LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN

LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
May 11/12

Bible Quotation for today/
01 Corinthians 10/20-22/ "No! What I am saying is that what is sacrificed on pagan altars is offered to demons, not to God. And I do not want you to be partners with demons. You cannot drink from the Lord's cup and also from the cup of demons; you cannot eat at the Lord's table and also at the table of demons. Or do we want to make the Lord jealous? Do we think that we are stronger than he?"

Latest analysis, editorials, studies, reports, letters & Releases from miscellaneous sources
Israel’s unity deal and Lebanon/By: Tony Badran/Now Lebanon/May 10/12
Prepare for the long haul in Syria/By Michael Young/The Daily Star/May 10/12

Latest News Reports From Miscellaneous Sources for May 10/12
Syria
Damascus suicide blasts killed 55, hurt 372
Syria suicide bombers kill 55, truce in tatters
Multinational force massed on Jordanian-Syrian border as 50 killed in Damascus bombings
Haaretz exclusive: A visit to the war-torn heart of Syria's struggle for independence
UN: Weapons being smuggled between Lebanon, Syria
Abadi says Arab parties arming Syrian opposition
China, Russia call for end to Syria violence
Israel-Iran, Egypt
Israeli ministers fear Mofaz will flip-flop and support strike on Iran
Netanyahu, Barak, and Mofaz are delegitimizing Israel
Egypt comedian found guilty of offending Islam
Ayatollah issues fatwa on Iranian rapper
Zasypkin wants Syrian opposition to cut relations with “armed groups”
UN Syria observer chief appeals for help to stop bloodshed
Lebanon
SSNP supporters protest in Beirut over unresolved 2008 killings
Mikati says Lebanon's real GDP growth on the rise
Committee fails to reach decision over Mansourieh voltage lines
EDL contract workers block south Lebanon road, reiterate demands
The quest for the amusingly profound
Man kidnapped in north Lebanon, abductors demand $2 mln ransom
Fire at south Lebanon dump put out
N. Lebanon border crossing reopened following protest over kidnapping
Lebanese to get free entry to National Museum on May 18, 27
Lebanon/Kesrouan gears up early for 2013 polls

Syria suicide bombers kill 55, truce in tatters
May 10, 2012/ By Oliver Holmes, Mariam Karouny /Daily Star
BEIRUT: Two suicide car bombers killed 55 people and wounded 372 in Damascus on Thursday, state media said, in the deadliest attacks in the Syrian capital since an uprising against President Bashar Assad began 14 months ago.
The blasts further shredded a ceasefire which was declared by international mediator Kofi Annan on April 12, but which has failed to halt bloodshed pitting Assad's security forces against peaceful demonstrators and an array of armed insurgents.
Opposition leaders said Annan's peace plan was dead, while Western powers insisted it remained the best way forward.
Annan himself condemned the "abhorrent" bombings and urged all parties to halt violence and protect civilians. "The Syrian people have already suffered too much," he said in a statement.
The Interior Ministry said suicide car bombers had carried out the morning rush-hour blasts. State television, blaming "terrorists" for the attacks, showed mangled, smouldering vehicles, some with charred remains of their occupants inside.
The near-simultaneous explosions hit the al-Qazaz district just before 8 a.m. (0500 GMT), residents said. One punched a crater three meters (10 feet) deep in the city's southern ring road. Bloodied corpses and body parts could be seen on the road.
State television also showed at least one overturned lorry. Walls of buildings on each side of the avenue had collapsed.
One resident reported limited damage to the facade of the nearby Palestine Branch Military Intelligence center, one of the most feared of more than 20 Syrian secret police agencies.
The Palestine Branch, a huge walled complex on the city's ring road, was the target of a 2008 bombing which killed 17 people and which authorities blamed on Islamist militants.
No group has claimed responsibility for Thursday's blasts. The attacks occurred a day after a bomb blew up near U.N. observers monitoring the ceasefire, which state forces and rebels have both violated, and two weeks after authorities said a suicide bomber killed at least nine people in Damascus.
"This is yet another example of the suffering brought upon the people of Syria from acts of violence," said Major-General Robert Mood, leader of the U.N. monitors, who visited the scene.
Opposition to Assad, which began with peaceful protests in March 2011, has grown increasingly militarized. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Wednesday there was only a narrow window of opportunity to avert full-scale civil war.
"There is no escaping the reality that we see every day," he said. "Innocent civilians dying, government troops and heavy armor in city streets, growing numbers of arrests and allegations of brutal torture, an alarming upsurge in the use of IEDs and other explosive devices throughout the country."
Rami Abdulrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said 849 people - 628 civilians and 221 soldiers, of whom 31 were defectors - had been killed since the April 12 truce. The toll did not include Thursday's deaths.
Shooting could be heard in the background of the Syrian television footage, filmed soon after the blasts. It showed a man pointing to the wreckage. "Is this freedom? This is the work of the Saudis," he said, referring to the Gulf state that has advocated arming rebels seeking to oust Assad.
Nadine Haddad, a candidate in Monday's parliamentary election which was boycotted by most opposition figures, blamed Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, who also says Syrian rebels should get weapons.
"I am addressing Sheikh Hamad and I tell him shame on you. You are now destroying the Syrian people, not the Syrian regime. You are killing children going to school," she said.
Qatar condemned the blasts in Damascus and called on all sides to stop the bloodshed in Syria.
The European Union also denounced the bombings as "pure terrorism", but said Annan's peace plan, backed by the EU, the United Nations and the Arab League, was still viable.
"It is the best option to try and ensure peace in Syria," Michael Mann, spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, said in Brussels. "It is the best way forward."
Western powers have shunned any Libya-style military intervention in Syria, while Russia and China have blocked any U.N. Security Council action against Damascus, although both have both supported the U.N.-Arab League envoy's peace effort. France, among Assad's sternest critics, said Annan's plan was the "last chance" to end the crisis. "The regime carries full responsibility for the horrors in Syria," the Foreign Ministry said. "By choosing a blind and brutal repression, the regime has entered a spiral of violence with no way out."The United Nations says Syrian forces have killed more than 9,000 people in their crackdown on the protests. Syrian authorities blame foreign-backed Islamist militants for the violence, saying they have killed 2,600 soldiers and police.
Samir Nashar, a member of the opposition Syrian National Council's executive board, said the government had not implemented any part of Annan's six-point peace plan.
"We expect Kofi Annan to say that his plan has hit a dead end, and that the Syrian regime should be held responsible for not stopping its operations, the killings, and its use of heavy weapons," he told Reuters. "We want international intervention to stop this policy of killing," he added, without saying what form this should take.
Nashar blamed the state for the bombings, saying they were intended to deter protesters and international monitors, an argument echoed by leaders of the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA).
"The government is trying to make Kofi Annan's plan fail. These bombs are not the work of opposition fighters," said its chief, General Mustafa al-Sheikh, adding that the FSA lacked the capability to set off such big explosions. Riad al-Asaad, the FSA's commander of operations, said the rebels were ready to resume attacks on government forces as soon as Annan announced that his initiative had failed.
In other violence, 10 rebels were killed overnight when tanks shelled the village of Ain Sheeb in the northwestern province of Idlib, opposition sources said. Tank fire also killed a civilian in the northwestern town of Ain Hamra.

Cabinet postpones discussion on extra-budgetary expenses
May 9, 2012 /The cabinet on Wednesday postponed the discussions on the issue of the extra-budgetary expenses until the next cabinet session, the National News Agency reported.
The cabinet could not agree on allocating around $3.3 million to cover the expenses of July 2012. Meanwhile, MTV reported that the discussion on extra-budgetary expenses for all of 2011 was also delayed because ministers could not reach an agreement on the issue. March 14 MPs wanted $11 billion dollars in extra-budgetary government spending from 2006 to 2011 to be legalized, while March 8 rejected the proposal and instead demanded the approval of only $6 billion in extra-budgetary spending for the current cabinet. President Michel Sleiman has repeatedly voiced his refusal to sign a decree allocating $6 billion to the current cabinet for extraordinary expenses in 2011, and called for taking into consideration the Parliamentary Budget and Finance Committee’s remarks on it, which have not been made public.
-NOW Lebanon

Committee fails to reach decision on Mansourieh voltage lines
May 10, 2012/ The Daily Star
BEIRUT: The ministerial committee tasked with overseeing the issue of the installation of disputed high-voltage power lines in Mansourieh, Metn, failed to reach a decision Thursday as sources voiced dismay that the matter was being politicized. The committee, headed by Deputy Prime Minister Samir Mouqbel, included Interior Minister Marwan Charbel, Defense Minister Fayez Ghosn and Minister of State Panos Manjian. Energy Minister Gebran Bassil did not attend the meeting due to his visit to Australia. Mansourieh residents have on several occasions voiced opposition to installing the power lines, describing them as a health hazard. They have asked the Cabinet to install them underground but the government has stressed that the move would be too costly. The Cabinet insists that installing the overhead wires is needed to tackle the country’s electricity crisis. In January, it decided to move ahead with a project to connect a power plant in Mkalles to one in Bsalim. Mansourieh is located between the two villages. Ministerial sources told The Daily Star Thursday that the committee was not opposed in principle to the suggestion of laying the wires underground.
“However, if they do this, then all the wires throughout the country will have to be placed underground and that amounts to around 360 kilometers,” he said, adding that such a task would be impossible.
The sources said the Cabinet would be informed about the results of the committee meeting and voiced dismay that some were politicizing the matter.
“If politicians didn’t interfere, this would have been resolved,” they said. Following the end of the committee meeting, Mouqbel told reporters that another meeting was scheduled to be held in 10 days in the presence of representatives from Mansourieh and Kamal Hayek, the director general of Electricite Du Liban. Mansourieh residents have repeatedly prevented EDL workers from beginning work on the voltage lines and voiced opposition to the government’s proposal to buy the homes of residents who would wish to leave the area as a result of the installation of the power lines.

Multinational force massed on Jordanian-Syrian border as 50 killed in Damascus bombings
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report May 10, 2012/Beset on two fronts, Bashar Assad rushed his elite Republic Division to Damascus Thursday, May 10, as two massive car bombs in the al Qaza district of Damascus demolished the command center of the Syrian military security service’s reconnaissance division, killing at least 50 people and injuring 170. Over to the southeast, 12,000 special operations troops from 17 nations, including the US and other NATO members, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, were poised on the Jordanian side of the Syrian border for an exercise codenamed “Eager Lion.”
debkafile’s military sources also disclose that the bomb attack on Damascus was the most serious his regime had suffered against a military target since the 14-month Syrian uprising began. For the first time, Assad moved his most loyal unit, the Republican Guard Brigade, into central Damascus.
Western and Arab pressure is building up to an intolerable pitch for the Syrian president to step down and save his people from the descent into the ultimate agony of a full-blown civil war. It is coming from two directions:
1. Special forces units of the US, France, Britain, Canada and other NATO members have gathered in Jordan alongside Saudi, Jordanian and Qatari special units for a large-scale ten-day military exercise in Jordan starting May 15.
The exercise was set up by the US Special Operations Command Central. It is the Obama administration's message to the Islamic rulers of Iran, Bashar Assad and his Moscow backers, as well as its answer to the complaints from Arab and other Western governments that America is doing nothing to stop the horrors perpetrated in Syria.
Since all 12,000 troops massed in Jordan are commandos, they stand ready at all times to cross the border into Syria if this is deemed necessary.
2. Syrian cities, especially the capital, are being targeted for violent bombing attacks designed to bring the Assad regime tumbling down. Behind these attacks are Persian Gulf emirates led by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. debkafile’s intelligence sources disclose they have been joined in the last few days for the first time by Turkey which is contributing intelligence input. The military pressure on the Assad regime is thus reinforced by a campaign of terror against its props.
No connection is admitted between the multinational force on the Jordanian-Syrian border and the spate of bombings. However, if Saudi or Qatari intelligence did play a hand in the Damascus bombings, their special forces in Jordan will have been in the picture.

Kesrouan gears up early for 2013 polls
May 10, 2012/By Antoine Ghattas Saab/The Daily Star
JOUNIEH, Lebanon: Though the parliamentary elections are scheduled for over one year from now, electoral maneuvering in the form of discussing likely candidate lists and potential alliances is already running at full steam in Kesrouan. Sources close to independent politicians in Kesrouan said that a lunch a few days ago brought together former MP Mansour Bone and Wissam Baroudi, an engineer and newcomer to the political arena, who is the son-in-law of President Michel Sleiman. The meeting dispelled reports of a dispute between the two. During the lunch, they discussed potential candidates who could be included on an electoral list spearheaded by the two men, as well as potential alliances that could be formed. Bone and Baroudi touched on the possibility of seeing the list include, in addition to themselves, former Interior Minister Ziyad Baroud and Neamat Frem, who heads the Association of Lebanese Industrialists, leaving the fifth seat for a candidate who could be backed by both the Lebanese Forces and the Kataeb [Phalange] Party.
Meanwhile, the path of former MP Farid Haikal Khazen, who served with Michel Aoun’s Change and Reform Bloc, remains undetermined. This attitude complicates an already tense situation, since Khazen’s relationship with Aoun and the current MPs in the region cooled after the former lawmaker expressed his belief that the Free Patriotic Movement leader and his parliamentary bloc should be held responsible for the pollution caused by the Zouk power plant and destructive sand quarries.
Although Aoun’s Change and Reform bloc took all five of Kesrouan’s seats in the 2009 elections, the Lebanese Forces has strong support there and is enjoying a noticeable increase in popularity.
While support for the LF is on the rise, if there is a joint list of independent candidates and March 14 candidates, the party could be willing to give its seat to a Kataeb candidate.
As for the Kataeb, the party is open to the possibility of cooperating with the LF to back one candidate on a joint list of independents and March 14 candidates. Names being mentioned for this spot include Sejaan Qazzi, Sami Khoueiri, Shaker Salameh and Salim Sayegh.
Coming off its electoral sweep in 2009, the FPM is nonetheless contemplating making changes to its ticket for 2013 by replacing one or two names.
Although MP Gilberte Zouein has become known for her extremely rare public appearances in Parliament, she is unlikely to be replaced due to the strength of ground-level support she enjoys as the representative of a leading Kesrouan family. Youssef Khalil, who is backed by a prominent family, is likely assured a slot as is Farid Elias Khazen, whom Aoun considers a key player.
This leaves Neamatallah Abi Nasr as the weakest candidate.There is also the possibility that the FPM will reach out to the leading independents, Baroud and Frem.
But it remains unclear whether they would take up the party’s offer, and Baroud is still seen as an ally of President Michel Sleiman, a chief target of criticism by the FPM leader.
It also remains a possibility that Aoun himself will not run in the 2013 elections in Kesrouan for the simple reason that it is possible he could find himself the sole winner on a FPM list. This result would, despite a personal victory, show the loss of popularity his party has suffered in recent years.
Baroud is taking a cautious approach to the elections, while for Frem, adding his name to the FPM list or a jointly sponsored list would give it a significant advantage, meaning that all sides are vying to lure him to their side. Sources close to the president say he could back a list if it truly advocates policies that transcend the current political divide. Otherwise, he will not give public backing.
Bkirki too has influence in the coming election, and many people remember how then-Maronite Patriarch,Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir backed March 14 in 2009, garnering the coalition more votes, though not victory. Meanwhile, if the feud between Sleiman and Aoun continues, Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai’s position could prove even more influential, observers believe.

Prepare for the long haul in Syria
May 10, 2012/By Michael Young/The Daily Star
One thing that the Lebanese can usually do with some precision is predict stalemate. Their own conflict between 1975 and 1990 was one long, debilitating lesson in destructive deadlock. So when those in Beirut look toward Syria today and shake their heads, that’s because they can hear echoes of their own past predicament.
Among those shaking their heads are lucid Syrian allies who will mock the propensity of some of their comrades to insist that victory for President Bashar Assad is just around the corner. This gloom is shared by Kofi Annan, the U.N.-Arab League envoy. This week he lamented that violence in Syria remained at “unacceptable levels,” while insisting that the observer mission he has put together “is the only remaining chance to stabilize the country.”
Annan has a plan, and because it’s the only plan in circulation everyone in the international community is clinging to it. And yet you will not find two people who truly believe that the deployment of United Nations monitors will slow the leviathan of civil war in Syria.
One reason is that Annan’s scheme pursues incompatible objectives. On the one side the envoy wants to contain the death and destruction, bringing it down to (well, the implication is his) “acceptable levels.” This Annan seeks to do through an all-inclusive dialogue between different Syrian political forces, regime and opposition. On the other side, however, he wants to facilitate the relatively peaceful overthrow of the Assad leadership, by creating conditions allowing for unhampered anti-regime protests.
The Syrian president is no dope. He won’t implement those features of Annan’s plan that might undermine his authority. As for the opposition, it has no intention of embracing dialogue unless this leads to Assad’s departure, and unless it receives assurances that the regime will halt its brutality. The envoy is perhaps still hoping against hope that Russia’s government will decisively shift on Syria and compel Bashar Assad to become more conciliatory. However, that’s not likely.
The Russians are ensnared in a knot of their own making. Their support is, indeed, essential for Assad’s survival. However, Moscow is so disinclined to surrender that singular leverage that its diplomatic flexibility has effectively been neutralized. Assad has the Russians’ measure. They cannot readily give up on him, because that would mean forfeiting their strongest card and caving in to the Americans at the Security Council. Russia has become an agent of the status quo, regardless of its assurances to Annan that it is not committed in principle to the perpetuation of Assad rule.
The charade will persist. Annan, to protect his plan, will continue to suggest that Russia might succeed in pressing for a change in Assad’s behavior. The Russians, who don’t want to see the envoy’s proposals abandoned, since that would leave a vacuum and only highlight Moscow’s ineffectiveness, will continue to hint that they can deliver a breakthrough. Everyone else, the United States above all, will wait and see. No one wants to be held responsible for a void in Syria, and no one has an alternative to Annan’s project.
Therefore, the diplomatic movement is mostly meaningless. As we saw in Lebanon more than three decades ago, political initiatives can take on a life of their own, and similar to the limbs of spiders continue to twitch even after death. Syrians, like the Lebanese before them, expect almost nothing from the international community. We are in a logic of chronic civil conflict in Syria, with the revolt taking on the dimension of a guerrilla war, bolstered by endemic and systemic recalcitrance in many cities and towns. How does one walk back from the precipice?
There are those arriving from Syria who will point out that the situation is not as bad as media outlets say. But they are missing the forest for the trees. The contract of fear hitherto imposed by the Assads has collapsed, taking with it a second contract that held up their political system: a sense that the regime, for all its faults, stood at the nexus point of multiple interests in Syrian society.
What most Syrians can see at present is that the ruling family is fighting for itself and its community, and that it will never be able to glue the pieces back together again. At best an improbable triumph would have to be reinforced by years of ferocious intimidation, in the context of a disintegrating economy, in a society devoid of cross-sectarian cohesion and solidarity. Assad has neither the skills nor the wherewithal to rebuild his legitimacy, and as his late father well understood, a minority regime with no national legitimacy cannot long endure.
We’re not quite at the stage where Syria has institutionalized a civil war. But we’re nearly there, and the prospective political and military dynamics are not liable to derail such a terrible outcome. The diplomatic impasse will only encourage outside countries to arm the rebels. Assad and the criminal enterprise he leads will not cease their repression, because that would spell their end. This was obvious a year ago when the Syrian uprising began, and yet the international community did nothing. Now we have a colossal mess to clean up.
**Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR. He tweets @BeirutCalling.

Netanyahu, Barak, and Mofaz are delegitimizing Israel
By Gideon Levy/Haaretz
Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and Mofaz are telling their nation and the world: We are leaders in a country of dwarfs, its citizens are all boors and idiots, and we can sell them any lie.
The delegitimization of Israel has been accelerating at a dizzying pace these past couple of weeks − only this campaign is being waged here, in Israel, not by critics abroad.
This latest attack of delegitimization is much more serious than what goes on in the rest of the world. This time the country is being delegitimized in the eyes of its own people. In the end, not only will the world stop believing Israel, Israelis themselves will stop believing in it or its institutions.
So the international organizations are asked to hold their fire. The people at the top here are doing the work for them. A line, albeit a crooked one, connects the mischief leading to the “unity” government to the state’s mischief in the case of Beit El’s Ulpana neighborhood, and this line spells out only one thing to Israelis, particularly younger ones: Fraud and lies are the way to go.
Those clucking their tongues at the wildness of today’s young people might want to remember that the rot starts at the top. The next time a teenager exits a courtroom, he can say what he learned from his prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that he’ll “consider” and “think about” what he’ll do in view of the verdict; and the next time someone is accused of fraud, he can point to his role model, Shaul Mofaz.
These two have shattered the fragile structure of Israeli governance more than any of Israel’s critics have done. The damage they’re causing doesn’t just harm our image; it gnaws at our essence. This required class on fraud and crime proves our country’s leaders are not just cynical figures, but anti-educational. Too bad we cannot remove them from our curriculum.
Civics teacher Benjamin Netanyahu has been giving a lesson on the rule of law. He’s teaching his students that after a final court ruling, the convicted party decide how to respond. The court doesn’t decide, the guilty one decides. His colleague in the teachers’ room, his new deputy Shaul Mofaz, says that he “believes in the rule of law,” as if the rule of law is a matter of faith, and if you don’t believe, you need not obey. The Israel Police has also been conducting anti-civics lessons, teaching us that protesters are enemies. After they jailed demonstrators who hadn’t even left their offices on the eve of Independence Day, they behaved violently at Monday’s demonstration against the new government. What will young people think about their country? What do they have to look forward to?
But these were just a prelude to the most anti-educational lesson of all: Presenting the inclusion of Mofaz in the coalition as a step that will benefit the country. This blatant lie is apparently being accompanied by illegally hiding secret clauses in the new coalition agreement.
How fascinating that this process was cooked up by Natan Eshel, Netanyahu’s former top aide who allegedly sexually harassed a co-worker. Once upon a time, someone in his situation would seclude himself at home in shame; now he gives television interviews. A private attorney is managing the so-called negotiations with the Palestinians and a disgraced former aide is putting together Israeli governments. What stellar examples of the delegitimization of government institutions.
In 1956, Rahamim Kalanter, a Jerusalem city councilman, agreed to remain in the governing coalition even though his party, the National Religious Party, walked out, and in return he was named deputy mayor for religion and sanitation. Since then, the act of crossing party lines in exchange for government goodies has been called “Kalanterism.”
In 2005, Alex Goldfarb bolted his party, Tsomet, and cast one of the votes that allowed the Oslo II accords to pass by two votes. In return he was given a government post that came with a big car.
Kalanter and Goldfarb were once symbols of shame. But now we must apologize to them. Mofaz managed to go much further than either of them; he joined the government just to assure another year-and-a-half in the Knesset for himself and Kadima colleagues such as Ronit Tirosh, and no one will even bother making up derogatory terms for this.
But the biggest damage of all here is the message that emerges from these scandals: Your leaders, dear citizens of Israel, take you for fools. Is there any more serious delegitimization of a country that this affront to its people? If this is what Israel’s leaders think of their countrymen, then what will they say in New York or London?
Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and Mofaz are telling their nation and the world: We are leaders in a country of dwarfs, its citizens are all boors and idiots, and we can sell them any lie. If we tell them day is night and spitting is rain, they’ll believe it. We are also leaders of a country where court verdicts are merely suggestions. Now we are not only flouting international law, but our own law.
And if that isn’t delegitimization, then what is?

Ayatollah issues fatwa on Iranian rapper
Ynetnews/Germany-based rapper's latest single earns him death sentence. Song deemed offensive towards revered tenth Imam for Shiites A senior Iranian cleric has issued a Fatwa on a Germany-based Iranian rapper for insulting Islam, the Fars news agency reported Wednesday. Persian-language Al Arabiya reported, that the latest single from Shahin Najafi, "Naqi," has earned him a death sentence from Ayatollah Safi Golpayegani, a Shiite cleric in the Iranian city of Qom.The song has drawn sharp anger from protesters who believe it is offensive towards Imam Naqi, the revered tenth Imam for Shiites.
Shahin Najafi's latest single 'Naqi' Al-Arabiya reported that a pro-regime website has launched an online campaign calling to hang Najafi and proclaim him a heretic. The campaign calls all Shiites and Muslims in general to find the rapper and "send him to hell." Najafi, 31, was forced to move to Germany when his politically-motivated lyrics for an underground band he was associated in Iran, earned him a ban.
His songs mostly deal with issues such as theocracy, poverty, sexism, censorship, child labor, execution and drug addiction. He strives to use poetic, literary, philosophical and political elements in his music.

Bkirki offers us dictatorship on Rai
March 15, 2012/
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Opinion/Columnist/2012/Mar-15/166716-bkirki-offers-us-dictatorship-on-rai.ashx#axzz1uHperuhl
By Michael Young/The Daily Star
You have to wonder what the Maronite Church and the Vatican were thinking when they replaced the old but smoothly functioning Nasrallah Sfeir with a malfunctioning Beshara Rai.
The patriarch took a lashing this week from Samir Geagea, the Lebanese Forces leader. He merited far more. Rai’s defense of the Syrian regime and his recently expressed views on Muslims, and even the Vatican, have been immoral, patronizing, prejudicial to his own community, foolish, or some combination thereof.
In an interview with Reuters last week, Rai observed, “We are with the Arab Spring but we are not with this spring of violence, war, destruction and killing. This is turning to winter.” The patriarch expressed his fears for Christians in the Middle East, and implied that Syria’s leadership represented less of a threat to the community.
“It’s true that the Syrian Baath regime is an extreme and dictatorial regime, but there are many others like it in the Arab world,” Rai said. “All regimes in the Arab world have Islam as a state religion, except for Syria. It stands out for not saying it is an Islamic state ... The closest thing to democracy [in the Arab world] is Syria.”
The passage provoked derision and outrage. Rai is evidently unable to distinguish between democracy and religious pluralism. One is not necessarily the other, and Syria shows us why. The patriarch also seems incapable of understanding democracy. It is most definitely not the military repression of a majority by a minority preserving its prerogatives. He is equally at sea about how to read the Syrian uprising in the context of the so-called Arab Spring. After all, it is Bashar Assad’s regime, the one he supports, that has carried Syria into the deepest recesses of winter through its systematic butchery of the civilian population. And by the way, did Rai read Syria’s new Constitution? It mandates that presidents must be Muslim.
Rai’s defenders say the man should be allowed to speak his mind, to defend the Maronites. Yet whenever the patriarch has done so, he has divided his flock. Perhaps he was too busy chattering away in the recesses of his parishes to hear of the virtues of silence. There are topics on which one’s opinions are best left unstated.
Given his profession, the patriarch’s views on Syria are astonishing. For years Rai appeared on the Christian station Tele-Lumiere to lecture the faithful on religious morals. To this day we are blessed with reruns of his silky homilies. That this same individual should presently be defending a mass murderer tells us much about Rai’s celestial insincerity. It must also leave not a few practicing Christians wondering what it is about their religion that they missed.
Never one to deny narcissism, Rai recently invited a Paris-Match reporter to spend three days with him in Bkirki for an interview. The outcome was a useful compendium of what not to say.
Rai was singularly disdainful of the Arab world in general, and of Muslims in particular. “Presidents are re-elected with 99.9 percent of the votes,” he pointed out, as if such electoral margins retained any legitimacy whatsoever. “With such a mentality, what can the alternative be between a sovereign and a president for life? The source of legislation in all domains is the Quran. There exists a single party, with all political, judicial and military power in the hands of Muslims who address every point through the Shariah. Democracy and theocracy are as contradictory as snow and fire.”
Well, there are Muslims and there are Muslims, someone might be tempted to explain to Rai, just as there are Christians and Christians. There are Christians who believe in religious coexistence; who try to avoid painting Muslims in broad, condescending brush strokes; and who know enough modern history to recognize that there has been a powerful secular current in the Arab world during the past century, even if religion has made a comeback, mainly thanks to the brutality of self-styled secular leaders like Bashar Assad and Saddam Hussein. And then there are Christians like Beshara al-Rai, who are prisoners of an insular, hierarchical mindset, who deem all change to be menacing, and who prefer to become the playthings of a tyrant, in order to protect their measured gains, rather than to extend liberty to all.
Geagea is right, Rai’s outlook is doing a terrible disservice to Lebanon’s Christians. But having alienated many in his own community, not to mention Syrian democrats and Muslims throughout the Middle East, the patriarch in his Paris-Match interview also irritated the Vatican. And this exposed another dimension of the man: his impulsiveness and immodesty.
When asked to describe relations between the Vatican and the Maronite Church, the patriarch answered they were “good,” before launching into criticism of the Roman Catholic Church. “I wish that our patriarchal churches and synods [in the Middle East] could be the object of greater consideration ... [A] certain decentralization at the level of the Roman Curia is desirable, and a better understanding of our churches.” Rai complained that the Vatican “sometimes spends months investigating our new bishops. This mistrust is not pleasant for us ... Let them give us more autonomy in our internal affairs!”
You have to wonder if a magazine is the place for a Maronite patriarch to settle scores with the Roman Catholic Church. This is all very interesting, and perhaps Rai is justified in his protests (though I, too, would set months aside to investigate our clerics), but these are subjects best settled quietly, within the church itself, not in a publication that reports on the escapades of Johnny Halliday.
More in the interview makes us doubt Rai’s judgment. For example, he asserts that Maronite priests, because they can marry, are “more serene” than their Roman Catholic counterparts, whose vow of celibacy “engenders frustration.” Some still hope to persuade the Vatican to push for Rai’s removal. That won’t happen, because the church’s reputation has become a hostage to his fate. However, a very troubling man resides in Bkirki, and Lebanon is the worse for it.
**Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR. He tweets @BeirutCalling.

Israel’s unity deal and Lebanon
Tony Badran , May 10, 2012 /Now Lebanon
Benjamin Netanyahu Netanyahu and Kadima chairman Shaul Mofaz struck a unity deal that could influence Israel’s willingness to strike Iran, thus involving Hezbollah. (AFP photo)
The surprise unity deal struck between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Kadima chairman Shaul Mofaz has spurred a flurry of speculation, including in the Arab media, about its ultimate significance. Was Netanyahu’s move driven entirely by domestic politics? Or does it indicate that an Israeli strike on Iran might be imminent? If so, how would that impact Lebanon?
It would be hasty to draw conclusions about an impending Israeli attack against Tehran from Netanyahu’s political maneuver. However, it is worth noting that the expanded coalition does strengthen the Israeli Prime Minister’s position externally, affording him more leeway to better deal with the fallout of a strike, should it actually come to pass. As cabinet minister Gilad Erdan put it: “When a decision is taken to attack or not, it is better to have a broad political front that unites the public."
Therefore, as some have noted, the deal may have some impact on Israel’s security policy. Since Iran has placed itself on the border with Israel through Hezbollah, Lebanon features prominently in this policy. Two recent interviews by high-ranking Israeli military officers provide a good exposition of Israel’s military strategy in any future engagement in Lebanon.
Last Sunday, an unnamed senior officer in Israel’s Northern Command warned that any retaliation by Hezbollah against Israel for a possible strike on Iran would result in massive devastation for Lebanon. “In these villages where Hezbollah has infrastructure, I will guess that civilians will not have houses to come back to after the war,” he said. “The day after [we attack] the village will be something that it will take 10 years to rebuild.”
Some might read this as a typical exercise in psychological warfare. However, the officer’s comment is in fact a reiteration of the so-called “Dahiyeh Doctrine,” coined by Major General Gadi Eizenkot, former commander of the IDF’s Northern Command, in 2008. The doctrine is premised on applying disproportionate force against any village from which Israel is fired upon.
Eizenkot’s successor, Major General Yair Golan, also gave an extensive interview a month ago in which he further elaborated the IDF’s military strategy. Golan observed that although “asymmetrical warfare is viewed as a disadvantage for organized states,” he holds the opposite to be true. “There is total asymmetry between us and Hezbollah, and our job is to demonstrate to Hezbollah our might in action in the most muscular way possible.”
This doctrine signals a fundamental departure from the rules of engagement that Israel had followed in the decade prior to the 2006 war, especially since the April Understanding of 1996. In his book, Hezbollah’s second in command, Naim Qassem, described the April Understanding as having been “tailored to the Resistance’s demands.”
The agreement prohibited targeting civilian populated areas, but as Qassem explained, Hezbollah had its own reading of the clause forbidding the use of these areas as “launching grounds for attacks.” While the group didn’t have to fire from within villages, it could still retreat back into their safety, and also use them as logistical centers.
Especially following the 2006 war, turning the majority of the villages of South Lebanon into veritable clandestine military bases became an essential element of Hezbollah’s revamped infrastructure. Eizenkot’s doctrine addressed precisely this phenomenon. “These are not civilian villages, they are military bases,” he said in 2008. The senior officer’s comments last Sunday reaffirmed this doctrine.
Along with this reassertion, the officer presented Hezbollah with a choice: “They will have to think about whether they want it or not. I hope that Iran will not push them into a war that Iran will not pay the price for but that Lebanon will.” The aim behind this ominous formulation was to highlight the dilemma of Hezbollah’s chief, Hassan Nasrallah: balancing the obligation to obey Iran’s orders with the devastation that will befall his followers and Lebanon more broadly.
With Syria now in open rebellion against the Assad regime, the group’s dilemma has only deepened. One could easily detect it in Nasrallah’s recent interview with Julian Assange, where he made a point of referring to the 1996 April Understanding, whose framework he doubtless would wish still existed today.
That’s hardly the only thing Nasrallah cannot bring back. His once secure strategic depth in Syria is no longer reliable. Although he and his Iranian patrons have been doing their best over the last 14 months to help Assad put down the revolt against his rule, they have not been successful.
Making matters worse for Nasrallah, the decision to involve Hezbollah in a retaliatory strike against Israel is not his to make. Indeed, Yahya Rahim Safavi, military adviser to Iran’s Supreme Guide, Ali Khamenei, already declared last November that Tehran’s retaliation will come from Lebanon. All Nasrallah could do at the time was to call on his followers to jump with him into the fiery abyss.
Therefore, the real question, as that senior Israeli officer noted, is whether Khamenei will deem it worthwhile to ultimately issue that order to Nasrallah. This is especially so in light of the additional constraints that the deteriorating situation in Syria will impose on Hezbollah in a subsequent war with Israel.
In the end, it’s worth noting that Netanyahu has not presided over a war during his tenure. However, should he finally decide to launch an attack, the broad-based coalition he now has secured—with three former IDF chiefs of staff in his cabinet—will be a valuable asset reflecting the wide support his government enjoys.
In sharp contrast, Nasrallah’s margin is shrinking, and his position, both domestically and regionally, is increasingly strained.
*Tony Badran is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He tweets @AcrossTheBay.