By Daily Star, Gulf news
Beirut: Lebanon’s newly elected President Michel Aoun has vowed to
uproot corruption and strive for nation-building in the deeply divided
country. Aoun spoke Sunday before thousands of supporters who gathered at the presidential palace in Baabda in southeastern Beirut. “Corruption will be uprooted,” he added, drawing cheers from his supporters waving red, white and green Lebanese flags. “ Aoun made his remarks from the steps of Baabda Palace, his first address to the country from the president’s official residence. A strong nation needs a strong government to administer it, and a
strong state is built in line with a constitution that is respected
equally by all politicians,” Aoun said in his inaugural address on
Sunday to a crowd of thousands of supporters waving red, white and green
Lebanese flags.
Lebanon “would no longer be linked to any other foreign country,” he
continued. “We will manage our own affairs and deal with others in a
friendly manner. Our independence and sovereignty don’t mean to target
anyone.” Aoun’s supporters began their rally early Sunday morning.
Men, women and children of all ages took to the streets en route to the
Palace. A large banner reading “People’s Palace” had been erected on
the palace grounds. The ecstatic crowd interrupted Aoun several times while he spoke.
By Paul Astih
Beirut- The workshop launched by the nominated Prime Minister Saad
al-Hariri to compose his upcoming cabinet has resembled many other
workshops launched by other nominated Prime Ministers who worked on
distributing quotas and ministerial portfolios based on sects, and
political and partisan belonging. However, Hariri’s mission may be the
hardest from years, because Lebanese political parties have raced to
partake in the rule, months before the next parliamentary elections,
aiming at taking advantage of their ministerial portfolios to draw
voters in May.
Hariri’s mission was more complicated with the coming apart of 8 and
14 March blocks and the failure of alliances composed in 2005 after the
assassination of the Former Prime Minister Rafic Al-Hariri. Meanwhile, the young Hariri cannot distribute ministries based on
political blocks anymore, but he is obliged to deal with each party as
an independent political team.
The upcoming Hariri cabinet, which is expected to see the light soon,
is the 74th cabinet in Lebanon since the independence on 1948, and the
seventh since 2015. Probably, it will be a “national unity” cabinet,
which means it will comprise all the political forces just like his
previous 30-minister government in 2009.
#LiveLoveLebanon
By Jessica Yeager, Contributor
There’s a lot riding on each college application. Now that we are getting close to application deadlines, I wanted
to share some mistakes students make that really hurt their
chances of being accepted at their dream colleges.
1. Starting too late
My college essay (that got me into Harvard, Yale, MIT, Stanford,
Cornell, and Columbia) took me months to write. The one college I was rejected from (Princeton) didn’t get that
essay; instead I sent Princeton four short answers that I waited
until the weekend before to send. Not too surprising that I
didn’t get in. You really want to give yourself plenty of time to
develop your unique story, so don’t wait to start your essay.
Start today, if you haven’t already!
2. Being generic
It’s so easy for your application to look like everyone else’s,
and admissions officers literally spend only a few minutes with
your application. It’s so important that you stand out. Your
essay should tell the admissions committee something unique about
who you are and what you’ll bring to the campus that the rest of
your application doesn’t.
3. Burning yourself out
This one starts even before you start filling out your
application. So many students think the only way to get into
Harvard or Yale is by joining 17 clubs, playing
three sports, volunteering at the local hospital a few hours
a week, and taking seven AP courses. Usually this only leads to burnout and isn’t a guarantee that
you’ll get into your dream college. In fact, schools may
interpret it as not really knowing yourself and what you want to
do.
Focusing on a few interests you really care about and going
deep can really set you apart.
Politics in Modern Lebanon, after french Independence.
Lebanon is a parliamentary democratic republic.The Lebanese constitution states: “Lebanon is a parliamentary democratic
republic based on respect for public liberties, especially the freedom
of opinion and belief, and respect for social justice and equality of
rights and duties among all citizens without discrimination.”
From Wikipedia: A parliamentary system is a system of democratic governance of a state where the executive branch derives its democratic legitimacy from the legislature (parliament) and is also held accountable to that legislature. In a parliamentary system, the head of state is normally a different person from the head of government. This is in contrast to a presidential system
in a democracy, where the head of state often is also the head of
government, and most importantly, the executive branch does not derive
its democratic legitimacy from the legislature.
In addition to the Lebanese Constitution, under the National Pact an unwritten agreement between Shi’ite, Sunni, and Maronite leadership in 1943, laid the foundation of Lebanon as a multi-confessional state, having shaped the country to this day.
Lebanon is part of the Arab League but is NOT an Islamic state. When the Lebanese State’s
geographical boundaries were set by the French Mandate back in the
1920’s, the Maronite Christians (who follow the Catholic Church in Rome)
were meant to form the majority of the Lebanese Population (60%). Thus,
the President of the Republic, who is intended to be the representative
of the Maronites in the government, has been granted wide powers in
order to reflect the Maronites’ demographical dominance, this has been modified slightly after the ta’ef accord.
The president of the country must be a Maronite, the Prime Minister must be a Sunnite, and the Speaker of Parliament must be a Shiite. Then most recent amendment of the Constitution was the Charter of Lebanese National Reconciliation (Ta’if Accord), in October, 1989.within the overall framework of confessionalism, a form of consociationalism in which some of the powers were amended inn the constitution.
The constitution
grants the people the right to change their government. However, from
the mid-1970s until the parliamentary elections in 1992, civil war
precluded the exercise of political rights. According to the
constitution, direct elections must be held for the parliament every 4
years. The last parliamentary election was in 2009.[1] The Parliament, in turn, elects a President
every 6 years to a single term. The President is not eligible for
re-election. The last presidential election was in 2008. The president
and parliament choose the Prime Minister. Political parties may be formed; most are based on sectarian interests. 2008 saw a new twist to Lebanese politics when the Doha Agreement
set a new trend where the opposition is allowed a veto power in the
Lebanese Council of Ministers and confirmed religious Confessionalism in
the distribution of political power.
The Lebanese legal system is based on and inspired by the French legal system. Just like France, which occupied Lebanon until 1943, Lebanon is considered to be a civil law country and possesses its own set of codes. The most notable code is the “Code of Obligations and Contracts” promulgated in 1932 during the French Mandate. The COC, as it is known among law students, is the equivalent of the French Civil Code except for matters related to personal status (heritage, marriage, divorce, etc.), which are governed by a separate set of laws designed for the different sectarian communities. For instance, the Islamic personal status laws are inspired by the Islamic Sharia’a, some of which were promulgated during the Ottoman rule (ending in 1918)
Lebanese individuals are also known to be natural-born entrepreneurs. The Lebanese community living abroad consists of approximately 15 million people, almost four times the Lebanese population living in the homeland, and is considered in its respective host countries as an economic force to be reckoned with.
by Nick Miriello and Kathleen Caulderwood, VICE News
If you want to know how the Islamic State group is doing, you
don’t have to follow the Mosul offensive. Just take a look at the recent output of the terrorist
organization’s propaganda machine. A 34-minute audio recording from Islamic State leader Abu
Bakr al-Baghdadi released Thursday — the first message
from Baghdadi in nearly a year — emphasized
violence and war, themes that have become increasingly
common in the group’s messages as its attempts at
statehood falter.
From its very inception, IS has built its legend through
its robust propaganda arm. But as the terrorist group loses
ground on its caliphate (its interpretation of an Islamic state)
and the territory in Iraq and Syria it spent the last two years
conquering, IS is running out of clear, tangible successes to
promote. The once-feared propaganda operation has suffered as a
result, showing a dramatic dip in production and a telling shift
in content since January, according to two recent analyses by
U.S. counterterrorism researchers
.
“Statehood is essential to the IS brand,” said Mara Revkin,
a resident fellow at Yale Law School’s Center for the Study of
Islamic Law and Civilization who studies Islamic legal systems
and governance by militant groups. “But as IS prepares to lose
Mosul, the question is whether this brand will remain attractive
to potential recruits and financiers now that the group has
failed to live up to its slogan of ‘remaining and
expanding.’”
A study published in early
October by the Combating Terrorism Center
at West Point gives some insight into how these ground losses
have already affected IS propaganda exercises. Researchers
focused on “official” visual media produced by IS and distributed
through its official online channels since
January 2015, analyzing roughly 9,000 images and videos. What
they observed in that period paints a stark decline for the once
expanding caliphate.
Emile Simpson, Foreign Policy
In his masterful account Strategy: A History, Sir
Lawrence Freedman defines strategy as “the art of creating
power.” This is a useful lens through which to consider one of
this year’s key geopolitical trends: Russia’s return to the
Middle East.
Apart from its close ties to the Syrian regime, which date back
to the 1970s, Moscow has had no substantial role in the Middle
East since 1972, when President Anwar Sadat kicked Soviet
advisors out of Egypt.
Why return now? At a general level, it’s clear that Russian
President Vladimir Putin wants to challenge the notion of a
U.S.-led world order and encourage the return to a multipolar
one, though there are certain self-imposed constraints on his
ambitions.
Although he has intervened in Georgia and Ukraine, he doesn’t
seem willing to start a wider war by attacking any Eastern
European states that are already members of NATO. In the Middle
East, however, Putin has a theater to undermine Western
influence, and to create power for himself, without the risk of
triggering a war with the West.
As any demagogue knows, one way to create power out of nothing is
to find a division and then exploit it. In the Middle
East, the fundamental division Russia has exploited is the one
between the West’s aversion to Islamists, on the one hand, and
human rights abuses on the other. The conflict between these aims
often produces equivocation in Western foreign policy. It also
opens up political space where Russia can operate by investing in
repression and discounting democracy.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — A Pakistani prosecutor says a court in
Peshawar has ordered that National Geographic’s famed green-eyed
‘Afghan Girl’ be deported. Sharbat Gulla was arrested 10 days ago over having allegedly
forged ID papers and staying in Pakistan illegally.
Gulla gained international fame in 1984 as an Afghan refugee
girl, after war photographer Steve McCurry’s photograph of her,
with piercing green eyes, was published on National Geographic’s
cover. He found her again in 2002.
Prosecutor Mohsin Dawar said on Friday that she faces deportation
after five days, when her 15-day jail term is to expire. He says
the court also fined Gulla a sum of 110,000 rupees, which is
about $1,100. Gulla gained international fame in 1984 as an Afghan refugee
girl, after war photographer Steve McCurry’s photograph of her,
with piercing green eyes, was published on National Geographic’s
cover. He found her again in 2002.
Business Insider By Abby Jackson
College
admissions season is upon us, reinvigorating conversations
about what it takes to get accepted into top schools around the
nation. The impressive strength of the applicant pool has been
apparent over the past few years. Business Insider, for example,
profiled impressive students for the class of 2020, some of
whom gained acceptance to all eight Ivy League schools.
The New York Times, too, puts out an annual call for
college-admissions essays to the newest class of applicants,
and then prints the most poignant essays, displaying the wit
an eloquence of the teenage applicants. The strength of these credentials and impressive essays elicits
the question of whether it’s more difficult to get into elite
schools today than ever before. Former Ivy League admissions
directors have some potentially unsettling news for college
applicants: yes, it is.
“Admissions have gotten more and more competitive in the past
decade,” Angela Dunnham, a college admissions counselor at
InGenius Prep, told Business Insider via email. “In addition
to the sheer number of applicants applying, the expectations for
candidates have increased,” Dunnham, a former assistant director
of admissions at Dartmouth College, said.
The steady uptick of college applicants, especially at elite
schools, is stark, driven in part by the emergence of Common App,
which allows students to apply to many schools at once. Take, for example, an article in the Harvard Crimson about the
acceptance rate for the class of 2000. “The class was chosen
among a pool of 18,190 applicants, making Harvard’s admission
rate a paltry 10.9 percent — the lowest in College history,”
The Crimson wrote. Twenty years later, the authors of that story are likely to be
aghast that the acceptance rate has spiraled ever lower. With
more than double the applicants,
about 95% of students who applied to Harvard were rejected.
