Supposedly, everything should be in place. This is why I kindly ask you to point out any broken link / malfunction / bug you might bump into.
 

To recap, the star-ratings should be working well now (even from www.beirutspring.com ), I encourage you to use them because they will be used later to feature the posts that are best rated on the sidebar.
 

Also, as you can see, I have added some feeds for a variety of Lebanese and Middle eastern bloggers. The feeds are all from good blogs that I chose carefully. That said, I do not necessarily agree with everything that other people poste.
 

I also changed the header for a better look, all that is left now is the actual beef.
 

Thank you for reading my blog.

Journalists protest in Beirut today (Photo New York Times)

Sign petition here.

Anyone familiar with the past two years of Lebanese politics would never claim, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did in Damascus last week, that “the road to Damascus is a road to peace.” Her assertion must have seemed especially naive to the people of Lebanon, where the list of the slain reads like a “Who’s Who” of Syria’s most vocal and effective opponents.

Update: And guess who sees this article as “The Cheney team’s [..] last ditch effort to get the Security Council to establishing an international tribunal to try the Hariri murder”

Remember that famous before/after picture of Dahieh which used Google Earth to expose Israeli brutality in the Lebanon war? That picture was an example of how users of Google Earth can use the program for political purposes.

The news now is that Google itself wants to point its users to international trouble spots, starting with Darfur.

Now, after logging in, users of Google Earth will see fire icons scattered all around Darfur (see picture above). When they zoom into these icons, they will see clear views of villages burnt by government-allied forces, in addition to pictures and stories of survivors and witnesses.

The purpose of the praise-worthy enterprise is to raise awareness among the 200m Google Earth users of the genocide taking place in Darfur.

But questions remain about Google’s policies.

Would it for instance feature satellite images of bombed areas in Lebanon if heaven-forbids, another war with Israel took place?

Please hold me tightly and don’t let go

You have to be seriously short on allies to attempt to resurrect the widely hated four generals implicated in Hariri’s assassination. Also, when your own underlings start contradicting your highness, you know you’re in trouble. This is why when our dear Sheikh starts shouting and threatening, you should know that his feet are beginning to catch fire in his cave.

The divine decider is insecure about his unkept divine promises, not to mention the 1701 ropes tying his hands in the south. So like a caged bleeding tiger, he tries to roar away the steel bars slowly closing in on him.

His own allies are shying away from defending him. Aoun keeps changing the subject to, euh, corrupt government baddies who are bent on breaking the constitution, while lamely insisting that he supports the international tribunal. Mr. Berri, meanwhile, watched silently as his boss shattered away the benign façade he was slowly trying to build and the promise he had made just a few days ago that the tribunal would be ratified in the parliament.

The Lebanese are queuing up to calmly and confidently denounce “the President of the Republic of Hezbollah” (sounds cool, we should use that more often). Unlike the sheep that keep cheering him, the Lebanese are starting to see Mr. Nassrallah for what he really is: an annoyance whose bluffs can easily be called.

Unfortunately, foreign bigwigs come to town, their domestic calculations in hand; then they leave, and we’re left picking up the pieces.

More from Anton Efendi who also points out editorials with a similar point.

Syria’s leaders, long shunned by fellow Arabs as well as Westerners, seem suddenly back in fashion… President Bashar Assad’s relations with the governments of neighbouring Turkey and Iraq have warmed. He has strengthened Syria’s long-standing alliance with Iran, yet seems also to have reconciled with the region’s rival heavyweight, Saudi Arabia. King Abdullah greeted him in person last week at the airport of Riyadh, the Saudi capital, on his arrival for an Arab summit whose next venue is to be Syria. Javier Solana, the European Union’s foreign-affairs head, had soothing words for Mr Assad on a recent visit. This week, defying President Bush’s ban on high-level contacts, two American congressional delegations, one led by Nancy Pelosi, the top-ranking Democrat, took the road to Damascus.

Mr Assad may even get back into the swim of Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy, from which he has been largely excluded, thanks in part to his backing of Hamas’s exiled leader, Khaled Meshal, whose haven is Damascus. The resuscitated Arab League peace plan of 2002 includes a demand that Syria be given back the Golan Heights in return for peace with Israel. And there is talk within the newly-formed Arab Quartet of moderate states (Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) that Syria should be included, partly to detach it from its ally, Iran.

When the Patriarch warned against a chapter 7 resolution last month, M.P. Michel Aoun suddenly had a new, convenient soundbite: The Patriarch is on our side!

However, when the Patriarch made that infamous interview with a Kuwaiti newspaper in which he accused Aoun of Opportunism, the FPM’s website immediately denied that the Patriarch had made such an interview, citing ‘a chat between Mr. Sfeir and journalists’ (The Patriarch didn’t deny that interview but labeled it: “inaccurate”).

Aoun kept taking the Patriarch for granted. A few days ago, Aoun “Predicted” that the presidential elections might not happen on time, and today, the Tayyar’s website featured what they called “the Patriarch’s strong opposition to the international tribunal under chapter 7″

So imagine Aoun’s embarrassment after the Maronite bishops took the following stance after their monthly meeting today:(source Naharnet)

The Council of Maronite Bishops on Wednesday urged parliament to practice its constitutional and national role.
It also said that presidential elections should be held on time and considered any attempt to prevent quorum an anti-constitutional measure.
The statement issued after the Bishops’ monthly meeting stressed on the importance of implementing U.N. Security Council Resolutions concerning Lebanon, including the creation of an international tribunal to try suspects in ex-Premier Rafik Hariri’s assassination and related crimes.

Frankly, when I heard that Nancy Pelosi is coming to Syria (to the objection of the White House), I felt my heart sink; Bashar was going to receive the highest-ranking American in two years, and his apologists are already celebrating the “collapse of Syria’s isolation”.

Are we going to be sold out? There are signs that perhaps not. Two things indicate that Pelosi’s position will be more nuanced than paranoid Lebanese fear.

First, madame speaker is traveling with Tom Lantos, a democratic Representative well known for his Hardline stances on Syria. If anything, he will help her understand the nature of the Syrian regime and reduce her rose-tainted vision on Syria.

Second, the symbolism in her itinerary.

The first thing Pelosi did after landing in Beirut (which she visited before Damascus), is visit Hariri’s grave. She then visited Majority Leader Saad Hariri, then P.M Seniora, in that order. If she weren’t Pelosi herself, you’d be sure Assad would have cancelled the meeting with her by now.

Pelosi’s message is clear: We are going to speak with Assad. But we’re still committed to Lebanon.

The Arabs Are Coming

Let’s say you’re Saudi Arabia and you’re stuck with a strategic regional rival, Iran, whose President keeps blaring anti-western rhetoric that the Arabs just love to hear. How do you confront such a rampant threat?

How about restoring Arabism from the freezer to frame this conflict as one between Arabs and non Arabs (read Persians), mixing in some make-believe anti-Americanism to bring back the hardliners from Iran’s lap into the fold, while discretely reshaping the Arab project into a more moderate and progressive project to placate western countries?

Don’t bother worrying about what seems like an American/Saudi rift. In fact, the louder the noise, the merrier.

Don’t let those pesky Arabs bully you

The Baabda palace issued a statement that the Arab League summit was for “kings, heads of state and princes” and that anyone else is only considered as a “guest.”

Perhaps Mr. Lahhoud, who will be traveling abroad the MEA, should pick up a copy of the free “Al-Hayat” newspapers available on board. The newspaper, which is a Saudi Government media outlet, published today the agenda of the coming Arab summit. Here’s the wording on Lebanon:

Translation:
The summit will discuss providing political and economic support to the Lebanese Government to keep national unity and the security and stability of Lebanon and its sovereignty over all its territory.

It’s obvious who the host thinks the unwelcome guest is.

I was having a mental exercise the other day. I was trying to figure out how the U.S would ever pull off a war on Iran with all the troubles it’s having at home with Iraq.

One of the ‘creative’ scenarios I thought of was this: The British would provoke the Iranians, the Iranians would over-react, Britain would then declare war and the US would have to “return the favor to our allies”. A great excuse: “We can’t leave our friends in this alone. They stood by us when we needed them most”

It’s not as far-fetched as you might imagine. Just think of this: Britain has been the most hardline country when it comes to Iran in the last few weeks. From reports in its press about impending American air-Strikes on Iran to hardline comments made by the British ambassador to the Security Council about the futility of giving Iran second chances.

By seizing 15 UK royal marines for “suspicious acts“, Iranians are effectively trying to get back at the Brits. Remember, we’re talking about a country that went to war over a tiny Island at the other end of the world. The Brits are not happy. They are “Demanding” the release of the marines, you could actually smell the “or-else” in between the lines.

More worrying are the large scale Israeli-American missile defence exercises for what analysts said would be in the event of a war with Iran. America won’t launch a war with Iran before warning the Israelis, and it seems they did.

The British media already seems very mobilized. Could this incident be the beginning of World War III? Let’s hope not..