![]() Photo: Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri posing with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Photo thanks to Arabic Post The article we posted on Lebanon earlier this morning, though written with a US-Establishment bias, provides important information on the relations between Russia and Lebanon. Apparently, both parties are interested in a rapprochement and Russia has offered to lend Lebanon $1 billion for ammunition for its military. However, the usual suspect, Washington, which has lent much smaller amounts to the country, squelched the deal. We know from past experiences that the usual Washington method is to threaten sanctions, and that is no doubt the discreet method used to intimidate the little country, which was thereby forced to earmark the funds lent by Russia for ammo for the interior ministry instead of for defence. However, now that US ally Israel has launched an attack on Lebanon and thereby started a hot war there, the country may be forced to switch its loyalties simply to survive. The article mentions the 2015 assassination of then-ex PM Rafic Hariri and some bystanders and makes sure the reader knows that Bashar al-Assad was the main suspect in that crime. The author neglects to mention, of course, that Assad was the least likely to have committed the murders because: 1—Assad had never been a suspect in a murder before that, 2—Rafic was no longer premier and had no power, 3—Assad’s father was friends with Rafic, and no self-respecting Arab would betray his father’s memory by harming one of his friends. 4—while Assad had had no history of arranging for political assassinations, Israel had a long rap sheet of assassinations in various countries, some matching the behaviour pattern of the Hariri killing. Nor does the author mention that thanks to this murder, Assad was forced to end the Syrian peace keeping mission in Lebanon, thereby clearing the way for Israel to invade Lebanon the very next year (just as it is doing now, 13 years later!). Just a convenient coincidence? Following the biased UN investigation, conducted by an investigator appointed under pressure from John Bolton, investigative journalist Jürgen Cain Külbel performed a personal investigation, the results of which pretty much cleared Assad of wrongdoing and showed that the UN investigation was biased against Assad. For example, though all evidence pointed to Israel as a suspect, Israel was brought in only as a witness, not as a suspect. But even at that early date, the Israel-Saudi-US triangle was busy smearing Assad in an effort to end his rule and install a pro-American pro-Israeli puppet in his place. I recommend that you read the following articles on this independent investigation. https://www.voltairenet.org/article143460.html Jürgen Cain Külbel https://www.voltairenet.org/article157407.html Jürgen Cain Külbel https://www.voltairenet.org/article167553.html by Thierry Meyssan While the Western corporate media largely were mute on the new accusations and evidence implicating Israel, or reported only that the accusations came from Hezbollah, with strong suggestions that the latter was making it up, Middle East media more boldly confronted new evidence against Israel. Lebanonews.net ran an article on the Hariri assassination titled New Evidence Shows Saudi Arabia and Israel Assassinated Rafic Hariri. And wouldn't you think Lebanon, where the murder occurred, would know a thing or two about it? QUOTE “While top Obama administration officials are still trying to exert last-minute pressure on lawmakers to help sustain Obama’s veto of legislation that would allow families of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia on October 16, 2016, Chuck Grassley the chairman of the Senate judiciary committee and the senior United States Senator from Iowa, in an interview with Politico voiced Senate serious support for 9/11 bill. “He stated that some newly obtained documents showed that the assassination of Rafic Hariri, the former Lebanon Prime Minister, was carried out by Israel with the help of Saudi Arabia.” Linked below is a long list of Israel-perpetrated assassinations, many with missiles (as in the Rafic Hariri assassination), around the date of that killing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Israeli_assassinations#cite_ref-152 One of the Lebanese business people interviewed for the translated article translated article from Arabic Post that we posted earlier today, snidely accused Putin of playing a “political game” in Lebanon. My thought was: If there is a political game, whose fault is it that the US illegally uses sanctions to prevent the Syrian people from heating their homes, buying and cooking their food and running their autos in order to lead a normal life? It is most assuredly not Putin’s game to starve the Syrians and deprive them of medicines or to sic terrorists on them. If Russia does in fact send shipments of oil to Lebanon and then from there furtively to Syria, as mentioned in the article, the US, which arbitrarily slaps these sanctions on any country that dares to pursue an independent path, has no right to complain that the Syrian people are being empowered simply to eat, against the will of the US Establishment. Can it be illegal to eat and buy fuel and medicine? Who is immoral here? The West has it backwards. The criminals are not the Russians or the Syrians or the Iranians but the ones in the halls of Congress and the White House who deliberately, heartlessly, deprive children of nourishment and medicines on the flimsiest of fabricated pretexts. I never dreamed I would ever have to sit here at my computer and defend the right of innocent people to eat and take their medicine. This is a surreal world we live in, where otherwise good Christian Americans, who get three meals a day and have check-ups at regular intervals have been brainwashed into thinking that people on the other side of the world may enjoy these rights only at the pleasure of the US government that has bombed hundreds of thousands of homes and killed countless children, and they pray to God for “wisdom” for the leaders that commit these crimes as if Washington were the anointed of the Almighty to save humanity, and as if a person with even a scintilla of Christian love let alone wisdom would sentence innocent people to death by starvation or lack of water or bomb them in their sleep. Praying for wisdom for a president or a congress that commits these crimes is nothing short of blasphemy and a pastor who asks for wisdom of such a psychopath is not praying to God but to Satan himself. Proverbs 26:1 – Just as snow should not fall in the summer, nor rain at harvest time, so people should not honour a fool. After all, the churches of America prayed for wisdom for the men responsible for Song My, for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for the horrific bombing of Dresden, for the massacre of 13,500 Serbian civilians. And what happened? As a reward for their prayers, the psychopaths in power gave them a staggering unpayable debt and decades of debilitating wars that the US never ever wins. But wisdom is not for everyone. Yet hypocritical Western “journalists” condemn Russia for attempting to help Syrian children eat and get medicine and help the Syrian people rebuild their war-torn country, buy fuel and live a normal life -- all things that have been unilaterally banned by the Satanic leaders to whom pastors have asked God to grant "wisdom." But the multipolar world is trending and the signs are all around us. Russia and Russia alone prevented war in Venezuela by landing its nuclear-capable bombers there. It prevented a repeat performance of Trump’s Tomahawk attack in Syria by quietly warning the US military that if a Tomahawk damaged Russian assets or harmed a hair on the head of a Russian soldier, the Russians retained the right to destroy the naval ship whence the missile came. The strong resolve of the Iraqi government in demanding the withdrawal of US troops, with silent support from Russia, is making it increasingly difficult for the US to continue threatening the Iranian service men tasked with defending against terrorists, and yes, against a rogue Israeli regime that just a few days ago launched assaults on 3 neighbouring countries. Russian diplomacy has made it more difficult for Western nations to continue seizing Iranian ships. And Russian EW has jammed Israeli and US aircraft as a warning not to threaten its allies, particularly Iran. Just recently, the US and Israel arranged a summit with Russia. The Western press made it abundantly clear that the goal was to pull Russia away from Iran. Instead, to everyone’s horror, the Russian delegate Nikolai Patrushev unceremoniously stated at the outset that Iran is and always will be a Russian ally. These words from the lips of a highly placed member of the Kremlin may very well have prevented a war with Iran. No one asked God to grant Patrushev wisdom, but somehow he acquired it in abundance. However, Israel needed to save face and soon thereafter, it fired missiles into Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, as if making more enemies would make it stronger. Now Israel and the US go on the cockeyed theory that if Israel does everything in its power to provoke a well-armed Iran and Hezbollah, this will make Israel safer. But schoolyard bullies eventually learn a different lesson when the kids all gang up on them and turn the tables. Israel got a taste of this lesson in 2006 when it launched a vicious assault on Lebanon, believing that it could achieve a victory similar to the one it gained in the 7 Days War. But Hezbollah saved Lebanon. That was the first taste. The fatal flaw in Israel’s calculations is that the US will join it in its fight against Iran. But that window of opportunity is closing fast as the multipolar world gains strength and the US finds itself increasingly alone on the world stage with nothing but threats and sanctions to pretend to defend its interests. China and Iran refuse to negotiate. Russia snubs Trump’s invitation to join the G7 and restore the G8. Putin said he didn’t need it. After all, he has the Valdai Club at Sochi and the Petersburg Economic Forum and plenty of other venues in Asia where people respect him and listen to him. And now we see Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri asking Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov for help mediating with Israel to end the illegal attacks on Lebanese territory. The US had denied Lebanon the chance of a $1 billion Russian loan for ammunition for its military, as we read in our translated article linked above. But now in the face of this new threat from Israel, it is unlikely that Lebanon will feel it can afford to stay friends with an increasingly unpopular Israel-shilling US, and bow to its will even as Israel threatens its security. It’s insane to think it would continue to caress the hand that beats if. The world could soon see a military rapprochement between Russia and Lebanon. Russia may be having trouble maintaining its ties with naive members of the former Soviet bloc, but the Middle East has seen countries that entered into alliances with the US getting their fingers burned, and it wants no parts of this unreliable nation. Our translation of the article linked above shows that Lebanon, like Syria and Iraq, has attempted to establish a security arrangement with Russia, which is interested in establishing a naval base at a Lebanese port, similar to the one at Tartus in Syria. In time, Russia could also establish an air base in Lebanon to deter the illegal invasion of Lebanese air space by Israel. Just after I thought this article was finished, Israel launched yet another attack on Lebanon, as reported by Southfront, and is now at war with Lebanon. Clearly, Israel wanted to bait Hezbollah into a military clash just prior to the September elections in order to portray Netanyahu as a tough guy who can defend Israel. But it’s gotten out of hand. On the other hand, the recent series of attacks by Israel will no doubt consolidate Lebanese opinion and strengthen the country’s resolve to resist all pressure to remain within the US sphere of influence. Indirectly, these attacks can be seen as advantageous to Russia in opening up opportunities for that country to make further inroads in Lebanon as discussed in the above-linked translated article. Once Russia is firmly established in Lebanon to the extent it is established in Syria, it will be more difficult for Israel to continue violating Lebanese air space and launching attacks on neighbouring countries from there. Of course, if Lebanon wanders away from the US sphere, the US will impose the same genocidal sanctions as it is imposing on Syria and Venezuela, but both PM Saad Hariri and President Michel Aoun have stated that just the first Israeli attack alone was a “declaration of war” and though they meant primarily Israel, no one can deny that the US is willing to tolerate such attacks based on its liberally applied doctrine of “Israel’s right to defend itself” – even though there was no evidence that Hezbollah in Lebanon was the imminent threat that Israel said it was. The Iraqi parliament already blames not only Israel but also the US for the Israeli attack there. Lebanon could follow suit. Needless to say, attacking 3 neighbouring countries that did not pose an ostensible threat and these countries are closely allied with Russia is hardly a way to bolster security. At any rate, the fear of constant attacks from Israel and an escalation thereof will at some point overcome the fear of US sanctions and literally shove Lebanon into Russia’s waiting arms. This behaviour pattern – reckless flirtation with war for political purposes — is what has caused much of the Middle East to move away from the US sphere of influence and into Russia’s protective embrace. It is a disarmingly simple concept but the US Establishment still doesn’t get it. Relevant: Lebanese Christians once supported Israel but were betrayed by it and are no longer pro-Israel: https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-2006-07-23-0607220396-story.html 2006 poll among Muslims in Lebanon shows they tend to be secular and pro-Christian: https://www.pewresearch.org/2006/07/26/lebanons-muslims-relatively-secular-and-prochristian/ Lebanon-Israel war now https://southfront.org/hezbollah-strikes-back-destroy-israeli-military-vehicle-in-upper-galilee/
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