Egyptians cast ballots in post-Mubarak polls - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

One more step forward in Egypt, as Egyptians cast ballots but the west has yet to acknowledge that Lebanon is ahead regarding diversity, and as a result, Islamists do not have a significant block in the Lebanese parliament. Lebanon is ahead democracy-wise, because its largest 2 parliamentary blocks sgned an agreement to separate religion from state. This secures equality in politics, and differentiates Lebanon from neighboring countries where the word "minority" is taboo. This also clashes with corrupt political profiteers that fed on sectarian fears, and lately fake religious divides in Lebanon.
These 2 blocks include the patriotic party, the advocate of the first civil law to be proposed in the middle east. It secures equal rights fro citizens of all backgrounds, and both genders. The other inculded block is Hezbollah. This is one of the alienated Lebanese groups that the patriotic party brought back into the Lebanese democracy, by acknowledging their reasons to dissent. They emerged from a rural south treated like a second class area since the 40's, by a series of regressive post-colonial Lebanese governments. The south was also subjected to racism form Israel. This finally provoked the emergence of Hezbollah in 1980's. Not accepting the cownboy idea of "you're with us of I shoot you", the patriotic party created memorandum of understandings with several Lebanese factions, where they acknowledge the social inequities that provoked them, and agree that a civil law would solve these inequities.

From 1989 to 2004 it was also the only opposition to the past Syrian occupation, to be joined in 2005, at the 11th hour by the so-called pro-west block in Lebanon, made of leaders that openly pledge allegiance to the Saudi monarchy. This pro-Saudi block, along with the US administration, that seems more eager to switch colonizers, than end the colonization of Lebanon by foreign countries. The US administration has definitely approved of that, switching overlords instead of become sovereign, and has vilified the nationalist party in Lebanon, the one that made Lebanon unavailable for a civil war by finding common ground among Lebanese factions.