Fabrice Balanche* – La Presse

Le conflit politique qui se déroule au Liban à l’heure actuelle entre l’opposition et le gouvernement se réduirait à un conflit entre prosyriens (l’opposition) et les anti-syriens (le gouvernement), d’après ce que nous entendons dans la plupart des médias. Les Syriens veulent contrôler de nouveau le Liban et pour cela ils instrumentalisent les Libanais, en particulier leur allié de toujours le Hezbollah. Sur les chaînes de télévision occidentales, face à des islamistes barbus vociférant en arabe, on nous présente des hommes politiques respectables, parfaitement francophones et anglophones, rasés de près qui se posent en rempart de la démocratie et de la modernité.

Le manichéisme est de rigueur. Certes il est difficile de comprendre le Liban et de l’expliquer en quelques minutes à des téléspectateurs, mais tout de même arrêtons les caricatures. Cessons de donner la parole à des politiciens libanais caméléons qui savent très bien quel discours tenir devant les caméras occidentales. (Lire la suite…)

Des Montréalais expriment leur soutien à la mobilisation populaire à Beyrouth.

[Photo: Pedro Ruiz, Photojournaliste Le Devoir]

Mercredi, 13 décembre 2006, 11h00
Institut Simone de Beauvoir, Université Concordia
2170 rue Bishop

COUVERATURE DE LA CONFÉRENCE DE PRESSE ICI.

Plusieurs organisations montréalaises s’expriment en défense des manifestations populaires ayant convergé vers la capitale libanaise depuis plus d’une semaine. Des centaines de milliers de personnes participent à un sit-in pacifique, à l’appel du Hezbollah et de plus de 10 autres partis politiques d’opposition.

Après l’attaque israélienne contre le Liban, ces manifestants revendiquent un gouvernement plus représentatif et défient la politique des Etats-Unis dans la région.

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By Robert Fisk -“The Independent”

With Fouad Siniora’s cabinet hiding in the Grand Serail behind acres of razor wire and thousands of troops – a veritable “green zone” in the heart of Beirut – the largely Shia Muslim opposition, assisted by their Christian allies, brought up to two million supporters into the centre of the city yesterday to declare the forthcoming creation of a second Lebanese administration. A “transitional” government is what ex-general Michel Aoun called it, while Naeem Qassem, Hizbollah’s deputy chairman, spoke ominously of the mass demonstrations as “the separatist day”.

So, is the Hizbollah militia, which withstood Israel’s disastrous bombardment of Lebanon last summer, really planning a coup on behalf of its Iranian and Syrian backers, as Mr Siniora suspects? Or are Mr Siniora and his cabinet colleagues – Sunni Muslim, Christian and Druze – working on behalf of the Americans and Israelis, as Hizbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, proclaims? (Lire la suite…)

An anti-government rally brought up to two million people into the capital’s downtown on December 10, 2006, impeding a quick exit from the political crisis that has gripped Lebanon since Dec. 1.(Pictures from the demonstration)

By Bill Cecil

George Bush doesn’t like what’s happening in this small Arab country. “Hezbollah extremists are trying to destabilize Lebanon,” he says. He claims that Syria and Iran are behind it all. Bush is no more honest about Lebanon than he was about Iraq. What’s happening here is a movement of the people on a scale rarely seen in history. It is like the Palestinian Intifada or the fight against apartheid in South Africa.

Yesterday more than half of Lebanon’s four and a half million people filled the streets around Parliament to protest the U.S.-backed regime of Fuad Siniora. From morning on, this city’s avenues to the south were a sea of people as hundreds of thousands walked in from the Dahye—Beirut’s working-class southern suburbs. (Lire la suite…)

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UN estimates Israel war cost to agriculture industry some US $280 million, farmers left in debt, poverty.

BEIRUT – Desperate Lebanese farmers are urging their government to do more to help them recover from a war that the United Nations estimates has cost the vital agriculture industry some US $280 million and left them facing “a downward spiral of debt and poverty”.

“I personally lost over 50 million Lebanese pounds [$35,000],” said Mohammed Mokahhal, a farmer from the eastern Bekaa Valley, describing his losses in the month-long summer war between Israel and militants from the Lebanese Hezbollah political party.

“I couldn’t harvest my potatoes or tend to vegetables like lettuces and peas which I had planted a week before the Israeli attacks began,” said the father of two. “And even when I managed to pick some I couldn’t transport them to the market because of the threatening situation.” (Lire la suite…)

Ghassan Makarem, a Lebanese activist, speaks from Beirut about the huge protests that have rocked the Lebanese capital

Beirut has become the focus of a new movement that is challenging the US-backed government and the political system that put them in power.

This movement was launched by the biggest ever demonstration in the country’s history. Over one million people – out of a population of 4 million – converged on the Lebanese capital on Friday of last week to demand the formation of a government of national unity. (Lire la suite…)

Willie Madisha, President of the Congress of South African Trade Unions: “As someone who lived in apartheid South Africa and who has visited Palestine I say with confidence that Israel is an apartheid state. In fact, I believe that some of the atrocities committed by the erstwhile apartheid regime in South Africa pale in comparison to those committed against the Palestinians.”

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