by alaraby.co.uk -- Lebanese singer and former The Voice France contestant Hiba Tawaji is due to perform in Syria, an announcement that has angered Syrian fans, many unable to return to their homes in Assad-held areas due to threats to their safety. Tawaji - well known for her songs Solidaritè and La Bidaye Wala Nihaye - is due to perform at the Damascus Opera House on 9 and 10 March, officially named the Dar Al-Assad for Culture and Arts after Syria's ruling family. It will be the first time the soprano has performed in Syria for 15 years, according to a tweet posted by the singer. Some have branded the upcoming show "shameful" as during the past decade Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad has launched a brutal assault on opposition areas, killing at least 500,000 people, mostly civilians from regime shelling and bombing.

Tens of thousands of detainees - many of them pro-democracy protesters jailed at the start of the 2011 uprising - have disappeared in regime prisons, many feared dead from torture and disease. "Mazzeh prison is only 10 minutes away, I hope the cry of the Syrians tortured under the orders of the president who gave his name to the Opera will not cover your voice," one Twitter user wrote. Other Syrians - many exiled from their home country - have struggled to understand why the singer agreed to perform in the capital, which is controlled by a regime widely condemned for sickening acts of violence against men, women and children. "Shame on you! Singing on a floor covered with hundred thousands innocent Syrian’s blood," another user, Nadia, wrote. "Shame now has a voice," another tweeter, Ammar, wrote. Some fans commenting on Tawaji's Facebook post appeared excited about the event. "We're waiting for you and love you so much," one fan Rana Aoun wrote, as others showered the singer with well wishes and good luck messages. "May happiness return to Syria," Facebook user Sandy Alroom commented.

بعد تفكيك شبكات التجسس، قوى الامن الداخلي تحبط عمليات ارهابية خطيرة، الف تحية لشعبة المعلومات. الدولة تحمي الجميع والدولة فقط !

by breitbart.com -- “We cannot continue like this in Lebanon,” Cardinal Béchara Boutros Raï said during his Sunday homily. The rulers “to whom are entrusted the future of the country, public money, the ports, the autonomous offices, and relations with other countries cannot continue to waste, block, and contribute to the collapse and emigration of the population.” “You cannot continue to destroy the country and impoverish its population despite the appeals launched by the whole world,” he declared, recalling that the pope himself has repeatedly made similar appeals.

The head of the Maronite Church pleaded for Lebanon to “exit from its political, economic, financial, vital and social collapse.” Officials “are sticking to their positions, destroying the country voluntarily or involuntarily and blocking the progress of the state and its institutions,” the cardinal said. “The time of hostility and divisions is over.” “The time of militias trying to bring us back to a page that has been turned is over,” he continued, in an implicit swipe at Hezbollah, which claimed to have launched a drone over Israel on Friday. “We are a united family, which has a role and a message in the East and we must know how to play this role again.”

By Nicholas Noe -- Carnegie Endowment -- Two and a half years after prolonged street protests brought down the Lebanese government and revealed the deep financial and political rot within it, Lebanon is finally set to hold parliamentary elections on May 15. There is growing doubt, however, about whether the longstanding political establishment – mainly comprised of government officials, legacy political parties and business elites – will allow the polls to proceed; enough powerful internal and external actors may yet see it in their interests to indefinitely postpone them. But even if a vote is held on time, the country on its current trajectory will likely experience one of its most chaotic, corrupt and illegitimate elections since its independence in 1943. This will ensure, among many other negative outcomes, that the ruling establishment which so many Lebanese blame for their country’s swift decline won’t meaningfully change, save for some internal reshufflings amongst “frenemies.”

There are at least four reasons for this state of affairs. First, Lebanon’s ruling establishment, aided and abetted over the decades by an impressively diverse group of countries, has, in the words of the World Bank, “deliberately” sunk the country into one of the three worst depressions in the modern era and still refuses to implement any reasonable policy responses. It is illogical, then, to assume that this same group will somehow allow for a peaceful transition through an election or a serious dilution of their iron grip on power.