The Iconoclast

I don't speak Italian, but I imagine it's a bit like this:

Giuseppe, da barber, ees greata for "mash,"
He gotta da bigga, da blacka moustache,
Good clo’es an’ good styla an’ playnta good cash.

W’enevra Giuseppe ees walk on da street,
Da peopla dey talka, "how nobby! how neat!
How softa da handa, how smalla da feet."

He leefta hees hat an’ he shaka hees curls,
An’ smila weeth teetha so shiny like pearls;
Oh, manny da heart of da seelly young girls
He gotta.
Yes, playnta he gotta—
But notta
Carlotta!

Giuseppe, da barber, he maka da eye,
An’ lika da steam engine puffa an’ sigh,
For catcha Carlotta w’en she ees go by.

Carlotta she walka weeth nose in da air,
An’ look through Giuseppe weeth far-away stare;
As eef she no see dere ees som’body dere.

Giuseppe, da barber, he gotta da cash,
He gotta da clo’es an’ da bigga moustache,
He gotta da seelly young girls for da "mash,"
But notta—
You bat my life, notta—
Carlotta.
I gotta!

T.A. Daly

Where is our weather heading? Well, it looks to be set fair:

Five Day Forecast

Talking of educational nonsense, this, from The Times is depressing:

Teaching children a passion for Shakespeare and the beauty of his language used to be one of the main aims of English lessons. Now the plays are being chopped up and shown to schools in truncated form.

Rather than visiting Stratford-upon-Avon or going to the theatre for a full production of The Tempest or Othello, pupils see performances only of the scenes on which they face tests.

Critics say the practice illustrates the growing trend of teaching to the test, with children’s education restricted just to material that is likely to be assessed. Schools are told in advance which lines of a Shakespeare play will crop up in tests at Key Stage 3, when pupils are 14.

In response, at least four theatre companies are offering stripped-down productions that focus on the key scenes. Even the questions explored in these workshops mirror those likely to be asked in Key Stage 3 tests.

Teachers complain they are under increasing pressure to ensure that pupils perform highly in the tests, the results of which contribute to school rankings. Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said: “This is teaching to the test. Shakespeare shouldn’t be in a national exam for 14-year-olds — they should be acting it out and enjoying it, not sitting tests. It’s a nonsense and completely unnecessary. The thinking is that if you are not tested on it you haven’t done it.

“The play’s the thing, not extracts from the play. If you’re watching only one scene you don’t have it in context and don’t get the experience of Shakespeare. But this happens — schools analyse three scenes in forensic detail, which is utterly boring.”

Jacques Barzun would be turning in his ... er... study.

It's beautiful weather here. Brilliant sunshine with a gentle breeze.

Only a couple of weeks ago it was hailing.

That's it, really.

"....we may say that educational nonsense consists in proposing or promoting something else than the prime object of the school, which is the removal of ignorance."

"These are the signs of a turning point in civilization. The high Renaissance ideas on which we have lived for 500 years have lost their power and we drift. We shall do so until the collective mind is emptied of dogmas and slogans and turns once again to the actualities of teaching and the plain limits of schooling. Then, some of the principles found in the perennial philosophy of the old reformers will regain their place of honor, after being restated by some crusading genius and being hailed as great new discoveries."

Jacques Barzun, "Where the Educational Nonsense Comes From"

That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense
Of being in a hurry gone. We ran
Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street
Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence
The river's level drifting breadth began,
Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.

All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept
For miles inland,
A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept.
Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle, and
Canals with floatings of industrial froth;
A hothouse flashed uniquely: hedges dipped
And rose: and now and then a smell of grass
Displace the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth
Until the next town, new and nondescript,
Approached with acres of dismantled cars.

At first, I didn't notice what a noise
The weddings made
Each station that we stopped at: sun destroys
The interest of what's happening in the shade,
And down the long cool platforms whoops and skirls
I took for porters larking with the mails,
And went on reading. Once we started, though,
We passed them, grinning and pomaded, girls
In parodies of fashion, heels and veils,
All posed irresolutely, watching us go,

As if out on the end of an event
Waving goodbye
To something that survived it. Struck, I leant
More promptly out next time, more curiously,
And saw it all again in different terms:
The fathers with broad belts under their suits
And seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat;
An uncle shouting smut; and then the perms,
The nylon gloves and jewelry-substitutes,
The lemons, mauves, and olive-ochers that

Marked off the girls unreally from the rest.
Yes, from cafes
And banquet-halls up yards, and bunting-dressed
Coach-party annexes, the wedding-days
Were coming to an end. All down the line
Fresh couples climbed abroad: the rest stood round;
The last confetti and advice were thrown,
And, as we moved, each face seemed to define
Just what it saw departing: children frowned
At something dull; fathers had never known

Success so huge and wholly farcical;
The women shared
The secret like a happy funeral;
While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared
At a religious wounding. Free at last,
And loaded with the sum of all they saw,
We hurried towards London, shuffling gouts of steam.
Now fields were building-plots. and poplars cast
Long shadows over major roads, and for
Some fifty minutes, that in time would seem

Just long enough to settle hats and say
I nearly died,
A dozen marriages got under way.
They watched the landscape, sitting side by side
-An Odeon went past, a cooling tower,
And someone running up to bowl -and none
Thought of the others they would never meet
Or how their lives would all contain this hour.
I thought of London spread out in the sun,
Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:

There we were aimed. And as we raced across
Bright knots of rail
Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss
Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail
Traveling coincidence; and what it held
Stood ready to be loosed with all the power
That being changed can give. We slowed again,
And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled
A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower
Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.

                                     --- Philip Larkin

One of the most maddening, because most effective, propaganda devices of the Arabs in their Jihad against Israel is  their exploitation of ignorance. For they not only invented the "Palestinian people" after the Six-Day War but have managed to convince almost everyone that there always was a "Palestinian people" which was somehow sufficiently distinct, in ways unspecified (surely not in language, religion, culture, or in any other way that counts) to be considered a separate people deserving, therefore, of a separate and distinct political expression. But the larger ignorance was about the toponym "Palestine." The word was in continuous existence in the Western world to refer to the Holy Land of Christianity, the place where the Jews lived, and created the Old Testament,  where Jesus was born and lived, and where the New Testament was composed. But this "Palestine" became a virtual place, during the period of Muslim conquest, and there was no separate administrative unit under the Arabs, or the Seljuk Turks, or the Ottoman Turks. The area known as "Palestine" in the West was parcelled out, allotted to several Ottoman vilayets and a separate sanjak for Jerusalem.

It is true that people continued to write, in the West, of travels "in Palestine" and Jews began to talk of buying land "in Palestine" or settling "in Palestine." But that "Palestine" was never, under Muslim rule, aseparate unit or country, and it only became one in the making in 1922, when the Mandate for Palestine -- set up for the sole and exclusive purpose of creating what was then called the Jewish National Home -- was entrusted to Great Britain as the Mandatory authority, the power responsible for seeing that the terms of the Mandate, such as the need to "facilitate Jewish immigration" and "encourage close Jewish settlement on the land" were indeed met. by the possessor of the Mandate.  

One has to be careful to refer, for the period 1922-1948, to Mandatory Palestine, not to "Palestine." It is as important as insistently putting quizzical quotation marks, or doubtful ones, around the phrase "Palestinian people," to signal one's skepticism about the phrase and the implausible but cleverly premeditated concept  behind it.

I have come unwilingly to realize that ignorance of the history of toponyms is widespread, and often a single callow copy-editor without any historical sense is enough to produce results that should -- but unfortunately often do not -- invite ridicule.

The latest example was one I found today in the historian Norman Cantor's "In the Wake of the Plague." On p. 193 was this:

"Justinian's successors were not able to hold back the Muslim armies from Saudi Arabia in the mid-seventh century...."

The Al-Saud family would be delighted to see this nunc-pro-tunc backdating in their family's favor. But what about us? Why should we be delighted? Why should we be anything except horrified?

Gazprom celebrated something -- I suppose the fact of its existence, and the high price of oil, and its ability to hire Western politicians such as Schroeder and Chirac -- the other day.  The high-priced Western musicians who entertained for fabulous sums included Tina Turner and Deep Purple.

You know Tina Turner. Here is Deep Purple:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FjBylFNA6k&feature=related

Was it for this that Galanskov died?

Meanwhile, Khodorkovsky, the most enlightened and moral of the natural-resource company plutocrats, who actually wanted -- as American commencement speakers like to say  -- to "give something back" -- has been put in a private magadan not of his making. He comes up for sentencing soon, will get twenty years, and if things continue as they have been going, with Putin-Povodyr' and Medvedev, Khodorkovsky  will never come out alive.

This is a great crime. It should  be a source of anguish and outrage. But is it? When was there last an article about the kangaroo-court railroading of Khodorkovsky?  Two weeks ago, in a public address, Vladimir Bukovsky mentioned the injustice being done to Khodorkovsky.  Who else has done so? Who else will? And where is Amnesty International, where are all those so-called human rights groups and quangos, the  Great and Good, with what turns out to be their highly selective indignation, their diseased sympathy?

From ynet:

"The Olmert defense team's decision comes after the Jerusalem District Court granted Friday Attorney General Menachem Mazuz's request to take a deposition from Talansky, an American businessman believed to have transferred funds to Olmert during the latter's tenure as Jerusalem mayor and as industry, trade and labor minister.

 State Prosecutor Moshe Lador told the court that Talansky 'has expressed his concern to a police officer that Olmert might send someone to hurt him."

The fear reportedly expressed by Talansky that Olmert "might send someone to hurt him" surely gives some idea of what Talansky, who knew Olmert well, apparently thinks him capable. No doubt Talansky himself is a bit odd, and not entirely rational.

Still...

Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) wrote -- or more likely, like so many Arab students in the Soviet Union and the West, hired an impoverished local to write -- his doctoral dissertation on a subject that few may know about. It is known that he is what is called a "Holocaust-denier" but what has not been widely known is that his thesis was on the subject of the supposed collaboration of Zionists and Nazis.

A summary of the dissertation, in Russian, can be found here:

http://lit.lib.ru/d/dobruskina_i_a/avtoreferat1982.shtml

The full dissertation, however, is still under a kind of spets-khran (spetsial'noe khranenie), that is under special seal, special lock-and-key. Apparently it is too horrifying to be let out, and Russia's rulers would not wish to embarrass an old Arab friend, a pal from the good old days when the PLO still had training camps in Soviet Russia.

Isn't it funny, though, that these opportunities come up and Hillary, despite her desperation, is in no position capitalize.  With Bill Ayers, she had the Clinton Weathermen pardons in her closet.  And now, Malley, the Hamas advisor, was also a Clinton advisor ...

American students should be able to make sense of contemporary documents that are based on Islam. If they cannot do so, then they have not been adequately taught the texts and tenets of Islam, and above all, they have not understood the worldview of Islam, which uncompromisingly divides the world between Believer and Infidel, and posits a state of permanent war (though not necessarily open warfare) between the two, until the whole world has succumbed to Islam, with all obstacles to its spread, and dominance, removed, and Muslims rule everywhere.

Students should be able, for example, if they have grasped what Islam inculcates, to understand what Article 7 of the Hamas Charter is all about. Those who believe that Jihad is an "interior spiritual struggle" to "do right," however, will be at sea, and should not get even a C. An F will do nicely, and begin to get their attention.

Here is Article Seven of the Hamas Charter:

By virtue of the distribution of Muslims, who pursue the cause of the Hamas, all over the globe, and strive for its victory, for the reinforcement of its positions and for the encouragement of its Jihad, the Movement is a universal one. It is apt to be that due to the clarity of its thinking, the nobility of its purpose and the loftiness of its objectives. It is in this light that the Movement has to be regarded, evaluated and acknowledged. Whoever denigrates its worth, or avoids supporting it, or is so blind as to dismiss its role, is challenging Fate itself. Whoever closes his eyes from seeing the facts, whether intentionally or not, will wake up to find himself overtaken by events, and will find no excuses to justify his position. Priority is reserved to the early comers. Oppressing those who are closest to you, is more of an agony to the soul than the impact of an Indian sword. “And unto thee have we revealed the Scripture with the truth, confirming whatever scripture was before it, and a watcher over it. So judge between them by that which Allah hath revealed, and follow not their desires away from the truth which has come unto thee. For each we have appointed a divine law and a traced-out way. Had Allah willed, He could have made you one community. But that He may try you by that which he has given you [He has made you as you are]. So vie with one another in good works. Unto Allah, you will all return. He will then inform you of that wherein you differ.” Hamas is one of the links in the Chain of Jihad in the confrontation with the Zionist invasion. It links up with the setting out of the Martyr Izz a-din al-Qassam and his brothers in the Muslim Brotherhood who fought the Holy War in 1936; it further relates to another link of the Palestinian Jihad and the Jihad and efforts of the Muslim Brothers during the 1948 War, and to the Jihad operations of the Muslim Brothers in 1968 and thereafter. But even if the links have become distant from each other, and even if the obstacles erected by those who revolve in the Zionist orbit, aiming at obstructing the road before the Jihad fighters, have rendered the pursuance of Jihad impossible; nevertheless, the Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah’s promise whatever time it might take. The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him! This will not apply to the Gharqad, which is a Jewish tree (cited by Bukhari and Muslim).

From an Iranian admirer, Amil Imani (hat tip: JW):

Israel, your people, as well as people of good will, are celebrating your sixtieth birthday. We, the children of Cyrus the Great, also would like to offer our heartfelt best wishes to you on this occasion. Yet, this, in fact, is your rebirth. Your birth occurred some 4,000 years ago.

Regrettably, your journey from your early beginning to the present has been fraught with great suffering. It is a tribute to the indomitable spirit of your people that they persisted in their valiant struggle to re-gather again in the land of their birth.

A noble and just Persian king, Cyrus the Great, rescued your people from captivity in a foreign land and empowered them to return home and build their sacred temple. By his action of freeing an entire people from captivity and restoring their rightful dignity, Cyrus the Great, the author of the first code of Human Rights, cemented a bond of friendship between the Jews and the Persians. It was the Just King’s way of setting the world on a course of freedom, equality, and justice for all people, irrespective of any and all considerations....

We appreciate the fact that you, Israel, have welcomed the Iranian Jews who could no longer tolerate the rule of the oppressive venomous mullahs. These mullahs are indeed traitors to the lofty long-standing tradition and values championed by Cyrus the Great and revered by Persians throughout the ages.

We applaud you for affording millions of Israeli Arabs opportunities denied to them in many other lands.

Your fair treatment of the Baha’is, Israel, is a further testimony to your ability and willingness to live in harmony with any and all people. In Iran, the birthplace of the Baha’i faith, Baha’is are ruthlessly subjected to a form of gradual genocide by the savage mullahs. Some Baha’is are executed for their faith, Baha’i children are denied university studies, Baha’i holy places destroyed and even their cemeteries are bulldozed, just to cite a few examples. You, Israel, by contrast, have provided the Baha’is freedom to care for their holy places which were established in the Holy Land during the 19th century, long before your rebirth.

Your perennial prayer, “Next Year in Jerusalem” has finally been answered. We also pray that you succeed in taking the steps necessary for making the New Jerusalem a place of hope and lasting safety for your people as well as people of all religions and those with no religion at all.

Happy Sixtieth Birthday, Israel.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Controversial Turkish Islamic author Adnan Oktar was sentenced to three years in prison on Friday for creating an illegal organization for personal gain, state-run Anatolian news agency said.

A spokeswoman for his Science Research Foundation (BAV) confirmed to Reuters that Oktar had been sentenced but said the judge was influenced by political and religious pressure groups.

Oktar had been tried with 17 other defendants in an Istanbul court. The verdict and sentence came after a previous trial that began in 2000 after Oktar, along with 50 members of his foundation, was arrested in 1999.

In that court case, Oktar had been charged with using threats for personal benefit and creating an organization with the intent to commit a crime. The charges were dropped but another court picked them up resulting in the latest case.

Oktar planned to appeal the sentence, a BAV spokeswoman said. No further details were immediately available.

Oktar, born in 1956, is the driving force behind a richly funded movement based in Turkey that champions creationism, the belief that God literally created the world in six days as told in the Bible and the Koran.

Istanbul-based Oktar, who writes under the pen name Harun Yahya, has created waves in the past few years by sending out thousands of unsolicited texts advocating Islamic creationism to schools in several European countries.

TENSIONS HIGH

The court decision comes at a time when political tensions in officially secular but predominantly Muslim Turkey are high as the ruling AK Party faces a court case that seeks its closure for alleged Islamist activities, a claim the party denies.

"Islam, this absurd theology of an immoral Bedouin, is a rotting corpse which poisons our lives." - Mustafa Kemal Ataturk  (hat tip: a comment at Brussels Journal)

WND has another good report on what is in the approved textbooks in U.S. schools concerning Islam.

..."In a passage meant to explain jihad, they encountered this: 'Muslims should fulfill jihad with the heart, tongue, and hand. Muslims use the heart in their struggle to resist evil. The tongue may convince others to take up worthy causes, such as funding medical research. Hands may perform good works and correct wrongs,'" the new report said.

The ATC report noted a complicating factor is a ban in California, to whose standards most textbook publishers align their work, on "adverse reflection" on religion in school.

"Whatever 'adverse reflection' is, such a mandate may be conceptually at odds with historical and geopolitical actuality," the study said.

"None of this is accidental. Islamic organizations, willing to [provide] misinformation, are active in curriculum politics. These activists are eager to expunge any critical thought about Islam from textbook and all public discourse. They are succeeding, assisted by partisan scholars and associations… It is alarming that so many individuals with the power to shape the curriculum are willfully blind to or openly sympathetic to these efforts," the report said.

Regarding the TCI book, the report said its lessons contain "stilted language that seem scripted or borrowed from devotional, not historical, material." Also, the "Medieval to Early Modern Times" book features a two-page prayer to Allah "the Merciful."

"Among the textbooks examined, the editorial caution that marks coverage of Christian and Jewish beliefs vanishes in presenting Islam's foundations. With materials laden with angels, revelations, miracles, prayers, and sacred exclamations; the story of the Zamzam well; and the titles 'Messenger of God' and 'Prophet of Islam' the seventh-grade textbooks cross the line into something other than history, that is, scripture or myth."

Among the lessons public school students must learn from the various books:

• Muhammad "taught equality"
  
  
• Fasting reminds Muslims of people who struggle to get enough food
  
  
• Muhammad told his followers to make sure guests never left a table hungry
  
  
• Arab traditions include being kind to strangers and helping needy

"These effusive formulations stop just short of invention and raise questions about the sources of information," the report said.

The books' praises of Islam continues, the report said. "TCI devotes 13 text-heavy pages to textiles, calligraphy, design, books, city building, architecture, mathematics, medicine, polo, and chess, some of it spun like cotton candy," the report said.

For example, the book reports: "Singing was an essential part of Muslim Spain's musical culture. … Although this music is lost today, it undoubtedly influenced later musical forms in Europe and North Africa."

"Undoubtedly, the TCI volume declares. Yet the book acknowledges the music is lost and the claims are speculative. Empty text dilates Islamic achievements," the report said.

Glossing over the actual physical conquering of some peoples, the "World History: Medieval and Early Modern Times" says people were converted to Islam because they were "attracted by Islam's message of equality and hope for salvation," the report said.

Another book teaches: "Q: How did the caliphs who expanded the Muslim Empire treat those they conquered? A: They treated them with tolerance."

"At a time when intolerance marks Islamic cultures worldwide and multiculturalism is a ruling idea in U.S. schools, these 'wonderland-of-tolerance' tropes constitute a major content distortion," the report said.

The books teach the Crusades were "religious wars launched against Muslims by European Christians."

"When … Muslims groups attack Christian peoples, kill them, and take their lands, the process is referred to as 'building' an empire. Christian attempts to restore those lands are labeled as 'violent attacks' or 'massacres,'" the report said.

Some of the books are rife with other errors. In the TCI book, it says the Crusaders wore red crosses. "No. Only Templars did," said the report.

"While Christian belligerence is magnified, Islamic inequality, subjugation, and enslavement get the airbrush," said the report, which also found inaccuracies in teaching about sharia religious law, women's rights and terrorism, especially the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, which killed nearly 3,000.

"The Modern World" says, "On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, teams of terrorists hijacked four airplanes on the East Coast. Passengers challenged the hijackers on one flight, which they crashed on the way to its target. But one plane plunged into the Pentagon in Virginia, and two others slammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York…"

"The flatness and brevity of this passage are dismaying. In terms of content, so much is left unanswered. Who were the teams of terrorists and what did they want to do? What were their political ends? Since 'The Modern World' avoids any hint of the connection between this unnamed terrorism and jihad, why September 11 happened is hard to understand," the report said.

In this week's Spectator, Byron Rogers reviews Sarah Anderson's memoirs:

I must declare an interest at the outset. Thirty or so years ago I went out, or walked out (or whatever the phrase is), with the author, until, that is, the night when, for reasons I have never been able to establish, she hit me over the head with a stainless-steel electric kettle. You may not have read a book review starting quite like that.

No, I can't say I have.

At the time all she said was, ‘You were being even more irritating than usual’, so, reading her memoir, I turned nervously to the chapter entitled ‘Men, Love and Sex’ but found no reference to me or the kettle. As a friend said of his time with an eminent woman writer, ‘Chap before me, he got a short story. I didn’t even get a sonnet.’ Reading Halfway to Venus, an inspired title, I find I now sympathise with the way he said it, part miffed, part relieved.

On reflection, I think the kettling may have had something to do with the fact that I had come on a fascinating little footnote in Macaulay about her ancestors, the Catholic Earls of Perth, who, in their attempts to run Scotland as a police state for James II, in a moment of genius introduced the thumbscrew into the country. This I gleefully passed on, and passed out.

As I am past the age of storming out, I am certainly past the age of hitting irritating men with kettles. I haven't hit anyone since I was ten, and besides, my kettle is plastic and wouldn't hurt a fly. That said, I could do some serious damage with my Breville sandwich toaster. I may as well find a use for it.

The LATimes doesn't see Hezbollah's offensive in Lebanon as part of a permanent coup or power grab there, but as part of a larger offensive by Iran against Israel and the U.S. It also seems to be about putting the Sunnis in their place in Lebanon.

...few observers expect Hezbollah to try to take over Lebanon or even continue to police West Beirut, especially areas long dominated by its political rivals. The group's fighters avoided storming government buildings such as the Grand Serail, the gracious Ottoman-era palace that houses the prime minister.

Instead, the offensive was an "object lesson" meant to demonstrate the group's ability to quickly subdue its domestic rivals without exposing its arsenal of heavy weapons meant to target Israel in a potential war, said Boston University's Augustus Richard Norton, author of "Hezbollah: A Short History."

The conflict was triggered Tuesday when the government challenged Hezbollah's de facto autonomy by outlawing its strategic fiber-optic communications network. Hezbollah fighters responded by pushing into the heart of the capital from strongholds in south Beirut and southern Lebanon, an escalation in the political crisis that seemed to catch the Siniora administration by surprise.

Some of the government's major political backers appealed Friday night to the international community, the United Nations and other Arab countries for support. The crisis prompted calls for an emergency meeting Sunday among leaders of the Beirut government's Arab allies.


'Changing the equation'

"It's definitely changing the equation," said Oussama Safa, director of the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies, a think tank. "Hezbollah is reshuffling the cards and redrawing the balance of power."

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah has long vowed that the group would not turn its considerable arsenal of weapons on fellow Lebanese, though it has for at least a year been allowing proxy groups to do just that.

But he said he had no choice this time. He described the Cabinet decision to declare the group's private telecommunications network illegal a "declaration of war." He said it put the government in the camp of Israel, which Hezbollah fought to a standstill in a 2006 war that left more than 1,000 dead. Rather than wait for the government to try to enforce its decision, Hezbollah targeted the political powers behind it.

Government supporters called the move a coup d'etat meant to strangle Lebanon and bend it to Hezbollah's will.

"What happened in Beirut and its surroundings and in its international airport is an armed coup that was implemented by Hezbollah," said Samir Geagea, leader of the pro-Western branch of the Maronite Christian community.

For now, Hezbollah's offensive achieved one significant military goal: crushing the budding forces of Hariri's Sunni Future movement, a constellation of poorly trained and lightly equipped government supporters organized around neighborhood offices and private security companies run by retired army officers.

It also exposed the government's weak hand. Hezbollah was able to quickly take over the capital, its commanders rolling into town in late-model Chevrolet Suburbans -- and with the country's armed forces at times coordinating rather than impeding the militia's progress. Future movement fighters fled for their lives...

Update from Reuters:

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Hezbollah fighters began withdrawing from Beirut on Saturday after the Lebanese army overturned government measures against the group, witnesses said.

They said gunmen, who had taken over the capital after routing pro-government supporters on Friday, were being driven out of Beirut's seaside front and other areas. Lebanese soldiers were seen patrolling the streets evacuated by Hezbollah and its allies