Lebanon Determined to Proceed with Election on Time
Perhaps because:

…[now]there is one left in the government to make up the numbers. In other words, it only takes one more murder for the democratically elected government of Lebanon to fall.
Only a few weeks ago, Walid Jumblatt called me after Ghanem’s predecessor was murdered. “Two more to go, Robert,” Walid said. And so, tonight, it is one.

And so now we are in the realm of high drama:

Jittery members of Lebanon’s ruling coalition have fled into hiding, many of them abroad, for fear of meeting the same fate as an anti Syrian MP who was blown up just days before a key presidential poll.
“There are instructions for us not to move, not to have a fixed agenda, not to use the same vehicles,” said lawmaker Marwan Hamadeh, who survived an assassination bid in October 2004, the first in a string of attacks against prominent anti-Syrian figures in Lebanon.
“We stay put, we don’t go out, we only receive people, and everything is filtered,” he told AFP.
A special wing of the high-security luxury Phoenicia Hotel on the Beirut seafront has been reserved for about 40 MPs who began moving in after Wednesday’s assassination of MP Antoine Ghanem, a source at the hotel told AFP.
Vehicles have been banned from parking near the hotel wing, now an off-limits bunker subject to close security sweeps, said the source, who did not wish to be identified….
Hamadeh said that no ministers or deputies dare use their special license plates to avoid drawing attention to themselves.
“We have no social life anymore. We stopped going out, going to meetings, conferences, condolences, seminars or any other social occasion,” he said.
MP Elias Atallah said he spends his time in hiding alone, without his family.
“I write and read a lot. I am now reading the book ‘One Thousand and One Nights’ because our times remind me of the past eras” of violence in our region, he said bitterly.(AFP)

Posted by: Bea | Sep 20 2007 21:43 utc | 3

Useful summary (via Syria Comment) of the issues involved/at stake in this high-drama Lebanese presidential election.

Posted by: Bea | Sep 20 2007 22:40 utc | 5

It just continually astounds me at how the US administration has the bald effrontery to accuse Lebanon’s neighbors of meddling in their politics when it continually does so from the other side of the world…
War is peace. Up is down. Black is white. I got it.

Posted by: PeeDee | Sep 20 2007 22:53 utc | 7

The Shock Doctrine in Action:
To recover from the disastrous war of 2006 in which Lebanon’s infrastructure was smashed back 50 years or more, the international community held a “donors’ conference” in Paris earlier this year. Pledges of aid were generously put forth… with conditions, of course. Although we don’t know all the details, seeing this news in light of Klein’s theories, it now all makes so much more sense.

BEIRUT: A senior US official said Friday that Washington will continue its economic and financial aid program for Lebanon as long as the government continues its reform plan based on the Paris III paper. “Lebanon was represented in Paris by a government which represented the Lebanese people and that government submitted its reform plan and for this reason Lebanon received the aid packaged pledged by the international community,” Elizabeth L. Dibble, the principle Deputy Assistant Secretary, International Finance and Development, told reporters at the US Embassy.
The US official said that any government which takes over responsibility after the presidential elections will continue to receive Washington’s economic assistance if the reform programs are implemented according to the plan….
The government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora received $7.6 billion soft-loan and grant pledges to help reduce the public debt, execute reforms and stimulate the economy.
The massive aid package was based on a five-year economic-reform program which was highly commended by the international community, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
As part of the international response at Paris III donor conference, US aid increased in 2007 with a pledge of $770 million for economic grants, additional security funding, and a new program for Lebanon.
The United States is already dispersing these funds through grant assistance.
The $770 million is aimed at helping Lebanon to reduce the cost of debt servicing, the largest single spending item in the government budget. Part of this money will be allocated for infrastructure reconstruction.
This brings the US total post-conflict assistance to Lebanon to $1 billion, including the $230 million pledged at the Stockholm conference on humanitarian needs.
Dibble, who commended the work of the government in tackling major issues in the economy, said the US is not putting a timetable on the privatization of the telecom sector.
“If Lebanon decided to postpone the privatization of the telecom sector until next year it will not affect the US benchmark for the assistance to the country,” Dibble said, adding that the government so far has met all the US benchmarks.
Dibble said that the remaining US assistance will continue to flow into Lebanon as long as the reform measures are implemented on time.
The US government last week provided Lebanon with $75 million which entirely went to settle a loan from the World Bank….
Dibble underlined the need for the privatization program and the restructuring of Electricite du Liban.
“But Lebanon need some parliamentary actions to complete some of the reforms which was agreed upon,” Dibble said.
She added that Lebanon has a chance to join the World Trade Organization if some measures such as the enforcement of the copy rights laws is taken.

So here is the recipe:
1. Invade and smash (or have your proxies accomplish the task for you) the economic infrastructure of the country you wish to privatize.
2. Magnanimously offer to “assist” in “recovery” by providing massive “aid.”
3. Make the “aid” conditional upon meeting particular “benchmarks”, which will generally feature privatization of key public services/resources, and opening up of those resources to your own corporate sharks. If possible, secure the most favorable terms ever for those corporate interests and also ensure that the publics in the target countries are shut out of the possibility of profiting. [Note: The degree of possibility of accomplishing this is directly correlating with the degree of destruction and desperation achieved in Step 1. Therefore, don’t hold back.]
4. Repeat in next target country.
Sound familiar, anyone?
P.S. Generate for defense companies massive profits from the replacement of all the ammo/weapons, etc used in step 1, whether by your own army or your proxy’s. Never mind if your government goes bankrupt trying to pay for all that, or if the needs of your own citizenry remain woefully underserved, or if you are sucking the lifeblood out of the government assets for the next generation… hey. no worries.

Posted by: Bea | Sep 21 2007 12:57 utc | 9

Very good analysis, Bea.
Remember too, that the money given to countries as “foreign aid” comes from the Social Security surplus (i.e. working class taxpayers), and goes to bail out rich bankers.
Destruction and recconstruction is not an “industry,” is not an activity which accomplishes anything besides taking from the poor and giving to the rich, and raising the artificially constructed GDP — and it does this at great permanent cost to the environment: It is simply unsustainable in the long run, and does nothing whatsoever to answer people’s needs.

Posted by: Malooga | Sep 21 2007 15:59 utc | 11

Letter from Lebanon
Good piece that helps flesh out our understanding of the Lebanese elections and all that is at stake there.

Posted by: Bea | Sep 22 2007 3:52 utc | 13