Archive for March 5th, 2015
This implicit new Constitution in Lebanon
Militia Leaders with veto power
Many believe that when tensions and conflicts in a political system include mechanisms for a political mediation to vent out violent resentments, then adopting violent means is no longer necessary.
In working democratic systems, people marching for a demand is a good enough opportunity for the system to listen carefully to the request of the people.
The people who felt this urge to get out to the streets and demonstrate must have kept their latent violent feeling under check for too long, and it is a good policy to tend to the voices of the demonstrators. A hundred demonstrators suffice for the mediation process to get activated and serious negotiation taking place.
The marching phenomena in Lebanon is evidence that one or several main leaders are critical of current politics and are sending the proper message to the government.
When Lebanon cease marching and demonstrating, it is an indication that the leaders are negotiating and trying to reach a consensus. Thus, demonstrating in Lebanon gives the cue that a few main leaders are not satisfied with their quota in the loot for public funds.
The main problem in Lebanon is that the institutional framework that was developed over 70 years, with endless patching up sections added to it, most of it implicit or verbal, is a process of consensus among the main ethnic-religious schisms and feudal tribes who are considered to constitute the fabric of this patched up society.
The constitution was frequently a scapegoat or smokescreen to pass policies against the interest of the common people. The constitution is implicitly admitted to be broken at wish and temporary laws replacing the constitution until the original constitution is forgotten and no longer taken seriously.
Essentially, the current implicit “reformed constitution” is to give veto power to about 5 leaders on “critical matters” that keep changing.
Each religious sect has appointed civil political leaders to represent its interest, in addition to the religious clerics. When a major religious sect ends up with more than one powerful civil leaders (militia), then a civil war is expected within the sect until a resolution is found.
For example, in the Christian religious sects many leaders battled for prominence, and they all failed after the war ended. Aoun found political asylum in France and Jeaja was put in prison for 11 years.
After the Syrian troops vacated Lebanon in 2005, Aoun returned and Jeaja was set free for political purpose in order to counter the Aoun ascendance.
The current battle for leadership is among Gen, Michel Aoun (Tayyar movement), Samir Ja3ja (Lebanese Forces), Suleiman Frangieh in the northern part, and to a lesser extent the Phalange party represented by Amine Gemayyel.
The Shiaa Muslim sect battled between Amal militia represented by current Parliament head Nabih Berry and Hezbollah.
Berry was Syria Man and still is and has become the broker of politicians. Amal and Hezbollah reached a consensus on dividing the roles and currently form the most cohesive and powerful section in Lebanon’s politics, in number, in firepower and organization.
The Sunni Muslim sect battled among many leaders and the assassination of scores of them until late Rafic Hariri purchased the sole leadership with Saudi funding.
After the assassination of Rafic in 2005, the Sunnis tried to affiliate and bring back old leaders and assemble around their local leaders. Currently, Saad Hariri (son of Rafic and the chief of Future movement or Mustakbal, mostly in absentia, navigating between Paris and Saudi Arabia) is being imposed upon the Sunnis as their leader with the same Saudi funding and political pressures.
The Druze sect managed to get more political clout that their number represents because they allied behind a single leader Walid Jumblat who inherited the leadership from his late assassinated father Kamal Jumblat.
The current 5 leaders were generated during the lengthy civil war (1975-89) and several of them inherited their fathers’ leadership.
Basically, the current veto power holders are: Saad Hariri, Walid Jumblat , Michel Aoun , Samir Ja3ja, and Nabih Berry (voicing the desires and positions of Hezbollah).
These leaders split the spoil of public funds and distribute the loot among their subordinate. Kind of Lebanon decided in the last decade not to submit an official budget for the Parliament to vote on. Every month, the main political leaders get their cuts handed over through the ministries in the government that they secured through months of haggling before a government is formed.
The Parliamentary system failed to elect a new President to the Republic for 11 months now.
The former president Michel Suleiman had appointed 3 ministers in the current government as his quota in the spoil, though he has no deputies and has no political party. Ironically, he is still meeting regularly with these ministers, flaunting all decent constitutional customs.
The former President was elected with Syria blessing. When Syria got in trouble, he shifted allegiance to the Saudi Arabia block of regional alliances in order to receive his share of the loot.
It is understandable in this mercantile State: The more powerful Iranian regional block has not the financial means or international clout to cover the President financial exigencies and to travel the world as an acceptable and honored president.
And why no President is about to be elected?
We have no legitimate parliament. and the government is working under a consensus that all the ministers have to agree on any decree, even the most trivial of decisions.
And security received a universal tacit approval that no major disturbances are to take place in the time being. For executing this tacit security deal, the political parties got the orders to meet and start the negotiation processes, two at a time.
A so the nemesis of Hezbollah and the Future are meeting at Nabih Berry palace. And the historic enemies of Aoun and Jeaja are also meeting. And nobody believe that any of these duo negotiations will approach and discuss the main critical divergences.
Protracted negotiations just to give the impression that a resolution could become possible once the green light has been received: kind of putting the final editing touch to the deals before the order is dispatched.
Hapless, tiny and impoverished Lebanon happened to have this red line crossing its land: The regional powers divide between the Saudi Arabia block and Iran block. And these two regional blocks are waiting for the USA and Russia to reach a negotiated settlement over Ukraine, and particularly, the fate of Mariopol, a tiny port city in the Ukraine.
Even the signing of nuclear deal with Iran, which has been finalized, is postponed until the USA and Russia agree on a resolution.
And the hapless Lebanese are being caught between bears, wolves, eagles and jackasses.
Note: Turkey got out of its cocoon during the Arab Spring revolutions and got involved heavily in supporting the various national Moslem Brotherhood movements. The Arab States and Iran managed to return Turkey back to its cocoon and clip its wings as it was getting immersed in the Arab World.
In reaction and retaliation, Turkey of Erdogan directly supported all the extremist Sunni terrorist movements such as ISIS and the Nusra Front in Syria and Iraq. Turkey is the main entry point for all the extremists willing to join the terrorists in Syria and Iraq, and Turkey has dispatched 10,000 of its citizen to join the fray.
Turkey wants its piece of the cake in the regional power tug of war before relinquishing its support to the terrorist movements.
Kind of Blue: Remembrance of Miles Davis’s Masterpiece
Every music fan touches Kind of Blue.
It is the best-selling jazz album of all time.
Kind of Blue was recorded over two days, the first of which, March 2, 1959, was 56 years ago today. Miles Davis convened his sextet—Cannonball Adderley, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and Wynton Kelly—at Columbia Records’ 30th Street Studio in New York City.
John Hendrickson posted this March 2, 2015
A look back at the afternoon that Miles Davis started recording Kind of Blue, one of the biggest albums of the 20th century
The first cut, “So What,” would go on to become one of the most familiar pieces of music in all of jazz. In a BBC documentary about jazz in the year 1959 (below), author Ashley Kahn likens Davis’s opening solo to a whispered confession.
More than anything, Kind of Blue remains a gateway to potential jazz listeners of all ages. Some finish side two and immediately dig deeper into the rest of Davis’s catalogue.
Some hear it and start exploring the various players on the record, like Bill Evans or John Coltrane (who may lead you to Thelonious Monk).
Before you know it, you’re crate-digging for names like Coleman Hawkins, Wes Montgomery, Ornette Coleman, then going back toward Duke Ellington or Louis Armstrong.
It just goes and goes and you’re never quite satiated, not since Kind of Blue whet your appetite.
But even if none of that happens, even if Kind of Blue is the only jazz record you ever hear or care to hear, you will have at least touched it, and you’re better off for it in the end.
Adonis Diaries 