Archive for Politics
April 12, 2011 at 12:46 pm · Filed under Politics ·Tagged Conservative, Democrat, Joseph Farah, Lebanon, politics, Republican, WorldNetDaily
Purveyor of extreme right-wing sludge, Lebanon's own Joseph Farah.
We Lebanese love extremes; hell, the most famous triviality about our country – that you can ski and swim in the same day – implies our extreme geography.
In fact, we love extremes in every aspect of our lives, from politics – we haven’t had a government in months – to plastic surgery – have you seen some of the freak shows walking around ABC mall lately?
So is it any surprise that our exports are also extreme?
Today the news/culture website Salon posted an article about the editor of extremist American website WorldNetDaily, one Joseph Farah, an American of Lebanese and Syrian ancestry. The site, which is so glaringly conservative it has even come under fire from Republicans, regularly posts blaring falsehoods about Democratic politicians and their “agendas,” and simply brushes criticism under the carpet without admitting its “mistakes.”
Farah confessed to the author of Salon’s piece that he posts misinformation, and then proceeded to call him a “punk” and a “worm.”
My question is, what is it about Lebanese Americans and extremist ideology? First Brigitte Gabriel and now this guy. I guess it’s just a case of: You can take the Lebanese out of Lebanon, but you can’t take the Lebanon out of the Lebanese.
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March 29, 2011 at 11:46 am · Filed under Politics ·Tagged Lebanon, Libya, Middle East, New York Tmes, Rebecca Black, Syria, uprising, Yemen
A Libyan rebel. Lebanon hasn't looked that bad in ages!
A lot of bad things have been said about Lebanon over the past few decades: that it’s fragile, it’s unstable, it’s a powder keg. As far as publicity goes, we’ve been received almost as badly as Rebecca Black’s appalling online music video.
But since the string of uprisings that have taken place in the region since the beginning of the year, upsetting formerly “stable” US-backed dictatorships, Lebanon’s been looking pretty stable by comparison.
Currently, US-European forces are literally fighting to keep Libya from descending into a full-scale civil war. The government in Syria is using force to keep demonstrations there from amounting to an overthrow of the Assad regime, and Yemen, well, Yemen is about as frail as Samuel L. Jackson’s character in the (unfortunate) movie “Unbreakable.”
It’s gotten so bad in the region that New York Times columnist Roger Cohen has called Lebanon one of the three most stable countries in the Middle East!
The way things are going now, Lebanon’s kind of like an average-looking person standing next to a group of uglies: We look good by comparison.
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March 28, 2011 at 12:57 pm · Filed under Politics ·Tagged Assad, Bahrain, Egpyt, GCC, Libya, protests, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
It seems that Syria has reached its concessions phase.
All Arab governments facing revolt this season have gone through a series of consecutive phases so standard they appear to be choreographed.
There’s the denial – President Bashar al-Assad hasn’t even left the comfort of his residence in the “People’s Palace” to address the situation in his country yet.
There are the government accusations that the protests are the work of shady “enemy powers” or seditious groups bent on destroying the country. The Syrian government blamed recent protestor deaths on “snipers” shooting from rooftops who are part of “armed gangs” that have nothing to do with the Assad regime. Remember Muammar Qaddafi’s assertion that the revolt in his country was fueled by drug-laced coffee and al-Qaeda?
Then there’s violent retaliation: government-backed thugs were reported to have shot at protestors in demonstrations in various cities in Syria this weekend, just like they’ve done in Egypt, Libya, Bahrain and Yemen. Whereas the international community was shocked by the murderous actions of the governments in other Arab countries experiencing revolutions, Syria has a lot of experience killing its own civilians. Remember Hama?
And then there are silly concessions offered when denial and murder no longer seem to be working. Assad has offered to study the emergency law that has been in place in his country since the 1960s and to plan a public debate on reforms. Qaddafi said he would give every family in Libya cash. Bahrain fired four cabinet ministers and offered a dialogue with the opposition. Before he was ousted, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt proposed a pay raise to government employees.
The next step is up for grabs. In Tunisia and Egypt the presidents were deposed in short order, Libya is embroiled in a civil war that now involves the international community, GCC countries sent troops into Bahrain to end the protests there, and Yemen’s revolution is in between flaring up and dying down. What happens next in Syria is anyone’s guess, but news reports have it that Western diplomats are calling this “the beginning of the end for the Assad regime.”
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March 23, 2011 at 1:52 pm · Filed under Politics, Religion ·Tagged Arab, Bahrain, Egypt, Lebanon, Libya, New York Times, protest, Thomas Friedman, Tunisia, Yemen
Anti-government protesters in Yemen
Thomas Friedman brought up an interesting point in his weekly column for The Times today.
Citing an article by David Kirkpatrick, the Cairo bureau chief for the paper, Friedman noted that the Arab rebellions that took place in countries with strong national identities, unified histories and relatively homogeneous societies – like Tunisia and Egypt – were successful, while the rebellions-turned-bloodbaths that are taking place in countries whose populations are made up of different tribes and religious groups, and whose borders were drawn by indifferent colonizers, are bound to devolve into civil war. Think: Libya, Yemen and Bahrain.
I happened to touch on this briefly in an earlier blog post, which leads me to the obvious conclusion that my blog is very popular at the New York Times. (Errrr…)
But seriously, a multi-tribal, multi-ethnic, multi-sect society doesn’t stand a strong chance of launching a unified fight against a cruel dictatorship and installing a democratic regime. In fact, the nature of such societies promotes the existence of dictatorships, as it is one of the only kind of systems that can effectively rule over (and oppress) such a motley crew of warring identities.
But Friedman neglected to mention Lebanon as an example of a multi-faceted former colony that is prone to civil war. Hell, we know about it almost more than anyone. And had Friedman brought it up, he would have mentioned our governing system, in which power is studiously divided among all sects to avoid any one group coming to dominance. It’s laughable at times – the president has less power than the parliament speaker – and it creates incentives for politicians to form groupings whose raison d’être is to obstruct progress (see: the March 8 coalition). But it’s arguably what’s kept Lebanon war-free for 20-plus years.
Now, I have more than one serious gripe with the system, the biggest of which is that there is no civil status law, meaning that family matters are handled in religious courts, always to the woman’s disadvantage.
But a system that equally – or almost equally – divides power among the different confessions/tribal groupings may work in Libya, Bahrain and Yemen, but only after the dictatorial regimes have been kicked out.
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March 15, 2011 at 3:09 pm · Filed under Politics ·Tagged Beirut, Hussein Ibish, Libya, Middle East, no-fly zone, North Africa, Qaddafi
A pro-Qaddafi soldier stands in the main square of Zawiya, west of Tripoli. (AP photo)
I’m bummed about Libya.
What seemed like the next North African government overthrow turned out to be the beginning stages of an almost-certain civil war.
According to Hussein Ibish in his piece that ran on NOW Lebanon today, while the West has been stalling over implementing a no-fly zone over Libya, “the momentum has shifted markedly toward the regime, and Qaddafi’s downfall looks much less imminent, or even likely, than before. Meanwhile, the most dangerous Islamist extremists have either escaped from prison or have been released by the regime, adding a dangerous Salafist-Jihadist element to the mix that was not present a few weeks ago.”
And now that the revolutionary tide in Libya has been butted by the Qaddafi levee, the energy of other uprisings against repressive regimes in the region has quelled. Since Qaddafi has sneered in the face of any possible retaliation from the West, why wouldn’t other Arab dictators do the same? Facing sanctions is a lot easier for dictators than being ejected (though most of them would be welcome to spend the rest of their years in luxury in overthrown-dictator-haven Saudi Arabia).
Libya and other Arab countries that are facing revolts and are unconcerned about killing their own people are in danger of turning into Somalia-style failed states or tearing into separate feifdoms along the lines of the tribal territories that existed before the Sykes-Picot agreement.
This is a lot less rosy a picture than the specter of oppressed populations across the region doing a spring cleaning of their dictatorial governors.
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March 8, 2011 at 3:03 pm · Filed under Politics, Religion ·Tagged Beirut, Brigitte Gabriel, Conservative, Darrell Issa, Islam, Lebanon, New York Times, Sharia Law, Tea Party
Lebanon seems to have spewed forth an uncanny number of radical conservatives who’ve found fame, fortune and political success in America.
The hysterically-conservative American right wing welcomes all manner of vitriol-spewing nut jobs, but it really relishes those who focus their venom-soaked ramblings on Islam – and especially those who come from Muslim countries. This is where the small but vehement Lebanese conservative contingent makes its name – and its fortune.
From Congress’ resident bratty little sister Darrell Issa to Republican Representative Charles Boustany, to the smattering of neocon pundits who’ve found themselves on AIPAC’s payroll, Lebanon has given many a gift to the American conservative movement.
The New York Times had a profile today of the latest Lebanese-born, deliriously conservative “activist” whose activism in effect amounts to drumming up hysteria over a Muslim takeover of America. Brigitte Gabriel (a nom de guerre) has terrified millions of followers with imagined scenarios such as radical Muslim infiltration into the US government and the weaving of an elaborate Islamist plot to replace the Constitution with Sharia Law – all of which she’s outlined in her books, “Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America” and “They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It.”
According to the Times, Gabriel, a Maronite who grew up in South Lebanon, escaped this Muslim-infested hell-hole and fled to Israel, where she worked for a TV station that was owned by American über-conservative Pat Robertson. Since marrying an American and moving to the States, she’s parlayed her popular brand of bigotry into a media empire built specifically around blaming the religion of 1.6 billion people for the actions of a few sociopaths. Gabriel has found fame and recognition, and made a hell of a lot of money, all from using her background as a weapon.
But from whence does this conservatism come? Well Lebanon’s a pretty conservative country, if you stop to think about it. Sure, we have a sexually liberal culture – women in short skirts dancing on bars is the most oft-cited example – but the government is guided by religous fundamentals, there are no taxes on the rich, and discrimination against women is written into the law. What more could an American right-winger want?
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February 27, 2011 at 6:09 pm · Filed under Politics ·Tagged Beirut, Cairo, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Libya, Middle East, Muslim, North Africa, protest, Qaddafi
Lebanon is a very sectarian society. Everything you do, buy, wear, drive, listen to, eat, say, hear and feel; your accent, clothes, food, car, house, political affiliation and friends – they all have to do with your religion in Lebanon.
Not surprisingly, then, your take on the current upheavals taking place in the Middle East has to do with your religion, as does the TV channel you watch the unfolding events on.
For example, if you are a Shiite Hezbollah supporter, you watch events in Bahrain – where a Shiite majority population is revolting against an elite Sunni minority – on Hezbollah’s channel, al-Manar.
If you are a Sunni Muslim, you are almost by default interested in the resurrecting anti-government Green Movement in Iran, which you watch on the Future Movement’s TV station, Future News.
If you are a Shiite Amal supporter, you are undoubtedly absorbed by the revolts against Muammar Qaddafi in Libya, which you follow on Amal chief Nabih Berri’s channel, NBN. Such is Amal’s obsession with the unfolding revolution in Libya – and Qaddafi’s murderous crackdown – that between shows NBN plays a minute-long montage of the protests in Libya titled The Revolt Against the Tyrant. Don’t forget, after all, that Amal has a special interest in Qaddafi’s overthrow; he is the man most people blame for the 1978 kidnapping and presumed murder of Amal founder Moussa Sadr.
So how does the rest of the Middle East watch Lebanon coverage? Well, they don’t. We’re simply the most boring and unimportant country in the whole region right now. Everyone else is rising up against their backward, corrupt and archaic systems while we stew merrily in ours.
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February 25, 2011 at 8:45 am · Filed under Environment, Politics ·Tagged Beirut, cars, driving, fuel, gas, gas prices, humor, Lebanon, pollution, shortages, SUV
Beiruti drivers line up at a gas station as shortages grip Lebanon
Could this be possible?
Lebanon has run out of gasoline?
I thought good things never happened to our poor little country, and then this surprise blessing!
Because of a price squabble between the Energy and Finance ministries, the prices of gasoline were not sent to the suppliers, who have in turn not distributed gas to stations across Lebanon.
We had a brush with this crisis a couple weeks ago, but it was temporarily resolved, only to rear its beautiful head again now.
But why on earth, you may ask, should we celebrate a country-wide fuel shortage? Because without gas, Lebanese can’t drive, and aren’t cars – and Lebanese drivers – one of the worst things about this country?
Isn’t reckless driving what makes Lebanon one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be on the roads in? Aren’t car accidents the number-one cause of death of young men in this country? Isn’t cars parked willy-nilly on sidewalks what prevents pedestrians from being able to walk in a straight line for more than five feet? And isn’t the thick blanket of car exhaust hovering over our cities what blocks out our magnificent mountain views – or views ten feet in front of us, for that matter?
Without crazed drivers barreling at us in their giant metal boxes a hundred miles an hour, we meager pedestrians can once again venture out onto the streets without fear of being mowed down by some oversized SUV speeding the wrong way down a one-way street. We can open our lungs and breathe in air untainted by gasoline pollution, and we can experience the sounds of life in our country instead of a chorus of a thousand horns blazing impatiently at every stop light.
We don’t have a lot of hope for a good government that will protect our financial or security interests – or even work to provide us with 24/7 electricity or decent internet – but we can thank those same inept, battle-prone leaders for this latest crisis, which will at least provide our little country with a few days of safe, unpolluted and quiet streets.
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February 24, 2011 at 2:33 pm · Filed under Politics ·Tagged Beirut, Cuba, dictator, Egypt, Fidel Castro, Hosni Mubarak, Lebanon, Libya, Middle East, North Africa, Qaddafi, revolution, Tunisia
Muammar Qaddafi seems to be the next dictator on his way out the door.
What are the chances of a revolutionary-leader-turned-ruthless despot remaining in office for life these days?
Not very high, it seems. With the possible exception of Cuba’s Fidel Castro, it looks like only a short few decades after you violently install yourself as the head of a country, you’re bound to be uninstalled by practically the same means you used to come to power.
Didn’t ousted dictators Zeineddine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak, and hopefully soon-to-be-deposed Muammar Qaddafi, all rise to power in their countries via a military coup? The last time those three North African autocrats saw a takeover, they were on the winning side of it.
All three stormed into office touting reform, people power, and the rule of the right and good. Then all of them became drunk with power, as perpetual rulers always do, and set up autocratic police states where all the money and power was concentrated in the hands of a few.
Ben Ali and Mubarak fell pretty swiftly after the rebellions in their countries started, the latter putting up only a brief fight before seeking the welcoming embrace of one of the dictator-friendly Gulf States.
Qaddafi, however, has shown a terrifying willingness to decimate his opponents, unfettered by any desire to hold onto the friendly terms he recently regained from the West.
Qaddafi has vowed to stay in office until his “last drop of blood,” and it seems his people are very much willing to help drain him of every last globule. Whether he gets deposed or killed by his own people remains to be seen, but surely he must have known it was coming. After all, being a dictator is a pretty high-risk job; these days it seems they have about the same chances of staying a lifetime in power as plot of empty land has of going undeveloped in Beirut.
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February 22, 2011 at 5:58 pm · Filed under Politics ·Tagged Algeria, Bahrain, Beirut, Cairo, Egypt, Hezbollah, humor, Iran, Middle East, Midwest, North Africa, Suez Canal, Wisconsin
Protestors in Wisconsin demonstrate against cuts to union rights.
What started as an isolated revolt has spread, and now citizens in different states, angered by their leaders overextending their authority and failing to protect their livelihoods, have vowed to hit the streets of their capitals in protest.
Is it the Middle East? No. It’s the Midwest.
All across the great American heartland, workers are following Wisconsin’s lead by protesting cuts to union power at their state capitals. “The spread of the protest spirit across the Midwest comes as governors attempt to balance budgets by extracting concessions from labor unions,” said Slate Magazine, in what could easily be a description of what’s happening in the Middle East if you switched out a couple words here and there.
In fact, in Wisconsin, Democrats have left the state so that the state senate cannot vote on the bill to stop the ability of unions to bargain collectively. Didn’t almost the exact same thing happen in Lebanon last month when Hezbollah and its allies dropped out of the cabinet to stop it from being able to fund the Special Tribunal for Lebanon?
And that’s just one example of the turmoil currently facing governments in the Middle East. What started as successful protests against the Tunisian government in January has turned into widespread dissent that is currently threatening long-standing regimes in places as far-flung as Bahrain and Algeria.
And amid all of this chaos, Iran – the Mideast’s biggest provocateur, who supports many of the regional uprisings – has sent two Navy ships through the Suez Canal, ostensibly on their way to Lebanon to supply Hezbollah with weapons.
Hey, maybe it’s Iran who’s funding the Democrats who ditched Wisconsin.
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Sunny Beirut 