Shooter... On the other hand the Lebanon situation is a good excercise of what can happen when we don't interfere in national politics. I'd say that's relevant to global politics, certainly more so than anything else going on here.

The "Lebanon situation" as Shooter calls it has come about precisely because we probably have interfered in their national politics, and incompetently as is usual and come to be expected by this administration. It is their signature. A potent mix of belligerence and incompetence.

NYTimes:

...humiliating blows made clearer than ever the power and determination of Hezbollah, a Shiite group backed by Iran and Syria, and its allies. By Friday afternoon, armed Shiite fighters were riding joyfully through west Beirut in a long column of trucks, cars and scooters, shouting and firing their weapons into the air in a raucous victory celebration.

The government majority issued an urgent appeal for help from other nations on Friday evening, calling Hezbollah’s actions an “armed coup” against Lebanon and its democratic system using “weapons sent by Tehran.” Some government lawmakers, including the Druse leader, Walid Jumblatt, and Saad Hariri, the son of the assassinated former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, spent the day holed up in their compounds, protected by Lebanese Army contingents and the police.

For all intents and purposes the battle in Lebanon is over and Hezbollah has won. Any fool could have told you that would happen. If they can fight the IDF and IAF to a standstill, the Lebanese Army never had a chance.

Out of curiousity

Who are the salonistas rooting for in Lebanon? Hezbollah?

-- shooter242

Just remember that when you take sides in this as in all other ME disputes, then you are part of the problem.

Pat Lang

Thanks for the info re: Di Rita & Shaheen.

Glenn - his lies about Gitmo, torture & Koran desecration might also be worth revisiting at some stage...

sysprog - DoH! You wouldn't believe how much better my Googling has gone with their names spelled correctly! Thanks for your generosity in characterizing my misspellings as routine "variants". I suspect that's kinder than true. Here I was imagining them whisked away to a secure location, when their only cloak of invisibility was from my shoddy typing!

In Australia the citizens who read UT decorate the front yard on Mothers Day to celebrate.

I heard the plastic pink flamingoes, kangaroo, ferrel cats, bunnies, and LWM's citizen-types (no spell good) are decked with boughs of holly.

If it's not true, what is true? The answer?

It's blowing in the wind. What hospitality!

"On the other hand, salonistas love to discuss irrelevancies to death. I can only presume it's a coping mechanism to avoid reality."

Your reality will come in November, Shooter.

As for the Pentagon and its illegal propaganda mill, that story isn't dead at all. As a matter of fact, it's just being born.

Stand by, Shooter. Your world is about to come crashing down.

For those who want a refresher or background on Shooter's "Lebanon situation" that has absolutely nothing to do with American meddling /snark off. At least previous meddling was competent and achieved the results intended, even if in hindsight, no meddling at all might have been better.

Friday, May 25, 2007

"The Welch Club" or who's Behind the Fighting in North Lebanon?

A reader led me to this very good essay by Franklin Lamb on "Counterpunch". To better understand what is going on in the camp (s), first you need to see the key elements of what is known as the "Welch Club" (nothing to do with Friday-Lunch-Club)

The Club is named for its godfather, David Welch, assistant to Secretary of State Rice who is the point man for the Bush administration and is guided by Eliot Abrams. Key Lebanese members of the Welch Club (aka: the 'Club') include: The Lebanese civil war veteran, warlord, feudalist and mercurial Walid Jumblatt of the Druze party( the Progressive Socialist Party or PSP) Another civil war veteran, warlord, terrorist (Served 11 years in prison for massacres committed against fellow Christians among others) Samir Geagea. The billionaire, Saudi Sheikh and Club president Saad Hariri leader of the Sunni Future Movement (FM).

http://friday-lunch-club.blogspot.com/2007/05/inside-narh-al-bared-and-bedawi-refugee.html

Franklin Lamb’s thesis is essentially a combined neo-neo — neocon and neoliberal — explanation and here is where it becomes surreal:

… the Welch Club wants to keep some Palestinians in Lebanon for cheap labor, ship others to countries willing to take them (and be paid handsomely to do so by American taxpayers) and allow at most a few thousand to return to Palestine to settle the ‘right of return’ issue while at the same time signing a May 17th 1983 type treaty with Israel with enriches the Club members and gives Israel Lebanon’s water and much of Lebanon’s sovereignty.

http://peoplesgeography.com/2007/05/25/whos-behind-the-fighting-in-north-lebanon/

It is just a curiosity, and I have no evidence of this other than a hunch, but I suspect Mrs. Di Rita is an Irish Shaheen, not an Islamic Shaheen.

I have a friend whose last name is Shahan and as Irish as you can be, right up to the red hair. But there is a mountain range in Pakistan called Shaheen.

When it does come crashing down (not if, when), hide the Mason Jars of rice wine, tomatoes, pickles, and various stored root crops: potatoes, carrots, beets, turnips, cabbage, rutabagas, and plastic bottled gas jugs in a sturdy cellar. Buy batteries, flashlights, dried corn, beans, acorns, dry rice, peanut butter, flour, Mizo stock soup, and holy swiss, etc., variety packs of good goat cheese.

Take Horehound herbs if you sneeze.

Learn to use a old time 'Tinder Box' kits.

I love Thomas Hardy's poem. Buy a pony.

Your criticism of the unwillingness of Democrats in Congress to confront the administration on a host of issues where Bush's policies defy overwhelming public sentiment (especially FISA) is incredibly valuable and insightful. In lots of cases it not only is the "right" thing to do, you argue persuasively that it also could be politically expedient.

However, don't you think the Dems reluctance to commence hearings on the pentagon analyst issue is due to a reasonable concern that the right wing blogoshpere and its allies, witting and othewise, in the mainstream media would quickly paint it as an attack not on the pentagon and the administration, but on the retired "heroes" who would necessarily be at the center of the investigation? Obviously, it would be a false portrait, but that's never stopped them before. Probably the Dems believe they are well positioned for November, and don't want to take any chances in that regard.

Maybe, on this one issue, they are right.