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Corporate Media Uses Fuzzy Math to Minimize Size of Lebanese
Demonstrations
Kurt Nimmo
December 2, 2006
As usual, here in America, the corporate media has a problem counting.
"A siege on Lebanon=E2=80=99s American-backed government continued Saturday
with tens of thousands of demonstrators sympathetic to the Shiite
Muslim Hezbollah militia and its allies packing downtown Beirut and
calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and his
cabinet," reports the Mercury News.
Meanwhile, closer to the "siege," actually a widespread call for the
neolib sponsored government of free trader (or free plundering by
international financiers) Siniora to step aside, the counting is a bit
more realistic.
"Hundreds of thousands of opposition protesters crammed into the heart
of Beirut Friday and besieged the headquarters of Prime Minister Fouad
Siniora=E2=80=99s government in a peaceful show of force to bring down the
ruling Cabinet," reports the Daily Star, a Lebanese newspaper. Some
observers put the number well over 800,000.
It is interesting, as well, the corporate media prefers to use the word
"siege" to characterize the demonstrations.
My dictionary defines "siege" as "the act or process of surrounding and
attacking a fortified place in such a way as to isolate it from help
and supplies, for the purpose of lessening the resistance of the
defenders and thereby making capture possible," and "a series of
illnesses, troubles, or annoyances besetting a person or group," in
other words, there is nothing positive to say about the massive
demonstration, obviously representative of a large segment of Lebanese
society.
It is an illness, an attack, an attempt to capture the government of
Lebanon, all at the behest of Syria and Iran. Hezbollah, naturally, is
a sucker for Syria. "Early last month, a White House spokesman said
there was evidence that Syria and Iran were planning to overthrow
Saniora=E2=80=99s government."
As usual, it=E2=80=99s all about Iran and Syria, two targets figuring
prominently on the target list of the Israelis and their neocon fellow
travelers. It has nothing to do with the Lebanese people sick and tired
corruption, neoliberal gangsterism, and the fact Siniora cannot protect
the Lebanese from the predatory and psychopathic Israelis to the south,
able to dispense a million cluster bombs and landmines with ease.
For all the predictable reasons, the corporate media has not bothered
to mention that a majority of the population supports Hezbollah.
According to a poll conducted on July 26 by the Beirut Center for
Research and Information, "support for Hezbollah soared to 87 percent
and crossed all religious lines" after Israel attack last summer. Even
Christians believed Hassan Nasrallah was more of a leader than the
pathetic neoliberal Fouad Siniora, who openly sobbed during his address
to Arab League diplomats in Beirut as the murderous Israelis killed
civilians with uranium-based weapons and phosphorous bombs, latter
proudly admitted, much the same way a serial killer brags about his
perverse exploits.
In the terrible wake of Israel=E2=80=99s illegal and immoral invasion, the
Siniora government was nowhere to be found when it came to rebuilding
efforts, while Hezbollah immediately launched a "Construction Jihad,"
which included participation from the Christian Free Patriotic Movement
Party, also known as the "Aounist Current." As to be expected, any
American who offers assistance in the Hezbollah effort to rebuild
Lebanon will be prosecuted as a supporter of terrorism.
Such cooperation horrified the neocons, prompting Elias Bejjani, a
Maronite Catholic and head of the Lebanese-Canadian Coordinating
Council, who supported Israel=E2=80=99s targeting of Shia civilians as "a
legitimate form of self-defense," to declare cooperation between the
Christian Free Patriotic Movement as a "bizarre and groundless marriage
of opportunism," never mind the effort the shelter the homeless who
paid a heavy price, as usual, for Israel=E2=80=99s "self-defense."
Facing nearly a million demonstrators yesterday, Michel Aoun declared
"Siniora must resign and be replaced by a Sunni prime minister who
better understands the Lebanese social fabric. We do not criticize him
because of his ethnic origin, but due to his deficient performance. He
must go, and his ministers must go, in order for a unity government to
be established," according to Yedioth Internet, an Israeli news source.
Of course, the Israelis and the Americans, or at least neocon
Americans, no shortage of them Israel Firsters, don=E2=80=99t give a whit
about the Lebanese social fabric.
In 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon, "Israel=E2=80=99s Likud government
coalesced around three objectives: the destruction of the Palestinian
infrastructure in Lebanon, the redrawing of the political map in
Lebanon, and the reduction of Syria to manageable proportions,"
explains Nasser H. Aruri in the foreword to Livia Rokach=E2=80=99s Israel=
=E2=80=99s
Sacred Terrorism. "The 1982 'operation,=E2=80=99 as well as its predecessor,
the 'Litani Operation=E2=80=99 of 1978, were part of the long-standing
Zionist strategy for Lebanon and Palestine=E2=80=A6. [a strategy] formulated
and applied during the 1950s [and] envisaged at least four decades
earlier."
Siniora and the Arab version of "free traders" are unable to protect
the Lebanese people from such vicious provocations, as they are more
interested in selling the country wholesale to their bankster
associates.
As Sami E. Baroudi writes, the "neoliberal ideology (or orthodox
neoliberalism)" has a "great hold =E2=80=A6 over the minds and actions of t=
he
Lebanese political and economic elite," part of a growing process
throughout "the Arab world" where "one sees growing evidence of the
rise to dominance of neoliberalism in inter alia: the yearning for open
markets =E2=80=A6 the reduction in governmental social spending and the
broadening of the tax base, the welcoming of advice and intervention
from the World Bank, and the breaking of old alliances between regimes
and labor in favor of new alliances with local and foreign
entrepreneurs."
In essence, this is what 800,000 people encamped outside the
office-turned-residence of PM Fouad Siniora is all about, not the
facile nonsense pedaled in American newspapers about nefarious Syrians
and Iranians pulling the strings of Hezbollah.
Siniora will not be saved by his military or commiserating "German and
British foreign ministers and calls of support from a host of Arab
leaders and Western officials," as Reuters puts it. "Although the
dispute is political, many Lebanese fear the situation could spark
sectarian violence. Tension between Sunnis and Shi=E2=80=99ites is high, in
addition to bad feeling between Christians who support leaders allied
to the rival camps."
Obviously, this would be a preferable situation for the Israelis and
neocons, who have managed to reduce Iraq to a bloody quagmire of
sectarian violence and insanity, but such is not a foregone conclusion
in Lebanon.
Hopefully, the Lebanese will get rid of their neoliberal beholden
government and send a message to both Israel and the United States.
:: Article nr. 28711 sent on 03-dec-2006 06:21 ECT
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