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World Focus: What Now For Lebanon?
Wednesday, January 19 @ 14:39:08 UTC |  By Franklin Lamb
January 19, 2010 - almanar.com.lb
Informed Congressional sources in Washington DC on 1/15/11 are confirming that the White House has informed Congressional Committee Chairpersons and American allies that the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) will indict Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Wali al Faqih (jurisconsult or Supreme Religious Leader) for issuing the order to assassinate Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
The US and Israel believe Iran’s motive was that PM Hariri was considered a serious threat to Tehran and Damascus because their intelligence agencies established that Hariri was conspiratorially linked to Saudi Arabia, France and the United States—and by extension, Israel.
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World Focus: What's Next in Lebanon?
Friday, January 14 @ 09:45:52 UTC | Why Hezbollah Walked
By Franklin Lamb
January 14, 2011 - counterpunch.org
"In case no one has noticed, the Obama administration just gifted Lebanon to Iran. Washington earlier presented Iraq, Afghanistan, the Gulf, and Pakistan. Could it be more clear that Iran's strategic trump card is America's subservience to Israel? For Iran, Israel's strangle hold on the US government is the gift that keeps on giving." With his comment, my neighbor, Lebanese Human Rights Ambassador Ali Khalil, declared American hegemony in the region was on a slippery and descending slope and that yesterday's political maneuvering in Lebanon likely accelerated American withdrawal.
My other neighbors in South Beirut appeared to go to bed early last night following the day's events which saw the collapsed of Lebanon's US-Saudi and Israeli backed government. Some, like my American and Lebanese roommates were planning for quick evacuations should our Hezbollah neighborhood-watch guys give us that special knock on the door. Two rapid raps and a shouted "Yalla!" (Let's go) and it's time to head north fast without looking back. The reason is because, like many here, some neighbors fear Israel might use this latest government crisis to invade Lebanon again.
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War and Terror: Bourj el-Barajneh: Searching for Meaning in a Refugee Camp
Friday, August 13 @ 09:25:52 UTC | By Ramzy Baroud – Beirut, Lebanon
August 13, 2010
Two young girls stood, as if frozen, starting below them at an ever vibrant Beirut. Their balcony, like the rest of their house and most of their refugee camp was of an indistinct color. It was dirty, as were their clothes. They, on the other hand, looked beautiful and bright, although their future didn’t.
Here in Bourj el-Barajneh, one of a dozen Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, time seems to have stood still for years. Generation after generation, children grow up in the same desperate reality, punished for crimes they did not commit, injured by a history not of their making. They stand on dirty balconies, cracked beyond repair, watching Beirut and the world go by.
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War and Terror: Who's Behind the Fighting in North Lebanon?
Saturday, May 26 @ 16:38:56 UTC | Inside Narh al-Bared and Bedawi Refugee Camps
By Franklin Lamb, counterpunch.org
Tripoli, Lebanon.
May 24, 2007
Wearing a beat-up ratty UNCHR tee-shirt left over from Bint Jbeil and the Israeli-Hezbollah July probably helped. As did, I suspect, the Red Cross jersey, my black and white checkered kaffieyh and the Palestinian flag taped to my lapel as I joined a group of Palestinian aid workers and slipped into Nahr el-Bared trying not to look conspicuous.
Our mission was to facilitate the delivery of food, blankets and mattresses, but I was also curious about the political situation. Who was behind the events that erupted so quickly and violently following a claimed 'bank robbery'? A heist that depending on who you talked to, netted the masked bandits $150,000, $1,500 or $150!
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War and Terror: Hypocrisy in Middle East
Monday, October 09 @ 16:48:05 UTC | By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
October 09, 2006
Within recent times, it has been suggested that the international community is angered that the Islamic Republic of Iran has "enriched uranium" that may lead to Iran eventually possessing a nuclear bomb.
The notion has also been bandied about that the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has publicly stated that, "Israel should be wiped off the map."
While the latter is steeped in largely misunderstood historical precedents, however, another variable must be factored in, that is, the State of Israel is the only supreme nuclear power in the Middle East. In addition, Israel has been posited to serve, protect and defend American and European interests in that region ever since its formation on 14 May, 1948.
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War and Terror:
Sunday, October 08 @ 07:53:01 UTC | By Stephen Gowans, gowans.blogspot.com
In 1928 a treaty was signed in Paris to renounce war among nations as an instrument of foreign policy. It was known as the Kellogg-Briand Pact.
Sixty-two nations signed onto the pact, including the United States and France, the driving forces behind the treaty.
It's hard to say whether the pact was an exercise in gross naiveté or demagogic disingenuousness, but whatever the case, its destiny as an apparently well-intentioned though doomed attempt at peace-keeping became clear when the signatories added escape clauses that would free them from the inconvenience of actually having to live up to the treaty's terms.
The US exempted any action taken to maintain the Monroe Doctrine, the doctrine by which it justified its domination of Latin America.
France exempted wars of self-defense (a suitably ambiguous proviso offering maximal latitude for manoeuvre.)
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War and Terror: Bush Demands Lebanese Commit Suicide
Tuesday, September 19 @ 03:02:20 UTC | By Kurt Nimmo, kurtnimmo.com
Hassan Nasrallah understands what will happen to the people of Lebanon if Hezbollah disarms. In 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon, 20,000 Palestinians and Lebanese were slaughtered and 400,000 were made homeless. "The tonnages dropped on Beirut alone surpassed those of the atomic bomb which devastated Hiroshima. Schools and hospitals were particularly targeted," writes Ralph Schoenman, who experienced the carnage firsthand. "Virtually all rolling stock and heavy equipment from Lebanese factories were looted and taken to Israel… The citrus and olive production of Lebanon south of Beirut was destroyed. The Lebanese economy, whose exports had competed with Israel's, became moribund."
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War and Terror: To Protect Lebanon, Sue Israel for War Crimes
Wednesday, September 06 @ 03:03:02 UTC | By Ahmed Amr, dissidentvoice.org
Against all odds, Ehud Olmert and Hassan Nasrallah are finally on the same page. On the one hand, we have Nasrallah admitting that he never would have ordered the detention of two Israeli soldiers if he knew that it would lead to a major outbreak of hostilities. The Hezbollah leader had no intention of igniting a war -- he simply wanted to arrange a prisoner exchange. And from Olmert, we have a pretty clear statement that the war had nothing to do with releasing the two Israeli captives. In fact, the invasion was a pre-planned event with very specific goals and a battle plan ready to go at the slightest provocation.
To justify his decision to go to war before the Israeli cabinet, Olmert made a startling confession. "If someone would have told me a month and a half ago that there would be a multinational force and Lebanese army presence in the south, that UN Security Council resolution 1559 would begin to be implemented, that the UN secretary-general would says that the multinational force could disarm Hezbollah, that there would be an arms embargo in Lebanon, observation of crossings, and all this while the IDF sat in Lebanon without being dragged into combat, despite a continued aerial and naval blockade -- I would have said he was dreaming and that he shouldn't try to set unrealistic objectives. These are, at least in part, the objectives that we set at the beginning of the war. There are additional factors that supplement these objectives."
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War and Terror: Neolib Vultures Perch Over Lebanon
Saturday, August 26 @ 15:20:33 UTC | By Kurt Nimmo, kurtnimmo.com
It is a classic case of adding insult to injury—or maybe usury and theft to injury. "Upcoming donor meetings to raise funds for rebuilding war-damaged Lebanon could be an opening for Western lenders to look for fresh commitments from Beirut to resume politically difficult economic reforms," reports Reuters. "Western lenders are signaling they are willing to help with overall economic support if Lebanon agrees to adopt reforms, possibly seeking an International Monetary Fund program as a signal of its commitment to reform and to frame how donor money could be best used."
Of course, we know what "reforms" mean in the context of IMF and World Bank "help," the latter now headed up by the neocon Paul Wolfowitz—it means Structural Adjustment Policies, of SAPs, requiring nations to reduce spending on things such as health care, education, and other social programs in order to ensure debt repayment and economic restructuring. "Debt is an efficient tool. It ensures access to other peoples’ raw materials and infrastructure on the cheapest possible terms," writes Susan George. It results in, as David C. Korten explains, a "race to the bottom."
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War and Terror: An Open Letter to George W. Bush on Lebanon
Wednesday, August 16 @ 19:12:59 UTC | Telling the Israelis to "Take Your Time"
By Ralph Nader, counterpunch.org
The widespread destruction of a defenseless Lebanon-its civilians, its life-sustaining public services, its environment-is a grim and indelible testament to your consummate cruelty and ignorance. Nearly two weeks ago when your tardy Secretary of State met with the Israeli Prime Minister, the message she carried was summarized in a large headline across page one of an Israeli newspaper, "TAKE YOUR TIME."
Yes, take your time, says George W. Bush, pulverizing fleeing refugees in cars full of families, bombing apartment buildings, hospitals and the poor huddled in large south Beirut slums.
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War and Terror: U.S. Helped Plan Israeli Attack on Lebanon
Tuesday, August 15 @ 20:16:59 UTC | Seymour Hersh: U.S. Helped Plan Israeli Attack, Cheney "Convinced" Assault on Lebanon Could Serve as Prelude to Preemptive Attack on Iran
By DemocracyNow.org
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reports in this week's issue of the New Yorker that Israeli officials visited the White House earlier this summer to get a "green light" for an attack on Lebanon. The Bush administration approved, Hersh says, in part to remove Hezbollah as a deterrent to a potential US bombing of Iran.
AMY GOODMAN: Seymour Hersh is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. He joins us in Washington, D.C. His latest piece is called "Watching Lebanon: Washington's Interests in Israel's War." We welcome you to Democracy Now!, Seymour Hersh.
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War and Terror: Starving Babies and Making Lebanon Dark
Thursday, August 10 @ 03:05:10 UTC | By Kurt Nimmo, kurtnimmo.com
It should be obvious by now Israel intends to ethnically cleanse southern Lebanon, all the way up to the Litani River where the United Nations proposed rebuilding a bridge in order to deliver humanitarian aid. "UN officials contacted the Israeli army to inform them that a team of Chinese military engineers attached to the UN force in Lebanon intended to repair the bridge on the Beirut to Tyre road to enable the transport of humanitarian supplies," reports the Guardian. "According to the UN, Israeli officials said the engineers would become a target if they attempted to repair the bridge."
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War and Terror: The fifty-percent solution: Catastrophe by the numbers
Tuesday, August 08 @ 17:29:47 UTC | By Chris Floyd, Empire Burlesque
Two telling stories came over the transom this week - seemingly unrelated, except tangentially, as both deal with different aspects of the fiasco in Iraq. Yet together they provide an illuminating glimpse - like a discarded corpse revealed by a lightning flash - of the moral horror that George W. Bush and his sycophants have wrought both in Iraq and the United States.
First, from the Catholic News Service: "Half of All Christians Have Fled Iraq Since 2003, Says Baghdad Bishop." Excerpt:
Chaldean Catholic Auxiliary Bishop Andreos Abouna of Baghdad said that before the invasion there were about 1.2 million Christians in the predominantly Shiite Muslim state. Since then the overall number has dropped to about 600,000, he said. "What we are hearing now is the alarm bell for Christianity in Iraq," the bishop said. "When so many are leaving from a small community like ours, you know that it is dangerous -- dangerous for the future of the church in Iraq."
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War and Terror: Making the Rubble Bounce in Lebanon
Friday, August 04 @ 11:32:56 UTC | By Kurt Nimmo, kurtnimmo.com
According to a report posted on the Reuters site, Israel has threatened to "destroy Lebanon's infrastructure if Hizbollah fires rockets at Tel Aviv as Hizbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah threatened on Thursday, a senior Israeli defense source told Israel's Channel One television."
Excuse me, but it seems Israel has already done a mighty effective job of destroying Lebanon's infrastructure. I guess the 60 bridges and 70 roads destroyed, the taking out of Beirut's airport, the destruction of power plants, the fuel tanks and gas stations bombed, the food warehouses, dams, schools, television and radio stations, churches, mosques, hospitals, ambulances, and the thousands and thousands of homes targeted and destroyed are not, according to the Israelis, part of Lebanon's critical infrastructure.
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Israel-Palestine: Ground war grinds to unexpected halt
Sunday, July 30 @ 11:16:39 UTC | By Raffique Shah
War is hell, says an adage that rings truer today than when it was first coined, maybe centuries ago. And in war, truth is the first casualty-another adage that has remained unchanged from the primitive period, when giant catapults were the weapons of choice, to today's not-so-smart bombs that seem to have an uncanny honing ability in favour of unarmed civilians over combatants. Still, for all its brutality and its inhumanity, war holds a perverse fascination for those who were schooled in military history, strategy and tactics. This personal background brings me back to the deepening conflict in the Middle-East that seems poised to plunge the world into a cataclysm last experienced in World War II, which few alive today experienced or remember.
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