Recent reports from Beirut describe a terrified country; the Lebanese are fright-ened about the prospect of a slide toward civil war. Several reports speculate that Beirut residents are arming themselves in anticipation of a surge in violence between the two main political powers in Lebanon today: Hezbollah and its allies on the one hand, and Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri and his supporters on the other. The investigation of the in 2005 assassi-nation of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri , the father of the current PM, could turn out to be the spark that sets off the tinderbox. A Lebanon-based website has in recent days posted an interview with an arms dealer who lives in Beirut and reports that there has been a rise in the sale of light firearms. He says, “the sales have spiked as a result of a clash in a Beirut neighborhood, Burj Abu Haidar, between an extremist pro-Syria Sunni group and Hezbollah militants; four people were killed in the skirmish (one was a Hezbollah commander, who died at the start of the fighting).” In the meantime, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's

visit to Lebanon this week has opponents of Hezbollah worried. The visit, perceived as a blunt statement about Iran's influence over Lebanon, has stirred concerns over how incendiary Ahmadinejad might be when he visits the southern part of the country and tours sites near Israel's border. According to Beirut residents, the Hariri assassination casts a long, ominous shadow over daily life in Lebanon's capital, and has come in recent weeks to dominate public discussions. The release of the next report on the Hariri assassination, prepared by a special international prosecutor, has been deferred, by probably another two months at least. Lebanon is rife with speculation that the report will lead to indictments against several top Hezbollah figures; many believe that the prosecutor has post-poned the document's release as a way of getting more time to build an irrefutable case against these figures. As tensions in the country rise, well-placed Lebanese sources describe the country's mood as "gloomy." Though its scope is difficult to determine, the sources point to a trend that the country has already seen in its war-torn past: Lebanese

residents are reportedly leaving the country. Should the international criminal tribunal hearing the Hariri case cite the names of those implicated in the assassination, it is doubtful that the Lebanese government will arrest them. However, under international law, the UN court is authorized to try defend-ants in absentia, and in that case, court proceedings against the accused would be broadcast daily on Lebanese television, at least those that aren't controlled by Syria or Hezbollah. Such trials are likely to exert a tremendous influence over public opinion. Worried about the disclosure of its appar-ent involvement in the killing, Hezbollah will take steps to undermine any such trial process. At this stage, Hezbollah in-sists that the special prosecutor is relying on false testimony, and it is also trying to put an end to Lebanon's funding of the court inves-tigation (it is underwriting 49 percent of the costs). Ten government ministers back Hezbollah's efforts to cut off the money supply; all it needs to bring an end to the funding is the support of one more minister. By Edgar Tenanbaum | Staff Writer

THE LOS ANGELES

Issue No. 1—7 Thursday, October 14, 2010

A MULTIWAVE PUBLICATION

COMPLIMENTARY

PrOfESSiONAL ExPrESS

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates met his Chinese counterpart, Liang Guanglie, in Vietnam on Monday for the first time since the two militaries suspended talks with each other last winter, calling for the two countries to prevent "mistrust, miscalculations and mistakes." His message seemed directed mainly at officers like Lt. Cmdr. Tony Cao of the Chi-nese Navy. Days before Mr. Gates arrived in Asia, Commander Cao was aboard a frigate in the Yellow Sea, conducting China's first war games with the Australian Navy, exer-cises to which, he noted pointedly, the Americans were not invited. Nor are they likely to be, he told Australian journalists in slightly bent English, until "the United States stops selling the weapons to Taiwan and stopping spying us with the air or the sur-face." The Pentagon is worried that its increas-ingly tense relationship with the Chinese

military owes itself in part to the rising lead-ers of Commander Cao's generation, who, much more than the country's military el-ders, view the United States as the ene-my. Older Chinese officers remember a time, before the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 set relations back, when American and Chinese forces made common cause against the Soviet Union. The younger officers have known only an anti-American ideology, which casts the United States as bent on thwarting China's rise. "All militaries need a straw man, a per-ceived enemy, for solidarity," said Huang Jing, a scholar of China's military and lead-ership at the National University of Singa-pore. "And as a young officer or soldier, you always take the strongest of straw men to maximize the effect. Chinese military men, from the soldiers and platoon captains all the way up to the army commanders, were

always taught that America would be their enemy." The stakes have increased as China's armed forces, once a fairly ragtag group, have become more capable and have taken on bigger tasks. The navy, the centerpiece of China's military expansion, has added dozens of surface ships and submarines, and is widely reported to be building its first aircraft carrier. Last month's Yellow Sea maneuvers with the Australian Navy are but the most recent in a series of Chinese military excursions to places as diverse as New Zealand, Britain and Spain. China is also reported to be building an antiship ballistic missile base in southern China's Guangdong Province, with missiles capable of reaching the Philippines and Vietnam. The base is regarded as an effort to enforce China's territorial claims to vast areas of the South China Sea claimed by other nations, and to confront American aircraft carriers that now

patrol the area unmolested. Even improved Chinese forces do not have capacity or, analysts say, the intention, to fight a more able United States military. But their increasing range and ability, and the certainty that they will only become stronger, have prompted China to assert itself regionally and challenge American dominance in the Pacific. That makes it crucial to help lower-level Chinese officers become more familiar with the Americans, experts say, before a chance encounter blossoms into a crisis. "The P.L.A. combines an odd combination of deep admiration for the U.S. armed forces as a military, but equally harbors a deep suspicion of U.S. military deployments and intentions towards China," David Sham-baugh, a leading expert on the Chinese military at George Washington University, said in an e-mail exchange, referring to the People's Liberation Army. "Unfortunately, the two militaries are locked in a classic security dilemma, where-by each side's supposedly defensive measures are taken as aggressive action by the other, triggering similar countermeas-ures in an inexorable cycle," he wrote. "This is very dangerous, and unnecessary." From the Chinese military's view, this year has offered ample evidence of American ill will. The Chinese effectively suspended official military relations early this year after President Obama met with the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan religious leader, and approved a $6.7 billion arms sale to Tai-wan, which China regards as its territory. Since then, the Chinese military has bristled as the State Department has offered to mediate disputes between China and its neighbors over ownership of Pacific islands and valuable seabed mineral rights. And when the American Navy conducted war games with South Korea last month in the Yellow Sea, less than 400 miles from Bei-jing, younger Chinese officers detected an encroaching threat. The United States "is engaging in an increasingly tight encirclement of China and constantly challenging China's core inter-ests," Rear Adm. Yang Yi, former head of strategic studies at the Chinese Army's National Defense University, wrote in August in the People's Liberation Army Daily, the military newspaper. "Washington will inevita-bly pay a costly price for its muddled deci-sion." In truth, little in the American actions is new. Mr. Obama's predecessors also hosted the Dalai Lama. American arms sales to Taiwan were mandated by Congress in 1979, and have occurred regularly since then. American warships regularly ply the waters off China's coast and practice with South Korean ships. But Chinese military leaders seem less inclined to tolerate such old practices now that they have the re-sources and the confidence to say no. "Why do you sell arms to Taiwan? We don't sell arms to Hawaii," said Col. Liu Mingfu, a China National Defense University professor and author of "The China Dream," a nationalistic call to succeed the United

States as the world's leading power. That official military relations are resum-ing despite the sharp language from Chi-nese Army officials is most likely a function of international diplomacy. President Hu Jintao is scheduled to visit Washington soon, and American experts had predicted that China would resume military ties as part of an effort to smooth over rough spots before the state visit. Some experts see increased contact as critical. A leading Chinese expert on interna-tional security, Zhu Feng of Peking Universi-ty, says that the Chinese military's hostility toward the United States is not new, just more open. And that, he says, is not only the result of China's new assertiveness, but its military's inexperience on the world stage. "Chinese officers' international exposure remains very limited," Mr. Zhu said. "Over time, things will improve very, very signifi-cantly. Unfortunately, right now they are less skillful." Greater international exposure is precise-ly what American officials would like to see. Americans hope renewed cooperation will lead to more exchanges of young officers and joint exercises. "It's time for both militaries to reconsider their tactics and strategy to boost their friendship," Mr. Zhu said. "The P.L.A. is increasing its exposure internationally. So what sort of new rule of law can we figure out to fit the P.L.A. to such new exposure? It's a challenge not just for China, but also for the U.S." Email us: opinion@laprofessionalexpress.com

YOUNG CHINESE MILITARY OFFICERS VIEW USA AS THE ENEMY

There is an anesthetic of familiarity, a sedative of ordinariness which dulls the senses and hides the wonder of exist-ence. For those of us not gifted in poetry, it is at least worthwhile from time to time making an effort to shake off the anesthet-ic. What is the best way of countering the sluggish habituation brought about by our gradual crawl from babyhood? We can’t actually fly to another planet. But we can recapture that sense of having just tum-bled out to life on a new world, by look-ing at our own world in unfamiliar ways. It’s tempting to use an easy example like a rose or a butterfly, but let’s go straight for the alien deep end. I remember attending a lecture, years ago, by a biologist working on octopuses, and their relatives the squids and cuttlefish. He began by explaining his fascination with these animals. “You see,” he said, “they are the Martians.” Have you ever watched a squid change color? Television images are sometimes dis-played on giant LED (Light Emitting Diode) hoardings. Instead of a fluorescent screen with an electron beam scanning side-to-side over it, the LED screen is a large array of tiny glowing lights, independently control-lable. The lights are individually brightened or dimmed so that, from a distance, the whole matrix shimmers with moving pic-tures. The skin of a squid behaves like an LED screen. Instead of lights the skin is packed with thousands of tiny bags filled with ink. Each of these ink bags has minia-ture private muscles to squeeze it. With a puppet string leading to each one of these separate muscles, the squid’s nervous system can control the shape, and hence the visibility, of each ink sac. In theory, if you wiretapped the nerves leading to the separate ink pixels and stimulated them electrically via a computer, you could play out Charlie Chaplin movies on the squid’s skin. The

squid doesn’t do that, but its brain does control the wires with precision and speed, and the skinflicks that it shows are spectac-ular. Waves of color chase across the surface like clouds in a speeded-up film; ripples and eddies race over the living screen. The animal signals its changing emotions in quick time: dark brown one

second, blanching ghostly white the next, rapidly modulating interwoven patterns of stipples and stripes. When it comes to changing color, chameleons are amateurs at the game. The American neurobiologist William Calvin is one of those thinking hard today about what thinking itself really is. He emphasizes, as others have done before, the idea that thoughts do not reside in particular places in the brain but are shifting patterns of activity over its sur-face, units recruiting neighboring units into populations becoming the same thought, competing in Darwinian fash-ion with rival populations thinking alter-native thoughts. We don’t see these shifting patterns, but presumably we would if neurons lit up when active. The cortex of the brain, I realize, might look rather like a squid’s body surface. Does a squid think with its skin? When a squid suddenly changes its color pattern we suppose it to be a manifestation of mood change, for signaling to another squid. A shift in color announces that the squid has switched from an aggressive mood, say, to a fearful one. It is natural to presume that the change in mood took place in the brain, and caused the change in color as a visible manifestation of internal thoughts, rendered external for purposes of communication. The fancy I am adding is that the squid’s thoughts themselves may reside nowhere but in the skin. If squids think with their skins they are even more ‘Martian’ than my colleague realized. Even if that is too far-fetched a speculation (it is), the spectacle of their rippling color changes is quite alien enough to jolt us out of our anesthetic of familiarity. -Excerpt from Unweaving the Rainbow, by Dr. Richard Dawkins. Available for pur-chase online at Amazon.com

CIVIL WAR IN LEBANON?

THE ANESTHETIC OF FAMILIARITY

LEBANESE CITIZENS ARM THEMSELVES IN PREPARATION!

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state, from which the vast majority have never stirred.”

Lebanese soldiers, above, with armored personnel carriers confronting Hezbollah in Beirut.

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THE LOS ANGELES

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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

I hope you’re ready to reevaluate your tentative plans because the roster of musicians in L.A. this week is impressive!

TONIGHT On the 14th, sensational and eclectically catchy Swe-dish all-stars Miike Snow invade Club Nokia with Mark Ronson and The Business International and MNDR opening. Not too far away, another international sensa-tion, M.I.A. performs with Rye Rye at the Mayan Thea-tre. Outside of the downtown area – Eastern Confer-ence Champions join Shadow Shadow Shade at Echo-plex and Legendary Shack Shakers shake down Eastsiders at Spaceland. The Born To Run tour featur-ing K-Os, Shad and Astronautilus at El Rey Theatre, John West at The Troubadour and J-Boogie at Zanzibar represent three good options for west of downtown entertainment.

FRIDAY Friday things get out of control. LCD Soundsystem, Hot Chip and Sleigh Bells, Grum and Acid Girls at Ava-lon, Fourtet and Jon Hopkins at The Music Box followed by Paul Oakenfold and Chuckie at The Music Box all have Hollywood oozing for fun (and aching for parking – cabs recommended). Closer to downtown, Miike Snow hits L.A. for night two with Mark Ronson and the Busi-ness International, but this time at The Wiltern. The legendary Kruder & Dorfmeister take over duties at Club Nokia. For less discovered, but nonetheless spec-tacular electronic fusion dance music – check out Tilt’s 3 Year Anniversary Party with Jamaica, Nightwaves, French Horn Rebellion, Parallels and more at Echoplex. And, last but not least, LTJ Bukem and Deco are at House of Blues. Aside from the indie electro dance invasion, Gamble House opens for Nicole Atkins who is performing at Echo just a few weeks after her opening performances with The Black Keys at Hollywood Palla-dium. The Aggrolites bring their quintessential reggae to The Roxy with support from Mandorico.

SATURDAY Saturday the award for best live music option goes to Cypress Hill’s Smokeout at the NOS Events Center. The line-up features Deadmau5, Erykah Badu, Manu Chao, Paul Oakenfold, Incubus, Slightly Stoopid, At-mosphere, Nas & Damian Marley, Collie Buddz, Chuck-ie, Basement Jaxx, Dan Black, Reza, MGMT and more. In addition to the music, the event also features a mov-ie area with The Big Lebowsky, Pulp Fiction, Friday and Dazed and Confused and a rumored “patients” smoking lounge. If you’re not continuing Friday’s dance party at the Smokeout, Sander Kleinenberg gets loose at The Music Box while Paul Oakenfold, Egil and EC Twins make ex-ravers sweat at Hollywood Palladium. For slowed down, mellower vibes – day one of DubQuake at Echo & Echoplex could be a good choice. Kenan Bell with his band at Bootleg Theater wouldn’t be a bad choice either.

SUNDAY Sunday, Jonsi performs with Mountain Man at The Wiltern (with rumors that Jonsi will also appear at Ori-gami Vinyl). Close to OV, DubQuake continues into day two at Echo and Echoplex with The Lions, featuring members of Orgone, Peanut Butter Wolf, The Heptones and many others. On the opposite side of town, DJ ?uestlove (of The Roots) hits the booth at The Central SAPC in Santa Monica with support from The Beatards. Die Antwoord at The Music Box and Holy Fuck and Indian Jewelry at Echoplex also deserve mention.

NEXT WEEK Although the start of next week is not nearly as intense as the weekend, plenty of great music options exist for post-work respite including current indie-rock with an Americana and folky element all-stars, Mumford & Sons with King Charles and Mt. Desolation at Hollywood Palladium on Monday night. Tuesday, The Muddy Reds and The Diamond Light and Andy Grammer at The Roxy are both excellent choices.

Visit www.supergoodmusic.com for more up to date information, including a full list of weekly recommendations for Los Angeles top concert venues and links to great music.

TIME TO REEVALUATE YOUR WEEKEND PLANS! By Brandon Dorsky, Esq. Entertainment Columnist

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College Football

Issue No. 1—7 Thursday, October 14th, 2010 COMPLIMENTARY

Some may recall Aldi Rizal, the now 30-month old Indonesian toddler who rose to the world spotlight when Britain’s Telegraph TV showed video of him smoking cigarettes on his toy truck and reported that he smoked approximately 40 cigarettes a day.

The world soon realized the major problem Indone-sia has with smoking. One third of the 230 million Indonesians and more than 60% of the male popula-tion smoke. Very few people there are informed about the risks of smoking and it is not totally uncommon for the habit to be picked up during childhood. The gov-ernment promised to take lead the front on the issue, and assured the Professional Express that they seek strong and effective laws to curb poor smoking habits.

Now, more than three months after Rizal’s story first surfaced, USA Today reports that psychologist Seto Mulyadi has helped Rizal kick the habit. Prior to commencing rehabilitation, state health officials con-ducted a full physical on the boy finding that he began experiencing adverse heart conditions, either as a result of smoking or obesity.

During rehab, Dr. Mulyadi pulled Rizal from the village and engaged him in distracting activities such as drawing, playing and painting. The boy has alleg-edly totally kicked the habit and no longer asks for cigarettes. No word yet on whether or when Rizal and L.A.’s own Lindsay Lohan will get together.

By James Clark Human Interest Columnist

(Editorial translated from Chinese to English) Almost all evil cults control their followers or resist external pressure through violence. Howev-er, few have resorted to the extent the Chinese Communist Party has to violent means without compunc-tion. Even the total number of deaths caused by all other evil cults across the world cannot com-pare to the number of people killed by the CCP. The CCP cult sees humanity as merely a means to realize its goal; killing is just anoth-er means. Thus, the CCP has no reservations or scruples in perse-cuting people. Anyone, including supporters, members and leaders of the CCP, can become a target of its persecution. The CCP fostered the Cambodi-an Khmer Rouge, a typical case of the Communist Party’s brutality and disregard for life. Inspired and guided by Mao Zedong’s teaching, during its reign of three years and eight months, the Pol Pot-led Cam-bodian Communist Party slaugh-

tered two million people—about one-fourth of this small country’s entire population—in order to “eliminate the system of private ownership.” Out of the total number of deaths, more than 200,000 were of Chinese ethnicity. To commemorate the crimes committed by the Communist Party and memorialize the victims, Cam-bodia set up a museum for docu-menting and exhibiting the atroci-ties of the Khmer Rouge. The museum is in a former Khmer Rouge prison. Originally a high school, the building was trans-formed by Pol Pot to the S-21 Prison, which was used specifically for dealing with prisoners of con-science. Many intellectuals were detained there and tortured to death. Displayed along with the prison buildings and various torture instruments are also the black and white photos of the victims before they were put to death. There are many horrible tortures document-ed: throats cut, brains drilled, in-fants thrown to the ground and

killed, etc. All these torture meth-ods were reportedly taught by the “experts and technical profession-als” that the CCP dispatched in support of the Khmer Rouge. The CCP even trained the photogra-phers, who specialized in taking pictures, whether for documenta-tion or entertainment, of the prison-ers before they were executed. Precisely in this S-21 Prison a head-drilling machine was devised to extract the human brains for making nutritious meals for the leaders of the Cambodian Com-munist Party. The prisoners of conscience were tied to a chair in front of the head-drilling machine. The victim would be extremely terrified, as a rapidly turning drill bit punctured the head from behind and quickly and effectively extract-ed the brains before the victim died. Excerpt from The Nine Commen-taries on the Communist Party. Read more a t on l ine at www.quitccp.org

MACHINES USED TO EXTRACT AND EAT HUMAN BRAINS!

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ACROSS THE COUNTRY The 7th week of the college football season is in the books. It was a weekend of major upheaval in the rankings as several schools fell from the ranks of the unbeaten. There was not a bigger upset than the “ole ball coach” and his South Carolina Gamecocks shocking the previously #1 ranked Crimson Tide 35-21, ending their 19-game winning streak. Ohio State trounced Indiana 38-10 to stay unbeaten and move up into the #1 slot in the country. LSU pulled off a miraculous fake field goal to stun the Florida Gators 33-29 and remained unbeaten at 6-0. Michigan State went into Ann Arbor and tormented the Wolverines’ superstar Denard Robinson with three turnovers in route to a 34-17 victory. With Alabama’s loss, Boise State moves up to #3 after hammering Toledo 57-14 and are in position to get to the big dance with a let down by the Buckeyes or Ore-gon. Some big games this weekend: Texas at #5 Nebraska, #1 Ohio State at #18 Wisconsin, and #12 Arkansas at #7 Auburn.

PAC-10 The PAC-10 had some excitement as well last Saturday with Oregon State pulling off the upset of #9 ranked Arizona in Tucson 29-27. Arizona State beat the Huskies for the seventh time in a row 24-14 in Seattle and the # 2 Oregon Ducks prevailed over an improved Washington State 42-23 in Pullman. UCLA went up to Berkeley and was mugged by their older brothers, the Cal Bears, 35-7, getting hammered 28-0 in the first

half and finishing with only 144 total yards in the game. The Trojans went up to Stanford as 10-point dogs and lost a dogfight 37-35 on a last second kick for the 2nd week in a row. The con-ference continues to reveal parity and the possi-bility of any team winning on any given week.

By Shane Foley