She: I don’t know when you’re joking and when serious.
He: As if I know. I’m counting on you.
She: come again, how?
He: When you laugh, it’s probably a joke. When you frown, you ferreted out a serious issue.
She: And you’ll be ready to discuss the issues?
He: No. Maybe your issues. Though it would be useful to know how you discovered and interpreted my supposed issues.
She: So you discuss My lame issues and Not yours.
He: correct. I figured out if we start with mine, you’ll quickly add so many on the list that the backlog will be too traumatic to work on any of them issues.
She: Will make a short priority list.
He: I beg to disagree. I find it more productive to select the easier and more feasible ones.
She: And why you jumped to the conclusion that my priority list is of the heavy guns?
He: We start with the simple ones and surreptitiously you gradually move the hardest to the forefront. I like to leave the hard issues to my next life. Or when age give me an excellent excuse to retire from life difficulties.
She: You certainly love your comfort and won’t take any risks to confront this nasty living of yours.
He: My comfort is to leave me with enough energy to tackles your issues.
She: You jumped to the conclusion that mine are harder than yours.
He: Just untangling your white lies from the darker ones is a full-time job. I’m Not trained for such investigative job of sorting out your ambiguous talks.
She: Not trained? And what you guys have always been doing? Legifering in our name?
Stanislawa Leszczynska was born on May 8th, 1896, in the Bałuty neighborhood of Lodz, Poland.
She was the oldest of three children of Jan Zambrzycki and his wife Henryka. She completed high school in 1914 and 2 years later she married printer Bronisław Leszczynski.
In 1920, Stanislawa and Bronislaw with their two children Bronisław and Sylwia, moved to Warsaw where she enrolled in the midwife college and completed her studies.
In 1922, they moved back to Lodz where she got a job as a midwife.
There , she gave birth to her second son Stanisław and in 1923 her third son, Henryk was born.
Stanisława Leszczynska
Stanislawa loved her job and was on call day and night, assisting women who delivered their newborns at home, since this had been a usual practice in the past.
She worked in the poorest districts of Lodz and often walked miles to each delivery.
When World War II began, Stanislawa and her husband involved in the Polish resistance movement but eventually, the entire family was caught by the Gestapo in 1943.
Her husband was killed in the Warsaw uprising of 1944, her sons were sent to labor camps in Germany while she and her daughter to Auschwitz, where she spent two years in a non-Jewish sector of the camp.
Stanislawa proclaimed herself as midwife to the camp’s authorities and was relegated to women’s camp maternity ward.
All the newborns of the prisoners in the camp were killed before she arrived in April, 1943.
During her time in Auschwitz, Stanislawa delivered over 3,000 babies.
Half of them were murdered and another thousand died due to the horrific conditions in the camp.
But after 1943, about 500 babies with blonde hair and blue eyes were sent to be raised as Germans, while 30 more survived the camp.
Somehow, she managed to tattoo the children who were about to be adopted by German families hoping that one day they will be reunited with their mothers.
All the 3,000 babies delivered by Stanislawa were born alive, not one single baby was lost during birth. She was called “Mother” by the prisoners.
Hungarian Jewish children and an elderly woman on the way to the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Photo Credit
When World War II was over, Stanislawa returned to her job in Lodz.
All of her children survived the forced labor camps. Stanislawa rarely spoke publicly about her time spent in Auschwitz and never had considered her deeds as heroic or unusual.
She attended an official celebration in 1970 where she met a small group of the surviving babies who had been born in the camp.
Her story is one of the most miraculous accounts from the Holocaust’s history and Stanislawa Leszczynska is being considered for canonization. God bless that woman.
When the glass doors fly open this Friday, riotous crowds will spill into a tide of mass consumption at Walmarts nationwide. But amidst the frenzy, the bleak undertow of global commerce will wash up against the rock-bottom prices: For workers on a distant shore, Black Friday caps another cycle of the round-the-clock drudgery driving the biggest shopping day of the year.
China Labor Watch’s (CLW) report on China’s toy industry is a seasonal reminder of how American families’ appetite for cheap toys is fed by not-so-fun factory jobs, in which workers struggle to sustain their own families on pennies an hour. The advocacy group reports:
In workshops that are hazardous to their health, millions of workers toil under cruel management, 11 hours a day, six days per week. Over the course of a year, a toy worker may only be able to see her parents and children one time.
In low-wage factories that bring Star Wars and Frozen toys to big-box shelves, field researchers reported observing up to 80-hour workweeks, widespread wage theft, and apparent violations of both corporate ethical sourcing codes and Chinese labor law—including age-discriminatory hiring, nonpayment of mandatory social insurance, and inadequate safety training.
For example, at two suppliers, Winson and Jetta, employers reportedly “diverted” overtime hours to discount weekend work. As a result, CLW claims, “employing up to 11,000 workers, the two companies may be cheating workers out of $1 to 2 million a year.”
A worker stuffs newly made toys at the production line of a factory in suburban Shanghai. (Reuters / Nir Elias)
The true price of toys, according to CLW, is measured in the everyday suffering of workers in Chinese cities, who might spend all-day shifts contorting their bodies to mold doll heads or inhaling toxic toy paint fumes.
For the Mattel Rock’ Em Sock’ Em Robots, sold on Amazon for $30, CLW reports: “each Winson worker earns only 0.05% the market value of the Rock ’Em Sock ’Em toy. Workers produce nonstop. Young workers sacrifice their youth and health…. Despite such sacrifice, a worker earns only 1/2000 the value of a toy she produces.”
As a brand and sales outlet, Walmart shapes working conditions in both Asia’s manfacturing hubs and the United States’ low-wage retail and logistics industries. While American Walmart associates are staging scattered Black Friday protests, more volatile labor dynamics are erupting in China. CLW details a recent uprising at a Mattel supplier factory, in which workers protested a months-long lag in wages and benefit payments during a lull in production.
Riot police and K-9 units cracked down “to suppress the workers’ action and compel them to accept partial compensation.”
Another uprising in July at the Jingyu toy factory in Shenzhen reportedly resulted in a strike being similarly squelched by police. Yet in response to CLW’s investigation, the toy industry’s corporate-monitoring organization ICTI-CARE took issue with the findings, commenting that the Jingyu dispute had been successfully resolved and stemmed partially from “poor communications” and “misunderstanding” between employees and management.
In a statement to The Nation, ICTI-CARE argues that in contrast to CLW’s report, the group has observed “a different pattern of continued progress across the 1,100 factories we work with,” and that “[d]riving lasting improvements on labor standards requires commitment from both the top and bottom of the supply chain.”
One thing Western brands seem committed to is showing zero tolerance for labor disruptions overseas, or for any taint on a company’s facade of social responsibility.
So establishment-supported auditing firms have produced regular reports showing purported improvements in labor conditions. Still, CLW’s report shows that despite voluminous ethical sourcing protocols and proclamations about acting as good global corporate citizens, the reality on Chinese assembly lines vanishes behind slick media packaging and irresistible prices.
“Pressure on toy producers has actually not been sufficient,” CLW Program Coordinator Kevin Slaten says via e-mail. “What is required is an even more successful awareness campaign which can produce enough reaction that the toy companies put more resources into improving working conditions in their supply chains.”
Public pressure has already spurred image-polishing corporate social responsibility campaigns, with brands funneling aid to the victims and recently establishing a new charity, the Tazreen Trust Fund, to issue payouts to workers’ families.
So far, Walmart has donated primarily through a corporate-funded philanthropic outfit called BRAC USA. A company spokesperson stated that “through BRAC, we have donated to a medical fund for Rana Plaza and Tazreen survivors and just recently to the newly established Tazreen Victim’s Trust Fund.”
But the real debt Walmart owes doesn’t just stem from workers’ injuries: it stems from the impunity with which the company has managed to evade liability.
Walmart claimed the factory was not an “authorized” supplier, shifting the blame to shady subcontractors lower on the production chain.
In a comment to The Nation, Walmart stated that it was “committed to helping our suppliers make factories safer for all and preventing tragedies like Tazreen,” stopping short of calling its charity “compensation” for victims. But advocates nonetheless condemn Walmart for failing to protect safety for all workers in its manufacturing network.
“Had Walmart put into place fire safety renovations after its inspections to remediate the high risk violations that it uncovered, it could have saved 112 lives,” says ILRF Director of Organizing Liana Foxvog via e-mail. “Instead, Walmart didn’t take any meaningful action to protect workers…and then distanced itself as much as it could after the horrific fire.”
Transnational supply chains trade on the political and social distance between the Global North and South to extract maximum profits. At the same time, the global economic forces girding Walmart’s commercial empire are also helping globalize messages of economic injustice and social unrest.
It’s up to American consumers to respond by politically leveraging their purchasing power. Because while multinationals eagerly claim credit for delivering the best Black Friday deals, only the savviest shoppers will link Western brands to the exploitation underwriting those unbeatable prices.
Note: This article has been updated to correct a reference to the ICTI-CARE’s comment on the Jingyu factory protest in Shenzhen—not the protest at the Mattel supplier Ever Force, as originally stated.
Notes and tidbits posted on FB and Twitter. Part 92
Note 1: I take notes of books I read and comment on events and edit sentences that fit my style. The page is long and growing like crazy, and the sections I post contains months-old events that are worth refreshing your memory.
Note 2: If you are Not tri-lingual, you will stumble on Arabic notes, written in Latin characters and with numbers representing vocals Not available in Latin languages.
Le tier de nos males ont la siphilis. Et le pourcentage des femelles qui ont une maladie sexuelle?
S’il m’aime, il doit etre capable de reperer les salopes qui me veulent du mal. Leurs regards de le mater, zyeuter et le posseder de loin. Et il me rend folle: il ne se rend pas compte que ca me fait du mal. (les femmes sont plus brutales que les hommes jaloux)
“Ce titre d’un livre sonne famillie’ ‘”. A eviter les redundants “comme quelque chose” qui n’est pas clair, ou “a mes oreilles” qui est ridicule.
This shitty “Charisma” that Lebanon militia leaders bestow on one another to retain the larger portion of the pie. Wake up sleepy brutes and desist disseminating this highway robber qualifier
For over a century during the renaissance, (1450-1550) the females Black Regents, mother, sisters, wives, concubines of European monarchs effectively ran the political schemes and alliances
Strong impression: the devilish Orientals (China/Iran) concocted the coming to power of Trump to alienate USA from International Tables and Circles.
Les grandes passions, cerebrales et sensuelles, sont affaires de gens dument repus et desalteres
Le ridicule amour-propre que les gens civilizes melent aux choses de la passion
“It isn’t what we know that gets in our way. It is what we believe” Physicist Harold Puthoff
Practice makes perfect. Virgin women cannot seem to take that advice at heart
La difference entre L’Enfant desiré et L’Enfant collateral (bil ghalat): La dette d’amour sans fond: substituer le temps consacre a l’enfant par acheter ses desir d’objets de consummation, les plus neufs, les plus cheres.
Bashar of Syria liberated the extremist salafists in May and June 2011, pour faire la place aux demonstrateurs pacifists: Le systeme pensait abattre 2 oiseaux en un seul tir: il mettait plus de poids aux coloniaux que ses voisins: Turkie, Qatar et Saudi Kingdom.
Le camion doit puer l’abattoir: le cheval tombe’ resistai a y monter.
Rania avait vite eu de quoi s’ inquieter: Le pretendant etait un vertueux, pas d’alcool, pas d’avanture, un precheur venue de la campagne, intransigeant et “honnete”. La marieuse dit: “Tous les chameaux ont une bosse: j’en trouverais une”
The exigencies of living lead us to stick to most of our biases and fallacies. We tend to procrastinate acting on our well-intentioned decisions that could correct our ill-conceived methodology to run our life.
As of October 13, 2015. Terror tactics. Live bullets against stones in occupied Palestine. Is it true that more than 1,400 Palestinians have been injured last week by Israeli forces? One girl was shot dead and the Israeli planted a knife by her side to claim that she intended to stab an Israeli.
Quand le patron sait que life expectancy de ses employes est tres reduite et vivront en souffrance, et qu’il s’habitue a l’indifference, toutes les cruautes lui seront egales
Lire Germinale de Zola etait deja tres fort. Le voir en film serait du masochism epanoui. Je prefere me coucher.
Traduire les actions par des mots? Plutot par des videos. Les mots simples et locaux sont faites pour commenter les videos.
Au debut, nous voulons nous debarrasser des moukhabarat (services secrets), une revolution de masse comme en Egypt et Tunisie
“Me Too”? To have an opportunity to get a foot in Hollywood by going along the bad entrance practices of the elite club?
Kurdish leader, Masoud Barazani est un fruit pourri qui tombe. Il a fait tout ce que USA/Israel lui on ordonner. Son role est termine’, lui et les extremists de sa tribue.
April 17, 2011 in the Palestinian camp in Lattaquie’: 200 dead from live bullets for chanting “Army and people, hand in hand”
How would you list the hardest hit States/Nations by climate calamities (Storms, earthquakes, flooding, fires) according to their economic/financial potentials to recover from devastation?
Just a reminder: over 300 killed in Mogadishu suicide car bombing. At least 3 fold that number were injured, most of them handicapped for life. Can western media cover these calamities with more than 10 seconds?
La lucidite’ amer vaut plus qu’une mediocrite’ dans les illusions: Si on croyait que l’existence est absurde, notre reussite aurait plus de valeur.
La “zabiba” (resin seche’), un durillon sur le front des devots, de frequente prosternations. Ces grand-peres qui marrient les filles de 14 ans.
L’ exil ne suscite plus un tel sentiment intense de perte d’identite’ apres l’emergence d’ Internet. Je fis l’experience.
Medical prof. Philip Salem said: Many of our “leaders” brag of their foreign allegiance. In other States, they are dispatched to prison. Sure, tiny Lebanon was Never in a strong position, but cut out this imbecile bragging.
Notes and tidbits posted on FB and Twitter. Part 91
Note 1: I take notes of books I read and comment on events and edit sentences that fit my style. The page is long and growing like crazy, and the sections I post contains months-old events that are worth refreshing your memory.
Note 2: If you are Not tri-lingual, you will stumble on Arabic notes, written in Latin characters and with numbers representing vocals Not available in Latin languages.
The simple generosity for pleasing others (seduce them) is the characteristic of genuine and confident people.
A culture of refinement is the process of knowing and learning how to seduce, of constant discovering and an attitude of good behavior.
“To seduce is to kill reality and to metamorphose it into lure“.
Tous ces Senegalais que la France a abuse’ dans ses colonies comme des Kleenex. Je me demande combien d’entre eux ete’ des Musulmans
Before 12,000 BC, most lands were covered with water: Egypt, the Sahara… Each high plateau had a kind of human species. The amalgam started when water receded to uncover more dried lands and shorter sea passages
Most of them “insensitive handicapped” have great sense of humor, you need Not lament for them
You won’t get a broad genuine smile, if you fail to send the vibe of steadfastness
La famine est le lit des epidemies, et les brigants saignent les provinces, et tu m’entretiens de theologie?
Un usufruit: Jouir de ses possessions durant sa vie avant de retourner a la Courone.
Les vrais trésors aujourd’hui, et à cette époque de ma vie: la patience et l’humeur bonne. Conserver le sens de l’humour qui manque terriblement tout autour de moi
Les micro-événements, des choses minuscules qui fracturent la vie, qui la rouvrent, qui l’aident à respirer à nouveau.
Quand une sorte de gaieté vous vient d’un evenement miniscule. C’est sans valeur marchande, la gaieté, sans raison, sans explication ! Tout d’un coup, la vie passe à votre fenêtre avec une couronne de lumière un peu de travers sur la tête.
La gaieté : du minuscule et de l’imprévisible.
Un salut militaire donné par un officier au plus faible des humains est trop juste and noble pour etre emuler
Un proverbe Egyptien: “Ne fait jamais peur a quiconque”. C’est la definition de la compassion et la survie
C’est une loi invariable:La diplomacie echoue toujours quand le rapport de force est equilibré. Consequence: diplomacie c’est comment delivrer un ultimatum
Nous croyons que l’énergie, c’est la vérité. Admettons donc que la mauvaise énergie survitaminée est une verite’ mauvaise.
L’ intelligence muette de l’enfant nous porte tout au long de notre vie et n’a pas besoin d’explication des sentiments.
On gagne des batailles en desertant les approbations et les applaudissements et se retirer vers le plus profond, de retenir notre capacité d’émerveillement.
On perd des personnes, des soleils mis en terre, et qui continuent a nous rechauffer .
He was an astute General for survival: he sided with short-term victors until he grabbed full decision position. He then shifted to, still unknown, long-term victors. And his patience paid out at long last
This Commander in the army was frequently assigned missions, during the civil war, at critical periods in critical locations. He had to deal with opposing foes (Israel, Syria, Palestinians, militia leaders). He knew he was used as a pawn. And the government knew that he could Not refuse a mission to give a semblance of the presence of the army (ebn al mou2assasseh)
“Anti-state propaganda” charges? What that mean? Those in government are No supposed to be exposed and their activities accounted for?
When a new technology arrives, it’s often the nerds and the neophiliacs who embrace it.
People who see themselves as busy and important often dismiss the new medium or tool as a bit of a gimmick and then “go back to work.”
It’s only a few years later when the people who understand those tools are the ones calling the shots.
Because “the work” is now centered on that thing that folks hesitated to learn when they had the chance.
And so, it’s the web programmers who hold the keys to the future of the business, or the folks who live in mobile.
Or it’s the design strategists who thrive in Photoshop and UI thinking who determine what gets built or invested in…
There’s never a guarantee that the next technology is going to be the one that moves to the center of the conversation. But it’s certain that a new technology will. It always has.
What the “Islamic Empire” did a thousand-year ago?
I say Islamic Empire because it is Not the “Arabs” who came from the Peninsula who brought civilization and culture to the vast empire: They were the Syrians, Iraqis, Iranians, Egyptians with education and knowledge with different languages and sciences that translated all the previous knowledge into the Arabic language and added immensely to human knowledge.
“A thousand years is a long time; the first book published in French wasn’t until 1476.
Goodness knows what an Islamic caliphate would have been doing 1,000 years ago? They bought rare books in various languages with gold and swapping prisoners.
They built the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, one of the first universities in the world;
they asked scholars of all faiths to translate every text ever written into Arabic;
they demanded the first qualifications for doctors,
founded the first psychiatric hospitals and invented ophthalmology.
They developed algebra (algorithms are named after their Arab father) and a programmable machine … a computer.
They introduced Aristotle to Europe,
Al-Jahiz began theories of natural selection,
they discovered the Andromeda galaxy,
Classified the spinal nerves and
Created hydropower using pumps and gears.
The Wahhabi terrorists of Saudi Kingdom in ISIS and Al Nusra want to destroy the knowledge that Islam is a beautiful, scientific and intelligent culture, and we are way ahead of them.”
It’s never been easier to find ways to be disappointed in our performance. You can compare your output, your income, your success rate to a billion people around the globe… many of whom are happy to exaggerate to make you even more disappointed.
It’s hardly worth your trouble.
The exception is the dissatisfaction that is based on a legitimate comparison, one that gives you insight on how to improve and motivates you to get better.
Get clear about the change you’re trying to make and, if it’s useful, compare yourself to others that are on the same path as you are.
If the response rate to your website is lower than your competitor’s, take a look at what they’re doing and learn from it.
If your time in the hundred-yard dash is behind that of the person to your left, analyze the video of their run, step by step, and figure out what you’re missing.
You can always find someone who is cuter, happier or richer than you. (Or appears to be). That’s pointless.
But if you can find some fuel to help you reach your goals, not their goals, have at it.
Les pressions Saoudiennes sur le premier ministre libanais Saad Hariri ont presque eu gain de cause d’un court état de grâce : en annonçant sa démission lors d’une conférence de presse tenue à Riyad, le 4 novembre 2017, c’est le mythe de l’unité nationale libanaise qui est encore mis à mal.
Saad Hariri a certes « suspendu » sa démission, à l’occasion de la fête d’indépendance libanaise, le 22 novembre 2017. Mais le Liban n’est pas loin de renouer avec une politique du vide caractéristique des années post-2005, une fois le retrait des troupes syriennes du Liban effectué : c’est plus traditionnellement la présidence de la République qui est vacante, de novembre 2007 à mai 2008, puis de mai 2014 à octobre 2016.
Les limites d’un compromis national
Saad Hariri s’était donné la stature progressive d’un homme de compromis.
À terme, ce fut aussi la figure d’un homme seul. Opposé à Damas, il s’engageait pourtant, en novembre 2015, à soutenir la candidature à la présidence de la République de Sleiman Frangie – leader maronite du parti des Maradas, et partisan de Bashar al-Assad.
La politique de la main tendue avec la Coalition adverse du 8 mars – emmenée par le Hezbollah chiite- aboutit à l’élection à la présidence de la République de Michel Aoun, en octobre 2016, et à la naissance d’un gouvernement d’union nationale, deux mois plus tard.
Nul n’était pourtant dupe des tensions qui traversaient le Courant du futur – la formation de Saad Hariri- et les différents leaderships de la communauté sunnite libanaise : les élections municipales de mai 2016 voyaient Tripoli tomber dans l’escarcelle de Ashraf Rifi – un ancien responsable des Forces de sécurité intérieures (FSI), particulièrement virulent envers l’Iran et le Hezbollah.
La perspective d’un gouvernement d’union nationale intégrant le Hezbollah, et dirigé par Saad al-Hariri, si elle faisait sens au Liban, rentrait ainsi de plus en plus en contradiction avec les grandes lignes de force régionales, structurées par le conflit entre l’Arabie saoudite et l’Iran.
Le récit sunnite libanais
Saad Hariri n’est pas seulement la victime de pressions saoudiennes ou des contradictions internes du jeu politique libanais : il porte à bout de souffle un Courant du futur qui est en manque de récit historique – notamment pour la communauté sunnite, qu’il peine de plus en plus à mobiliser.
Le leadership de la famille Hariri n’est pas en totale continuité avec l’héritage des générations qui les ont précédées.
Premier ministre sunnite et père de l’indépendance libanaise de 1943, Riyad al-Solh (1894-1951) pensait un Liban inséré dans son environnement arabe – en même temps qu’il posa les bases d’un service public libanais pour toutes les confessions, comme le rappelle l’historien Ahmed Beydoun.
Dans les années 1950, la communauté sunnite libanaise avait ses grands récits : le Parti des Najadeh de Adnan al-Hakim s’inscrivait dans une narration nationale et arabiste.
Le nassérisme égyptien eut ses enfants sunnites libanais : dans les années 1970, les Mourabitouns de Ibrahim Qoleilat tenaient le quartier de Tariq al-Jdideh, à Beyrouth.
À la même époque, les jeunes générations sunnites se raccordaient aisément à une dynamique révolutionnaire régionale – emmenée par les Palestiniens de l’OLP.
Le discours confessionnel était plus atténué que de nos jours : au début des années 1980, une révolution iranienne chiite pouvait bien fasciner une partie des sunnites libanais comme en témoigna le chercheur français Michel Seurat (1947-1986) à Tripoli.
Ces mouvements eurent certes leurs limites marquées notamment par l’échec d’un véritable dialogue avec les maronites libanais, même une fois la guerre civile terminée.
Toujours est-il que les sunnites du Liban avaient leur grand récit historique : il était arabe, parfois développementiste – le socialisme nassérien – ou s’accordait avec de grandes dynamiques populaires régionales.
L’éphémère « République marchande » des Hariri
Saad Hariri, quant à lui, hérite simplement du projet néo-libéral de son père, adossé aux capitaux du Golfe : celui d’une « République marchande » libanaise, selon les termes de l’écrivain libanais Michel Chiha (1891-1954).
Rafiq Hariri (1944-2005) pouvait cependant se prévaloir de ses origines populaires, d’un engagement passé dans les rangs du Mouvement des nationalistes arabes (MNA), inspiré du nassérisme, de la figure du self-made man et d’un Rockefeller libanais attaché à la reconstruction du Liban post-guerre civile.
Les années 1990 fonctionnaient selon un partage des tâches : le premier Ministre Rafiq Hariri soutenait officiellement la résistance militaire d’un Hezbollah au sud du Liban occupé par Israël, et pouvait inscrire ses mandats dans un grand récit relatif au conflit israélo-arabe et à la cause palestinienne. Cela n’empêchait pas une opposition sur les volets économiques, mais la complémentarité fonctionnait – jusqu’à un certain point.
Le fils ne peut avoir ces prétentions : il est « l’héritier de ».
Son père était né à Saïda, d’une modeste famille d’agriculteurs. Saad Hariri est quant à lui né à Riyad. Il peut bien essayer de mobiliser la communauté sunnite libanaise : mais il manque d’une véritable narration historique.
En conséquence, sa base populaire s’érode. Dénoncer la Syrie et l’Iran, certes : mais chercher l’appui des États-Unis dans une région traumatisée par les effets de l’invasion américaine de l’Irak d’avril 2003 n’est pas sans conséquence néfaste.
Le soutien saoudien devient plus handicapant que par le passé : le récent rapprochement israélo-saoudien (ce rapprochement n’est pas recent mais date de 1918 avec le mouvement Zionist) n’aide pas à gagner en popularité, ni au Liban, ni dans le monde arabe.
Saad Hariri est dépendant des intrigues de palais du Royaume Saudi : mais la « modernisation de l’autoritarisme » saoudien que décrit bien le politologue Stéphane Lacroix ne fait pas un projet politique porteur à l’échelle régionale.
La rhétorique tout à la fois anti-américaine et anti-chiite des salafistes radicaux concurrence un Courant du futur qui ne propose pas d’utopie concrète.
Quant à la « République marchande » libanaise rêvée par Hariri père, elle est à l’image de la compagnie qui fit sa fortune, BTP Saudi Oger, aujourd’hui gérée par Hariri fils.
Ce que l’historien américain Mike Davis a pu nommer un « stade Dubaï du capitalisme » libanais se traduit surtout par un surendettement national chronique, et un accroissement des inégalités et des écarts de richesses – affectant particulièrement les classes populaires sunnites du Akkar, au nord du Liban.
Entre le marteau saoudien et l’enclume salafiste
En l’absence de grand récit national et communautaire, Saad Hariri – et son allié au sein du Courant du futur, le ministre de l’Intérieur Nohad Machnouk– sont devant un problème désormais insoluble.
L’une des options serait de se mobiliser contre le Hezbollah, et faire de l’épouvantail iranien le cœur de la politique libanaise. En ce cas, il renoncerait à un pouvoir logiquement fondé sur l’idée d’un compromis communautaire avec les chiites.
Au pire, il s’engagerait dans une logique de confrontation civile et communautaire avec le Hezbollah. Ce fut le pari de l’ancien premier ministre Fouad Siniora, dans la seconde moitié des années 2000 qui se solda par un échec cuisant lorsque les ministres Hezbollah se retirèrent du gouvernement, paralysant la vie politique.
Ou bien, la direction du Courant du futur choisit le compromis national, l’idée de Saad Hariri depuis novembre 2015. Mais cette option a montré ses limites : il s’est retrouvé débordé par un front du refus allant des courants fondamentalistes sunnites libanais les plus radicaux – le Cheikh Ahmad al-Assir à Saïda – à des figures nationales de son propre parti (Mustapha Allouch, Muin Merabi) lui reprochant de faire trop de concessions à ses adversaires. La politique saoudienne a fait le reste.
Le Courant du futur est également venu à bout de sa logique originelle : dans la seconde moitié des années 2000, il fonctionnait sur la dénonciation systématique d’une mainmise syrienne sur le Liban, en dépit du retrait militaire de 2005.
En 2017, cette stratégie ne porte plus : c’est désormais moins un régime syrien qui est présent au Liban, qu’une formation politique libanaise, le Hezbollah, qui est militairement présente en Syrie.
Opposé à Bashar al-Assad, la coalition du 14 Mars voulait voir la Syrie dehors : la ruse de l’histoire fit qu’au final, ce fut un parti libanais à dimension régionale qui imposa sa marque en Syrie. Reste alors l’éternel repoussoir iranien : mais ce terrain est désormais occupé par d’autres.
Saad Hariri est ainsi pris entre le marteau d’une Arabie saoudite puissante et soucieuse de son influence régionale, une logique d’État, et l’enclume d’un radicalisme salafiste qui a un projet et une utopie – fut-elle mortifère.
Le rêve d’une « République marchande » portée par son père a fait long feu.
Note 1: It is confirmed that Israel executed late Rafic Hariri PM (assassinated him in 2005, father of Saad) with the decision and finance of Saudi Kingdom. US Bush Jr. didn’t oppose the decision.
Learn to retain your freedom, born with it? How to go about it?
Long time ago, a small community voiced a set of laws or codes of behavior: Males and females voted on the laws after a calamity that decimated the village.
The neighboring villages refused to even listen to these laws: They felt cleverer than this community and were comfortable with their customs.
The laws were orally spread to far away communities. A few villages selected the items that satisfied their life-styles, and the chief or the council of elders contributed in the trade-off discussions.
A few villages edited the laws and interpreted them differently.
All the villages never got to the last items in the laws that stipulated: “You are born free. Learn to retain your freedom”.
This items was the abstract one among the other more practical in nature for running the daily life. And it was Not logical: Why you need to learn to be free if you were born with it?
Many people were burned alive for voicing publicly this right and considered to be heretic persons and witches.
Nowadays, this item is back on the list of laws, but the operationalization of how and what to learn is muddy and diverse.
War in mostly the preferred option to subjugate other communities into abiding to laws that don’t suit their conditions, situations and world views.
Le rêve d’une « République marchande » portée par son père a fait long feu.
Adonis Diaries 
