I got this e-mail today from my friend in Lebanon, and i felt I just had to share it with all of you:

Greetings rom the bekaa, where my spoken Arabic is really improving these days, thanks especially to the party of god. Three of their goons just came to the house for a two hour visit. I said I would only answer their questions if they corrected me when I spoke so I turned it into a dars Al arabi. The guy who was asking all the questions – the bad cop, if you will – said in mild disbelief 'ana almtik arabi?' (I'm going to teach you Arabic?) and then proceeded to correct my grammar and pronunciation (even at times providing verb conjugations) throughout the excruciatingly boring process, which included questions like 'ah, so you visited a friend in Italy in 2004. Who was he? Only for Christmas? What does he do?' He photographs skateboarders… 'what do you do here? I study and cook during the day, and sew at night,' at which point I held up one of my micro-dresses I had been showing off to the neighborhood ladies this afternoon.Or 'what do you like to eat in lebanon?'

They kept saying that this was all for my own security so I imagine that now that they have my photo and my food preferences on file and everyone in the village knows me, in case someone who didn't get the 'stranger in our midst' memo comes up to me on the street offering a shawarma, all the shabab will jump in to protect me, saying 'NOO!!! she only eats falafel!'

I will admit I slowed down the process a bit by writing a flash card every time a new word popped up in our conversation.

I will also say they should thank their lucky stars for the donations of sophisticated anti-aircraft weaponry etc they are getting from other countries because their local intelligence agents were truly not impressive.

Not that it matters because the whole village is HA but they just lost the votes of this household. My fake Lebanese aunt just said 'fuck HA' before she went to bed, and she doesn't say much in English.f

and then this addendum in a seperate e-mail titles " And I forgot to add.."

 Worst of all, one was wearing double denim!!! Correct me if I am wrong but I am pretty sure that is labeled haram in the first or second sura of the quran, if not in the preface, author's note or even the front cover. 

Oh Boy..

A Katyusha barrage was fired Thursday at
the Nahariya area in the Western Galilee. Police reported that two
people were lightly wounded and evacuated to the local hospital.
Several residents were treated for shock.

Police sappers received reports of three rocket hits, one in town and two others in open fields nearby.

Update: So far we know it's not Hezbollah.

Update: Israel hits back

Now is the time to start praying that Hezbollah doesn't start "responding", or we really will be having a 2006 De Ja Vu! 

Too many people are jovial about the return of Samir Al Kuntar, with even Nasrallah informing him that the 2006 war was for him. The question I would like to pose here, regardless of whether or not Kuntar is a child killer , is it worth it? Oh, and look at the below table before you make that answer, please!

The sweet taste of Victory, ehh? 

I have been reading a bunch of lebanese opposition blogs lately, and I have to say that I am amazed on how disconnected from reality they are, or rather how reversed their reality is. You see, what Hezbollah did was justified apparently and they have in essence liberated Beirut , oh and the FM secuirty force-that ran away when Hezbollah first attacked- is actually the Harriri terrorist militia , killer of syrian workers and attacker of lebanese christians. It's great!

Some of the opposition do keep a level head about all of this and don't indulge in their own bullshit like the above blogs do, and for that I am grateful. They do have a sense of weariness to them, knowing-unlike the previously mentioned blogs who were written by the blogging equivalent of 13 year old female NSYNC fans who are talking smack about the equally lame Backstreet Boys- that there is no easy victory here, and that what Hezbollah did will cost them and the Lebanese Shia for years to come  I will provide you with a list to check out, in order to give you a "more rounded" perspective on all of this:

Marxist from Lebanon

In the Middle of the East

Land and People

qunfuzcreation

And because we offer full services around here at Sandmonkey INC. , we recognize that there are those of you who are anti- both sides as well as there some of a who are Lebanese and who simply hate everything that is going on. So for both of those gorups I give you the one and only Fuck Lebanon blog.  

Enjoy! 

So we are finally there. Finally, after 3 years of pussyfooting, it's here. Oh boy, where do I begin?

Well, now that the gloves are off, we have become aware of 3 very important facts:

1) Hezbollah has lost its mind and decided to turn their weapons against the lebanese population.

2) Amal and the SSNP have vicious militias that are doing the work that Hezbollah doesn't want to be associated with.

3) The Sunni militia is a bunch of pansies, and Saad Al Harriri could never be his father.

I have been following the sataelite channels for the past 3 days, glued to my TV, watching what's going on with serious disbelief. I never thought that the Sunni neighborhoods would fall this quickly, nor that Hezbollah would control Beirut this easily. But here we are, and it all seems so…deliberate. Like M14 wanted this to happen. Like they wanted Hezbollah exposed. Their refusal to engage with the opposition fighters is making the latter look-and rightfully so- like thugs. Not to mention they are, once and for all, exposing to whom their allegiance falls: Our dear old friend Bisho!

Oh, and btw, Images of the Hezbollah occupation of Beirut is here!

The Satalite coverage of what's going is fantastic, depending on who you believe. Here is the rundown:

AlJazeerah: Anti-M14 coverage as usual. They are hosting way too many people who keep denying what we are seeing on TV. My Favorite was the SSNP guy denying that its his militia running around with guns and responsible for burning down the Almustaqbal TV station building, but nevertheless emphasized that those acts won't stop until, well, the M14 people bow down, lick the boots of the opposition and pledge to be their bitch at all times. Oh, and the footage of the Prince of Qatar and Bisho agreeing that what's happening in Lebanon is "an internal matter". Awwww, you guys. It's so cute when u r so obviously sticking it to the Saudis. So so cute!

AlArabiyah: The Saudis are FREAKING OUT. But before we get to them, can we please salute whomever put Rima Maktabi as their anchorwoman? She is so very very hot, and the pics I found of her online do not do her justice. She could read a food menu and I would still listen. HOT!! ANYWAY, so yeah, Saudis, freaking out, calling it the Hezbollah Coup and are complaining about how they were attacked and their tapes were destroyed. But the one thing that keeps annoying me is their tendencies to get saudis to comment on what's going on in Lebanon. And saudis in the gelbab and kefayah and everything. People u never heard of them before, and they have the title of "Mohamed whatever, political analyst". Who the fuck is that guy? Did Lebanon run out of political analysts al of a sudden, that u have to get a saudi guy? Dude, every lebanese is a political analyst. Stop being assholes and hire those guys. They need the work and could definitely use the money.

Press TV: The Iranian english news channel is awesome. They get this lebanese guy, this editor of a newspaper called "Al Intiqad"  ( which means 'the criticism', I wonder what's it all about!) who is squarely against the current government, and then have the token M14 guy talk for 6 seconds before cutting him off. They also like to bait the M14 guys and then cut them off the moment they get what they want. They once asked this M14 guy what are the external factors and forces that play in Lebanon, so he naturally started to mention Israel and the war first, and before he could say Syria, the moderator thanked him and went to the Intiqad guy and was like "So, with Israel next door Hezbollah has the right to have its weapons, no?", and then gave the Intiqad guy 10 minutes to respond. It was beautiful.

AlManar: OH MY GOD. I am in LOVEEEEEEEEEEE. This  channel is great. Ignore the reporting for a second, and watch the Propaganda segments. It's almost rude in the way it's direct. I also love the segments where they show that the vacated offices of the FPM had "weapons", never mind they are showing 2 handguns and an AK47, which is like the standard amount of guns inside any self-respecting Durzi guy's car and doesn't exactly constitute "an armed office of a militia". It's all bullshit, but that's the beauty of Hezbollah: they don't care that they are full of shit. They know they have a population that will eat it up regardless. Also, they have fantastic graphic work, reminds me of egyptian TV in the 80's. I mean come on guys, we know u r backwards and stupid, but surely you can do much better in the media production value department, no?

LBC: They were playing game shows. Seriously. And today, they had morning Aerobics.

"Egypt will not stand by as Iran takes over Beirut!"

Anonymous Source from the Egyptian Ministery of foreign affairs

"If Beirut falls, Riyadh falls, and Cairo falls"

Some Egyptian expert/analyst/whatever on AlArabiyah TV

Feel free to laugh.  Seriously. I am laughing my ass off. Oh yeah, Mubarak won't allow Iran to take over Beirut. Ok, was that the same way he didn't allow Iran to take over Iraq via Muqtada al Sadr, or the way Iran took over Gaza Via Hamas? And what are you gonna do tough guy? Send the army? Ha! You mean the one the people of Egypt begged you to send to fight the Israelis? So You are sending it now to fight those who fought the Israelis? Yeah, that will look good.

Dear Lebanese readers, don't count on arab countries for anything. Especially ours. Trust me, we are useless. And as for those of you who have been asking that Egypt does send troops, well, I do not recommend this at all. Mubarak is in charge people, and this guy never leaves a hole the moment his dick gets in it. Not recommended. Trust me on that one! 

Nasrallah says that the phone network is "the most important weapon for the resistance" , and here I thought it was all about stealing revenue from the government. 

Iran is blaming… you guessed it…Israel and the US! Hey, at least they are consistent!

Obama opened his mouth on the Lebanon situation yesterday and proved himself to be a jasckass. Here is what he said, plus the commentary of Abu Kais:

Hezbollah's power grab in Beirut has once more plunged
that city into violence and chaos. This effort to undermine Lebanon's
elected government needs to stop, and all those who have influence with
Hezbollah must press them to stand down immediately. It's time
to engage in diplomatic efforts to help build a new Lebanese consensus
that focuses on electoral reform, an end to the current corrupt
patronage system, and the development of the economy that provides for
a fair distribution of services, opportunities and employment.
We must support the implementation of UN Security Council Resolutions
that reinforce Lebanon's sovereignty, especially resolution 1701
banning the provision of arms to Hezbollah, which is violated by Iran
and Syria. As we push for this national consensus, we
should continue to support the democratically elected government of
Prime Minister Siniora, strengthen the Lebanese army, and insist on the
disarming of Hezbollah before it drags Lebanon into another unnecessary
war. As we do this, it is vital that the United States continues to
work with the international community and the private sector to rebuild
Lebanon and get its economy back on its feet.

Oh the
time we wasted by fighting Hizbullah all those years with rockets,
invasions of their homes and shutting down their media outlets. If only
we had engaged them and their masters in diplomacy, instead of just
sitting with them around discussion tables, welcoming them into our
parliament, and letting them veto cabinet decisions. If only Obama had
shared his wisdom with us before, back when he was rallying with some
of our former friends at pro-Palestinian rallies in Chicago. How stupid
we were when, instead of developing national consensus with them, we organized media campaigns against Israel on behalf of the impoverished people who voted for them.

During that time when we bought into the cause against Israel,
treating resistance fighters like our brothers, we really should have
been building consensus with them. Because what we did back
in 1982, 1993, 1996, 2000 and 2006 – all that was plain betrayal and
unnecessary antagonism, a product of a corrupt patronage system and unfair distribution of wealth.

We stand today regretting the wasted time that could have been wisely spent talking to them, to the Syrian occupiers who brought them into our system, and the Iranian revolutionary guards who trained them.

Yes, this is change we believe in. Get me a time machine.

As for Jeha, he hits it on the nail as usual:

Could someone tell that neophyte that he is not yet President of the United States? He will have plenty of chances to “engage” with Syria at our expense, when or if he becomes "President of these 57 states". We may be down, but we're not out yet…

Just spare us the hypocrisy for now

 Signed: A bitter Lebanese, still clinging to religion and guns

Even the Blacksmiths of Lebanon agree . It's kind of funny, but not a single M14 supporter I know is an Obamaniac. Hmmm… I wonder why!

Anyway, a new day is starting, and the latest I've heard is that the Druze militias have just killed like 7 Hezbollah guys when they tried venturing into their neighborhood. Hezbollah may have stretched his muscles over the sunnis, but he can't do it to the christians and the druze as well. Plus, they have now angred all the sunni forces in the region. Don't be surprised if assassinations of Shias start by groups claiming to be "AlQaida" in Lebanon. Hezbollah are warrioris, and if they are not fighting Israel they need to be fighting somebody, and their sociopathic behavior is now apparent to everybody. They may have taken over some parts of Beirut, but they have lost both their legitimacy and image. They are now fair game, and they surely don't lack enemies.

We are heading towards some really interesting days! 

Hezbollah and the Sunni Militias are clashing in Lebanon right now. Live reports from Lebanon here , pictures of the clashes here.

The prison that hosts both the generals accused of facilitating Harriri's assassination and the Fatah Al Islam terrorists is having a riot, with the inmates taking several of the prison personell hostage. However…

Roumieh is Lebanon's main jail. The detainees there include four
former generals held in connection with the 2005 assassination of
former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and members of the al-Qaida-inspired Fatah Islam militant group.

The officials say the rioting is not near the generals or the Fatah Islam members.

Let's hope it stays that way. 

Dude has their number down cold..

First,
does Nasrallah believe? The answer would seem to be obvious. Rarely
does the Sayyed utter a phrase that analysts will not quote with a
rider firmly informing us that he says what he means and means what he
says. One can certainly find quite numerous exceptions to that rule,
particularly when Nasrallah pronounces on the slippery substance of
Lebanese domestic politics. But when it comes to Israel, where the
lines are far clearer, Nasrallah actually does mean what he says, and
has been saying it with considerable consistency for quite a long time.

For example, in an interview
with the newspaper Al-Wahda al-Islamiyya in February 1989, when
Nasrallah was still only a Hizbullah field commander, he remarked: "The
future is one of war [against Israel], not settlement; the line that
[Yasser] Arafat is pursuing will only lead him to a closed door, and
the day will come when warfare and the elimination of Israel will be
the only options." (For a rundown of Nasrallah's statements translated
into English, read the indispensible "Voice of Hezbollah: The
Statements of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah", edited by Nicholas Noe.)

Why
is the topic important? Because over the years academics, analysts,
journalists, and others, particularly the Westerners among them, who
write about militant Islamist groups, have tended to project their own
liberal attitudes and desires onto such groups, misinterpreting their
intentions and largely ignoring what these groups say about themselves.
Inasmuch as most such observers cannot really fathom the totalitarian
strain in the aims and language of armed Islamists, totalitarian in the
sense of pursuing a total idea, total in its purity, they cannot accept
that the total idea can also be apocalyptic. Where Nasrallah and the
leaders of Hamas will repeat that Israel's elimination is a
quasi-religious duty, the sympathetic Westernized observer, for whom
the concept of elimination is intolerable, will think much more
benignly in terms of well-intentioned "bargaining." Hamas and Hizbullah
are pragmatic, they will argue, so that their statements and deeds are
only leverage to achieve specific political ends that, once attained,
will allow a return to harmonious equilibrium.

This
argument, so tirelessly made, is tiresomely irrelevant. No one has
seriously suggested that Hizbullah or Hamas are not pragmatic. But one
can be pragmatic in the means and not in the ends. If anything,
pragmatism is obligatory in the pursuit of an absolute idea. And what
characterizes those pursuing the absolute idea? In his essay "Terror
and Liberalism", Paul Berman provides a partial answer, writing how
French author Albert Camus noticed that out of the French Revolution
and the 19th century had grown a modern impulse to rebel. That impulse,
Berman wrote, "mutated into a cult of death. And the ideal was always
the same. It was not skepticism and doubt. It was the ideal of
submission … it was the ideal of the one, instead of the many. The
ideal of something godlike. The total state, the total doctrine, the
total movement." 

Read the whole thing! 

No one, and I mean no one in Lebanon- besides Tubby Turban* and his band of armed dick-jerkers want another war with Israel, especially the Shia. Abu Kais has the news.

*Trying out a new nickname for Nasrallah. You like? Have a better one? Let me know! 

Fayrouz represents the Lebanon as the lebanese wish it to be, while  Zeyad al Rahbany represents the Lebanon that they live in.

Between Fisk's sensationalism and Naja's eloquence!

The guy just publicized a speech yesterday , claiming that having a President voted in by the parliament with a 50% +1 Majoirty (which the Lebanese constitution allowes) would be "an unlawful seizure of Power" by the March 14 government and will not be acknowledged by the opposition. Hmm..Ok, Nasrallah, here is how democracy works: People vote, those with the majority votes win and set the agenda. Now, this does suck for the people who lost, but if they are true believers in democracy, they work on their message, and they do their best to win the election the following election cycle. What they don't do is drag their counrty into useless and futile war, destroy its touristic economy afterwards by shutting down their center touristic attraction, and threaten the government with their weapons if they don't get what they want exactly how they want it. And you know why that is? Because if the next election is held and your side wins, the losing side can just do what your side is doing, and nothing would ever get resolved. I understand that your syrian and Iranian masters you have grievances, and they might be legitimate, but your methods are anything but, and all that you and your supporters are doing (this includes all of you dumbfucks who follow Aoun) are just bringing the country closer and closer to a civil war.

But that's what you always wanted anyway, No?