I was talking to a Belgian free-lance journalist at a bar this weekend. I asked him how work is. In general, Beirut is a pretty flooded market for foreign free-lance writers. He said it's slow, but he's sure things will pick up in a couple months.
February 14-Hariri trial starts in the Hague
February-Israeli elections
June 7-Parliamentary elections
Showing posts with label Lebanese politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lebanese politics. Show all posts
January 21, 2009
May 15, 2008
Things are back to "normal"
Yesterday, I went to Hamra. There weren't that many vans, and some of the roads were still closed. At one road closing, there were three 13-year old boys, who seemed to be controlling the roadblock. They weren't Army or police or anything. I asked the taxi driver who they were, and I didn't understand any of his Arabic. In certain situations, I push it, and fuddle through the explanation with my bad Arabic. But I didn't feel like giving away my American-ness, so I just dropped it.
Last night, when the government announced it would take back its decisions to shut down Hezbollah's phone network and force their security guy from his job at the airport, my whole neighborhood exploded. Crazy gun shots. I have some video. Hopefully, some day I'll get to a connection where I can post it.
Today, all the roads are supposed to be open. Schools are back in session. Hopefully, it's all over.
Thanks to all you guys who were writing and expressing your concern. I really, really appreciate it.
Last night, when the government announced it would take back its decisions to shut down Hezbollah's phone network and force their security guy from his job at the airport, my whole neighborhood exploded. Crazy gun shots. I have some video. Hopefully, some day I'll get to a connection where I can post it.
Today, all the roads are supposed to be open. Schools are back in session. Hopefully, it's all over.
Thanks to all you guys who were writing and expressing your concern. I really, really appreciate it.
May 10, 2008
Truth with a capital T
My mom said the American press is saying that Hizbollah is staging a coup d’etat. But then of course, people here say it’s Amal, and others say it’s the Hizb. Or maybe it’s other people in the Opposition.
Someone asked if I live in East or West Beirut. This is how the Western press liked to talk about the 1975-1990 Lebanese Civil War: Christian East Beirut vs. Muslim West Beirut.
Now the press likes the Shia/Sunni thing. They created that whole thing in Iraq. I ask my Iraqi refugee friends here, “What are you? Sunni or Shia.” They say, “We’re neither. That question doesn’t even make sense. If you go back, we had grandparents that identified themselves as such. But we’re all mixed. All the Iraqi people are.”
So today, it’s the US-backed, Sanyoura, (Sunni) government opposed by the Shia Hizbollah.
But the US media can’t really understand that the Opposition consists not only of Shia, but of Aoun (a Christian), Talal Arslan (a Druze), Amal (the more traditional Shia party), and random others.
The pro-government alliance consists of the Ishtirikiye, Druze party led by Walid Jumblatt and the “Christian” Lebanese Forces (who to me always seem like the most savage, having colluded with Israel in massacring the residents of Sabra and Shatila, neighborhoods like mine, that I pass every day, with Ariel Sharon overlooking the whole operation. He was tried and convicted for war crimes, and the Israeli people still elected him Prime Minister. But I shouldn’t be a hypocrite. Look at the criminals we Americans have in office.)
It’s all too complicated to really explain, so why should I blame the media? It’s like that with anything. If you were actually at a place or know someone involved in something, it’s always different than how the news story explain it. Always. We know this.
Yet, it’s really scary if we allow that to sink in, if we choose to accept the full repercussions of this fact. We can’t trust anything. We can’t know anything. Just what I see with my own eyes. And even that I can’t trust.
If there really is such a thing called Truth, does it really matter, since we can’t ever know it?
Someone asked if I live in East or West Beirut. This is how the Western press liked to talk about the 1975-1990 Lebanese Civil War: Christian East Beirut vs. Muslim West Beirut.
Now the press likes the Shia/Sunni thing. They created that whole thing in Iraq. I ask my Iraqi refugee friends here, “What are you? Sunni or Shia.” They say, “We’re neither. That question doesn’t even make sense. If you go back, we had grandparents that identified themselves as such. But we’re all mixed. All the Iraqi people are.”
So today, it’s the US-backed, Sanyoura, (Sunni) government opposed by the Shia Hizbollah.
But the US media can’t really understand that the Opposition consists not only of Shia, but of Aoun (a Christian), Talal Arslan (a Druze), Amal (the more traditional Shia party), and random others.
The pro-government alliance consists of the Ishtirikiye, Druze party led by Walid Jumblatt and the “Christian” Lebanese Forces (who to me always seem like the most savage, having colluded with Israel in massacring the residents of Sabra and Shatila, neighborhoods like mine, that I pass every day, with Ariel Sharon overlooking the whole operation. He was tried and convicted for war crimes, and the Israeli people still elected him Prime Minister. But I shouldn’t be a hypocrite. Look at the criminals we Americans have in office.)
It’s all too complicated to really explain, so why should I blame the media? It’s like that with anything. If you were actually at a place or know someone involved in something, it’s always different than how the news story explain it. Always. We know this.
Yet, it’s really scary if we allow that to sink in, if we choose to accept the full repercussions of this fact. We can’t trust anything. We can’t know anything. Just what I see with my own eyes. And even that I can’t trust.
If there really is such a thing called Truth, does it really matter, since we can’t ever know it?
May 9, 2008
Back to Beirut . . . An Impending Civil War?
Okay, I feel like posting something I wrote three months ago, February 20, when I first got back to Beirut. I didn't post it because I didn't want to freak out my mom. But I sent it to my friend, Emery, so you can confirm with him that I didn't just now write this.
----------------------------------------------
The last time I came back to Beirut was a year and a half ago—September after the July War. The first thing I noticed that was different was that the price of servees went up to 1500 Lebanese Lira (1 US$) from the 1000 it had been since the beginning of time. (Servees being the shared taxi that will get you most places in Beirut.) Everybody was complaining about an overall rise in prices—milk, food in general, the necessities of life.
And the already horrendous traffic became incomprehensibly worse. The roads and bridges Israel took out for the most part still have not been fixed. Any trip through Beirut will most likely meet two or three places that require detours that take at least 20 minutes.
So what’s different this time around?
The electricity is worse. Four months ago, it came in four-hour shifts. Off before 10, on from 10-2, off from 2-6, on from 6-10, and the off; it switched the next day. Living on the 8th floor required remembering this schedule. But it still wasn’t perfect. Even with good planning, I’d end up climbing those stairs. Ramadan, however, was an exception. Somehow it was pretty much on all the time. But now, when it’s supposed to be on, it flickers, or “Tacks” as they call it. So if you’re watching TV, it goes off about every five minutes and then you have to turn it back on. I just wonder what’s going to happen to my laptop batteries and other electrical appliances.
They fixed one intersection, and it actually looks and feels modern. The road there is straight and paved. It won’t bust up your car, like the rest of Lebanon. (I read a statistic that 70% of the cars in Lebanon are over 20 years old. . .Well, why would anyone spend money on a car here when the roads will just eat it up? But since this is such a display culture, there are rich people who do drive around in fancy vehicles.)
But here’s what’s REALLY different this time around. I’ve been back for 4 days. And I’ve heard the phrase, “If anything happens. . .” or “If war breaks out. . .” way too much. I’ve never heard Lebanese people talk like this before. They’re making contingency plans; talking about not being able to go to certain areas; even expressing concern about being able to see certain friends. We went to visit my Druze friends in Aley yesterday, and my fiance’s dad expressed concern about us going up there. “Wouldn’t it be better if they came here?” My Druze friend mentioned how her 11-year-old has some Shia friends. He asked if he could put away the picture of Walid Jumblatt, displayed prominently on top of the TV, when they came over. “Of course, Habibi.” The situation is very tense.
Black Sunday happened January 27, 2008. There were snipers around the Mar Mikhael church. That’s intensely symbolic and significant for the Lebanese. The Mar Mikhael church is on the Green Line, the border that divided “Muslim” West Beirut from “Christian” East Beirut—that no man’s land during the 17-year Civil War, littered with snipers. Yesterday, I heard that a Palestinian got killed by some followers of Hariri. I haven’t heard the news to be able to confirm—but it doesn’t really matter. If people are talking about it, that’s enough. The general consensus among the Lebanese is that the Civil War officially began when a bus passing through Ain El Remaine (the neighborhood of the Mar Mikhael church) was stopped and attacked by masked men who have never been identified. 17 Palestinians were assassinated.
Of course, Lebanese politics is too complicated to be Muslim vs. Christian. It wasn’t that simple for the first Civil War. And the Western Press will make this one out to be Sunni vs. Shia. They do that for Iraq. Eventhough when I ask my Iraqi refugee friends here in Lebanon what they are—Sunni or Shia? They say that question doesn’t make sense. They never identified themselves as either. If you go back to their grandparents, they were both. But of course the Western media likes to make it out like this. They like maps showing areas of Sunnis, and Kurds, and Shias, and some Christians. Though have you ever seen a map of Los Angeles in a Western paper showing Black areas, and White areas, and Korean areas, and Mexican areas? It’s good for Westerners to make out that “Eastern” or “foreign” places are inhabited by people who are just innately savage. Then they don’t have to take any of the blame for themselves.
But it’s not Sunni vs. Shia. The Christians are diverse and split. Even some of the Druze are with the opposition, but they are mostly with the Sinoura/Hariri (both Sunnis) government. It’s far more complicated than the Western press will be able to depict.
Was the cause of the Civil War in Lebanon a bad constitution that put a minority—the Christians—in charge and gave them a disproportionate amount of power? Not really. It wouldn’t have caused the Civil War. It was the Palestinian problem. Yasser Arafat had created a fiefdom in Beirut, and that was causing too many problems for Israel. Israel joined with their historic brothers, the Christians ??? to fight their mutual Muslim enemies. (Wait. Aren’t there Palestinian Christians??)
But make no mistake. The first Civil War was an offshoot of the Israeli agenda to take and steal land from native Arab people. The Lebanese point out that religious Israeli Jewish people consider their Promised Land to extend all the way to the Litani River, which includes all of southern Lebanon. This was the area that Israel occupied from 1982 to 2000, when Hizbollah claims they successfully kicked them out.
What else is different after the July War of 2006? Israel destroyed the Khiam prison. Good thing I went a couple years ago. It was a museum run by Hizbollah, displaying the medieval torture devices that the Israelis used against innocent Lebanese people who had never been given a trial. Just for living in south Lebanon —they were associated with terrorism. When the Israelis left, all of Lebanon watched with tears the liberation of the prison. It’s celebrated as a national holiday. May 25 is Liberation Day.
After my first two weeks in this country back in September 2004, I was standing outside during a break with my students. I heard a loud noise.
“What’s that?”
“Oh, it’s just the Israelis flying their planes illegally over our air space, making those sonic booms, just to intimidate us.” The look on their faces and the tones in their voices said the rest— “Those assholes.”
The Lebanese give the Palestinians in their country a very hard time. They haven’t made them citizens. They still live in refugee camps, and this past May there was a two-month standoff with the Lebanese Army, where the Army basically bombed and destroyed Nahr al-Bared, a Palestinian camp, near Tripoli. Why? Because the camp was harboring al-Qaeda-ish terrorists.
These people, many of whom were born on Lebanese soil, are not given Lebanese citizenship; they cannot own property; they can only work 17 prescribed jobs.
Are the Palestinians to blame for the Civil War? Some Lebanese think so. But are they going to blame the victim? Most people say it’s Israel. And after the 2006 War, why wouldn’t they? Israel destroyed in 2 days what it took 15 years to rebuild. And the country will take a VERY LONG TIME to recoup. As the economy gets crappier, the shebab (those unemployed, futureless young men who make civil wars) get more and more antsy.
Some would blame the state of the economy on Hizbollah. Their strike against the current US-backed government has stopped all the business downtown. This is horrible and has completely ruined many people’s lives and have put many people out of work. Some Lebanese say Hizbollah started the war, by kidnapping those two Israeli soldiers. Others say those soldiers were on Lebanese soil, and the Israelis had already planned the war with the US back in March.
Hizbolla keeps saying they are the Resistance. They are resisting Israel, who at any moment will wantonly try to come to Lebanon to grab land and water and wantonly destroy property and kill people. Nasrallah has repeatedly said that none of their guns or arsenal will ever be turned against their fellow country men. Hey, he was friends with Rafik Hariri. Those guns and that arsenal (he claims to have nukes) are pointed against Israel—as a defense, as a resistance.
The Israelis again will start another war in Lebanon, just so they can take. Oh wait, maybe I mean Syria. It’s Syria, isn’t it, who’s created all the havoc since the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, three years ago on Valentine’s Day? There have been 18 political assassinations since, to bolster their pawns/clients in the Lebanese government—Hizbollah.
Either way it’s the foreign influence, be it Syria, Israel, Iran, or the US that will bring about another Civil War in Lebanon.
People say, “If anything happens. . .” And then promptly follow it with, “But nothing’s going to happen.”
Nothing’s going to happen.
----------------------------------------------
The last time I came back to Beirut was a year and a half ago—September after the July War. The first thing I noticed that was different was that the price of servees went up to 1500 Lebanese Lira (1 US$) from the 1000 it had been since the beginning of time. (Servees being the shared taxi that will get you most places in Beirut.) Everybody was complaining about an overall rise in prices—milk, food in general, the necessities of life.
And the already horrendous traffic became incomprehensibly worse. The roads and bridges Israel took out for the most part still have not been fixed. Any trip through Beirut will most likely meet two or three places that require detours that take at least 20 minutes.
So what’s different this time around?
The electricity is worse. Four months ago, it came in four-hour shifts. Off before 10, on from 10-2, off from 2-6, on from 6-10, and the off; it switched the next day. Living on the 8th floor required remembering this schedule. But it still wasn’t perfect. Even with good planning, I’d end up climbing those stairs. Ramadan, however, was an exception. Somehow it was pretty much on all the time. But now, when it’s supposed to be on, it flickers, or “Tacks” as they call it. So if you’re watching TV, it goes off about every five minutes and then you have to turn it back on. I just wonder what’s going to happen to my laptop batteries and other electrical appliances.
They fixed one intersection, and it actually looks and feels modern. The road there is straight and paved. It won’t bust up your car, like the rest of Lebanon. (I read a statistic that 70% of the cars in Lebanon are over 20 years old. . .Well, why would anyone spend money on a car here when the roads will just eat it up? But since this is such a display culture, there are rich people who do drive around in fancy vehicles.)
But here’s what’s REALLY different this time around. I’ve been back for 4 days. And I’ve heard the phrase, “If anything happens. . .” or “If war breaks out. . .” way too much. I’ve never heard Lebanese people talk like this before. They’re making contingency plans; talking about not being able to go to certain areas; even expressing concern about being able to see certain friends. We went to visit my Druze friends in Aley yesterday, and my fiance’s dad expressed concern about us going up there. “Wouldn’t it be better if they came here?” My Druze friend mentioned how her 11-year-old has some Shia friends. He asked if he could put away the picture of Walid Jumblatt, displayed prominently on top of the TV, when they came over. “Of course, Habibi.” The situation is very tense.
Black Sunday happened January 27, 2008. There were snipers around the Mar Mikhael church. That’s intensely symbolic and significant for the Lebanese. The Mar Mikhael church is on the Green Line, the border that divided “Muslim” West Beirut from “Christian” East Beirut—that no man’s land during the 17-year Civil War, littered with snipers. Yesterday, I heard that a Palestinian got killed by some followers of Hariri. I haven’t heard the news to be able to confirm—but it doesn’t really matter. If people are talking about it, that’s enough. The general consensus among the Lebanese is that the Civil War officially began when a bus passing through Ain El Remaine (the neighborhood of the Mar Mikhael church) was stopped and attacked by masked men who have never been identified. 17 Palestinians were assassinated.
Of course, Lebanese politics is too complicated to be Muslim vs. Christian. It wasn’t that simple for the first Civil War. And the Western Press will make this one out to be Sunni vs. Shia. They do that for Iraq. Eventhough when I ask my Iraqi refugee friends here in Lebanon what they are—Sunni or Shia? They say that question doesn’t make sense. They never identified themselves as either. If you go back to their grandparents, they were both. But of course the Western media likes to make it out like this. They like maps showing areas of Sunnis, and Kurds, and Shias, and some Christians. Though have you ever seen a map of Los Angeles in a Western paper showing Black areas, and White areas, and Korean areas, and Mexican areas? It’s good for Westerners to make out that “Eastern” or “foreign” places are inhabited by people who are just innately savage. Then they don’t have to take any of the blame for themselves.
But it’s not Sunni vs. Shia. The Christians are diverse and split. Even some of the Druze are with the opposition, but they are mostly with the Sinoura/Hariri (both Sunnis) government. It’s far more complicated than the Western press will be able to depict.
Was the cause of the Civil War in Lebanon a bad constitution that put a minority—the Christians—in charge and gave them a disproportionate amount of power? Not really. It wouldn’t have caused the Civil War. It was the Palestinian problem. Yasser Arafat had created a fiefdom in Beirut, and that was causing too many problems for Israel. Israel joined with their historic brothers, the Christians ??? to fight their mutual Muslim enemies. (Wait. Aren’t there Palestinian Christians??)
But make no mistake. The first Civil War was an offshoot of the Israeli agenda to take and steal land from native Arab people. The Lebanese point out that religious Israeli Jewish people consider their Promised Land to extend all the way to the Litani River, which includes all of southern Lebanon. This was the area that Israel occupied from 1982 to 2000, when Hizbollah claims they successfully kicked them out.
What else is different after the July War of 2006? Israel destroyed the Khiam prison. Good thing I went a couple years ago. It was a museum run by Hizbollah, displaying the medieval torture devices that the Israelis used against innocent Lebanese people who had never been given a trial. Just for living in south Lebanon —they were associated with terrorism. When the Israelis left, all of Lebanon watched with tears the liberation of the prison. It’s celebrated as a national holiday. May 25 is Liberation Day.
After my first two weeks in this country back in September 2004, I was standing outside during a break with my students. I heard a loud noise.
“What’s that?”
“Oh, it’s just the Israelis flying their planes illegally over our air space, making those sonic booms, just to intimidate us.” The look on their faces and the tones in their voices said the rest— “Those assholes.”
The Lebanese give the Palestinians in their country a very hard time. They haven’t made them citizens. They still live in refugee camps, and this past May there was a two-month standoff with the Lebanese Army, where the Army basically bombed and destroyed Nahr al-Bared, a Palestinian camp, near Tripoli. Why? Because the camp was harboring al-Qaeda-ish terrorists.
These people, many of whom were born on Lebanese soil, are not given Lebanese citizenship; they cannot own property; they can only work 17 prescribed jobs.
Are the Palestinians to blame for the Civil War? Some Lebanese think so. But are they going to blame the victim? Most people say it’s Israel. And after the 2006 War, why wouldn’t they? Israel destroyed in 2 days what it took 15 years to rebuild. And the country will take a VERY LONG TIME to recoup. As the economy gets crappier, the shebab (those unemployed, futureless young men who make civil wars) get more and more antsy.
Some would blame the state of the economy on Hizbollah. Their strike against the current US-backed government has stopped all the business downtown. This is horrible and has completely ruined many people’s lives and have put many people out of work. Some Lebanese say Hizbollah started the war, by kidnapping those two Israeli soldiers. Others say those soldiers were on Lebanese soil, and the Israelis had already planned the war with the US back in March.
Hizbolla keeps saying they are the Resistance. They are resisting Israel, who at any moment will wantonly try to come to Lebanon to grab land and water and wantonly destroy property and kill people. Nasrallah has repeatedly said that none of their guns or arsenal will ever be turned against their fellow country men. Hey, he was friends with Rafik Hariri. Those guns and that arsenal (he claims to have nukes) are pointed against Israel—as a defense, as a resistance.
The Israelis again will start another war in Lebanon, just so they can take. Oh wait, maybe I mean Syria. It’s Syria, isn’t it, who’s created all the havoc since the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, three years ago on Valentine’s Day? There have been 18 political assassinations since, to bolster their pawns/clients in the Lebanese government—Hizbollah.
Either way it’s the foreign influence, be it Syria, Israel, Iran, or the US that will bring about another Civil War in Lebanon.
People say, “If anything happens. . .” And then promptly follow it with, “But nothing’s going to happen.”
Nothing’s going to happen.
May 8, 2008
Sayyed Hassan looks like an ewok
and he has a speech impediment. Now that I kind of understand Arabic, I pick up on the Amewickas and Hawiwis and mashwuas and ashweein and I just can’t help but to laugh. How can people take him seriously? This is the big, bad terrorist the world is scared of? His fuzzy cheeks are so cute.
It’s so funny. Why doesn’t everyone else laugh, too?
But no, they’re always so serious when they watch him on TV. Of course, today, there was no electricity at 4 when Hassan Nasralla started his speech, so mom and the sisters had to listen to the radio. Apparently, only the boys know how to turn on the generator. I’m not going to go near that thing, and stink my hands up of benzene.
I was scheduled to tutor at 4. Knowing that the speech was starting at 4, I still didn’t finish my other work and leave before hand. So when all the AK-47s and RPGs and whatever else started, I was putting on my shoes. My tutee called, “I don’t think you should come. The shooting is really loud over here. It’s bad where you’re at, too, right?”
Barely able to hear him with all the racket outside, I told him I’d leave in about ten minutes. It might have been 15 minutes once it all died down. Joe later drive me there. And I just couldn’t believe it—the streets were empty!!! It was 5 in the afternoon, and there was NO ONE in the Dahiye. I took a picture! Everyone was stuck to his/her TVs/radios. All you could hear was the Sayyed talking.
I took some video—so you will eventually hear all the racket and see the black pillars of smoke and then myself filming from my balcony. But I didn’t really go out on the balcony. I was still inside. I am scared of those falling bullets.
On the way home, after the speech and all the accompanying artillery-fire-racket, I noticed the people with the 4-5 packs of bread in their hand, and the bakeries filled with people. It’s like they were running to get bread!!!
We called home, and they told us to pick up bread. Geez. There is at least five huge packs of bread that mom brought back from the village about five days ago. She makes it herself, on the communal tannour oven in the middle of the village. She says she’s one of the very few people who uses it these days. Her children don’t like it so much; they prefer “furn,” from the bakery, though mom’s is a million, billion times better.
Everyone’s stocking up.
It’s so funny. Why doesn’t everyone else laugh, too?
But no, they’re always so serious when they watch him on TV. Of course, today, there was no electricity at 4 when Hassan Nasralla started his speech, so mom and the sisters had to listen to the radio. Apparently, only the boys know how to turn on the generator. I’m not going to go near that thing, and stink my hands up of benzene.
I was scheduled to tutor at 4. Knowing that the speech was starting at 4, I still didn’t finish my other work and leave before hand. So when all the AK-47s and RPGs and whatever else started, I was putting on my shoes. My tutee called, “I don’t think you should come. The shooting is really loud over here. It’s bad where you’re at, too, right?”
Barely able to hear him with all the racket outside, I told him I’d leave in about ten minutes. It might have been 15 minutes once it all died down. Joe later drive me there. And I just couldn’t believe it—the streets were empty!!! It was 5 in the afternoon, and there was NO ONE in the Dahiye. I took a picture! Everyone was stuck to his/her TVs/radios. All you could hear was the Sayyed talking.
I took some video—so you will eventually hear all the racket and see the black pillars of smoke and then myself filming from my balcony. But I didn’t really go out on the balcony. I was still inside. I am scared of those falling bullets.
On the way home, after the speech and all the accompanying artillery-fire-racket, I noticed the people with the 4-5 packs of bread in their hand, and the bakeries filled with people. It’s like they were running to get bread!!!
We called home, and they told us to pick up bread. Geez. There is at least five huge packs of bread that mom brought back from the village about five days ago. She makes it herself, on the communal tannour oven in the middle of the village. She says she’s one of the very few people who uses it these days. Her children don’t like it so much; they prefer “furn,” from the bakery, though mom’s is a million, billion times better.
Everyone’s stocking up.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)