Montrealers Lend Support to Popular Mobilization in Beirut.

WEDNESDAY, December 13th, 2006,11am
Simone de Beauvoir Institute of Concordia University
2170 Bishop Street

MEDIA COVERAGE OF THE PRESS CONFERENCE HERE.

Several Montreal organizations are speaking out in defense of popular protests which have overtaken Lebanon’s capital for over a week.

Hundreds of thousands in Beirut are participating in a peaceful sit-in, initiated by Hezbollah & over 10 other opposition political parties. Participants are demanding a more representative government in the aftermath of the recent Israeli attack and are challenging U.S. policy in the region.   (more…)

By Robert Fisk -“The Independent”

With Fouad Siniora’s cabinet hiding in the Grand Serail behind acres of razor wire and thousands of troops – a veritable “green zone” in the heart of Beirut – the largely Shia Muslim opposition, assisted by their Christian allies, brought up to two million supporters into the centre of the city yesterday to declare the forthcoming creation of a second Lebanese administration. A “transitional” government is what ex-general Michel Aoun called it, while Naeem Qassem, Hizbollah’s deputy chairman, spoke ominously of the mass demonstrations as “the separatist day”.

So, is the Hizbollah militia, which withstood Israel’s disastrous bombardment of Lebanon last summer, really planning a coup on behalf of its Iranian and Syrian backers, as Mr Siniora suspects? Or are Mr Siniora and his cabinet colleagues – Sunni Muslim, Christian and Druze – working on behalf of the Americans and Israelis, as Hizbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, proclaims? (more…)

An anti-government rally brought up to two million people into the capital’s downtown on December 10, 2006, impeding a quick exit from the political crisis that has gripped Lebanon since Dec. 1.(Pictures from the demonstration)

By Bill Cecil

George Bush doesn’t like what’s happening in this small Arab country. “Hezbollah extremists are trying to destabilize Lebanon,” he says. He claims that Syria and Iran are behind it all. Bush is no more honest about Lebanon than he was about Iraq. What’s happening here is a movement of the people on a scale rarely seen in history. It is like the Palestinian Intifada or the fight against apartheid in South Africa.

Yesterday more than half of Lebanon’s four and a half million people filled the streets around Parliament to protest the U.S.-backed regime of Fuad Siniora. From morning on, this city’s avenues to the south were a sea of people as hundreds of thousands walked in from the Dahye—Beirut’s working-class southern suburbs. (more…)

(more…)

UN estimates Israel war cost to agriculture industry some US $280 million, farmers left in debt, poverty.

BEIRUT – Desperate Lebanese farmers are urging their government to do more to help them recover from a war that the United Nations estimates has cost the vital agriculture industry some US $280 million and left them facing “a downward spiral of debt and poverty”.

“I personally lost over 50 million Lebanese pounds [$35,000],” said Mohammed Mokahhal, a farmer from the eastern Bekaa Valley, describing his losses in the month-long summer war between Israel and militants from the Lebanese Hezbollah political party.

“I couldn’t harvest my potatoes or tend to vegetables like lettuces and peas which I had planted a week before the Israeli attacks began,” said the father of two. “And even when I managed to pick some I couldn’t transport them to the market because of the threatening situation.” (more…)

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…)

Willie Madisha, President of the Congress of South African Trade Unions: “As someone who lived in apartheid South Africa and who has visited Palestine I say with confidence that Israel is an apartheid state. In fact, I believe that some of the atrocities committed by the erstwhile apartheid regime in South Africa pale in comparison to those committed against the Palestinians.”

(more…)