Will the US withdraw in shame from Iraq after the election.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Why do you feel the need to consistently prove my point?

And what point is that?

You don't really have a point. As usual you stand around sniping because you have nothing substantial to offer, and then you wonder why your opinions are treated with contempt.

You may not like mine, but at least I'll endeavour to defend them. You guys just sit around like hillbilly grandpas griping about their piles.

[Whaleboy]

Yo DD, the Italians are pulling out!

[Agathon]

It's true. Where are my gloating shorts?

[Dinner]

Interesting developments. Bush has supposedly offered to remove Hezbollah from the list of terrorist organizations if they promise to forever give up terrorism and violence to achieve political goals (a la the IRA). CNN is reporting this now and there is no word as to Hezbollah's response.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Interesting developments. Bush has supposedly offered to remove Hezbollah from the list of terrorist organizations if they promise to forever give up terrorism and violence to achieve political goals (a la the IRA). CNN is reporting this now and there is no word as to Hezbollah's response.

Umm, the IRA have decommissioned weapons and given up violence and terrorism?

[Agathon]

Hezbollah are much more like an ex-resistance army that is now a political movement. They are basically dedicated to getting Israel the **** out of where it doesn't belong - a laudable goal, only opposed by racial bigots.

Hezbollah provide education, welfare, etc. They are very popular and do a lot of good.

It seems absurd to compare them to Al Qaeda.

[Dinner]

Techumseh's Asia Times also has a very interesting report about the Parallels between Naziism-facism and Islamic fundimentalism. Substitute racial purity with religious purity and you've got Islamic National socialism.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/others/islamism-fascism-terrorism.html

[Dinner]

Is that why Hezbollah continues to send suicide bombers into Israel and the west bank? Israel pulled out of Lebanon something like a decade ago so it's a little late for national liberation is it?

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by Agathon
Most of all they hate Syria... no wait.. this is a pro-Syrian march.. I wonder what the "foreign interference" could be...

While there are only about 4 million Lebanese, there are also about 1.5 million Syrians in Lebanon.

Guess who attended which rally?

[The Mad Monk]

Syrian ethnic cleansing in occupied Lebanon

from People for Free Lebanon - 28.12.2003 01:51

What do Lebanese want from Syria?
Full pull out for their troops and intelligence members from Lebanon per UN resolution 520, setting free all Lebanese detainees in Syrian prisons and an exchange of formal diplomatic relations.

Lebanon under Syria Baath Occupation

In one of the most terrifying scenes of the modern history: the Syrian regime has been working on changing the ethnic and religious demography of Lebanon by replacing its people. Since 1990, Syrian occupation of Lebanon has forced more than 35% of the Lebanese to leave their country. Meanwhile the Syrian-appointed government in Lebanon naturalized around half a million Syrians and Palestinians that is equal to 20% of the Lebanon population.

Syrian troops in Lebanon protect around 1.5 million Syrian illegal workers (that is about half the population of Lebanon), which forces Lebanese to abandon their country. This mass displacement project is accompanied with regular persecution, arresting, kidnapping, torturing and assassinating of the Lebanese

http://beirut.indymedia.org/ar/2003/12/855.shtml

Yeah, it's a slanted site. Is it lying?

[The Mad Monk]

Syrian Workers in Lebanon: The Other Occupation
by Gary C. Gambill

For the impoverished majority in Lebanon, the Syrian occupation is more than just an affront to national sovereignty, a barrier to free expression and an assault on personal liberties. To the university students who demonstrate regularly against the occupation on campuses throughout the country, it is all these things, but little more. Most of them will eventually escape the atmosphere of repression that has violated their sense of justice by emigrating abroad and joining their prosperous compatriots in the ever-growing Lebanese diaspora.

For the poor and downtrodden who have no escape from this land of lost opportunity, however, the Syrian occupation has a much more pernicious face. Their nemeses are not the Syrian soldiers who man checkpoints throughout the country, nor the plainclothes intelligence officers who monitor every public political gathering, but the 1.4 million penniless Syrian workers who have flooded into Lebanon in recent years and swept away the promise of a brighter future by virtually monopolizing many unskilled professions.

The Syrian Labor Force in Lebanon

The rapid influx of Syrian workers into Lebanon began shortly after Syria's October 1990 takeover of Beirut, which completed its military conquest of the country. Syrian workers had been a significant part of Lebanon's expatriot workforce prior to the outbreak of the civil war in 1975, but their presence had been strictly subject to Lebanese laws. In 1991, Lebanon's newly-installed puppet regime announced the official removal of most travel restrictions between the two countries. As Lebanon's post-war reconstruction boom gained steam in the early 1990's, a variety of subsequent agreements were implemented which made it possible for Syrians to cross over the border virtually undetected. By 1994, Syrian workers were a nearly ubiquitous presence in the streets of Beirut.

The most reliable estimate of the number of Syrian workers in Lebanon was calculated by Michel Murkos in two articles published by the influential Lebanese newspaper, Al-Nahar, in October 1994 and July 1995. Citing statistics obtained from Lebanon's General Security Directorate, Murkos indicated that between 1993-1995, the number of Syrians entering the country exceeded the number who departed Lebanon by 1,435,991.1 Economist Marwan Iskander, a former adviser to Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri who has produced annual reports on the Lebanese economy for the past 18 years, has estimated that the number of Syrian workers in Lebanon remains about 1.4 million. Since these figures do not take into account undocumented migration into the country, they are considered to be conservative estimates. In addition, the estimated 35,000 Syrian soldiers stationed in Lebanon often have jobs to supplement their meager pay.

According to Lebanese economic experts, the Syrian labor force is roughly distributed as follows: construction (39%), seasonal agriculture (33%), municipal and sanitation jobs (20%), services, including street venders and taxi drivers (8%) and industry (2%).

The Impact on Lebanon

The influx of Syrian workers into Lebanon has tended to benefit commercial elites who own businesses that require unskilled labor. Since Syria's per capita GNP is less than a third of Lebanon's,2 Syrian laborers have been readily willing to work for wages that are extremely low by Lebanese standards. A Syrian taxi driver in Beirut, for example, can earn up to $200 per month--around twice the salary of a university professor in Damascus. Lebanese employers prefer to hire unskilled Syrian workers over their Lebanese counterparts because the transaction is off the books, allowing them to avoid paying the required minimum wage, evade the social security system and demand long working hours.

While this small strata of elites has profited immensely from the virtually unlimited supply of abnormally cheap labor, working class Lebanese have suffered tremendously from the entry of Syrian workers. Over the last several years, the unemployment rate has hovered around 30% for the Lebanese labor force as a whole, and is probably higher for unskilled workers, who cannot compete with their Syrian counterparts. Those who manage to get jobs are often forced to accept low wages and dismal working conditions, as well as forgo health insurance and other benefits they once enjoyed.

According to the results of a study released last month by the Development Studies and Projects Center, Lebanon's labor force is expected to grow by an average of 2.3% in the next decade, compared to an average of 1.5% worldwide.3 Lebanon's dismal economy will have difficulty absorbing this growth.

In addition, the presence of Syrian workers hurts the overall economy because very little of the money they earn remains in Lebanon. Unlike Lebanese workers, Syrian laborers are not required to pay taxes. Unlike other foreign workers, Syrians do not have to pay for work permits. According to Lebanese economist Bassam Hashem, the Syrian labor force deprives the Lebanese treasury of hundreds of millions of dollars per year in permit fees and taxes.4

Moreover, Syrian workers live in squalid conditions, often sharing a single room with several of their compatriots, so as to save the bulk of their income and send it to their families in Syria. Syrian workers remit around $4.3 billion from Lebanon to Syria every year. The Assad regime has worked carefully to discourage Syrian workers from spending their wages in Lebanon. It is illegal, for example, for workers to send Lebanese-made consumer durables back to their families in Syria.

Perhaps the most detrimental impact of the Syrian worker presence is demographic. One Lebanese scholar has called the influx of Syrian workers into Lebanon "nothing short of a movement toward Syrian colonization of Lebanon."5 Syrian nationals constitute at least one-third of Lebanon's resident population. Since most Syrian workers are between the ages of eighteen and fifty, there are probably more able-bodied adults Syrians in Lebanon than there are Lebanese. In 1994, under pressure from Syria, the Lebanese regime granted citizenship to over 200,000 Syrians resident in the country. Many of these newly-naturalized citizens were registered in the electoral districts of pro-Syrian political elites, such as former Interior Minister Michel Murr, in order to consolidate Syrian authority over the Lebanese political system.

http://www.meib.org/articles/0102_l1.htm

There's more in the link. That's from 2001, what is the situation now?

[Dinner]

Strange things are happening here at Apolyton. Fez has mellowed some but Aggie has stepped up in an attempt to capture Fez's old title of the wackiest & most bizarrely partisan poster.

[Agathon]

Strange things are happening here at Apolyton. Fez has mellowed some but Aggie has stepped up in an attempt to capture Fez's old title of the wackiest & most bizarrely partisan poster.

I like being partisan. It means I can't ever fall for right wing BS. Which is good policy really, since 100% of what they say is BS.

When it comes out that you were all duped by GOP spin...yet again, just the way you were in the case of Iraq (which some of you still have the gall to ignore) I'll be dancing in my jeweled gloating shorts again.

[Sava]

Fez has mellowed some

yeah right, go read the gun control thread...

[The Mad Monk]

Don't you love how he calls anything that disagrees with his worldview "GOP spin"?