Today's Stories

November 18, 2008

Chellis Glendinning
Cheering for Morgan Stanley

George C. Wilson
Perils of Pakistan: Will It Prove to be Obama's Cambodia

November 17, 2008

Michael Hudson
Bankers Shake Down Congress and the G-20

Paul Craig Roberts
When It's a Clear Day and You Can't See GM

Mike Whitney
Busted in Washington

Steve Conn
Where is Nader Country 2008? Mapping the Nader Votes

Andy Worthington
Closing Guantánamo: Advice for Obama

Jonathan Cook
The Real Goal of Israel's Blockade of Gaza: "They Are All Hamas"

Rannie Amiri
Dual Loyalties Will Doom Obama

David Macaray
Bailing Out the Automakers

David Michael Green
Twelve Victories

Charles Modiano
Sports Illustrated and Sexism: Tokenism or a New Day?

Website of the Day
The South Sea Bubble

November 14 / 16, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Heading for the First Hundred Days

Jeffrey St. Clair
How Bill Clinton Doomed the Spotted Owl: a Cautionary Tale for Greens in the Age of Obama

Mike Whitney
Paulson the Bungler

Sasan Fayazmanesh
RIP: the Experts, 1929-2008

Moshe Adler
Keynes: China's Greatest Export?

Anthony DiMaggio
Transcending Race?

Jean Bricmont
Cats, Dogs and Creationism

Sheldon Rampton
The Eisenstadt Hoax: a Real Life Example of a "Fake Fake"

Douglas Valentine
Let the Trials Begin!

Joseph Nevins /
Timothy Dunn
Barricading the Border

Tom Barry
Rahm Emanuel's Political Pragmatism on Immigration

Ron Jacobs
Che Guevara Meets Trashman: the Genius of Spain Rodriguez

Larry Portis
The State of the Israeli State

Mary Lynn Cramer Obama's Brain Trust: Seems Like Old Times

Sherry Wolf
The Myth of the Black/Gay Divide

Peter Cervantes-Gautschi
Secretary of Greed: How Larry Summers Championed Wall Street by Impoverishing the Mexican People

Jacob Hornberger
The Conservative Malaise: Hey, Brother, Can You Spare Some Habeas Corpus?

Lance Selfa
The Center-Right Nation Con

Benjamin Dangl
Vermont Against General Dynamics

Seth Sandronsky
Lifelines in Hard Times

Russell Mokhiber
Time to Give the Friends of Big Coal the Boot

Allan Stellar
Nuke a Gay Whale for the Navy

Kelly Overton
Get Thee to a Shelter: the Obamas and the Million-Mutt March

Martha Rosenberg
Why Mink are Cheering the Economic Crisis

Richard Rhames
Palling Around with Ray the Plumber

David Yearsley
How I Played Hooky from "High School Musical 3"

Lorenzo Wolff
Zach is Back: Songs of Hurt, Rage and Resistance

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Ford and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
The Eyes Have It

November 13, 2008

Pam Martens
The Two Trillion DollarBlack Hole

Vijay Prashad
Guilt by Participation: Sonal Shah's Membership Has Expired

Patrick Cockburn
Who is Paying for the Iraqi National Intelligence Service?

Jonathan Cook
The Withering Palestinian Economy

Ralph Nader
Obama and the Rogue Regime

Bill Quigley
McCain Owes America an Apology

Lee Sustar
Bailing Out the Big Three

Omar Barghouti
Boycotting Israeli Settlement Products

Steve Conn
More Alaska Fun

Howard Lisnoff
The Last Bastion of Hate

Jeff Cohen
What Indy Media Heroes Can Teach Us

Website of the Day
Who are the Obamagelicals?

November 12, 2008

Johanna Berrigan
Scattered Families: the Iraq Refugee Crisis

Steve Conn
The Big Mystery Election in Alaska

Patrick Bond
Against Volcker

Bokar Ture /
Dedrick Muhammad
Remembering a Black Radical in a Barack Obama America

Alan Farago
The Hispanic Vote in South Florida: Not Dyed Blue Yet

Dave Lindorff
Rescuing Joe Lieberman

Karl Grossman
Break Up Big Oil: Tyranny in the Tank

David Macaray
An Obama Litmus Test: Will Labor Have a Seat at the Table?

George Wuerthner
Act Now to Save America's Public Forests

Susie Day
Heavy Weather

Website of the Day
Does the Planet Have a Future? an Interview with Derrick Jensen

November 11, 2008

James G. Abourezk
How to Vote Against Your Own Interests

Allan J. Lichtman
What Obama Can Learn From FDR

Eric Toussaint
Financing the Bailout: a Holy Union for a Deuce of a Swindle

Ron Jacobs
Moving Beyond Hope: a Leftist Looks at the Near Future

Peter Montague
Green Coal?

Corporate Crime Reporter
BP's Big Spill on the North Slope

Laura Carlsen
Latin America Sends Obama a Piece of Its Mind

Col. Dan Smith
A New Unifying Paradigm?

Morton Skorodin
The Machine Grinds On

David Michael Green
My Michelle Moment

Charles R. Larson
Ask Your Doctor for a Free Sample

Website of the Day
Will Old Faithful Be Sucked Dry?

November 10, 2008

David Roediger
Obama's Victory and the Future of Race in the United States

Paul Craig Roberts
Conned Again?

Peter Lee
Obama's Man in Afghanistan

Corey D. B. Walker
And We Are Not Saved

Jeff Halper
A Bone in America's Throat

Bill Hatch
Look on the Bright Side, Dammit!

Andy Worthington
Guilty By Torture

Bill Quigley
Anger and Hope: Haitian Families Furious Over School Collapse

Peter Morici
Paulson's Folly

Anthony Olszewski
The Advent of a New Black Politician

Kim Nicolini
Exile and Displacement on Bunker Hill

Cpt. Paul Watson
Farley Mowat's Last Book? Maybe Not

Website of the Day
Boondocks, Another Banned Episode

November 7 / 9, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Hail to the Chief of Staff

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Fire

Vijay Prashad
Obama's Indian: the Many Faces of Sonal Shah

Tariq Ali
Great Expectations

Jean Bricmont
Our Obama Problem

John V. Whitbeck
Obama, Emanuel and Israel

Saul Landau
Politics Among the Ruins: Obama Faces an Economic Disaster

Peter Morici
Gone, Baby, Gone: Another 240,000 Jobs Lost

Lawrence Velvel
Obama and Afghanistan: the Return of Clintonia?

Karyn Strickler
Don't Govern From the Middle

Nativo V. Lopez
Banking on Obama with Open Eyes: Latinos and Obama

Christopher Fons
A Generational Moment: From Jackson to Obama

Alan Farago
Sarah Palin's Limited Engagement

David Yearsley
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

Christopher Brauchli
Pardoning Industry: Bush's Latest Executive Orders

Samah Sabawi
Gaza's New Cemetery

Dave Lindorff
Getting the Change We've Earned

Deepak Tripathi
A Revolution to Remember

Beth Sherouse
In the Wake of Lost Initiatives: the Gay Glass is Half Empty

Patrick Irelan
La Belle Dame Sans Regrets: Back to Alaska

Stephen Martin
Barack and the Temple

Richard Rhames
Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

J. Murray
White Cherokee Mythology

Lorenzo Wolff
Anthems for the Average Kid

Kim Nicolini
Exile and Displacement on Bunker Hill: Art Meets Realism in "The Exiles"

Poets' Basement
Farrelly, Fleming and Browne

Website of the Day
Take Who Takes You (For the New Big O)

November 6, 2008

Frank J. Menetrez
Now What?

John Chuckman
The Big Leap: From Hope to Change

P. Sainath
A Magic Moment (But Still Behind the Global Curve)

Joshua Frank
A Look Under the Hood of an Obama Administration

Edna Canetti
Come, Obama, Change My Life: a Plea from Israel

John Ross
Brad Will is Still Dead

Norman Solomon
Sorry Joe: a Mandate for Spreading the Wealth

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Morning After: Pakistan and Its New Bedfellow

Robert Weissman
Mordor Brightens: Obama's Challenge--and Our Own

Harvey Wasserman
A Blow to Nuclear Power in Chicago

Website of the Day
Pot Wins Big

November 5, 2008

Cockburn / St. Clair
Why McCain Lost

Chuck Spinney
How Obama Won

Ishmael Reed
Morning in Obamerica: the Promised Land?

Chris Floyd
A Prism for the New Paradigm: "What If Bush Did It?"

Binoy Kampmark
Obama's Victory: a Nation Divided

Michael Donnelly
The Rebooting of America, 2008

David Macaray
Who Should be Secretary of Labor?

Peter Morici
Obama's First Moves on the Economy

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
What Real Change Should Bring

William Willers
Will We be Forced to Sell Off the Public Lands?

Website of the Day
The Killing Fields of South Africa

November 4, 2008

Kathleen Christison
McCain, Obama and Khalidi

James Ridgeway
A New World?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Cleaning Out the Pentagon Pig Sty

Mike Whitney
Obama's Little Red Book

Conn Hallinan
A New Foreign Policy

Holly M. Barker
The Inequities of Climate Change and the Small Island Experience

Ashley Smith
Where is the Occupation of Iraq Heading?

Andy Worthington
Guilty Verdict Fails to Justify Gitmo Trials

Martha Rosenberg
AIG: Too Big to Play Fair

Stephen Martin
Breakdown of the Globalisation Agenda

Doug Lummis
Full Moon Over Okinawa

Carlos Fierro
An Anarchist View of Elections

Website of the Day
La Pequeña as Sarah Palin

November 3, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Friends Like These

John Kennedy O'Hara
Voter Lockdown: Prosecuting Voters

Peter Montague
Is Nuclear Power Green?

Steve Conn
Nader and the Youth Vote

Andrew Gebhardt
How Much Do the Differences Between Obama, McCain and Bush Really Matter?

Ron Jacobs
Bombing Syria: Borders are for Sissies

Ralph Nader
Between Hope and Reality: an Open Letter to Senator Obama

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Cleaning Up After Bush

Uri Avnery
Obama and the Order of the Optimists

Dave Lindorff
Studs and Me

Fred Gardner
Adieu, Rimonabant

DC Larson
You Are How You Vote

David Michael Green
McCain Finally Gets Tough

Val Strange
Hopeless Hoi Polloi or Step in the Right Direction?

Tuli Kupferberg /
Jeffrey Lewis
Wailing Wall Street:
Bring Spare Money!

Website of the Day
Pranking Palin (the Uncut Version)

October 31 , 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Change You Can See

Jeffrey St. Clair
Killing Leroy Jackson: the Indian Wars Have Never Ended

Douglas Valentine
Giving Aid and Comfort to the Enemy: McCain's 14th Amendment Problem

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
The Great Bailout Fraud: Misrepresenting the Financial Crisis

Dr. Ignacy Nowopolski
Is the Global Economy a Mistake? an Interview with Paul Craig Roberts

Alan Maass
What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Spreading the Wealth?

William P. O’Connor
Reflections of an Average Joe

Patrick Irelan
Johnny's Tantrums: McCain the "Gook Hater"

Brian Cloughley
Out of Control: Memo From Islamabad

Mats Svensson
The Last Dance in Ramallah

Binoy Kampmark
Into Syria We Went

Steve Conn
The Future of Ted and Sarah

Alan Farago
The Division of Florida: the Politics of Growth

Morton Skorodin
The Bush-Obama-McCain Administration

Robert Bryce
Not McCain

Wajahat Ali
Dear John McCain, Please Stop...

David Yearsley
Palin's Flute, Obama's Voice

Dennis Loo
What to Do with Bush and Cheney?

Pam Martens
Why 2008 Feels Like 1932

Stephen Martin
Defense Strategies in Economic Warfare

Richard Rhames
Nothing for Something: the Doomed Rustic's Lament

Ramzy Baroud
A Third Palestinian Intifada

Missy Beattie
I'm Sick of Their Voices

Howard Lisnoff
Burning Reason: More From the Religious Right

Richard Neville
Pickled Heads: First the Revelation, Then the Revolution

Saul Landau /
Farrah Hassan
Bush Ultra Lite: Oliver Stone's Oedipal Problem

Kim Nicolini
Max Payne: Vigilante Violence as Sex Story

Lorenzo Wolff
Dance to the Music--or Else!

Poets' Basement
Four Poems from the Japanese Trans. by Rexroth

Website of the Weekend
Art Against Empire

October 30, 2008

Cockburn / St. Clair
McCain's Women Problems

Vijay Prashad
Smearing Rashid Khalidi

Paul Craig Roberts
World Tires of Rule by Dollar

Glen Ford
Turning the Tide of Ethnic Cleansing in America's Cities

Stanley Heller
Wall Street Bonus Madness

William Loren Katz
"Kill Him!:" a Political Chronicle

Joshua Frank
Memo to Progressives for Obama: What Happens After the Election?

James McEnteer
The Year of Unreliable Witnesses

Felice Pace
The Big Change: Can "Civic Unreasonableness" Save the Earth?

Jonathan Cook
The Executions at Kafr Qassem

Reza Fiyouzat
Boycott the Elections!

Website of the Day
An Open Letter to Whole Foods

October 29, 2008

Arno J. Mayer
The US Empire will Survive Bush

Eric Toussaint
How the Food and Financial Crises are Interconnected

Matt Gonzalez
What Do They Have to Do to Lose Your Vote?

Steven Conn
Obama and the Camp Followers

Jonathan Cook
Israel Bars Visit to a Father's Grave

Patrick Bond
Strauss-Kahn Strikes Again!

Ramzi Kysia
A Freedom Rider in Gaza City

Douglas Valentine
A Glimpse Inside the Head of Joe the Plumber

Stephen Martin
What America is Owed

Margaret Dooley-Sammuli
Alternatives to Incarceration

Amee Chew
Support Obama, Vote McKinney?

Website of the Day
N-Word Chant Doesn't Phase Palin

October 28, 2008

James G. Abourezk
How to Bail Out the Taxpayers

Andy Worthington
The Empty Chair at Guantánamo

Gary Leupp
The Specter of the Sixties: Palin v. Ayers

Paul Craig Roberts
The End of the American Road

Mike Whitney
Meet the World's New Currency

Gregory V. Button
What the Next President Must Do to Save FEMA

Ralph Nader
Share the Sacrifices, Share the Benefits

P. Sainath
Haunted by Socialism

Martha Rosenberg
Melting Pot in Hell

Charles R. Larson
Palin/Wurzelbacher 2012!

Website of the Day
Why You Can't See Across the Grand Canyon

October 27, 2008

Michael Hudson
Scenes From the Global Class War

Barbara Rose Johnston
The Clean, Green Nuclear Machine?

John Dinges
Palling Around with Dictators: McCain and Pinochet

Mike Whitney
Chickenhawks and the Horrors of War

Mary Lynn Cramer Greenspan's Higher Power

Alan Farago
Origins of the Fall

David Michael Green
Remind Me Again: Who Won the Cold War?

Andy Worthington
The Collapse of Omar Khadr's Guantánamo Trial

George Wuerthner
Is Ranching Sustainable? The Story of Bob the Rancher

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Obamanations of Barack

Website of the Day
Heartland of Darkness

October 24 / 26, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Waiting for the Curtain to Rise

Ishmael Reed
Boogiemen: How Lee Atwater Perfected the G.O.P.'s Appeal to Racism

Mike Whitney
Down for the Count

Don Santina
How Maria Fell: Death in the Central Valley

Scott Boehm
Manufacturing Sympathy: Palin, Special Needs and Identity Politics

Saul Landau
Faith-Based Surge: Whining About Winning in Iraq

Ron Jacobs
Iraq and the Arrogance of Washington

Binoy Kampmark
Afghanistan the Un-Winnable

Linn Washington Jr.
The Great Vote Fraud Hoax

Nicole Colson
Mocking Our Rights: McCain's Disdain for Women's Health

Bernard Chazelle
The Humorology of Power

Brian Jones
Campaign by Codeword

Christopher Brauchli
Down the Drain with McCain's Vetters

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Rejects Neoliberalism

Val Strange
The Fraternity of John McCain: Scenes from North Carolina

Joe Mowrey
Name That Candidate: He Supports Petraeus, the Death Penalty, the Bailout, Nuclear Power, the Occupation...

Steve Early
SEIU Learns the Meaning of "No"

David Macaray
Patriotism and the Labor Movement

Allison Kilkenny
You Have the Right to Airport Harassment

Richard Rhames
Open Season

Jim Bell
Nuclear Power's Big Con

Kris De Welde
Domestic Violence and Financial Stress

Barry Clemson
John Wayne Syndrome

Adam Engel
Last Exit to Disneyland

Mark Scaramella
The World's Weirdest Pipe Organ?

Tuli Kupferberg
Nobody for President: the Original Version (Annotated)

Lorenzo Wolff
A Frustrated, Broken-Hearted Joy from Kidnapkin

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Swartzfager and Payne

Website of the Weekend
Patrick Cockburn Dismantles the Surge

October 23, 2008

Allan J. Lichtman
What Voter Fraud?

Todd Chretien
Why I'm Not Voting for Obama

John Ross
No Child Left Behind, Mexican-Style

Peter Morici
Strategies to End the Crisis

Mats Svensson
Short Film Clips at a Checkpoint

Marlene Martin
Don't Let Them Execute an Innocent Man

Robert Jensen /
Pat Youngblood
Looking Beyond the Election and Beyond Elections

Margaret Kimberley
Rightwing Obama Love

Deepak Tripathi
Post-Bush Scenarios

David Morris
Why Joe the Plumber is a Socialist (And You Are, Too)

Website of the Day
Voting While Black in North Carolina

October 22, 2008

Brian Cloughley
Kid Killers are Barbarians

Heather Gray
Raising Hell in the South: the Legacy of J. L. Chestnut, Jr.

Jeff Birkenstein
McCain's Disdain for Spain

Ralph Nader
The Song Remains the Same: Convergence and Avoidance in the Presidential Election

DC Larson
The Growing of a Heartland Nader Raider

David Swanson
Colin Powell, Not Qualified for Government Service

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor Race and the Election: When the "Real" America Enters the Voting Booth

Larry Everest
9/11 and the Imperial Adventure in Afghanistan

Robert Fantina
Anything to Win

Martha Rosenberg
The Financier's Playbook

Stephen Martin
Giving It Up to the Combine

Website of the Day
Brokers with Hands on Their Faces

October 21, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Wealth's Apostles

Paul Craig Roberts
How Inflation Works: Why I Can't Buy an Old Ferrari

Corey D. B. Walker
Empire and White Supremacy

Steve Breyman
How to "Win" in Afghanistan

Eric Toussaint
The Economic Crisis and Latin America: Time to Delink

Wajahat Ali
Boo Radley Comes Out to Play: the Emerging Muslim-American Electorate

Robert Weitzel
Wasting a Vote for Lincoln's Radical Ideal (Or Why I'm Voting for Nader)

Brendan Cooney
Palinoscopy: an Exploration of Why Liberals are So Obsessed with Sarah Palin

Dave Lindorff
Cuba's Oil Reserves: a Game-Changer?

Marqueece Harris-Dawson / Bob Wing
When You're a Black Candidate There's No Such Thing as a Safe Lead

Patrick B. Barr
Socialist, Socialist, SOCIALIST!

Omar Barghouti
The Boycott and Palestinian Groups: Countering the Critics

Website of the Day
How to Dismantle a US War Plane (and Get Away With It)

October 20, 2008

Michael Hudson
The ABCs of Paulson's Bailout

Anthony DiMaggio
The Scandal That Never Was: ACORN, Rightwing Media and Election "Fraud"

Tariq Ali
Zardari Bans My Books

Uri Avnery
Is Akko Burning?

Bill Quigley
Hammered by the Swedes

Ben Rosenfeld
The Politics of St. Joe, Martyr to a Lie

David Michael Green
Payback's a Bitch: McCain on the Ash Heap

William S. Lind
The Afghanistan Advantage

Chris Genovali
Drill, Baby, Drill (Wink, Wink)

Stephen Martin
The Last Man in America

Howard Lisnoff
Bad News for War Resisters

David Yearsley
Organ Meat

Website of the Day
Our Brother is Sick: the Steve Ferguson Cancer Fund

October 17 / 19, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Blow Ups and Bombers

Jeffrey St. Clair
Inside Hanford: a Trip to America's Most Toxic Place

Pam Martens
How the Banksters are Making a Killing Off the Bailout

Paul Craig Roberts
Government of Thieves

Mike Whtney
No More Investment Banks

Michael D. Yates
Bowling Alley Blues: Racism Dies Hard in Johnstown, PA

Suzanne Smith
The Energy-War Connection: McCain Said It, Why Don't We?

Carl Boggs
Prosecuting Bush

Ralph Nader
Closing the Courthouse Doors

Fidel Castro
The Global Crash

Dave Marsh
The Great Levi Stubbs

Saul Landau
Denial, the Election Musical Comedy

Jo Guldi
The Floods of Heaven

Kevin Zeese
Now the Cost of War Really Matters

Larry Everest
Afghanistan, Not a Good War Gone Bad

Steve Early
Stop, in the Name of Joe!

David Macaray
Hey, Joe

Ben Terrall
When Ike Hit Haiti

Missy Beattie
Palin and God's Children

Don Monkerud
American Exceptionalism

Helen Redmond
Health Care Now's Big Con

Dan Bacher
Schwarzenegger's Delta Vision: Canals and Dams to Bail Out Big Ag

Wajahat Ali
Bush Gets Stoned

Farzana Versey
The White Tiger's Stripes and Gripes

Vladimir Frolov
Medvedev to Obama: We Come Not to Bury America, But to Buy It

Kim Nicolini
Frozen River: At Last, a Great Movie That's Neither Hip Nor Cool

Poets Basement
Gibbons, Corsale, Davis and Fleming

Website of the Day
The Real Sarah Palin?

November 18, 2008

Hezabollah or the United Nations?

Who Will Evict Israel from Lebanon?

By FRANKLIN LAMB

Northwest of Ghajar Village, South Lebanon 

"We, as Lebanese, are here to confirm that we cling to freeing every grain of our soil. We will not abandon the great national cause, which is the continuation of the liberation of our land. The resistance looks forward to hoisting the flags of victory again over the Kfarshuba hills, Shebaa Farms, Ghajar and Abbasieh where 80 percent of the land is still occupied"

Sheik Nabil Qwork, Hezbollah leader addressing villagers at Abbasieh Village, 10/2008

Under pressure from the lame duck Bush Administration to withdraw from territory that the Lebanese Resistance did not liberate during its May 2000 rout of the Israel army and its surrogate SLA militia, Israel to date remains unwilling to budge.  One reason is that it claims the Bush Administration reneged on secret pledges to bomb Iran.

As the unseeing eyes everted by five consecutive US administrations from Israel's 22 year brutal occupation of South Lebanon (1978-2000) make plain, Israel remaining on Lebanese territory normally would not be of much concern to Washington even as it is learning that its own hard-line policy in the region did not succeed.

The reason for the sudden worry about Israel clinging to Lebanese land, such as Ghajar Village and Shebaa Farms, is the fast approaching-and arguably second most important election for the Middle East (the first being the result of the 11/4/08 US vote), the May 2009 Lebanese election.  The Bush Administration is widely thought here to believe that the 2009 election may be the last chance for the US to save Lebanon from Iranian suzerainty.

If Israel leaves Ghajar which it occupied in violation of UNSC Resolution 1701 on its way out of Lebanon, with Hezbollah hot on its heels, following the July 2006 war, (and Shebaa Farms which it occupied in 1967) the Bush Administration feels its March 14 Lebanese allies stand to benefit electorally.

Both the US and Israel are trying to prevent Hezbollah from determining Lebanese policy at Cabinet meetings and gaining the allegiance of a majority of the 128 Deputies following the May 2009 election.  The Obama victory helps Hezbollah in the coming Lebanese election because, despite groveling and  genuflecting to the Israel lobby as all  US presidential candidates have historically done, Obama takes a broader view of the Middle East and is perceived in the region as willing to 'do business and conduct dialogue" with Hezbollah, Syria, Hamas, Iran and Afghanistan.

Sundry, “Nasrallah-Obama! Yes We Can!”  (Nam, Nahnou Nastatia!  in Arabic) placards have been observed recently in Beirut and around the Middle East.

For these reasons the nearly moribund Bush administration is taking no chances.  Charges persist, including those made this week by pro-Hezbollah Marada Movement leader Suleiman Franjieh that Welch Club-Saudi cash (in amounts up to $ 900 per vote according to some electoral organizers where the average monthly income is $75 per family) is being offered in the Tripoli/Akkar/Beirut area where Saad Hariri is deemed by many as not having properly filled his father's leadership shoes. Cash offers for votes are reported even in areas where a Hezbollah sweep is unlikely.  Hariri opponent, Franjieh added that "If Saudi Arabia continues to pump money into the forthcoming elections, this would lead Iran and others to contribute money!"  Needy and clever Lebanese voters may not complain much as some desperate citizens calculate how to sell their vote more than once to offset Lebanon's rising inflation.

The blizzard of cash prompted Hezbollah's popular leader in South Lebanon, Sheikh Nabil Qwork  to comment sarcastically that "it would have been more useful if the cash had been sent to help rebuild Lebanon instead of an attempt to buy the election".

Does Hezbollah buy votes?

One can't be absolutely sure of practically anything in Lebanon these days but not according to residents in the Hezbollah Haret Hreik neighborhood between Shatila and Burj Barajneh Palestinian Refugee Camps.

"That would be so funny! I wish they did!" the scintillating late teen chador-clad cashier at the neighborhood Halifee sandwich restaurant commented to this observer.  "Hezbollah is more likely to ask voters for a charity donation at the voting place than to pay people to vote.  I want you to know that Hezbollah supporters have the highest voting rate in Lebanon because they are motivated to do their 'national duty'.  I want to vote and I hope that the Parliament will immediately lower the voting age from 21 years to 18 years as Sayeed Hassan Nassrallah proposed during his Martyr's Day speech last week."

According to an election analyst at Beirut's, Notre Dame University – Louaize, founded by the Maronite Order of the Holy Virgin Mary, Parliament will likely agree.  Voting analysts calculate that dropping the voting age three years should give Hezbollah a majority of the approximately 250,000 newly available votes since young people in Lebanon tend to favor Hassan Nassrallah much as young Americans favored Obama

Fattening the base with US Pork?

It must have been pure coincidence last week (11/12/08) that U.S. Ambassador Michele Sisson, and USAID/Lebanon Mission Director Denise Herbal, announced that the U.S. embassy has launched a  six million dollar humanitarian assistance program "to help 21 villages adjacent to the northern Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared who were affected by the war"."  ( Nahr al-Bared is the camp near Tripoli/Akkar  that was destroyed during  12 weeks of fighting between  salafist Fateh al-Islam  and the Lebanese Army during the summer of 2007 and  where serious reconstruction is yet to begin partly because donors pledges have not been honored).

The Embassy did not explain to some Lebanese  who were astonished by this widely perceived  interference and electoral ploy  how these 21 villages, at least two from which this observer witnessed snipers firing down into the  sealed Palestinian Camp, during  the May of 2007 siege, were  themselves affected—since most of the villages were far removed from any fighting. Also unexplained is the coincidence that the 21 selected villages just happen to be those where US allied candidates are facing possible defeat at the polls.

The new US Ambassador did note that "A revolving fund will be established for micro-finance loans to boost income generation (read: quick cash payouts) and job creation as well as job-market-oriented vocational training for youth, women and the unemployed."
A reporters' question:  "What about Nahr al Bared, where they lost everything and desperately need help?" was ignored.

Inquires to the Embassy were answered as is oft stated; "The Government of the United States of America  respects the sovereignty and independence of Lebanon, does not interfere in its internal affairs, and will accept the results of the coming election".

A Hamas organizer from Jenin, Palestine, currently being hunted and laying low in Lebanon, quipped: "Don't hold your breath. That's what they said in 2006 before Hamas won our election"

A brotherly swap: Lebanese territory for Georgian?

The election is causing some tension between the US and its March 14 allies for the reason that many Lebanese want  Ghajar and Shebaa Farms returned, and since the Embassy has not delivered on its whispers  to  force Israel to withdraw so the March 14 team could claim credit, their leader Saad Hariri  may be  negotiating with the Russians not only for help with getting Shebba Farms back before the voting,  but also, to the consternation of the Bush Administration and Israel, asking Russia to deliver heavy weapons to Lebanon.

Following a meeting last week between Hariri and Russian leaders, Hariri was quoted by the Vremia Novosti newspaper as saying, "Lebanon needs heavy weapons such as tanks and artillery. American military aid only consists of light arms".

Further upsetting the US administration is speculation that Hariri will obtain Lebanon's recognition of the breakaway Georgian districts of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in exchange for Russia picking up the ball regarding forcing Israel to return Lebanese territory. According to one staffer on the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the White House is wondering what went on during the Nasrallah-Hariri (Hezbollah-Future Movement) meeting last month that Hariri may be  reinventing himself  as a  pro Resistance Lebanese patriot.

Where does the Israeli occupation of Lebanese territory end? 

Lebanese voters are aware that Hezbollah may add the expected Israel withdrawal of Ghajar to its chain of claimed victories over Israel, and then ratchet up for complete Israeli withdrawal from Shebaa Farms and, as some insist, other border areas claimed by Lebanon.

The Bush Administration hope is that  if  Israel withdraws from the north side of Ghajar and a long predicted  UN deal can be  done regarding the 14 Shebaa Farms, the now emptying White House could claim some success with its Middle East 'peace processes' before handing over the keys. Furthermore, its local Lebanese allies would have an argument why the Lebanese Resistance no longer needs arms to force the return of Lebanese territory.

However, many Lebanese along the southern Lebanese 'border' insist there is more to Israel's ongoing occupation of Lebanese territory than the village of Ghajar, and Shebaa Farms.

Hezbollah: "Excuse us please but the 'Blue Line' is not the Border!"

As recently as last week, but not for the first time, Hezbollah has reminded the international community that the U.N.-Demarcated Blue Line is "not a border line" between Lebanon and Israel.

Hezbollah's international relations official Nawaf Mousawi explained to visiting journalists and Parliamentarians that the Blue Line is only a "line setting withdrawal limits by the Israeli army from south Lebanon in the year 2000". He added that the "Zionist terrorist organizations moved the border line from what was established in 1920 to a new line in 1923 which stripped Lebanon of seven villages and 20 farms. We should be attentive to attempts to consider the Blue Line a border line, which cuts from Lebanon millions of square meters from its national soil."

Hasan Nasrallah has also asserted that Lebanon's territorial integrity includes not only the disputed Shebaa Farms but also the disputed Seven Villages.  Not good news for Tel Aviv or the Bush Administration.

Mousawi continued: "You can go back to the French Foreign Ministry's documents in the city of Nant, where you will find a memorandum the Zionist movement sent to the peace conference held in San Remo in 1919. In it, the Zionist movement wanted the Al-Awwali River, north of Sidon, to be the border of Israel, something which makes the entire south into part of the State of Israel."

Mousawi, often succinct in his fact-filled dialogues, did not name the seven villages but those living along the blue line who were expelled from them, recite:  Tarbikha, Abil al-Qamh, Hunin, al-Malikiyya, al-Nabi Yusha, Qadas and Saliha.  In addition, they insist the villages of Abbasieh and Nkhaile have been encroached upon by Israel and must be returned.

UN cartographers who spent part of 2007  studying  French/English maps relating to the Lebanese/Palestine boundary  pointed out that those who know best exactly what Lebanese territory Israel still occupies  are those  Lebanese citizens whose families have lived  along the historic Lebanon/Palestine/Syria frontier for generations  and  who have witnessed  Zionist projects dating back nearly half a century before, according to one spry 80 something  villager, "the Zionist  colonial enterprise  was grafted onto our land".

A brief survey of that opinion, as well as a review of cartography records from the colonial mandatory period (1920-48) which led directly to the establishment of modern Lebanon as well as to the Nakba, is revealing.

It also aids in understanding the mindset of Hezbollah in servicing its population base, and fulfilling what the Party refers to as its 'religious and moral duty to resist Zionist occupation".  As AUB Professor Timur Goksel, a 30 year observer of the boundary between Lebanon and occupied Palestine, nearly a quarter century as spokesmen for UNIFIL, told a visiting American delegation from the Council for the National Interest last week, "sorting out Lebanon's southern border could take ten years and that assumes cooperation from all the parties". 

Colonialism and the Seven Shia Villages

The Seven Villages lie just south of the present Lebanon-Israel 'border ' and remain a sensitive issue for Hezbollah since they were originally populated by Shia whose farms were  inside the French mandate of Greater Lebanon after World War I. However, in 1924 their property was transferred to Palestine by the pro-Zionist British, at the urging of the Rothschilds, after the initial demarcation of the international border.

The Seven Villages comprising, at the time  25 farms  were originally declared part of Lebanon by the French and English  mandatory powers in 1920 but were shifted  south out of Lebanon  by the Treaty of Al Quds in 1924 based on faulty border measurements, Zionist pressure and misunderstandings between French and English diplomats and cartographers.  The residents were forced off their property and only in 1994, following 30 years of litigation were they finally given Lebanese nationality. To this day their deeds and land records are in government offices in Tyre and Sidon -- but their villages and more than 25 farms are locked inside Israel.

Recovering the Seven Shia Villages has never high on the list of Christian and Sunni Lebanese demands of Israel over the years and the Seven Villages were ignored as part of the stillborn US orchestrated 1983 May 17th Agreement. The villagers argue that this neglect of their lands does not diminish Lebanon's legal case to regain them or the validity of the Lebanese Resistance raising the issue.

Some may argue that it is not politically expedient before the election for Lebanon to raise the issue but that view may change following the next election assuming a new Parliamentary majority.

The genesis of the Seven Villages issue is found in the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 wherein England (Sykes) and France (Picot) prepared a secret plan to carve up greater Syria and create a new State, Lebanon with ancient Palestine to the South. The territory south of the Sykes-Picot line would be governed by Britain and truncated Syria and the new state of Lebanon by the French.

The Seven Villages were lost to Lebanon at the end of World War I, when the British and French each established their exclusive Occupied Enemy Territorial Administrations (OETA) area, which kept the Seven Villages inside Lebanon, only to be shifted south into Palestine when the British, in the spirit of the Balfour Declaration, caved to Zionist pressure. Britain, not only did not shy away from the Zionist momentum ignited by the 1917 Balfour Agreement including Lebanon's lower Litani  river and in headwaters of the Hasbani, at the Versailles Peace conference two years later,  it nearly achieved for the Zionists  a border for 'Palestine" that would run as far north as South Saida to Mount Hermon.

The French representative on the Border Unit, one Colonel N. Paulet,   received instructions from the French Governor Gouraud in Beirut to retain the Shia populated villages in the area inside Lebanon on the grounds that they were a natural part of the new country.  Gouraud's resistance to British intensions was not out of love for the Shia.
Indeed, the French, were far warmer to the expansionist ambitions of their Christian subjects, at the expense of Muslims, and were disinclined  to insist on keeping the Seven 'kufer' Shia villages.  Rather, Gouraud's reasoning appears to have been based on a recognition that the geographical division between Shia- and Sunni-populated areas corresponded closely to the delineation of the border.

The fate of the Seven Villages was sealed on April 24 1924 when villages and farms located north of the Palestine OETA line were formally moved at British insistence from the jurisdiction of Greater Lebanon to Palestine – a total Lebanese land loss of more than 2,729 hectares.

The fact that Hezbollah  has kept the pressure on Israel to withdraw from Ghajar and Shebaa Farms will likely reward it at the polls, although there are more than a dozen other Israeli border violation issues that Hezbollah may decide to address including some 25 farms, seven villages and any number of  'moving the goal posts' issues.
During its 22 year occupation, Israel frequently   took ground in the Galilee panhandle because for much of its route Lebanon has the topographical advantage, particularly in the 1980s, when the Israeli military was watched and sometimes recorded by villagers.  They report seeing Israeli soldiers pushing the border fence north and deeper into Lebanon in various areas, creating annexed areas that granted the Israelis the high ground overlooking the terrain to the north and west.   Villagers claim that some of these areas have not been returned to their pre-occupation positions.

Future border rectifications?

Additionally, if some of the Lebanese farmers along the Khiam plain south of Marjayoun have their way, Hezbollah may also try to  force Israel to return more than  an estimated 3,000  truckloads of the area’s rich and fertile soil that  during its occupation, its engineer corps hauled south  to create expanded farms at Kiryat Shemona,  Matulla and adjacent areas.

This observer has noticed that some foreign visitors or 'experts' writing from Zionist-funded 'think thanks' in Northwest Washington, DC claim that Hezbollah is radical and makes extreme and unrealistic demands concerning the return of Lebanese territory.

Researchers tramping the south of Lebanon come to learn that it's the people of the South who used to travel uninhibited between Palestine and Lebanon and whose families have lived in the area for hundreds of years who are counting the days until their southern neighbors are liberated. Views they express make Hezbollah appear meek and mild.

Whatever Lebanon's future government decides to do about regaining this countries land, it may wish to consider the results of an admittedly unscientific survey conducted recently of former owners of farms in the Seven Villages as well as Abbasieh and Nkhaile villages in South Lebanon.  Villages like Maron al Ras from which today visitors can clearly view Saliha, one of the Seven Villages where during April of 1948, 70 people were rounded up, forced into  the center of the village and machine gunned by Israeli troops, their bodies dumped inside the mosque and the building demolished.

Next move:  the UN or Hezbollah?

The United Nations may want to work with increased vim to resolve the myriad extant border issues in south Lebanon, alongside the current unity Government of Lebanon, rather than face the escalating wrath from villagers along the 1916, 1918, 1920, 1923, 1924, 1949, 2000, 2006 frontier. The same goes for Israel, the US and the other members of the Quartet.

On the table at Maron al Ras:

1. The return of  the kifa shoula hills, adjacent to Shebaa Farms annexed in 1967

2. Handing over all maps of landmines and cluster bombs, the latter of which has caused more than 300 Lebanese and international casualties since the August 14, 2006 cessation of hostilities;

3. Ending all violations of airspace and territorial waters;

4. Written acknowledgement of Lebanon's right to control its water resources including the Hasbani and Wazzani rivers;

5. Demarcation of the Lebanese/Palestine border back to the original 1923 line and replace the 2000 'blue line'

6. Restoration of the Seven Lebanese villages

7. The return of all Palestinian Refugees  residing in Lebanon who want to exercise their UNSCR 194 guaranteed Right of Return, (approximately 400,000) and  fair and adequate compensation for those who do not choose to return;

8. Indictment and prosecution before International Courts of all those who committed crimes against humanity and who crossed the southern Lebanon border by land, air or Lebanese territorial waters  to do so;

9. The payment by Israel of Third Reich era reparations, compensation, and damages for the destruction of Lebanon and for the families of the Massacred for Israeli crimes conducted by its aggressions in 1948, 1949, 1967, 1976, 1978, 1981, 1982, 1984. 1985, 1993, 1994, 1996 and 2006;

10. An international tribunal to try Israeli officials for organizing and abetting the September 16-18 Massacre at the Sabra-Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp.  The payment by Israel of compensation for those killed and injured as a result of the Massacre and the destruction of property.

Franklin Lamb earned his Doctorate from the London School of Economic in International Law and Economics. He is a board member of HOKOK: the International Coalition against Impunity, which is preparing a case before the International Court of Justice with respect to Israeli violations of international humanitarian law during the 2006 War.  He can be reached at fplamb@sabrashatila.org.

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