Saturday, November 25, 2006

Conditions not right for civil war-Kamal Salibi

So my family went to pay their respects to The Gemayel's again. They went together, my Dad' brother and his wife, his sister and her son, and his other sister. Kamal Salibi also joined them. Salibi is a prominent Lebanese historian who wrote numerous books analyzing the civil war as well as other middle easter issues. Salibi said that the conditions here are night ripe for a civil war. In the lead up to the 1975-90 civil war, Christians wanted an independent Lebanon (among other things, but as a central tenet), Muslims wanted to do away with a Lebanese state and join a grater Arabia. On top of this, the Russians were arming the Palestinians as well as the Lebanese Communist Party and Ba'athist parties both which had a strong Shi'ite following, the Sunnis were using the Palestinians as their army and the Christians recieved their arms from the west and eventually Israel.
But now, the only sect with arms is Hezbollah, so how can there be a civil war?
Now all sects believe in an independent Lebanon, so there is no fight over that notion. But is Hezbollah a little too close to Iran to really look out for Lebanon's best interests?What do you think?

Also, updates for today. Prime minister Siniora decided not to hold a cabinet meeting today, which would have been unconstitutional since all the Shi'ite MPs resigned and the sect is not represented. He decided to appeal for the resigned MPs to rejoin cabinet:

From Naharnet.com
http://www.naharnet.com/domino/tn/NewsDesk.nsf/getstory?openform&08B60D66F597A178C2257231002C8360

And, Berri and Nasrallah just announced their support of the International tribunal to try those that are suspected in the Feb. 14, 2005 assassination of fromer PM Rafik Hariri. The related artcle's link isn't copying so I can't paste it here. Just click on the above link and look at the box to the right of the article, which lists other available articles. Click on the one "Nasrallah, Berri Support Tribunal, Renew Threats of Protests."

Big day in the Middle Beast

Hezbollah is now considering the ME to be the MB--Middle Beast.

BAHRAIN:
Another interesting development is the elections in Bahrain which reflects what's happening in Lebanon right now--Shi'ites demanding more power in a government that treats them as a minority when they are a majority. Bahrani Shi'ites comprise 60% of the population. The al-Khalifi monarchy is Sunni and the king appoints the upper-house of parliament, which has all the legislative control. Today elections are being held for the lower house, which is more symbolic than productive. The upper house is full of Sunni legislators and due to the demography, the lower house if filled with Shi'ites. Salah al-Bandar, a government advisor, wrote a report in September detailing the government's plans to taper with electronic voting, naturalize Sunni immigrants, pay Shi'ites to convert to Sunni-Islam and the government dished out $2.5 million dollars to implement its plans, in a country where rampant, especially among Shi'ites as Sunnis are favoured for government jobs and many businesses are Sunni-run.

Article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/24/AR2006112401292.html?nav=hcmodule
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/25/world/middleeast/25bahrain.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin

IRAQ:
With over 200 killings by Sunni militias of Shi'ites in Sadr city, reatliatory strikes were bound to happen. Moutqtada Sadr, who controls the Mahdi army and is a prominent politician in P.M. Nouri Maliki's government, is warning Maliki not to meet Bush next week in talks to take place in Amman. Also, Sadr is threatening to pull out of the Iraqi government, which would cirpple a weak government. Bush is pressuring Maliki to crack down on Shi'ite militias, but if Maliki does so, the government will crack. Not only does Sadr have one of the biggest militas, but the Finance Minister, Bayan Jabr does too. Jabr--who up until May 2006 was interior minister and then was appointed as minister of finance--often employed Shi'ites in the force and uses them as death squads. This is why all these reports are surfacing of the Iraqi police force killing innocent Sunnis, who at first trusted the state employees, but have learnt to do otherwise. Harper's Magazine, in a report that detailed Jabr's role, even calls him the 'Minister of Civil War,' (article below).

Update on current violence and Sadr's demands:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/24/AR2006112401317.html?referrer=email

Information from a Harper articel back in July about Shi'ite death squads and Jabr's bllod-stained, corrupt hands that were strengthened through Paul Bremer, the leader of the Coalition Authority Provisional Government.

http://www.harpers.org/the-minister-of-civil-war-399309.html

I find that newspapers, especially American, have been honest to their readers. Iraq is in a civil war, and many generals, reporters and analysts believe so as well. The Harper's article above proves that the internal conflict is a civil war, especially when the Washington Post reports:
"In a major shift, much of the recent violence has come from militias linked to parties in Iraq's government and from death squads with ties to government agencies. The trend is important because a common benchmark in the slide from strife to civil war is the government falling apart and factions within it fighting each other.
cowardice journalism."--http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/24/AR2006112400203.html?nav=hcmoduletmv

Yet Jabr's involvement with the death squads has gone way back. So why can't we call it like it is and say there's a civil war in Iraq? And like Lebanon in its 1975-90 civil war, there are regional powers fighting proxy wars on Iraqi land.

SAUDI/AMERICA:
American Vice President Dick Cheney visits Saudi Arabia today. He hopes to convince the monarchy to play a bigger role in quelling Iraqi violence through their ties to the Sunni population. This shows a significant change in U.S. foreign policy--instead of America forming alliances with European powers to fix the situation in the Middle East, it now is seeking the advice of the corrupt dictactorial Arab regimes it supports.

From Reuters:
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-11-25T125639Z_01_N24372732_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-MIDEAST-USA.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsHome-C3-politicsNews-2

Silencers mailed to the U.S. embassy before Gemayel's death

So, with my ear on the ground (well, with Hicham's help), I recovered an interesting tid-bit of information.
A couple of weeks ago, gun silencers were intercepted in the Lebanese airport. They were headed to the American embassy.
Around the same time, Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea, intalks with Rice, announced that a Lebanese minister would be assassinated. And then, Pierre Gemayel dies with a silencer.
This was reported by Al-Akhbar. It's in Arabic, but you can get someone to translate?

http://al-akhbar.com/ar/node/9994
http://al-akhbar.com/ar/node/10000

I like to keep my options open. Of course no one did it, but there are so many interesting coincidences that are surrounding this death.

Also, who knows? During Clinton's era, Clinton ordered the CIA declassified information from the past forty years, much of it revelaing Regan's support of bloody regimes through U.S.-backed coups of democratic governments. And we found that the CIA has taken out Salvador Allende, the democratically elected leader of Chile, replaced him with Pinochet, took out democratically elected Pres. Arbenz to install a ruthless regime that served American banana companies interests, were involved with Nicaragua's sadinistas, and the Iran-contra scandal? Oh how the U.S. still reveres the Regan years though. And they still hail him as one of the best U.S. presidents ever, yet he was involed with all the above scandals except the one in Guatemala (which happened in 1953). U.S.-caused, hush-hush bloodshed, scandals and assassinations have happened in the past, so why not now, in Lebanon?

Links to U.S. scandals mentioned above. Remember that these sources stem from information that the CIA declassified. If they were untrue, they'd be taken off the net for libel or never would have been published as a book:

Installing Pinochet:
From George Washinton Univ. :
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20000919/
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/nsaebb8.htm

Guatemala: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/Guatemala_KH.html
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/34.1/streeter.html

Interesting devlopments

Interior Minister Hassan Sabaa, who resigned nine months ago, has decided to resume his position. This is a definite boost for Siniora's cabinet, which is down to 17 ministers from 24. Sabaa decided that due to the volatile political situation he's resume his duties. Only one more minister needs to resign or be assassinated for the government to fall. With Sabaa's inclusion inthe cabinet, now two more ministers need to be knocked-off. Sabaa resigned after bloody riots that took place concerning the Dutch cartoon that mocked the prophet Mohammed.
Odd thins is that this country is in an extremely precariou political situation and we've had no Interior Minister for the past 9-months, after the many assassinations that took place? That's extremely odd.
The article:
http://www.naharnet.com/domino/tn/NewsDesk.nsf/getstory?openform&A3F1CADD0E35E0DDC22572300029C59B

In other news, clashes are breaking out between the supporters of Hezbollah and Hariri (Future movement).
http://dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=77131

The streets are politically charged and really anything can spark another war. Not everyone in Lebanon has the benefits of education so they can't see that actions such as bashing a politican or sect is really not the most ideal action at this precarious moment. Especially when Hezbollah and Aoun announced that they will start protesting maybe as early as the begining of this week. They are protesting for a national unity government:

http://dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=77158


This is laughable:

http://www.naharnet.com/domino/tn/NewsDesk.nsf/getstory?openform&A3F1CADD0E35E0DDC22572300029C59B

I mean c'mon! Businesses closing for two days because they're protesting the assassinations, a push for the international tribunal (to nail hariri's assassins) and civil protests that are deteriorating the economy? Sound counter-productive.