Syrian regime behind Gemayel assassination?

However pure political and diplomatic logic makes it difficult to see Damascus behind the assassination. The day Gemayel was killed, Syria chalked up one of its most significant diplomatic achievements since its defeat in Lebanon in April 2005: the renewal of full diplomatic relations with Iraq.

Syria is also on the way to achieving a semi-official stamp of approval from Washington as able to calm things down in Iraq. Syria could have been on the verge of an important political success in Lebanon - the possible fall of Fuad Siniora's government, which would mean Syria could increase the power of its supporters in the government by means of the Hezbollah ultimatum. If that came about, the international tribunal on the murder of Rafik Hariri would be delayed, or at least be of a sort convenient for the Syrians.

With three such achievements, the last thing Damascus needed was a new accusation of a political murder in Lebanon.

The virtue of ajramization

Hilarious. An "alternative" reading of the Nancy Ajram phenomenon.

Stealing US elections

Two million legitimate voters will be turned away because of wrongly rejected or purged registrations.

Add another one million voters challenged and turned away for "improper ID."

Then add yet another million for Democratic votes "spoiled" by busted black boxes and by bad ballots.

And let's not forget to include the one million "provisional" ballots which will never get counted. Based on the experience of 2004, we know that, overwhelmingly, minority voters are the ones shunted to these baloney ballots.

And there's one more group of votes that won't be counted: absentee ballots challenged and discarded. Elections Assistance Agency data tell us a half million of these absentee votes will go down the drain.

Driving this massive suppression of the vote are sophisticated challenge operations. And here I must note that the Democrats have no national challenge campaign. That's morally laudable; electorally suicidal.

Add it all up -- all those Democratic-leaning votes rejected, barred and spoiled -- and the Republican Party begins Election Day with a 4.5 million-vote thumb on the vote-tally scale.

Richard Armitage praises Hizbullah

The conflict in July and August this year allowed Hezbollah to take on the role of an elected government and increase its standing, Mr Armitage said.

"No Arab government could have done as well as Hezbollah did," he said.

"And not only did they fight well, they simultaneously handed out goods and services to the people, something the government of Lebanon - the democratic government of Lebanon - were unwilling or unable to do.

"So what we have is an NGO taking the place of the government, electrifying the streets of the Middle East with their boldness and temporarily the myth of Israeli invincibility is shattered.

For the future or for the past?

Khaled Saghieh defends the Lebanese Communist Party's alliance with Hizbullah by quoting from Walter Benjamin's thesis XII on the concept of history:

Not man or men but the struggling, oppressed class itself is the depository of historical knowledge. In Marx it appears as the last enslaved class, as the avenger that completes the task of liberation in the name of generations of the downtrodden. This conviction, which had a brief resurgence in the Spartacist group,* has always been objectionable to Social Democrats. Within three decades they managed virtually to erase the name of Blanqui, though it had been the rallying sound that had reverberated through the preceding century. Social Democracy thought fit to assign to the working class the role of the redeemer of future generations, in this way cutting the sinews of its greatest strength. This training made the working class forget both its hatred and its spirit of sacrifice, for both are nourished by the image of enslaved ancestors rather than that of liberated grandchildren.

It is funny to note here that the majority coalition in the Lebanese government is led by the Future Movement. This should not push us to ally with Hizbullah. Instead we should learn from the Iranian experience and remember its lessons. Read Mansoor Hekmat on the counter-revolution there:

The Islamic counter-revolution was built on the nationalist and so-called liberal tradition of the 'National Front', which more than anything else feared workers and communists and had spent its entire life biting its nails under the monarchy's cape and religion's robe. It was a tradition, which in its entire history had been unable to organise even a semi-secular offensive against religion in Iran's politics and culture. It was a tradition in which its leaders and personalities were among the first to swear allegiance to the Islamic movement. The Islamic counter-revolution was built on the Tudeh Party's tradition in which anti-Americanism and strengthening its international camp at any price, made up the philosophy of its existence and which saw the Islamic regime, irrespective of its consequences for the people and freedom, as a playground for manoeuvre and manipulation. The Islamic counter-revolution was built on a corrupt anti-modernist, anti 'westernisation', xenophobic and Islam-ridden tradition dominant in a majority of the intellectual and cultural segments of society in Iran, which shaped the initial environment of the youth and student protests. Khomeini triumphed not because superstitious people saw his reflection on the moon, but rather because the traditional opposition and this corrupt nationalist and regressive culture saw him - who was the most imported and manufactured personage of Iranian contemporary political history - as 'made in Iran', anti-Western and one of their own and thus rose to praise him. The Islamic counter-revolution was the result of the fact that the modernist-socialist oil industry and big industries' workers lost the initiative in the protest scene to the traditional opposition of Iran. It was they who received Khomeini's personage and the Islamic revolution scenario from the West and sold it to the protesting masses of people.

The State and the Resistance

Burhan Ghalioun presents an interesting perspective on the state and the resistance in the Arab region. Here are some main ideas. Public opinion is faced with two choices: either reforming the state with all its deficiencies including foreign domination of it, or expanding the resistance, which symbolizes the loss of faith in the state and the need for a communal power that preserves independence and identity.

Foreign intervention has disrupted state reform; and resistance has risen based on strong group feeling which can only lead to sectarianism, and so is by definition unable to rebuild a national identity which is necessary to have a lawful state that treats its citizens as equals instead of based on their ethnicity. Resistance movements against foreign powers are also building fiefdoms ruled by their private militias, which comes in contradiction with the lawful state, and leads to divisiveness and internal conflicts.

So what is to be done? There can be no separation between state and resistance. On the one hand, resistance is part of the role of the state, as it means defending popular will against foreign or internal hijacking. On the other hand, no resistance can be legitimate if it does not lead to building a lawful state based on citizenship which guarantees the freedoms and equal rights of everyone. The difference between resistance and insurgency is this: insurgency stands against the legitimacy of law and the state, while resistance aims to confirm them.

The apparent contradiction between state and resistance in the region is in direct relation with the extent to which both have been corrupted and emptied of their meaning. The state no longer translated popular will, and resistance became only a cover for militias opposing central authority. Work needs to be done to ensure harmony between state and resistance, by freeing the state from foreign interference or internal domination, and reforming the resistance under the princple of sovereignty for the state and freedom for the people.