Michel Aoun's Version of "I Will Survive"

Yesterday, Michel Aoun said: “The problem is not over electing a certain person as president of the republic but rather over 'electing the republic' and the survival of the republic...”

What he really meant was:

"In Baabda I was afraid I was petrified 

Kept thinking I could never live without the republic by my side 

But in Paris I spent so many nights 

Thinking how Assad did me wrong 

And I grew strong 

And I learned how to get along with his son 

And so now I am back 

from outer space 

I just walked in to find Hassan here with that fun look upon his face 

I should have allied with his stupid flock 

I should have made you leave Baabda's keys 

If I had known for just one second Geagea be back to bother me 

Go on now go, walk out the door 

Just turn around now 

'Cause you're not welcoming me anymore 

Weren't you the one who went to Sleiman and said bye 

Do you think I'd crumble 

Did you think I'd lay down and die?

Oh no not I. I will survive 

Oh as long as I know how to lie 

I know Gebran will stay alive 

and I've got all my life to live 

I've got you Republic and you'll give and I'll survive 

I will survive! Hey, Hey!"

Sorry Aoun but I enjoy Gloria Gaynor's original version of "I will survive" much more than your weekly desperate "I want to become president" speeches.

Said Akl, A Lover Spurned

Said Akl has passed away a lover spurned.
He loved Arabs, Islam, Syria and Palestine passionately.  He gave them his soul in some of the most beautiful Arabic poems in the 20th century.
But after the defeats, cruelty, ignorance, violence, sectarianism and self-serving instincts of Arab politics, he felt betrayed.
He retreated to his Lebanese castle. He hid behind highly controversial walls to protect himself and his broken heart. Lebanon became the promised land of his exodus from Arab affairs. He wanted to shield it from the disappointments, violence and barbarism of the Middle East.
Although he was lost and bitter and espoused an extreme form of Lebanese nationalism, he was never a sectarian.
He was a Lebanese icon, a heroic Arab bard who retreated from the broken and degenerate Arab polity, a Lebanese nationalist who saw his Lebanon crumble.
The truth of Said Akl was in his blue eyes. Through them you could see the purity of his romantic soul where absolutes reigned.
His perfectionist tendencies to idolize causes, ideas, people and leaders always led him to disappointments but his verses were perfection and they will never disappoint.

Sabbouha: Our Aphrodite has gone

Sabah was more than a diva. She incarnated the positive, happy, joyful and beautiful Lebanon.
She was bright, flashy, hard working and a real star. She was a smile, a breeze, eternal youth, the Lebanon of my youth.
She was a symbol of goodness, love and giving. She was everything beautiful that Lebanon had to give.
The Lebanese spirit that refused to die even during the darkest days of the civil war. But now she is no more.
 I never knew she was so entrenched in my psyche. I felt like I lost someone very close although I do not remember meeting her.
If I had to choose between Sabah and Fairuz. Sabah would win every time, although it is Fairuz’ songs that I hear and enjoy. But just seeing Sabah on magazine pages made me happy, gave me hope.
Your passing away made me sad, Sabbouha. Sabbouha, this alias made her close to all our hearts.
She will remain entangled with the Lebanon that I love. She was the good life. The myth of pre-war Lebanon. The belief that everything will be alright and that the war will end and Lebanon will be rebuilt.
She was Lebanon’s Venus and Aphrodite, a real goddess. She was a bond between us Lebanese. She was our girlfriend, our wife, our mistress. Our pretty sister, our funky grandma.
It didn’t matter what god you prayed to, what politics you followed, how poor or rich you were, if you were Lebanese, you had Sabah imprinted like an invisible tattoo on your subconscious mind.
But now she leaves us in very uncertain, dangerous and desperate times. She took with her a part of the Lebanon that I loved; a part that will never come back.

They Are the Past and You Are Iran

Thank you Iran, thank you for giving hope to every freedom loving person in the Middle East. My heart grows when I see this nation rise up to its great past, its intelligence, its beauty and its dynamism.
Thank you Iran for confronting the idiotic tyranny of ideologues, liars, murderers and frauds.
You make me proud, you give me hope.
I want to be with you in these rallies. These are the best of times where everything seems possible, where you feel you can change the world.
You stood up! You confronted! What courage!
I hear your cries, your yearning for liberty and it is the sweetest sound, the saddest cry.
I lived it in Lebanon and it turned me into a free being and everything after that was possible.
I hope you succeed to bring down this ugly and sick leadership out of Orwell's Animal Farm. These social swine viruses.
If you don't, if they kill you, you will still have won. They are the past and you are Iran.

Odette Salem Never Gave Up

Odette Salem will finally know the truth.

On 16 May 2009, Salem, who was the main organizer for Friends and Families of the Missing and Kidnapped sit-in opposite the ESCWA headquarters in Beirut, passed away after a traffic accident while crossing the street to the protest tent.

Salem never gave up looking for her children and organized a movement to uncover the fate of the 17,000 people who disappeared during Lebanon's civil war. The movement gained political momentum after Syrian troops withdrew from Lebanon.

After an encounter with Salem in January 1993, I had written the following:

Odette Salem will never stop looking for her children, Richard and Christine, who were kidnapped in 1985 on Sadat Street in West Beirut.
"The war has ended," says Salem. "But my nightmare hasn't. How can we talk of peace when I don't know where my children are?"
On Tuesday September 17, 1985, Salem cooked lunch for her children. They usually returned home from work at 2 p.m.. But, Richard, who was 23 years old, and Christine, who was 20 years old, were late.
Salem waited for them on the balcony of her house in the Sakiat al Janzir district in West Beirut. It was 3 p.m. and they still had not come. She phoned the Joseph Salem design company in Hamra Street, West Beirut, where Richard and Christine worked. She was told that they had left an hour ago.
She thought they had had a car accident, so she phoned all the hospitals in the capital. Nothing. She rushed to her neighbor, Colonel Issam Abou Zaki, who today is the national Chief of Police. He phoned the capital's precincts. Nothing. In August and September 1985, fifty Christians were kidnapped in West Beirut. Salem's children were among them. The Hezbollah, she says, kidnapped Richard and Christine to exchange them with Shiites, held by the Christian militia.
"During the war," she says, "I worried about bullets, bombs and mines. But I never thought my children would be kidnapped."
After news spread about the abduction, Salem received a phone call from a person demanding a ransom. "Three days after they were kidnapped," she recalls, " I received a phone call. A man asked me for 100,000 Lebanese Pounds [about $3000 at the time]." But the call was a prank.
Many people asking for money called her; but none knew where her children were.
Salem, whose husband died of a heart attack in 1982, says that she suffered from severe depression for the three years following her children's abduction. She was hospitalized several times. Now she lives on tranquillizer and can hardly fall asleep before 3 a.m.. She has suffered a slipped disk, a severe case of sinusitis; her kidneys need surgery urgently.
"I am a wreck," she says smoking her fourth cigarette in 40 minutes. "But I won't have surgery before I see my children. What if they are released and I am still in the hospital? Who would they go to? I am the only family they have left."
Her children have become her only purpose in living since 1985, when she founded the Parents of the Kidnapped Association. She has organized rallies and lobbied politicians and journalists. "Promises, promises, promises, is all I get from politicians," Salem says. "Last year, this idiot [former Prime Minister Omar] Karami told me, with a smile on his face, that there were no kidnapped left alive. I walked out of his office."
Indeed after the Lebanese Forces and the Hezbollah released 14 hostages in July 1991, the government considered the case closed. Salem, however, is convinced that her children are still alive.
"Last year," she says, "a former kidnapped [ whom she refused to name] told me that he was held with my son at the Sheik Abdallah barracks in Baalbak [once a Hezbollah stronghold]. "Now the [Lebanese] army took over the barracks, and they [Hezbollah] moved him."
She met with Hezbollah leaders, the Palestine Liberation Organisation, the Iranians. Nothing. Her crusade will continue until she sees Richard and Christine, dead or alive, she says.
Everynight Salem looks at the photo albums of her children and talks to their pictures. " This is all I have left," she says weeping. "I am living with their pictures."

Goodbye Mrs. Salem, your story should never be forgotten and always be told to safeguard our country from further bloodshed and tears.

Fatah Al Hamam / Nasrallah the Traitor

The truth is that Syria is destabilizing Lebanon, and Fatah Al Islam is its creation.
Syria opened the gates of hell...and their dogs of war, Hezbollah, are helping them.

The truth is that Hezbollah, Syria and Iran decided to kill Hariri. Syria would never take such a decision without informing their favourite commander Hassan Nasrallah.

The truth is that Walid Jumblatt and Samir Geagea and all their allies are not statesmen but worn and corrupt war criminals without visions.

The truth is that Michel Aoun is a megalomaniac who is ready to burn Lebanon for his presidential obessions.

The truth is that Saad Hariri is a useless puppet.

And guess what, we elected those that are about to destroy our lovely country.

Fatah Al Islam or Fatah Al Hammam, they could have called it anything. This Syrian invention. They create chaos in Lebanon and they benefit. Israel benefits. The US benefits, Iran benefits but Lebanon doesn't.

But somehow we have politicians that beg to differ. But the worse of them all is Hassan Nasrallah...the bearded Hitler that turned utter defeat into victory, and I don't care what our enemy Israel says. We lost our Lebanon last summer, and we are about to finish it off this one.

Israel first, now Syria and Iran and their new toy Fatah Al Islam.

"Labayka Nasrullah, Labayka Nasrullah" and land price in Syria tripled.
"Labayka Nasrullah, Labayka Nasrullah" and Syrian GDP is growing substantially.
"Labayka Nasrullah, Labayka Nasrullah" and Syria is courting Israel for peace talks.
"Labayka Nasrullah, Labayka Nasrullah" and Lebanon is being destroyed by your barbarian ideology and your ugly face.

Nasrallah decided that Fatah Al Hammam should kill the Lebanese Army and they should find a political compromise.
Nasrallah decided to kidnap Israeli soldiers and get Israel to destroy Lebanon.
Nasrallah decided with the Syrians and the Iranians to kill Rafic Hariri.
Nasrallah is a traitor that should be prosecuted and sentenced to 30 years in jail.

The Heroes

The Lebanese are heroes. The ones who fought Israel in the South and defeated its once mighty army, the ones who rescued the wounded, the ones who took in the refugees and helped them, the ones who never stopped working during the war and the ones who prayed.
The Lebanese are heroes and not cowards killing women and children with "smart" bombs and laser guided missiles from US made jet fighters.
The Lebanese are heroes and not monsters who commit massacres in the name of Zionism.

Whatever Hezbollah did, (Nasrallah admitted yesterday that he would not have kidnapped the soldiers if he knew what Israel intended to do), and whether it did it for Iran or Syria, is irrelevant.

It is Israel that killed my fellow citizens, destroyed our infrastructure and our economy. It is Israel's army that was defeated in the fields of our South. The resistance was heroic, Israel was pathetic in its crimes and the world witnessed in real time how immoral a state and a people it is.

Israel's hate was poured onto Lebanon and part of it was destroyed. But we will rise, like we always do, stronger and more united.

[I went back to Lebanon last week for a few days, thinking that it would be easy to close shop and move to London. I was heartbroken. My country is beautiful, my people are warm and caring , our fruits and our vegetables are the freshest and life there is easy.

"Should I give up on our new life and my great new job in London, take my family back to Beirut and live day to day there?", this is a question I have been asking myself everyday since I came back.

A prominent Lebanese banker I met during my short Beirut stay, answered my question when he said:"Ambitious people go make their money outside and come retire in Lebanon." I wish somebody could have told me this earlier.]

The New Saladin

Hassan Nasrallah's speech tonight was clear: Nobody will disarm Hezbollah and I am imposing my will to power on Lebanon.
Ah! and of course he claims that Hezbollah won the war. But that is classic and discounted populist spin.

He also said that Hezbollah will compensate everyone whose house was destroyed. That will make him a semi-god (he was prior to that a saint, whose name you could not pronounce in vain) among the majority of Shiites in Lebanon.

He also said that it was his people who suffered most while others were comfortable in their offices theorizing.

Thank you Israel for transforming this ignoramus ideologue, whose philosophy of life and death comes from 1400 year old book and who is educating his people accordingly, into a victorious and arrogant ignoramus ideologue.

Thanks to Israel, Lebanon has its mini Khomeini and the Islamic Republic of Lebanon is around the corner.

Now Israel is depending on the Lebanese government to finish the job, but I hope that Lebanon will not oblige and I hope that Israel will end up with an Islamic republic on its border that will make its life hell for a long time.

Unless they are fond of religious wars, I call on my Israeli enemies to join me in London because a new Saladin is rising at their doors and his name is Nasrallah.

The Herald of Civil War

Another pro Iranian and pro Syrian newspaper was published today, Al Akhbar (the news), its owner, the arrogant mercenary Ibrahim Al Amin wrote that Hezbollah will not give up its weapons and he went on to accuse Lebanese politicians of implementing the will of the United States and Israel.

The paper also interviewed (the I hate Hariri because he is not backing my Presidential candidacy) General Michel Aoun who accused the Hariri camp and their allies of coordinating with the US and therefore having prior knowledge of the Israeli attack.

In any other country such accusations of betrayal spun by Iranian and Syrian funded papers such as Ad Diyar and Al Akhbar should lead to investigations or libel trials.

In Lebanon it usually leads to civil strife.

Syria and Iran: Bring it on, Israel!

[A must watch video: George Galloway on Sky]

The Syrian Foreign Minister today was emboldened enough to say:"Syria is ready for the possibility of a regional war if the Israeli aggression continues...[and] as Syria's foreign minister I hope to be a soldier in the resistance.''

From the beginning, the war on Lebanon was a losing battle. The more Israel kills Lebanese civilians and destroys Lebanon's infrastructure the stronger Hezbollah becomes.

The only way to have hurt Hezbollah and Iran is to have focused on Syria and its weak regime. But now it is too late.

With a change of regime in Syria, attacks in Iraq would stopped so would weapons to Hezbollah. The Syrian opposition made it clear that fighting Israel is not its intention and I wonder why the Israelis did not see this option.

Ariel Sharon understood that. He was the one who sent planes to bomb Palestinian bases in Syria. He scared them.

Lebanon is and was always a trap for Israel. Ehud Olmert and his army of hotheads and criminals did not see that and they fell right into it.

It would have been simple, Israel hits the Syrian military and regime aparatus and the opposition takes over in no time. Iran would not have intervened and if it did than it would have been threatened with deadly force.

At the same time, Israel makes peace with the Palestinian moderates and things would have come to an end.

But today, Israel looks very weak and the Syrians know it.

Go to Heaven!

Supporters of Hezbollah in Lebanon today are confident of their victory. They have survived therefore they win. Israel killed hundreds of Lebanese and destroyed our infrastructure and still Hezbollah won. Hundred of thousands of refugees and Hezbollah supporters say that they are victorious.

If this is victory, what is defeat?

Maybe Hassan Nasrallah can explain to me what he meant when he said that if his fighters retreat it is not important because it is just a little bit of land and it is not precious enough to hold on to.

What are the Shebaa Farms then? A little bit of unpopulated land?

What are the 3 prisoners held in Israel compared to the hundreds of children that Israel killed?

Get out of Lebanon Hassan and take your ideology of death and hate with you. Take your supporters and your complexes and go to your beloved Islamic Republic of Iran.

Leave us, the people who actually believe in a country called Lebanon, alone. You are not part of us. Go live your Islamic battles somewhere else. Go to heaven and let us live in the pro-American hell in peace and prosperity like many other places in the Middle East and Asia.

Sayonara The Islamic Republic of Iran

Hezbollah is not a Lebanese party. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said it several times on live TV. His nation is not even the Arab world, it is Islam.

And Nasrallah said a few days ago that he is fighting the battle of the Umma (the nation of Islam) despite Lebanon's will.

Nasrallah is the General of Khamanei. He might live in Lebanon but he considers it part of dar al-harb. Indeed Islam divides the world in two parts, Dar el-Islam, the House of Islam, and Dar al-harb, the house of War.

Lebanon is not an Islamic country and it is not ruled by Islam, therefore Khamenei's Sharia allows it to be destroyed for the greater cause of Islam. And Nasrallah dutifully obeys.

Today, Shiite refugees, mostly followers of Hezbollah, are all over Christian, Druzes and Sunni areas. Small and localized problems are happening here and there. Some of them are walking in the streets with guns, in some areas women are afraid to walk at night and houses are being robbed.

After all it is "hallal" (religiously permitted) to rob a non-Muslim for some twisted fundamentalist minds.

A reporter I know told me that a refugee girl who did not wear her veil was beaten in front of her.

People are scared that the small clashes will one day explode into a full fledged massacre, because Hezbollah is armed and the rest of the population is not.

A recipe for a new civil war.

Hezbollah has been brainwashing the poor Southerners since 1983. Today fundamentalism is the norm.

And Hezbollah was founded and is funded by Iran. The ideology, finance and arm shipments are all Iranian.

Why is Israel hitting Lebanon alone? That does not make sense. Because the moment there is a ceasefire is the moment that Hezbollah gets armed again.

The Israeli murderers want to make sure that Hezbollah is destroyed before the adventure against Iran starts. This is why the Iranians do not want Hezbollah to give up the fight, whatever the cost to Lebanon, because they know they will be next.

I think that the smiles of both Khamanei and his crazy lackey Ahmadinejad will soon be wiped out their bearded faces.

Special to Beirut Notes / Terje Roed-Larsen: Crisis could engulf Syria

Terje Roed-Larsen, the UN envoy in charge of implementation of resolution 1559, told a seasoned Arab diplomat recently that Israel has a US "green light" to hit Hezbollah and Syria, but not Iran.

According to a first hand account, Roed-Larsen added that the situation is very dangerous and could spread.

My source added that Larsen might mentioned the Syrian factor because he wanted the message to get to the Syrian leadership.

Furthermore, Roed-Larsen said that US Vice President Dick Cheney, who is not the healthiest of men, will be resigning in three months only to be replaced by Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice.

The Monsters From Israel

One more time, Israel turned life into death in the village of Qana where Christ supposedly attended a wedding and turned water into wine.
The Israelis massacred, butchered, tore the limbs of at least 51 people including 22 children.
The democratic state of Israel, the moral state of Israel is burning Lebanese children alive to the god of Zionism.

Ten years ago Israel massacred more than 100 refugees in a UN base in Qana. And Israel went unpunished.

Lebanese kids are inferior, aren't they? They do not matter to Western societies. Israel can kill as it pleases and wishes, and it is always unintentional.

Poor Israel, Poor Israelis. They after all are victims defending themselves from the Arab monster. They can kill its children, its grand children and its mothers. They are fighting for survival.

Poor Israel, Poor Israelis. They are the first line of defence for Western civilization and ethics. They can make a mistake and kill tens of children and apologize and the US quickly forgives them. That is allowed.

After all they are human and Lebanese children are Hezbollah supporters that should die for the new and democratic Middle East that George Bush has promised the world.

A Middle East of death, misery and hate. A Middle East where criminals are celebrated and victims are swiped under the carpet of international justice.

That is the brave new world that Bush, his neo-con intellectuals and their Israeli instigators promised us.