http://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/forum/detail/5782Lebanon's distress is stemming from regional stresses....
Saudi Arabian ZIOCONS continue the reign of Terror with Al-CIAda and the Syrian Alawite thugs.....in IRAQ and soon in Lebanon.....
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/saudi-arabia-s-iraq-policy_515076.html
Saudi Arabian ZIOCONS continue the reign of Terror with Al-CIAda and the Syrian Alawite thugs.....in IRAQ and soon in Lebanon.....
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/saudi-arabia-s-iraq-policy_515076.html
BEIRUT -- It is easy to join the chorus of woe in Lebanon about the fate of this wonderful but disjointed country that once again teeters on the edge of turbulence or active conflict. The reason this time is the tension stemming from the anticipated indictments by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) of some individuals, linked to the infamous White House Murder INC, and Asef SHAWKAT for the assassination of Mr. Elie HOBEIKA, January 24th 2002, and late prime minister Rafik Hariri and 22 others five years ago, Feb. 14th 2005. The level of internal anxiety is matched by intense local and regional diplomacy to try and avert political clashes that could result in bringing the government to a halt, outbursts of localized fighting or assassinations, civil war-like large-scale fighting, or even combined local and regional warfare that includes Hezbollah, other Lebanese armed groups, Israel, Syria and perhaps Iran.
These possible outcomes are also symptoms of deeper Arab problems, weaknesses and distortions that have plagued most of the Arab world since its manufacture by retreating European colonial powers in the early-mid-20th Century. A deeper look beneath the surface of this latest bout of Lebanese tensions reveals chronic problems facing the entire modern Arab world -- of which five stand out:
1 -- Constitutional power-sharing No Arab country has devised a credible system that allows all groups and citizens to share power and alternate incumbency according to a peaceful transfer of power that affirms the consent of the governed, the will of the majority, and the rights of minorities. Long bouts of quiet interspersed by intermittent wars, ethnic clashes, bombings, assassinations and the arrival of foreign armies do not comprise a good example of constitutional power-sharing.
2 -- Communal and national identity The richness of Arab society is very much related to its many component ethnic, religious, national and sectarian groups. Its weakness is that it has never found a credible manner by which individuals, small groups and larger groups of citizens can express their various identities while simultaneously meshing into a national identity that they have helped to define and that adequately represents them all.
3 -- Sustained, equitable development Arab countries on the whole did a good job of state-building in their formative decades, but when economic stress spread throughout the region in the 1980s and population growth outstripped economic growth, severe socio-economic pressures and disparities set in, and persist to this day. World Bank data shows that per capita Gross Domestic Product (at constant 2000 prices) for the entire Arab world actually declined from an average of $2671 for the decade of the 1980s to $2556 this decade (going even lower to $2035 for the decade of the 1990s in between). In other words, in the last 30 years, the average income or personal wealth of Arabs on average has been simultaneously low, dropping and erratic. For every BMW or Mercedes you see in Arab capitals there are 50 families you do not see that cannot provide their children with sufficient nutrition, school supplies or heat in winter.
4 -- Citizen-state relations in a context of the rule of law The stability and development that have taken place in the Arab world have primarily reflected strong, centralized security systems, foreign support for those systems, and the spinoffs from serendipitous oil and gas wealth. The full human and economic potential of today’s 340 million Arabs has never been approached because rule of law mechanisms that permit citizens to manifest their total capabilities and creativities have never been put in place in any Arab country. Because the rights of citizens and the limits of state power have never been seriously delineated in the modern Arab world, our societies consequently tap only part of their real potential.
5 -- Relations with external powers Iran, the United States, Israel, Great Britain, France, Russia and other major non-Arab countries remain actively involved in internal and regional Arab issues, but it remains unclear if most Arabs view these countries as friends or foes. Incoherence at home has been translated into parallel and continuing incoherence in our relations with foreign powers, who fight their ideological battles in our lands.
These five issues strike me as capturing the core, underlying weaknesses of most Arab countries, to some degree. They are more evident in Lebanon than in any other Arab country, except perhaps for lands like Somalia that have shattered and ceased functioning as coherent sovereign states, or places like Sudan, Yemen and Iraq that also reveal severe internal cleavages because they have not reconciled the imperatives of sovereignty, identity, legitimacy, citizenship, statehood and governance.
These basic challenges pertain even in rich countries with oil wealth or stable countries with strong central governments. Lebanon’s heightened worries these days due to the STL should remind us that its underlying problems and challenges are Lebanese only in their transitory particularities, while deeper down these problems are typical of most of the Arab world, where they remain stubbornly unaddressed and unacknowledged....
Saudi King Abdullah, in New York for surgery on a herniated disc, met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and spoke by phone with President Obama on the forthcoming UN tribunal report on Hezbollah. A key member in the talks was Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Jeffrey Feltman, who is as close to the government of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as he is to his own government.... Feltman, a former U.S. ambassador to Lebanon and a bitter enemy of Hezbollah, reportedly met with Hariri in New York prior to the Lebanese Prime Minister's trip to Washington to meet with Obama. French President Nicolas Sarkozy was also in New York where he met King Abdullah and Hariri. Sarkozy's meetings with the Arab leaders followed his meeting with Obama in Washington. Hariri also met with Hillary Clinton in New York...
Although the Special Tribunal for Lebanon has proven to be a propaganda tool of the Israelis and its lobby in the United States and recent Lebanese intelligence discoveries of Mossad penetration of Lebanese telecommunications proves that Israel manufactured the cell phone and other telecommunication "evidence" pinning blame for the Hariri assassination on Hezbollah, the Obama administration and France, Saudi Arabia, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, and Israel are poised to see Hezbollah blamed for several assassinations of Lebanese politicians and international criminal indictments issued against leading Hezbollah figures. The tribunal report will result in a major political upheaval in Lebanon, which is to Israel's benefit.
The presence of Feltman, who is a virtual tool of the Israeli government, in the top Middle east policy position in the State Department, has largely led to the present debacle in America's Middle East policy.
A political deal was in the works for Lebanon that would have prevented the UN tribunal from indicting senior Hezbollah officials for the 2005 Hariri assassination. However, the Saudis helped scuttle the deal being worked out with Syria. Hezbollah political ally, retired General Michel Aoun, leader of the Free Patriotic Movement of Lebanon, decried the Saudi double-cross and Qatar Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem bin Jabr al-Thani, who helped work out the Arab-led peace deal for Lebanon, also expressed alarm that the Lebanese government would collapse as a result of the deal between Washington, Paris, Riyadh, and Tel Aviv....
These possible outcomes are also symptoms of deeper Arab problems, weaknesses and distortions that have plagued most of the Arab world since its manufacture by retreating European colonial powers in the early-mid-20th Century. A deeper look beneath the surface of this latest bout of Lebanese tensions reveals chronic problems facing the entire modern Arab world -- of which five stand out:
1 -- Constitutional power-sharing No Arab country has devised a credible system that allows all groups and citizens to share power and alternate incumbency according to a peaceful transfer of power that affirms the consent of the governed, the will of the majority, and the rights of minorities. Long bouts of quiet interspersed by intermittent wars, ethnic clashes, bombings, assassinations and the arrival of foreign armies do not comprise a good example of constitutional power-sharing.
2 -- Communal and national identity The richness of Arab society is very much related to its many component ethnic, religious, national and sectarian groups. Its weakness is that it has never found a credible manner by which individuals, small groups and larger groups of citizens can express their various identities while simultaneously meshing into a national identity that they have helped to define and that adequately represents them all.
3 -- Sustained, equitable development Arab countries on the whole did a good job of state-building in their formative decades, but when economic stress spread throughout the region in the 1980s and population growth outstripped economic growth, severe socio-economic pressures and disparities set in, and persist to this day. World Bank data shows that per capita Gross Domestic Product (at constant 2000 prices) for the entire Arab world actually declined from an average of $2671 for the decade of the 1980s to $2556 this decade (going even lower to $2035 for the decade of the 1990s in between). In other words, in the last 30 years, the average income or personal wealth of Arabs on average has been simultaneously low, dropping and erratic. For every BMW or Mercedes you see in Arab capitals there are 50 families you do not see that cannot provide their children with sufficient nutrition, school supplies or heat in winter.
4 -- Citizen-state relations in a context of the rule of law The stability and development that have taken place in the Arab world have primarily reflected strong, centralized security systems, foreign support for those systems, and the spinoffs from serendipitous oil and gas wealth. The full human and economic potential of today’s 340 million Arabs has never been approached because rule of law mechanisms that permit citizens to manifest their total capabilities and creativities have never been put in place in any Arab country. Because the rights of citizens and the limits of state power have never been seriously delineated in the modern Arab world, our societies consequently tap only part of their real potential.
5 -- Relations with external powers Iran, the United States, Israel, Great Britain, France, Russia and other major non-Arab countries remain actively involved in internal and regional Arab issues, but it remains unclear if most Arabs view these countries as friends or foes. Incoherence at home has been translated into parallel and continuing incoherence in our relations with foreign powers, who fight their ideological battles in our lands.
These five issues strike me as capturing the core, underlying weaknesses of most Arab countries, to some degree. They are more evident in Lebanon than in any other Arab country, except perhaps for lands like Somalia that have shattered and ceased functioning as coherent sovereign states, or places like Sudan, Yemen and Iraq that also reveal severe internal cleavages because they have not reconciled the imperatives of sovereignty, identity, legitimacy, citizenship, statehood and governance.
These basic challenges pertain even in rich countries with oil wealth or stable countries with strong central governments. Lebanon’s heightened worries these days due to the STL should remind us that its underlying problems and challenges are Lebanese only in their transitory particularities, while deeper down these problems are typical of most of the Arab world, where they remain stubbornly unaddressed and unacknowledged....
January , 2011 -- Fixing blame on Lebanese assassinations on Hezbollah. Final report cooked up by players in New York, Langley, and Tel Aviv...
Hillary's State Department foments political upheaval in Lebanon....
AS we have been reporting since 2002, most assassinations in Lebanon have been carried out by Asef SHAWKAT and his Syrian Military Intelligence goons, together with the Lebanese deep state apparatus, on behalf of CIA/MOSSAD, starting with the assassination of Mr. Elie HOBEIKA, January 24th 2002 and ending with the assassination of Imad F. MOUGHNIEH in Damascus Feb. 12th 2008....
We have learned that the final report of the UN's Special Tribunal on Lebanon was made known to leaders from the United States, France, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Lebanon in New York with an agreement by most parties that blame will be fixed for all of Lebanon's recent assassinations, most of them signature CIA/Mossad remotely-controlled car bombings, on Lebanese Hezbollah. Hezbollah, aware of the secret deals in New York, has announced that it will pull out of the Lebanese coalition government led by Prime Minister Saad Hariri, son of slain ex-Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, a victim of one of the Mossad-CIA car bombs, thus bringing down the Lebanese government...
The US/Israeli/French nexus of utter evils are eager to perpetuate the covert links of the infamous White House Murder INC, with Asef SHAWKAT and Syria's minority mafia Dictatorship of the ASSAD dynasty of assassins for hire, since January 24th 2002....and the barbaric assassination of Mr. Elie HOBEIKA and his brave companions in Hazmieh by Asef SHAWKAT's goons and Lebanese Military Intelligence lackeys....and others....working on behalf of CIA/MOSSAD or being bamboozled into action in a classic black operation on Feb. 14th 2005 and the hit on Hariri....
Saudi King Abdullah, in New York for surgery on a herniated disc, met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and spoke by phone with President Obama on the forthcoming UN tribunal report on Hezbollah. A key member in the talks was Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Jeffrey Feltman, who is as close to the government of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as he is to his own government.... Feltman, a former U.S. ambassador to Lebanon and a bitter enemy of Hezbollah, reportedly met with Hariri in New York prior to the Lebanese Prime Minister's trip to Washington to meet with Obama. French President Nicolas Sarkozy was also in New York where he met King Abdullah and Hariri. Sarkozy's meetings with the Arab leaders followed his meeting with Obama in Washington. Hariri also met with Hillary Clinton in New York...
The presence of Feltman, who is a virtual tool of the Israeli government, in the top Middle east policy position in the State Department, has largely led to the present debacle in America's Middle East policy.
A political deal was in the works for Lebanon that would have prevented the UN tribunal from indicting senior Hezbollah officials for the 2005 Hariri assassination. However, the Saudis helped scuttle the deal being worked out with Syria. Hezbollah political ally, retired General Michel Aoun, leader of the Free Patriotic Movement of Lebanon, decried the Saudi double-cross and Qatar Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem bin Jabr al-Thani, who helped work out the Arab-led peace deal for Lebanon, also expressed alarm that the Lebanese government would collapse as a result of the deal between Washington, Paris, Riyadh, and Tel Aviv....
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