Dr Ibrahim Mousawi speaking at the World Against War international peace conference in London, December 2007 (10:13)

McCarthyism comes to Europe and the Levant: The Zionist Targeting of Lebanon’s Dr. Ibrahim Mousawi

by Franklin Lamb in Beirut and Ann El Khoury in Sydney

You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?
– Joseph Welch to Senator Joseph McCarthy, April 1954

In a US Senate hearing just over fifty years ago, Boston lawyer Joseph Welch famously rebuked Senator Joseph McCarthy with these now immortal words. They have been immortalized because they have helped furnish what we understand McCarthyism to mean: extreme, mean and unreasonable persecution of people by means of witch-hunts and other tactics including guilt by association or through simple prejudice. This is done in order to achieve a political objective of silencing dissent and preventing the public from learning inconvenient truths.

In the human drama of Middle East theaters and in the wider context of the current Bush administration-spearheaded endless war, the New McCarthyism involves the mobilization of the global ‘war on terror’, in which we see once again the manipulation of fear and the corruption of public discourse in pursuit of narrowly partisan gain – chief among them, the Likudnik Israel-first hawks of the neoconservatives in the US and Israel.

The foot-soldiers of the Likud lobby around the world are applying pressure to stop people from attending academic and activist conferences. As with the McCarthyism of half a century ago, today’s Middle East Studies McCarthyism perpetrated by the Likud Lobby is also a threat to our liberty, to academic freedom, and to basic, fundamental democratic rights and responsibilities. Read the rest of this entry »

The blast that rocked Beirut yesterday—killing three and injuring scores more—sends a clear message to the Bush administration, Franklin Lamb writes:

It is doubtful that it was a failed attempt to assassinate Ambassador Feltman. Had they targeted him it is likely the Ambassador would be dead.

… For many in Lebanon, the American Embassy under the Bush administration has become an Israel Embassy in the way that John Bolton became a second Israeli UN Ambassador. Once an Embassy joins one side in an internal conflict as it did in 1982 it loses its diplomatic status and under international law can be targeted as if a participant in hostilities against the Country.

What little credibility the Bush administration had was lost when it intensified the US record of facilitating Israel’s destruction of Lebanon, a string of five wars armed and funded, largely unknowingly, by American taxpayers and without their consent during 1978, 1982, 1993, 1996 and 2006. The Bush performance this week in occupied Palestine erases any doubt about its objectivity.

Few in Lebanon, Palestine, or the wider Middle East take Bush for anything more than a dangerous zealot in the service of Israel, not America. Bush’s midlife crisis exhibited by his dancing around with a sword in Saudi returns him full circle to his alcohol fuelled toga fraternity parties.

What might be a sensible prescription to remedy this mess? Read on for the article in full, and click on image thumbnails for the often unabashedly provocative full-size cartoons by Latuff et. al. Read the rest of this entry »

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL)
Whose Mission is it fulfilling?

Franklin Lamb
UN Headquarters
Naquora, Lebanon
peoplesgeography.com

Ever since one of this student’s favorite Professors, Dr. Ruth Widmeyer, an accomplished and rare beauty still, who was the first woman to receive a PhD in Soviet Studies from Harvard nearly a half century ago, announced to our Political Science class at Portland State University that our class would be representing France at the Model United Nations Session in San Diego, Lamb was smitten: both with Professor Widmeyer and with the United Nations.

Straight out of high school, rarely having taken a step out of Clackamas County, Oregon, and never having been on an airplane or stayed in a hotel, the prospect of traveling more than 1,300 miles south to compete against the likes of Stanford and UCLA was exciting. Especially for a hayseed (city kids called us hicks in those days) whose main life achievements were a record-demolishing 6 years of perfect attendance at St. John’s Episcopal Church Sunday school and another record (at that time) at Milwaukie Union High School for a basketball free throw percentage of 89%. (I will never understand why Shaquille O’Neal can’t do better than he does at the foul line! Shaq! Habibee! Wear a blindfold for goodness sake and your percentage will surely improve!)

Responding to Professor Widmeyer’s Germanic discipline, our delegation took our work seriously. Between trips to the San Diego Zoo, the swimming pool at our El Cortez Hotel, and side trips to San Diego’s nearby sister city, Tijuana, Mexico, “to buy fresh street made Tacos”, PSU prevailed and we won the award for outstanding Model UN Delegation that year.

When we returned to Campus some of us were surprised by the reaction of the Dean of Students who graciously invited us to his office. We thought perhaps some sort of accolade might be waiting for us but all the Dean cared about was the fact that three of our delegation returned to Portland from the Model UN Session and Tijuana with gonorrhea! Read the rest of this entry »

Franklin Lamb reflects upon the recent term of Bush administration-appointed (to Lebanon) and former Israel-posted US Ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey Feltman.

Before his appointment as US Ambassador to Lebanon in July 2004 and commencement in August of that year, Mr. Feltman served at the Coalition Provisional Authority office in Irbil, Iraq, from January-April 2004. Prior to this, as Franklin Lamb mentions in his article below, he served for seven years in Israel.

Fouad Siniora’s government in Lebanon has been dubbed “Feltman’s Government” by several opposition parties in Lebanon.

See also this Daily Star Editorial (20 Oct): There’s a better - and cheaper - way that Washington can help Lebanon (URL updated: now direct link; for all Daily Star editorials, click here)

(Photo: Jeffrey Feltman)

October 26th, 2007

As US Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman packs his bags and prepares to depart Lebanon for his next assignment, he probably should be forgiven for feeling a bit abused these past few months.

His pique surfaced on October 22 when he rudely insulted his host, his Christian eminence Bishop Mattar specifically, and Lebanese journalism in general when he likened it to a court clown tasked with bringing him some laughter in the morning which helps him forget his Lebanese concerns. Beirut’s media, including Al Safir, has been having a field day commenting on the American Ambassador’s unprecedented pro Israel activities while claiming to “love Lebanon.”

Talal Salman, editor in chief of As-Safir in Beirut wrote on October 24:

If there had been a true state in Lebanon, the America ambassador in Beirut Jeffery Feltman would have been “deported” back to his country. … Never in the history of relations between countries has a foreign ambassador given himself such license to interfere, through public and secret personal communications, daily televised statements, and written journalistic columns of late, in the most critical of internal affairs of the state to which he was sent. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in the press and making news again is speculation about the possible US airbase in northern Lebanon, renewed by the Lebanese daily As-Safir (Arabic). Only this time, there’s more. In English, the idea was best enunciated by Franklin Lamb in Its The Airbase, Stupid (see also ‘Does “Loving” Lebanon Mean the Bush Administration Never Has To Say Its Sorry?’), and he is cited again in the article from Al-Manar below.

The Daily Star also carries an article on the issue, and how this week’s visit to Lebanon by US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman has renewed speculation that Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s government has plans to turn the country into a forward base from which the Pentagon can counter what it sees as resurgent Russian influence in Syria, as claimed in Y-Net. Is the Cold War making a comeback?

All this would involve a string of bases in Lebanon: one in the Christian region of Bsharri; one in the Bekaa; and one in the plains of Damour south of Beirut. This would be in addition to the airstrip at Kleiaat being used as an airbase, two naval bases near Tripoli, and a wish-list for radar stations in Qornet Sawda, Barouk and Dahr al-Baidar. This is denied by US Ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey Feltman. What we can be more sure of is that what is being pushed for is a less neutral stance towards the resistance (namely, Hezbollah) and Syria — and a reassessment of Lebanese relations towards Israel—that’s right, let’s forget the willful invasion and nefarious destruction of the country by Israel’s hafrada regime last year ever happened.

See also Iran’s Press TV; Israel’s Ha’aretz carries AP’s Hezbollah slams U.S. call for ‘partnership’ with Lebanon army and the International Herald Tribune also carries the AP piece: US to build “strategic partnership” with Lebanese army, says Pentagon official. In the blogosphere have a look at Zentor’s In the Middle of the East blog with The Mother of all Sparks and Mustapha’s Beirut Spring blog with A US Military Base in Lebanon? On a different but related topic, see Robert Fisk’s Secret armies pose sinister new threat to Lebanon.

Lebanon US base to counter Qaeda, Hezbollah or Russia?

Mohamad Shmaysani

18 Oct 2007 Al Manar

The issue of building a US airbase in northern Lebanon has resurfaced. Senior US political and military officials have been flocking into Lebanon since the Israeli war against Lebanon in 2006, the last of whom is Eric Edelman, the US Undersecretary of Defense for policy, heading a Pentagon delegation. The Lebanese daily Assafir raised speculations of a likelihood to build US military bases in Lebanon and alter the Lebanese army’s creed. “It is perceived that the US is focusing on the army’s directive which includes the fundamental national policy adopted by the army, particularly article five which stresses on the brotherly and special ties between Lebanon and Syria and article eight which underscores supporting the resistance,” Assafir said.In the report which the daily said is based on “reliable sources”, the Eric Edelman delegation met with the head of the unconstitutional government Fouad Saniora, Defense Minister Elias el-Murr and Army General Michel Suleiman and tackled four issues: the military situation in Lebanon, security and intelligence, the situation of the Lebanese Army and Lebanese state policy.

US Ambassador to Lebanon Jeffery Feltman, who reportedly attended the Pentagon delegation meeting dismissed Assafir daily report as insulting to the Lebanese army. Sources closed to Saniora’s unconstitutional government brushed aside as fabricated reports that the US had proposed building military bases.

Earlier reports revealed that a US airbase in the north of Lebanon would be built in the model of El-Udeid base in Qatar, for covert operations against the Syrian regime and to safeguard the oil pipelines of Baku-Tiflis-Ceyhan and Mosul-Kirkuk-Ceyhan. Read the rest of this entry »