Assange: Many Arab Officials Have Close CIA Links

In his second interview with AlJazeera, Assange, increasingly fearful of a US cabal against him and his organization, is threatening to unveil sensitive information that a careful editing of the cables would normally not unveil, naming Arab leaders with CIA links and Arab countries that operate torture prisons for the CIA.

I think Assange right now is entitled to any means at his disposal to protect himself and his organization. What our leaders do behind our back is our business especially when it contradicts what they say in public. Diplomacy certainly uses secrecy but it is not a tool for secrecy in democratic governance. Secrecy is merely a feature of the business but it is not a goal. And we are increasingly seeing great disparities between private and public political discourse as well as an unhealthy amount of secrecy as worrying tendencies in actual western democratic governance.

Moreover, I am not surprised by the revelations about Arab states. Any Arab with a critical mind knows this and without any doubt can list the countries with close CIA links and CIA torture chambers. Bin Laden was a close CIA ally and foreign Saudi policy in general is 100% aligned with the US.

However, I am concerned about what we as Arabs (the people, not the governments) can and will do with these revelations. I am mostly distressed by the amount of silence in the Arab press and especially in the Lebanese press surrounding Al-Akhbar's revelations about Lebanese officials' collaboration with Israel and the US* against legitimate Lebanese resistance to Israeli invasions while telling us a different story publicly (this reaction from a Lebanese blogger close to Saudi Arabia's lebanese allies is an example).

Palestinians have suffered from this irresponsible conduct by Arab governments and Politicians. Our standing in the world and estimation of ourselves as people and nations are the first victims of this autocratic attitude by Arab governments which is in contrast with the political sympathies and affinities of the people in Arab countries.

*Unfortunately I was not able to link to the original story in Al-Akhbar because their website was down for more than a week following the publication of the first Wikileaks cables which were very damaging to Saudi Arabia and its March 14th allies in Lebanon.

Lebanon Wikileaks Documents Expose Deep Strife And Treason At The Heart Of The Current Lebanese Government

The US cable is one of several that have been published in Beirut by the leftwing al-Akhbar newspaper which has apparently been leaked as part of the WikiLeaks cache obtained by the Guardian, the New York Times and three continental European publications.

Al-Akhbar has highlighted contacts between the March 14 movement led by the current prime minister Saad al-Hariri, the US and the Saudis, prompting denials or defensive reactions from those named.

Marwan Hamadeh, the Lebanese minister of communications, warned the US charge d'affaires of the risks involved after Hezbollah indicated it would see any action against the telecoms network as "equal to an Israeli act of aggression".

Hamadeh also reported interference with Lebanese mobile communications by Syria and Israel.

...Lebanon's defence minister, Elias Murr reported in other leaked documents as telling US officials that the (Lebanese) army would not involve itself in a future Israeli attack on Lebanon...

Source: The Guardian via Al-Akhbar

White House to receive convicted Lebanese war criminal

To:
President George Bush
Sen. John Warner
Sen. James Webb
Rep. Thomas Davis
February 22, 2008

As of 1994, Geagea was tried and convicted for four crimes - only a small portion of his long list of war crimes that we have listed below for your reference. He was convicted for:
1. The assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister, Mr. Rachid Karami
2. The assassination of a former leading figure in the Lebanese Forces militia, Elias Zayek
3. The assassination of Christian leader Dany Chamoun with his wife and two young children (ages 5 and 7)
4. The assassination attempt against Deputy Prime Minister/Minister of the Interior Michel Murr.

More
And may I add: The assassination of Suleiman Frangie's parents and siblings for which Gea'gea stands for suspicion as the principal planner ?

This is my 999th post.

Lebanon: bomb kills senior general

I had the intuition that the talks about the next president weren't going anywhere. My assumption was that USrael and its Lebanese clients, March 14th, did not have any interest in the stabilisation of the country.

The man tipped to be the next head of Lebanon's army, Brig Gen Francois Hajj, was killed today by a car bomb in a Beirut suburb.

And as the hopes of the Lebanese were hanging on the only institution in the country that is not involved in dirty politics and clientelism, the army, to save the country from a civil war and a political deadlock, I had the intuition that the army was going to be a target. You see, Lebanese Politics is as simple as this: any time a solution is profiled, it is bombed, in the metaphorical and real senses of the word. And the culprits are designated immediately by March 14th: Syria, Iran, Syria-Iran, Iran-Syria, and now for the first time, the Syria-Iran AXIS. It doesn't matter for them that the bomb went on in a Christian neighbourhood, their theory is immune to refutation by facts, logic and pretty much anything else.

When I was a child learning about God and the bible in school I was told by the nuns that God is everywhere. And in my child's mind I wondered if God was living in my fridge or sleeping in my bed. Sometimes I would wake up at night fearful and implore God to let me sleep alone.
Like God and the primitf christian cathechism destined to make children obediant, we are told by March 14th and the Sanyura government that Syria and Iran are everywhere in Lebanon, they so much fill the air and the space that they live in our organs, they occupy our houses and sleep in our beds, and eventually bomb the hell out of us any time it is convenient for March 14th or their mentors !

Lebanon is the new middle earth, a country of doom, full of Nazgûls, ghosts, and dark masters, without the necessary counterpart of hobbits and courageous wizards.

The Syrian-backed opposition party Hizbullah condemned the attack, saying Hajj was a "friend" of the Lebanese people, al-Jazeera television reported.

However, the telecommunications minister, Marwan Hamadeh, accused the "Syrian-Iranian axis" of hitting the military - "the only body in Lebanon who can balance the power of Hezbollah and other militias in the country."

Related: Israel increasingly concerned with Lebanese elections, In January 2007, March 14th officials told Al-Siyassah, a koweiti newspaper known for its March 14th propaganda, among other, that François El-Hajj should be tried foir siding with the Aoun-Hezbollah opposition. Those March 14th who are mourning El-Hajj today by pointing fingers at the Syria-Iran axis know very well that they are just shedding crocodile tears...

In a larger context, what may be at stake now in Lebanon is the ability of those Neo-cons who still want to attack Iran (understand those who take their orders from Israel) to keep Lebanon as an open front for civil war, pulling the rug under the feet of those in Washington who want to talk to Iran. There is definitely a rift among the Neo-cons and any step Lebanon makes toward civil war away from consensus and stability will serve the pro war camp.