Lebanon's history since its creation in 1922 by France reads like a "Who's Who" of "Who Did What to Who and When." Following the fall of the Ottoman Empire after WWI, the League of Nations mandated direct control of the five provinces that make up today's Lebanon to France, while giving it a lesser degree of control over what is known today as Syria. Given the right to manage the distribution of this entire region, France, driven by a desire to maximize the area under its direct control, created a border that was easily defensible; to keep an Arab Syria held in by tight borders, France chose to include a mountainous area more culturally akin to, influenced by, and historically belonging to the province of Damascus in their newly created state of Lebanon. Being mostly Muslim or Druze, this addition drastically changed Lebanese demographics by reducing the previous Christian Maronite majority to a little over 50 percent of the entire population, and tremendously increased the Muslim population. Providing for a Christian president with veto power over legislation drawn up by the parliament, a Sunni prime minister and a Shiite speaker of the house, the French-designed Lebanese constitution balanced power among the different religious groups as per a census taken in 1932, yet ensured Christian political dominance over the Muslim population.

Peacefully gaining independence, Lebanon saw French troops withdraw in 1946. More than any other Arab state, Lebanon received hoards of Palestinian refugees after the Arab/Israeli wars of 1948 and 1967, and then again in the early '70s, when Jordan fought off an attempt to overthrow its monarchy by Palestinian militant groups, most notably Yasar Arafat's PLO, forcing them into Lebanon. A deal brokered by Egypt with Lebanon in 1969 saw the PLO get access routes to northern Israel and self rule over Palestinian refugee camps in exchange for PLO recognition of Lebanese sovereignty. Upset by the government's lack of authority over the camps from which the PLO increased attacks into Israel, Christian Maronites responded by setting up their own paramilitary groups.

Feeling they had become the majority population in Lebanon by 1960, frustrated Muslims were unable to obtain proper representation in the government, due to the Christian minority's control of parliament. Frustration over representation issues and the problems they created between the different religious groups sandwiched by Israel and Syria and their related sovereignty claims as well as the presence of the PLO's autonomous state-within-a-state saw Lebanon erupt into civil war in 1975. Before its end, 15 years later, almost every group involved­-Christian, Shiite, Sunni, Druze, non-religious militias and Palestinians­-had sided with and fought against the other. Sectarian violence, civilian massacres, massive destruction, and both Syrian and Israeli intervention and occupation left an estimated 100,000 dead and another 100,000 handicapped.

Fast forward.

AP Report, July 12, 2006: "Hezbollah kidnaps two Israeli soldiers in cross-border raid. Israel responds by sending in tanks and by bombing bridges and roads in south Lebanon to try to prevent the hostages from being taken north." What the media is not calling a war has begun. Days before, while cleaning my office here in the peaceful, idylic Hudson Valley, I came across an envelope given to me by Steve Gorn, an Accord-based, internationally acclaimed bansuri flute and Indian classical music master. Inside were tapes of an interview with Eqbal Ahmad by Barsamian, the founder and director of Alternative Radio, the independent award-winning weekly series based in Boulder, Colorado.

Named one of its "Top Ten Media Heroes" by The Institute for Alternative Journalism and the winner of the winner of the ACLU's Upton Sinclair Award for independent journalism and of a Democracy Media Award, Barsamian, a radio producer, journalist, author, and lecturer on US foreign policy, the media, propaganda, and corporate power in the US, Canada, Brazil, India and Europe, has been working in radio since 1978. His interviews and articles appear regularly in the Progressive and Z Magazine, and his latest books are Imperial Ambitions with Noam Chomsky and Speaking of Empire & Resistance with Tariq Ali. Earlier books include Propaganda and the Public Mind: Conversations with Noam Chomsky; The Decline and Fall of Public Broadcastng; and, of course, the transcriptions of his interview, "Eqbal Ahmad: Confronting Empire."

Listening to the tapes, I longed to speak with Eqbal. His words were at once eloquent, clear, and concise as far as explaining and putting forth fresh and unique ideas as to how to go about solving the problems of our modern world. Learning he had died in 1999, I decided to interview Barsamian to revive Eqbal's voice and learn more about the man. And then what is not being called a war broke out.