Real News Video: The Pathology of the Rich - Chris Hedges on Reality Asserts Itself pt1

On RAI with Paul Jay, Chris Hedges discusses the psychology of the super rich; their sense of entitlement, the dehumanization of workers, and mistaken belief that their wealth will insulate them from the coming storms

A SUPERB INTERVIEW

Impossible Dialogue

The Choice in Yemen

By Ramzy Baroud
CounterPunch

"....
The collective sense of revolutionary hope Yemenis felt as president Ali Abdullah Saleh was overthrown has faded as elements of his regime push back and as the separatist-leaning south rejects national dialogue. In 2011, calls for an end to corrupt, clan-based politics united the youth, now the revolt's failure to deliver change threatens war and secession......

Yemen’s divisions are copious and growing, allowing the old regime to find ways to once more dominate the country. It could easily rebrand itself as the party capable of uniting all Yemenis and saving Yemen from complete economic collapse and disintegration.

Still empowered by the spirit of their revolution that underscored the resilience and discipline of one of the world’s poorest nations, Yemenis might find themselves back on the streets demanding freedom, democracy, transparency and more, demands of which nothing has been accomplished, nearly three years on."

Egypt charges three top activists over Cairo protest

Ahmed Maher, centre left, the leader of the April 6 youth group that helped lead the 2011 uprising against Hosni Mubarak, tries to hand himself in to prosecutors. Photograph: Ahmed Omar/AP

Fears over rights to protest after Cairo prosecutor charges leading April 6 movement activists for protesting without permission

The Guardian

"Egypt's public prosecutor referred leading political activist Ahmed Maher for trial on Thursday on charges that include protesting without permission, a judicial official said.

It was the first case of an activist being charged under the provisions of a new law criticised for stifling the right to protest.

Wael Shibl, the prosecutor, said Maher faced other charges including assaulting police and "resisting the authorities".

Two other activists being investigated in the same case were also referred for trial for allegedly assaulting the police and resisting the authorities. Shibl had said earlier that all three had been charged with protesting without permission.

Maher is founder of the April 6 movement, which helped ignite the historic 2011 uprising against former president Hosni Mubarak. The other two activists are Ahmed Douma and Mohamed Adel."

Al-Jazeera Video: اغتيال حسان اللقيس.. المؤشرات والمآلات

Britain is up to its neck in US dirty wars and death squads

• • 
    Seumas Milne
  • The Guardian, Wednesday 4 December 2013 16.00 EST
  • Jump to comments (321)

A still from Jeremy Scahill's Dirty Wars, which shows how 'killings on the ground by covert US special forces' are e

scalating. Photograph: Allstar/HBO/Sportsphoto Ltd

The war on terror is now an endless campaign of drone and undercover killings that threatens a more dangerous world

"You might have thought the war on terror was finally being wound down, 12 years after the US launched it with such disastrous results. President Obama certainly gave that impression earlier this year when he declared that "this war, like all wars, must end".

In fact, the Nobel peace prize winner was merely redefining it. There would be no more "boundless global war on terror", he promised. By which he meant land wars and occupations are out for now, even if the US is still negotiating for troops to remain in Afghanistan after the end of next year.

But the war on terror is mutating, growing and spreading. Drone attacks, which have escalated under Obama from Pakistan to north Africa, are central to this new phase. And as Dirty Wars – the powerful new film by the American journalist Jeremy Scahill – makes clear, so are killings on the ground by covert US special forces, proxy warlords and mercenaries in multiple countries.

Scahill's film noir-style investigation starts with the massacre of a police commander's family by a US Joint Special Operations Command (Jsoc) secret unit in Gardez, Afghanistan (initially claimed by the US military to have been honour killings). It then moves through a murderous cruise missile attack in Majala, Yemen, that killed 46 civilians, including 21 children; the drone assassination of the radical US cleric Anwar al-Awlakiand his 16-year-old son; and the outsourced kidnappings and murders carried out by local warlords on behalf of Jsoc and the CIA in Somalia.

What emerges is both the scale of covert killings by US special forces – running 20 raids a night at one point in Afghanistan – and the unmistakable fact that these units are operating as death squads, whose bloodletting is dressed up as "targeted killings" of terrorists and insurgents for the benefit of a grateful nation back home.

When a Yemeni journalist, Abdulelah Haider Shaye, demonstrated just how targeted these killings can actually be in practice – by exposing the US slaughter at Majala – he was framed and jailed in Yemen as an al-Qaida collaborator, and his release was initially blocked by the personal intervention of Obama.

Of course, the US and its friends have carried out covert assassinations and sponsored death squads for many years. But assassination and undercover killings, once criticised by the US as an unfortunate Israeli habit, are now a central part of American strategy – and the battlefield has gone global. The number of countries in which the US Special Operations Command is operating has risen from 40 to 120.

And Britain is with them every step of the way. British officials like to present their own drone operations in Afghanistan as a moral cut above those of the CIA and Jsoc. In real life, the collaboration could hardly be closer. This week Noor Khan, whose father was one of more than 40 killed in a US drone attack in Pakistan, has been at the appeal court in London demanding the British government reveal the extent of GCHQ support for such war crimes.

The government is hiding behind "national security" and the special relationship. But there can be no doubt that GCHQ intelligence is used for drone attacks – just as British undercover units have been operating hand in glove with US special forces in Somalia, Mali, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan.

As Theresa May has been stripping British Muslims suspected of fighting for al-Shabaab in Somalia of their citizenship, just in time for them to be killed or kidnapped by US special forces, evidence has emerged that British special forces themselves killed a British recruit, Tufail Ahmed, there last year.

Britain has plenty of experience of its own dirty wars, of course. BBC'sPanorama programme last month broadcast interviews with members of a former undercover army unit in Northern Ireland (several of whose officers had taken part in colonial campaigns) that carried out a string of drive-by shootings of unarmed civilians in Belfast in the 1970s. "We were there to act like a terror group," one veteran explained. Just like the US special forces in Gardez, they mounted regular cover-ups and struggled to accept the people they killed had not been "terrorists".

The assumption that they were taking out the bad guys, armed or unarmed, clearly trumped the laws of war. The same goes for the war on terror on a far bigger scale. Drone strikes are presented as clean, surgical attacks. In reality, not only does the complete absence of risk to the attacking forces lower the threshold for their use. But their targets depend on intelligence that is routinely demonstrated to be hopelessly wrong.

In many cases, far from targeting named individuals, they are "signature strikes" against, say, all military-age males in a particular area or based on a "disposition matrix" of metadata, signed off by Obama at his White House "kill list" meetings every Tuesday. Which is why up to 951 civilians are estimated to have been killed in drone attacks in Pakistan alone, and just 2% of casualties are "high value" targets.

At best, drone and special forces killings are extrajudicial summary executions. More clearly, they are a wanton and criminal killing spree. The advantage to the US government is that it can continue to demonstrate global authority and impunity without boots on the ground and loss of US life. But that is a reflection of US weakness in the wake of Afghanistan and Iraq: dirty wars cause human misery but give limited strategic leverage.

They also create precedents. If the US and its friends arrogate to themselves the right to launch armed attacks around the world at will, other states now acquiring drone capabilities may well follow suit. Most absurdly, what is justified in the name of fighting terrorism has spread terror across the Arab and Muslim world and provided a cause for the very attacks its sponsors are supposed to be defending us against at home.

The US-led dirty wars are a recipe for exactly the endless conflict Obama has promised to halt. They are laying the ground for a far more dangerous global order. The politicians and media who plead national security to protect these campaigns from exposure are themselves a threat to our security. Their secrecy and diminished footprint make them harder than conventional wars to oppose and hold to account – though the backlash in countries bearing the brunt is bound to grow. But their victims cannot be left to bring them to an end alone.

Hezbollah suffers heaviest blow in years as commander is shot dead in Beirut

Shia militia blames Israel for killing Hassan Howlo al-Laqqis, but responsibility is claimed by previously unknown Sunni group

• Martin Chulov in Beirut and Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem
• theguardian.com, Wednesday 4 December 2013 12.05 EST

The funeral of the senior Hezbollah commander Hassan Howlo al-Laqqis. Photograph: Mohamed Azakir/Reuters

"A senior Hezbollah commander has been shot dead outside his south Beirut apartment in the biggest blow to the secretive Shia militia since its then military commander was assassinated by a car bomb in the city six years ago.

Hezbollah blamed Israel for the killing, saying it had twice before tried and failed to target Hassan Howlo al-Laqqis, who is understood to have been the group's overall logistics and procurement chief.

But a previously unknown Sunni group claimed responsibility for the brazen attack on Hezbollah's home turf, underlining the Shia militia's deepening entanglement in a regional sectarian conflict.

Before Laqqis's funeral in Hezbollah's Beeka valley heartland, a statement from the militant group said Israel "should bear full responsibility and all the consequences of this heinous crime and its repeated targeting of dear resistance leaders and cadres".

Israeli officials denied any involvement. "Unequivocally no. We had nothing to do with it," said Israel's energy minister, Silvan Shalom. "The Salafists over there did it," he added, referring to a fundamentalist Sunni insurgency in Syria and Lebanon that has in recent months vowed to take the fight to the Shia Hezbollah.

An unknown group claiming to represent Lebanese Sunni interests took to Twitter to claim responsibility for the killing. In late November, another Sunni group, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, used the same forum to claim it had sent two suicide bombers to blow up the Iranian embassy in Beirut, an attack that killed more than 20 people, including a diplomat and up to four Hezbollah guards.

Renowned for its secrecy and discipline, Hezbollah closely guards its inner secrets, particularly its military command structure and the identities of senior militants who lead operations against Israel and, increasingly, against groups fighting the regime of its key backer, Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad.

Laqqis is understood to have held a position on the group's Jihad Council, which gave him a stake in the group's strategic decision-making and in devising military tactics. Sources in Beirut said his status had grown steadily since the assassination of Hezbollah's former overall military chief, Imad Mughniyeh, who was killed by a car bomb detonated by Israeli agents in central Damascus in February 2008.

Unlike that killing, however, Laqqis's death triggered few rumours in Tel Aviv of Israeli involvement. "And the question that is being asked is who did this," said a source with connections to Israeli security figures. "This one looks homegrown."

In recent months, various Sunni groups, some al-Qaida-aligned jihadists and others more closely linked to the Syrian opposition, have sworn vengeance against Hezbollah for the prominent role it has taken in defending the Assad regime. The group's forces were largely responsible for capturing the Syrian border town of Qusayr in June and are prominent in fighting now taking place around Damascus, in the Qalamoun Mountains near the Lebanese border and in Aleppo in northern Syria.

After initially denying it had taken a stake in the Syrian civil war, Hassan Nasrallah spent more than two years conditioning his followers to focus on a new enemy – Sunni jihadists, who he claimed were trying to bring a sectarian war to Lebanon. However, his claim to be fighting a defensive war in Syria has been scorned by much of the Sunni world, which sees Hezbollah as a direct proxy of Iran's Shia Islamic leaders.

While Hezbollah has also lost several leaders on the battlefields of Syria, it has historically reacted viscerally to assassinations in its territory. Despite reported efforts in Israel and Europe, it has so far failed to avenge the death of Mughniyeh.

"As far as we're concerned, we're not particularly sorry of course, but we had nothing to do with it," said Shalom, of Laqqis's death. "Of course Hezbollah does not want to show its inferiority. It is taking blow after blow. Hundreds of its members have been killed in Syria, more than the number killed in the war against us.

"This was a major blow so it is trying to show his assassination as part of the war against Israel and not as a domestic war."

Political solution to Syrian war does not interest Assad, says Qatari minister

• Ian Black, Middle East editor
• theguardian.com, Wednesday 4 December 2013 12.43 EST
• Jump to comments (18)

The Qatari foreign minister, Khalid al-Attiyah. Photograph: Hamad I Mohammed/Reuters

Khalid al-Attiyah says those with blood on their hands in Syrian regime should be tried at international criminal court

"Bashar al-Assad has "no interest in a political solution to the conflict inSyria" while those "with blood on their hands" should be sent to face justice at the international criminal court, the Qatari foreign minister said on Wednesday.

In a rare public appearance, at the London thinktank Chatham House, Khalid al-Attiyah said Qatar backed the creation of a transitional government for Syria at next month's Geneva II peace conference, which has broad international backing despite its slim chances of success.

But the Syrian government has again insisted Assad must remain president and lead any transition agreed in the Geneva talks – a position flatly rejected by the opposition.

"If anyone thinks we are going to Geneva II to hand the keys to Damascus over [to the opposition], then he might as well not go," the country's information minister, Omran al-Zohbi, said in remarks carried by the official Sana news agency.

Qatar has been a significant supporter of the Syrian rebels since the uprising began in March 2011. The tiny but fabulously wealthy Gulf state has taken a backseat role to neighbouring Saudi Arabia and lowered its profile since the new emir, Sheikh Tamim, took over from his father, Sheikh Hamad, in the summer.

Attiyah said Qatar had tried to persuade Assad to pay a condolence visit to the first victims of the unrest in the southern city of Deraa but had been ignored. Opposition to Assad's rule was not for sectarian reasons, Attiyah insisted. (The Assad regime is based on the Shia-related Alawite minority while Qatar and its Gulf neighbours are Sunni Muslim.) "When Bashar al-Assad decided to kill his people we decided to stand by the people," he said.

"After all the massacres it's clear that the regime should go to The Hague [seat of the international criminal court] and other people should go to Geneva to discuss the transition. The issue is not grey. It's black and white. Whoever has blood on his hands should go to The Hague."

Attiyah said it was up to Syrians to decide whether Iran, a staunch backer of the Syrian government, should be invited to Geneva. "We do differ strongly from Iran over Syria," he said. "But Qatar does not consider Iran as an enemy."

If Iran is invited, it is expected that Saudi Arabia will also be.

Asked about the spread of extremist or jihadi groups in Syria – a source of mounting concern to western and Arab governments – Attiyah suggested that terrorism was a response to the brutality of the war. The Qatari government and individuals have spent an estimated $2bn supporting Syrian rebels, including Islamist units.

According to the latest estimate by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based and pro-opposition monitoring group, 126,000 people from both the government and opposition camp have now been killed in the 33-month uprising.

Salim Idriss, head of the rebel Supreme Military Council, the umbrella group for various militias fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, said this week that his forces would join with Syrian government troops to fight al-Qaida once Assad had been removed from power. Idriss stressed the threat posed by the al-Qaida affiliate the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or Isis. The president's departure, he said, was no longer a precondition for attending the Geneva talks.

Among the many grave political problems faced by the conference, a new one has emerged: a shortage of hotel rooms in the Swiss city because of an international watch fair. The likely consequence is that the crisis will have to be discussed in the nearby city of Montreux at the other end of Lake Geneva."

بلداننا الأكثر فساداً في العالم: شكراً للطغاة العرب!

رأي القدس

DECEMBER 3, 2013

صنفت منظمة الشفافية الدولية السودان وليبيا والعراق وسوريا واليمن بين الدول الأكثر فساداً في العالم وذلك في تقريرها الأخير الصادر أول أمس، ولم تزاحم هذه الدول العربية على ‘قمة’ الفساد غير الصومال وكوريا الشمالية وأفغانستان.
تقوم هذه المنظمة بمتابعة انتشار الفساد في الاحزاب السياسية والشرطة والنظام القضائي والخدمات العامة في جميع بلدان العالم.
يقوّض الفساد امكانيات نمو الدول اجتماعيا واقتصاديا ويفاقم أوضاع الفقر فيها مما يخلق دارة مغلقة تستفيد من هذه الأوضاع وتقوم باعادة تدويرها وتكريسها والدفاع عن استمراريتها لتأبيد أسس الاستبداد والطغيان.
سكان الدول الأكثر فساداً في العالم هم الأكثر فقراً والأكثر معاناة على الكرة الأرضية، وفقرهم سببه الفساد وهو عامل مهم في استمراره، لأن الفساد يعتاش على تمييز القلّة المحظوظة التي تمسك أوراق الاقتصاد والسياسة وتقوم بنشرها بكل الاتجاهات، وهذه القلّة المحظوظة، بعد مرور فترة طويلة دون محاسبة او مساءلة قانونية لا تلبث أن تعتبر امتيازها قدراً إلهياً وخاصية جينية ترفعها عن البشر درجات وتجعلهم في مرتبة أدنى انسانياً منها.
ينظر الممسكون بأبواب السلطة والامتيازات المالية الى أنفسهم كما لو كانوا أرباب ناد مقدّس محروس ومكرّس للعائلة الحاكمة التي لا تلبث أن تمسخ وتوظف وتحشّد لمصلحتها الطائفة والعشيرة وصولاً الى افراغها مؤسسات الجيش والأمن والشرطة من معانيها الحقيقية، بحيث تتبدّل وظيفة الدولة ومعناها من إقرار السلم العام ورعاية شؤون المواطنين ومصالحهم الاقتصادية والاجتماعية والخدمية لتصبح مزرعة خاصة يتلاعب في شؤونها الوالد وزوجته وابنه والمقرّبون منه.
يجمع بين الدول الأكثر فساداً في العالم كونها محكومة او كانت محكومة لعقود بنظام شموليّ ايديولوجي يشبه الآلة العسكرية ويرأسه فرد يدير كل شؤونه ويتحكم في تفاصيله كافة بحيث يلغي كل صوت معارض، وبالتالي، أية امكانية للتغيير.
يشكل كيم جونغ اون (ابن القائد السابق كيم جون ايل وحفيد القائد الأسبق كيم ايل سونغ) مثالاً عظيماً لهذه الآلية الشمولية الحديدية التي لا تجد أحداً مؤهلاً لقيادة البلد غير الجد فالابن فالحفيد، وهو مثال أعجب فيه الرئيس السوري السابق حافظ الأسد فمشى على دربه في اختراع مؤسسة حزبية تحاول سجن أطفال سورية في بوتقة ايديولوجية (طلائع البعث)، وفي توريث إبنه العرش، وفي إسكات أي صوت للمعارضة ضده مغلقاً أبواب التغيير أمام شعبه، وما زال ابنه يتابع المحاولة.
تلتهم آلة الفساد والطغيان كلّ ما يقف في طريقها، بمن فيهم المقربون من الدكتاتور الأكبر، وقد جاء في أنباء اليوم أن عم الزعيم الكوري الشمالي قد عزل وأن مقربين منه قد أعدموا، وهو ما يذكر باعدام الرئيس العراقي الأسبق صدام حسين لزوجي ابنتيه، والموت المريب لخاله، كما يذكّر بمقتل آصف شوكت صهر الرئيس السوري بشار الأسد في عملية اغتيال خطيرة لقادة أمنيين سوريين كبار.
يُدخل الفساد البلد الذي يحتلّه في موات وخراب شاملين، ويحاول، في شراسته الفظيعة للدفاع عن استمراريته، منع إمكانيات التغيير بعده فيبذر بذور الدولة الفاشلة التي تفتت الوطن والمجتمع الى عصبياته الأولى: العشيرة والقبيلة والطائفة والدين والمذهب والجهة الاقليمية، وحين يقتل الطاغية او يموت او يغتال او يسجن تخرج كل شياطين الفساد والطغيان للدفاع عن مواقعها ويدخل الوطن في صراع حياة او موت معها.
يتقارب الطغاة في مزاياهم الأساسية وتتشابه مصائر بلدانهم فهي تتأرجح جميعاً بين المركزية الحديدية الصارمة والفوضى الشاملة عندما يواجهون ثورات شعوبهم، وهو ما يسعد الطغاة وأعوانهم أشد السعادة ولسان حالهم يقول: ألم نقل لكم ان الديكتاتورية أفضل؟ ناسين ان الديكتاتورية والفساد والطغيان هي التي أسست لهذه الفوضى وساهمت في قتل بلدانها وافقار شعوبها وتهجير مواطنيها.

Promoting democracy – the military way

Regime backs 'NGO' conference in Egypt

By Brian Whitaker

"Tomorrow marks the start of a two-day conference in Cairo fronted by an obscure NGO called the Egyptian Council for Democracy Support (EGCODS) – and backed by the military-led government.

The conference, to be held in a five-star hotel which is owned and run by the Egyptian military, seems to be part of a charm offensive aimed at persuading the world that General Sisi's takeover of the country last July has been "misunderstood".

A blurb on the conference website says:

"International media have showcased different visions and interpretations of what is happening in Egypt. For many international observers and analysts, the picture seemed to be not well-understood, either because of unawareness of Egyptian culture, or pushed by biased international political standing not favouring the will of Egyptians ...

"Therefore, some Egyptians took the initiative to transparently clarify the reality of events in order for the global audience to closely realise the true reasons and outcomes of Egypt’s turmoil caused by the ousted regime …"

Foreign journalists have been invited to attend with all expenses paid. "It is [a] full board visit covered by one of the Egyptian NGOs, 'Egyptian Council for Democracy Support'," Sohair Younis of the Egyptian embassy in London informed Jack Shenker, one of the journalists invited.

Shenker, who formerly reported for the Guardian from Cairo, was surprised that a supposedly non-governmental organisation had the embassy's resources at its disposal in drumming up support for the conference.

But that's not all. When the conference was first announced its website made the rather imporbable claim that various European media organisations including the BBC, Le Figaro in France, the Italian news agency ANSA, the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle and News Talk in Ireland, were sponsoring the event.

The names of the BBC and Deutsche Welle have since been removed from the list, though the others remain as "media partners". The BBC reportedly denied all knowledge of its alleged sponsorship.

A new name has also joined the list: the Egyptian Tourism Authority, which is described as the "official sponsor". So it looks as if the government is dipping into its tourism budget to support a conference which is not about tourism.

Organisation of the conference is being handled by a Cairo-based company called db Group (whose website, incidentally, bears a striking resemblance to that of EGCODS). According to db Group, it is working on the conference in partnership with al-Ahram newspaper, a PR firm called InfocastME ... and SIS.

SIS is the State Information Service – another arm of the Egyptian government. "

Bribes galore

Five Arab states among world's 10 most corrupt countries 

By Brian Whitaker

"Five Arab League countries – Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Iraq and Syria – are among the bottom ten in the latest Corruption Perceptions Index issued by Transparency International. 

The United Arab Emirates, in 22nd position worldwide, is narrowly ahead of Qatar as the least corrupt Arab country. Both, incidentally, are ahead of Israel which ranks 36th.

Countries are ranked in the annual survey according to a points scoring system, with 100 as the maximum score. The least corrupt countries this year – Denmark and New Zealand – both scored 91 points. Apart from the UAE and Qatar, all Arab countries scored below 50 points.

In the table below I have compared the rankings of Arab countries in the 2013 survey with 2009, to show changes over the last five years. 

2013	Country	2009	Change
26 28 57 61 63 66 69 77 91 94 94 114 119 127 127 167 168 171 172 174 175	UAE Qatar Bahrain Oman Saudi Arabia Jordan Kuwait Tunisia Morocco Algeria Djibouti Egypt Mauritania Comoros Lebanon Yemen Syria Iraq Libya Sudan Somalia	30 22 46 39 63 49 66 65 89 111 111 111 130 143 130 154 126 176 130 176 180	+4 -6 -11 -22 0 -17 -3 -12 -2 +17 +17 -3 +11 +16 +3 -13 -42 +5 -42 +2 +5
Note: The 2009 survey covered 180 countries – three more than the 2013 survey. This is why Somalia, for example, appears to have improved its ranking while actually remaining at the bottom in both surveys. Neither survey included the Palestinian territories.

 
The most striking observation from this comparison is that Libya and Syria have slipped considerably – presumably as a result of the turmoil there. Yemen, Tunisia and Bahrain are also down, though Egypt's ranking hasn't changed significantly.

Oman and Jordan have slipped 22 and 17 places respectively, for reasons which are unclear. The most improved Arab countries are Algeria and Djibouti.

Transparency International's lead researcher, Finn Heinrich,
told AFP:

"Corruption is very much linked to countries that fall apart, as you see in Libya, Syria, two of the countries that deteriorated the most.

"If you look at the bottom of the list, we also have Somalia there. These are not countries where the government is functioning effectively, and people have to take all means in order to get by, to get services, to get food, to survive."

Because of its nature, corruption is notoriously difficult to measure objectively. Transparency International’s index relies on the assessments of experts and business people – "those who are most directly confronted with the realities of corruption in a country". It focuses specifically on perceptions of corruption among public officials and politicians. 

For further discussion of corruption and its effects in the Arab countries, there's a background article here at al-bab."

Hezbollah says commander killed in Beirut, blames Israel

1 OF 2. A Hezbollah flag is seen near the crime scene where commander Hasan al-Laqqis was killed in the southern Hadath district in Beirut December 4, 2013.

CREDIT: REUTERS/HASAN SHAABAN

"(Reuters) - A Hezbollah commander who fought in Syria's civil war was shot dead outside his home in Lebanon on Wednesday in an attack which the militant Shi'ite group blamed on Israel.

Israel denied any role in the killing of Hassan al-Laqqis, who was shot from close range by a silenced gun as he arrived home at around midnight in the Hadath district of Beirut, a source close to Hezbollah said.

Hezbollah, which fought a 34-day war with Israel in 2006, also sent fighters into neighboring Syria to support President Bashar al-Assad against mainly Sunni Muslim rebels, an intervention which helped to raise sectarian tension in Lebanon.

A previously unknown group, Ahrar al-Sunna Baalbek brigade, claimed responsibility for the attack in a message on Twitter. The claim could not be verified but the name of the purported group suggested Lebanese Sunni Muslim connections.

Footage from the scene broadcast by Hezbollah's Al Manar television on Wednesday showed two bullet marks in a wall and muddy footprints it said had been left by possibly more than one assailant.

Hezbollah described Laqqis, who will be buried in Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley later in the day, as "one of the leaders of the Islamic resistance" against Israel who had been frequently targeted by the Jewish state.

He had been with Hezbollah since it was set up with Iranian support in the 1980s to fight Israeli troops occupying south Lebanon. His son was killed in the 2006 war, Hezbollah said in a statement.

"The Israeli enemy tried to get to our martyr brother several times, in more than one location, but these attempts failed until this repugnant assassination," it said.

Israel would "bear full responsibility and all the consequences for this heinous crime", it said.

But Israel denied involvement. "This has strictly nothing to do Israel," foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said.

"Hezbollah has made a fool of itself in the past with these automatic and groundless accusations against Israel ... If they are looking for explanations as to what is happening to them, they should examine their own actions."

PROFESSIONAL HIT

The source close to Hezbollah said Laqqis had taken part in several battles inside Syria.

Five years ago top Hezbollah commander Imad Moughniyah was killed in a Damascus car bombing. Hezbollah has blamed Israel for Moughniyah's death and vowed to avenge it.

The source also said Wednesday's attack bore the hallmarks of an Israeli operation, and analyst Charles Lister of IHS Jane's in London said it suggested an element of "professionalism and prior intelligence".

"But what is very clear is that it comes under the context of Hezbollah and its role in Syria," he said. "It was expected that Hezbollah would blame Israel, but that is not necessarily the case."

The open role of Hezbollah fighters in the Syrian civil war and the steady flow of Lebanese Sunnis joining the anti-Assad rebels have fuelled sectarian strife in Lebanon.

Car bombs killed dozens of people in Beirut in August and a twin suicide attack on the Beirut embassy of Hezbollah's patron Iran killed at least 25 people last month.

An Iranian foreign ministry spokeswoman blamed Israel for that attack, but responsibility was claimed by a Lebanon-based al Qaeda-linked group, the Abdullah Azzam brigades.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said he believed the group had support fromSaudi Arabia, Iran's main regional rival whose backing for Assad's foes has pushed it deeper into a proxy conflict in Syria against Tehran.

Abdullah Azzam "is not a fictitious name," Nasrallah said in an interview broadcast on Lebanese television on Tuesday night. "This group exists ... It has its leadership ... and I am convinced it is linked to Saudi intelligence," he said.

"Saudi Arabia is the one who runs these kinds of groups in several places in the world."

Hezbollah accuses 'Israeli enemy' of killing commander in Beirut

• Associated Press in Beirut
• theguardian.com, Wednesday 4 December 2013 03.05 EST

Hussein al-Laqis was allegedly killed by Israeli forces. Photograph:AFP/Getty Images

Lebanese Shia militants indicate reprisals likely for 'ugly crime'

"The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah on Wednesday accused Israel of "assassinating" one of its commanders outside his home in southern Beirut.

A statement issued by the group said Hussein al-Laqis was killed as he returned home from work around midnight. It did not say how he died.

Lebanese security officials said assailants opened fire on Laqis with an assault rifle while he was in his car. He was in the car park of the residential building where he lived in the Hadath neighbourhood, some two miles south-west of Beirut, they said.

He was taken to a nearby hospital but died early on Wednesday from his wounds, the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

The statement accused Israel of responsibility for the killing. It said Israel tried to kill him several times, but had failed.

"The Israeli enemy is naturally directly to blame," the statement said. "This enemy must shoulder complete responsibility and repercussions for this ugly crime and its repeated targeting of leaders and cadres of the resistance."

Hezbollah, which has fought several wars against Israel, has also been fighting alongside Syrian president Bashar Assad's forces in that country's civil war, sparking attacks across neighbouring Lebanon.

Laqis spent his entire life in the Shia group from the time of its inception until the last hours of his death, according to the statement. His son died fighting Israel in the month-long 2006 war."

Current Al-Jazeera (Arabic) Online Poll

Do you believe that the new constitution will calm down the Egyptian street?

So far, 93% have voted no.

Al-Jazeera Video: Something for Arabs to be Proud of! خمس دول عربية ضمن الأكثر فسادا بالعالم

PA arrests prominent businessman who called for Abbas’ downfall

Submitted by Ali Abunimah on Tue, 12/03/2013 - 00:31

الشرطة تحتجز رئيس مجلس أدارة الاهلية للتأمين محمد سبعاوي

Palestinian Authority security forces today arrested a prominent Palestinian-born Canadian businessman, weeks after he called for the downfall of PA leader Mahmoud Abbas.

In the above Wattan TV video of Monday morning’s incident, Muhammad Sabawi, 68, chairman and general manager of Ahlia Insurance Group, can be seen arguing with a group of PA police officers who came to his office to take him away.

The video shows a clear shot of a police summons presented to Sabawi.

Sabawi was held by police for nine hours before being released, his son Khaled Sabawi, 30, told The Electronic Intifada from Ramallah this evening.

Khaled, who was with his father throughout the ordeal, said that the family’s lawyers, while initially present, were then ordered out.

“Retaliation”

Though his father was not presented with any formal charges, Khaled said that the arrest was retaliation for an incident that occurred during the visit to Ramallah last month of French president François Hollande last month.

Khaled also said that the Palestinian Authority had begun retaliating against the family’s businesses.

Yet Khaled recognized that his father would have faced a much worse fate were he not well-established in the business community and a Canadian citizen.

“Had my father been a regular Palestinian ID holder he would have faced what many face, which is being arrested and held for no charge for expressing dissent, for an unlimited time period,” he said.

“We’ve heard many examples of Palestinians being harassed, detained and humiliated by the Palestinian Authority simply for expressing their opinions.”

The Sabawis ought to be the sort of people that the Palestinian Authority sees as the backbone of the state and economy it claims it wants to build, but today’s incident suggests that the Abbas regime will not brook dissent or defiance from any quarter.

French president’s visit

On 14 November, Khaled happened to be in Paris to receive the Takreem Young Entrepreneur Award.

While there, he received an email from a member of his staff saying that the Abbas presidential guard had called to ask to place snipers on the roof of the Ramallah office building owned by the Sabawis and which houses their companies during the upcoming visit of the French president.

The building also houses the offices of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. As landlords to a UN agency, the Sabawis must meet stringent criteria.

Khaled told his colleague to inform the presidential guard that they should send a request in writing so that the matter could be discussed and coordinated with the UN. The request never came, he said.

However on 18 November, the day of Hollande’s visit, as Khaled was returning to the occupied West Bank via Jordan, he received a phone call from his staff saying that the presidential guard had arrived at the building with a letter demanding immediate access.

Khaled said the heavily-armed force intimidated the workers in the building, informing them “there’s no one higher than the president’s office.” The Palestinian Authority snipers scaled the fire escape and occupied the roof of the building.

Video footage below also shows armed, uniformed men entering the building through its front door.

During the incident, the police also attempted to arrest Muhammad Sabawi. Khaled says that he arrived back at the building to find employees forming a cordon around his father to prevent the police from taking him away.

“Insulting” Abbas

مدير "الأهلية للتأمين" يطالب الرئيس عباس بالرحيل

Clearly angry at what happened, Muhammad Sabawi can be heard in this Wattan TV video of the 18 November incident declaring “the people want the downfall of President Mahmoud Abbas!”

The following day, Muhammad Sabawi went to the PA attorney general’s office with his lawyers to give an affidavit about what had happened, particularly the invasion of the building by the security forces.

Today’s arrest was an unexpected shock, Khaled said, and even after his father was taken to the police station, he was not presented with a formal complaint.

Later, Khaled said, a complaint was made – he believed from Abbas’ office – claiming Muhammad Sabawi had insulted the president.

From refugee to businessman

Muhammad Sabawi was born in the village of Salama, near Jaffa, in 1944, and he and his family fled to Gaza during the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

A student in Egypt in 1967, he was unable to return to Gaza when it was occupied by Israel in June that year. With a doctorate in risk management, Muhammad Sabawi went to Kuwait to begin his career and then emigrated to London, Ontario, Canada in 1987.

Muhammad Sabawi founded Ahlia Insurance Group in 1995, a publicly listed company with branches throughout the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. He also founded Union Construction and Investment (UCI), which is now run by Khaled.

UCI pioneered geothermal heating systems in Palestine. Khaled, an engineer who was active in Palestine solidarity activism during his studies at the University of Waterloo in Canada, also runs a company called TABO, which aims to buy, register and subdivide plots of land. It then offers the plots to Palestinians with interest-free loans.

Most land traditionally owned and used by Palestinians in the West Bank is not registered,due to a 1968 Israeli military order halting land registration.

This has been used as a pretext by Israel to seize land for settlement, claiming that it is “state land.” Khaled describes TABO – which is for profit – as an effort to protect the land and place it in the hands of Palestinians who will use it.

Khaled told The Electronic Intifada that his company’s lawyer was informed by the general manager of the Palestinian Lands Authority today that all of TABO’s registration activities had been placed “under review.”

Khaled said he saw this as the first of a number of retaliatory measures that the PA would likely take.

Unbowed, he posted this status on his Facebook page this evening:

The PA leadership quivers in their collective boots every time a Tweet, Facebook [message], or article is published that uncovers more examples of their corruption, cronyism, nepotism and sheer ineptitude. This arrest was an attempt to humiliate my father – an independent investor who employs hundreds of Palestinians and has invested in renewable energy and expanding property rights for Palestinians. What the unelected, cynical, and morally bankrupt cronies in Mahmoud Abbas’s office don’t realize is that they just completely humiliated themselves and that this issue has made us stronger, more vigilant, and with your help, given us a bigger microphone.

Wattan TV reported that repeated requests for comment from the Palestinian Authority about the arrest of Sabawi went unanswered."