Iran protesters stage biggest demonstrations since ‘Green Movement’

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By Ali Arouzi reported from Tehran. Alexander Smith reported from London. - AP and Reuters - Article represent opinion of the author

TEHRAN, Iran — The most significant protests in eight years are rocking Iran, with state media reporting Monday that at least 12 demonstrators have been killed and a police spokesman saying one officer was fatally shot. Hundreds of people have been arrested and activists are taking the rare step of publicly criticizing the country's religious leaders. Iran's reformist President Hassan Rouhani appeared to acknowledge the seriousness of the protests Monday when he tweeted that "the authorities must pay attention to the people's demands."

What's happening?

The protests started out as local rallies against Iran's economic problems but have since spread in both geography and scope. Iranians last week took to the streets of Mashhad, the country's second-largest city, in protest at high inflation and the rising prices of everyday goods. This frustration is hardly new. Many people expected the their financial situation to improve after Iran signed a nuclear deal in 2015 with the U.S. and five other world powers. The country agreed to limit its uranium enrichment in exchange for sanctions being lifted. The economy has improved — but there is widespread anger that the benefits have not trickled down to ordinary citizens. The demonstrations spread to Tehran on Saturday, with people c The next day, officials said that two protesters had been shot dead overnight in the western city of Doroud. Authorities denied they were killed by police, instead blaming foreign agents and terror groups for the deaths. State TV reported Monday that another 10 people had been killed during clashes. "Some armed protesters tried to take over some police stations and military bases but faced serious resistance from security forces," state TV reported, according to Reuters. What started as an isolated economic grievance appears to have morphed into a wider expression of dissatisfaction with the government. "I think it's far more serious than we anticipated a few days ago," said Sanam Vakil, an associate fellow at London's Chatham House think tank.

How has the government reacted?

Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran has been a religious conservative society where many aspects of public life, such as freedom of expression, the press and public assembly, are restricted. On Sunday, Rouhani, who is seen as a reformist, said that while people had the right to demonstrate he condemned "violence and destruction of public property." hanting anti-government slogans and tearing down political posters.

Iranian officials have also partially blocked Instagram and the messaging app Telegram, which was used to distribute information and images of the protests. Videos on social media purported to show some protesters shot dead by government security forces, although NBC News could not verify the videos or details of the shootings. Hundreds of people have been arrested and security has been overseen by the regular police. As yet neither Iran's feared volunteer militia force, known as the Basij, nor the revolutionary guard have not been deployed to crush the dissent. "Whether it's going to happen slowly or more immediately, I think the government is going to start cracking down," said Vakil at Chatham House. "We've already started seeing it — people have been killed, there have been arrests and curtailing access to the internet. And if people don't stop protesting that will only increase." However, she also predicted that the government would have to offer some sort of carrot, perhaps in the form of economic concessions, alongside this stick. Over the weekend, Iran's hardliners, some of whom are critical of the more moderate Rouhani, took to the streets to defend the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and others in planned demonstrations of support for the regime.

Why are the protests significant?

The unrest is the biggest public challenge to Iran's status quo since 2009, when a disputed presidential election saw millions take to the streets in what became the "Green Movement." It is currently far smaller in scale than that event, and there are other significant differences. Eight years ago, it was more of a middle-class uprising, involving demonstrators who had livelihoods and would go to work the next morning after protesting the night before. People who lived in more affluent parts of Tehran would shout "Allahu akbar," meaning "God is great" in Arabic, or "death to the dictator" from their rooftops and balconies. Their focus was on reform rather than revolution.

Today, however, the middle classes do not appear to be participating in a similar way. The activists who are taking to the streets appear more working-class, radical and provocative than in the past, and they don't appear to be chanting for any leader. There is an expression in Iran that says "the knife has hit the bone." This is being used to describe these demonstrators who feel they have little left to lose. Also unlike the Green Movement, today's activists are not chanting the names of any opposition leaders or wearing green bracelets in support of reforms. Without the unifying presence of a central figurehead or cause, "it's really hard to see where this is headed," Vakil said.

Rouhani, the current president, is also seen as more moderate than his predecessor in 2009, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, something perhaps reflected in his statement this weekend permitting some criticism of the government. How has the U.S. reacted? President Donald Trump, whose travel bans blocked Iranians from getting U.S. visas, reiterated his support for the protests Monday, tweeting that Iran was "failing at every level" and saying it was "TIME FOR CHANGE!" This follows other tweets expressing the same sentiment over the weekend. Rouhani appeared to respond to Trump’s criticisms in his comments Sunday. "Government and people solve problems together. One who calls the Iranian nation a terrorist does not have the right of compassion for our people," the Iranian president said. However, it is unclear if Trump's support will give the protesters a boost of encouragement, or whether it will be used by Iranian hardliners as evidence that foreign powers are in fact behind the disruption. In 2009, marchers chanted "Obama, Obama either you are with us or you are with them," a call largely ignored by the former president, who didn’t want to jeopardize the nuclear deal. The crowds this time in Iran have not called for support from Trump — so far. Vice President Mike Pence tweeted that "America will not repeat the shameful mistake of our past when others stood by and ignored the heroic resistance of the Iranian people." In the main, Iranians are already skeptical over the president's refusal to re-certify the nuclear deal, while Iran's government has often used comments by U.S. officials to dismiss protests as a sign of foreign interference in its internal politics. "The people of Iran give no value and credit to Trump," Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said Saturday. "The powerful people of Iran don't waste their time with opportunist and meddlesome slogans of American officials." Ali Arouzi reported from Tehran. Alexander Smith reported from London.

Horoscope predictions 2018 - 2019 - Astrology

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to view horoscope from 2020 to 2021 please click here

Yearly Horoscope 2018 Overview

New Year is that time of the year when we happily bid farewell to one year and give a grand welcome to the next one. It is globally celebrated on the 1st of January and is observed as a global holiday all over the world. Over the decades the human beings are always worried about their safety and security of the future. They also become curious and are eager to know their future in advance. In such cases horoscope and astrological prediction help them to be acquainted with their future. Being aware of some of the problems previously, you can also find the solution for the future uncertainties. So, here is the Horoscope 2018 predictions for you.

Before saying goodbye to year 2017, prepare to wish ‘Happy New Year’ to year 2018 with the smile on your face. This is the best time to find out what year 2018 is preparing for you. With the 2018 horoscope predictions, you can obtain a good perpective over the future and the decisions that you should take next year. With these yearly astrology forecasts you’ll find what’s going to happen with your love life, your career, your finance, your health or your life in general, your expenses and investments for next year and finally your relationship with others. With one click you cand find out what year 2018 reserve for you. All the birth dates of every individual are included in the twelve sun signs of the Zodiac. Those twelve sun signs are further being divided according to the four rudiments – Earth, Fire, Air and Water. - 

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The Boustani house encompasses both the tragedy and faith of Lebanon

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by Robert Fisk - independent.co.uk - During the great famine in Lebanon and Syria – whose lamentable 100th anniversary we mark these current months, though few bother to commemorate (or even remember) it – the hungry and poor of Beirut would gather at Mar Mikhael railway station in the east of the city, in the desperate hope that the once-a-week steam locos coming down from the mountains would have vegetables, even meat, in their grimy freight wagons. Some of these people had lived on stinging nettles, like the Irish of the 19th-century Great Famine, and many of their children and elderly had died of starvation. The bodies of children lay in the streets. So the trains were a symbol of both hope and despair. But just up the road lived a Lebanese banker, Salim Habib al-Boustani, who would regularly walk down to the station to hand out food and cooking oil, and money to the dying proletariat of Beirut. They indeed deserved a revolution.

Since 1914, the Allies had blockaded the Ottoman coastline, preventing all supplies reaching the ports of Lebanon and Syria – which were then part of the same Ottoman province. As the Great War strangled the Ottoman armies, their Turkish officers commandeered massive shipments of food, farm animals and carts from the hundreds of thousands of destitute Lebanese and Syrians living in countryside, mountains and cities. Amid this misery, some of the Beirut rich (for this was, after all, Lebanon) held parties – and invited their Turkish rulers – but there were others like Boustani who retained their morality and cared for their gaunt-faced neighbours. Boustani owned a magnificent house only 400m from the station, and his residence and his kindness and the memory of those trains is being commemorated this month, with paintings by the British artist Tom Young and even film footage of the first steam railway to be built by the Allies in the Second World War. It’s all inside the old Boustani house, now under restoration: a glorious Ottoman pile with arched windows whose owners, Nabil and Zoe Debs, are also turning it into the second Beirut Arts Club.

In 1917, Beirutis had only just recovered from the earlier “year of the locust”, when billions of the insects swept across Egypt and the Levant consuming everything in their flight path. The locust cloud over the Lebanon was so thick that diaries of the time describe it eclipsing the sun. In the Beqaa valley east of Beirut, a historian described how they settled on the ground “to the depth of an arm’s length”. Perhaps two million died of hunger in the Great War, especially in Beirut, and this was in addition to the one and a half million Armenian Christians “genocided” by the Turks in 1915, whose survivors were now turning up in Beirut to add to the city’s starving population. Thus the lands of the Levant today lie on the unknown graves of as many as three and half million dead: well over three times the total fatalities of the British and its Empire during the First World War. Young has a fascination with trains, and so do I; writer’s admission, two of his railway paintings hang in my Beirut home, one of the upended track high above Beirut where the civil war ended its purpose, and another of a 19th-century Swiss rack-and-pinion loco rotting in the old Beirut marshalling yard, smothered in flowers and creepers. His paintings in the Boustani house, however, evoke a living railway. A steam loco thunders over the Mar Mikhael railway bridge in 1972 – still there today, but overgrown – while in another, an old Ottoman train waits in a station further up the mountain.

Young takes his inspiration from original photographs, and I know well the picture of the steamer on the bridge. But in Young’s hands the train is bursting over the bridge: a grey speed emanating from it, smoke billowing upwards, as if you could pop out the door, run down the street and see the real thing thundering past. As always, Young’s interest curls round the decay and the might-have-been. He’s climbed up onto the track and found Mar Mikhael station in ruins – it has simply fallen down – and the remains of an old carriage. In paint, he has transformed it into a kind old graveyard. “La wayn”, it is captioned in Arabic. “To where?” He has, of course, photos of the real wreckage which he took from the railway line. During the Second World War, British officers were billeted on the top two floors of the Boustani house after the victory they and the Free French had gained over the Vichy forces loyal to Petain in 1941. It was the British and Australians who extended Lebanon’s railway network to the northern city of Tripoli, principally to carry ammunition, and there’s a weird moment when, looking at Young’s pictures, film footage appears on the ceiling above.

And there are the Australian soldiers with British General Spears – who loved De Gaulle and then hated him so much when he refused to grant Lebanon its promised independence that Churchill fired him – and Lebanese President Naccache, France’s pliant Lebanese “leader”. But the camera also sits above the footplate of a big steam loco, and we travel with it on the movie as it thunders up the Lebanese coast – you can still recognise the surviving railway bridges today – to the cheers of crowds of Lebanese civilians. The film is freely available from the Australian government. In one shot, it’s clear the railway-builders half-demolished a beautiful Ottoman house to allow the track to take a curve above the Mediterranean. So a shake of the head from Young each time he sees this sequence. He spends much of his time trying to preserve the cultural past of Beirut – not without ruffling masses of sectarian feathers – and declined to involve himself with the Boustani house when its previous owners announced their decision to bash it down and build a road through the site to two new tower blocks. But the moment the Debs bought the house, Young was back to support their restoration. The ground floor window casing appears almost identical to that of the original Mar Mikhael railway station, built a few years later; the same Italian architect may well have constructed both. More than a hundred years ago, Salim and Adele Boustani had six children, one of them a daughter called Georgette. After arriving with the Allied forces in 1941, a Scottish officer, the gloriously named Frank Armour, fell in love with Georgette and married her. He was looking after his songbirds in the back garden of the house during the Lebanese civil war when a shell burst next to them. Most of them died. Frank was in the house and survived. Somehow, the Boustani house, like the old railway station down the road, appears to encompass both the tragedy and faith of Lebanon. So surely it has now been saved.

Lebanon Family reunions for the Lebanese mean home for holidays

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By An-Nahar - Ghadir Hamadi -- Beirut: By the time December is around the corner, Lebanese abroad are dreaming of visiting the homeland for the holidays and arriving by the planeload. In recent days many of the flights are overbooked and Beirut’s streets, bars, malls, and restaurants are all packed with revelers. Why? The reasonable answer is that the Lebanese diaspora reverses itself on holidays, as Lebanon’s far-flung family come back from work and lives abroad to spend quality time with their families and loved ones. Nothing will discourage them —not long flights, not bad weather, and definitely not the bad mood of Lebanon’s ongoing political quarrels. The Lebanese have long had wanderlust. Ancient Phoenician merchants roamed the Mediterranean, setting up cities such as Carthage and Cadiz. In the past century and a half, waves of Lebanese have left for the Americas and West Africa. With millions of Lebanese and their descendants now living in Brazil, millions more in the United States and an estimated quarter million in West Africa. They do everything from managing restaurants to diamond trade and have proved to be the talented business persons and skilled executives the country is known for producing. “My plane was packed with Lebanese flying home for the holidays, and when it landed we all shouted ‘Beirut’ and clapped hysterically,” Jad Hussein, a 25-year-old high school Biology teacher working in Qatar, told Annahar. Hussein was sitting with his friends-mostly Lebanese who work abroad- smoking hookah at one of Hamra’s bustling cafes. Across Beirut, malls were packed with fashionably dressed shoppers, and large families walking together talking loudly and laughing simultaneously, and food shops were doing brisk business for large holiday reunion meals. 65-year-old retired nurse, Om Shareef told Annahar, “My husband and I each worked two shifts almost all our lives to support our children’s education.” Her four children are now spread across the Gulf. “I’m proud of the good jobs they secured for themselves, but I miss them terribly every day,” she added. Her three married daughters all came home for the holidays, but her eldest son Shareef was unable to take a break from the engineering firm he works for in Saudi Arabia.

For some families, Lebanon has become a place for reunions but not an employment market. “We’re all here for the holidays but none of us live here anymore,” said Rita Ghulmiyyah, 25, an architect based in Dubai who was born in Beirut. There are seven people in her family, “four of us are now scattered across the globe.” Dareen Jamaleddine’s father surprised them by coming home from Canada, a day before Christmas. “I couldn’t believe my eyes when he walked in, I just sat on the floor and started bawling my eyes like a baby,” said Jamaleddine with a grin. “I haven’t seen my dad who works in Canada for over a year, seeing him walking through the front door knocked the air out of my lungs.” “We all know how expensive planning a trip to Lebanon can be,” her father, Mohamed Itani, said. “The cheapest flight from Toronto to Beirut right now is going for at least $3000 (CAD),” he added. Aliyah Hammoud concurs. “My fiancé works abroad as an accountant, but the skyrocketing price of airplane tickets stopped him from coming home for the holidays,” she said.

For Lebanese arriving home, however, the thought of long afternoons spent in the kitchen nibbling mom’s home-made dishes and laid-back evenings curled up on the sofa, catching up with family under the colored holiday lights, is priceless. In the globalized economy, this is still a place to call home, and for families to meet for gatherings that keep the Lebanese spirit alive as one of the country’s greatest exports is the talents of those born or descendant from the Levant.

Mideast Catholic patriarchs express hope amid uncertainty at Christmas

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by cruxnow.com BEIRUT, Lebanon - Catholic patriarchs of the Middle East - with hope, despite uncertainty in the region - called for peace, security, prayer and solidarity at Christmastime. From Baghdad, Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Sako expressed hope for a “new phase” for his country, that the recent triumph over the Islamic State and the termination of terrorist control of Mosul and other Iraqi cities is a step toward security and stability. But the liberation of those areas, he said, requires the Iraqi government to work to facilitate “the return of Christians to their homes and properties, preserving their rights as indigenous citizens, recognizing their culture, civilization and heritage as an essential part of Iraq’s history and preventing demographic changes in their historical geographic areas.” Sako reiterated that before the American-led invasion of 2003, there were more than 1.5 million Christians in Iraq. More than half of that Christian population has migrated due to discrimination, threats, abductions and the expulsion from their homes in Ninevah Plain by the Islamic State in 2014, he said. “This is our homeland and we insist (we) remain here,” he said. He called for unity among Iraqi Christians as well as for them to work “hand in hand with their fellow Muslims.” The future, Patriarch Sako said, “cannot be built without tolerance and coexistence.” “So, let us move to the path of hope together,” Patriarch Sako said. “In regard to Muslims, an honest dialogue is a must, to understand the truth of each side and accept it,” he said. Alluding to U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the Chaldean patriarch urged Christians “to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, who have been suffering from injustice and displacement for 70 years.” He also called on them “to pray for Jerusalem to remain a holy city for Christians, Muslims and Jews.”

In his Christmas message, Lebanese Cardinal Bechara Rai, Maronite patriarch, also touched upon Trump’s declaration regarding Jerusalem. “We categorically reject it because it is an unjust and hostile decision toward Christianity and Islam, and of the Palestinian people in particular,” Rai said. He said the decision demolished peace negotiations and could “ignite a new uprising and even war, God forbid.” Citing World Bank studies, Rai noted that one-third of the Lebanese people remain below the poverty level. Furthermore, the presence of 1 million displaced Syrians and hundreds of Iraqis as well as half a million Palestinian refugees is “compounding the needs of the Lebanese.” Rai called upon the Prince of Peace to protect Lebanon and “this growing (Middle East) region where Christianity originated, and to spread the culture of love, brotherhood and peace.”

Syriac Catholic Patriarch Ignace Joseph III Younan noted that Lebanon, “the only country where all citizens enjoy the best possible liberty and equality,” had faced numerous trials in 2017. In his Christmas message from the patriarchate in Beirut, he thanked God that the Lebanese army dispelled terrorist groups that were threatening Lebanon’s “very existence.” “During this joyful season, our thoughts and prayers will particularly go to our brothers and sisters in Syria and Iraq, who have been suffering for long, because of their steadfast faithfulness to the Gospel,” Younan said. “Their presence as a Christian minority that endured every kind of hardship is essential to the rebirth of their respective countries.” He added that “there is still a lot to do that would inspire confidence to our eradicated and exhausted community in order to return to their ancestral land” in Syria and Iraq. “Economic sanctions on Syria must be lifted,” the Syriac Catholic patriarch said. The sanctions, he said, “are like crimes against humanity, because they target the most vulnerable segments of a nation.”

Melkite Catholic Patriarch Joseph Absi, in a message from the patriarchate in Damascus, Syria, noted that “as the various currents of the world invade the spirit of the people” and “as the land of the East is trampled by war and displacement,” the faithful sometimes wonder about the presence of God “and his role in our lives.” But Absi offered hope and reassurance in his message that “Christmas comes, the Divine Incarnation, to reveal to us that God’s hand appears and accompanies us, especially in the difficult stages of our lives.”

Lebanese foreign minister denounced over Israel comments

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BEIRUT- Lebanese politicians on Thursday criticized Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil over a television interview in which he was shown saying that Lebanon did not have an ideological problem with Israel and was not against it having security. The comments, made to al-Mayadin television channel during a long interview on Tuesday, had just started attracting attention. Bassil stated during his interview“There is no ideological problem with Israel, and we do not reject its existence. Israel has the right to safety. All we care about is for people to recognize one another. We are people who accept the other but the problem is when the other rejects you,” Bassil, said when asked about normalizing relations with Israel. A former government minister called on Bassil to resign and a member of parliament also criticized him with Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouq leading the charge tweeting "The Cabinet should dismiss Bassil if he doesn't recognize an ideological difference with Israel"; while MP Boutros Harb called on the Justice Minister to open a probe regarding the matter.  Bassil’s office later said al-Mayadin had distorted his comments through its editing of the interview, without explaining how. “The aim of taking his statements out of context is to distort his stance – the well-known stance that Israel is an aggressive entity that practices terrorism of the state. It is well-known who stands behind this campaign that aims to harm the stance which Bassil expressed at the Arab League,” the statement said.