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Ghassan Makarem, a Lebanese activist, speaks from Beirut about the huge protests that have rocked the Lebanese capital

Beirut has become the focus of a new movement that is challenging the US-backed government and the political system that put them in power.

This movement was launched by the biggest ever demonstration in the country’s history. Over one million people – out of a population of 4 million – converged on the Lebanese capital on Friday of last week to demand the formation of a government of national unity. (more…)

Nasrallah calls for massive turnout Friday to support opposition’s demands for national unity cabinet.

By Sylvie Groult – BEIRUT

The Lebanese opposition called for mass demonstrations Friday in support of its demands for government of national unity but the pro-Western cabinet swiftly rejected the move.

“The opposition forces, on the basis of their constitutional rights, call on all Lebanese, whatever their religious confession, to demonstrate peacefully in an open-ended sit-in from 3 pm (1300 GMT) Friday for a national unity government,” said an opposition statement.

“The opposition forces appeal to demonstrators to brandish only the Lebanese flag and authorised slogans,” the statement added. (more…)

Ghassan Makerem, an intellectual and activist in Beirut, provides context and an overview of initial reaction to the assassination of Lebanese Cabinet Minister Pierre Gemayel:

An interview with Ghassan Makarem on Gemayel Assassination: A view from Lebanon

For information on the Lebanese situation, you can go to:

• The Daily Star
• Al Jazeera

By Anthony Shadid-Washington Post Foreign Service

BEIRUT, Nov. 22 — The neighborhood of Ain Rummaneh was quiet Wednesday, its shops shuttered and streets empty a day after the assassination of an anti-Syrian politician from one of Lebanon’s most prominent Christian families. Nayef Mazraani took a break from washing his car and pointed down a shaded street.

There, he said, was where Lebanon’s civil war began in 1975, when Christian militiamen massacred 27 Palestinians on a bus after an attack on a church. He gestured in another direction. There, he said, was that war’s front line, which remains a barrier of sorts between two Beiruts and two Lebanons, pulling ever further apart.

“The war has never stopped,” he said. “It started here, in 1975, in Ain Rummaneh, and until now, it hasn’t finished.” (more…)

The latest assassination in Lebanon has bolstered the US-backed government and weakened Hizbullah and the opposition

Charles Harb
Thursday November 23, 2006
The Guardian

The assassination of Pierre Gemayel, a Lebanese cabinet minister and scion of a ruling Christian Maronite family, in Beirut on Tuesday has sent shockwaves through the country’s establishment and is shaping the political feud raging throughout the country. Given the timing, location and method of the killing – a sophisticated shooting in the heart of Christian east Beirut at the height of a political crisis – there is already rampant speculation as to the identity and sponsors of the assassins. That will doubtless remain the case even after the criminal investigation is complete. The consequences of this for Lebanon and the wider Middle East are already starting to become clear.

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The UN troops claim they are in Lebanon toprotect the Shia. The Shia think they’re there to protect Israel from Hizbollah. Is this because the peacekeepers are really a Nato army in disguise?

The blue and white UN flag looks good in the morning over these soft, pale hills. For all of 28 years, it has flown beside Irish battalions, Nepalese battalions, Senegalese battalions, Finnish battalions, all kinds of battalions, from every worthy neutral nation you can imagine. But now the flag snaps over French battalions, Spanish battalions, Italian battalions, German naval units, over the offices of four Nato generals, two French, one Spanish and one Italian. (more…)

by Daniel Freeman-Maloy

Canadian Dimension, November/December 2006 Issue

Under Paul Martin’s Liberals and Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, the Canadian government has rapidly shed any pretense at having an independent foreign policy. In Haiti, Canadian forces joined their U.S. and French counterparts in carrying out the coup d’ tat of 2004, overthrowing the elected Lavalas government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide and instituting a foreign occupation of the country. In Afghanistan, similarly, thousands of Canadian troops are engaged in combat operations to defend the U.S.-ledoccupation and allow the U.S. military to focus its resources on Iraq. For years, escalating Canadian support for Israel has been part of this trend. In recent months, it has become more unabashed than ever.

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Two posters created by Ron Saba

The posters refer to the current leadership race in the Canadian Federal Liberal Party. In English Canada, candidate Michael Ignatieff remarked in August that he wasn’t losing any sleep over the massacre of Qana. Recently in left-leaning Quebec, he said that his comment had been a mistake, continuing, “I was a professor of human rights, and I am also a professor of the laws of war, and what happened in Qana was a war crime, and I should have said that. That’s clear.” Bob Rae and Stephane Dion, rivals for the Liberal leadership position, immediately denounced his statement. 

By Patrick Cockburn in Gaza
Published: 08 September 2006
Gaza is dying. The Israeli siege of the Palestinian enclave is so tight that its people are on the edge of starvation. Here on the shores of the Mediterranean a great tragedy is taking place that is being ignored because the world’s attention has been diverted by wars in Lebanon and Iraq.
A whole society is being destroyed. There are 1.5 million Palestinians imprisoned in the most heavily populated area in the world. Israel has stopped all trade. It has even forbidden fishermen to go far from the shore so they wade into the surf to try vainly to catch fish with hand-thrown nets.

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