Lebanon Votes To Replace Assassinated Pols

Tense Election Has Become Major Showdown Between U.S.-Backed Government And Its Opponents

(AP)  Tens of thousands of Lebanese voted Sunday to replace two assassinated lawmakers in a tense election that has become a major showdown between the U.S.-backed government and its opponents.

The election's results could determine the political future of this deeply divided country, weeks ahead of a scheduled vote by parliament to elect a new president.

Sunday's vote was largely peaceful. It took place amid tight security in two electoral districts, one in Beirut and the other in Lebanon's Metn region, a Christian stronghold where the community is deeply divided.

Voters picked candidates to replace legislator and cabinet minister Pierre Gemayel, a Christian who was shot dead in November, and lawmaker Walid Eido, a Sunni Muslim who was killed in a Beirut car bomb in June. Both were allies of the U.S.-backed Lebanese government and vocal opponents of neighboring Syria, which controlled Lebanon for 29 years until it was forced out in 2005.

In Beirut, the vote for Eido's seat was expected to be easily won by Mohammed al-Amin Itani, a candidate of parliament majority leader Saad Hariri's Future Movement, particularly since the Hezbollah-led opposition did not officially sponsor a candidate.

But in Metn, the vote for Gemayel's seat is a bitter contest between two candidates including the assassinated politician's father, Amin Gemayel, who was president of Lebanon for much of the 1980s.

Gemayel has decided to compete for his son's seat on behalf of the ruling coalition. He faces off against Kamil Khoury, who is supported by Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun, a former army commander and interim prime minister allied with the Hezbollah-led opposition. Aoun's party dominated the district in the 2005 legislative elections.

A local TV station called the Metn election "the mother of all battles."

"Vote for freedom and independence by voting for Gemayel in Metn and Itani in Beirut," read a banner at the entrance of Gemayel's hometown of Bikfaya. Pictures of Gemayel and his slain son were displayed on balconies, cars and electricity poles.

At many polling stations in Metn, Gemayel's supporters distributed white roses to voters before they cast their ballots in memory of the late minister.

Gemayel and his wife, Joyce, began the day by visiting their son's grave before heading to the polling station. As he later entered a school to vote, about 20 supporters of his Phalange Party chanted "Pierre lives on!"

"We visited Pierre to ... promise him that his blood will not be in vain," Gemayel told reporters.

"They have been provoking us all day," said Bahiya Mizher, a Aoun supporter wearing an orange T-shirt and cap — the color of his Free Patriotic Movement. "But God is with us and we shall win," she said.

Mizher, like many others, believes the election is about much more than just a seat. "The battle is between two diverging tracks ... what happens today will have major repercussions on the political future of the country," she said, sitting on the ground in Bikfaya outside a polling station.

While pro-government politicians accuse the opposition of being agents for Iran and Syria, Hezbollah leaders and Aoun accuse the ruling majority of subservience to the United States.

Aoun has said the Metn elections are "to liberate the country from political feudalism, sectarian intolerance and political bribery," a reference to the Gemayel family's role in Lebanese politics since the 1930s.

The rivalry between Aoun and Gemayel could further divide the Christian community and is generally seen as a battle of wills between the ruling coalition and the opposition, weeks before parliament is to elect a new president. According to the constitution, the current president must step down before Nov. 23.

As Maronite Christians, both Gemayel and Aoun are eligible to run for the position, with the latter already having declared his candidacy.

The elections could also escalate the country's deepening political crisis because Prime Minister Fuad Saniora's Western-backed government called them without the required approval of President Emile Lahoud, who has blocked attempts to replace the lawmakers. Lahoud considers Saniora's government to be illegitimate.

Lahoud is allied with the Hezbollah-led, pro-Syrian opposition, as is Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who has said he will not recognize the results of the contests.

Gemayel and the government have accused Damascus of being behind the assassination of his son and a number of other anti-Syrian politicians and public figures over the last two years, part of what they deem Syria's plan to end the majority's rule through attrition. Syria has denied the allegations.

With Eido's death, Saniora's margin in parliament has been whittled down to only four seats.

[closethippy1]

The two assesinated anti-Syrian politicians were expected to be replaced by another two anti-Syrian candidates.
Well, surprise, surprise: The pro-Syrian candidate that won the election was voted in by his own Christian community.
And this is what I, as a Palestinian athiest and as an Arab, have been trying to explain to Americans: Things are not so black and white back home.
When 9/11 happened there was an American couple dining in a restaurant owned and staffed by Lebanese Christians in the Christian section of Lebanon. These American witnessed with their own eyes how the entire restaurant erupted in applause and cheers when images of 9/11 were shown on the TV.
So the Palestinians that were shown on American TV were not the only ones celebrating the 9/11 tragedy. And you have to ask yourself is if Lebanese Christians celebrated who else did the same throughout the Arab world.
And why? Why?! Does any American out there give a shoot about why it happened? Can anyone explain to me why a pro-Syrian candidate was chosen to power this Sunday by the Lebanese Christians?
Why I as an atheist am strongly pro-Hamas? Hamas itself fielded 20 female and 6 Christian candidates during the 2006 elections.
Get the picture? Confused yet? Well, then hit the books, read what Arabs themselves and not American journalists have to say about what's going on in the Middle East and educate yourselves for freaking once in your lives.

[lars008-2009]

it is fascist nazi terrorislam stupid%u2026.

non muslims of the world unite... fight against the tyranny of the fascist nazi terrorslam imperialist empire of the darkside...


Our Prophet commanded us to fight the kaafirs when we are able and to attack them in their homelands and to give them three choices before we enter their lands: either they become Muslim and be like us, sharing our rights and duties; or they pay the jizyah (poll tax) and feel themselves subdued; or they fight, in which case their wealth, women, children and homes become permissible as booty for the Muslims.
http://islamqa.com/index.php?ref=13759&ln=eng&txt=before%20islam%20arabia%20pagan

[lars008-2009]

NOW CAN WE KILL THEM???
If they can kill us, we can kill them

Qaeda warns of attacks 'worse than 9/11'
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=070530102648.wuwa6k96&show_article=1

Hizbullah Deputy Sec-Gen Sheikh Naim Qassem: We Have Jurisprudent Permission to Carry Out 'Martyrdom' Operations, Fire Missiles on Israeli Civilians From Ayatollah Khomeini
http://memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD154907

Switching Sides: Inside The Enemy Camp

But then in 2000, well before his arrest, something happened which would make Abas question everything he believed in: a fatwa, a religious edict, was issued by Osama bin Laden.

"It should be understood that killing Americans and Jews anywhere found are the highest act of worship and the highest form of good deeds in the eyes of Allah," Simon quotes bin Laden.

Abas and his fellow commanders were ordered to read the fatwa to their men and make sure they carried it out. The others obeyed, but Abas refused. It was his moment of truth. He firmly believed that jihad was to be fought only on the battlefield in defense of Islam; he had always been taught that the killing of civilians had nothing to do with holy war and that it was forbidden.

The fatwa justified killing non-Muslim civilians everywhere.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/04/60minutes/main2761108.shtml?source=RSSattr=60Minutes_2761108
American Al Qaeda Member Threatens Attack
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/29/terror/main2865282.shtml

[lars008-2009]

IT IS TIME TO DEFEAT FASCIST NAZI TERRORISLAM ONCE AND FOR ALL%u2026

In 1786, Thomas Jefferson, then U.S. ambassador to France, and John Adams, then American Ambassador to Britain, met in London with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the Dey%u2019s ambassador to Britain, in an attempt to negotiate a peace treaty based on Congress%u2019 vote of funding. To Congress, these two future presidents later reported the reasons for the Muslims%u2019 hostility towards America, a nation with which they had no previous contacts.

%u2026that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman (Muslim) who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.

Sound familiar?

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison defeated the fascist nazi muslims 200 years ago
And again 100 years ago with Theodore Roosevelt
Tunisia in 1881 by France and Libya in 1911 by Italy. By then most of the Islamic world was under Christian domination. With the Ottoman Empire defeated in WW1, secularist Turkish rebels in 1923 overthrew the last Islamic Caliphate,
http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?6bdec278-6a71-4436-bc4d-29d1c54b0ad7

[closethippy1]

The two assesinated anti-Syrian politicians were expected to be replaced by another two anti-Syrian candidates.
Well, surprise, surprise: The pro-Syrian candidate that won the election was voted in by his own Christian community.
And this is what I, as a Palestinian athiest and as an Arab, have been trying to explain to Americans: Things are not so black and white back home.
When 9/11 happened there was an American couple dining in a restaurant owned and staffed by Lebanese Christians in the Christian section of Lebanon. These American witnessed with their own eyes how the entire restaurant erupted in applause and cheers when images of 9/11 were shown on the TV.
So the Palestinians that were shown on American TV were not the only ones celebrating the 9/11 tragedy. And you have to ask yourself is if Lebanese Christians celebrated who else did the same throughout the Arab world.
And why? Why?! Does any American out there give a shoot about why it happened? Can anyone explain to me why a pro-Syrian candidate was chosen to power this Sunday by the Lebanese Christians?
Why I as an atheist am strongly pro-Hamas? Hamas itself fielded 20 female and 6 Christian candidates during the 2006 elections.
Get the picture? Confused yet? Well, then hit the books, read what Arabs themselves and not American journalists have to say about what's going on in the Middle East and educate yourselves for freaking once in your lives