by YaLibnan.com

Free Patriotic Movement criticized the Lebanese Forces over its
latest proposal for privatizing the electricity sector during the
cabinet meeting that was supposed to discuss the budget at the Grand
Serail. Ever since Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea endorsed FPM founder
Michel Aoun’s presidential candidacy the relations between the 2 parties
ran very smoothly

But on Wednesday Energy Minister Cesar Abi Khalil who represents president Aoun in the cabinet criticized LF for its proposal. Geagea has recently proposed that private companies should build and operate power plants
in a partnership with the state in the electricity sector, describing
it as a necessary reform that should be included in the state budget. Education Minister Marwan
Hamadeh of the Progressive Socialist Party voiced support for the LF’s
proposal in this regard, but Justice Minister Salim Jreissati who
also represents Aoun in the cabinet rejected linking the state budget to the electricity plan stressing they are “two separate things.” Abi Khalil meanwhile told reporters sarcastically that he is
“preparing a health plan,” in an apparent jab at the LF, which holds the
health portfolio in the government. Flanked by Abi Khalil after the session, Health Minister Ghassan
Hasbani tried to play down the differences with FPM by saying : “We’re
both in good health and we always cooperate.”

by RT.com – During a trip to Beirut, US Central Command leader, General Joseph
Votel, told top Lebanese officials that declaring safe zones in Syria
would work once ground troops and other resources are in place.
President Donald Trump has long promised such a policy. On Monday, four-star General Votel met with Lebanese President Michel
Aoun, Prime Minister Saad Hariri and Defense Minister Yaacoub Sarraf to
discuss military strategy against the Islamic State (IS, formerly
ISIS/ISIL) and other jihadist forces in Syria. Syrian safe zones would be “a viable concept” in “areas that have already been secured where we already have humanitarian and stabilization activities ongoing,” Votel said, according to Foreign Policy.

However, “You’ve got to have all of the resources,”
Votel added. That would include ground troops, but the general
reportedly did not go into specifics about which country or countries
would provide the boots on the ground. Turkey is skeptical of a
safe zone in Syria, where Kurdish forces may hold an influential
position. Turkish President Recep Erdogan threatened that its Free
Syrian Army allies could attack the Kurds, an incident Votel said could “have an impact on the coalition campaign plan,” Foreign Policy reported. “We are fully engaged with our Turkish partners,” Votel added, referring to northern Syria, where Kurdish forces have advanced.

by DailyStar.com.lb Lebanon’s Industry Minister Hussein Hajj Hasan Tuesday warned of a total collapse of the industrial and trading sectors in Lebanon. Hajj Hasan, who was speaking at a conference for marble and granite factory owners at the Biel Exhibition Center in Beirut, said that “competition by foreign products … has created a dangerous situation.” […]

by Robbie Gramer, Foreign Policy

The Islamic State is now setting its sights on China, releasing
on Monday a half-hour video in which they pledged to “shed blood
like rivers” in attacks against Chinese targets. Experts say it’s
the first threat the terrorist organization has leveled against
China. “Oh, you Chinese who do not understand what people say. We
are the soldiers of the Caliphate, and we will come to you to
clarify to you with the tongues of our weapons, to shed blood
like rivers and avenging the oppressed,” an Islamic State fighter
said in the video, which was

analyzed

and translated by U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group. The
video showed fighters, including heavily-armed children, praying,
giving speeches, and executing suspected informants. The video appeared to be the terrorist group’s “first
direct threat” against China, Michael Clarke of the Australian
National University, told


AFP



.

At first glance, China may seem like a strange target for the
Islamic terrorist group. It has no real military footprint in the
Middle East, and while Beijing is getting more involved in the
region’s energy business, it’s not involved in the U.S.-led
anti-ISIS coalition in Iraq and Syria. But experts say China
entered the terrorist group’s crosshairs over its treatment of
ethnic minority Muslims, the Uighurs, who are concentrated in the
western Chinese province of Xinjiang. Beijing is taking an increasingly hard line against unrest
there. On Monday, thousands of police — backed by helicopters and
armored vehicles — staged a mass rally, the fourth this year, as
a show of force,


Reuters

reported

. A Xinjiang Communist Party
official pulled no punches as 1,500 cops were dispatched to
problematic cities.

by Edwin Mora breitbart.com

Director Ava DuVernay celebrated her decision to wear a gown to the 2017 Oscars by a designer from Lebanon, which she proudly described as “a majority Muslim country.” Lebanon was founded as a Christian “sanctuary” state in the Middle East, and its religious makeup is so controversial the nation has not held a census since 1932. Although various assessments that use other metrics have determined that Lebanon is a slightly Muslim-majority country, Tom Harb, co-chairman of the Middle East Christian Committee, believes otherwise.

In Lebanon, “Christians are the majority including [Lebanese people] abroad,” Harb told Breitbart News, adding that there has been “no census since 1932.” “The Muslims in Lebanon refused the Lebanese diaspora to be counted because they count for more than 70 percent of the Christian Population,” he explained. “A small sign of solidarity. I chose to wear a gown by a designer from a majority Muslim country. Thanks to @AshiStudio of Lebanon. #Oscars,” director Ava DuVernay wrote on Twitter on Sunday, the day of the awards.

The move to wear a dress from Lebanese brand Ashi Studio was a deliberate snub towards President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting immigration from seven terrorism-linked countries, which she has protested in the past. Lebanon is not among the countries on the list.
 Intended as a sanctuary for Christians in the Middle East, Lebanon was established over territory from the crumbling Ottoman Empire.

By PHILIP ISSA BEIRUT (AP) — Clashes erupted in a densely-packed Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, wounding at least four people, including a three-year-old boy with a bullet-wound to the head, Palestinian security officials said. The Palestinian officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters. One […]

Image Luis Vazquez

by -Dr Joseph A. Kechichian – Gulfnews

The Lebanese seldom trust each other, especially at the political
level. And while the country is nominally a democracy, its unique
power-sharing formula allocates influence to most communities in a
more-or-less harmonious fashion. That’s the theory of the
consociationalism mechanism that determines Maronite, Sunni and Shiite
authority. In reality, the parliamentary democratic republic is
hostage to itself, and while the 1989 Ta’if Accords, that suspended the
1975-1990 Civil War, removed the built-in majority previously enjoyed by
Christians and brought parity between Christians and Muslims, the
parliament’s 128 seats are all confessionally distributed.

Because
of the country’s demographic make-up, each religious community has an
allotted number of seats, even if candidates must receive a plurality of
the total vote cast, which includes followers of all confessions. This
deliberately-designed system is meant to minimise inter-sectarian
competition and maximise cross-confessional cooperation. In other words,
and while every candidate is theoretically opposed by a coreligionist
[for example, two or more Sunnis competing over a Sunni seat must seek
support from outside of their own faith in order to win], the process
produces the mother-of all gerrymandering loads.

Over the years,
multi-member constituencies emerged, which “secured” most of the 128
seats, irrespective the person who filled the post. In the Baabda-Aley
district, for example, the predominantly Druze area of Aley (in the
Chouf Mountains) were combined in 2000 with the predominantly Christian
area of Baabda, into a single constituency. Likewise, while several
seats in the South are allocated to Christians, they have to appeal to a
predominantly Shiite electorate, which means the latter chose Christian
parliamentarians.

Christian politicians have claimed that
constituency boundaries were extensively gerrymandered in the elections
of 1992, 1996, 2000, 2005 and 2009. They insisted that past
rearrangements favoured the election of Shiites, for example, from
Shiite-majority constituencies (where Hezbollah is strong and can
prevent the opposition to challenge it), while allocating many Christian
members to Muslim-majority districts.

by Daily star.com.lb BEIRUT: A General Security officer was sentenced to life in prison with hard labor on Wednesday for the murder of his neighbors in the Mt. Lebanon town of Ashkout. Although the murder was the result of a long-running dispute between General Security Sgt. Maj. Tony Abboud and his neighbors, Judge Rami Abdallah […]

This article represents author views –

By Josh Wood – The National

BEIRUT// Every day, the electronic messages of support filter in. “Happy Valentines day, we love you Donald J Trump (Mr strong President)”, reads one. “Trump is my idol”, says another. Such
professions of adulation are not uncommon among Mr Trump’s fans, both
before and after his shock win in the US presidential election. But
these messages are not coming from those who voted for him, they’re
coming from the Arab world — from Lebanon, posted to the Friends of
Donald J Trump in Lebanon Facebook group. Just over a month into his presidency, Mr Trump’s relationship with the Middle East has had a rocky start. An offhand remark about how the US could get another chance to “take” Iraq’s oil, his cosying-up to Israel,
the constant portrayals of refugees as likely terrorists and an attempt
to ban citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering
the US have set an adversarial tone for many in the region.

But
in Lebanon, the controversial and outspoken president is finding
friends. It is impossible to gauge how much support Mr Trump has here,
but the Friends of Donald J Trump in Lebanon Facebook group has so far
attracted more than 60,000 likes. For Christians made anxious by
the demographic change in their country caused by the addition of more
than a million mostly Sunni Syrian refugees in recent years, some find
reassurance in Mr Trump’s statements about confronting Christian
marginalisation. For
those who want a Lebanon that is not ruled by lifetime politicians or a
government compromised by corruption, Mr Trump’s outsider status and
“drain the swamp” message resonates.

Those who oppose the
continued domination of Lebanon by the Shiite party and Iran ally
Hizbollah ae encouraged by the Trump administration’s promised tougher
line on Tehran. And, paradoxically, supporters of Syrian
strongman and Iran ally Bashar Al Assad see Mr Trump’s ambiguity on the
Syrian civil war and his suggestions that Damascus, Moscow and
Washington could work together as signs of a shifting tide. For
some, support for Mr Trump is much more simplistic, and has nothing to
do with the geopolitics of a Middle East complicated by war, or with
marginalisation or corruption.

by AP – BEIRUT — The commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East has met with top officials in Lebanon to discuss American military aid and other efforts to contain the fallout from the civil war in neighboring Syria. Army Gen. Joseph Votel, the head of U.S. Central Command, met with Lebanese President Michel […]