Aoun rejects EU, UN statement on Syrian refugees post Brussels conference

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The Daily Star -- BEIRUT: President Michel Aoun Thursday said the joint statement by the European Union and United Nations after yesterday’s Brussels conference on the Syrian refugee crisis infringed on Lebanese sovereignty. "I declare my rejection of the statement issued by the [EU and UN], including what was stated on ‘voluntary return,’ ‘temporary return,’ ‘will to stay,’ and ‘integration in the labor market’ and other words that contradict the sovereignty and laws of the Lebanese state,” Aoun said in a statement released by his office Thursday evening. Aoun said the only solution to the crisis was the safe and dignified return of Syrian refugees to “the possible areas inside Syria ... as there are many areas [there] that are safe” and called for the international community to remember that Lebanon is dealing with the refugee crisis based on “brotherly ties and humanitarian obligation."

النشرة: مجلس الوزراء عين فريد الياس الخازن سفيرا للبنان بالفاتيكان

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Jeff Bezos says he liquidates a whopping $1 billion of Amazon stock every year to pay for his rocket company Blue Origin

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by business insider -Prachi Bhardwaj -- Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos spends a tiny fraction of his net worth to fund Blue Origin, the space company he started back in 2000. For a man worth $127 billion dollars, that tiny fraction amounts to $1 billion a year, which he gets by liquidating Amazon stock, Bezos said at an Axel Springer awards event in Berlin, Germany, hosted by Business Insider US Editor in Chief Alyson Shontell. "The only way I can see to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my Amazon winnings into space travel. Blue Origin is expensive enough to be able to use that fortune," he joked in an interview with Axel Springer CEO Mattias Döpfner. Bezos said he plans to continue funding the company through that annual tradition long into the future. Bezos famously has a number of different projects. He's running the e-commerce giant, owns The Washington Post, and is working on turning a historical mansion in DC into a single-family home, to name a few. None of these, he said, are as relevant or as worthy of his personal money as the space company, which he called "the most important work I'm doing."

His personal interest in space aside, Bezos says he pursues his goal of putting people on a rocket to outer space because of what he fears could happen if we don't explore the option of living on other planets. "I don't want my great-grandchildren's great-grandchildren to live in a civilization of stasis," he said in the interview. Humans take up a lot of energy, and that amount is growing — something Bezos refers to as "the real energy crisis." He sees two options: living in a state of inactivity to use up minimal energy or expanding into space. "The solar system can easily support a trillion humans," he said. "And if we have a trillion humans we would have a thousand Einsteins, and a thousand Mozarts, and unlimited — for all practical purposes — resources from solar power and so on." In the short term, his billion dollars-a-year is going towards a tourism vehicle that will launch at the end of 2018 or beginning of 2019, and a large orbital vehicle that's scheduled to fly for the first time in 2020. "I'm very lucky because I feel like I have a mission-driven purpose with Blue Origin," he said.

Aoun calls on voters to reject sectarianism

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The Daily Star BEIRUT: President Michel Aoun in a televised speech Wednesday evening called on the Lebanese public to exercise their right to vote and reject sectarianism, days before thousands of expatriates head to the polls for parliamentary elections. The president warned voters against those “who foment feelings of sectarianism and fanaticism because they undermine the stability of the country.” He told voters not to the give their support to candidates who offer money in return for their ballots, “because those who buy you will eventually sell you and those who sell the citizen will sell the country just as easily.” Aoun also said to “beware of those who launch campaigns based on the negative aspects of others and who only resort in their political speeches to defamation, slander and rumor without really having a concrete project to showcase.” The full text of the speech: To the Lebanese men and women, in Lebanon and abroad, You will be invited to vote in a few days, nine years after the last [parliamentary] elections, during which Lebanon has seen major events including the scourge of terrorism that has hit the Middle East. Our country, by its strength, was able to combat terrorism, remained intact, and regained its security and stability. After the presidential elections, it was normal to adopt a new law for the legislative elections, as promised in my inaugural speech. This new electoral law guarantees the fairest representation to all the components of the Lebanese people, be it the majority or the minority, and also grants, for the first time, the right to vote to the Lebanese diaspora wherever it may be. In addition to the effective representation, this law determines the political choice through the closed list. Through this choice, it is now possible for the voter to show his personal appreciation of the candidates in the selected list by giving his preferential vote to the candidate he deems the best. However, the reverse of the medal, as pointed out by almost all observers, is a conflict that has emerged between members of the same list to obtain the preferential vote. However, this fact is not attributable to the law per se, but rather to the candidates themselves. Indeed, the law is the framework that gives voters the freedom of choice, while the conflict is due to the lack of cooperation between members of the same list or to the fact that they are still not used to be part of a positive competition. Another downside that has emerged recently is the decline of the political discourse, and the most dangerous is that it is currently moving towards feeding fanaticism.

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Local tensions flare up before Lebanese election

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By reuters --Dahlia Nehme

 The May 6 vote will take place using a complicated new electoral law. It is not expected to cause major changes to the government or its policies. Analysts expect Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri will head the next cabinet. But the law has made the outcome less predictable in some places. This has sharpened local rivalries and is encouraging parties to campaign extra hard. “The threats to candidates, men and women, are escalating. We expect more of them as we approach the election, and we expect an increase in violence,” said Omar Kabboul, the executive director of the Lebanese Association for Democratic Elections (LADE), a group of independent electoral observers. “The outcome of the elections is uncertain. The more uncertain the outcome, the more fear there is within the parties and the bigger the agitation in speeches.” Some 28 years after Lebanon’s civil war, nobody expects any major strife, but the country has been plagued by repeated bouts of political instability that have weighed on its economy.

The Lebanese system divides up power according to strict sectarian quotas, with parliament’s 128 seats split evenly between Christian and Muslim groups. The flare-ups reported so far have pitted rivals from the same sect against each other. The army intervened on Sunday night to break up a confrontation between supporters of rival Druze parties south of Beirut in which guns were fired in the air, a security source said. The standoff spiraled from a row over electoral posters. Also on Sunday, an independent Shi’ite candidate said Hezbollah supporters beat him up in their southern Lebanon stronghold, where he is standing against the two dominant Shi’ite parties Hezbollah and Amal. Ali al-Amin said a group of more than 30 Hezbollah supporters accosted him while he was hanging an election poster in his home village of Shaqra in Bint Jbeil district. “I accuse... a political side, which is Hezbollah, of arranging this incident and I hold it mainly responsible,” he said, adding that the group “could not tolerate the presence of one photo or poster of a candidate who is against them”. Ali Saleh, the pro-Hezbollah head of the local council, said it was an “individual incident” that was now in the hands of the judiciary and security forces. “Ali al-Amine is a candidate ... and every candidate has the right to practice his media campaign and his electoral campaign,” he said.

CONFRONTATION

The heavily armed, Iran-backed Hezbollah, which gained legitimacy among many Shi’ites by fighting Israeli forces that occupied the south until 2000, has taken part in Lebanese elections since the early 1990s, enjoying an effective duopoly of the Shi’ite vote with Amal. The parliamentary election has been postponed three times, chiefly because Lebanon’s fractious politicians could not agree on the new election law that was demanded by Christian parties. It has redrawn constituency boundaries and introduced a new proportional representation system that experts say has been engineered to suit the dominant political players but has still left a good deal of uncertainty at the local level. Last week, supporters of Hariri’s Future Movement attacked the offices of an electoral rival in the capital, breaking his windows, the rival candidate said. First, his election posters were torn down, then his supporters were attacked after a rally, and then his campaign office was assaulted, prompting some volunteers to quit, said Nabil Badr. Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk, a Future Movement member, acknowledged on television that some of the party’s supporters had carried out the attack. He said they had been provoked by Badr’s bodyguards, who had themselves assaulted a local figure. “All the parties are tense because they don’t know the outcome of this electoral law,” said Badr. “The electoral battle will be strong in Beirut.” Reporting By Dahlia Nehme, Issam Abdallah and Tom Perry, writing by Angus McDowall; Editing by Tom Perry and Anna Willard Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Who Is Ali Al Amine And Why Was He Attacked?

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Article represents opinion of the author do not necessarily represents khazen.org  

by Seth Frantzman -tsarizm.com - On April 22, 2018 Ali al-Amine (Amin علي الامين), a Lebanese politician and journalist was attacked and hospitalized. He was a candidate for the Shbeana Haki (شبعنا حكي) or “we are fed up” list. He is a candidate for the May 6 elections in Lebanon in the 3rd southern district (South Lebanon. III- Nabatiyah, Bint Jbeil and Marjeyoun-Hasbaya). He was attacked in his home village of Chaqra which is north of Bint Jbeil and west of the Israeli border. He was apparently attacked by dozens (reports say 40) while hanging banners for his campaign. He was taken to Tibnin hospital. He claimed that the assault was carried out by Hezbollah activists. “My whole body has been hit by a bunch of thugs, and this is what I put on the face of the president and the election watchdog,” he said.

Amine’s List said it was a “blatant and humiliating [attack during] elections that are supposed to be democratic, and this reflects the failure of the de facto forces and their acceptance of any change in their areas.” He has been in the news before, not least because he writes and interviews as a journalist. Al-Arabiya wrote about him in 2016. “Al-Amine is the torchbearer of the Al-Amine family, one of the most prominent Shiite families in Lebanon.” The article claimed that Amine had written about Hezbollah loses in Syria that year. In 2014 his house was attacked by Hezbollah supporters. Amine’s list “we are fed up”

The Daily Star reported that his electoral list was put forward on April 7, providing a list of candidates for the district. Lorientlejour.com also provides a map and list of the candidates. They provide a long profile of Amine. It notes that he is opposed to the hawkish “fascist” Hezbollah which styles itself the “resistance.” It goes on to note he is “The eldest son of the Shia ulama Mohammad Hassan el-Amine, he was raised in the tradition of Shiite Amelite: the original Lebanese Shiism, in perfect symbiosis with the Lebanese particularity – or that tends to be it -, and which is based on a clear distinction between politics and religion…Amelism converges with the tradition of Najaf, where Ali el-Amine was born and remained until his six years.” This would indicate he was born in Iraq. Amine in his own words “We are witnessing an uprooting of the Shia identity, in its Lebanese, Arab and generally Muslim sense, and the genesis of another identity,” Amine says. “The end of the models of erudite and progressive scholars, exploring the currents of thought of left.” The piece claims that his family home in Chaqra was damaged three times by Israeli shells. He accuses Hezbollah of reaching for a kind of dictatorship in Lebanon, of the sort that has taken place in Iran. Russia Condemns Israeli Strikes On Hezbollah In Syria

In a longer interview at Janoubia he also discussed the attempt by Hezbollah to campaign under the guise of “resistance” and the need for opposition. He accuses Hezbollah of “consolidation of the situation of tyranny.” He goes on to note: “The battle of the south of the election on the importance of the electoral issue, different from the rest of the Lebanese regions, is the battle to prove the right of political presence in the face of the trend of [monopoly by Hezbollah], which is practiced against the southerners in the name of ‘resistance’ and on behalf of the unity of the community, while the main purpose of these slogans is to prevent diversity in the south that He expresses himself politically and at different levels.” In 2017 he had also written about the difference between Hezbollah’s propaganda tours of the south and his own view that it was used as an excuse and distraction when Lebanon should be trying to progress economically, like Israel.

He was very critical of Hezbollah in the days leading up to the attack. In an interview on April 18 he lashed out. “There is an organic link between the weakness of the state and the presence of Hezbollah. The party’s interest in the strategic sense – in case it does not participate in power – is always to say that this country is corrupt and weak.” The attack on Amine has caused outrage in Lebanon, particularly among fellow journalists and opposition to Hezbollah. For instance Hanin Ghaddar writes “thugs beat up Ali Al Amin in his hometown #Chakra. #Lebanon. Al Amin, who’s running agst Hezbollah in the South, was just admitted to the hospital. He is in a bad shape, but will hopefully recover and continue his noble and peaceful fight against these terrorists.”

And Luna Safwan writes “All the support goes to Lebanese Candidate and journalist Ali Al Amine, who’s running against Hezbollah in his town Chakra (South Lebanon), he was just beaten up by some Hezbollah thugs for hanging his own picture on a wall.” Antoine Haddad, a politician with the Democratic Renewal Movement and an ally of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, posted about the attack on Amine on Facebook, calling it “brutal” and saying “democracy cannot coexist with armed groups.” Amine is a candidate in the parliamentary elections scheduled to take place on May 6. Journalist Diana Moukalled tweeted solidarity for Amine against the “barbarism of Hezbollah.” Abbas Hodroj, a student, posted a photo of Amine in hospital and alleged that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had a role in the attack. Larissa Aoun of SkyNewsArabia also condemned the attack as an example of “pressure, harassment and violations against opposition candidates.”