Harry’s Place

I shouted exactly the same thing at the telly the other night….

Of course we are, we are with them until victory, until Jerusalem!

(I’m not sure what happens after victory - I think we sod off and look for something else to bash the Israelis/Americans/New World Order with).

You might be very close to John Wight et al., who considers the likes of Sinora to be a quisling governor.

Well, i read the most fascinating comment on an Italian blog aggregator the other day (Kilombo - a portal for leftwing blogs) about this being all maneuvered behind the scenes by Israel that is setting things up for a new war, due to the fact that now Italy, the main contributor to the UN force in Lebanon, has a neo-Fascist (and therefore pro-Israel) government that would help the invasion.

So, well, if we’re all Hezbollah now apparently we’re all Mossad agents.

Of course they are! Don’t you know that the Lebanese government - according to them - is supported by the Americans?

Just read the Guardian opinion pieces for the subtle emphasis on the collapse of a pro-American proxy government.

‘The battle in the north of the country came as Arab foreign ministers urged the warring factions to immediately stop fighting and said they would send a delegation to try to broker a settlement between the Hizbullah-led opposition and US-backed government.’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/12/lebanon1

Compare the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7397946.stm

If you want an interesting and indepth view of what is really happening in Lebanon in particular and the region in general, you can’t beat http://www.michaeltotten.com/

I can only vouch for the validity and depth of his reports on Israel, but from those, I assume that his view does not change on crossing the border.

“Hizbullah-led opposition and US-backed government” is a fairly breath-taking phrase. It completely ignore something called the majority of people in Lebanon. But you know, maybe there is no nation called Lebanon afterall.

I’ve also noted the press equating the US “backing” of the Lebanese government with Iran and Syria’s “support” for Hezbollah.

1. So a bunch of knee-jerk “pacifists” voice their support for a fascist militia after they initiate a cross-border kidnapping and lob missiles at civilian centers, unprovoked.

2. World opinion forces a pointless “cease-fire” and puts down a handful of toothless blue-helmets to enforce it.

3. The fascist militia “re-arms” (without ever disarming) and plots a take-over of the elected government. The Lebanese “army” is helpless to stop them.

4. Everyone is very surprised.

According to Galloway last week on radio he believes that Hezbollah are necessary to counter the West’s puppet government of The Lebanon and to protect Lebanon from Israel

Considering Hezbollah attacked Israel in an act of War and has threatened Israel a few times since then that’s a bit rich.

Point-scoring while people are dying *sighs*

Yes, saeed, any time anyone anywhere is dying, political commentary is suspended.

I’m sure that’s a maxim you subscribe to.

Writing:

Point-scoring while people are dying *sighs*

Is *really* “point-scoring” as it makes no “point,” except to score “superior sense of empathy points” or something.

The political point, the practical point, is that hollow, *Sighing* “pacifists” enable these murderers.

“Point-scoring while people are dying *sighs*”

People aren’t dying in this situation because of floods, illness or famine. They’re dying because of the actions of a fascist group which is emboldened in its ambitions by support in the West. Pointing this out - attempting to wake people up and warn well-intentioned but naive people to the dangers of this course - ought to, if anything, save lives in the future.

At least one person was killed there, bringing the death toll since fighting erupted on May 7 to 81. Another 250 people have been injured,

Terrible as it is to hear of people being killed… innocent civilian’s or armed and uniformed soldiers?

Any sign of Green Helmet guy yet?

from http://www.michaeltotten.com/

Our friend and colleague in Lebanon Elie Fawaz writes in to remind us that The War for Lebanon has not even begun yet in earnest and Hezbollah’s “victory” in Beirut is not all it seems:

“So, we know that Hezbollah’s well-trained fighters are in control of most of west Beirut. The decision taken by Walid Jumblat and Saad al-Hariri not to fight back in Beirut, but rather hand most of their positions to the army ended any illusion regarding the sanctity of the “resistance” – that it would never turn its weapons inward, for now its hands are dripping with the blood of innocent Lebanese.

Of Course, Now More Than Ever the Left is All Hezbollah!
Forward Comrades!
Revolution Untill Victory!

(filling in for Flanker)

I’ve been watching Lebanon being destroyed ever since I remember being a person.

Now that I am 33, I still don’t understand how so many people can look at wars, massacres, genocides and whatever other acts of violence as if they were not real but merely a virtual game, a chess game, or one of those stupid games of strategy where the player has to conquer the castle.

Many people thus disrespect the immense suffering of those who happen to be caught in the middle of conflicts, and they do it just to feed their narcissistic need of portraying themselves as anti-system.

Being anti-system relieves those people from actually doing anything that may constructively contribute to solve conflicts, because it provides them with the illusion of having a moral superiority that authorizes them to systematically call hypocrites to those who fail to act, and agents of imperialism to those who actually try to contribute to conflict-solving.

They live in an intellectual ghetto, usually a very comfortable one, they chat with their palls about abstract ideological concepts without ever having to experience their concrete consequences.

This is why they achieve to defend totalitarian movements in the name of liberty. Then if those totalitarian movements conquer their goals, it is not them who have to face the consequences, it will not be them to be subjected to totalitarianism. They will keep living comfortably in their homes in a democratic and prosperous country somewhere in the “west”, denouncing how the “west” is corrupt, etc, etc, etc and thereby continuing to feed their ego.

To answer your question based upon a knowledge of this gang, I’d have to say “yes!”

And you can bet your last dollar that most of the refugees will be Christians, with a few Druze thrown in.

Because of their present inability to destroy the *Zionist* entity, the tenors of islamism have chosen to rag on their second most favourite target, Mid-East Christians.

Jews need a save haven in the area, as do the region’s Christians and other harassed religious minorities.

I was going to comment, but having read Sarah Franco’s remarks any further comment would be superfluous. She’s said all I’d want to say, save the fact that Hezbollah’s antics show that those that the ‘anti-imperialists’ champion - including also Hamas and the Iraqi ‘resistance’ - do more harm and inflict more damage on their own people than they do on their declared enemies.

@ sarah Franco…very good post…you said, with clarity what i feel on this subject…

“sarah franco” indeed.doo you live in the lubnan?

Ah yes, the subtle “American backed government” thingy that the BBC et al are so keen to subtly slip into reports about Lebanon or Colombia or whatever, as a nice little nudge, nudge, wink, wink to make sure the audience understands where their sympathies should lie in any given issue.

Funny how the governments of Sudan or North Korea or Burma are never referred to as “Chinese backed”.

That Scottish bloke on the BBC reporting from Beijing today was very keen to point out how the ‘Communist’ government had sprung into action very effectively to help out the victims of the earthquake and the ‘People’s Liberation Army’ were rushing in to help out the survivors.

Mediaspeak, if I didn’t understand it I’d assume I was a paranoid loon!

Mediaspeak, if I didn’t understand it I’d assume I was a paranoid loon!

If you say so. But on the basis of the entirety of your comment, and the conclusions that one is presumably intended to draw from it, it would appear that you are doing a very fine impression of a paranoid loon, at least.

blah:
No, I have never been to Lebanon, I am from Portugal, a country where nothing seems to happen. but still I’ve had my own share of small micro tyrants to cope with. Everybody does, except for a few privileged persons.

Anyway, distance doesn’t make any difference. Lebanon entered my parents living room every night. Now it enters mine.

I think we don’t need to experience oppression to dislike it, and I am tired of those people who think that they are promoting freedom by supporting Freedom’s enemies, because for them freedom is no more than an abstraction that they take for granted.

People in the “infamous west” are so used to being free that some of them lost the sense of what political freedom is about.

The fact that I am not Lebanese, or Zimbabwean or birmanese is pure chance. We don’t get to choose our origins. Fortunately, we do have the possibility to choose our values, and we never know whether in the future we will have to cope with the same things they are enduring.

Fortunately, we do have the possibility to choose our values, and we never know whether in the future we will have to cope with the same things they are enduring.

If you choose values that do not involve infusing your society with deep generational prejudices, it is highly unlikely you will have to cope with the murderous sectarianism that afflicts these places. Cultures are products of the collective habits and attitudes of their people.

the swappies are consistent in this at least:
http://www.socialistworker.org.uk/art.php?id=14890
they still are ALL hezbollah!

“Considering Hezbollah attacked Israel in an act of War and has threatened Israel a few times since then that’s a bit rich.”

This is stupidly ilogical, Hezbollah did not even exist before Israel invaded Lebanon, cause and effect: Hezzie is Israel’s illegitimate son.

I meant personal choices, at the ethical and political levels. Not cultural values. The intersection between the individual level and the group level is highly problematic, and I think prejudices are much more profoundly rooted than we are ready to admit.

No society is immune to future oppression because, when certain conditions converge, it’s not difficult at all to manipulate some handpicked cultural values and stereotypes and exploit people’s anxieties and the human tendency to sacrifice higher values for lower but closer to their practical needs (for example: you are against corruption, but you need an urgent medical appointment because you have a tooth ache that is torturing you and you know that if you bribe the clerk you will get it).

A civic minded society has a higher degree of immunity, but civism has to be constantly nurtured and doesn’t just spontaneously spring. And this is why I get mad when I see people undermining civic values because they feel it’s cool to be ‘anti-system’ and defend totalitarians.

Simon Assaf is still Hezbollah.
Isn’t he the “on the ground” Middle East specialist for the SWP,who goes “on the ground” after the fighting has stopped to take photos of rubble?
He was also one of the blokes who claimed all the Oil documents were forged to incriminate Galloway.

Modernity I thought you were ignoring me, it was a lot more peaceful when you did.

Israel never attacked Lebanon. It was a false flag attack, like 9/11, right Flanker?

What Sarah Franco said… And I hope she’ll say much more, equally eloquently, on HP.

There are basically two approaches to events in faraway lands of which our knowledge is imperfect.

The first is to infer from a global world view, a division of players between the poles of Right and Wrong, to identify the actors in a sordid local conflict with regard to their true or alleged or symbolic position on this-or-that side of the watershed. People caught in the conflict are, according to this school, not real, three-dimensional humans, they are actors in a greater drama and reduced to the status of mere avatars and symbols. Those wedded to the first approach (and they come from all ends of political doctrine) take sides not because of some specific parameters of the conflict at hand but because it fits into their “bigger” picture. So, they will be all Hizbullah Now because they detest US and/or Israel beyond anything else, or they will be paid-up members of the Siniora fan club because he is supposedly “pro-Western”.

And then there is a second approach. An approach that assumes that conflicts occur because people on the ground fuck up in their own way and on their own. And that fuck-ups typically occur not because one side is totally in the right and the other totally in the wrong but because they are both sometimes right and sometimes wrong, slaves to the dynamics of conflict, reacting to events thereby eliciting counter-reaction… Conflicts aren’t resolved by flag-waiving or shroud-waving or all of us being Hizbullah or all of us being Fuad Sionora. They are solved by finding the middle ground, identifying the points of contention of the specific conflict and, more often than not, disconnecting it from the gravitational pull of world divides and grand ideologies.

The fact that SWP, StWC or Flanker are of the first persuasion is not a surprise. Why should it be?

If we are all hezbollah, both then and now, do we get the social goodies I hear so much about. My Tumble Dryer is fucked and a visit from a few ‘disciples of the Divine’ handy in white goods maintanance would be appreciated. Plus the bath leaks

Great comment Sarah. Entirely OT but how do you see (if any) the heritage of Salazzar manifest itself in Portugal?

The Lebanese wine making industry is the oldest in the world. They are still making (very good) wine in the Lebanon (in the Beqaa valley). If you want to support Lebanese wine makers, and their economy, buy some Lebanese wine. Lebanese wines are available online from, among others, Handford wines (www.handford.net) who import directly from local vineyards, and no, this doesn’t make them absurdly expensive.

Sarah Franco, thank you for your elogant comments. Welcome to Harry’s Place. Hope you will visit here often.

Sarah Franco’s blog can be found at http://cafeturco.wordpress.com .
Her posts there are as thoughtful and interesting as her comments here are.

socialrepublican: “How do you see (if any) the heritage of Salazzar
manifest itself in Portugal.”

If you link to her blog and scroll down to two posts of May 1st entittled “April 25th” & “April 24th” respectively, you will get some of Sarah’s views on Salazzar and his heritage.

Thanks David All, good stuff…

social republican:

Do you remember a silly TV show that was produced all around Europe where, in a simulacre of democratic debate, the viewers were asked who they would choose as the Greatest citizen of the respective country ever?

Guess who won the contest in Portugal????

Bingo! António de Oliveira Salazar!

In other countries, the dictators were excluded from the possibility of being selected. In Germany, Hitler was off the list.

In Portugal, Salazar was not off the list because the enemies of democracy and others that think that they can promote democracy by allowing the missuse of free speech to falsify History pressured enormously through the blogsphere.

All of this despite the fact that the Portuguese Constitution forbids the apology of Fascism…

Sarah, it’s sad to hear that the ghost of Salazar still haunts Portugal.

BTW, I like your blog.

Sackcloth and ashes:

let me quote a legendary expression that belongs to the symbolic heritage of all anti-fascists despite the fact that extreme-left winger always try to appropriate it:

no pasaran!

in case you are from the generation that watched the Scooby doo cartoons as a kid, you must be aware that ghosts don’t really scare those who don’t believe in them.

About the relativisation of dictators depending on them being left or right, take a look into this link especially the comments. the sarah franco from lisbon portugal that comments there is me.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5151504.stm

let me thank the Harry’s place audience for your warm reception on my comments!

‘in case you are from the generation that watched the Scooby doo cartoons as a kid, you must be aware that ghosts don’t really scare those who don’t believe in them.’

Well, if I ever encountered the shade of Marcel Caetano, I’d just have to play these to get rid of him:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89LBNSX_vig&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_H1pYcI_l0

It worked well enough in the past.

No pasaran!