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Sayyed nasrallah we accept official results lets start building our country

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Sayyed Nasrallah: We Accept Official Results; Let’s Start Building our Country 
Mohamad Shmaysani   

nasrallah

Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah delivers a speech on Al-Manar TV.
 
“Tonight I will tackle Sunday’s election and the outcome.
First, I would like to congratulate all the Lebanese people, opposition and loyalty, on this great national achievement. I would also like to laud the popular presence that reflects a great national responsibility. This is a positive point. I also seize the moment to thank the ministries and the public administrations, the Lebanese army and the security forces, for the handling of the electoral process and for preserving security and stability. These administrations were in front of a major challenge of holding general elections on a single day. Despite some flaws, which we’ll assess later, the challenge was faced with responsibility. I congratulate the winners who have to know that they have just taken the responsibility of the people. We accept the announced results by the Interior Minister. Contesting the results at the Constitutional Council is another matter. We accept the results and we accept that the rival camp has secured the majority of parliament seats, knowing that the opposition has also kept its seats. In past speeches, I used to say that there is a difference between a parliamentary majority and a popular majority. If most votes have given the majority to the March 14 bloc, I would accept this regardless of our evaluation to the whole process. We accept the result regardless of the huge expenditure that will illustrated in the days to come; regardless of the sectarian incitement and the lies that were aimed to intimidate the public opinion, especially in some particular districts and regardless of open foreign interference, however I will not tackle this tonight and this will not affect our acceptance to the results.”
 

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Palestine do the right thing

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Palestine – do the right thing

by George Galloway MP

“Where is the ummah; where is this Arab world they tell us about in school.”

Those words will forever remain etched on my brain. They were spoken by a 10 year old girl in a bombed out ruin in Gaza in March. She had lost almost her entire family in the 22-day Israeli bombardment earlier this year. The second time she spoke, it was to the back of my head. I had to turn away; what answer could you give her?

While Hugo Chavez expelled the Israeli ambassador to Venezuela, the leaders of the Arab League, with a handful of exceptions, spent those murderous weeks in December and January scarcely summoning even the synthetic indignation that has so often attended previous bloody episodes in the Palestinian tragedy.

But that was not so of public opinion, not only in the Muslim world, but mobilized on the streets of Western capitals. In Britain, over 100,000 people took to the streets and night after night we blockaded the Israeli embassy. Above all, the Gaza onslaught produced in the US an unprecedented outpouring. There have, for sure, been protests before, but this has turned out to be more than an ephemeral release of impotent rage. Something is changing.

That has become more and more apparent to me over the last two months as I’ve spoken on Palestine at packed meetings and fundraisers across the US.  The opinion polls in January showed a plurality of Americans against the Israeli onslaught. It may not have been a surprise to those of us who witnessed Ariel Sharon’s leveling of Beirut in the late summer of 1982, but the sight of white phosphorous – which forms a gaseous cloud – being used against civilians in Gaza stunned the senses of millions or people who had up to that point been led to believe that it was somehow the Palestinians who were occupying Israeli land rather than the other way round.

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The unnecessary war

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The unnecessary war
By Roedad Khan

child
A internally displaced girl, who fled a military offensive in the Swat valley region, holds her pot while awaiting a serving of tea at the UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) Yar Hussain camp in Swabi district, about 120 km (75 miles) northwest of Pakistan’s capital Islamabad June 7, 2009.
REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro

Somehow, our history has gone astray. We were such good people when we set out on the road to Pakistan. What happened?

Marx once said: "Neither a nation nor a woman is forgiven for an unguarded hour in which the first adventurer who comes along can sweep them off their feet and possess them". October 7, 1958 was our unguarded hour when democracy was expunged from the politics of Pakistan, perhaps forever, with scarcely a protest. The result is the mess we are in today.

"Liberty once lost", Adams famously told his countrymen, "is perhaps lost forever". We Pakistanis lost our liberties and all our democratic institutions in October 1999. Sadly, Pakistan also lost her honour and became a ‘rentier state’ on General Musharraf’s watch when he capitulated, said yes to all the seven demands presented to him at gunpoint by Secretary Colin Powell and joined the "Coalition of the coerced". Regrettably, this situation remains unchanged even though the country is now under a democratic dispensation!

 

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Where are the missing settlers?

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Where Are The Missing Settlers?

By Jonathan Cook

source: Countercurrents.org

 

"There are about half a million Jews living illegally on land occupied by Israel in the 1967 war. Give or take the odd few thousand (Israel is slow to update its figures), there are nearly 300,000 settlers in the West Bank and a further 200,000 in East Jerusalem…"

Nazareth : Talks between Barack Obama and the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships over the past fortnight have unleashed a flood of media interest in the settlements Israel has been constructing on Palestinian territory for more than four decades. The US president’s message is unambiguous: the continuing growth of the settlements makes impossible the establishment of a Palestinian state, and therefore peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

The implication of Mr Obama’s policy is that, once Israel has frozen the settlements, it will have to begin dismantling a significant number of them to restore territory needed for a Palestinian state.Understandably, in an era of rolling news many media outlets have been scrambling for instant copy on the settlers, relying chiefly on the international news agencies, such as Reuters, the Associated Press (AP) and Agence France-Presse (AFP).These organisations with staff based in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv churn out a stream of reports picked up by newspapers and broadcasters around the globe.

So, given their influence on world opinion and the vital importance of the settlement issue in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, can readers depend on the news agencies to provide fair coverage? The answer, sadly, is: no. Even on the most basic fact about the settlers — the number living on occupied Palestinian territory — the agencies regularly get it wrong.There are about half a million Jews living illegally on land occupied by Israel in the 1967 war. Give or take the odd few thousand (Israel is slow to update its figures), there are nearly 300,000 settlers in the West Bank and a further 200,000 in East Jerusalem.

Sounds simple. So what is to be made of this fairly typical line from a report issued by AFP last week: “More than 280,000 settlers currently live in settlements dotted throughout the Palestinian territory that Israel captured during the 1967 Six Day War”?Or this from AP: “The US considers the settlements — home to nearly 300,000 Israelis — obstacles to peace because they are built on captured territory the Palestinians claim for a future state”?Where are the missing 200,000 settlers?

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