Mother of sparks is back…

The Lebanese Arabic-language daily As-Safir has again – as two years ago, read my blog post about it here – published a frontpage article (unsigned) about US plans to set up military bases (in this case an airbase) in Lebanon. Practically, the plan is to revive the never-finished civil war-era Pierre Gemayyel airport in Hamat, a village in the Batroun district between Byblos and Tripoli. I have been there to see it, and today it is a severely deteriorated strip of concrete with some concrete sheds evidently used by junkies as well as housing a few bored Lebanese army conscripts and used primarily as a racing track by local youths. The idea is to have an airport which is not situated in areas ‘under the influence of the Shia sect’. As-Safir claims the issue is currently being discussed at the highest echelons of the Lebanese Armed Forces and pushed aggressively by various high-placed civilian and miltary US players, including general David Petraeus. Unfortunately, the article quotes only anonymous sources and ‘followers of the file’, in addition to ‘eye witensses in Hamat’ (and one Junblatt quote dating from early 2005). Unsubstantiated as the story might appear to be, it does keep cropping up at regular intervals (only last year, during the May clashes, there was talk about reviving it when Beirut’s airport was temporarily closed by Hizbullah) and holds an obvious importance if only for the reactions it would elicit among the US’s many opponents in the country. After all, it would imply using Lebanon as a base for operations in the entire region, which is the one disaster the country’s feuding warlords have managed to avoid so far. So here is a (rather shoddy and basic) translation I made of the entire article, which was published last Monday, September 28th, 2009.

‘A Lebanese or US airbase in Hamat? Washington insists and its military team is scouting the area…while the army leadership is taking (it) into (serious) consideration’

Unsigned front page article, cont. on p. 16

‘The Americans once again prove that Lebanon will not be contracted out to anyone (but them), nor will it be left to the Lebanese, and the Americans themselves will decide on its business. Once again, the Americans give tangible proof that they bet on Lebanon being, one way or the other, (their playing) field not just for their politics and its complicated calculations, but even for their military and strategic projects for the whole of the Middle East. Why this conclusion, which to some might seem rash, or an exaggeration which the case doesn’t merit?

The coming invasion… of Israel

I have been arguing for a while now (although not on the blog) that the next logical step for Hizbullah, in case of a new Israeli attack, would be to invade the north of Israel. This would mean the end of the Anglo-American colonial project in Palestine. The psychological effect on the Israelis of  actually losing land,  for the first time since 1948, would be devastating enough to induce an already demoralised settler population to flee in droves on the first plane, boat or bicycle available. All the Hizb would need to do is take a strip of 10 kilometers or so in the north and resettle the (armed) Palestinian refugees of Lebanon there, in addition to the Palestinians still living there. Now it seems the Israeli military are for the first time publicly recognising this option too – and decrying their utter lack of preparedness for this scenario. Al-Akhbar reports: ‘وبناءً على ذلك يشدّد الضابط على أن «الحرب المقبلة ستكون على شاكلة هجوم متشابك على الحدود، في داخل إسرائيل ومن الجو».

ودرس الضابط التهديدات الصادرة عن الأمين العام لحزب الله، حسن نصر الله، وتوصّل إلى أن «العدو سيجتاح في الحرب المقبلة شمال إسرائيل، وتحديداً منطقة الجليل، بواسطة الآلاف من المجموعات التي تتكوّن كلّ منها من أربعة إلى خمسة مقاتلين، مدرّبين جيداً ويحملون أسلحة رشّاشة متوسطة، وصواريخ مضادة للدروع، إضافةً إلى قنّاصات وأسلحة خفيفة»، مشيراً إلى أنه «فور دخول هذه المجموعات إلى إسرائيل، سيحظون بمساعدة من البنية التحتية التي سيوفّرها السكان العرب»، في إشارة إلى فلسطينيي أراضي عام 1948.’
ويؤكد الضابط الإسرائيلي أنه «ليس لدى الجيش الإسرائيلي ردّ على سيناريو مشابه، حتى الآن، وليس قادراً على منع هذه المجموعات من دخول إسرائيل.. بل إن تفوق سلاح الجو لم يعد قاطعاً، وعدد المطارات قليل، وتقع جميعها اليوم في مدى الصواريخ»، مشدّداً على أن «سلاح الجو الجبار محبوس في جسد قزم».’

Let me translate that for you: ‘Elaborating on this subject, the [Israeli] officer stresses that: “the coming war will take the form of an interwoven attack on the border, on the interior of Israel and from the air”. The officer has studied the threats made by Hizbullah’s secretary general Hasan Nasrallah and concludes that “in the coming war, the enemy will sweep the north of Israel, threatening the Galilee using thousands of groups consisting each of four to five well-trained fighters carrying medium-size assault rifles, anti-tank missiles, sniper rifles and light weapons”. He points out that inside Israel these groups will benefit from the support of the [existing Israeli] infrastructure handed over to them by the Arab population, ass he refers to the Palestinians in the land of 1948. The Israeli officer affirms that the IDF has at present no response to such a scenario and would be unable to prevent these groups from entering Israel… Moreover, the superiority of the IAF will not be decisive, as the number of airports is limited and all of them have now come within the range of [Hizbullah's] missiles”. He refers to the IAF as “a giant trapped in the body of a dwarf”.’

Why Israel is bad for jews pt.7

I have just read the excellent study ‘Non-jewish Zionism: its roots in western history’ by Regina S. Sharif (Zed Press, London 1983), in which she traces the origins of zionism to a bunch of rather anti-semitic English and American protestant puritans in the 18th and 19th centuries. Remember how protestantism was all about reading the bible for yourself, in your own language, instead of relying on corrupt authoritarian catholic clergymen babbling in latin? Unfortunately, when protestants talk about the bible, they refer mainly to the old testament. They also tend to literal interpretations of the text (not unlike salafi sunnis). Some saw the fulfillment of the prophecy in the bible which has the jews returning to Israel – and converting to christianity, incidentally – just before the last judgment, as a felicitous approach to solving the ‘problem’ of the jews in their own countries (i.e. they wanted them out).It was essentially a non-jewish idea and it is only after Hitler’s holocaust that zionism really found support on a large scale among the jews themselves. Or did it? But why take the word of mere goyim like Regina and me for it, read for yourself why many of the jews themselves dislike and oppose Israel (and remember, the majority of global jewry has never gone to live there even when it still looked like it had a future). The following is found on the website of Neturei Karta, a vocal orthodox jewish anti-zionist organisation in the US:
‘The Zionists claim that they are the saviors of Israel, but this is refuted by twelve things:
FIRST — If one contemplates the two thousand years of our exile, take any hundred years even the hardest, one will not find as much suffering, bloodshed, and catastrophes for the People of Israel [as] in the period of the Zionists, and it is known that most of the suffering of this century was caused by the Zionists, as our Rabbis warned us would be the case.
SECOND — It is openly stated in books written by the founders of Zionism that the means by which they planned to establish a state was by instigating anti-Semitism, and undermining the security of the Jews in all the lands of the world, until they would be forced to flee to their state. And thus they did – They intentionally infuriated the German people and fanned the flames of Nazi hatred, and they helped the Nazis, with trickery and deceit, to take whole Jewish communities off to the concentration camps, and the Zionists themselves admit this. (See the books ‘Perfidy’, ‘Min Hameitzor’, etc.). The Zionists continue to practice this strategy today. They incite anti-Semitism and then they present themselves as the “saviors”. Here are two replies given by Leaders of the Zionists during World War II, when they were asked for money to help ransom Jews from the Nazis. Greenbaum said “One cow in Palestine is worth more than all the Jews in Poland.” (G-d forbid). Weitzman said, “The most important part of the Jewish people is already in the land (of Israel) and those who are left, are unimportant” (May we be spared).
THIRD — We see that most of world Jewry lives in security and under good physical conditions, and have no desire to go live in the Zionist State. Whereas many people have left the Zionist State to live under better conditions in other lands.
FOURTH — The Zionists make a great deal of propaganda to induce people to immigrate to their state. If their state is so beneficial why do they have to make so much propaganda.
FIFTH — Because nobody wants the Zionists to “save” them. The only way they can get immigrants is by promising poor people material benefits, and even then very few people respond.

Back home…

After a few busy weeks work-honeymoon-reunion-holiday in Belgium, I made it back to this country, which has managed to not have a government yet in the time Belgium got five of them together. Meanwhile, Irael is upping the threats of another war, which is being taken seriously by nobody but the most paranod (on the grounds that barking dogs don’t bite, and on the grounds that it will mean the virtual end of ‘Israel’).

Some titbits that did happen and characterise this of this wonderful country full of contradictions in a superb way: ‘On a nice Sunday afternoon, one Mercedes ML350, a big black SUV, is heading towards Faqra. On board are two couples planning to have lunch in a restaurant in the area. The car has black dimmed glass all over– remember that this type of glass has been ruled illegal on civilian vehicles. Passenger #1: “Cool ride dude.” Sami (a Typical Lebanese): “Thanks man. It’s my dad’s you know, but all of the extras are the handy work of yours truly.” Passenger #1: “What extras?”And on it roared.For no more than $100, Sami had managed to buy himself the most outrageous, and illegal, of gadgets. He had in his car a police siren device complete with a public address system and a sound amplifier. Is there a need to mention that such a device should belong exclusively to Internal Security police cars? Sami pushed the siren button which instantly started to wail in the most atrocious of ways. He held the microphone to his lips and mimicked the line usually repeated by internal security forces (ISF) when “someone important” is blessing the commoners with his presence among them on the streets. “Silver Toyota move to the right!” And the poor woman driving the Toyota actually moved to the right side of the street. The incident had a surrealist quality: Typical Lebanese– Sami had actually perfected the aggressive tone of ISF officers who always sound like caffeine addicts deprived of their daily dose of the drug. He was maniacally speeding down the sloping hills of Rayfoun, pushing the siren on and on again (the image of a laughing Joker from Batman movies comes to mind), and cars around were obediently moving away from this important-looking death machine.’

Ben Gilbert, in Executive Magazine, writes a comprehensive article on the state of prostitution, which strangely enough turns out to be legal in this country, albeit in typical Lebanese fashion: ‘Siranossian calls the super nightclubs
a “fantastic” solution to the problem of prostitution, because it allows the government to regulate and oversee the industry, somewhat akin to the way escort services operate in the US or Europe. Charbel verifies this, noting that
police usually stop in three or four times a week. “They’re checking to see if the woman is in the club, and hasn’t
gone out with a customer,” he said. Even then, it appears that circumventing the law is relatively easy. Policecorruption in Lebanon is nothing new, and several people acquainted with the industry said that in the past, law enforcement has often looked the other way if enough money is offered. “The law was permitting us,” he said. “When the police come, we’d pay a lot of money, and they’d forget everything for one week, two weeks,” he said.’ (pdf of the article via Qifa Nabki, here).

Of pirates and slave drivers – and food for thought

‘The only hostel for women in Dubai – a filthy private villa on the brink of being repossessed – is filled with escaped maids. Mela Matari, a 25-year-old Ethiopian woman with a drooping smile, tells me what happened to her – and thousands like her. She was promised a paradise in the sands by an agency, so she left her four year-old daughter at home and headed here to earn money for a better future. “But they paid me half what they promised. I was put with an Australian family – four children – and Madam made me work from 6am to 1am every day, with no day off. I was exhausted and pleaded for a break, but they just shouted: ‘You came here to work, not sleep!’ Then one day I just couldn’t go on, and Madam beat me. She beat me with her fists and kicked me. My ear still hurts. They wouldn’t give me my wages: they said they’d pay me at the end of the two years. What could I do? I didn’t know anybody here. I was terrified.” One day, after yet another beating, Mela ran out onto the streets, and asked – in broken English – how to find the Ethiopian consulate. After walking for two days, she found it, but they told her she had to get her passport back from Madam. “Well, how could I?” she asks. She has been in this hostel for six months. She has spoken to her daughter twice. “I lost my country, I lost my daughter, I lost everything,” she says. As she says this, I remember a stray sentence I heard back at Double Decker. I asked a British woman called Hermione Frayling what the best thing about Dubai was. “Oh, the servant class!” she trilled. “You do nothing. They’ll do anything!”‘

Johann Hari, who wrote the excellent long article on Dubai from which the above is quoted, is without a doubt one of the few courageous and pertinent journalists left in what passes for the ‘free’ press. I have just spent an entire morning reading through his eminently insightful stream of articles for the Independent and he is spot-on on many issues without losing sight of the bigger picture connecting them. He clearheadedly exposes the connections linking the wars of the west, including the drug war, with corporate culture, the economic crisis, global warming and the fights for economic equality and freedom from religious censorship and oppression. As for example in this analysis of the Somalian pirates: ‘Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our toxic waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We won’t act on those crimes – the only sane solution to this problem – but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 per cent of the world’s oil supply, we swiftly send in the gunboats. The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarised by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know “what he meant by keeping possession of the sea.” The pirate smiled, and responded: “What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor.” Once again, our great imperial fleets sail – but who is the robber?’

He is also one of  the very few people in the west who seem to be capable of criticising islam and christianity and religion as a concept rather than just taking the easy way out of islam-bashing alone: ‘Starting in 1999, a coalition of Islamist tyrants, led by Saudi Arabia, demanded the rules be rewritten. The demand for everyone to be able to think and speak freely failed to “respect” the “unique sensitivities” of the religious, they decided – so they issued an alternative Islamic Declaration of Human Rights. It insisted that you can only speak within “the limits set by the shariah [law]. It is not permitted to spread falsehood or disseminate that which involves encouraging abomination or forsaking the Islamic community”. In other words, you can say anything you like, as long as it precisely what the reactionary mullahs tell you to say. The declaration makes it clear there is no equality for women, gays, non-Muslims, or apostates. It has been backed by the Vatican and a bevy of Christian fundamentalists. Incredibly, they are succeeding. The UN’s Rapporteur on Human Rights has always been tasked with exposing and shaming those who prevent free speech – including the religious. But the Pakistani delegate recently demanded that his job description be changed so he can seek out and condemn “abuses of free expression” including “defamation of religions and prophets”. The council agreed – so the job has been turned on its head. Instead of condemning the people who wanted to murder Salman Rushdie, they will be condemning Salman Rushdie himself.’

Back in business – personal update

I’ve been off the blog for a while, mostly because I’ve been working a lot. I would like to direct you to an article I wrote on the music business in Lebanon and the wider Middle East (did somebody say ‘piracy’?)  called Rockin’ the shop for this month’s issue of Executive Magazine, but unfortunately it is accessible online to subscribers only. I would also like to put a link to a timeline of  Saudi political events I wrote last year (in French) for Les Chroniques Yéménites, the academic journal published by CEFAS (Centre français pour l’archéologie et les sciences sociales à Sanaa), called Chronologie politique de l’Arabie saoudite 2007, but unfortunately the latest issue is not online yet. Apart from these, I have been doing editing work for Hospitality News Magazine, a B2B hotel magazine as well as, incongruously, for Georgia Today (neither of which is particularly exciting work, but the money’s gotta come from somewhere…). But my main activity over the past six weeks has been translating a collection of academic essays on Iran, the Shia around the world, and the relationship between them. The original French volume is called ‘Les mondes chiites et l’Iran‘, edited by Sabrina Mervin and published in 2007 by IFPO (Institut français du Proche Orient) in Beirut. The English translation will be published by Saqi Books in London at some point later this year and under a title yet to be decided. Essays cover Shia communities and movements in Turkey, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the GCC states and Senegal, apart from more obvious subjects such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq, as well as the transnational links and connections between the grand families of  Ayatollahs and marja’s. Authors include, besides the editor, Olivier Roy, Laurence Louër, Joseph Alagha, Peter Harling and Hamid Yassin Nasser. The fourth part of the book, about internal Iranian theological debates, will not be included in the English translation. My next project, apart from journalistic work to keep me in food, drink and plane tickets, will be finishing (finally) my master’s thesis and writing up the related research report for CEFAS, which will be published in the next Chroniques Yéménites. I spent six weeks in Saudi Arabia in Fall/Winter 2007 interviewing a number of ‘liberal opposition figures’ to get a view on the influence and reception of the writings and ideas of Turki al-Hamad, a novelist, philosopher and ‘reformer’ who is seen as the figurehead of the ‘liberal movement’ in the kingdom. I have translated some of his essays for my thesis. The research report will probably be written in French and the thesis obligatorily in Dutch, which kind of limits the potential readership, I am afraid.

Meanwhile, so as to offer you at least something to read, check out this interesting article on the upcoming election of the next Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood by the well-informed Marc Lynch aka Abu Aardvark (incidentally proving that even UAE newspapers like The National do sometimes publish insightful articles).

Obama sorely… pt2

It takes John Pilger to point out the elephant that by now has grown so big it is obscuring the room: ‘Far from “deconstructing [sic] the war on terror”, Obama is clearly pursuing it with the same vigour, ideological backing and deception as the previous administration. George W. Bush’s first war, in Afghanistan, and last war, in Pakistan, are now Obama’s wars – with thousands more US troops to be deployed, more bombing and more slaughter of civilians. On 22 January, the day he described Afghanistan and Pakistan as “the central front in our enduring struggle against terrorism and extremism”, 22 Afghan civilians died beneath Obama’s bombs in a hamlet populated mainly by shepherds and which, by all accounts, had not laid eyes on the Taliban. Women and children were among the dead, which is normal.
Far from “shutting down the CIA’s secret prison network”, Obama’s executive orders actually give the CIA authority to carry out renditions, abductions and transfers of prisoners in secret without the threat of legal obstruction. As the Los Angeles Times disclosed, “current and former intelligence officials said the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role.” A semantic sleight of hand is that “long term prisons” are changed to “short term prisons”; and while Americans are now banned from directly torturing people, foreigners working for the US are not. This means that America’s numerous “covert actions” will operate as they did under previous presidents, with proxy regimes, such as Augusto Pinochet’s in Chile, doing the dirtiest work.
Bush’s open support for torture, and Donald Rumsfeld’s extraordinary personal overseeing of certain torture techniques, upset many in America’s “secret army” of subversive military and intelligence operators as it exposed how the system worked. Obama’s nominee for director of national intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, has said the Army Field Manual may include new forms of “harsh interrogation”, which will be kept secret.
Obama has chosen not to stop any of this. Neither do his ballyhooed executive orders put an end to Bush’s assault on constitutional and international law. He has retained Bush’s “right” to imprison anyone, without trial or charges. No “ghost prisoners” are being released or are due to be tried before a civilian court. His nominee for attorney-general, Eric Holder, has endorsed an extension of Bush’s totalitarian USA Patriot Act, which allows federal agents to demand Americans’ library and bookshop records. The man of “change”, is changing little. That ought to be front page news from Washington.
What the childish fawning over Obama obscures is the dark power assembled under cover of America’s first “post-racial president”. Apart from the US, the world’s most dangerous state is demonstrably Israel, having recently killed and maimed some 4,000 people in Gaza with impunity. On 10 February, a bellicose Israeli electorate is likely to put Binyamin Netanyahu into power. Netanyahu is a fanatic’s fanatic who has made clear his intention of attacking Iran. In the Wall Street Journal on 24 January, he described Iran as the “terrorist mother base” and justified the murder of civilians in Gaza because “Israel cannot accept an Iranian terror base (Gaza) next to its major cities”. On 31 January, unaware he was being filmed, Israel’s ambassador in Australia described the massacres in Gaza as a “pre-introduction” – dress rehearsal – for an attack on Iran.
For Netanyahu, the reassuring news is that Obama’s administration is the most Zionist in living memory – a truth that has struggled to be told from beneath the soggy layers of Obama-love. Not a single member of Obama’s team demurred from Obama’s support for Israel’s barbaric actions in Gaza. Obama himself likened the safety of his two young daughters with that of Israeli children while making not a single reference to the thousands of Palestinian children killed with American weapons – a violation of both international and US law. He did, however, demand that the people of Gaza be denied “smuggled” small arms with which to defend themselves against the world’s fourth largest military power. And he paid tribute to the Arab dictatorships, such as Egypt, which are bribed by the US Treasury to help the US and Israel enforce policies described by the United Nations Rapporteur, Richard Falk, a Jew, as “genocidal”.
It is time the Obama lovers grew up. It is time those paid to keep the record straight gave us the opportunity to debate informatively. In the 21st century, people power remains a huge and exciting and largely untapped force for change, but it is nothing without truth. “In the time of universal deceit,” wrote George Orwell, “telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”‘

The end of a legend?

It’s hardly the first time, but the Daily Star has once again been invaded by bailiffs who shut the paper’s offices down last week. My almost-employer (I was offered the job last summer but then they turned out to have no money to pay me) is up to its ears in debt as usual – it’s been written up by a tiny staff and a seemingly-endless supply of unpaid interns for years now. The paper was founded in 1952 by Kamal Mroue, and continued by his widow after his death in 1966. It died and resurged several times during the civil war. Since its resurrection in 1991, the founder’s son Jamil Mroue has been running it as virtually the only independent newspaper in Lebanon – and the Middle East for that matter – and consequently it hasn’t got the party/sectarian backing (i.e. financial input) that keeps Lebanon’s myriad other newspapers going without a readership sufficient to support it. Apparently nobody seems to appreciate the value of this sole independent english-language source for news in the region. Or its policy of giving a voice to all sides and parties. And thus, unless Jamil finds a new source of money somewhere quickly (something which he has a proven reputation for), a legend will die – and several of my friends will have to look for new jobs…

Orientalism revisited – a review of Robert Irwin’s ‘Lust of Knowing’

In short, rather than a convincing refutation of Said’s work, Irwin has actually (albeit maybe unwittingly) produced a useful companion to ‘Orientalism’ (including both the prevalent criticisms of the work and a list of errata). ‘Lust of Knowing’ would have been even more useful if Irwin had resisted the mean-spirited and often disingenuous personal attacks that mar an otherwise informative and well-researched historical account. The book is also a warm celebration of a scientific discipline whose obvious and abundant mistakes can sometimes be explained as part of the normal dialectic of the scientific method, but more often seem to be simply a regrettable product of ‘the individual being largely confined to thinking in terms of the public discourse imprisoning him’ – although of course simultaneously demonstrating that ‘public discourse is for a large part created by the intellectual contributions of individuals’…

Pix to a story

Some time ago, during the ‘events’ of May, I posted a story about graffiti painting in the streets of Beirut. These are the accompanying pictures. (The faces of the police officers have been ‘pinked out’ at their own request, since they are not allowed to have their photographs taken while on duty…)

And this was the story: ‘Circulating between the three or four bars still operating in Gemmayzeh on saturday night (both Hamra and Monnot being out of the circulation for obvious reasons). Contrary to the previous few days, the lone open bars are packed to the brim with people tentatively celebrating the lull in the fighting (in Beirut at least) and the slightly promising understanding between HA and the government that had just been announced. At some point, I team up with some youths going out onto the street to spray graffiti representing, or meant to represent, a peace message. It consists of the slogan ‘Power of the Underground’, positioned above three stylized men with bandanas on their faces, each holding up a peace sign in a circle in one hand stretched above their head. Only, when not sprayed very carefully, they can easily be mistaken for three bearded man throwing bombs… Everybody is tipsy and the whole operation is carried out without much care for discretion, so predictably, after three or four spraying sessions, two of the police that are always stationed on Gemmayzeh arrive and want to know what the fuzz is all about. The girl who’s doing the actual spraying puts on her sweetest smile and explains it is an action for peace in Lebanon. ‘Peace in Lebanon? What the f*** are you talking about, are you nuts? Can’t you see what’s going on?’ ‘Yeah, we know, but what can we do? Stay in our homes, watching sectarian scare-mongering channels on TV and be brainwashed and afraid, like everybody else? At least we go out and try to do something constructive, you know, it’s not like we’re shooting RPG’s at each other…’ By this time the cops are broadly smiling, touched by the innocent naiveté and presumably happy there is still some left in the country, and it ends up with them posing for a picture in front of the police van, in uniform carrying their guns, on either side of the girl who is holding the spraycan, with the template in front… Well, they couldn’t very well arrest some kids for spraying graffiti while standing by idly while militiamen kill each other, destroy houses and take over entire town quarters, I suppose…‘