Mr lala-land a.k.a. Michel Aoun

Here are some snippets of what Michel Aoun recently said, as he seeks to up the sectarian and divisive rhetoric:

لكن من يدعون الخوف من المقاومة هم الذي قتلوكم ووضعوا لكم المتفجرات

But those who claim fear from the Resistance, they are the ones who killed you and laid explosives for you.

سننتصر في النهاية وسنسيطر على كل الوطن، وسنصبح فئة واحدة وسنصبح الشعب اللبناني فقط. أما الذين يكتبون عنهم أن حاضرهم يخجل من ماضيهم فهم منهم وليسوا منّا

We will be victorious and we will take control of the entire nation, and we will be a single group and we will be become the Lebanese people only. As for those, of whom is written that their present is ashamed of their past, they are of them and not of us.

إسرائيل لن تهاجم لبنان في أي ظرف إلا إذا كانت الموالاة هي التي تحكم لبنان

Israel will not attack Lebanon in any situation unless the current ruling parties are the ones governing.

لقد سمعنا من يقول أن زحلة والأشرفية هي لسعد الحريري

We heard those who said that Zahleh and Ashrafieh are for Saad Hariri.

Israel will attack Lebanon if you vote for March 14, a vote for March 14 is a vote for Hariri, March 14 are murderers and they are killing “you”, and they are not Lebanese. Some of the brainless rhetoric being flung around on the eve of elections.

The only good result for me in these elections is if no one goes to vote in order to send all these idiots a clear message that we are not going to fall for their hate mongering and have had enough. Enough!

We all need to say sorry!

One of these days we, the Lebanese, need to realize that we must apologize to one another for all the mistakes and “sins” we committed against one another as various groups and sects in the country. This is the one thing no one has really ever done. Today, we continue to live out our fears and desire for revenge in our domestic politics. Here are some examples of the things some of us as Lebanese perceive need to be apologized for:

1. The imbalance between Christians and Muslims in the original constitution which favored the Christians sects, and Maronites in particular, for over 40 years until the Taef Accord. This was the main issue that led to the civil war in 1975. For many, this gave Christians an unfair lead which they still enjoy today, especially in economics and education.
2. The ethnic cleansing and massacres committed in the Chouf and other parts of the mountains by the Druze against the Christians. To this day, most have not been able to return to their homes for lack of a sense that they will be welcomed back as equals and without harassment. 
3. The fighting among the various Christians sects in the 1980s which created deep hatred among the various parties and regions.
4. The economic and social policies of the 1990s which are largely associated with Rafic Hariri and perceived by Christians in general of having favored Muslims and Sunnis especially.
5. The massacres of Muslim civilians by Christian militias in the 1970s and 1980s based on their identity cards.
6. The fighting in the 1990s between Amal and Hezbollah that split the Shia down the middle.

These are just some examples which continue to hang heavily over the Lebanese and continue to move emotions. Isn’t it time we set those differences aside and apologized for each other for these crimes committed in the name of “defending the nation” or of a “progressive agenda” or “righting previous wrongs”. We need to realize that defending the nation or moving it forward by improving and reforming our laws can only be done in agreement with one another.

While there have been some efforts made, these have not always been up to expectations. One example was the reconciliation between the Druze and the Maronite church on the ethnic cleansing of the Chouf. Yet, until this day, many people have not returned to their homes, and there are many Christians who do not feel that the reconciliation was complete and only served to provide Walid Jumblat with a political gain.

We urgently need an environmental agenda!

Lebanon’s environment is in free fall and we urgently need someone to pay attention to this. If our democracy was a balanced one, this issue would be at the top of politicians’ agendas. Instead, the environment is almost unspoken of.

In fact, the reason for the lack of attention is a little more complicated. First, as we have still not resolved our national security priorities it is hard for anyone to focus on other issues.

Second, the interests stacked against us in environmental politics are quite daunting. Most established politicians are unwilling to challenge the status quo.

Third, environmental awareness in Lebanon is quite poor, with people unaware of the importance of a healthy natural environment for our long term well being and public health, among other things.

Meanwhile, here is a modest list of the key priorities that require urgent attention:

1. Uncontrolled urbanization and construction
   The general inadequacy of current city planning laws and regulations has meant buildings are going up everywhere at the expense of planning and the natural environment. Other than destroying the environment, the consequences are congested cities without adequate facilities for parking, parks, and pedestrians. In addition, a negative aspect is the aesthetic hideousness of the urban areas, with detrimental effect on our mental health and tourism industry.
2. Unrestricted car ownership and lack of alternatives
   Cars dominate every part of our lives, with the resulting pollution detrimental to our health in the main cities.
3. Unregulated cement, asbestos and fertilizer plants
   The region around Batroun and Sebline have been ravaged by unregulated cement and other factories which have been operating for decades. The dust pollution and the destruction to the surrounding hills and mountains are having a very negative effect on the natural environment and the health of the local population.
4. Unregulated stone quarries
   This phenomenon, which has often been on the political agenda for other reasons, is destroying mountains around the country.
5. Poor waste management
   “Garbage mountains” in Saida and Burj Hammoud are good examples of the poor waste management in the country, a result of poor planning and uncontrolled consumption habits. The problem also encompasses liquid waste which is most often simply dumped into the sea around the main cities. The result: nasty fumes and the destruction of our beautiful beaches and sea life. 
6. Damage of beaches by uncontrolled land reclamation
   Land reclamation all along the Lebanese coast has ravaged our beaches and natural habitats. Construction in the sea around Beirut, Dbayye, Saida and Tripoli, are only examples. A quick look at the Lebanese coast on Google Earth reveals the non-stop destruction of our beaches in almost every part of the country.

If we are lucky, any one of these items can come under the focus of politicians some time soon. If these issues are not dealt with soon, the cost to the economy and the health of the population could be excessive and detrimental for our nation’s future.

Even his allies accuse him of dirty tricks

Apparently, Amal, one of Aoun’s allies in the March 8 group, is complaining to Hezbollah about Aoun’s tactics in the Jezine election campaign. They accuse his candidates of using divisive language with sectarian tones to get Christians to vote for him in the upcoming elections.

Dah! Did they just find out that this is how Aoun always wins his elections? He has been doing it since 2005 against March 14, painting a picture of the last 19 years since the end of the civil war as being under the Hariri boot, so to speak, and that he has come to save Lebanon (read the Christians) from the Hariri (read Sunni) tyranny.

He has never lost an opportunity to foment hatred against the Hariri family and their political movement, pinning all the mistakes of the last two decades on them. Aoun and his foot soldiers have even claimed that the Taef was designed for Hariri and by extension the Sunnis. Read this recent article for an example.

Aoun and his stooges conveniently forget that Taef was always a precarious balance between many parties, including the Syrians, Hezbollah and Amal. It may be true that Rafic Hariri was involved in things that are hard to defend, but he was never alone in them and very often his way was not allowed to go ahead.

Perfecting the “traitor rhetoric”

We always hear about the “traitor rhetoric” in Lebanese politics. Nothing exemplifies this more than the recent uncovering of Israeli spies. Apparently, one spy is thought to have links to the Hariri’s Future Movement. Hezbollah wasted no time in jumping on this as proof that the Future Movement are in cahoots with the enemy and calling them traitors essentially. 

However, when three spies that were found out were thought to have links to Hezbollah, no one in the March 14 camp commented on this as being proof of treason.

Hezbollah went further, recently accusing “other politicians” of promoting an environment in which spies became more abundant (read this article). Apparently, they did this by “fomenting sectarian hatred”.

Hezbollah wants to be able to operate in our country without any controls. What kind of a resistance is that? If its our resistance, then we have the right to control it. We have the right to control what they do. Otherwise, its dictatorship. Now its liberate the South. Next, it can be anything, from liberate Palestine, or impose religious law.

I can easily imagine a day when Hezbollah will impose new laws affecting the freedom of the press to control what is being written about Israel and the resistance. They can be storming press institutions before we know it. What will stop them from storming the Nahar offices if that paper writes something they do not agree with?

Israel hands over cluster bomb map… three years too late!

After three years of refusing to hand over maps of where cluster bombs were dropped, Israel finally handed them over this week. Of course, had Israel handed over the maps earlier, countless deaths could have been avoided. Meanwhile, the international community hardly made a peep while Israel took their sweet time for no logical reason other than that they simply do not care about innocent lives.

A traffic jam in Beirut is being taken seriously!

The minister of interior has announced that he wants all road works to be halted until after the elections after an unbearable jam this morning. He even called on people affected by the disruption to file a formal complaint with the authorities. Of course, as anyone in Beirut knows, road works have accelerated in the last month, a traditional way for the political class to “bribe” supporters to get out to vote. A number of main roads have recently been prepared for a new surface just as the Lebanese are getting ready to go to the polls.

Why our taxis stop wherever they want!

I have often wondered why our taxis in Lebanon stop wherever they want to. The reason, I often thought, was that this is simply what they got used to doing and that the lack of order in the country has never been able to put a stop to it; or even worse, that the Lebanese “are just like that”.

Well, I just found out why and neither of those reasons named above are the correct one. I read in the magazine Al-Shahria, that the union for taxi drivers called a strike in 1970 to protest the fines taxis were receiving whenever they stopped to pick up or drop off passengers in the middle of traffic. They were successful in getting the police to lay off and to this day, taxis stop wherever they want, obstruct traffic and no one can say anything.

So, its not because we love chaos nor because we never thought of putting a stop to the practice; its because special interests in Lebanon can be very aggressive and single-minded to the point where they do not realize how order can actually be beneficial to everyone.

What happened in May 2008

Last year Lebanon was on the verge of a new civil war when on May 7, 2008, Hezbollah and other pro-Syrian militias entered west Beirut and wreaked havoc. In the following days, Hezbollah and the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party (SSNP) went on the rampage in Aley and the Chouf.

A recent Now Lebanon article tells in some detail what happened during those few days in which Hezbollah was “defending” its existence by going on the offensive against the Lebanese, though not all the Lebanese. It literally  invaded the largely Sunni part of Beirut, a March 14 stronghold, and the Druze areas of Mount Lebanon. The clashes were violent though no official number of dead and wounded were announced.

Of course, as a result of the clashes, the Lebanese parties agreed in Doha last year to a new electoral law and a national unity government which took office shortly after. In effect, the agreement was a capitulation to Hezbollah’s fait accompli. The party/militia was too powerful for the state to confront them, and so they decided to wait it out and go to the polls instead. On June 7 the parties will fight it out in elections.

Detlev Mehlis clarifies the issues

This morning Now Lebanon published an article in which the former investigator into the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, Detlev Mehlis, explained some of the facts surrounding the investigation. Most importantly, he dismissed criticism coming form the March 8/Hezbollah camp that the investigation has been politicized.

The pro-Syrian “opposition” has been celebrating the release recently of the four heads of security that were suspected of having a hand in the assassination and who remain under suspicion. Hezbollah in particular has been eager (for an unstated and yet unclear reason) to show these generals as innocent victims of the March 14 camp and has been saying that they were nothing less than political prisoners for the last four years.

This issue would not be serious were not so many Lebanese willing to believe these lies because in Lebanon the majority are political sheep, they follow blindly what their political masters tell them to.

Some of the myths that Mehlis debunks in this article are:

1. The generals were being held in accordance with the Lebanese law, explaining that the law allows for indefinite detention so long as the investigation appears to be making progress. (Interestingly, someone in the Aoun camp recently proposed a law to change this by putting a time limit on detention.)
2. The arrest decision was issued by the investigative commission as an entity and not him as an individual and thus is unaffected by changes in the makeup of the commission.
3. The arrest was not based only on the evidence provided by Al-Siddiq whose accounts were subsequently discredited by the fact that he himself came under suspicion.
4. The validity of the accounts of Al-Siddiq and Husam Husam remain unclear despite what the March 8 camp wants people to believe.
5. The commission was not obsessed with accusing Syria as some critics claim. Leeds on evidence accusing Israel and Islamic fundamentalists were pursued but proved insignificant. Among these was a claim by the Syria minister Buthaina Shaaban that she had evidence of Israel’s complicity in the assassination, but when asked to provide this evidence nothing was forthcoming.

Clearly, some people in March 8 know exactly who killed Rafic Hariri and they are trying to run from responsibility. Syria or some Lebanese group close to Syria was involved, that is the most likely at this point.