From the Lebanese Political Journal

Hezbollah has taken control of the media in Lebanon, and their propaganda campaign has already begun. They are currently presenting themselves as liberators of Lebanon, and allies of the Lebanese Army against a corrupt government supported by pro-government snipers and brigrands.

Hezbollah's militant takeover of Beirut and its systematic destruction of the authority of the state and freedom of the press suggests a sophisticated and planned campaign to take power. There is no hiding the violence Hezbollah used to seize Beirut and cut it off from the rest of the country. But as their media campaign is already showing, Hezbollah is employing subtle and sophisticated mechanisms to take over the rest of Lebanon. All news which could be construed as negative behaviors, such as the blatant destruction and corruption of Lebanese institutions, is hidden beneath a Hezbollah-dominated media blackout....

Targeting the Lebanese Christians

Hezbollah seems to be making a concerted effort to placate the Christian population. Ashrafieh was not attacked, and life is relatively normal in the Christian suburbs north of Beirut.

Al Jazeera is claiming that Hezbollah has made a "concession" by opening the airport road. As was told to me by a veteran Lebanese reporter, all of the journalists and news agencies reporting right now have been vetted by Hezbollah. Even if the news is true, it is written to present Hezbollah's actions as gracious.

Michel Aoun just gave an interview claiming that the crisis will be over soon. He even noted that the illegal occupation of Beirut's downtown by opposition militants will end soon. Many who watched his interview are happy to hear this news, despite it coming from a politician who appears to be Hezbollah's Christian spokesman. Once again, this sounds like propaganda that no other Lebanese faction is in a position to challenge...

..Depressing Conclusion

At the moment, it feels a bit like fall 2004 when the Syrians bullied all Lebanese factions into voting for a three year extension of Emile Lahoud's term in office. Rafiq al-Hariri resigned from office, and Lebanese parliamentarians and democratic activists kept their mouths shut while Syria appointed a government made up of its Lebanese cronies. When Lebanese politicians began to stir a bit, Druze parliamentarian Marwan Hamade was targetted for assassination, and barely survived.

According to NOW Lebanon online newspaper, pro-government websites are being attacked. So, we'll see what happens to this blog. The government's telecommunications company has probably been fully overrun by Hezbollah, and all of our calls and internet traffic could be monitored. A source in the pro-Hezbollah Syrian Social Nationalist Party claims that everything is being monitored right now. Good luck getting reliable news from Lebanon.

(Hopefully) more at NOW Lebanon

Analysis of the situation at Michael Totten's

..and Kouchner says France will not passively watch Lebanon go to war

Isn't that what we just did?

UPDATE: Jeha at Pajamas Media writes:

Second, in political terms, it is a victory that will have essentially destroyed the last shreds of Lebanon as a state. All Nasrallah’s eloquence will not hide the fact that Hezb has become no different from the Syrian army of old: an arrogant occupier with a birthright complex. The presidency will remain vacant even if the seat is filled; General Suleiman has proven himself to be unworthy of the presidency he has been longing after.

Third, in simple economic terms, Hezbo* is taking over an economy they are ill-equipped to control. When the parasite takes over the host, it kills the host and dies with it. While the thugs were taking over their positions, people were changing their Lebanese liras back to dollars.

Finally, in simple national terms, the defeat of the government would represent a defeat of the UN. With no chance of being implemented, UN resolution 1559 will wither away and Hezbo will keep their cherished weapons. But Resolution 1559 is now part of 1701, which also links the resolution to the armistice agreement with Israel and, more importantly, to Lebanon’s border demarcation. So Nasrallah will get to keep his weapons, and the Israelis will get to “redefine” the border.

As a result, we Lebanese may end up with a resistance without a people, an economy, or a land.

What are we fighting about, then?

* Jeha lives in Beirut and blogs at Jeha’s Nail. He refers to Hezbollah as “Hezbo” because he doesn’t believe in a “Party of God.”

Charles Malik posts today from Ras Beirut:

The bullets and RPGs are flying, again. There are sustained bursts, then quiet.

The RPGs make an interesting suction sound as they are fired.

It's dark. Oddly enough, many people in Hamra have their drapes open and lights on. That is surprising, but I guess shows that the situation is either not horribly bad, or that these people are just a bit ignorant.

Two separate friends both within two separate blocks in opposite directions just invited me to come over. Both assured me that the half a block in front of them are safe, but could not say anything about the rest of the journey.

It sounds like an RPG just landed on my street, though.

According to Yahoo:

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Security officials say that two civilians were killed in clashes between Shiite Hezbollah supporters and the government's Sunni backers.

The officials say the mother and her son died when a rocket-propelled grenade hit their apartment in Beirut's neighborhood of Ras el-Nabeh during Thursday's fighting.

Via Ya Libnan

Hezbollah holding an entire nation hostage:

Other unconfirmed reports indicated Hezbollah was planning to set up tents near Beirut airport, like they did in downtown Beirut on December 1, 2006, when they blocked the road near the governmental palace. The camp is still in downtown Beirut.

"Hezbollah is invading the city, by doing this," said majority MP Wael Abu Faour.

Hezbollah followers were seen patrolling on motorcycles in most areas near Beirut airport and their security men were seen standing with walkie-talkies.

Opposition sources close to Hezbollah told dpa that House Speaker Nabih Berri and officials in Hezbollah told the government the airport road would be reopened when the government reinstated the pro-Hezbollah airport security chief, Wafiq Choukair.

He was dismissed by a government decision on Tuesday after being accused of helping Hezbollah install cameras to monitor planes landing at Beirut International Airport.

"This is not an economic protest. This is an attempt to overthrow the government," said Salwa Baltagi 20, a supporter of the government.

In this article, written on Tuesday, resident of Beirut Charles Malik predicted that trouble was coming to the city

I'm heading to bed later than usual, tonight. This is because I doubt that I will need to be at work on time tomorrow.

A few opposition affiliated Lebanese unions are striking tomorrow. The last few times opposition affiliated organizations have protested it has meant attacks on those affiliated with the government and clashes with the Lebanese Army. This time, please allow me to assume that this protest is a disingenuous attempt to attack the Lebanese government and Army. I may be wrong, but actions speak louder than words (pardon the cliche).

I understand that the oppositiong is piping mad. The Lebanese Cabinet, which the opposition unconstitutionally claims is illegitimate, ruled yesterday that Hezbollah should not be allowed to have its own telephone network.

Hezbollah counters claiming that their network is needed to combat the Israelis, however the Lebanese government points out that Hezbollah is profiting significantly from their scheme. Often, when I receive calls from friends in the United States I see the country code +98, which is the country code for Iran. Often, it also has a 2 or a 31 after the +98, which indicates that the call was routed through either Tehran or Isfahan...

...Hezbollah also chooses to subvert state security by installing its own security network throughout Lebanon. They claim that the Lebanese network is insecure because it is vulnerable to penetration by Israelis, but if the Lebanese press and security analysts know about Hezbollah's radar system and spy cameras at the airport, how secure can they be?

More on Wednesday's crisis in Lebanon and the various events that led up to it at Malik's Lebanese Political Journal

I attended this conference featuring lectures by Joseph Massad, Gil Anidjar, Noha Radwan and Lila Abu-Lughod on a dark and stormy evening last week. Columbia's non-tenured Joseph Massad, whose manner and delivery reminded me of Vincent Price in his later films, stole the show, but many students in the audience were quietly unimpressed.

As Israelis look towards the future in their celebration of the nation’s 60th birthday, some Palestinians cling to the past by commemorating what they call the "Nakba" or "the catastrophe." A faculty panel discussion held at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) last month and titled, "60 Years of Nakba—The Catastrophe of Palestine 1948-2008," was one of many similar lamentations held worldwide.

The tone from the outset was grim. Speakers acknowledged that another "Nakba" anniversary was confirmation that combined Palestinian and Arab attempts to eliminate the Jewish state have not succeeded.

Despite this, Columbia's controversial associate professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history, Joseph Massad, was upbeat. According to Massad, the Israelis have won military victories, but the "Palestinian resistance" has successfully rebranded them. Through 60 years of tireless propaganda efforts, the Palestinian term, "Nakba," has replaced "Israel’s war of independence"; "apartheid" has replaced "Jewish sovereignty"; the "plight of the Palestinians" has replaced “the return of the Jews to their ancestral homeland"; the "Palestinians" has replaced "the non-Jewish community of Palestine." And even in the culinary world, Massad claimed, "Palestinian Maftool" has replaced "Israeli couscous." (Like many of Massad’s claims, the couscous issue is debatable. A recent visit to Whole Foods Market proved that Israeli couscous is still the preferred nomenclature.)

Massad’s concept of victory reframed the event. It was no longer a dirge-like recitation of perpetual victimization, but rather a showcase—a preview of new trends in “resistance” propagandizing.

So what’s "in" this season? Using the "renaming" strategy to make the destruction of Israel more palatable to the West was the faculty panel’s primary theme. Portraying the only democratic state in the Middle East as a brutal, non-democratic "Jewish supremacist and racist state," as Massad once put it, was the secondary theme.

Read the rest at FrontPage

Michael Young on the clashes in Lebanon *

...Once we accept that this week's alleged labor unrest was only the latest phase in Hizbullah's war against the Lebanese state, will we understand what actually took place yesterday. And once we realize that cutting the airport road was a calculated effort by Hizbullah to reverse the Siniora government's transfer of the airport security chief, Wafiq Shouqair, will we understand what may take place in the coming days.

Since last January, when Hizbullah and Amal used the pretense of social dissatisfaction to obstruct roads in and around Beirut, the opposition has, quite openly, shown itself to be limited to Hizbullah. Michel Aoun, once a useful fig leaf to lend cross-communal diversity to the opposition, has since become an afterthought with hardly any pull in Christian streets.

Long ago we learned that Hizbullah could not, in any real sense, allow the emergence of a Lebanese state free from Syrian control...

...Outside areas under direct Hizbullah control, no one respected the call for a strike. The labor unions were not even able to march through mainly Sunni neighborhoods, for fear of street fights. The only real weapon Hizbullah has is to hold the airport hostage by closing all access roads. But all sides can close roads. How such action can possibly be in the interest of the Shiite community is beyond comprehension. Isolating the airport amounts to thuggery, underlining that Hizbullah now has few means other than to collectively punish all Lebanese to advance its exclusivist agenda...

The Lebanese state cannot live side by side with a Hizbullah state. This theorem is becoming more evident by the day, as the party's actions in the past three years have been, by definition, directed against the state, the government, the army and the security forces, institutions of national representation, the economy, and more fundamentally the rules of the Lebanese communal game. We've reached the point where Hizbullah, and more importantly the Shiite community, must choose. Will it persist in favoring a Hizbullah-led parallel state that will surely continue to clash with the recognized state? Or will Shiites try to find a new arrangement with their countrymen that forces Hizbullah to surrender its weapons?

More..

* Link thanks to Michael Totten

Via AP

An opposition protester holds a gazoline bottle
as he stands near a burning car during a protest called by
labor unions in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, May 7, 2008.

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) — Lebanon's long-simmering political crisis erupted into gunfire and explosions Wednesday when a labor strike devolved into clashes between rival Hezbollah and government supporters.

Demonstrators supported by militant Hezbollah protested the U.S.-backed government's economic policies and paralyzed much of Beirut with roadblocks of burning tires. The strike turned violent when both sides began throwing stones at each other, and gunfire and explosions rang out in some areas for brief periods.

The cause of the explosions was not immediately known. There were a few injuries reported, mostly from the stone throwing.

The clashes threatened to degenerate into an all-out sectarian conflict. Shiite Hezbollah seized the offices of a major Sunni group and the fighting spread to several mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods.

More...

There are a lot of them out there...

For some reason, adults who lived through the summer of love, and/or the disco beat and/or generation x are fretting about kids today and their questionable values. The Anchoress sighs:

All of the old social safeguards are no longer in place; instead of communities wherein live several generations of families and friends, everyone is transient and most of us have only a nodding acquaintance with our neighbors.

When did these social safeguards ever exist in America? This is a country mostly made up of immigrants, many of whom were willing to give up everything they had to get the hell out of "communities wherein live several generations of families and friends." For the most part, their descendants are very grateful to them for doing so.

When did Americans stop encouraging our youth to seek the frontier "breaking the bonds of custom, offering new experiences, calling out new institutions and activities." Instead, kids are supposed to seek "social safeguards." Nanny-state leftists want the state to make us safe from everything from hurtful language to fatty foods. Family values conservatives want the state to encourage family ties and standard relationships - and to discourage breaking the bonds of custom.

For some people a life tied to marriage, community and family is heaven. For others, it’s not. Living the way you want and letting others do the same isn't isolationism, it's individualism. If you think that's alienating, you've never talked to quaint European villagers who call a family that's been in their town for only 200 years "the foreigners"

Via the New York Post

I've visited over a dozen Muslim countries and many more that have significant Muslim minorities. In every case, I've found the Saudis funding evil.

From Thailand to the United States, the Saudi goal is to prevent Muslims from integrating into their host societies. In poor countries, such as Kenya, they pay families to pull their children out of state schools and send them to madrassahs - where they learn to recite the Koran, but no career skills.

The Saudis don't mind if Muslims live in poverty and squalor - as long as Muslims don't identify with the societies around them. They want strict religious and cultural apartheid.

So here's another easy thing Congress can do: Prohibit foreign funding, direct or indirect, of US religious institutions and schools by the government or citizens of any state that denies religious freedom to its own residents. No churches in Saudi Arabia? OK, no Saudi-controlled madrassahs in Virginia.

And when referring to Islamist terrorists or the Saudi royal family that nurtured them for so long, let's stop using the term "Islamo-fascists." As horrid as Italian or Spanish fascists could be, they were enlightened humanitarians compared to either al Qaeda or our Saudi "friends." Let's just call fanatics "fanatics."

The greatest modern tragedy for the Arab world wasn't European imperialism. It was who got the oil money: inbred desert barbarians with a zero-sum mentality about heaven and earth. The stunningly hypocritical Saudis (they could teach Eliot Spitzer plenty about top-flight hookers) have used their wealth to cut out Islam's heart. The faith of Mohammed, peace be upon him, has no greater enemies.

In this fight, we Americans, and Muslims around the world who cherish their faith, should stand united against the Saudis.

In the heat of the moment, Iran appears to many to be our worst enemy in the Middle East. While the nut house government in Tehran is a deadly problem, it's ultimately one of lesser scale. Our greatest enemy, anywhere, is Saudi Arabia, the cradle of terror.

Five years ago, I supported removing Saddam Hussein on moral and geopolitical grounds. I'm beginning to suspect we invaded the wrong country.

He's right, but "beginning to suspect"..? I was thinking the same thing back in October 2001.

Alan Sullivan describes the damage:

From a Daily Mail article, the side by side images show the Irrawaddy delta immediately before and after the passage of cyclone Nargis. Look closely. The red box marks Rangoon. Notice the brown areas south and southwest of the capitol in the “before” shot. These are probably expanses of rice paddy awaiting the seasonal rains. Now they are flooded blue with salt water that has not returned to the sea....Because the storm moved from west to east, the delta was hit with onshore wind immediately in advance of the eye. It was a perfect worst-case scenario, as though Katrina had come directly ashore on the Mississippi Delta and driven straight over New Orleans. That too could have killed 60,000. But looking at the scale of the floods, and considering the density of the Burmese population, I wonder whether the casualty estimate might still be low.

More here..

On April 16, the body of teacher and activist Riad Hamad was spotted floating in Lady Bird Lake in Austin, Texas. Witnesses said the man’s body had been “wrapped with duct tape.” According to News Radio 590, the police were not sure if foul play was involved. When Hamad was reported missing, the family mentioned that he was experiencing suicidal thoughts.

According to a later police report, “tape was found around [Hamad’s] eyes, and the hands and legs were loosely bound. The bindings of his hands and legs and placement of the tape were consistent with Hamad having done this to himself. Detectives know that Hamad walked from his vehicle to the water on his own based on evidence retrieved from the scene.”

The news about Hamad’s death was mostly reported in the local news, but it was spread worldwide due to a carefully orchestrated mass mailing through internet “activist” lists. Blogger Martin Solomon of Solomonia.com, who posted on Riad Hamad’s death on April 17, said, “People reading these comments should know that emails have gone out on various activist lists advising people of the death and telling people to go out proactively and make sure that Hamad is remembered as a man of peace, not a hatemonger. They’ve been advised to do it even before any stories appear so that if he is written about, that’s the view of him that’s portrayed. In fact, that’s how I found out.”

Many of the letters, articles, and blog posts that immediately appeared after these activist orders were sent out dutifully stressed Riad Hamad’s non-violent nature. Blogger Juan Cole received a letter from “Riad’s friend,” which Cole published verbatim without comment. It began: “Call me suspicious. Bound bodies found floating in a lake just don’t seem to me very likely to be the victims of suicide.” Cole followed this quoted message with an appeal to send money to the Palestinians.

Solomon posted the news, but he didn’t follow the activists’ orders...

More on Pajamas Media

Viewed when Fausta and I went to see MoMAs "Design and the Elastic Mind" - a lovely day and a great show.

Why do some people ally with the enemy?

Of all the incomprehensible things about the incestuous life and times of the man they call the Tyrant of Amstetten, none is more alien to logical thinking than the assertion that Rosemarie Fritzl knew nothing of her husband's debauchery in the cellar of their own home.

How was he capable of abducting his own daughter, fathering seven children by her and keeping the whole unhealthy ménage a secret from his wife for an incredible 24 years?

What chronic lack of maternal curiosity stopped her from investigating her daughter Elisabeth's disappearance? Or wanting to find out whether the three babies allegedly left on her doorstep – three – were really her own grandchildren? ..

...What sort of a woman is she?

The same question might have been asked of Primrose Shipman, who calmly handed chocolates round at her husband's trial for multiple murder. Despite his drug addiction and constant bullying, she stood by Harold throughout his trial and imprisonment and beyond his suicide in 2005...

...Whatever turns out to be the truth of Rosemarie Fritzl's role in this horror story, it demonstrates the peculiar nature of marital dependency and the lengths to which some women may go to preserve a facade. Misplaced loyalty, fear or self-deception allow all kinds of women – from battered wives to partners of paedophiles – to suspend disbelief. In effect, not to question.

Maybe the battered wives who cling to the 'security' of their husbands and the partners of pedophiles ignore reality for the same reason their spouses do what they do - because they want to and because they can.

IFR through a white cloud

I've been trying to avoid Obama vs. McCain blogging, but this is funny (and true)

Student 'Twitters' his way out of Egyptian jail

(CNN) — James Karl Buck helped free himself from an Egyptian jail with a one-word blog post from his cell phone.

Buck, a graduate student from the University of California-Berkeley, was in Mahalla, Egypt, covering an anti-government protest when he and his translator, Mohammed Maree, were arrested April 10.

On his way to the police station, Buck took out his cell phone and sent a message to his friends and contacts using the micro-blogging site Twitter.

The message only had one word. "Arrested."

Sometimes it's good to be wired..

More about Twitter and other apps like Jott and Phone Tag

Via the Australian: Esteem for US rises in Asia

...in a world supposedly awash in anti-US sentiment, pro-American leaders keep winning elections. Germany's Angela Merkel is certainly more pro-American than Gerhard Schroeder, whom she replaced. The same is true of France's Nicolas Sarkozy.

More importantly in terms of Green's analysis, the same is also true of South Korea's new President. Lee Myung-bak, elected in a landslide in December, is vastly more pro-American than his predecessor, Roh Moo-hyun.

Even in majority Islamic societies, their populations allegedly radicalised and polarised by Bush's campaign in Iraq and the global war on terror more generally, election results don't show any evidence of these trends. In the most recent local elections in Indonesia, and in national elections in Pakistan, the Islamist parties with anti-American rhetoric fared very poorly. Similarly Kevin Rudd was elected as a very pro-American Labor leader, unlike Mark Latham, with his traces of anti-Americanism, who was heavily defeated.

Even with China, the Iraq campaign was not a serious negative for the US. Beijing was far more worried by the earlier US-led NATO intervention into Kosovo because it was based purely on notions of human rights in Kosovo...

...Green cautions that a US failure in Iraq, a retreat and leaving chaos in Iraq behind, would gravely damage US credibility in Asia.

What is clear from Green's analysis is how different the Asian environment is from the European environment, or even from the US domestic debate.

It is a form of Orientalism, but not quite what Edward Said had in mind.

Patrick Lasswell wonders: if Congressman Broun is so worried about harmful addictive masturbation, why doesn't he focus his attention on earmarks?

In the NY Times, Barry Gewen describes the similarities and the differences between "Muslim Rebel Sisters" Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji:

Both Ms. Hirsi Ali and Ms. Manji come from non-Arab Muslim backgrounds. By itself, this may be one reason for their opposition to Islamic orthodoxy, which they see as inherently Arab, or Arab-dominated. Ms. Hirsi Ali was born in 1969 in Somalia, and lived in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya before fleeing to the Netherlands when she was 22 to avoid an arranged marriage. When her family was in Saudi Arabia, she remembers her father’s complaining that the Saudis had perverted the true Islam. “He hated Saudi judges and Saudi law,” she writes. “He thought it was all barbaric, all Arab desert culture.”

Ms. Manji was born in 1968 in Uganda, but her family, part Egyptian and part Indian, moved to Canada when she was 4 to escape Idi Amin. She is even more insistent than Ms. Hirsi Ali in drawing a distinction between Islam and Arab tribal culture, its “dictatorship from the desert.” Who elected the Saudi monarch “to be Islam’s steward?” she asks. “We’re not in the Saudi sand dunes anymore.”

Ms. Manji has a broader and more flexible idea than Ms. Hirsi Ali of what Islam is and can be. Ms. Hirsi Ali says, “Saudi Arabia is the source of Islam and its quintessence.” Ms. Manji, on the other hand, is convinced that her religion can escape what she sees as its Arab domination. “We need a take-no-prisoners debate about Saudi Arabia, a cauldron of duplicity.” ...

...No element more thoroughly informs the work of both women than feminism; its influence on their thinking can hardly be overstated, and in this sense they might be considered crown jewels in the history of the modern women’s movement. Yet because they are risking their lives for their beliefs — constantly, every day — they may have more in common with antitotalitarian dissidents like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn than with Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan. As feminists, Ms. Hirsi Ali and Ms. Manji are demanding more than equality; they are very self-consciously challenging the foundations of an entire way of life....

...Clearly, this is a debate of importance not only to Muslims but to non-Muslims as well, and for a Westerner listening in, the best way to understand it may be to translate it into the language of European history. Irshad Manji sees herself as moving Islam into the 16th century; Ayaan Hirsi Ali wants to move it into the 18th. It’s as if Luther and Voltaire were living at the same time.

Comparing these brave women to Luther and Voltaire is more appropriate than comparing them to Steinem and Friedan. This is definitely an article worth reading.

[cross-posted at Solomonia]

Fighting terrorism by fighting terrorists. What a concept!

Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC) recently unveiled her “Wake Up America” agenda to a select group of media representatives, including Family Security Matters. Her agenda features a ten-point strategy to alert and educate Americans to terrorist threats posed by radical Islamic extremists here at home.

One of Myrick’s goals is to “explain to people what the roadblocks are” regarding the fight against terrorism in the United States. She also feels “very strongly about the infiltration” by those who would do us harm “that’s taking place in America.”

(and, no, she's not talking about Mexicans crossing the border looking for jobs washing dishes)

A few of her proposals:

3. Will call for the Government Accounting Office (GAO) to investigate the selection process of Arabic translators in the FBI and DoD.

4. Will call for the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) 501(c)(3) non-profit status which restricts “lobbying on behalf of a foreign government.”

5. Introduce a bill to make the preaching, publication, or distribution of materials that call for the death of American citizens, attacks on the United States Government or Armed Forces, or the financing of the means and/or operations to accomplish these acts, acts of sedition and/or solicitation of treason.

6. Will call on the Government Accountability Office to conduct an audit to verify the total sovereign wealth fund investment in the United States.

7. Will attempt to cancel scholarship student visa program with Saudi Arabia until they reform their textbooks.