VOA News – Hezbollah, Amal Get Clean Sweep in Lebanon Vote — This can’t be good.
Lebanese officials say the Hezbollah and Amal movements, both pro-Syrian, have won all 23 parliamentary seats contested in southern Lebanon in Sunday’s second stage of staggered elections.
Interior Minister Hassan al-Sabaa announced the official results Monday.
After polls closed Sunday, both groups declared victory and their supporters poured into the streets of Lebanese towns and cities in celebration.
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I’ll try to make this shorter than my usual history lesson.
People in lands that have dealt with real, historic exploitation of their resources by Imperial invaders don’t focus rare chances at democratic expression on the niceties of “compassionate” this or “moderate” that. They’d like to keep the bastards off their land who have been killing them and stealing their goods.
If that means voting for those who proclaim their religious beliefs the loudest — while actually showing up, every day, and helping with their day-to-day needs in the neighborhood — they’re going to grab that chance.
Americans have a unique history. [1] We got away with our genocide. No one’s succeeded in taking us to court or anywhere else for the First Nations we decimated when we stole the land we live in. [2] It’s been a couple of centuries since we had to kill anyone other than ourselves in a war on our own soil. The Confederacy owns the thug in the White House and they still don’t think there was any big deal about slavery. [3] The Brits and the French realized that Imperialism didn’t work, anymore, after the end of WW2 — backed off and ran from the countries they’d exploited for decades, if not centuries — and left Uncle Sugar to walk in to “show them how to do it”.
Our governments have been making the world safe for democracy — and GM and United Fruit, the Oil Patch Boys — since Hector was a pup. Americans never grew up in a land so decimated by invasion and occupation that, for example, it was “normal” to have the front seats of a bus reserved for invalids of war. We’ve given away the lives of countless young people; but, the wars still weren’t fought in our backyards.
Hizb Allah offers a lot of folks the same religious crap as all the other superstitions. The folks who believe in it, though, show up, every morning and help the generations that have followed on — after the French, the Brits, the Israelis and the Americans have spent the night before, telling them how to live at gunpoint.
A little silly to say that the US eliminated First Nations. This claim only exists because the settlers were advanced enough to document their history. The tribes that were eliminated had previously eliminated other tribes in that area, but they didn’t keep a history about it.
Uh, no. The documentation is pretty thorough, both Spanish and English-speaking colonizers. You should be capable of Googling some reputable, academic sources — even if it jiggles your belief system.
Unless you think the Holocaust didn’t happen, too. Or the Armenian genocide by the Turks. Or is it only “our” genocide that’s unthinkable enough to be swept under the carpet of history?
Read what I said. That the Indian tribes that were eliminated had themselves eliminated previous tribes in the area.
By the way, you can expect more of this as democracies happen everywhere. Egypt’s president is bringing in elections, and it’s likely to see the long repressed Muslim Brotherhood take power. The US should be stressing liberty over democracy.
Read what I said. That the Indian tribes that were eliminated had themselves eliminated previous tribes in the area.
The relevance and your point being … ?
AB CD
Perhaps you could tell us of which tribes were wiped out by whites that had wiped out other tribes?
Let’s see, there were the Seneca that attacked and almost wiped out the Huron in the mid 1600s. Oh wait; the Seneca were allied with the English and the Huron with the French. And didn’t the Seneca have English support? Oh ya, the Seneca are doing just fine, thank you.
The Mohican were attacked by the Cree. Ooops forgot. The Cree were allied with the French while the Mohican were with the English and they just happened to be at war. The Cree are strong and populous.
Then the Americans came along. All the Indians ceased their tribal warfare in order to survive against the Americans. Ever hear of the Trail of Tears? Many Indian tribes were forced to walk from Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, and Georgia to Iowa, Kansas, and Oklahoma. They were poorly cared for and driven like cattle. They would arrive at their new homes in late fall with no shelter or food in near barren lands. What food they did have was often rotten and filled with worms. They were denied weapons to hunt the few remaining wildlife.
As for your comment on The US stressing Liberty over Democracy, Liberty and Democracy go hand in hand. I can’t think of any case where there is one but not the other. Subtract one and you lose the other.
My point is what I said all along. You can’t say the US eliminated First Nations when the tribes that were eliminated had themselves eliminated others. It goes back older than Seneca and Huron to points where the history is very spotty.
Jordan and Kuwait are relatively liberal for their area, and they have no democracy. We have just seen democracy in action in Lebanon, and the same can happen in other places. Democracy can also be mob rule. You say subtract one and you lose the other. Well right now in France, Britain, and many other places in Europe free speech does not exist. Le Monde was just put on trial for inflammatory speech, and they lost. Would you say that democracy has been eliminated there?