Lebanon is not the land of colored revolutions!

Morning Morning
7 March 05

Great crises and great shocks lead people into perdition because
great crises and great shocks are difficult to assimilate. The
collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 disquieted those who toppled it
as well as those who lost it. The republics that arose from the ruins
of the Soviet Union remain perplexed even now, and their perplexity
has kept them in a state of impotence as to their options although
they have been independent for more than 10 years. Despite that they
have not in the democratic line, despite the WestÃ¢~@~Ys expectation.
Beginning with the Baltic republics and ending with Georgia, the
latter committed to a line independent of Moscow. For more than 70
years Russia was the focus of an empire with an area of 22,500 square
kilometers, from the Far East of Siberia to Moldavia and Byelorussia
(now Moldova and Belarus). To this day neither Kazakhstan nor
Azerbaijan, for example, has adopted the democratic system. Have
revolutionary elections changed the nomenklatura state in place? This
is the question posed, and it will continue to be because elections
alone are not democracy, which is a heritage before being a practice.
The democratic system was adopted in Greece in the fifth century BC,
and with it public debates. From the Greeks to the Persians, to India
and pharaonic Egypt… before France, England and Germany. Even
before EnglandÃ¢~@~Ys Magna Carta in 1215. * * *

Although elections change many things and many people, certainly what
happened in Lebanon on February 14 is related to them. This all the
more true since the next elections in Lebanon will define, as we
know, the Lebanese process in the framework of the delimitation of
the Middle Eastern process, probably in its evolution towards the
Greater Middle East!
Elections change many things and people. Even enmities, friendships
and lines of orientation can be turned upside-down. This is accepted
and sometimes desired.
People change and we still say nothing of those who follow a line and
continue to develop in accordance with it. People change, above all
in the sense that they prefer to adapt themselves to the winds of
change before they blow, whoever the one blowing may be. To the point
that loss of confidence in an authority risks affecting the future of
a nation.
There is in Lebanon something of all this. Those who vote in
elections to modify the prevailing image, have frozen the elections
and their law until light is shed on the crime of February 14.
Nothing is against that, because blood calls for justice in order to
prevent recourse to vengeance. I donÃ¢~@~Yt know how a man of the
stature of General De Gaulle was able one day to say, Ã¢~@~Blood
dries rapidlyÃ¢~@~], in reply to a person who was announcing to him
the decease of someone Ã¢~@~before his hands are stained with
bloodÃ¢~@~]. But in fact the cry of blood is deafening. The eye of
Cain is an example. The blood of the Duke of Enghien and that of
HamzÃƒÂ©, uncle of the Arab Prophet pursuing Hind, wife of Abi Soufyan
and mother of Moawiya, as well as the blood of Al-Hussein — the
examples are many.
These events are probably forgotten and, with them, the blood that
leaves red stains in the memory, such as the incident of Greenpeace
in the Pacific, facing the islands possessed by France, which was
proceeding to carry out nuclear tests in order to confirm its
presence in the club of the great powers. However, these great powers
have given to small ones among them potentials enabling them to
possess nuclear arms. But now the matter of acquiring nuclear weapons
is closed, and those countries that try to acquire them are described
as Ã¢~@~rogue statesÃ¢~@~]. The Greenpeace incident caused the removal
from office of Charles Hernu, French minister of defense during the
mandate of FranÃƒÂ§ois Mitterrand, his close friend, because the
inquiry in New Zealand established the responsibility of the French
minister in the explosion of the ship Rainbow Warrior. When the man
responsible for intelligence revealed to the French president — who
had governed France for 14 years during which he concealed the fact
that he was suffering from cancer — that Hernu had dealt with the
Soviets and given them NATO secrets, Mitterrand told him, Ã¢~@~Take
this dossier and place it among the most inaccessible dossiers in
your office… For we cannot rewrite historyÃ¢~@~].

* * *

ItÃ¢~@~Ys an event that will be forgotten. As for blood, it cannot be
forgotten. But can blood that is shed be a rogue operation… and the
cause of the death of Rafik Hariri? Is it permitted that the
elections in Lebanon be sabotaged in the wait for the results of the
inquiry, with everyone knowing the traps and pitfalls that will
hamper the work of the investigators, making inevitable a delay in
the announcement of the results?
The elections must take place on the dates scheduled. Such is the
challenge which the crime of February 14 has thrown down on the
Lebanese scene, the Arab scene and even the international scene. The
elections will be the word of Lebanon in the Lebanese essence and the
Lebanese color. It being understood, as Stalin once said, that
elections are less a matter of who votes than of who counts the
ballots.
What color will be that of Lebanon?… The Lebanon of the Resistance
or the Lebanon of the Syrianization of the Shebaa Farms and what
followed? What therefore will be the color of Lebanon — the color of
the elections in Palestine and Iraq, where the situation remains
disturbed?

* * *

If the victim were to speak, he would say that the country is the
priority of priorities. And that revolutions of velvet… the
many-hued revolutions, pink in Georgia, orange in Ukraine,
wine-colored in Moldavia, apricot in Armenia and aubergine in
Azerbaijan. Colored revolutions can be exported, but not to Lebanon.
No such revolution can find acceptance here, for Lebanon is
sufficiently colored by wise words, exemplary justice, independence,
sovereignty, true democracy. Not in using democracy to foment coups
dÃ¢~@~YÃƒÂ©tat whose final outcome no one can know.

* * *

We say this knowing that great crises, like great shocks, produce a
perdition. De Gaulle, and there is no harm in returning to him, lost
his way after May 5, 1968, a date of great significance in the French
calendar. On that day he saw millions demonstrating in Paris. He lost
his way so far as to fear that the fate of Louis XVI might be his as
well and he went to see General Massu at Baden-Baden, who told him:
Your place is in Paris; return to Paris.
He returned and millions demonstrated while De Gaulle was holding
democratic elections that led to a Gaullist parliamentary majority.
But reason led him to prepare for Ã¢~@~lÃ¢~@~YaprÃƒÂ¨s De GaulleÃ¢~@~].
Will they hear? We hope so!

–Boundary_(ID_hVVmsvztzsW1v/OJ/5YLIg)–