Lebanon's Presidential Elections: The Aberration of Consensual Democracy

Lebanon is not a democracy. By themselves, elections do not make a democracy. The Europeans, for example, refer to the right-wing systems now in place in Hungary or Poland - and maybe soon in Italy - as "Electoral Autocracies", as opposed to the "Liberal Democracies" in place in other European countries. For example, see [ https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/09/15/hungary-is-no-longer-a-full-democracy-but-an-electoral-autocracy-meps-declare-in-new-repor ] about Hungary.

As defined in [ https://www.quora.com/What-does-electoral-autocracy-mean?share=1 ], an Electoral Autocracy "refers to a system of democratic government in which the constitutional machinery that is mandated to provide transparent system of governance has failed to give the required outcome". In an electoral autocracy, people go to elections and vote for representative government. But the elected government proceeds to curtail the other attributes of a liberal democracy, such as restricting freedom of the press and speech, limiting the separation of powers and interfering in the judiciary which loses its independence, and using unlawful means to fight its opponents, among other things.

From its inception and up to the Taif Agreement (1989), Lebanon was a liberal democracy. Its constitution provided for all the freedoms and there were genuine elections in which rivals ran as candidates, and the losers ceded authority to the winners. The system was a parliamentary one but with strong presidential powers that rendered the decision-making fast and effective. The constitution itself did not mention the sectarian identities of representatives or of the President or Prime Minister of Speaker of Parliament. However, there was a non-written "word of honor" type of understanding known as the "National Pact", a tradition adopted in 1943 that attributed the presidency to a Maronite Catholic, the Speakership of Parliament to a Shiite Muslim, and the Premiership to a Sunni Muslim, and so on and so forth down the hierarchy, granting every religious sect a proportionate representation in the workings of government and administration.

The Taif Agreement, which amended Lebanon's constitution at the end of the Lebanon War (1975-1990) between armed Palestinian refugee militias (e.g. Yasser Arafat's PLO) and Lebanese grassroots militias, aimed at correcting what the Muslims, most notably the Sunnis, perceived as an unfair disequilibrium favoring the Christians. In other words, the Muslims saw that an effective liberal democracy was incompatible with the National Pact. On one hand, the Pact granted the presidency to a Maronite Catholic Christian, and on the other hand the constitution granted that Christian president powers that, although normal in a liberal democracy, were seen as unfair by the Muslims. The Muslims, ever so allergic to being ruled by a non-Muslim, could not countenance that a Christian President had the power to destitute a Sunni Prime Minister and appoint another, or dissolve a Shiite-led Parliament overnight and call for elections. 

By the mid-1960s, in the midst of global revolutions sweeping the world, the Muslims began complaining about the state of affairs, notwithstanding the fact that the liberal democratic system under a Christian President had taken Lebanon into its golden age. Between the mid-1940s and the mid-1970s, Lebanon was prosperous, cosmopolitan, and attracted capitals and tourism. The fact that the President was a Christian had nothing to do with Lebanon's prosperity; the prosperity was the natural outcome of a system that worked because everyone played by the rules. In fact, the Christian president's powers were balanced by his need to secure the approval of the Sunni Prime Minister and the Shiite Speaker. Instead of seeking to improve the system via lawful constitutional mechanisms in order to satisfy their disgruntlement, the Muslims ultimately chose to wage war against the Christians using the Palestinians as their militia, and dismantle the country in the process. Now we see that the victory of the Muslims consisted in replacing a functioning presidential-parliamentary system with the aberration of a "consensual" democracy in which the President (Christian) was replaced by three Presidents (Christian, Sunni and Shiite) with more or less equal powers, a three-headed monster that led the country into corruption, dysfunction, and after 30 years, into collapse.

With the advent of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1965, which established its headquarters in Beirut in 1970 (after it was crushed in Amman by King Hussein of Jordan in the notorious Black September), the Lebanese Sunnis saw the PLO as a paramilitary instrument they could use to alter the mismatch between a liberal constitution and the National Pact. In effect, the Palestinians, who are Sunnis in their vast majority, became the army of the Lebanese Sunnis. Every constitutional action and decision taken by the Christian President were challenged by the Sunnis, a situation which escalated into a full-fledged war pitting on one side the Lebanese Army and security forces still under the command of the President in the initial phase of the conflict, and on the other side the PLO and its satellite Muslim (Sunni, Druze, Shiite) militias. I remember watching from the town of Hadath in 1973 the jets of the Lebanese Air Force bombing the fortified Palestinian camps of Sabra and Shatila by order of the President, an unthinkable occurrence in today's Lebanon.

The Assad dictatorship in neighboring Syria sent its own Palestinian militias (the Saika, the Yarmuk Brigades, the Palestine Liberation Army, etc.) to rally with the PLO and the Lebanese Muslims in undermining stability in Lebanon. In turn, grassroots Christian militias were formed that backed the Army initially, but then, when the Army fractured along sectarian lines, became the direct enemies of the Syrian-Palestinian-Sunni coalition known as the National Movement. For example, a Sunni Army lieutenant by the name of Ahmad Khatib seceded and formed his own Arab Army of Lebanon that went on a rampage in the south, attacking regular units of the Lebanese Army in their barracks, and isolating a large swath of territory south of the Litani River bordering on the Israeli border from the central government in Beirut. That territory was controlled by regular Lebanese Army units led by Major Saad Haddad which maintained the State's sovereignty in the area. As their isolation deepened, however, Major Haddad opened the border with Israel from whom his people received much needed assistance in food, medical care, and ultimately military support. That was the genesis of what later became the Israeli-occupied "border strip" which Hezbollah falsely claims to have liberated. The residents of the Border Strip, Christians and Muslims alike, were essentially defenders of Lebanon's sovereignty against the assault on the State by the Palestinians and their Lebanese Sunni manipulators.

The Taif Agreement sealed the defeat of Lebanon's Christians who tried to keep Lebanon as a liberal democracy with standard operating rules of governance. In the Taif Agreement, Lebanon's liberal democracy became an "electoral autocracy" which the Lebanese proudly brag about it being a "consensual democracy", i.e. a fallacy or a parody of a democracy. Not only did the Taif Agreement enshrine the National Pact into the constitution - it is now written that the President be a Maronite, the Speaker of Parliament a Shiite, and the Prime Minister a Sunni - it also redistributed the formerly concentrated presidential powers among the three top offices. In other words, what used to be a mono-cephalic presidential system became a tri-cephalic monster where decisions could never be made, as has been the situation since the Syrian army was evicted in 2005. In fact, the only reason the system worked between 1990 and 2005 was that all decisions were dictated from Damascus via the Syrian occupation of the country.

The aberration of "consensual democracy", a Lebanese nomenclature for what amounts to an "electoral autocracy", consists in holding elections, but then regardless of the outcome of the elections, the bosses of the sects sit down together, often in dark rooms and behind closed doors, and make decisions as they see fit. Which means that elections are really a farce. 

A perfect example of this aberration is currently on display. The Christian President is elected by Parliament, not by universal suffrage, which makes the choice of a President even more removed from anything democratic. Yesterday (Thursday Sept. 29), Parliament met and voted, without any candidate achieving a majority. But then, instead of moving automatically to a second vote with a lesser majoritarian requirement (from two-thirds to a simple 51%) as required by the constitution, the Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri (head of the Shiite Amal militia, and a dinosaur autocrat occupying the Speakership since 1992) adjourned the session and declared that he will call Parliament for a second session later, "when a consensus is reached about the identity of the president". 

In other words, autocrat Berri doesn't want a real election where two or more candidates compete. He wants his peers, in their vast majority sectarian bosses, or vassals of foreign countries, or former militia warlords, or their recently elected progeny, to make a deal over one candidate behind closed doors, then tell him they have a candidate, at which time he will convene Parliament to rubber-stamp the lucky bastard. What happens behind those closed doors leading to a single candidate? Phone calls to Tehran, or Riyadh, or Paris, or Washington, directly or via their local ambassadors, bartering favors and deals, bribes by the millions of dollars, etc. 

For now, the two sides of the political divide are just about equally represented in Parliament, but neither has the majority: The pro-Iran/Syria side (Hezbollah, Amal, Aoun and Bassil's Christian FPM, etc. known as March-8), and the pro-Saudi/US side (Lebanese Forces, Kataeb, etc., known as March-14). But there is a group of 12 MPs who breached the traditional lineups at the elections last May. They are known as the "Reformers" or "Independents" who refuse to play by the old rules and do not want to be cast into either of the two camps. They want a candidate who is not affiliated with either of the two main sides. They are generally closer in outlook with the March-14 camp, but refuse to rally under its umbrella. Yet, the Reformers are not kingmakers whose vote can sway the outcome in favor of March-8. The Reformers' vote can either favor the March-14 group (if the two sides can agree on one candidate), or a candidate from outside the two camps, but never a March-8 candidate. And this is precisely what happened during the first session. March-14 had a candidate (Michel Mouawad), the Reformers had a candidate (Selim Edde), while the other side dropped a blank vote and is suspected of wanting to scuttle the elections and leave a vacuum in the presidency. 

The crux of the matter is that the Lebanese electorate unfortunately remains very conservative and at the latest (May 2022) eleftions voted for a tiny bit of reform, not enough for reform to materialize. Since the country needs to shake off the old guard of corruption and backroom deals of both traditional camps, the Reformers are, on principle, correct in holding the independent line. But in practice, they don't have the critical mass to control the vote, and therefore they must join with the March-14 in these elections for the simple objective of defeating the pro-Iran/Syria camp. The country will not survive another six years of a Aoun-like presidency under constant threat by the illegal weapons of Hezbollah. Sadly, real reform will have to wait for the next parliamentary elections. Until then, the Reformers can prove to the Lebanese people that they are able to make short-term coalitions without sacrificing their principles and long-term objectives.

Turncoat Gaby Issa in his Own Words

Gabriel "Gaby" Issa, an otherwise useful idiot ally of Michel Aoun, was appointed Lebanese ambassador to the U.S. in July 2017 as a reward for serving Aoun financially for decades. He also spent much of his years in the US begging the pro-Israeli Zionist lobby in the US congress for help against the Syrian occupation of Lebanon and pouring money into the Aoun coffers. But then, circa 2002, he was instructed by Aoun's son-in-law Gebran Bassil to switch sides, and overnight became an ardent supporter of the Syrian-Iranian occupation of Lebanon as embodied by Hezbollah and a hater of Israel. 

Aoun himself had made the same magical transformation around that time. In addition to interview statements in which he expressed sympathy for the Israelis as they were targeted by a wave of suicide bombings (see: https://lebanoniznogood.blogspot.com/2022/07/aouns-legacy-unprincipled-greed-for_11.html), Aoun twice made statements into my own ears completely opposite to his current metamorphosis: once pitying the poor Israeli victims of Palestinian terrorism, and another time when he said "he is one of us" (هيدا منّا وفينا) about the leader of the Guardians of the Cedars Etienne Sacre (aka Abu-Arz), exiled in Cyprus and condemned for treason because he fled to Israel, along with thousands of other southern Lebanese, after Israel treacherously handed the Lebanese South to the Iranian terrorist militia Hezbollah in 2000.

In an interview on April 14, 2022 with Aoun's OTV television channel, Issa said that he not only supports the presence of Hezbollah's weapons on the Lebanese border with Israel, but that he believes that Hezbollah should increase its arsenal dozens of times over because it protects the Lebanese people. 

Rebuttals: 

- If the Aoun administration believes that stockpiling weapons on the border will protect the Lebanese people, why doesn't he [Aoun] send his army, instead of his ally the Iranian militia Hezbollah, to the border? Why subcontract the defense of the nation to an unlawful terrorist organization acting on behalf of Iran? 

- If Aoun and his son-in-law Gebran Bassil, head of the Free Patriotic Movement [FPM], believe that the south of the country is a "national", and not only a "Shiite", territory worthy of defense, why haven't they mobilized their Christian FPM followers to build their own militia or join the ranks of Hezbollah along the border to fight against Israel, instead of hurling insults from behind their cell phone screens and the comfort of their couches? Why is a matter [the supposed continued Israeli occupation of the Shebaa Farms] of such national gravity as territorial integrity or national defense left to a radical fundamentalist Muslim organization? Perhaps those Christians of the FPM do not wish to fall under US sanctions, and are hiding like coward Dhimmis behind the Muslim Shiite Hezbollah. Perhaps those Christians of the FPM - including Gaby Issa himself, a Lebanese-born US citizen who lived in the US for 40 years before losing his US citizenship to become ambassador - have a lot of money and assets in the US that they do not wish to jeopardize their own little self-interests. It may be that after 40 years in the US, Gaby has become just another dumb American..

Issa said that it is hypocritical of the U.S. to "grumble" and call for the dissolution of Hezbollah and other Lebanese militias because today's situation in Lebanon is America's doing.

- Issa should at least adhere to the Lebanese constitution of the Taif Agreement that his boss Michel Aoun first opposed, then accepted after he decimated the Christian population of Beirut in futile internecine battles that he lost, fleeing like a coward to the basement of the French embassy. The Taif Agreement called for the dissolution of ALL - not some - militias; yet of all wartime militias, only Hezbollah was allowed to remain armed and active. The Taif Agreement called for the Lebanese Army to take control of the entire border zone, yet to date Hezbollah has full control of the southern border and continues to harass and threaten the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) present on the ground.

Issa explained that the issue of Hezbollah's weapons will be resolved when all regional issues are resolved...

- This idiot wants Lebanon to wait for the resolution of all regional issues - Iran's nuclear stalemate, Iranian-Saudi rivalry, Palestine/Israel, Yemen's civil war, Syria's civil war, Iraq's smoldering civil war, etc. - before Hezbollah's weapons are dealt with. Let's see: Every one of these conflicts has been smoldering for decades; in fact the Saudi-Iranian conflict has been simmering since the 7th century with no end in sight. 

- Mr. Issa's ally, Hezbollah, has only one resolution in mind when it comes to all these conflicts: Eradicate Israel from the map and establish a Shiite Muslim Caliphate over the entire Near East. So Mr. Issa, a Christian Dhimmi ("tolerated" by Muslim rulers), is asking the Lebanese people to remain under the constant threat of war until Israel disappears and the Iranian mullahs rule over the entire region. Very sagacious and realistic goals. 

Issa said that by pressuring Lebanon on Hezbollah's weapons, the U.S. is trying to push Lebanon towards civil war.

But Lebanon has been in a chronic civil war between Christians and Muslims long before there even was an America worthy of any influence. Let's see: 

- 1842-1860 - Christians and Druze massacre one another. Country is partitioned into 2 mini-states, one Druze, one Christian. It fails. Massacres resume, European powers intervene and a small Christian Mount-Lebanon Protectorate is declared from which Turkish Ottoman troops are excluded.

- 1914-1918 - Ottoman Turkish troops re-invade and requisition everything, one third of the Mount Lebanon Protectorate dies of famine and a third emigrate to no return.

- 1920 - Contrary to French advice, Mount Lebanon is enlarged into a Greater Lebanon that reduces the Christians to 50% of the population.

- 1943 - The stupid Lebanese Christians chase their WWII-weakened French protectors out of Lebanon. Modern Lebanon is born.

- 1958 - Crisis with Abdel-Nasser of Egypt leads to a brief civil war. Lebanon's Sunni Muslims want to join a Greater Arabia entity.

- 1961 - Failed coup d'état attempt by the Near East Nazi Party (Syrian National Socialist Party) close to the Syrian Baath Party. Leads to the militarization of the Lebanese government under the Chehab and Helou presidential terms.

- 1970 - Yasser Arafat and his PLO move their headquarters from Amman to Beirut and attempt to seize power and make Lebanon a substitute homeland in lieu of Palestine, leading to the war of 1975-1990 between Lebanon's Christians and the Palestinian organizations.

1982-present time - By force of weapons and terrorist actions (kidnappings, hijackings, bombings, assassinations, etc.), the Iranian Hezbollah militia - apparently Mr. Issa's favorite terrorist organization - evicts all Western presence from Lebanon and subdues the entire country under the pretext of "defending" Lebanon. Mr. Issa's shallow cerebrum makes him think that Hezbollah is the answer to Lebanon's chronic problems. Good luck with that. 

Issa also said that the U.S. threateningly told the Lebanese that they must not contribute to the reconstruction of Syria in the aftermath of the Syrian civil war, even though Lebanon was impacted by the war more than any other country. 

- While he doesn't cite who exactly of "the Americans" told him not to contribute to the reconstruction of Syria, this remark points to where Mr. Issa's priorities are: Money-making schemes, while the country is floundering. It is Lebanon that needs to be reconstructed from the abysmally corrupt governance of the very Aoun administration that Gaby Issa flaunts. No amount of money, whether from the reconstruction of Syria or from begging the IMF, will fix Lebanon's constitutive structural problems. Mr. Issa and his buddies stand to make lots of money from reconstructing Syria if, and only if, his Iranian allies in Hezbollah keep the upper hand in Lebanon: The reason being that Hezbollah and Syria have elevated the art of smuggling across the porous border (thanks to Michel Aoun's laxity with his Syrian allies) to new heights, combining ancient donkey caravans, trucks and modern drones. So  Issa and Bassil stand to make a good cut of Syria's reconstruction because they are counting, as Issa said, on the many long years still to go before all regional conflicts are resolved. Peace and the rule of law are not to their advantage, but anarchy, lawlessness, war, or even just the constant threat of war that Hezbollah perpetuates definitely works to Bassil and Issa's advantage.

Below are excerpts from an interview with Gabriel Issa, the former Lebanese ambassador to the United States, on the Lebanese OTV channel on April 14, 2022.

Interviewer: "So you are in favor of keeping the weapons of the resistance?"

Issa: "Not just keeping them. I support increasing them dozens of times over. I confronted senior American officials who came to talk to me. I said to them: 'You allowed for this.' They said it was the Syrians, not them. So I said: 'You allowed Syria to invade Lebanon.' The same thing happened with regard to the Taif Agreement. I said to them: 'You imposed the ruling system of the Taif Agreement on us.' Their answer was: 'It was the Saudis, not us.' The Americans always deny responsibility. They say that they did not allow Syria to invade Lebanon, that they did not allow Saudi Arabia to impose the Taif Agreement on us... All the Americans who say today that we do not have the right to do this – they themselves formed a militia and invented the concept of a militia and of a mini-state within a state. Not only did they invent this notion, but they have imposed it on us for many years, and now they grumble about the existence of the Hezbollah militia? You have the same background. You said that you were defending Lebanon, and Hezbollah also says it defends Lebanon ... Okay, so there are weapons that not held by the Lebanese army. Sure, there is a problem and it will be resolved when the regional issues are resolved. But today, in the elections, all you hear is people suggesting to take away the weapons of the resistance, as if this is the only problem."

Interviewer: "It is also noteworthy that no one mentions the weapons of the Palestinians in the refugee camps."

Issa: "Absolutely. We talked about when the mini-states within the state began, and when the Lebanese army came to restore its control of this Lebanese land, everybody opposed it. Today, the Americans are inciting us to send the Lebanese army to take away the weapons of the resistance. What does this mean? That they want to push us towards a civil war. This is what I am against.

[...]

"The Americans pressured us with regard to many issues. For example, they pressured us with regard to our dealings with Syria. We were directly informed about this in a threatening tone. I was at the meeting when they said: 'Don't even think about contributing to the reconstruction of Syria.' This is the language they used. They threatened to impose sanctions on us. Lebanon was forbidden from helping in this reconstruction, even though this was an opportunity for the Lebanese. We paid a higher price for that war than other countries, considering the size of Lebanon, its economy, and its population. We were the country impacted the most by that war, so at least, when the reconstruction begins, let us offset some of it – I'm not talking about benefiting from this but at least some offsetting some of our losses. No. We were completely prevented from doing this. I am not saying that we accepted this, but this was the language they used with us – not only with me. Officials more senior than me were also present, and they were told to their faces by the top American in charge of the Syrian portfolio: 'I came to tell you that you are forbidden from participating in the reconstruction of Syria.' During the discussion, we said: 'Why? We have the right to do this.' But he said: 'I did not come to negotiate with you. I came to inform you.' This was the language he used."

 

 

 

Ottoman-Era Lebanon in the 21st Century

The mantra of Lebanese administrative politics these days is the need to implement reforms to bureaucratic norms and practices going back to the era of Ottoman occupation: Fiscal stamps, illegible ink stamps, handwritten and often illegible documents loaded with mistakes in spellings and dates, bribes, etc.

The need for these reforms stems from a broken system that degrades the individual citizen by forcing him or her to resort to for-fee-brokers (with established money-driven corrupt channels with bureaucrats protected by a political leader or party), or to any other form of bribe-driven services. Reforms are not only needed, they are required by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund as conditions to lend money to a pauper and beggar state.

The system pervades the life of Lebanese citizens. Two years ago, I needed to renew my driver's license. I had two options: Doing it myself or hire a broker whose name was provided to me by a friend. To do it myself, I have to obtain a half dozen paper documents from a number of sources (medical certification, residence statement form the selectman (moukhtar) of the town where I reside, passport photographs, etc.), each of which charges a fee and requires driving relatively long distances on bad roads where maniacal drivers abound and at an exorbitant price of gasoline. I also have to check that all these sources use the same spellings and the correct dates, as the compulsory cursive nature of Arabic handwriting is particularly liable to errors. I also have to go to administrative buildings where chaos reigns supreme, where employees' offices are unmarked, where dust and cigarette butts line the floor and the walls, where elevators run the risk of breaking down because there's no electricity, and where the stench of urine and tobacco hits you in the face the moment you walk in. Not to mention the crowds that haunt these places all the time. You'd think you're in a leper colony!

The other option is to hire a broker who, through his connections, will illegally obtain all the necessary - and forged - documents from doctors who don't check me, from towns where I don't reside, etc. and two days later will present me with a brand new driver's license. All of this for a fee that is triple the normal cost of the doing-it yourself option.

For a while, I had a birth certificate with one date of birth (28 January), an extract of the Civil Registry with another date of birth (25 January), and a driver's license with still another date of birth (15 January). Here's the story why.

First, the Registrar of the Civil Status of my district (first name: Rajeh; last name withheld) issued me on the same day a birth certificate with the correct birth date of January 28 and an extract of my Civil Status Registry entry with the erroneous birth date of January 25 because, as he later justified, errors occurred when they recopied by hand the registers after the 1975-1990 war during which some records were burned. In Arabic, the numbers 28 and 25 can, if written fast by hand and without diligence, be made to look very similar, whether written in full words or in numerals, so errors occur right and left. But as the corrupt jackass that he is, the Registrar refused to recognize, let alone correct, his own mistake. Ottoman-minded bureaucrats like this asshole still haunt the Lebanese administration where they act like members of secret associations that cultivate their own unintelligible jargon and traditions, including, like doctors on their prescriptions, the mysteriously persistent bad handwriting: By issuing barely legible handwritten documents, they cultivate mystery and artificially glorify their job which, truth be told, should be as simple as a schoolchild carefully doing his/her homework, and instill dread in those they ought to be serving. I am not sure how much of a "mistake" this is; it may well be a deliberate introduction of errors to screw with people's lives and then extort them for money to "repair" the error.

Second, when I used the extract of the Civil Status to obtain a Drivers' License, the 25 became 15. Again, a collateral damage of the archaic script of the technically dead language that Arabic really is. 

Imagine the headaches and the tremendous hardship this state of affairs causes on people who, for example, are in the process of registering in university, emigrating, getting married, seeking inheritance, or who emigrate with one date of birth on their passports but then return with a different date of birth in their records. 

To add insult to injury, when confronted with the discrepancy in the date of birth appearing on two documents simultaneously issued by his own Registry, the Registrar was very upset and refused to correct what is obviously an administrative error. Instead, he poured salt on the wound and required a Court Order to compel him to correct his own error. I suspect he might budge for a fat bribe, but I refuse to reward his corruption. I hired an attorney who has prepared the file but apparently can't file it with the courts because the courts, according to him, haven't functioned in years and are in fact on strike. Yet, every evening on the news, we hear about courts issuing judgments in a variety of cases. The corruption in Lebanon is very pervasive; even people, like my own fucking attorney, who ought to be on your side are probably ripping you off. So life goes on for me, with three different dates of birth circulating across my records in the Lebanese administration. 

I do not even tell you about the five different ways my name is spelled, as Lebanon elevates Arabic as its official language, but still has French and English haphazardly strewn across its official papers. Half of Lebanese last names begin with the letter A because Arab nationalism requires the use of the archaic definite article "Al" stuck like shit on a monkey as a prefix to most last names. It would be as if in English, half of all last names are written by prefixing them with the article "the". For example, US presidents' names would be sometimes written as "Joe The-Biden", or "Donald The-Trump", but not always, just arbitrarily, on a whim, alternating these spellings with "Joe Biden" or "Donald Trump".

Worse yet, when I was admitted to American University of Beirut, the university, whose pre-WW I history under Ottoman rule is pregnant with a visceral hatred of an independent Lebanon, insisted on forcing a "high Arabic" spelling on students' names which was entirely different from the official spelling. Let's say, for the sake of illustration, that your last name is شعيب . The Lebanese State would have spelled it in your personal documents as "Shayb" or "Chaib", but the arrogant hypocrite neanderthals of American University of Beirut, trying to be more Arab than the Arabs, imposed on you the spelling of "Shuayyibb", as the name would have sounded circa 800 AD in the now dead language of classical Arabic. I hear that they have dropped this insulting practice in recent years.

In Lebanon, the country its nationalists claim to be the "homeland of freedom, culture and enlightenment" while it continues to rot under millennia of abject ignorance, religiosity and feudalism, you don't even own your own name.

Even Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who wants to resurrect the Ottoman Empire, would be upset if these practices were current in his modern-day Turkiye. But in Lebanon, the barbarians are entrenched inside the gates and the defenders of the city are outside the city walls. Go figure.

Cultural Colonialism Persists

There was a time when colonialism pervaded every aspect of human life. Its victims were robbed not only of their natural resources, but their cultures were also degraded, denigrated and made to feel undeserving of the interest of the "oh-so-Christian" colonizers. A lot has happened over centuries for any moral or economic compensation to actually make a difference, for the abuse of the south by the north continues to this day. After building their wealth by pilfering all they could find from their victimized societies, including decent innocent men and women taken into slavery, the countries of the north built their industries that began polluting the waters, the air and the lands of the entire earth, leading to today's climatic catastrophes that punish the south to a far higher degree than they punish the north.

Given this asymmetrical history, one wonders why men and women of former colonies continue to be subservient to their former colonizers. Two cases in point:

I have had enough watching Queen Elizabeth's endless funeral processions and queues to look at a box inside of which is the decaying body of a woman, with all the paraphernalia of Stone Age vintage. Two weeks yet of endless coverage on every media portal, even in far away countries that have nothing to do with English tradition, and worse, for countries and peoples who were enslaved, occupied, repressed, denied, robbed of their dignity by the very English people who are burying their queen. 

Do people truly still believe that she is queen by the grace of God, like some Pharaoh several millennia ago? Did God himself descend and declare her sovereign queen? Or was it some unelected self-appointed so-called archbishop of Roman vintage crown the said queen? Hasn't humankind learned anything from our long history of mutual killings, abuse, exploitation, racism and self-serving receipt of divine favoritism and exclusivity? That people can still be drawn to such stupidity and subservience to what amounts to superstitions and wizardry is beyond belief. Whether she was a good person is not the point. 

Meanwhile, the Arab world - particularly the Gulf region - is being invaded and culturally colonized by  Hollywood. Most American television outlets have subsidiary Arabic channels like OSN where insidious propaganda is delivered into the brains of credulous nouveau-riche Arabs who are made to believe that whatever comes out of the United States is beyond question: violence, more violence, and even more violence is served uninterrupted into the living rooms of Arab families. A snapshot of a Saudi living room showing both the viewer and the screen will display an Arab woman with head and face coverings watching a Western superwoman decimating with her machine gun multitudes of enemies often portrayed as an inferior race. You will see American magic and wizardry and superheroes rectifying injustices before devout Muslims devouring American-made chips and sugary soft drinks. 

The submission of entire cultures to the "American way of life" is under question: cheap, mercantile, insidious, void of substance, illusory.... While the consequences have yet to take shape, this process of cultural colonialism is well under way. When you have to borrow someone else's values, you have to kill your own values first to make way. But when that someone else's values have no roots in your own culture, how sturdy is this forced acculturation construct? How long before someone notices that you are building new societies that have not designed the parameters of their own journey? 

May the woman Elizabeth rest in peace. But may Queen Elizabeth and all the medieval charlatanism that escorts the British (Oops.. should I just say English?) monarchy go to hell as far as I am concerned, for the blatant disregard for the historic cultural genocides committed by this cabal won't be forgotten any time soon.

Hezbollah Upset: UN Toughens Conditions in South Lebanon

Amendments to UNIFIL’s Mission: A Warning to Hezbollah
Sunday, 11 September 2022  

Freely translated from the original Arabic by Nazeer Rida and published in: 

https://aawsat.com/home/article/3867186/ لبنان-لتطويق-تداعيات-تعديل-مهام-القوات-الدولية-في-الجنوب

Lebanese authorities are trying to contain the fallout from the amendments introduced by the UN to the mission of the peacekeeping United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in the south of Lebanon under the terms of resolution 2650. Lebanese authorities are warning of the consequences of this amendment, the first since 2006, with the government requesting the UN to maintain the existing rules of engagement in the field, while Hezbollah forcefully attacked these amendments, and said that they “transform the peacekeeping force into a force of occupation”.

On August 31, the Security Council extended UNIFIL’s term for another year after adopting resolution 2650 for 2022, per the request of the Lebanese government. But the resolution included first-time amendments to the mission of UNIFIL, saying “The Council reiterates that UNIFIL does not require prior authorization or permission from anyone to undertake its mandated tasks, and that it is allowed to conduct its operations independently”. The Security Council “called all parties to guarantee UNIFIL’s freedom of movement, including its ability to conduct announced and unannounced patrols. The Council condemns the harassment and intimidation of UNIFIL personnel, as well as the use of disinformation campaigns against peacekeepers,” it added.

The rules of engagement in place since 2006 stipulate that the Lebanese army accompany UNIFIL patrols in its areas of operation in the south. The peacekeepers had been harassed and attacked by citizens in the past for allegedly taking photos of some locations, and because their vehicles have trespassed onto roads they are prohibited from entering.

Lebanese authorities have sought, year after year, to extend the UNIFIL mission without amendments in the mission or troop numbers or areas of deployment. The position was reiterated by President Michel Aoun last June when he said that Lebanon “is committed to the international forces operating in the south and to the positive role they play”. He said his government has decided to “call on the Security Council to extend the peacekeepers’ term for another year without amendments to their mission, operating rationale, and rules of engagement, allowing them to continue to play a vital role in maintaining regional and even international security”.

The amendments, therefore, came as a surprise to Lebanese authorities, prompting them to raise the tone of their warning of the risks entailed by such a move. Lebanese ministerial sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that Lebanon had “renewed its warning of the risks of such a faulty move, as it could lead to clashes between the residents and the peacekeepers, a situation that Lebanon seeks to avoid by running joint patrols with the Lebanese Army in order to eliminate tensions and pretexts for tensions, thus providing ideal conditions for UNIFIL to carry out its work and play its vital role, which is our goal.”

The ministerial sources, however, have denied any diplomatic demarches with the Security Council, and said there were no preparations in this regard. They also said that Lebanon “draws the attention of the Security Council and the UNIFIL to the matter and warned of its consequences on the relations with the residents, stressing the importance of coordination and cooperation with the Lebanese Army.”

Lebanese Army vehicles often accompany UNIFIL patrols in its areas of operation in the south, and about 430 patrols are conducted every day throughout these areas. But the reduced numbers of Lebanese Army soldiers in the south prevent the Army from escorting UNIFIL in all its patrols. And when UNIFIL’s vehicles were aggressed in the past by the residents, they were not accompanied by Lebanese Army vehicles.

Lebanon is trying to contain the fallout from the amendments by adopting field measures, despite the symbolic nature of the amendments from a political perspective. The government has preemptively addressed the UNIFIL command about the issue to prevent any consequences on the ground. Caretaker Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said on Friday, “We agreed with the UNIFIL command that the amendments will not lead to changes in the rules of engagement”, and that “there will be constant exchanges and cooperation with the Lebanese Army”.

Caretaker Defense Minister Maurice Slim met with UNIFIL commander and Head of Mission General Aroldo Lázaro Sáenz on Thursday and emphasized that “coordination between UNIFIL and the army was specified in line with resolutions 425, 426 and 1701”, and stressed the need to maintain coordination and cooperation between the two sides to “preserve calm and stability in the South.”

In parallel with the official actions, Hezbollah slammed the changes in the resolution via Iranian Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei’s legal advisor in Lebanon, Sheikh Mohamed Yazbeck, who asked in his first reaction on Friday, “Who are those responsible for the decision of the Security Council to grant UNIFIL freedom of movement, ask the Lebanese parties to facilitate, and remove the need for the Army’s permission to run its announced and unannounced patrols?” Yazbeck added, “this is an abrogation of previous agreements, and a dangerous development that turns the peacekeeping force into an occupation force whose role is to protect the Israeli enemy by tracking people and the resistance”.

Resolution 2650 requires the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and the UN Secretary General to define specific criteria and timetables for an effective and permanent deployment of the LAF in south Lebanon and the territorial waters of the country. The Security Council also strongly urged the Lebanese government to rapidly deploy a standard contingent of the LAF in the area of operations. The Council also urged the parties to facilitate efforts to clearly delineate the Blue Line and proceed forward in resolving issues of conflict.

Following repeated clashes with the residents, the Council “condemned the harassment and terrorizing of UNIFIL members, and the use of media campaigns of disinformation against the peacekeepers”. It also asked UNIFIL to take measures to identify and combat the disinformation. The Council expressed its concern vis-à-vis developments along the Blue Line, noting the recent installation of containers that restrict the entry of the peacekeepers into sections of the Blue Line or their ability to view them. It also condemned the presence of unlawful weapons under the control of armed groups in UNIFIL’s areas of operation, in a clear reference to Hezbollah.

Aoun Prime Minister (1988) and Aoun President (2016)

Aoun Prime Minister (1988) and Aoun President (2016): Both Products of Geagea’s Personal Greedy Agenda and Lack of Political Vision
Video Transcript – English translation
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/111834/الياس-بجاني-فيديو-ونص-تعليق-عنوانه-عون/
September 10, 2002

From the outset, there is no real difference between Dr. Geagea on one hand, and Aoun and his son-in-law on the other. All three hail from one and the same narcissistic mold, entirely devoid of a national political vision, and their sole interest is lust for power and nothing else. Which is why their political journey has been one of failure with its assortments of catastrophes that have tormented the country for as long as anyone can remember.

Perhaps the single difference between them is that Aoun and his son-in-law have shed all pretenses by blindly subordinating themselves as servile dhimmis to Hezbollah, going so far as to declare their pride openly and shamelessly in doing so. Geagea for his part conceals himself under a cloak of virtuous chastity, all the while trying to outbid the other two in bootlicking Hezbollah under the “Riachi” table in his quest for power, as was apparent in his recent interview with Fadi Abu-Daya on Al-Jadid.

For how can Geagea be against Hezbollah, he who expressed shame in remembering the South Lebanon Army, and who doesn’t have the return of our heroic refugees in Israel as his priority? His shills in his corporate party of the Lebanese Forces, Inc. publicly say that the martyrs of both sides (theirs and Hezbollah’s) are of the same clay, that the Persian party is made of authentic Lebanese fabric that they – Geagea’s Lebanese Forces – are trying to bring back inside the Lebanese house, that Hezbollah has liberated the south, and that their goal is to resolve the conflict with it by dialogue. More dangerous than all of this is that they legitimize Hezbollah’s occupation and hegemony and its Iranian project for Lebanon, by claiming that it is possible to achieve change and liberation and the recovery of decision-making via constitutional mechanisms, including elections and such, while Hezbollah has hijacked the state, the constitution, the institutions, and the authority, and is the ultimate decision-maker.

Let us tease their selective memory by going back to 1988, when Geagea and others obstructed the presidential election to prevent Sleiman Frangiyeh Sr. from acceding to the presidency, thus allowing Aoun to become the Prime Minister of the military government. In 2016, Geagea cloned the same obstructionist and short-sighted scenario by pushing Aoun’s candidacy, backing him, and praising his glorious achievements. He then co-signed with Aoun the Me’raab Memorandum in which they divvied up the booty between themselves, again with the goal of preventing the accession of Sleiman Frangiyeh Jr. to the presidency.

Who knows what Geagea is scheming today to block one more time the election of Sleiman Frangiyeh Jr. to the presidency? Based on his record of recklessness, lack of vision and treasonous behavior, he might as well back the election of Gebran Bassil as president!!!

In sum, and with good conscience, we believe that the leadership of our Maronite parties, namely Geagea, Frangiyeh, Aoun, Bassil, Gemayel Sr. and Jr., has been an abject failure. They have not achieved anything positive to their community, and because of them and their egotism, Lebanon has fallen to occupation, disintegration, and alienation. They all have turned a blind eye to the international resolutions on Lebanon and have indeed become hostile to them, for the simple motive of appeasing Hezbollah.

One of the most preposterous and childish justifications for Geagea’s backing of Aoun’s candidacy to the presidency in 2016 was – according to Geagea’s mouthpieces and close associates – to deal a blow to Aoun’s popular aura and bring his downfall by exposing him. What a mind-blowing strategy! 

But what is the solution? First, we need to rid ourselves of those intellectually-challenged and treasonous leaders. We need leaders with a deep sense of duty and moral responsibility, proponents of sovereignty, who are simply Lebanese patriots. Leaders who request the international community to place Lebanon under Chapter VII of the UN Charter and declare it a failed state, and assign its governance entirely to the hands of the United Nations. Otherwise, Lebanon is condemned to remain a hopeless case.

Let us remember that Lebanon is a sacred shrine whose protection and defense fall to the Maronites. Since Maronite leaders have skirted their responsibilities in this patriotic sacred mission, Lebanon has collapsed and won’t rise from its limbo without the advent of honorable, pious, patriotic Maronite guardians who will defend and protect it.

Hezbollah: Putin is NO LONGER Our Ally

Ever since Vladimir Putin sent his troops to defend the vulgar Syrian tyrant Assad against his people in September 2015, the hordes of the so-called "Resistance Axis" (محور الممناعة) declared that Russia is now a full-fledged member of their Axis, going so far as to give Putin a nom-de-guerre, Abou Ali Putin. Indeed, Russia has air bases and marine bases along the Syrian Mediterranean coast, and the Russian might was unleashed mercilessly against most civilian areas and cities across Syria. The destruction of Syria was the job that Russia carried out specifically to protect, not Syria itself, but the Assad regime. One brutal criminal protecting another brutal criminal.

However, the Resistance Axis, which includes Iran, Assad's Syria, the Iraqi "Popular Mobilization Group" (الحشد الشعبي), the Yemeni Houthis and more importantly Hassan Nasrallah's Hezbollah, has noticed that Israeli officials paid numerous visits to Moscow since 2015 leading to drawing red lines and understandings between Moscow and Tel Aviv over their rules of engagements in the Syrian war zone.

Not one Israeli attack in Syria against Iranian and Hezbollah positions was ever opposed by Russia. Not one. Israeli jets fly over the Mediterranean and strike positions, weapons depots, and convoys of the Resistance Axis, then return safely to Israel. Neither the Syrian cowards dare to defend themselves or respond, nor the Russians care much for these attacks as long as their interests in Syria are preserved.

But the most hilarious of all this is the posture of Hezbollah and its strongman Hassan Nasrallah who has claimed that his gazillion sophisticated rockets pointing at Israel from the Lebanese south have deterred Israel from wantonly attacking Lebanon. While the deterrence, if any, goes both ways (since Hezbollah has refrained from attacking Israel since the 2006 war that left Lebanon in ruins), Israel continues to fly over Lebanese airspace, including occasionally when it is attacking Hezbollah and Iranian targets in Syria, and it continues to occupy the Shebaa Farms which Hezbollah claims as Lebanese territory and as a pretext for its continued "resistance". So what kind of resistance is this that drags on for two decades WITHOUT FIGHTING THE ENEMY?

No one should forget that Hezbollah sent its hordes to fight alongside the Syrian regime throughout the Syrian war, and it has lost thousands of fighters there. So the question is: Why has Hezbollah failed to confront the nearly daily Israeli attacks against its own forces and positions in Syria? Where is the deterrence it claims to have established? The Syrians themselves don't bother either with responding to the Israeli attacks. So what gives?

The answer is that Hezbollah's resistance is a pile of horse manure. Hezbollah doesn't give a damn about Lebanon, its supposedly occupied territory in the south, or about any of the sublime objectives it has claimed for itself. Hezbollah is simply an Iranian tool implanted in Lebanon. With Iran nearing collapse after years of sanctions, it is clinging to tiny shreds of hope for a resolution of the nuclear stalemate with the West, which would liberate its confiscated funds and relaunch its economy. And because of that, Iran has ordered Hezbollah to lay low, take the blows, ignore the resistance BS, and wait for its marching orders from Tehran.

But the hoodlums of the Resistance Axis are itching for action, despite their orders from Tehran. So they have now unleashed their frustration on Vladimir Abou Ali Putin because he is not confronting Israel's attacks near his bases in Syria. Of course, Putin is probably feeling gloomy and hesitant to open another front with the West; he is reeling from the sanctions, he is losing ground and retreating in Ukraine, and given the well-known Russian racism, he is not going to sacrifice his troops for some cowardly Syrians, Iranians and their proxies in Yemen and Lebanon.

Finally, Hassan Nasrallah's eyes are also fixed on his share of the potential windfall from a successful agreement in the indirect Israeli-Lebanese maritime border negotiations. Everything points to a positive development in the gas extraction process off the Israeli and Lebanese offshore platforms, if only for one reason: Europe desperately needs Israeli gas (and potentially Lebanese gas, which is lagging behind), and it will put all its might into a successful outcome of the maritime negotiations. But Putin's ambiguous position vis-a-vis Iran and the Resistance Axis might turn either way. He might try to throw kinks in the Israeli-Lebanese maritime negotiations in order to deprive Europe of an alternative source of gas, which would be to his advantage, but not to Hezbollah's advantage. Which could explain the sudden anti-Putin turnabout in the Resistance Axis ranks. Gotta blame someone else for your own failure.

UNIFIL Mission Expansion: Hezbollah is Unhappy

Al-Markaziyah, 08-Sept-2022  

(Translated from Arabic)

The decision to renew the mandate of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) was not taken this year in a “business as usual” manner. It has raised, and continues to raise, in substance and in form, much controversy. Yesterday, it was reported that the Bustros Palace [Lebanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs] has asked the UN Security Council to delete mention of UN resolutions 1559 and 1680 from the text of the UNIFIL renewal decision as a “goodwill gesture” toward Hezbollah. However, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement in which it said that “Lebanon respects all UN Security Council resolutions and is committed to them. It is out of question that a request was made to delete mention of the aforementioned resolutions as part of the UNIFIL renewal decision issued recently, given that the request to renew UNIFIL’s mission was made by the Lebanese authorities”.

No sooner had this controversy settled that another “hotter” issue was raised. While the official and final text of the renewal decision is not yet available, it was reported today that it includes, for the first time, the consent of the Security Council to expand UNIFIL's mission such that it is now authorized to carry out search operations and patrols within its area of action and without need for prior authorization or assistance from the Lebanese Army.

This expansion of UNIFIL's mandate used to be raised by Washington every year in New York whenever the term of UNIFIL was up for renewal. But Russia and China used to object to it, which prevented its approval by the Security Council. But this time, diplomatic sources tell Al-Markaziyah, the two countries did not object, and in effect the mission and tasks of UNIFIL south of the Litani River have been expanded.

The diplomatic sources also say that this development has irked Hezbollah, which has notified those concerned, primarily domestically, that this move will place UNIFIL in a confrontation with the villagers in the south, and Hezbollah won’t be able to control the situation if UNIFIL crosses red lines and "forbiddens". Hezbollah has also begun its own inquiry with Lebanese government officials about what happened and about those whose dereliction of duty has enabled such a decision by the United Nations.

Yet, what Hezbollah ignores, or chooses to ignore, is that an expansion of UNIFIL’s responsibilities would not have been agreed to by the Security Council if Russia and China wished it otherwise. Which means that this measure constitutes in fact a novel hardening of pressure by these two countries, particularly Moscow, vis-à-vis Hezbollah, leading to further limiting its freedom of action in the south. This posture by the Kremlin is in synch with its position on Israeli raids against Iranian targets in Syria which Russia has neither objected to nor condemned, thus giving it an implicit green light for continued action.

Therefore, the sources conclude, it seems that this UNIFIL mission expansion fits into an international consensus over the need to tighten the screws on Hezbollah and all other Iranian proxies in the region, and is not limited to the situation in the Lebanese south.

Flight of Schoolchildren from Private to Public Schools

It is great news, and while the reasons are financial, it is never too late.

With the collapse of the Lebanese Lira, private (virtually all religious) schools have become too expensive.

Why is it great news? Because the private sector has fought tooth and nail any development and improvement of the public educational system. 

Private schools are basically religious schools affiliated with the religious sects that control every facet of life in Lebanon. Without a religion declared at your birth, you will have no existence as far as the Lebanese State is concerned. The religious sects are like concentration camps in which are herded willy-nilly citizens who have no choice in the matter. Inter-religious marriages continue to face challenges and generally have to be sealed abroad in civil, not religious, proceedings (e.g. in nearby Cyprus). 

Private schools in Lebanon take money from the State to fund their activities, instead of channeling that money to fix public schools. Now that the Lebanese Lira has collapsed, these religious schools (run by nuns and priests for the Christians, and by sheikhs and imams for the Muslims) have to raise their tuition, and oppose any salary increases demanded by their teachers.

In this rigid centralized government, I have no idea why the State, which claims to have a liberal economy, has to tell private schools what to do, what the curriculum is, how much to pay their teachers, and pay them money (supposedly to teach poor children! How Christian!). The reason is because the State has agreed to be at the mercy of the religious establishments, and defers to them in many areas. Typical of vertically stratified societies (banana republics, though I prefer in the Lebanese case to refer to it as a lemon republic) run by wealthy oligarchs and tribal families who sit at the top of the pyramid, while everyone else bottom-feeds from the crumbs. Lebanon is truly like France was in the 1750s: Colluding nobles, religious establishments, and the military, shafting the middle class and the poor every which way you look at it. The difference is that the Lebanese people have no collective sense to mount a serious revolution. They bask in the comfort of their own little sectarian concentration camp.

Funny, in a country where the majority of children are taught in religious schools, many of these children grow up to be corrupt, criminal, warmongering militiamen, disrespectful of their fellow citizens of the "other" religion or sect, drive like maniacs and jeopardize the lives of others, love money above all else, throw garbage everywhere, go to hunting safaris and leave no wild bird or animal alive - apparently they are taught by priests, nuns, sheikhs and the like that God gave man dominion and life-and-death decisions over all other forms of life. All of this explains why the environment is in such sad state of affairs in Lebanon. Soon, the migratory bird season will begin, and all manner of thugs and hoodlums pretending to be professional marksmen will venture into the wild in their boosted 4-wheel drives - in a cheap Hollywood movie imitation - and shoot at anything that moves, and worst of all, they leave mounds of empty plastic cartridges in the woods right where they shot them. Cleaning up after themselves is not what Sister Mary-Archangel or Father Roufayel taught them; instead they told them that the African maid their parents have (and cannot afford her, but it is a status symbol, you see) will always clean after them. 

Not only schools but universities follow the same patterns. Every religious denomination has its own private university, while State universities are in complete disrepair and disarray, managed by political appointees whose merit is no more than their religious affiliation and political background. 

Despite the difficult moment - it seems Lebanon wallows in tragedy and self-mutilation because of a difference in belief in God and his prophets and saints - I am thrilled to see a massive migration of schoolchildren from the private to the public. Perhaps, it will instill a sense of pride to be only Lebanese, and not Protestant or Catholic or Sunni or Shiite Lebanese. Perhaps this will force the government to stop giving taxpayer money to the religious educational cartels and instead fund its own national schools and universities.

Which Lebanon do you Want?

Since 1920 when Greater Lebanon was established as an independent sovereign country, it has operated under a centralized system of government. Because of the religious and sectarian diversity of the society, a tradition of power distribution between the constituent sects evolved and later became a constitutional requirement.

Unfortunately, this system has by and large failed because once you endow a representative of one sect (e.g. Maronite Catholic) with the executive authority of the president, the other sects holding the legislative power (e.g. Shiite Muslim) or the executive authority of a Prime Minister (Sunni Muslim) try to score advantages by undermining the president, especially during unstable times (e.g. Palestinian refugee influx, Syrian refugee influx, regional instability in Israel or Egypt or Syria, etc.).

In essence, there is no national imperative in Lebanon that overrules sectarian imperatives, and the Maronites, who were the founders of Greater Lebanon, see themselves under constant challenge and threat by the Muslim sects. One ought to remember that the Maronites had their own autonomous Mount Lebanon District free of direct Ottoman Turkish rule between roughly 1840 and 1918 and enjoyed an 80% majority. The Muslim regions (Akkar, Hermel, Bekaa, Jabal Amel) and the Muslim cities (Beirut, Tripoli, Sidon and Tyre) originally rejected the idea of joining Greater Lebanon in 1920 and wanted instead to remain part of Syria. But the dominance of the Maronites and their strenuous lobbying at the 1919 Paris Conference forced the attachment of these Syrian Muslim regions to the new and enlarged Greater Lebanon.

It therefore seems that the Muslims never really accepted the idea of modern Lebanon, even though the Maronites ceded major positions of authority (legislative and executive) to the Muslims. Whenever the opportunity presented itself, the Muslims by and large rose up against the established system agreed to in 1920. For example, a mini-civil war erupted in 1958 when the Sunnis, backed by Arab nationalist Abdel-Nasser of Egypt, challenged the Maronite President. Then in 1961, a Syria-affiliated party (the SSNP, Syrian Social Nationalist Party) mounted a failed coup d'etat. Again, when the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was founded by Yasser Arafat in 1965 and established its headquarters in Beirut in 1970, the Sunnis used the military capabilities of the Palestinians to challenge the Maronites in the 1975 War, leading to the 1989 Taif Agreement in which the Maronite President lost most of his authority to the advantage of the Sunni Muslim Prime Minister. Finally, the Shiites (Hezbollah and the Amal Movement) are nowadays inspired and funded by the Islamic Republic of Iran to challenge the new status quo and appear to be aiming to seize power and push both the Maronites and the Sunnis into second status.

What next for Lebanon? Is there a form or system of government that can accommodate the sectarian divisions of the country while at the same time ensuring some long-term stability, instead of ricocheting from one crisis to another? Discussions these days have reached a crescendo, with the Maronites sick and tired of the continuous challenges raised by the Muslims. If the Muslims want Lebanon to become a strictly Muslim country lording it over the Christians as a "tolerated" (Dhimmi) minority, you can rest assured that the Maronites will not agree and will do everything in their power to make that option impossible. The Maronites are finally beginning to take stock of the huge mistake the Maronite Church made in 1920 with the creation of Greater Lebanon, and options they are considering range from another form of accommodation with the Muslims to a pure and simple separation that would require the partition of the country and a return to the smaller and predominantly Christian Mount Lebanon.

The Maronite Patriarch is calling for an internationally-sponsored neutrality of Lebanon with the Swiss model in mind (and without calling for a change in the system), hoping that neutrality would put a distance between the country and the centripetal regional forces that keep tempting the Muslims and dislocating the country. I fear that the Patriarch and his Church are, again, improvising, without an ounce of strategic thinking. Just as they insisted in 1920 on an enlarged Lebanon where they, the Christians, became a minority, this idea of neutrality is as stupid as the Bronze Age biblical texts on which much of the monotheistic fiction and its devastating consequences are based.  To declare you want neutrality is not sufficient, because you would need the Muslims' consent to it, a very unlikely scenario. Neutrality is not part of the Muslim codex, for Islam - just like Judaism - divides the world into us versus them (Dar al-Islam vs. Dar Al-Harb, or Land of Islam vs. Land of war; In Judaism, it is Jews vs. Gentiles).  As far as I know, there are no self-declared neutral Muslim countries anywhere in the world, just as Israel as a "Jewish-only" state can never by definition be neutral. Islam, like Judaism, appear to be intrinsically counter to the idea of separating religion from political authority, an idea which neutrality takes to another height because it implies a dissociation of Lebanese Muslims from other Muslim "causes" (e.g. the Palestinian Cause) to which they are constantly drawn.

Below is a list of the systems of government to which countries with inborn diversity resort in order to manage their lives with reasonable stability and success. Lebanon today functions with a centralized system where all sects must be represented by convoluted and inefficient mechanisms in which unqualified people of the right sect are assigned their positions. As you witness the death of the diverse Greater Lebanon, what system of government do you think works best to reach a point where life can become normal again in a Lebanon that has been in constant torment since it was born in 1920?

Centralized System: A form of government in which both executive and legislative power are concentrated in a central authority (a person, a government) and are not distributed to local or regional authorities. In a national context, centralization occurs with the granting of power to a unitary sovereign nation state. Example: France, Lebanon.

Decentralization: The act of removing specific functions of government from the immediate control of the central authority and delegating them to local branches or governments. This is one of the most debated options for Lebanon, with a preference by Muslims to limit it to "administrative decentralization", while the Christians call for a broader form of decentralization that includes financial and even military aspects.

Federation: Two or more "states" or "provinces" relinquish their own sovereignty to the advantage of the federal government. In a federation, membership of the constituent states is not voluntary, i.e. a state or province cannot secede at will from the federation. Examples: Germany, the United States.

Confederation: Two or more "states" or "provinces" come together voluntarily, but without ceding their individual sovereignty. A confederation may be viewed as the union by compact or treaty of states or provinces that creates a central government with limited powers; the constituent entities retain supreme authority over all matters except those delegated to the central government. Example: Switzerland

Cantonization: It is not a form of government, it is simply the division of a territory into smaller units called cantons. Once the cantons are formed within a territory, they still have to decide whether to remain sovereign and separate, or become a federation or a confederation.

Autonomous regions: An autonomous region is neither independent nor sovereign, but it has control over some of its affairs and has the freedom to make decisions independent of the government of the larger political entity to which it belongs. Autonomous regions are sections of a nation that have a degree of independence in making decisions pertaining to specific local issues. (See: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/121-autonomous-regions-in-40-countries/1563764 for a list of such regions around the world).

Partition: Division of a sovereign country or nation into two or more separate sovereign countries or nations. Example: India and Pakistan were born out of the partition of the British-ruled Indian subcontinent in 1947.

Unique cases that do not fall into the above categories: The United Kingdom. Though a union between Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland, the UK is not easily classified into any of the categories above. It is neither a federation, nor a confederation, and is not a centralized state since each of the member countries has its own parliament and institutions.

Whence Europe

Below are historic distortions of the name “Phoenicians” that the Helleno-centric Western racists refuse to acknowledge. It would be demeaning for these racists to give credit to the Phoenicians as the source and origin of Greek culture. Yet, evidence continues to pour in. See for example Carolina Lopez-Ruiz’s latest masterpiece (2021), “Phoenicians and the Making of the Mediterranean” in which she attacks the biased and vague Eurocentric claims that western civilization suddenly and spontaneously arose somewhere on a Greek island. Yet, no civilization or culture is an island, and while the West continues to fail to recognize that the Phoenicians were hundreds of years earlier than the Greeks propagating the foundations of Western civilization, there is no doubt that the Phoenicians themselves were also learning from other near-eastern cultures as they laid the foundations of all Mediterranean cultures. At least the Greeks themselves recognize that Europe was a Phoenician princess, and her myth as a founder of the European continent is a testament to the Phoenician foundation of Greek culture.

French/English
Phéaciens / Pheaceans
Phocéens / Phoceans
Puniques / Punic
Phéniciens / Phoenicians
Phrygiens / Phrygians
Carthaginois / Carthagenian
Ituréens / Itureans (From the region of Iturea in modern-day Italy)
Etrusques / Etruscans (From the region of Etruria in Italy facing the Tyrrhanean Sea, a name itself suggesting Tyrian, from the city of Tyre)

-... the last writings of the Etruscans, the Etrusca Disciplina, their books of cult and divination, were collected and burned in the 5th century by the first Christians who, like Daesh/ISIS today, were radical terrorists rampaging, killing and destroying all aspects (temples, books, scientists, etc.) of civilizations preceding Christianity (see for example the story of Hypatia of Alexandria). (see also: http://www.realhistoryww.com/world_history/ancient/Etruria_the_Etruscans_1.htm).

- “The origins of the Etruscans, a non-Indo-European population of preclassical Italy, are unclear.”… “Genetic distances and sequence comparisons show closer evolutionary relationships with the eastern Mediterranean shores for the Etruscans than for modern Italian populations” ( American Journal of Human Genetics, 2004 Apr; 74(4): 694-704: The Etruscans: A population-genetic study)

- Tuscans are the Etruscans’ closest neighbors in terms of genetic distance. The Etruscans called themselves "Rasenna" which was syncopated to Rasna or Raśna [likely from the Semitic/Phoenician root RAS, head, chief… later giving Raj, Rex, etc..).

Other Greek names with Phoenician origins

Phocida or Focida in today’s central Greece

Phocis was an ancient region in the central part of ancient Greece, which included Delphi, a city visited by Cadmus, Europe’s brother, who was sent by his father, the King of Tyre (today’s Lebanon) to look for his sister. In Delphi, Cadmus was given a cow by Pelagon, King of Phocis, and it guided him to Boeotia, where he founded the city of Thebes.

Phocaea (modern-day Foça in Turkey) was an ancient city on the western coast of Anatolia. Colonists from Phocaea founded the colony of Massalia (modern-day Marseille, in France) in 600 BC. In Semitic/Phoenician, “Marsa-El” means “Harbor of God”, equivalent to “Gotenhafen” in today’s Poland.