Lebanese Hypocrisy

Recently watched an old interview of Bachir Gemayel back when he was president and he spoke about alliances and issues with other countries which was really just a strange telling of how the Lebanese government has been acting today and how Lebanese are now more strongly divided in views on their country's future.

Check out the video.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=lvCiEI4g0xk

Talk about straddling the fence. This guy talked about a united [sic] Christian front but wasnt even open to dialog with its opposition. (Even if you cant negotiate with barbarians[sic] doesnt mean it's right to forego diplomacy).

The sad thing is Christians in Lebanon seem to be just as f-ed as the extremist Muslim supporters of Hezbollah because they are just as prejudiced. Listen to Gemayel and tell me that's not how some Christian Lebanese feel these days. The Christians want the Muslims out but they've been outnumbered and overshadowed since ohh... the 1970's? and they dont speak out or do enough to make a difference. They just want to be left alone in the mountains. Even Aoun has become a strange bedfellow with the Muslim constituency because of his odd alliance with Hezbollah. Muslims want unity but they want it in a militant way. And what about prejudice among Arabs in general? Let's put more salt on that wound. It's no secret that male chauvinism and bigotry still exists here. This cant be the Paris of the Middle East. No wonder prosperity wouldnt last. Too many divisions and despise of diversity eventually killed the fire.

It doesnt really seem to matter anymore that a small minority truly want peace and prosperity for Lebanon. All this tells me is that prejudice is always going to be at the heart of it and the more Lebanese try to weed each other out (and the people who try to help them), the smaller their voice gets.

So recently another anti Syrian politician was assassinated. People are restless and scared about the recent violent incident. Locals are once again fearing they have to leave their country. Let's see where shall they go... the U.S., Canada, anywhere else but where they should really be.. their own country. How ironic is it that they speak vehemently against the violence one minute and then say they're leaving the next. I especially love the part when the U.S. gets blamed again by those who've left Lebanon and are currently living in parts of America that have embraced diversity better than their own Christian neighborhood. I'm not hating. Really I'm not. Just tired of the same cyclical hypocrisy.

Can't wait to see what happens in the upcoming elections.

A Cheesier Knockoff

http://video.msn.com/v/us/v.htm?g=b7844cc3-3bc7-4636-a539-f614616e4d3e&t=m10&f=06/64&p=hotvideo_m_edpicks&fg=&gt1=10150

First they use Mickey, now they replace him with a pathetic looking bumblebee. No rewards will come to these sick bastards except a nice place in hell.

Imagine all the children whose minds are poisoned by this filth!

Who Wants Peace?

I do. But obviously it would take a miracle for the entire world to experience peace at the same time. It's all relative.
And for the Middle East, let's just say at this point it's just not going to happen for a while.
I firmly believe that if someone wants something so bad, they'll find the strength and the courage within themselves to achieve it even if it means having to put up or shut up.
We all know the conflicts in the Middle East open up huge (HUGE) cans of worms and it appears that each time a country steps up to get involved whether to help or attempt to forge resources for economic or political reasons, it never achieves anything relatively positive. Everyone is always viewed from an extremist point of view. Seems like a majority of Arabs today feel like they've been served up an eternal lemon of life and they do not want to make lemonade. They just want to kill anyone who comes in their way. It feels like pages from the bible have been exhumed and reenacted into history again. I mean come one already.
Take this recent editorial from Shimon Peres. http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2007/06/08/2003364361
Good, rational commentary. (I couldn't agree more on the part about Iran's motives to increase influence in the Middle East. ) But I bet if a non-Jewish Arab or Anti Israel were to comment, this piece would get reamed. It's like a dead-end marriage. Constant bickering and no one comes close to an amicable agreement. The goal towards peace is gone. Point is, biases are starting to build up. Even I find myself these days fighting to suppress opinions that border on prejudice against Arabs because the hardcore ones have so strongly built their own bigoted views on Americans. I'm not perfect but at least I make an effort not to act on them. All this madness about how the U.S. has been getting unnecessarily involved in the Middle East may be true but I think it's secondary to the real reason that alot of Arabs are blinding themselves with old grudges. And don't get me to elaborate further on sectarian conflicts. That's a whole other blog entry to struggle with. The frightening conclusion is that achieving peace seems to mean an entirely different thing in the Middle East.

Lessons the Extremist Arab World has Taught Us

Came across this article. I don't particularly believe muslims in most parts of Asia are as heinous as Arab muslims knowing this firsthand. The Arab world has been angry for a long time with their longtime conflicts with Israel and it's becoming increasingly obvious that they've been trying to infuse other countries with bitter pieces of their twisted culture. Despite the beauty of their countries and their people, they're doing nothing today but breed prejudice and a dishonorable reputation by raising past issues. It takes alot to get past the anger and the feeling of injustice but to succumb to their own internal conflicts and drag others into this madness will only cause them to further spiral down into their own demise.

I've highlighted spots below that strike a chord.

No one really knows even Arabs themselves I dont think at this point, what they are angry about anymore. If you poll Lebanon, they'll probably say because of the Israeli's using their land as a warzone, Syrians manipulating their government and economy. If you poll Iraq, it's about sectarian conflicts, the U.S. and growing unrest that have no signs of calming down. I think the moderate Arab countries are in the right path but they sadly get misrepresented because the extremists always overshadow their agendas with more unjust views of how this world should evolve. Curiously, what the hell is Iran doing in the midst of this but constantly playing devils advocate to the Arab world while it builds its own arsenal of bombs and proliferating propaganda. With Ahmadinejad's help, they're on a one way ticket to Nazi-ville and God forbid obliterating millions of innocents from this earth.


Asia's Islamic extremists add beheadings to their arsenal
POSTED: 9:21 p.m. EDT, June 2, 2007

Story Highlights• 25 beheadings have been reported in Thailand since 2004• Islamic-inspired insurgency has claimed 2,200 lives• Thai authorities say jihad videos from the Middle East may inspire the killings• Videos transmitted via Internet or DVDs
NA PRADU, Thailand (AP) -- It took two days for the young Muslim assassin to calm his nerves before the slaying.
Then, Mohama Waekaji says, he walked one cool morning to a rice mill, carrying a knife and following orders from a guerrilla commander to behead the 72-year-old Buddhist owner.
He asked the elderly man, Juan Kaewtongprakam, for some rice husks. As he turned to collect them, Waekaji says, he slashed the blade through the man's neck.
"I didn't dare to disobey," the 23-year-old Waekaji said in an interview with The Associated Press -- the first time a Thai militant accused of a beheading has spoken to the Western media. "I knew they would come after me if I did not do what I was told."
The killing in February was one in a spate of beheadings that has shocked Thailand, a nation with no past history of the practice, and fueled fears that the brutal terrorist tactics of the Middle East are spreading in Asia.
Twenty-five beheadings -- including 10 already this year -- have been reported in southern Thailand since an Islamic-inspired insurgency erupted in 2004, claiming more than 2,200 lives. Militants in the heavily Muslim region seek independence from mostly Buddhist Thailand.
"Beheadings are certainly on the rise outside of the Middle East proper," said Timothy Furnish, professor of Middle Eastern history at Georgia Perimeter College. "These groups do take their cues from ... hardcore Islamic thought coming out of the Arab world. Beheading infidels not only shocks, but also demonstrates Islamic bona fides to other groups."
Thai authorities say jihad videos from the Middle East, captured from rebel training camps, may be inspiring young men like Waekaji. One clip said to have come from Iraq shows a woman lying on her side on a patch of grass as a man slowly cuts her throat with a long knife. Blood spurts from the wound, the screaming finally stops and her head is completely severed.
"The inspiration is clearly coming across the Internet or through DVDs clips," said Zachary Abuza, an expert on terrorism in Southeast Asia at Simmons College in Boston.
"Islamist militants in Southeast Asia are very frustrated that the region is considered the Islamic periphery," Abuza added. "Militants of the region are actively trying to pull the region into the Islamic core. They want people to understand that their jihad is a part of the global jihad."
Beheadings have been linked to other militants across Asia, including groups in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indian-held Kashmir and Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation. In the mostly Roman Catholic Philippines, at least 37 people have been decapitated in the last decade by the al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf.
Beheadings are not solely a tool of guerrillas. It's imposed as punishment under some strict interpretations of Islamic law such as in Saudi Arabia and under the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
The odyssey of a Muslim student
Waekaji's account of his journey -- from quiet, average student to a confessed killer -- offers insights into how young Muslims fall under the influence of militant Islamic thinking.
He was attending a private Islamic school in Pattani province when a school buddy persuaded him to join a religious event at a mosque. There "ustad," or teachers, told him about an organization to liberate southern Thailand, asking him to take an oath to become a servant of Allah, obey the teachers and take the secrets of the organization to his grave.
Although confused and with little knowledge of politics, he took the oath and began secret training at age 19.
His teachers stressed the sufferings of Muslims in the Palestinian territories and Afghanistan and also in Thailand, where many Muslims feel they are second-class citizens in a Buddhist-dominated land.
The teachers detailed the Tak Bai tragedy of 2004 when Thai security forces confronted Muslim protesters, resulting in the deaths of 85. The victims died of suffocation when authorities arrested 1,300 people and stacked them on top of each other in trucks.
"I was shaken when I heard the story. I was revengeful, and I did hate them, those who did this to us Muslims," Waekaji said at the prison in Na Pradu, about 680 miles south of Bangkok.
His story could not be independently confirmed, but Waekaji has made a formal written confession and the police have filed a case against him in criminal court.
'It was either me or him'
During rigorous training, Waekaji learned how to do knuckle push-ups, wield knives, swords and guns and how to take a life by squeezing an opponent's Adam's apple with his hands or breaking a victim's neck.
After two years, he was sent out to burn tires and spread nails on roads to puncture tires and distract police before attacks staged by his comrades.
"They recruit responsible, tightlipped and trouble-free teenagers ... people who can carry out orders and who don't attract attention to themselves," said Thai army Col. Shinawat Mandej. "They train their minds before training their bodies. They get them at the most vulnerable age when they need something to believe in and turn them into cold-blooded killers."
When the order came to slay the mill owner -- a person he had seen but didn't know -- Waekaji said he was frightened, both by the orders and what his leaders would do to him if he failed.
"It was too late to want out," he said, his eyes closed and his head downcast. "It was either me or him."
Police found the man's headless body at the rice mill and his head in a nearby field that separates Muslim and Buddhist villages. Waekaji was arrested and charged with the killing about two months later.
Leaflets left in mailboxes and motorcycle baskets in Pattani the day of the beheading warned: "We will give Thai Buddhists three days to leave our land. Otherwise, we will kill you and burn your houses. ... Thai Buddhists will never live peacefully. You will be killed cruelly."
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Find this article at: http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/06/02/asia.beheadings.ap/index.html

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