no idea beyond a commercial about the candidates? Don't you examine their history and background, their writings (if any) or interviews, their statements and past achievements, or their criminality and corruption? 

When the Supreme Court decided in 2010 to allow the free flow of money into campaigns (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission), by which the Court found that laws should not restrict the political spending of corporations and unions, it granted immeasurable power to wealthy individuals and corporations. On the surface, it seems like a bad decision since the average individual could not possibly compete with large powerful groups, corporations, lobbies and the like. But again, this implies that Americans are so politically dumb that their voting pattern are dictated by advertisements and commercials, which in turn reflect how much money the candidates spend.

If this is true, then American democracy sucks. It is not the informed, enlightened will of the people that decide, but a brainwashed, misinformed and disinformed herd of morons that elect someone to public office.

It may be that the ultimate moron Trump's ascent into politics was driven by the money he spent on his campaigns, which means that the 2010 Supreme Court decision to allow the unfettered "sale" of political office to the wealthier of candidates brought us the fantastic Emperor who doesn't speak, read and write with precision - hence who doesn't think. You see, the entire edifice of human evolution rested upon language. Language gave us intelligence. Those with poor language are dumb. Hence, Donald Trump.