Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, General Secretary of Hizballah, is the leader of a movement claiming to fight for the right of self-determination, in the same way that Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela were leaders of movements that claimed similar ends. However, Nasrallah will likely not be elevated to the status of a Gandhi, Mandela or other leaders of resistance movements of our time, nor will he be given the same revere and respect. Rather, he will be remembered as a violent man, a terrorist, appearing angry in pictures rather than with his innocent, almost childlike smile. Read more about Judging Hassan Nasrallah
Israel’s supposedly “defensive” assault on Hizbullah last summer, in which more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians were killed in a massive aerial bombardment that ended with Israel littering the country’s south with cluster bombs, was cast in a definitively different light last week by Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert. His leaked testimony to the Winograd Committee — investigating the government’s failures during the month-long attack — suggests that he had been preparing for such a war at least four months before the official casus belli: the capture by Hizbullah of two Israeli soldiers from a border post on 12 July 2006. Read more about Olmert's leaked testimony reveals real goal of summer war
BEIRUT: Nothing encourages artists to produce better work than competition. Last summer, for 34 days straight, two artists - one holed up in Achrafieh and the other holed up in Sin al-Fil - made drawing after drawing. When the power supply was on, they posted their pieces online, filling their respective blogs with diary-like accounts of living through the war in Lebanon. They each checked out the other’s work, as they each wondered how the other would respond to the day. Sometimes they felt the satisfaction of seeing a particularly trenchant piece of work. Read more about Satisfaction, frustration and pride
Arab regimes and the United States are rushing to shore up Siniora’s government. On January 25, the same day of the bloody protests and curfew in Beirut, Siniora attended a donors conference in Paris, where he received pledges of $7.6 billion in aid and loan guarantees. Some of the funding will go toward reconstruction after last summer’s war, but much of it will be used to make interest payments and refinance Lebanon’s crushing $41 billion public debt. The country’s debt-to-GDP ratio is now about 180 percent—the second-highest in the world (after Malawi). A large proportion of the pledges received at the Paris III conference are tied to unpopular economic reforms that Siniora has vowed to undertake, including raising taxes and privatizing state assets. Most of these measures—such as raising gasoline surcharges and the value-added tax—will most heavily affect Lebanon’s poor and working classes, who are disproportionately Shiite. Read more about Blowback in Lebanon
On the streets of Beirut, a vernacular of graffiti, political posters, cloth banners and stenciled portraits of leaders and martyrs — and the effacement thereof, whether intentionally or through natural causes — produces a lively debate. Various individuals and groups effectively claim existence, label their territories, as well as write and re-write their histories — Lebanon has no one history. I refer to this as a “debate” because of this back and forth, of placement and replacement, which lies in stark contrast to the monologue that rises above buildings and highways, the one-way beaming of high-priced messages as represented by billboards and advertising space. Read more about Brand America: Of False Promises and Snake Oil
Listen to an interview with Bilal El-Amine on KPFA’s Flashpoints. This interview outlines the realities of the general strike called by Lebanon’s opposition movement lead by Hezbollah and the Free Patriotic Movement. This interview addresses the central political demands of the Lebanese opposition, which center on the neo-liberal economic policies of the current Lebanese government backed by international financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank. Bilal El-Amine also addresses the connections between the current Lebanese opposition movement and the 2006 Israeli strike on Lebanon. Read more about Audio Report: General Strike 2007
On January 23, 2007, the Lebanese opposition shut down the entire country, pummeling heavy black smoke over its skies and sending the entire country into an economic standstill. It was and is a top-down “democratic” movement, nonviolent in its intent, but with empty demands; this primarily because of a fundamental flaw in the system that requires any opposition to build coalitions of national unity, thus forced to share power with former and current thieves and murderers, and making higher demands a form of political suicide. The day’s event leaves one with a feeling of the surreal and a sense of absurdity. And how does one begin to recount the surreal, the absurd? Read more about Is a Military Government our only Choice?
BEIRUT: As the Hizbullah-led opposition forces move on Tuesday to launch a general strike that promises to paralyze the country, officials within the ruling parliamentary majority have urged Lebanese to ignore the calls for a work stoppage. After almost two months of an opposition sit-in in the heart of the capital aimed at bringing down the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, the campaign has progressed to ambitions of paralyzing the periphery of the capital and the rest of the country. However, Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah vowed on Monday that “we will not raise arms against anyone.” Read more about Siniora Cabinet girds for rough ride as opposition launches general strike
Ever since Hezbollah and its allies began an open-ended protest against the US-backed government on December 1, Beirut’s gilded downtown—built for wealthy Lebanese and foreign tourists—has become more authentically Lebanese. Where Persian Gulf sheiks once ate sushi, families now sit in abandoned parking lots, having impromptu picnics, the smell of kebabs cooked over coals wafting through the air. Young men lounge on plastic chairs, smoking apple-scented water pipes, and occasionally break out into debke, the Lebanese national dance. Read more about People's Revolt in Lebanon
Throughout much of the Arab world, Hezbollah is being celebrated as the champion that was, at long last, able to establish a victory over invincible Israel and its omnipotent western backers. In the Middle East, Hezbollah’s victory has energized movements against imperialism and its system of client regimes. In Canada, Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. It is thus illegal to “participate in or contribute to, directly or indirectly, any activity” of this Lebanese political party or even to urge anyone to act in a way that could be construed as benefiting Hezbollah. Read more about Selectively Terrified
