Lebanon

Hundreds of people have staged a protest outside the government headquarters in Beirut in the second consecutive day of protests against the ongoing economic crisis, reports Peoples Dispatch.

The deadly ammonium nitrate explosion in Lebanon is a symptom of capitalism's disregard for human life and the environment, writes John Molyneux

Lebanese Prime Minister Hassan Diab announced a new government on January 21. The cabinet, made up of technocratic ministers backed by the main parties, is promising to tackle the country's deep economic crisis. Karim Traboulsi reports on the protest movement, which shows no sign of letting up.

Now in its second month, the uprising in Lebanon is revealing its nature and cultural character.

The word inscribed upon the wrist of the iconic 6-metre high fist in downtown Beirut — which was firebombed early Friday morning but was rebuilt the following day — is ثورة (thawra); meaning revolution, and this is what is going on here.

Two weeks of sustained mass protests across Lebanon have forced the government of Prime Minister Saad Hariri to resign. At its peak, the movement united to form a 170 kilometre-long human chain from Tripoli to Tyre. While Hariri’s resignation met one of the movement’s demands, demonstrators have vowed to keep struggling for more fundamental change in the country. Nizar Hassan, who participated in the uprising as a member of the LilHaqqi movement, looks at the origins and dynamics behind the protests.

Today, Tarshiha is promoted on AirBnB as Ma’alot-Tarshiha in the Galilee region of Israel and, depending on your budget, you can book somewhere chic and stylish to take in the stunning views or a more humble, village style experience. Seventy years ago though, Tarshiha was a village in Palestine.

Your wars, our dead graphic

The Socialist Alliance and its youth wing, Resistance, expresses our solidarity with the people of Paris and Beirut who were targeted in back-to-back acts of terror by ISIS forces in the past few days.

As news arrived yesterday of terror attacks in Paris that ultimately left more than 120 people dead, US President Barack Obama characterized the situation as “heartbreaking” and an assault “on all of humanity.” But his presidential sympathy was conspicuously absent the previous day when terror attacks in Beirut left more than 40 dead. Predictably, Western media and social media were much less vocal about the slaughter in Lebanon.
Marcel Khalife.

Marcel Khalife, born in 1950 in Amchit, Lebanon, has injected new life into the music produced by the oud (the Arabic lute) ― helping revive an important part of Arabic culture. Khalife studied the oud at the Beirut National Conservatory of Music and graduated in 1971. From 1972 to 1975, Khalife taught at the Beirut National Conservatory of Music, public universities and local private music institutions. During that period, he toured the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and the United States giving solo performances on the oud.

Palestinians commemorate al Nakba

This article is reposted from http://gazatvnews.com . Protesters fired on by Israeli forces were commemorating al Nakba ("the catastrophe"), as Palestinians refer to the ethnic cleansing that accompanied the founding of Israel.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said that over the next six months, Wikileaks will be releasing more files related to Israel. “There are 3,700 files related to Israel and the source of 2,700 files is Israel,” he told Al-Jazeera on December 22. “The Guardian, El Pais and Le Monde have published only two percent of the files related to Israel due to the sensitive relations between Germany, France and Israel.”
The Israeli government agreed “in principle” on November 17 to withdraw from the northern part of Ghajar, a village in the occupied Golan Heights. The village was conquered by Israel in 1967, during the six-day war. In 2000, Ghajar was split in two. The northern part was to be controlled by Lebanon, the southern part by Israel. The southern part of Ghajar was deemed by the United Nations (UN) to be a part of the Golan Heights, Syrian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.