Bilder und Geschichten

Nap

2008-02-19T19:46:00.001-02:00

How Nancy Wished Everything was an April Fool's Joke

2007-09-05T11:37:00.000-02:00

According to a friend, Rabih Mroue is as good as it gets when it comes to Lebanese theatre. Although I know nothing about theatre, I enjoyed seeing a play by him when I was in Beirut. It dealt with how ordinary people became caught up in the sectarianism of the civil war - a topic normally avoided in public discourse, so the piece had been subject to censorship.

I don't know where exactly they're planning to take the "Nancy" play, but if it is coming to a location near you it's definitely worth checking out. The article also contains a remarkable incident of the culture minister's personal intervention in order to lift the customary censorship (the play had originally been banned in Lebanon). If it's that easy to change something, why not go for it and change a few of the other problems as well?

Spendenaufruf/Call for donations

2007-09-04T10:38:00.001-02:00

English translation at end of post.

http://www.hier.geblieben.net/
Aktionsprogramm "Hier Geblieben!"
Für das ganze Bleiberecht!
Für die vollständige Umsetzung der UNO - Kinderrechte!

Liebe Kinder und Jugendlichen,
sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,

hiermit sende ich einen recht ungewöhnlichen, aber nicht um so weniger
wichtigen Hilferuf aus dem Kreise der "Jugendlichen ohne Grenzen" weiter.
Paymana - die den Aufruf geschrieben hat - ist eine der sehr engagierten
Jugendlichen, die durch ihr Engagement immer wieder auf das Bleiberecht
aufmerksam gemacht haben.

In der Hoffnung das dieser Aufruf nicht ungelesen bleibt - sondern
Unterstützung erfährt, verbleibe ich mit freundlichen Grüßen,

Philipp Harpain

vom GRIPS Theater Berlin

"Jugendliche ohne Grenzen"
----------
" Hilfe für Lisa Saify "

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren und Liebe Freunde,

hiermit möchte ich mich mit einer dringenden Bitte an Sie wenden.

Meine Name ist Paimana Heydar. Ich bin 23 Jahre alt und komme ursprünglich
aus Afghanistan. Zur Zeit lebe ich in Deutschland und mache eine Ausbildung
zum Gesundheits-und Krankenpflegerin. Mit 5 Jahren musste ich mit meine
Familie aus Afghanistan fliehen.Nun lebe ich seit 11 Jahren in Deutschland.
Wenn ich mir die Kriegsgeschichte und Unterdrückung dieses Landes
anschaue,so bin ich froh, dass ich sie seither nur aus Büchern und
Erzählungen kenne.
Seit einigen Monaten habe ich durch Mühsamen Suchen den Kontakt zu der
Familie eine damaligen Nachbarin und beste Freundin gefunden. Die Familie
Saify hat es nicht geschafft wie wir damals aus Afghanistan zu
fliehen.Dementsprechend haben Sie wie tausende afghanische Familien auch
dafür einen großen Preis gezahlt.
Der Vater und die älteste Tochter der Familie ist von den Taliban entführt
und ermodert worden. Die alleinstehende Witwe und ihre 5 Kinder (Töchter)
haben nach dem Tod des Vaters und der Schwester in vielen Flüchtlingslagern
Pakistans unter extrem schwierigen Lebensbedingungen überleben müssen, da
die Mutter weitere Entführungen ihre Töchter in Afghanistan befürchtete.
Ich hoffe, ich muss nicht ausführlicher erklären, wie es in den
Flüchtlingslagern in Pakistan zu sich geht. Es hat uns sehr viel Zeit und
Geld gekostet sie da rauszuholen und eine winzige Zimmerwohnung und deren
Lebensunterhalt gelegentlich zu finanzieren.

Eine Tochter der Familie (nach dem Tod der ältesten, die zweitälteste) mit
dem Namen Lisa hat sich beim Arbeiten als Reinigungskraft eine Fraktur des
Mittelfusses zugezogen. Diese Fraktur wurde mit Nagelung versorgt, es kam zu
einer Pseudarthrose mit Entzündung des Fusses, so dass dringend eine
operative Versorung indiziert ist ( eine Tripelarthrodese des Mittelfusses),
die finanziellen Mittel dieser Familie aber bei weitem hierfür nicht
ausreichen. Zur Zeit lebt Lisa unter ständigem Schmerzen und braucht ständig
starke und teuere Schmerzmittel. Eine operative Versorgung ist die einzige
Möglichkeit ihr Fuss noch zu retten. Sie ist u.a. die Säule für das
Überleben ihre Familie.

Mit Hilfe einer Ärtztin habe ich die CT- Bilder einem deutschen Chirugen
vorgelegt, der sie befundet hat- den Bericht habe ich beigefügt (siehe
Anhang).
Des weiteren habe ich den Kostenvoranschlag der pakistanischen Klinik
beigefügt, die diesen Eingriff vornehmen wird. Mit den Kollegen der Klinik
habe ich persönlich telefoniert. Der Arzt hat mir mitgeteilt, dass er eine
Biopsie der Wunde entnommen hat und es sich um eine bakterielle oder
tuberkulöse Entzündung handelt,so dass das Mädchen aktuell operabel wäre.
Die Kosten belaufen sich ingesamt auf etwa 3500 Euro.

Ich fühle mich für diese Familie verantwortlich, weil ich selbst ein
Kriegskind bin und mir lieber nicht ausmalen möchte in welchen
gesundheitlichen Bedingungen ich leben müsste, wenn meine Familie mich nicht
in sicheren Deutschland gebracht hätte.
Ich kann aber dennoch sehr mitfühlen, wie es Lisa in ihre Lebenssituation
und gesundheitlichen Zustand gerade geht. Daher bitte ich Sie mir jegliche
Hilfe zukommen zu lassen, damit ich Lisa helfen kann wieder auf den Beinen
zu kommen und sie widerum ihre Familie versogen kann.

Wir kümmern uns um unsere Gliedmaßen als Teile unseres Körpers.
Warum nicht um die hilfbedürftigen Menschen als Teil der Menschheit?
Helfen Sie mir, helfen Sie Lisa !!!

In aller Hoffnung Paimana Heydar
p.heydar@hotmail.de

Gemeindekonto
Berliner Volksbank
BLZ : 10090000
KontoNr. : 1734585013
Betreff : Hilfe für Lisa Saify

Ansprachpartner für die Kontoführung
Pastor Dieter Begaße
Gorkistraße 127
13509 Berlin
Tele : 030 / 434 21 45

:: in English ::

The text above has been forwarded to me by a group of people campaigning against the deportation of asylum seekers and other "aliens" from Germany. I worked with them for a few months in 2005. In the forwarded message, Paimana, a 23-year-old woman whose family is from Afghanistan and who was been living in Germany since she was 5, calls for donations. She is trying to raise funds for a family friend, Lisa, who was not as fortunate as Paimana and had to stay in Afghanistan. Lisa's older sister and father were kidnapped and then killed in Afghanistan. She, her mother and 5 other sisters have since been living in harsh conditions in refugee camps in Pakistan. Lisa had a work accident and urgently needs surgery on her foot, which has become infected and might have to be amputated unless she is treated soon. The surgery costs USD 3,500 and the family have no money. If you can donate, contact me or leave your contacts in the comment section, I can find out the IBAN and SWIFT codes.

Photo w/ Lili

2007-08-25T15:04:00.000-02:00

Auf dem Kreuzberg...

Munich this June w/ Silke

2007-08-25T14:59:00.000-02:00

Some pics from our flat - Julia's b-day, March

2007-08-25T14:56:00.001-02:00

Martial arts slide show

2007-08-22T15:37:00.000-02:00

Almost there....

2007-07-26T09:32:00.000-02:00

For what seems like weeks, the Lebanese army has been saying that they are about to clear out the "remaining Fatah al-Islam" fighters.

This is from today's As-Safir newspaper, translation courtesy of NOW Lebanon:

"The Nahr al-Bared camp witnessed yesterday the heaviest artillery shelling since the clashes started 67 days ago as the army artillery pieces targeted the remaining geographical location that is still under the control of Fatah al-Islam militants (an estimated 40 % of the old camp surface area). Thousands of artillery shells fell on the area from around 4 A.M. yesterday until the evening at a rate of 10 artillery shells per minute, which represents a record since the clashes erupted on May 20."

So 40% of the camp's surface area are what remains of Fatah al-Islam's position. And ten shells per minute averages at one ever six seconds, right? No wonder nothing will be left of the camp.

Meanwhile, many pictures surface of the life of Lebanese army soldiers during the crisis (of course we still don't know much about the life of refugees still inside the camp, or inside Beddawi camp; this information remains confined to blog reporting, such as from Golaniya). This is an example taken from Beirut Spring:

Finally...

2007-07-24T11:20:00.000-02:00

...someone (a Lebanese person) is saying something sensible about the situation of Palestinians in the country...

The problem of the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon is not an Arab or an international problem, it is a Lebanese problem and it is up to us to solve it once and for all. Urgently.

Rubber bullet watch site

2007-07-16T19:03:00.000-02:00

In a previous post on this blog I had written about the German police's wish to use rubber bullets against protesters, after having met a guy who was almost killed by one. Now check this out - the UN bans the use of rubber bullets in Kosovo after accidentally killing two protesters with such bullets. They were well past their sell-by date. This is so typically UN - people get killed by inertia.

PRISTINA, Serbia, July 3 (Reuters) - The United Nations is considering banning the use of rubber bullets in peacekeeping operations after the killing of two protesters in Kosovo, U.N. police in the province said on Tuesday.

... The bullets were manufactured in 1991 and had a shelf life of three years. A police report said they had "probably hardened" with age.

Quote of the Day, if not the next 3 Months, if not the Year

2007-07-12T15:46:00.000-02:00

I have always admired people who manage to find quotes by wise/experienced/dead/witty people to express what they want to say. Today one such quote has mysteriously made its way to me, courtesy of the Daily Star newspaper, a Lebanese daily otherwise famous (to me, at least) for its unintentionally funny headlines. Check out these words of wisdom from Abbas Zaki, the official PLO representative in Lebanon:

'Zaki stressed that the situation in Nahr al-Bared should resolve itself as quickly as possible and urged the Fatah al-Islam fighters to lay down their arms and surrender. "The Lebanese judicial system is the fairest in the world," Zaki said.'

It requires no further comment, I believe.

Rami Zurayk article

2007-06-18T11:44:00.000-02:00

A large scale humanitarian crisis is silently unfolding as the Lebanese army is systematically destroying the Palestinian camp with artillery shelling.

How convenient!

2007-06-08T11:42:00.001-02:00

In a statement Thursday, Lahoud urged all sides to form a unity cabinet in order "to save the country and confront any attempt to settle Palestinians in Lebanon and drive Lebanon into anarchy."

Heiligendamm, peacefully, for a change

2007-06-08T10:38:00.000-02:00

Palestinian refugees in Lebanon

2007-06-08T10:37:00.001-02:00

Excellent and easy-to-read backgrounder on the situtation of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon 1948-present.

Day 17 of the current madness, and counting

2007-06-08T10:35:00.000-02:00

"We can't reach people and we can't gain access to where the wounded are," said Igor Ramazzotti, a delegate for the International Committee of the Red Cross. "There's a lot of rubble in the street. That's made it almost impossible to drive into the camp."

More Rostock

2007-06-05T11:21:00.001-02:00

Burning cars with Black Block flags....

But we still kind of thought it would end peacefully...

...until the water cannon trucks came forging into the crowds...

40 Years of Occupation

2007-06-05T10:56:00.000-02:00

Dear readers. (If you are out there). Forty years ago today, on June 5, 1967, the so-called Six-Day-War between Israel and several Arab states (Syria, Egypt, Jordan) started. Six days later, the newly founded (in 1948) state of Israel had gained enormous amounts of territory from its opposing states, more than its own original state territory: the Sinai peninsula from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, the West Bank from Jordan, as well as the Gaza Strip.

While the Sinai was returned to Egypt when a peace accord between the two countries was signed in 1979, Israel today, as you know, still holds the West Bank and Gaza Strip as well as the Golan. The latter was simply annexed in 1981 and declared Israeli territory (in violation of international law, just for the record). The West Bank and Gaza Strip were initially directly ruled by Israel. As in the Golan Heights, many Israeli settlements were established there. New waves of refugees from the West Bank and Gaza fled to neighbouring states (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan) to swell the already significant refugee populations created when Israel was first established in 1948.

After the first Intifada (a civil disobedience campaign directed against the occupation) had started in 1987 and could not be quelled by military means, at the beginning of the 1990s negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians were begun and led to the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 and 1996. The PLO led by Yasser Arafat, the main Palestinian interlocutor in negotiations with Israel, recognised Israel's right to exist; the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) was created as a proto-state agency, and given some (limited) power to rule things in the West Bank and Gaza. The goal of this exercise, it was declared, was to set up two independent states, Israel and Palestine, living in peace side by side.

Did it work? Obviously not. Although an independent Palestinian state was the declared goal in lofty speeches and negotiations, things on the ground looked very different. The West Bank was now divided into A-, B-, and C-type areas, where the PNA had control over area A, area B meant "shared" control, and C meant Israeli security control. In practice, the set-up of the different areas, the Israeli settlements on large and strategically located swaths of West Bank land, the system of "Israelis-only" roads and tunnels meant that the West Bank remained divided into small enclaves, under Israel's control at any time, and deprived of other criteria of stateness (control of its airspace; control of important water resources being used by Israeli settlements). Jeff Halper has called this the 'matrix of control'.Politically, the achievement of Palestinian statehood remained conditional on the resolution of the most contentious issues (control of Jerusalem; the return of Palestinian refugees; ...) that were supposed to be tackled in "final status negotiations".

So the situation on the ground was contradictory of the Oslo Accords' stated goals, and the proposed final status talks were never begun. Efforts to do this were made at Sharm el Sheikh and at Taba in 2001; but they collapsed (the Palestinians blame the Israelis for this, because the "state" they were being offered could never have lived and breathed for a single day, it was unviable; the Israelis, on the other hand, blame Arafat for rejecting their famous "generous offer" - for a debunking of this myth, see this.). Shortly afterwards, Ariel Sharon triggered the so-called Second Intifada with his visit to the Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem... and the rest of the story (or, rather, the bits that reach our mainstream media) we all know from watching and reading the news. It keeps going from bad to worse....

....but let's not be fooled. Although one of the most long-running and seemingly intractable conflicts, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is actually fairly easy to solve. Solutions for all difficult problems have been proposed (at Taba, Sharm el Sheikh...) and need only be put into practice. "Only" being of course somewhat of an understatement. But still. The solutions are known. As time is ticking by, the situation is getting ever more explosive, people continue dying, and the Arab-Israeli conflict remains one of the most important mobilising and rallying causes for international terrorism.... we need to solve it. Two states living side by side in peace, as even the most unknowledgeable person will concede, is needed right now!

Lebanon is burning

2007-06-05T06:59:00.000-02:00

Taken from Remarkz

Riot control

2007-06-04T14:46:00.000-02:00

For those of you who read German, this is an excerpt of an interview with the head of Germany's police union (hat tip Tobi). His message: after this weekend's riots in Rostock, it's obvious that German riot police need rubber-coated bullets. After all, he says, these are successfully used in other countries.

By the way, at the demo in Rostock I met an Israeli from Anarchists Against the Wall who had lost an eye after being shot with a rubber coated bullet.

sueddeutsche.de: Sie fordern nun den Einsatz von Gummigeschossen gegen militante Demonstranten. Wann genau soll damit denn geschossen werden dürfen?

Wendt: Die Bilder im Fernsehen haben ja ganz deutlich gezeigt, dass die Polizisten nicht in der Lage sind, aus einer Distanz von 30 bis 40 Metern auf Störer einzuwirken, wenn sie mit Steinen und Molotowcocktails beworfen werden. Wir haben den viel zu kurzen Schlagstock und wir haben die Pistole. Der Schlagstock ist wirkungslos, den brauchen wir nicht einzusetzen. Und die Pistole will ja wohl keiner einsetzen.

Um zu verhindern, dass unsere Kolleginnen und Kollegen möglicherweise einmal in Panik zur Waffe greifen, sagen wir: Die Polizei braucht wirkungsvolle Distanzwaffen. Das sind Gummiwucht- und Gummischrotgeschosse. Damit müssen unsere Hundertschaften jetzt ausgestattet werden, um in Situationen, bei denen Steine geworfen werden, auf die Störer einwirken zu können.

sueddeutsche.de: Ein Schlagstock ist wirkungslos? Das überrascht...

Wendt: Über eine Entfernung von 40 Metern ist er wirkungslos. Da kann man mit dem Ding werfen, mehr aber auch nicht.

sueddeutsche.de: Wieso geht die Polizei dann eben nicht näher ran?

Wendt: Wissen Sie, unsere Einsatzkräfte schleppen 15 Kilo mit sich rum. So schwer ist die Sicherheitsausrüstung. Stellen Sie sich mal vor, Sie würden mit eineinhalb Kisten Bier auf den Rücken geschnallt hinter Störern herlaufen. Da haben Sie keine Chance.

sueddeutsche.de: Weil die Störer schneller und wendiger sind?

Wendt: Genau. Wir operieren aus taktischen Gründen nur in geschlossenen Verbänden, nicht mit einzelnen Leuten. Und geschlossene Verbände bewegen sich langsamer als Einzelpersonen. Deshalb brauchen wir auch die Distanzwaffen, damit wir nicht länger dieses Katz-und-Maus-Spiel haben.
sueddeutsche.de: Können Gummigeschosse töten?
Wendt: Gummigeschosse können vor allem sehr weh tun und auch Verletzungen hervorrufen. Aber Waffen, die wirken sollen, müssen auch weh tun dürfen.

sueddeutsche.de: Noch einmal: Kann ein Gummigeschoss, das einen Demonstranten am Kopf trifft, diesen töten?

Wendt: Nein. Ein solcher Fall ist nicht bekannt. Diese Waffen werden in vielen anderen Ländern sehr erfolgreich erprobt. Im Übrigen ist ja auch niemand dazu verpflichtet, Pflastersteine und Molotowcocktails auf Polizisten zu werfen. Wenn er das unterlässt, kommt er nicht mal in die Reichweite der Gummigeschosse.

Interesting connections

2007-06-04T11:17:00.000-02:00

From the Daily Star, June 1, Lebanon politics section:

Separately, international talks are being held behind closed doors over the possibility of deploying UNIFIL troops along the Lebanese-Syrian border, the Central News Agency (CNA) reported on Thursday.
"This issue will be a priority after the UN Security Council approved the creation of an international tribunal," the report said. "Due to the current security developments in Lebanon, firm measures need to be implemented to monitor the border in a more efficient way."
Meanwhile, the UN's Lebanon Independent Border Assessment Team started its evaluation of bordermonitoring capacities along the Lebanese-Syrian border. The team's work should be completed in two weeks, the CNA report said. The team arrived on Monday to evaluate reports of arms smuggling across the Syrian border in violation of UN Security Council resolutions. It was dispatched following the council's presidential statement of April 17, in which the council asked UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to send an independent group to assess security measures along the Lebanese-Syrian border.
The team is led by Lasse Christensen of Denmark and is composed of experts from
Algeria, Germany, Jamaica and Switzerland.

Bad news is back in the news

2007-06-04T10:15:00.000-02:00

Well, all of this seems like a re-run of last summer's bad news alerts. But different. On top of the ongoing crisis at the Nahr al Bared camp, where the Lebanese army is still shelling big-time and people are still dying, there are now clashes at Ain al Hilweh camp in Saida (South Lebanon), too. This is really bad news, although it had been expected. A roundup of informed sources includes "Anecdotes from a Banana Republic", which has this video of Nahr al Bared fighting.

(If you put the caption "Lebanese civil war, shelling of Palestinian camps" nobody would notice by the way). And this bit of reporting:

A Swedish woman, a "child safety consultant," according to her business card, briefed us on the latest developments. "We are receiving pictures of the dead-- children, the disabled and elderly. Most of the people who remained are very old; others stayed because they fear not being allowed to return to their homes and being re-located to temporary encampments." "How are you receiving the photos?" I asked. "People are sending them in over their phones. I just received one of a sixty-year old woman, her head blown off. Just now they say a large building near the marketplace, in the densest area of the camp, collapsed from continuous shelling. The situation is bad. Bad. Very bad," she said, and returned to her computer. "Oh and the Lebanese press are denying there are still as many people in the camp," she continued. "There are at least 5,000 who remain inside. They keep reporting that only the Fatah al Islam remain. It's simply not true."

Land and people has more shocking news on the racist fallout of this crisis:

SB was asked for his ID, and when they found out that he is Palestinian, they forced him to lie on the gound for half an hour after which they beat him and kicked him and then told him to go. Just like that, in the middle of the day, in the middle of the busiest district in Beirut. His crime: he is Palestinian.

Rostock

2007-06-03T19:41:00.000-02:00

Don't tell me they weren't looking for trouble...

....and that all of this...

...couldn't have been avoided. would have been a much stronger message too, if despite the 10,000 police people wouldn't have taken the bait and things would have stayed peaceful...

it all makes me very angry because this type of violence has no goal, no political demand (at least none that i can recognise), no room for shades of grey, and worst of all, it takes all the coverage and attention away from the real messages people were trying to send...

excuse the shitty images. i was taking pictures with my camera. should get better ones from my flatmate soon.

2007-06-01T08:15:00.000-02:00

How low can you go

2007-05-31T10:30:00.000-02:00

Check this out

w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Last update - 18:50 30/05/2007

Sheetrit, Eitan propose firing 'Israeli Qassam' at Gaza Strip
By Aluf Benn, Haaretz Correspondent, Haaretz Staff and Agencies

Ministers Meir Sheetrit and Rafi Eitan proposed Wednesday that Israel produce its own version of the Qassam rocket to be fired at targets inside the Gaza Strip in response to Palestinian rocket fire on its southern communities.

The suggestion was made at a meeting of the security cabinet to discuss the ongoing military operation aimed at countering Qassam fire from Gaza.

The two said that this kind of rocket, which would cost very little, would cause a small amount of damage but would put pressure on the population in Gaza.

The cabinet decided at the meeting to reject a cease-fire with Hamas over the violence in the Gaza Strip, and that the Israel Defense Forces should continue with its ongoing policy of military action against the Palestinian militant groups.

Minister of Industry, Trade and Labor Eli Yishai of Shas proposed that Israel use air strikes to destroy Palestinian towns and villages in response to the rocket fire, after giving local residents advance notice allowing them to evacuate their homes.

Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman also suggested intensifying Israel's response to the Qassams, but Prime Minister Ehud Olmert rejected both proposals.

Shas MK Yitzhak Cohen proposed cutting off the supply of electricity, water and fuel to the Strip, and justify the move by saying that Qassam rockets had destroyed Israel's infrastructure and that it will take a long time to repair the facilities with which to supply the Palestinians with basic resources. Shin Bet security service director Yuval Diskin suggested that Cohen's idea is worth examining.

Noting a "relative decrease in Qassam rocket launchings," the cabinet decided to continue "attacks and military pressure on terrorist groups, mainly Hamas and Islamic Jihad," Olmert's office said in a statement.

"It was emphasized [at the meeting] that Israel is not conducting any negotiations for a cease-fire with the terrorist organizations," the statement said.

The methods currently employed by the IDF include air strikes on those responsible for or carrying out Qassam rocket attacks on southern Israel, limited ground operations within the Gaza Strip, and targeted assassinations of those firing rockets and members of the military wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Meanwhile, Hamas political leader Khaled Meshal said in an interview published Wednesday that the organization intends to continue its attacks on Israel despite the IDF operations in Gaza.

A political source in Jerusalem said Tuesday, however, that Hamas is under increased pressure due to the number of casualties in the Strip and the number of arrests in the West Bank.

According to the source, Hamas and Islamic Jihad are experiencing difficulties in firing rockets, due to Israeli pressure, which is evidenced by a reduction in the number of launches.

The source added that the original Palestinian cease-fire offer was not acceptable to Israel, and that "we must see what they offer in the future."

A Qassam rocket directly hit the fourth floor of a building in Sderot on Wednesday. The strike caused damage to several apartments in the building. No one was wounded but several people were treated for shock.

Security sources told Haaretz that the leaders of Hamas' military wing disagreed on Tuesday as to whether or not to halt the Qassam fire on Israel. According to the sources, the commander of Hamas' military wing instructed the men under his command to stop firing Qassam rockets on Sderot, while the branch of the military wing stationed in the northern Gaza Strip refused to follow his instructions and continued the attacks.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will meet next Thursday with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni will meet Thursday with United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Austria.

Meanwhile, Meretz MKs Avshalom Vilan and Zahava Gal-On have been promoting a new diplomatic initiative for several weeks, which would give the Arab League responsibility for the Gaza Strip and install a multinational force, in cooperation with the European Union.

It brings to mind an excellent suggestion made during last year's war: listen up, Eitan & Co.:

Operation Security Roof
Developing Story
by Gilad Atzmon

Following the IDF difficulties in defeating Hezbollah’s and Hamas’s ballistic warfare, the Israeli Government is now searching for contractors with some advanced experience in large scale reinforced concrete constructions. The mission ahead is the building of a solid concrete roof over the entire Jewish State (known as ‘Greater Israel’). PM Olmert is determined that the only way to defend Israel’s populated area is to cover the Jewish State with a thick layer of iron and cement.

The Israeli Government’s decision to build a concrete roof followed a considerable debate within the cabinet. Defence Minister Amir Peretz insisted that a massive extension of the current Security Wall would be enough to provide the goods. Peretz maintained that a substantial increase of the wall to the height of 90,000 ft. would be more than sufficient to stop missiles from entering Israeli territory. Peretz sensibly argued that Israeli youngsters would benefit from seeing the blue sky when they raise their eyes above. Prime Minister Olmert and the Chief of Staff, Major General Dan Halutz, couldn’t agree less. Being fully aware of the nature of ballistic warfare, both Halutz and Olmert agreed that the only way to provide the Jewish State with the ultimate security is to cover it from above with a reinforced concrete shield. Shimon Peres, the legendary peace enthusiast, offered a compromise inspired by the idea of a trampoline. Peres suggested that a Security Wall’s 90,000 ft. extension made of an elastic net would do the job. The elder statesman argued that an elastic net will guarantee that every Arab missile aimed at Israel would bounce back to the Arab territory once it hits the net. Olmert and Halutz dismissed Peres’s suggestion. They argued that considering the excessive Israeli usage of artillery and missiles against its Arab enemies, the Jewish State would suffer far more from the erection of such a ‘bouncy net’. “Israel,” said Halutz, “would never survive the extent of its fierce artillery barrages bouncing back on itself.”

In a press conference following the heated cabinet debate, the Government spokesman Mr Zion Zioni stressed that “following the total success of the Security Wall in stopping Palestinian suicidal terror, ‘Security Roof’ is obviously the natural way to proceed.” Mr Zioni maintained as well that the new Israeli project will turn the Jewish State into a “sealed Jewish Bunker”. “In fact,” Zioni emphasised, “‘Operation Security Roof’ brings the Zionist adventure into its final destination. We are now moving from the ‘Iron Wall’ phase into the ‘Concrete Roof’ future. With a reinforced concrete ceiling from above, a Security Wall in the East and the Mediterranean Sea in the West, the Jewish State will eventually become the safest haven for world Jewry. Herzl’s dream comes true. Long Live Israel!”

Yet, some technical difficulties lay ahead. Probably the most crucial problem has something to do with breathing. Like the rest of the humankind, the Israeli people consume oxygen and release carbon dioxide. Apparently, the Israeli cabinet Ministers were made aware of this very crucial fact by the Health Minister. Olmert, being a man of action, responded immediately. Already in the cabinet meeting he authorised the Defence Ministry to explore different solutions to the acute problem.

We already learned from the Defence Ministry spokesman Lt. Galileo Galilee that ‘Filter on the Roof’, the Israeli-American High Tech chemical giant (traded on Wall Street, operated from Gush Katif) has been contracted to deal with the problem.We have learned as well from Lt. Galilee that Filter on the Roof has already come up with more than a few solutions. Although some of the solutions are rather radical, it is crucial to mention that they are all extremely innovative, as you would expect from an Israeli-American High Tech venture. Probably the most conventional and practical solution proposed by the chemical giant was to bore as many as 6 million ventilation holes in the roof. Peres, Peretz and Sh-Meretz rejected the possibility without even thinking twice. “Considering our traumatic collective memory of the holocaust,” so they said, “turning the Jewish State into a big room with holes in the ceiling is simply unacceptable.”

Probably the most radical suggestion made by the Israeli-American company was to train the Jewish population in Israel to breath like fish. By the time the Israeli people are well trained, all that is left to do is just to fill the Jewish bunker with seawater. In other words, Filter on the Roof suggested to turn the Israeli State into a ‘giant Jewish tropical aquarium’. Though this option seems to be very radical and even inconceivable, most cabinet Ministers reacted enthusiastically. They all agreed that such a solution would fit nicely with the concept of modern Jewish life in general and Zionism in particular. Israelis love the sea. Israelis are not afraid of water. Once the entire Israeli society is covered with water, no one would ever consider throwing them to the sea.

We will be following this developing story and keeping you informed.

What's new in the stuff I read - Lebanon crisis, take x

2007-05-30T10:18:00.000-02:00

So, I've been trying to follow what is happening in Lebanon these days. Apart from reading the papers, that involves of course checking out what people write on their blogs. And wow, it can get very tiring very fast to try to form a picture of events that way. It seems pretty much everyone loves their conspiracy theories, with a few helpful and/or thoughtful postings that actually have something meaningful to say. That is at least my impression as a consumer of blog posts, while like everyone else I am of the opinion that my posts do have something to say.

Dissatisfied with the reporting in German and English-language media of the most recent outbreak of major violence in Lebanon which started on May 20, I first came across the UN office for humanitarian affairs' news site. That seemed more helpful. Haaretz, the Israeli paper, also carried much more up-to-date info than anything based over here in Europe, at least during the first few days (they must now be content to file this as unimportant, because Lebanon's nowhere to be found on there these past few days. Or maybe it's because so much is happening in Gaza right now..).

Shocked and awed by what had seemed a total impossibility, judging by the conversations I had while in Lebanon - namely, the renewed outbreak of violence between the Lebanese army and an armed group inside Lebanon - I started to read and watch anything I could find. What particularly upset me was the video footage of the first one or two days of shootings, when clashes happened in several places in Tripoli. It's the combination of the sudden outbreak of anarchy, of each person's life and health suddenly being a matter of luck and negotiation, and the abyss of hatred, anxiety and adrenalin visible on the men's faces in these pictures that shocked me. To me, it seemed that they were falling back into old, all-to-familiar patterns of action left over from the civil war, perhaps - just watch the way the shooters (Internal Security Forces?) are interacting among themselves. There is something so everyday about it, underneath all the fear of the moment. Plus, of course, the way many civilians cheer on the army in firing on the Palestinian refugee camp.

This particulary haunted me when I seemed to recognise places in the city that I might have visited myself during the past year.

It seems that I wasn't the only one to make comparisons with the past during these days - as this Comment by apokraphyte from Remarkz shows:

I will relate a personal anecdote. Last summer when I was in Beirut, I recall seeing an exhibit about the famine that resulted from the Ottoman blockade from 1915-1919 (??). It really shook me. I had always tried to understand the civil war according to the political, economic, military and social realities. But these horribly gruesome picture really made me stop and consider where the terrible inhumanity, where the terrible brutality came from. After seeing those photos, I really began to understand how the value of human life can become so degraded that people will trade in it to achieve their political and economic objectives.

The photos still haunt me. Mostly because I think it is almost impossible for me to reconcile the warmth and generosity of most Lebanese I know with this horrible meanness that seems to lurk under the surface of social relations. Maybe I should do a post, but I am fearful of making wild generalizations for no purpose. Dunno.

Although I haven't read much of the sort by Lebanese bloggers. Perhaps an indulgent foreign pastime.

Anyway, as the events continued to unfold, it quickly became clear who was bearing the brunt of violence: Palestinian civilians. Indiscriminate shelling + 40,000 people + 1,5 sqkm in Nahr al Barid refugee camp = anyone can "do the maths", as they say. The few things I could find on what is actually happening (although I have many misgivings about this particular article) inside the camp are haunting. As is the fallout of this crisis for any Palestinian in Lebanon who is now, more than even before, a target for the various Lebanese security agencies. Not to mention that the closest refugee camp, Baddawi, now has to take in all the refugees from Nahr el Bared, putting further strains on the living conditions there.

Help campaigns have sprung up. UNRWA, after initially being fired upon while trying to get supplies into the camp that has now been cut off from water, electricity and of course, food, for 10 days and counting, is now managing to deliver supplies to Baddawi at least.

As to the political narratives of what is happening - they are many! Most people can agree that Fatah al-Islam, the group the army is trying to eradicate by shelling Nahr al Barid camp, is of an "Islamist" persuasion. Backgrounders on the group are everywhere now - just run a Google search. But what do they want, how did they get into the camp, and who sponsors them? Of course the Lebanese government (in Blog posts often known as "the club", "the Welch club", "Hariri, Inc." or "March 14"), and presumably pro-government blogs which I hardly read, think it's the Syrians. As does, interestingly, a portion of the German press (Rainer Herrman, FAZ). And a colleague of mine at work (I work in one of those think tank thingees) would agree. The argument: Syria wants to stop the formation of an international tribunal to try the suspects in the Hariri murder by creating mayhem in Lebanon. It is not entirely clear how the chain of reasoning works in this, but if anything can be counted as initial proof, it would have to be the postponement of the debate on the tribunal in the UN Security Council.

But a lot of people doubt this is the case. Most prominently, Seymour Hersh, the US journalist. He had argued in an article a few weeks back that Fatah al Islam had been funded by the Hariri movement (the strategy: build up a Sunni militia to counterbalance Hizballah). He refutes the argument that Syria supports Fatah al-Islam in a TV interview, but his reasoning seems a bit twisted. To the point of making, as Remarkz once again points out, CNN presenter Hala Gorani appear more together than he is. And that goes a long way of showing how weak his argument must be. And Jamal averts that Hersh's assertion of Hariri funding for Fatah al Islam is based on a single source.

OK, where does that leave us? To be honest, I have no idea and I can only add that I am instintively wary of Syria conspiracy theories. I simply can't see how the current strife is helping Syria in any way - just as I couldn't - and still can't - for the Hariri bombing. So maybe it has all developed its own dynamics which Syria is not controlling, and it is banking on the long-term effect of being needed for overall regional stability. I don't know. We will probably never know - or will we?

And Hizballah - the opposition? They are lying low it seems. It took them a while to come out in support of Palestinian refugees. Everyone is watching which move Walid Jumblatt is going to make next. The US are shipping arms to Lebanon to support the army. Siniora is trying to retain control. As the saga continues... and oh, I forgot to mention the concurrent bombing campaing: bombs set off at night during the past week, in Achrafiyeh (Christian area of Beirut), Verdun (Muslim area of Beirut), Aley (Druze village)...

Joan as policewoman

2007-04-11T10:37:00.000-02:00

This band is the best. Joan rules. And their gig this Monday in Berlin is probably the best concert I've been to. The setting at Volksbühne was great, it being the avantgarde punk rock theatre, or whatever, that it is - a grey concrete slab on the outside, a 70s GDR glam theatre inside. And the music you can check out for yourselves. But it's really the amazing charisma of the band that does it... Joan herself is of course the star and immediately fills up the whole theatre with her amazing presence, just by the way she walks onstage and sits down in front of the grand piano, all the while holding a small white coffee cup and taking occasional sips from it. She makes you follow her every move. At one point I thought I was going to have to become a total victim right there, but luckily she has this easy, charming way of laughing at herself and everything that makes her appear less intense. For example she will tell little anecdotes in between songs, like how during the soundcheck all the seats were covered with canvas covers, until, like in some sudden modern dance sequence, a horde of people came in and wordlessly removed all the covers from the seats in a weird, choreographed way. She has this slightly odd, ironic way of telling the story that makes it funny. Sometimes she will just stop talking and breathe down the microphone in a way that has the whole audience laughing with its mock-erotic charm. Or, after a particularly weird moment of doing that, say 'I am a strange person! Nice to meet you!' You can see that I'm starting to go on about her...
The other two band members are not effaced by her presence in any way though, you can really feel that without them she wouldn't be there doing this and vice versa. It really showed how well they work together on 'I Defy', where normally Anthony of Anthony and the Johnsons sings with Joan. Since he wasn't there, Rainy the bass player and Ben the drummer took turns singing his parts. It was great. By the way, the first time I listened to Anthony and the Johnsons - at full volume - was during a road trip in Lebanon's Chouf mountains, courtesy of Amer from Jordan. On a sunny day when we drove up the mountain real fast in search of the 'cedars', which we never found,instead winding up next to some ex-Syrian surveillance equipment, horsing around really high on thin mountain air. But I've written about that on this blog somewhere....
Back to Joan and the gig - respect is also due for their choice in support band. 'Rythm king and her friends' are two girls in their early twenties doing really, really bad electro-punk-rock stuff with full-screen words like 'industry' and 'desire' projected onto the stage background (in pink). A courageous choice on everyone's part, and great fun.
Jeff Buckley was a lucky guy, is all I can say.

New blog

2007-03-22T16:19:00.000-02:00

hey, I've started a new blog about doing my Phd. check it out!

Royal Trekkie

2007-03-20T16:03:00.000-02:00

Did anyone know that King Abdallah of Jordan, a guy who bases his rule on his presumed 'family ties' to the Prophet Mohammad, appeared on an episode of Star Trek back in 1995? I discovered this recently and it blew my mind! I guess it just goes to show how far apart perceptions and reality can be. Also, he apparently welds miniature tanks in the (admittedly royal) shed next to his house in his spare time, while his wife Rania bakes cakes for the kids. Says a BBC documentary.

more jamaica

2007-02-25T16:46:00.000-02:00

jamaica

some more pics.

also, some jamaican ways to announce (in bars, shops, etc.) that no credit will be given to customers:

'MR CREDIT IS A BAD DISEASE. BUT DON'T WORRY, YOU WON'T GET IT HERE'

'NO MORE MR CREDIT. HE DIED IN A CAR ACCIDENT ON HIS WAY IN FROM THE JAZZ FESTIVAL'

???

Jamaica

2007-02-12T22:58:00.000-02:00

by the way. this is my getaway from everything having to do with war, lebanon, last summer, etc. it's working!

at miami airport. the immigration people weren't as friendly as this guy and had a lot of intelligent questions about the lebanese, syrian, jordanian and egyptian stamps in my passport (my favourite: "so what is it that you DO, ma'am?", or maybe: "so how was the middle east, ma'am?"). this of course after the iris and fingerprint scans. nice.

downtown kingston is scary!!

on top of blue mountain peak

lynette, owner of coffee fields, runner of whitfield hall guest house, generally the boss of the show

yes. at long bay.

at dicky's - a small rastafarian restaurant. please note the carefully folded napkins with ganja motif.

a "man trap" from the days of slavery. oh my.

Evacuated from Beirut

2006-07-31T11:39:00.000-02:00

Although there was so much, in my opinion a bit too much, attention paid to the evacuation of foreigners from Lebanon, I decided to write something about my personal evacuation experience.
I took the decision to leave about eight hours before we were due to go - around 11pm on Tuesday night. In the end it just felt like I wasn't doing anyone a favour by staying, all (well, almost all of them) my Lebanese friends were telling me to go and be safe, and so was everybody I know in Germany. So I decided to do it, even though it felt particularly nasty to be leaving as part of a 'green light' the international community was giving Israel by evacuating its citizens from Lebanon. 'Once we're out, you can go ahead with the real stuff' may have been the logic, or maybe it was Israel contacting European governments and telling them, 'guys, you've got 48hours to get your people out of there'.
That's what the German airforce crew on our evacuation plane were speculating anyway, they were saying that the really short notice for evacuating Germans was probably due to the fact the German government hadn't been planning on doing this until they got a definite call from Israel.
It was a really long journey until we got on that plane in Turkey though. First we had to assemble at 7am outside the BIEL conference venue in the port of Beirut. After queuing for three hours in the already unbearably strong sunshine with about 1,000 others, we were told that the first batch of buses had gone and that we should come back in a couple of hours. By this point, several people had fainted and one person had been severely injured because they were squashed against the separation barrier where several Lebanese army and German embassy staff were checking everyone had a German passport. There were definitely not enough embassy people around to inform people what was going on - they had one guy with a megaphone shouting 'everyone will get on a bus', but somehow he didn't manage to get through to the majority of people. Besides, all this was hard to believe in the midst of the pushing, fighting for space, the heat and the occasional outbreak of panic anyway. People panicked out of worry they wouldn't be able to get on a bus, or that they would get separated from friends or family. All the children and babies were crying because of the heat and stress, parents were losing their nerve - and all of this got worse when Israeli planes bombed a storage facility in Achrafiyeh, near Sodeco, about 5 mins by car behind us.

Anyway, I had made it right to the front and was literally standing in front of the separation barrier when they closed it and told everyone the next buses would be arriving in two hours' time. A lot of people were jumping the barrier at this point, with the Lebanese guards letting them be. One man came running and pushing up to the barrier with his two kids in his arms, furious and sweaty, and shoved them into the arms of one of the soldiers guarding the barrier. 'I want my kids to get out, do something' he shouted at the soldier, who told him to calm down and behave and handed the kids back across the barrier.
It felt a bit stupid to actually turn back from the gate like a civilised person, considering that everyone else was of the view that by this time, everything counted to get out and breaking the rules was o.k. and jumping the barrier was in order. But that's what I did anyway, I remember thinking for better or worse... I came back after two hours and most of the morning crowd were gone then - buses started arriving from Sidon in the South carrying more evacuees, who at this point had already been on the road for 4-5 hours with their lives in danger from Israeli bombardment. Accordingly, they were even more stressed than people had been in the morning. There were a lot of fights after we got through the barrier and had to wait for another hour or two in the sun, just to catch a shuttle bus to the main conference centre (a distance of about 500 metres). They wouldn't allow us to walk there, and for this purpose had armed German security guards on call. Next to us, the Canadians seemed to be evacuating people at a much faster pace, sending more buses and pickups...
After I finally made it to the conference centre and registered with the German embassy staff (more waiting of course), I had to wait in a huge hangar, bare apart from a lot of plastic chairs, with my fellow evacuees, i.e. about one to two thousand people. Even the German ambassador was helping with the registration, but by this point nobody was surprised about anything anymore. The majority of us were to be taken by bus to Damascus, but as I was waiting to register, an embassy person had asked me if I was willing to travel to Turkey instead. They had negotiated another evacuation route through Syria and to Turkey and were asking anyone not travelling with small children to take that road, because of the longer bus ride.

Unfortunately our bus convoy was the last to leave, at about 7p.m., so we had quite a long wait... there was no food anywhere, except a few lunch boxes which we suspected were left over from the Canadians, and of which my new-found traveling companion managed to get her hands on a few. But then they had told us to bring food to last for 24 hours, along with our ten kilo evacuation allowance...
Once we got on the way, in a strangely surreal dusk with a beautiful sunset - surreal because all the roads were deserted where they would normally have been bustling on a weekday night - everyone started to relax a little. It almost felt like we were taking a road trip, except that things remained strangely tense, and with every major industrial facility we passed (refineries, fuel storages, etc. - and there are a lot of them on that road), people held their breath a little. You never know.
And then there were the fights: we made one stop on our four-hour trip to the border to buy some food and use the bathroom, and there were lots of fights in the queue: 'I was first!' 'No, you bitch, I was!!'. And between grown-up people, mind you. So much for the road trip feeling.
At some point in the middle of the night we got to the Lebanese-Syrian border. I was by this time listening to music on my discman to escape the hectic feeling of the bus and the arguing and the noise. All of a sudden I could hear a strange sound, and people on the bus began to panic. There had been bombing really close to us, two explosions. We were waiting at the border crossing for our passports to be stamped then, and suddenly all the cars around us turned out their lights, people started panicking and running and speeding to the border - on foot, in cars, a minibus full of families had broken down and some of the passengers were desperately trying to push it across the border, to the Syrian side, to safety. The soldiers at the crossing started screaming at us to get the hell out of there with our buses (potential targets, after all the Israelis had already bombed some tour buses in the previous days, saying that they might carry Hizballah weapons), and the people who had gotten off the bus for a cigarette just had time to jump back on before our driver tore up the bumpy road and crossed the border, which the guards had opened to let everyone through. Once on the other side, we had to wait for about three hours, because our passports along with a German army guy accompanying us had been left at the border crossing post.
These three hours were the most terrible part of the journey. We were waiting, we didn't really know what was going on, and people still kept passing us, whole families coming across the border barefoot, carrying the kids and a few belongings. Everyone kept telling us to get out of there because they were bombing close-by. The rumour started circulating that the bombs had targeted the village we had just passed through, and had destroyed the road, cutting the only land route out of Lebanon. It was an agonising wait then, all I could think about were the Lebanese friends who had been planning to take that road the next day, and who would now be unable to leave. I desperately wanted to know if it was really true, but as rumours go there was no way of knowing for sure. And who was I to ask or to share those worries with? My fellow passengers had mostly been through hell at this point, one guy kept telling us over and over how his village close to the Israeli border had been bombed into the ground, and how he had spent the past four days without sleep, pulling bodies from the rubble of destroyed houses, putting extra fridges into the hospital morgue because there were too many bodies...
Finally the army guy reappeared with our passports, and we got back on the bus and into the 'calm' of journeying through relatively safe Syria. The panicking had really taken a toll on everyone's nerves though, and somewhere near Aleppo a big family feud broke out on my bus, with several women going at each other with their high-heeled shoes as attack weapons, and the men unable to separate them. This whole affair delayed our journey by another half hour or so. Early in the morning we were roused from sleep (at least I was) and told to get all our stuff and change onto another bus. At some point we stopped at a hotel, already inside Turkey, to get some food and eat their nice breakfast buffet, but I wasn't hungry at all actually. I remember desperately trying to ask the waiter for a fork, but he didn't understand what I wanted to tell him. A German TV crew had already been flown in to meet us there, and started interviewing people about the journey and about how well (or badly) the German embassy had been managing the evacuation. It all felt really surreal. I didn't want to speak to or see anyone. Strangely, there was a really nice and completely empty jacuzzi-swimming pool thingy which I found while wandering around the hotel, and I would have loved taking a swim in there, but my fear of getting left behind by the bus was stronger.
We continued our journey through the amazingly beautiful scenery of South-East Turkey, which nobody was taking much notice of anymore, but it definitely added to the trip in some way. At Adana airport, the final stop of our 20-hour bus ride, there were more television crews and more waiting. We could already see the German airforce plane waiting for us on the runway, but for some reason it took them a few hours to sort everything out and let us on. A coke at the only snack bar in the waiting lounge cost 4 US dollars, a definite dissuasion.

Finally on the plane, we were greeted by seats much wider and much more comfortable than on a commercial airliner, and instead of air hostesses there were soldiers pushing around little trolleys with food and drink. They even served tomato juice (why does everyone drink that on the plane, anyway?!). Evacuation heaven!
And then we had at last made it to Cologne airport, and by then the German authorities apparently were feeling thoroughly bad about all the negative press they'd been getting. All of a sudden there were all these people to take care of us, medics, counsellors, railway employees to help organise onward journeys.... We were a bit surprised, considering all the official company we'd had on the journey had consisted in our German army escort, who by the end had become quite dear to us and vice-versa, and who said his farewell to each and every one of us as we got on the plane (he turned right back around to accompany the next convoy to Turkey).

More bad news

2006-07-18T13:51:00.000-02:00

Everything continued: last night they were bombing Beirut (usually between 3 and 4 in the morning). Today pretty much the whole country was under constant attack, the South, the Bekaa, even Zahle apparently, which is a majority Christian area. The count of dead civilians is now at around 200, plus 30 Lebanese soldiers who were killed in air raids on their barracks. The really worrying thing: Israel is on record as saying that this is legitimate, that they are planning to continue the attacks for several weeks even if there ARE negotiations for a cease-fire, and by the way, that civilians are legitimate targets because they all condone Hizballahs actions. And their conditions for negotiating are unattainable: Hizballah should release the two captured soldiers as a precondition for negotiations. This is a strategy of deliberate escalation, obviously - and yes, let's remember that Hizballah were saying right away, on Wednesday when they first captured the soldiers, that they are ready for negotiations and a prisoner swap. Then Israel started the bombing and we got to where we are now. If you don't believe this, read up on it please - it's Israel that everybody needs to pressure for a cease-fire now, it's as simple as that. And why is nobody doing it?

Here in Beirut things are getting increasingly chaotic. So many people came up from the South now (don't ask me how, a lot of them presumably walked it because all the roads and bridges are destroyed) and from the destroyed suburbs that the schools are full and providing for all these peoples' basic needs is becoming increasingly difficult. Yesterday I was at a meeting - a large part of it a pointless discussion about how Lebanese civil society should react to the attacks - where some people were organising supplies and coordinating volunteers for distributing them to those in need.

Today the health minister came on TV calling for help because there is a humanitarian crisis in the South: it's completely disconnected and blockaded, there is not enough food, no medication (including anaesthetics, for example), and still the bombings continue. Does anybody know this where you are? There have been air raids on hospitals, and today on a bus carrying donated medication from the UAE which was completely destroyed.

I am debating now whether to leave the country on a bus to Syria, the German embassy is evacuating people. You have to bring food and water to last for 24hrs (because of the long queues at the border), enough cash in USD, and everyone is only allowed one bag of 10kg. The Israelis are also bombarding the North, which is the only route now on which you can leave by land, but presumably the German embassy will be coordinating their transport with them. I don't know.

All hell broke loose

2006-07-17T10:30:00.000-02:00

In the past days the situation has really escalated so much, it's hard to even begin to understand it. A few days ago everyone thought this would have to end soon. But it just keeps going, and getting worse. To recap some of the main facts, Israel has now really destroyed all important infrastructure: roads, airports, ports, radar systems, you name it. And they keep carpet bombing all of South Lebanon, including with outlawed weapons like cluster and phosphor bombs. 141 civilians had died at yesterday's count. I don't know if you get these pictures where you are, but the destruction is massive, entire villages just flattened. Also, Haret Hreik in the Southern sububurbs of Beirut, where Hizballah used to have its HQ, is virtually gone. I'm not exaggerating, the Israelis have been bombing it for 5 days now and it's gone. Today I saw my colleague Badia here at the office. She used to live there for many years (and by the way, no she is not a Hizballah militant) and had just sold her house 2 months ago and moved to a different part of town. She still had all her stuff in the house, though - and now it's all gone. A pile of rubble. Her sister's house is also gone, and she was still living there. Nobody will compensate them. They couldn't take any of their belongings. On top of that, their family members got stuck in a town in the South, and are today on the road trying to reach Beirut, literally risking their lives in doing so - but they had to leave the South because it's even more dangerous there.

Beirut has also changed a lot. The streets were completely deserted over the weekend, everyone was at home waiting to see how things would turn out. You could hear the bombings all over Beirut, they were mostly bombing at night but occasionally during the day, too. On Saturday I was briefly at home when they started bombing the port, about 1 km away from my house. You can imagine what I felt like when I saw the shells falling and exploding and felt the blast shaking the house and rattling the windows: a few seconds of pure panic, before I realised it was a limited operation and it was calming down again. I moved to a friend's house in a different part of town after that, and have been staying with her and her family, which is really nice. There is no way anyone can be on their own in a situation like this.

Today there are a few more people on the streets, but it's all very tense. More and more refugees from the South keep arriving, they are sleeping in schools which have all been opened. People are descending on the stores that are open and hoarding food, even though that might not be necessary and supplies aren't short yet. Everybody is incredulous at what's happening, although that sentiment gets covered by worry and anxiety most of the time.

I feel that people are also very afraid that everyone's abandoning them - and that sentiment is very real. To hear the G8 summit declare their 'concern' about the situation and see the Security Council fail to pass a resolution calling for a cease-fire is really very depressing. It feels like Israel is on a rampage and no-one's willing to stop them. Now most countries are evacuating their citizens from here, and that's a further blow to the morale. Mind you, none of these are forced evacuations - it's only for people who want to leave. The German embassy is advising all citizens who are residents here to stay put for the moment, which is what I've decided to do (independently of their advice). It just feels like I'm not going to abandon my whole life here just now.

Mahnwache

2006-07-17T09:57:00.000-02:00

Im Nahen Osten eskaliert die Gewalt, jeden Tag sterben im Libanon, in
Israel und im Gaza-Streifen zahlreiche Menschen und man hat das Gefühl,
es geschieht nichts. Jedenfalls ging das mir und einigen Freunden so.
Deshalb rufen wir ab

HEUTE, MONTAG, 17. JULI 2006

an jedem Werktag von 17 – 19 Uhr zur

MAHNWACHE VOR DEM AUSWÄRTIGEN AMT auf.

Wir wollen die Bundesregierung auffordern, sich unverzüglich und aktiver
für die Beilegung der Gewalt im Nahen Osten einzusetzen.Anbei findet ihr
ein Flugblatt mit Forderungen, für weitere Infos könnt ihr euch an
zurueckhaltung_ist_ohnmacht@yahoo.de
oder an mich unter 0176 /
2919 1593 wenden. Online:
http://www.geocities.com/zurueckhaltung_ist_ohnmacht/

Kommt zahlreich, und wenn es nur für eine halbe Stunde ist!

Und BITTE LEITET DIESE MAIL WEITER – an Freunde, Verteiler oder
Medienvertreter – wer euch so einfällt! Sorry for x-posting.

Viele Grüsse,

Silke Lode

Text auf Deutsch

2006-07-17T09:49:00.000-02:00

Seit letztem Mittwoch ist Libanon unter israelischer Bombardierung. Innerhalb von 2 Tagen wurde nahezu die komplette Infrastruktur des Landes zerstoert: der Flughafen ist geschlossen weil Landebahnen und Treibstoffvorraete getroffen wurden, alle wichtigen Bruecken sind zerstoert und sich ueber Land fortzubewegen ist sehr schwierig und wegen der andauernden Luftangriffe lebensgefaehrlich. Ausserdem wurde eine Seeblockade eingerichtet und die israelischen Kriegsschiffe bombardieren vom Meer aus. Als naechsten Schritt hat Israel alle Hizballah zugerechneten Einrichtungen bombardiert, darunter auch einen ganzen Stadtteil im Sueden Beiruts (Dhahiyeh Janubiyeh), der mittlerweile voellig zerstoert ist. Gleichzeitig befindet sich der Suedlibanon unter andauernden Bombardierungen, laut al-Arabiya TV auch mit verbotenen Cluster- und Phosphor-Bomben. Die Situation im Sueden des Landes ist katastrophal: es gibt keinen Strom, kein Wasser, keine Medikamente und nicht genug Lebensmittel. 141 Zivilisten sind bis jetzt gestorben (16. 7.), mehrere Hundert wurden verletzt. Wegen der zerstoerten Infrastruktur ist es schwierig fuer die Menschen zu fliehen und viele versuchen zu Fuss nach Beirut zu gelangen. Die Fluechtlinge, die es bis hierher geschafft haben, schlafen im Freien oder werden in Schulen untergebracht. Am Samstag hat Israel ein Krankenhaus in Tyr bombardiert. Wegen der andauernden Angriffe kann das Rote Kreuz an vielen Orten weder Leichen evakuieren noch den gestrandeten Zivilisten Hilfe leisten. Viele Doerfer und Staedte sind voellig zerstoert, gestern kamen 20 Zivilisten bei ihrem Fluchtversuch um, nachdem Israel alle Bewohner eines Dorfes zum Verlassen des Ortes aufgefordert und dann das Dorf bombardiert hatte. Sie befanden sich bereits auf dem Weg nach Beirut. Ebenfalls gestern bombardierte Israel eine Notunterkunft voller Fluechtlinge, 20 Tote. Abgesehen von der humanitaeren Katastrophe im Sueden des Landes (ich wurde heute verzweifelt von einem Mann kontaktiert, dessen Familie im Sueden von der Aussenwelt abgeschnitten ist und die im Kontakt zur Deutschen Botschaft ihre letzte Chance sieht) und der Atmosphaere der Angst und Verzweiflung angesichts der Untaetigkeit der internationalen Gemeinschaft, die sich ueberall breit macht, sind die wirtschaftlichen Schaeden kaum abzusehen: der Wiederaufbau der Infrastruktur allein wird mehrere Jahre in Anspruch nehmen, die fuer die Wirtschaft unerlaesslichen Einnahmen aus der Tourismusindustrie sind verloren, alle wirtschaftliche Aktivitaet ist zum Erliegen gekommen, wichtige Ernten koennen nicht eingebracht werden. All dies wirft die Entwicklung des Landes um Jahre zurueck.
Bei diesem Angriff geht es nicht mehr um die Befreiung zweier israelischer Soldaten. Die Gefahr einer regionalen Eskalation ist heute real, und die unverantwortliche und voellig unproportionale Reaktion Israels auf Hizballahs Provokation ist dafuer der Hauptgrund. Die libanesische Regierung ist nicht in der Lage, Hizballah zu konfrontieren: dies wuerde unweigerlich zu einem neuen Buergerkrieg im Libanon fuehren. Internationaler Druck auf Israel fuer eine sofortige Einstellung der Angriffe und eine diplomatische Loesung sind der einzige Weg aus der Krise, was auch das Leiden der israelischen Zivilbevoelkerung beenden wuerde. BITTE GEHT AUF DIE STRASSEN UND FORDERT DIE REGIERUNG ZUM HANDELN AUF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They're imposing a blockade now

2006-07-13T08:00:00.000-02:00

Israel has decided that all of Lebanon needs to pay for what Hizballah is doing. So, they're now blockading all access to the country by air, land and sea. How long, I wonder, will they keep doing this? Are they aiming for food shortages? What a civilised answer: the only democracy in the Middle East is imposing a brutal siege on the only other democracy in the Middle East!

Meanwhile, pictures on TV show destroyed villages in the South of Lebanon with smoke rising from them, burning fields, destroyed bridges that it will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair, ruins of houses - one with a lifeless human foot covered in dust sticking out from underneath concrete rubble -, people getting in their cars and carrying babies away with them, presumably trying to reach Beirut where they will be safe. Only they can't reach here anymore, because all the main roads between here and the South have been destroyed by Israeli shelling.

--- PLEASE STOP THE MADNESS!! ---

For a while now I have been thinking, as I'm sure all of us do occasionally, about why it is that there is so much trouble and strife in this region. And much of our work here is focused on bringing more women and more young people into decision making. Occasionally I've been asking myself if that is actually such an effective strategy, given the big problems going on. But yes, now that all this is happening I find myself thinking: what if younger people with a different perspective and less long-brewed hatred, and a few more women made decisions over here? Maybe it wouldn't get so bad so quickly! Because now, non-elected middle-aged men with a military background seem to be making ALL the decisions on everyone's behalf, and look what's happening! They're at each others' throats, and they can't get enough of it either.

Going backward, fast

2006-07-13T04:51:00.000-02:00

Ok, I hate to be sensational. But it really makes you wonder - Israel has effectively managed to close Beirut's airport. Meaning, we're trapped here. This feels bad. But then, that's only a minor problem (although economically it's going to cause Lebanon huge damage). 20 civilians were killed in the South this morning, in just a few hours. Including one entire family killed in their house. Israel thinks it is going to war with the Lebanese government. I'm sure the majority of Lebanese would disagree with that interpretation. The main bridge between Beirut and Saida was hit too, so you can't go to the South anymore, either, even if you wanted to.

This morning I woke up early and all was quiet; there is almost no traffic today anyway because people are scared and staying at home if they can. And I swear I could hear, ever so faintly, helicopters and several explosions in the distance. Makes sense, because Israel also bombarded Hizballah's al Manar TV station which is located in a southern suburb of Beirut. My colleague here at work used to live in that suburb for a long time, she even remembers when it was a 'mixed' (meaning: including inhabitants from different confessions) residential neighbourhood. Before all the recent insanity that all sides have incited. And, without excusing Hizballah's ideology or their stupid actions, let's remember how they got to where they are today, and to what they are today: weren't they founded after Israel's 1982 invasion? Doesn't this make anyone go, STOP IT YOU CRAZY IDIOTS!!! RIGHT NOW!!!! ALL OF YOU!!! Anyway that's how I feel. And yes, for the sensational bit, check out this Time magazine cover from August 1982:

Not to mention these quotes from Dan Halutz, who is the IDF Chief of Staff: "We will turn Lebanon's clock back 20 years."

Or this one from today's Ha'aretz: "The IDF General Staff took a similarly hard line, with one senior officer declaring that Israel should send Lebanon's infrastructure "30 years backward" in response to the attack."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=737860&contrassID=1&subContrassID=0&sbSubContrassID=0

Sound familiar?

2006-07-12T09:01:00.000-02:00

This country is actually under attack by Israel right now, after Hizballah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers:

"Immediately following the incident, IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz headed into the military's war room at the Defense Ministry complex, Channel 10 TV reported. In consultations, senior IDF officers called for an end to the restraint against Hezbollah and said Lebanon should be made to pay a heavy price.

Halutz ordered the IDF to mobilize a reserve infantry division that was expected to be sent to Israel's northern border with Lebanon. General Staff exercises held over the past several years tested a number of possible responses to kidnapping scenarios. One of these responses involves the massive incursion of IDF ground forces into Lebanese territory. Military sources told Haaretz that Israel is liable to act with the aim of "altering the rules of the game on the northern front."

The IDF also ordered troops deployed on the Lebanon and Gaza borders on high alert in the event that armed groups may attempt to fire Katyusha and Qassam rockets into Israel.

[...]IDF responded to the attacks from Lebanon with heavy artillery and tank fire. Al-Manar television reported that IDF artillery was pounding the fringes of the villages of Aita el-Shaab, Ramieh and Yaroun in the hills east of the coastal border port of Naqoura. Israel Air Force struck roads, bridges and Hezbollah guerrilla positions in southern Lebanon, Lebanese security officials said.[...]
Lebanese security sources said two Lebanese civilians were killed and a Lebanese soldier was wounded in an IAF air raid on a bridge in south Lebanon on Wednesday. The Lebanese casualties occurred in the raid on the coastal Qasmiyeh bridge."

Ha'aretz online edition, July 12, 2006
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/737634.html

Long time

2006-07-10T11:39:00.000-02:00

Ok it's been more than two months since I last posted anything here. I'm sure everyone has stopped checking in on my blog anyway: PUBLISH OR PERISH, right?? Only I really really haven't had time to post anything recently, especially because it's been very eventful, and summarising that seemed a little difficult. To give it a try: quit my old job and found a new one. Went to Germany for training with new job, there saw lots of dear friends and enjoyed the beauty of Berlin. Came back, went to Damascus several times. Silke and Julia came to visit. Went to Cairo for more training with the new job. Really enjoyed that, Cairo is great. Came back here and had to look for a new apartment. Started this process, including shady estate agents, aggressive neighbour's dogs, finally success in the form of a new apartment with a great view but also a lot of noise, and an ant's nest in the bedroom (will be taken care of by fumigation experts next week - run while you can, shitty ants!!!). Summer is here and we're going to the beach. I have decided that I need to go back to Berlin sooner rather than later. Germany got kicked out of the world cup by Italy, who seem to specialise in waiting for their lucky streak until the very last minute. Can't believe it. Lebanese politicians are continuing to throw insults at each other, backed up by their respective religious authorities or offending them, respectively, whatever will guarantee them more media attention. People continue to despair at the sight and sound of this (ask any taxi driver). Summer is going on and people are going to the beach....Did I forget anything? I will post some pictures soon.

Pics for Fabiolla

2006-05-04T05:14:00.000-02:00

Beiteddine, non-existing Chouf cedars and getting high off of mountain air

2006-04-10T11:13:00.000-02:00

Renting a car in Lebanon is really cheap and you can just take off and go see some amazing scenery in a day...and there really are some spectacular sights around. It has to be said, despite my current rather negative attitude towards the country. So that's what I did last weekend with some friends. We first went to Beiteddine, which is an old family palace and is really pretty.

Next, we tried to find the Chouf Cedar Reserve, which is quite high up in the mountains. We did see about three cedar trees (the first ones I've seen here!!) behind a fence, but somehow the 'reserve' appeared to be closed and we couldn't go in. So we just kept driving up the mountain until we got to the top, where the lack of oxygen or something made us really really silly. Check this developing photo story:

To top it all off, we had a picnic in the Bekaa valley (after manoevring the car through the last remaining bits of snow on the pass road) and found this really bizarre sight in the middle of nowhere!

Muriel was here

2006-04-10T10:22:00.000-02:00

... for about 24hrs and we talked a LOT and ate yummy food - with a view of a guy with an outsize albino boa constrictor around his neck - and visited some major sites (Hariri's grave, Virgin Mega Store...) and smoked Argileh and it was great. I feel homesick. I want to go to Berlin.

Weird Story

2006-04-05T10:47:00.000-02:00

OK, check this out. Very strange indeed. It's a story about information flow, in its various forms, and about life in this region. It happened yesterday.

My landlord - let's call him Elie; this is what living in a paranoid country does, by now I don't think it absurd that 'General Security', the not-very-secret secret police here might get bored and start doing blog searches for the term 'Beirut', and I don't want to pass them any real names - had been telling me that he'd been receiving phone calls for me on his mobile. In these calls, a guy with a strange accent ('like Gulf Arabic, you know what I mean', as Elie puts it in his own strange American accent - I am not good at covert action apparently, I am giving him away already!) had told him 'I have money for Eva'. Naturally, before he told me this, Elie had asked me inconspicuously if I happened to be waiting for any money shipments. Why give away any information without doing a bit of intelligence gathering first? You never know!

Anyway, so eventually I managed to obtain the number of this money-guy from my landlord. 'He's an Israeli', was his latest conspiracy theory about the mysterious caller. Never mind that you can't even travel to Lebanon with an Israeli stamp in your passport, let alone an actual Israeli identity. When I called, the pseudo-Israeli solved part of the mystery: the money he wanted to give me was money that the owner of my flat in the US owed me. Instead of wiring it and paying fees for it, he apparently preferred to send it through a trusted friend. No problem. Except that he could have told me before so that we could have skipped the whole Gulfie/Israeli part.

As the money guy - I still hadn't managed to find out his name - was a new arrival in Beirut, further fuelling the foreigner conspiracy, we agreed that I would come to the suburb where he was staying (New Jdeideh) and meet him in front of City Mall. So I spent about 45 minutes in a service (shared) taxi stuck in traffic and cruising through New Jdeideh, an apparently poor part of Beirut where the remains of civil war damage stand out much more prominent and ugly than in other parts, until I finally was told to get out in the middle of a roundabout and right in front of the new, shiny City Mall by the highway. A direct taxi would have taken about 15 minutes, but they do get quite expensive. Unfortunately I still had to cross the highway, which almost cost me my life, but hey what's new, this is normal in Beirut.

In front of City Hall, I had to call the guy again because he apparently forgot about our appointment (also a normal feature of life here). He said he would be right there and that his name was Hamid. I told him that I wear black-framed glasses - not too common here, unlike in Europe - so he'd recognise me, and sat down on a bench facing the entrance. One, two, three guys walked in through the glass door after being checked by the security guard, and all of them stared at me, presumably because I was staring at them, trying to figure out if they might be Hamid the money man.

Finally he arrives, a square-looking guy with glasses and a leather coat and a big friendly smile. He apologizes for the delay and pulls out his wallet to hand me the money in US dollars. By now I feel really tired and slightly irritated with the whole episode, if not at Hamid who is after all doing me and the flat-owner (almost wrote his real name...!) a favour. To be polite and despite feeling really tired and just wanting to get out of the blasted City Mall asap, I ask him where he is from - Iraq - and what he is doing here, is he visiting? Hamid looks at me slightly apologetically and points at his head. 'I am here for medical treatment. I live in Baghdad and a car bomb exploded next to me, and now I have some problems with my eyes.' My head feels really heavy and I feel a little bit betrayed by this sudden revelation - how could that just come out of nowhere?? Now I notice several auburn marks on his head and neck that look like scars. I feel like I should be doing or saying something appropriate, only I have no idea what that might be. 'I hope you'll be better now', is all I manage. Hamid smiles and says with a giggle, 'Insh'allah!'. That's a good one! 'Insh'allah', I reply, having learned that you can't really go wrong with that answer, and he shakes my hand with a firm grip like he would with one of his buddies, not like a man would with a woman (according to my own Middle East experience). And then he just vanishes through the glass doors, and I stay behind clutching the stupid dollars and feeling terrible, and wanting to run after him and make up for that terrible thing that happened to him! Instead, I walk into the next mall store, the Geant supermarket, and wander around slightly bewildered between giant aisles of imported French cheese.

Here comes Tekka

2006-03-28T11:27:00.000-02:00

So 'Dots' was getting a bit too dotty, in my opinion. Instead I've decided to go 'boring'. What do y'all think?

It's good to catch up

2006-03-28T10:13:00.000-02:00

and thank you too, c'etait vraiment genial de se revoir!!!

not to forget, of course, a huge thank-you for the best, the most beautful, the all-black all stars that have found their way to me by way of Anna's generously dragging them across half the globe to Lebanon...MERCI :)) (it's fun to be a brand addict, sometimes.)

Checking the scene with Anna in 48hrs

2006-03-13T08:06:00.000-02:00

48hrs non-stop catching up, plus Beirut & Tripoli & Byblos!!!

By the way, did you know Tripoli was actually famous for its pregnant squirrels of Phoenician times? They were so revered that they actually made statues of them. Bet your tourist guide wouldn't tell you that, huh!

Another interesting fact we discovered goes under the headline "Major Donors of the American University of Beirut":

Funding needed

2006-02-21T09:06:00.000-02:00

Anybody have any ideas on how to get funding to go to this conference in Berlin, March 8-10?? I want to go!! I can't believe they're talking about this without me!! If I'm ever going to do a PhD it'll be on this topic, and the proposal I've written last fall is about this. Plus, of course I'd love to go to Berlin for a bit :).... please help if you have any ideas....!

Hariri & cartoon news...

2006-02-15T11:22:00.000-02:00

Well, I didn't actually go to the demonstration marking the anniversary of Hariri's assassination. I didn't know why I should be going, or what exactly I should be associating myself with in this event: the demonstration as a celebration of Lebanese sovereignty or independence? No, thank you, I don't actually believe any longer that there is actually any positive development taking place that will strengthen Lebanese democracy and sovereignty. At least not one that I can make out. The demonstration as an opportunity for various groups to show their force and wave their flags? Yes, so I don't want to be part of it. The demonstration as a commemoration of Rafiq al-Hariri? Er, I don't feel I want to be part of the enormous personality cult that has sprung up around him, either. He may have been a good person and so on, but I'm not going to worship him personally.

Consequently, I stayed home and watched the event on TV, which was a little absurd considering that it is a mere 10-minute-walk from my house to Martyr's Square. But I don't have the kind of curiosity I had a few months ago when I came here. I am still curious, but in the meantime I've gotten to know how a few things work here when it comes to politics, and I am much more cautious now about what I want to be part of. I don't believe in the 'peaceful movement of all Lebanese for democracy and sovereignty' anymore. It doesn't really exist, in my opinion, even though that is what I wrote in my MA thesis only six months ago.

But there's no reason to give up just yet, there are tons of people who want to change the world and the way things work here. That's why I've, in the meantime, joined a small NGO called 'Nahwa al-Mouwatiniya' or 'Towards Citizenship'. It's a group of about ten people from very different backgrounds who want to make Lebanon a country that respects its citizens as such, regardless of their religious/communal background. Actually, I should go now because we have a meeting later..

By the way, if anyone is interested in reading more stuff about the Cartoon issues & discussing it, here is an article by Robert Fisk, kindly provided by my friend Leah. And there's also an interesting article and discussion on this topic by Fred Halliday and others on Open Democracy.

The Wild West and the Fanatics

2006-02-08T07:32:00.000-02:00

So yesterday I passed by the Danish consulate while in a taxi. I was kind of unprepared for this and hadn't been thinking about what happened on Sunday - 'normal' everyday life picks up very quickly here after bombs, demonstrations or whatever and provides a nice shield against thinking about this stuff. So all of a sudden I looked out the car window and found myself surveying a very familiar scene: hey I've seen this on TV the other day.....OH! Ok, it's the Danish consulate... a completely burned-out shell now. At least it looks like that - they say the damage is actually not that bad. One guy died in there. He was only 22. He got trapped by the fire that he and his buddies had been setting, and jumped out a third-floor window to escape. He didn't make it. Why why why??? Why wasn't he playing a football match with his team, or taking a walk with his girlfriend or something, or drawing, or...? How did he end up in there?

As has been suggested a lot in recent days, I think the whole problem is obviously an outgrowth of the 'Islam vs. the West' issue. This is the answer to the 'war on terror': just as this supposed war has no objectives that can realistically be achieved and is directed against an ill-defined, general 'enemy', the 'war on caricatures' has no specific goals either. It's an outburst of anger and frustration directed at an enemy perceived as all-powerful and overbearing. The comparison is lacking though in that the violence related to the caricatures is largely spontaneous I think and not necessarily related to a sustained anti-Western conspiracy. It's not really a policy, and it shouldn't be confused with the policies of many moderate Islamic parties. An interesting article on this topic is here.

What can be done about this? In my opinion there are many things we can do. Even if Muslims take to the streets in London and hold placards saying 'kill all non-believers'. Even if occasionally various al-Qaeda people appear on television and tell us we're all going to die and we're on the wrong path. In Europe, we can
1) start to question our assumptions about Islam, Islamic countries, Arab countries - are we perhaps mixing up different things and notions here that should be kept separate? Are we making too many assumptions about what life is like 'over there'? Can we somehow make attempts to find out (read stuff, talk to people)?
2) look at what our governments are doing in the 'war on terror'. Is all of it a good idea? Do we need all of that, or some of that? Especially in the UK, but also in other countries (Sarkozy in France) including Denmark - how is the Danish government treating its immigrants? How have Danish immigration policies changed over the past few years? Do some of these policies make things worse in the way a self-fulfilling prophecy can?
3) say something if we disagree with any of the above policies.
4) not take personally the insults and outrageously prejudiced ramblings of a minority of deluded people (i.e. 'terrorists') in those infamous Al Jazeera tapes that crop up periodically ('The West is immoral' etc.). They probably have no idea what they're talking about anyway.

In Arab countries, we (the people who live there and the foreigners who work there) can also do a lot of things:
1) take a cue from the freedom of expression debate that is currently going on and see if there's anything we can do to protect it in Arab countries.
2) make sure that people have alternatives to joining radical religious movements. And this, of course, requires an enormous amount of change: more economic opportunities. More ways for citizens to ask for their legitimate rights (freedom of religion, expression, association...) without endangering themselves or their families. A foreign policy on the part of the international community that does not reward the wrong people (i.e. autocratic, backward-looking governments).
3) question our prejudices about the 'West': what are our assumptions about 'life over there'? Should we trust what our media says? How can we use the opportunities we have (internet etc.) to obtain different information? (i.e., read stuff, talk to people).
4) even if they are limited: grasp every opportunity to speak out against the government if we disagree with them. They might not be as powerful as they have been in the past...

Well there you have it, this is my insignificant opinion on what's going on. I would even go so far as saying that this is something we HAVE to do if we want to stop and eventually reverse the current trend of misunderstanding, fear and frustration.

Violent Sunday

2006-02-06T08:48:00.000-02:00

Ok, never mind DSL. Right now everybody is more worried about inter-communal violence making a real comeback onto the stage here. I wasn't here yesterday to witness what was going on, and I feel fortunate! I spent the day in Saida (Sidon) in the South of Lebanon and only came back in the evening to find that the crossroads close to my house looked like a battlezone with hundreds of soldiers at military checkpoints stopping each and every car. Lots of protesters from Christian parties (the Lebanese Forces and General Aoun's party) where marching towards the church that had been ransacked by protesters during the day (nobody holding them back...). It was all a bit much to take in. It got worse though when I turned on the TV and saw that while I had been blissfully exploring the souqs and sea castle of Saida and eating a delicious meal in a seaside cafe, there had been a major street fight going on at a crossroads that is literally a few minutes away from my doorstep. On CNN, Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera, I could see the street corner that I round about twice on any given day and which up until now had always struck me as a completely oblivious, non-descript, run-of-the mill street corner. So much the weirder to see this area transformed into a war zone with stone throwing, tear gassing and water cannon use in full force. Also, the church that was attacked by protesters is on my regular jogging route. I feel a little disturbed by how close-by these things are, although today everything seems relatively calm. At least on the surface: underneath it, the police and security forces are conducting a massive wave of arrests among Islamist activists of all couleurs. Ok, they obviously have to do something, but if they suspected these people of criminal activities beforehand, why didn't they arrest them earlier? And is this really going to help or just breed more resentment of - perhaps innocently arrested - people against the state and the system which is going to flare up later?

Speaking of the infamous system, I think it's fairly scary that despite the heavy police and military presence (when we left Beirut early in the morning, the streets were already packed with army and riot police) public order could not be maintained. This underscores another and more dramatic absence of system when it comes to maintaining the peace - which makes DSL and electricity problems look temporarily petty. If the army is afraid of getting involved in this fight because it would have to take sides and this might have dire consequences for the peace between the different communities, then this says a lot about the weakness of the central government. Clearly, the army and police are not considered 'neutral' instruments fit for ensuring the protection of private property or the prevention of violence directed at citizens (which fortunately hasn't occured so far). The interior minister resigned today because he officially did not agree with the use of water cannons against violent protesters (and they were really violent). A lot of people are scared about what all of this might mean. Politicians, meanwhile, call for 'dialogue' without ever making any concrete suggestions as to how this crisis might actually be resolved. Religious leaders take the lead in calling for peace and calm, and Mosques are broadcasting calls for people to take it easy and not get involved in violence. Surely that doesn't bode well for a secular state power to step in and resolve things - and this would be badly needed I think. Not just to control violence & ensure 'law & order' but also, for example, to give citizens who disagree with all this stuff a space to hold their own, peaceful protests and express their opinions. This is impossible right now. People are too scared!

While all of this was going on, I spent part of the day in a meeting with supporters of various Islamic charitable NGOs who are affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. A friend of mine had accepted to hold a workshop for them about recruiting volunteers. Behind this technical topic, there were a lot of discussions about values and social and political issues going on. I was only there for part of it - warmly welcomed by everyone present - and couldn't understand all of it, but my friend says the discussions were extremely fruitful. For one, the fifteen people who came to the training were fifteen people less at the demonstrations in Beirut. And secondly, during the discussions people really opened up to a lot of ideas they hadn't considered before. Say, for example, the 'profile' that a possible volunteer should have. Some in the group wanted to enforce gender restrictions here - and pointing out to them that Lebanon has signed and ratified all major human rights conventions and that gender discrimination is therefore in breach of national and international law was a new idea that people were willing to consider. And there are many more examples. As a next step my friend wants to get this group together with quite a hard-line Christian one to debate. Inshallah this will happen! It would be great, especially at this time.

Ok and finally, here are some unrelated pics from my Saida-excursion...

So yeah it was a windy day! Here my friend Hania and I climbed to the top of this holy Mary-statue. Apparently Jesus at one point was passing through Saida (behind me in the picture, with the huge Ain el Helweh camp for Palestinian refugees in the foreground - this camp cannot be entered by the Lebanese army, it's controlled by Palestinian forces. From up there it looks like where Sidon has maybe 1 person for every 2 square meters, Ain el Helweh has 5 persons per sqm.) and Mary, like a good mummy, waited for him at the top of this hill. Hence the statue is called Holy Mary of the Waiting, or something to that effect. Nice view, in any case.

DSL exasperation

2006-02-03T11:46:00.000-02:00

So finally DSL was supposed to arrive in Lebanon and save a lot of people (including me) a lot of frustration created by painfully slow internet connections. Introducing DSL has been talked about in Lebanon for the past few years, but recently the government stepped up the ante by actually naming a date for this endeavour, March 2006. Well, let's see. What is happening: yes, DSL will arrive in Lebanon. However, this will not bring the promised improvement in internet enjoyment for the population at large. Initially (that is, for the duration of the next six months), only 360 internet users will have the privilege of using DSL connections. Three-six-zero. This is called a 'pilot phase'.

The government maintains that this has something to do with a bottleneck in access to the international cable that is necessary for DSL use, and that they're working on 'augmenting capacity'. Not only does this sound like they're firmly stuck in the oil pipeline age and conjures up images of workers in protective clothing and with heavy tools working on those pipes that carry a fluid called 'information', it also seems to be a plain lie according to people who work in the telecoms sector and who talk to newspapers about this. They say that due to the delay in introducing reasonably fast connections to Lebanon (which already function in most neighbouring countries: Lebanon is really lagging behind here even if we leave aside the fact that there are of course a lot of people here who don't even have electricity or are able to read anything on the internet, being illiterate), a lucrative market has been created for wireless access. There are a bunch of wireless providers here who can give you fast access at the hefty rate of about $50 a month. And these people don't like the idea of competition, so they lobby the government to slow it down....presumably providing them with enough time to hedge their bets and become involved in the DSL business too. Whatever the case, the government is certainly happy to comply with their wishes, because high DSL rates - initially monthly rates will come up to, uh, let's see....$50/month... (btw about twice as high as in Jordan) - mean higher revenues for the state treasury. And they need the money.

Is anybody up for intiating a world-wide letter writing campaign that would convey to Lebanese government and business how see-through their corruption really is and how badly they need to stop it if they want to be credible....?

Baalbek

2006-01-30T08:41:00.000-02:00

Below are some pictures of the Roman ruins in Baalbek in the Bekaa valley. I visited them last week with my Argentinian friends Pablo, Leo and Martin after we had been partying, so we spent the day stumbling around the ruins with a major hangover. Very nice though and very impressive, this leaves behind anything in the way of Roman ruins that I've seen in Europe. The temples are massive and amazingly well-preserved.

Another thing this made me think of is the whole female Goddess worship thing. Baalbek was obviously dedicated to different Gods and stuff, and the largest temple there - the columns in the picture above are some remnants of it, and according to my guidebook are the largest man-made columns in the world - was Jupiter's. But the most interesting temple was dedicated to Ishtar or Astarte or whatever her name was, the chick who was made so famous in the 'Da Vinci Code' by Dan Brown. Of course he's making a lot of money plagiarising not only a two thousand year old-cult but also another book, which I happened to come across in the flat I am renting. Has anybody ever read 'Skinny legs and all' by Tom Robbins? It was published in 1990 and contains essentially the same 'revolutionary' idea that Dan Brown is using (that religion was really all about worshipping women until a bunch of frustrated, mysoginist priests turned up in the Holy Land, turned things around and wrote a best-selling book about it called the Bible, which is largely responsible for the rampant patriarchism and macho chauvinism inherent in a lot of world cultures today), only in a less ready-made-for-Hollywood, weirder and more fun way. In 'Skinny legs' it's not a bachelor scientist who looks like 'Harrison Ford' and thinks politically correct feminist thoughts while still having a pretty French woman around to look out for and protect (red cliche alert...), but a bean can, a dirty sock and a spoon who discover the true nature of Astarte-worship and the whole religious conspiracy that has ensured male domination of the religious and social order to this day. (By the way, 'The Da Vinci Code' is officially banned in Lebanon.) If I were Tom Robbins I would definitely sue Dan Brown for some of that easy money he made with his clever book. I have a feeling though that Tom Robbins might spend a lot of his time consuming various drugs if his wild imagination is anything to go by...so maybe he's not up for suing...a shame!!!

Had the Romans been to India??
Who knows.... anyway, the fact is that today, Baalbek is an area whose inhabitants support Hizballah, and outside the temple ruins there are some stands selling touristy stuff, like Hizballah T-Shirts and flags. It is located in the Bekaa valley, which is not really a valley but more like a plain between the two mountain chains that run from North to South in Lebanon.

Has anybody seen the system around?

2006-01-17T09:32:00.002-02:00

Since I haven't gone on any touristy trips or witnessed anything that could qualify as exciting and worth telling you about, let me tell you about the absence of a system in Lebanon. I know it might sound strange at first, but I've been thinking about this for a while because I encounter the lack of system constantly, everywhere. Obviously here at work, I think I have talked about this in a previous post, but that's a different story. What I'm referring to is the absence of a central state in Lebanon.

It's something that you read about a lot when you study political science, different theories of the state etc., states in the Middle East.....and invariably, you will get to the universally accepted contention that there is an absence of central state power in Lebanon. Ok, it seems fairly obvious, there was a civil war, several militias that were involved in the war still retain their arms, the government doesn't have control over all of its territory: yeah, makes sense that you can't talk about much of a central government power. But this is only such a small part of the story!! And any political scientist looking at Lebanon from this angle is going to miss out on so many things. (I really want to send my thesis supervisor "Tommy" at FU Berlin an email and tell him about all of this, ask to retract my thesis and add some very important points - don't think they'll be up for it, but it would be great).

Normally, 'the system', i.e. some kind of centralised government, should formulate a bunch of policies, like social or economic policy. At least if you claim to be a democratic state, which Lebanon technically does (although of course I haven't met any real life Lebanese yet who think they live in a democratic state). It's a republic, you have elections, representation, separation of powers, the whole lot. What you don't have is economic or social policy. Why? Because money and power are allocated along sectarian lines: each of the different confessional communities, and of the big families within these communities, wants to make sure they get their share of the dough and the power. And they are strong enough to make sure that this works.

Some examples: jobs within the state administration in Lebanon aren't filled according to merit - i.e. who does the job best - but mostly according to religious and sectarian background. This is something that almost any standard text on Lebanon will tell you. Until very recently, I thought this meant that every ministry has its share of Christians, Sunni and Shia Muslims from different sects (there are 18 recognised ones in Lebanon!!). But, no! This can also mean that any one ministry is completely dominated by one single religion or sect. E.g.: the ministry of social affairs is mostly staffed with Shia administrators. So, what happens when you appoint a Christian minister to the top of this structure?? That's right, nothing. Nothing controversial can happen because that would risk an open conflict between sects, and you don't want to do that! Especially not right now, when there's a general and quite serious government crisis which pits the five Shia ministers in the government against their Christian and Sunni counterparts. (If you appointed a Shia, all the money would go to the Shia community.) So, Lebanon will go on without the social policies that would be so badly needed, like a general health insurance system (absent) or a sustainable pension system (absent) or a reform of the education system (badly needed, even though it might be one of the better ones in the MidEast). Instead, a network of charities and associations provide some basic services, and they, of course, are sectarian in turn. To create a state policy and structure to replace this network of sectarian, civil-society providers of social services would be great, but seems to remain pretty utopian. It would require a lot of money and would step on a lot of peoples' toes....

Or, take economic policy - opening up the telecommunications sector. Lebanon's mobile phone rates are some of the highest in the world. It's incredibly expensive - especially if you put it in context - and dominated by two companies who have special arrangements with the state. This makes the whole market very uncompetitive, but: you can't open it up because the Lebanese state depends on the income! They rely on people to use their mobile phones and pay these high rates as a major source of state income. This is especially needed considering Lebanon's enormous public debt caused mostly by overspending on reconstruction projects: it's actually the highest ratio of public debt to GDP in the world, at 171%. This is amazing! The public debt is almost twice as high as what the entire Lebanese economy generates in a year. Now, if you had a system, and a state power that were strong enough to make people pay their taxes, you might not have to rely so much on people's mobile phone habits. But there isn't any power that could make sure taxes are paid, and a budget gets agreed upon in time, and that the loans Lebanon gets are actually used for reducing public debt in the long term.

And there are so many more examples -- the absence of traffic rules. The inability to ensure even the most basic measures of environmental protection. The absence of central heating, or electricity when it's raining...I blame all of that on the system, or more precisely on its absence.

At first sight, it might not seem so bad that money gets allocated to different sects - as long as they all cooperate and care for their respective constituents, what's the problem...? I guess the problem is, as I was trying to argue in these examples, that for some things you really need a system, i.e. a state that can take care of some stuff from the center. Otherwise you'll always be at the mercy of any minor query between different sects, which could ignite at any time and paralyse everything. Plus, it makes everyone reliant on their respective community. There isn't any public space for people to demand their rights as citizens; everything has to go through your sect/community. So don't believe those people waving Lebanese flags and claiming to be patriotic: that is largely an expression of opposition to Syria. But it's very far away from being patriotic about a state....because it doesn't exist!!

So I have to disagree with a friend of mine who says that the Lebanese are experts at opposing any kind of system. It's more like: they don't have a system that they could oppose in the first place, really. And I think this problem has been here the whole time and will resurface more and more now that the Syrians are gone from Lebanon, taking with them their imposed and repressive security system and any excuse for the Lebanese to blame everything on Syria. Anyway, all I can say is that I have hugely underestimated this problem, looking at it from outside. Reading about things and seeing them first-hand really are two different things - I know this sounds really very naive but hey, it's the way I feel about being here.

And if you take this further and think about how to solve the problems that arise from not having a system....it really goes back to a lot of fundamental questions, like, how can the different sects cooperate? What is the role of outside actors in this? You could go on forever.

A River Called Tripoli

2006-01-09T06:27:00.000-02:00

For any of you who thought the town of Tripoli was a coastal town in the North of Lebanon, I have some news: on my sightseeing trip there yesterday, I discovered that it's actually a river! :)

I still had fun though because Tripoli has a lot of souks and looks a bit like Damascus or Aleppo - very different from East Beirut. Somehow, I was relieved to discover this and to know that there actually are Muslim communities in Lebanon; something that is easily forgotten when you live and work in a Christian neighbourhood, like I do. Getting lost in the network of souks is a lot of fun, and like in Damascus there are different sections: a clothes section, a fruit and veggie section, a meat section, a jewelry section, and of course, a tacky-crap-section! After I spent some time in the clothes section unsuccessfully looking for a pair of rubber boots and warm socks because my shoes were seriously soaked after crossing the above river-street, I settled for a pair of stuffed-animal slippers in the shape of lions from the tacky-crap-section, because at least that way my feet would be warm once I got home. This proved to be a good calculation and I cannot describe my joy at wearing the brand new lion slippers after a day of slushing through muddy water in trainers! Luckily there is so much to distract the senses in the souks that I didn't notice it so much. There are tons of little Madrassas with black and white stonework, and Khans (storage rooms) from several centuries ago, and incense and tea and the sweets that Tripoli is famous for....I bought some from an old man in a little shop - they're the best. And of course there's the castle, which I will have to visit next time since it's basically a lot of ruins under the sky and I wasn't up for that in the rain. Anyway I'm definitely going back, it's a really nice day trip.

Happy New Year

2006-01-02T12:08:00.000-02:00

A very happy, healthy, successful, exciting 2006 to all of you!!

The Holidays here have been really nice, I went to a really nice Christmas dinner with a bunch of strangers that I'd met recently, and it was really good fun. Almost felt like Erasmus, with two Jordanians, a Swiss girl, an Italian, two Germans and an Armenian there.

The new year's party I went to had been organised by somebody I met through work, a guy who works at the World Bank here, and some of his friends. They are all consultants, work in banks and come across as very serious people - but of course, being Lebanese, they know how to party!! So my friend Sherine came to pick me up wearing a bright red, curly wig, whereas the last time I'd seen her was on a panel at the conference we'd organised a few weeks ago. And all the other economists at the party soon were very drunk and started wearing funny party hats and all of that. Later on I drove to a different club with a few friends, six of us in the car piled on top of each other, nobody sober and the car going really fast...a good thing, in that case, that nobody is serious about traffic controls here. Anyway, unfortunately I always forget to take my camera when I go out, so I have no pics...

Had to spend the past two days in bed because I already had a cold before all these parties started - after New Year's I unfortunately could no longer talk, my voice was completely gone. It's coming back now... Luckily they gave us today off at work, very nice, and it's a beautiful sunny day with 20-something degrees, lovely!

On Friday I was feeling slightly more convinced about my work for the first time. After the Ehden workshop experience I talked about last time, and after meeting all these people who talk about ending feudalism and interconfessional dialogue but essentially are completely racist and locked up in their own communities..... we are now applying for a new project. The whole office got together and discussed several ideas - the overall theme was 'youth and political participation' - and in the end my plan was chosen!! To be honest it was easy because none of the other people really felt like writing a project proposal until Friday, but still, I felt a bit chuffed about it. So now we want to try and get young people from different regions together and train them in facilitation and moderation methods so they can go back and pass on this knowledge - at least giving people the tools to cross confessional and regional boundaries, should they want to. Whether or not they do it is of course still up to them. But first we have to write the proposal and get the project working of course. I will keep posting in 2006, of course! :)

Need a break from work...

2005-12-23T14:27:00.000-02:00

So it's a good thing it's christmas!!! Before I start complaining though, I wanted to share some pictures from Gibran Tueni's funeral of last week, which was a weird mixture between burial and festival. At first - we went there around 10 in the morning - the crowd was only moderately large and gathering in front of the An-Nahar building. A band was playing cheerful music. The man on the picture is obviously Tueni, and the caption reads "The difference between darkness and light...is the word", in reference to his very outspoken opposition to Syria. (That's right, I am asking you to note my improved Arabic skills(!), although I am not sure about the word 'darkness', I more or less made that up because it would be the logical opposition to 'light'... :) )
Then it got bigger and bigger though, and it was really quite hot waiting in the sun with a big crowd of people. Although the Tueni family and the families of the two people killed with him had explicitly asked for no partisan flags to be displayed at their funeral...people could not resist, obviously. Instead, some daring teenagers climbed to the top of this crane in order to wave their flags at the risk of death - Progressive Socialist Party, Kataib, Lebanese Forces were all there, basically the youth organisations of Lebanon's big sectarian parties operating at the national level. This is of course a somewhat sad metaphor for what is happening in Lebanon in general in terms of sectarian politics. I will come back to this in a minute with another example. This, however, is what I call an impressive victory sign:
As the morning wore on, the crowd grew thicker and finally it became obvious what everybody had been waiting for - the three coffins were taken to the An-Nahar building once all family members of the victims and a bunch of political figures had arrived. From there they (the coffins) were carried by procession to the nearby St Georges Cathedral for the funeral service.
Well, and since then everybody has been slightly on the edge, there were a few days of heavier-than-usual military deployment and of few people on the streets. Some people (the youth movements of the 'March 14'-bloc, i.e. mostly Christian and in opposition to Syria) were going to resurrect the permanent camp in Martyr's Square that had been set up after Hariri's death to protest the killings that are going on here, and to protest Syria in general. However, I go by there often when I go running and haven't noticed any major signs of it so far. Hmm...
The last weekend before Christmas was very intense in terms of work, we had a workshop in the mountain resort of Ehden, which is extremely popular in summer but almost empty during the winter.

Unfortunately the batteries of my camera died after this picture, so I cannot show you some of the more cheerful vistas of Ehden, which is really quite pretty. The next mountain chain after the one you see here is already all covered in snow, and that's were most of the skiing resorts are. Anyway, so this workshop was really exhausting but ultimately a great learning experience. We (i.e. my employer) were supposed to assist in the foundation of a new youth movement aimed at overcoming sectarian differences in Lebanon and the feudal structures that still dominate politics here. Sounds great, doesn't it? The problem: this youth movement is doing exactly the opposite, by perpetuating sectarian divisions (these people are really hardcore Christians and I doubt any of them have had a lengthy encounter with any Muslims - not a small feat considering more than half of the population here is Muslim) and employing the exact feudal family structures they claim to fight against. How this works is: whoever has the highest ranking within the family context (in this case, whoever is most closely related to or most friendly with the Moawad family) is king and gets to dictate everything everybody does (in terms of politics) without ever seriously being questioned. It was so depressing to witness this first hand, especially since this was a bunch of young people who could really try and change things if they wanted to. Well, maybe they'll do some good things for their own community, but I really have my doubts they'll be doing any of the other peacy stuff they're talking about.

Finally, MERRY CHRISTMAS to all of you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Day after

2005-12-13T16:34:00.000-02:00

Today has been a lot more 'normal' than I thought it would be. Last night especially I thought the whole place was going to, I don't know, change? Go crazy? I was walking around trying to find a store so I could buy a phone card. Impossible! The place was like a ghost town, there wasn't a single person in the streets, all the shops were closed, no cars, just the thrash cats hanging around. Scary!!! The most frightening thing was the silence - something that seems completely impossible in Beirut under normal circumstances. But yesterday my whole neighbourhood was silent.

Today was a bit more lively although I did see the occasional tank in the street on my way to work. It also helped to know that other parts of Beirut were not as shut down as my neighbourhood yesterday. This is because the area I live in, Achrafiyeh, happens to be Gebran Tueni's constituency. So people were demonstrating their disbelief and shock here more than elsewhere I suppose. I actually found out today that at some point yesterday morning, while we were all in the office practically looking down on the hospital across the street, Tueni's body had been taken there for a while, before it was transferred to another hospital. I find that a really strange idea too. But on my way home from work today, I observed one man having a foot massage in a beauty salon, so things can't be so bad I guess.

On TV, I was watching part of a mourning ceremony that was taking place in a church in my neighbourhood. Marwan Hamadeh, the minister who survived a car bomb, was there, as well as Samir Geagea, leader of the Lebanese forces, and Nayla Moawad, the minister of social affairs who is at the same time president of the foundation I work at. I don't know why I'm writing this down, but it seemed really odd to see all these people, who are starting to look familiar now, and two of whom I have seen in real life already, appear on television when they were really just a few hundred yards away from where I was sitting on my couch. Gebran Tueni's wife was there also, she looked in a terrible state and like she was going to faint any minute.

What makes things seem even more unreal is the fact that every single Lebanese TV station - perhaps with the exception of Al-Manar, Hizballah's own broadcaster - has dug up every tape they have of Gebran Tueni and they're constantly broadcasting it. When I switch on the TV, he's right there as part of a talk show or giving an interview. His newspaper Al-Nahar is also re-publishing every editorial he ever wrote. For me, who had never seen him when he was alive or read his articles, this makes the whole situation even weirder than it already is.

A general strike has been called for tomorrow and the funeral is going to happen. Meanwhile, everyone keeps waiting for the Security Council debate on the second Mehlis report and there's a major government crisis here in Lebanon. Hizballah's ministers have suspended their participation in the cabinet after it adopted a motion that calls for an international investigation into all the recent car bombings. Looks like they're more or less keeping it together, at least the government hasn't resigned yet.

"Tu vas faire quoi maintenant?"

2005-12-12T12:05:00.000-02:00

That's the question everybody is asking everybody else right now, because really, nobody knows. I got to work this morning and found the TV switched on, with everybody crowding around it as they came in. The entire office spent about 2 hours there to find out what had happened in the car bombing that shook the city around 9 o'clock. Most of my colleagues had heard the massive explosion too, except for me - I don't know, I was blissfully unaware and walking to work as I usually do in the mornings, climbing up the stairs to Sassine square and then going down from there towards Hotel-Dieu, the big university hospital that is directly opposite our office and I didn't hear a thing.

When the news came in that Gebran Tueni had been killed in the bombing the atmosphere changed. Before, there had still been a slight chance that it might have been an industrial accident, as the explosion happened right outside a factory. Or that there was some non-political, simple explanation behind it all. But the fact that this anti-Syrian MP had been killed unfortunately took away the simple way out and made it obvious to all that this was indeed a politically motivated murder, one that might spark off who-knows-which consequences, and that the whole ugly beast was rearing its head again etc.... One colleague had known the victim and is quite close to the family and she was in tears and so distraught. Everybody, in fact, was in a state of shock although no-one was willing to admit so much. But the feeling of 'please, no, please don't let this happen to us again', this tiredness and anxiety and outrage were quite palpable.

Trying to go back to work after this was near-impossible, most of the phone lines were down and everybody had other things on their minds anyway. All morning ambulances and security personnel were arriving at the hospital opposite and sirens were screeching constantly, with virtually no other traffic (by Beirut standards anyway). Around two o'clock the word spread that there would be a non-violent protest march outside the An-Nahar building in downtown - An-Nahar is the newspaper of which Gebran Tueni had been editor. So a bunch of my colleagues decided to go down there and I went with them. Traffic was chaotic and as we were sitting in the car driving down to the protest, a colleague got a phone call from her boyfriend who was panicking. From his balcony, he had just observed a service taxi being stopped and its Syrian passengers being dragged out of the car and beaten up by an angry mob. And you bet there was nobody there to stop them from doing so, not even police or security services.

By the time we got to downtown, part of the protest was dissolving already and lots of people carrying orange flags - supporters of Michel Aoun, the General who recently returned from France - were marching up to Sassine square to stage a separate protest and possibly look for more people to beat up. The remaining crowd outside the An-Nahar building was quite small, perhaps a hundred people or so, and almost all of them belonging to some party - the Phalanges and other Christian groups. They were waving their respective flags and chanting 'Fuck Syria'. After five minutes (actually maybe before that even) I felt the desperate urge to leave: I don't want to blame anyone, I don't want to be a voyeur, I don't belong to any of these movements, so what the hell am I doing here? Luckily my colleagues had reached a similar conclusion around the same time, so we all left again and ate lunch together at the office.

Seriously, all of this is so weird. A general strike is being called for for tomorrow. We'll see what happens.... I guess the coming days and weeks will bring more upheaval and more crucial decisions and events. The UN is debating the second Mehlis report tomorrow. And I'm asking myself the question: which theory makes more sense? Are the Syrians doing this in order to sow fear and anxiety in Lebanon, hoping to destabilise the situation and then once again move in here to 'guarantee security'? That would be a fairly blunt calculation, but then they aren't exactly well-known for their tact and subtleness when it comes to political strategies.
Or is someone trying to pour oil on the fire and to ignite the already enormous potential of hatred towards Syrians here - underlining the fact that Lebanon has been a victim of their designs for so long and that it needs to 'regain its full sovereignty'? This is of course the political demand that all Christian factions - and some others, of course - have been making throughout this year, and it happens to be what the U.S. wants as well. How convenient then that this reminder of the situation comes right before the debate on sanctions against Syria etc. that is to be held at the UN tomorrow. If I were a fan of conspiracy theory, I would find supporting evidence for the second theory in the fact that it barely took an hour or so after the bombing for orange flags to appear on all lamp posts on the major road outside our office - and they look official, not just improvised.

But then, I'm not a fan of these theories and honestly I have no idea what just happened here today. There will be a whole range of explanations as there usually is with such things. What I know for sure is that everybody is afraid for their future, their jobs, their security, their perspectives because nobody knows what's next. I will keep you posted!!!

Amman and back

2005-12-08T13:39:00.000-02:00

On my first trip out of Beirut since I've been here, I went to Amman (the capital of Jordan, just because I have been asked this question before :) ) from Sunday to Tuesday to finally meet my colleagues at the regional office of the Naumann Foundation (my employer). To get over there I took a shared taxi from Beirut which takes about six hours, including getting in and out of the car a bunch of times because you have to get your passport stamped to leave Lebanon, then to enter Syria, then to leave Syria, then to enter Jordan..... my passport looks very colourful now with lots of stamps in it. The Syrian border guys forgot to charge me $8 for a transit visa because they thought my multiple entry visa from a year ago was still valid. This was much to the amusement of my fellow passengers who were happy to see the Syrians look incompentent, with the general verdict being that Syrians are stupid and "unable to understand anything" anyway. This bit of racism aside, they were very friendly people and saw to it that I, as the only foreigner, did not get confused by all the passport stamping and one of them would always accompany me to the customs counter.

After crossing Syria and passing through Damascus (horse-drawn carts and motorcycles going the wrong way on the highway), which made me feel very 'homesick', seeing it buzz under its usual cover of exhaust fumes, we got to Amman and a colleague picked me up and took me to my hotel. All hotels and restaurants in Amman now frisk everybody going in, but women only get searched if there's a woman frisker on duty which is not always the case. So listen up, female suicide bombers out there! Ok, I know it's not funny, but this policy makes no sense at all.

Basically, I spent most of my time there either at the office - everybody is very young and nice and seems to have a great sense of humour - or the Grand Hyatt Hotel which was bombed four weeks ago. Not that you would notice - it looks exactly like any other grand hotel of that sort, complete with a stylish Christmas tree made out ouf stacked wood painted purple in the lobby. Impossible to fathom what the scene looked like only a month ago...

The point of being there was a conference organised by the Naumann foundation and the Arab League on reforms in the Arab world. Very interesting. My favourite was a guy from the ruling party in Egypt who took 15 Minutes to basically state that there was a crucial difference between 'reform' and 'change'. You don't want change because nobody knows which way it'll go. Instead it's much better to have 'reforms' and to clearly limit what they can do. Well, at least he was being honest... But cynicism aside some of the discussions were quite good and everybody seemed happy at the end. I also thought it was pretty cool one Palestinian delegate in his fifties was wearing khaki Chucks. And the food was great!!

I also went to all of Amman's trendy bars (2 - two) in one evening - I guess that's why it's also called "The Hashemite Kingdom of Boredom" by a friend of mine... But Jordan is supposed to be really beautiful and you can do lots of hiking in the mountains or desert. I think I'm going back sometime.

On the way back to Beirut there were no direct taxis, so I took one to Damascus (with a couple from Turkey who were taking a bus to Istanbul from there, takes about 2 days...) and changed there to take a taxi to Beirut. This process took about 8 hours (more stamps) and was kind of tiring because I hadn't had time to eat anything all day and had to spend the ride to Beirut practically sitting in some teenager's lap and with a very unfriendly taxi driver. But I got back in one piece no problem and full of new impressions.

2005-12-01T10:07:00.000-02:00

What happened to the cat

Yesterday I was walking home from work and came across a terrible sight. This orange, stripey cat was lying in the street, on its side, flipping its tail. At first I thought it was just having a nap or something, but then a car passed really close to it and it didn't move. Apparently it had been hit by a car and couldn't get up anymore to walk out of the road. I walked up to it and saw that it was bleeding and having difficulty breathing and was probably in a lot of pain.
So what was I supposed to do? There were lots of people around and everybody was ignoring the cat. I considered picking it up but then what would I have done with it? I looked at the shop owner who stood nearby and was looking at the whole scene, but he just looked away.

Finally, after pondering this for some time and feeling really helpless, I walked away because I decided that I personally could not help the cat (except maybe hold its paw while it was dying, but then I don't know if cats appreciate that kind of thing and plus, it was in the road) and that nobody was around to help it either. Basically, I just left it there to die!! Later, I was telling myself that not very many people have pets here (most of the cats in the neighbourhood live out of the thrash cans, although there are some pet cats and I have seen at least one pet dog), and that there were probably no vets around who could take care of a cat.

However, I was feeling bad about this line of argument later because I, of course, never tried to find a vet and help the cat but just walked away. And, come to think of it, people have bloody plastic surgery here all the time and everybody in my neighbourhood has servants (Filipinas who in the morning get to wash the shiny SUVs their employers drive and go shopping with their 'masters' in the supermarket in the afternoon, pushing the heavy trolley while the master selects the products for them to carry), so why wouldn't there be pets and, by implication, vets as well? I just didn't want to deal with it because I didn't want to look like a stupid European who cares too much about pets when that is not part of the culture here.

Am I going to burn in hell (who wants to meet up there)? Are all cats going to hate me now? Does it make a difference to the way the world is going? Does it matter at all? What would you have done in my place??

2005-11-30T12:17:00.000-02:00

It's a Wednesday

I don't know, I'm not feeling creative for a headline here. Things that have happened recently - I've overcome, more or less, my down phase of last week (I feel so odd posting things like this on a web page, but then I guess that's what a blog is about and I've been going on about it...) and anyway I have lots of work now to keep me busy! I'm organising two events, i.e. conferences and stuff, in December, and I'm also supposed to have designed and conceptualised a calendar teaching kids about human rights within the next 10 days. One of the conferences is about the European Neighbourhood Policy - it's supposed to get people from the government and civil society together and come up with recommendations for an action plan for this policy. And the other one.....is meant to help found a new political movement, but then this sounds so weird. It's all about capacity building and all of that. You know what I mean...

So last week I went to see this concert inside the "Dome" I was talking about before. It actually looks quite nice on the inside, but when you see this thing from the outside you really wonder how it can still hold up. Apparently they've had a huge techno party in it a few years ago which is now famous for the amount of drugs that were abused there. I tried to take a close-up of my favourite musician, the very cool grandpa bass player, but unfortunately it didn't really turn out.

I've also been to a two-day conference about Euro-Mediterranean relations. The food there was quite good and they gave away lots of freebies, but as far as the outcome it was pretty much zero if you ask me. The Minister of Telecommunications was there to talk about the fight against terrorism - he recently escaped a car bombing himself. It was a little odd because when anybody talks about terrorism in Europe, people usually talk about definitions, or networks, or other grand concepts. This discussion however was very much focused on details - which security service is listening to which kind of phone conversations? Strangely, there was also some French General there who was talking about security services in Europe. According to him, terrorism is of course something to worry about, but at least we should count ourselves fortunate because there are no more wars between "great powers" - as he put it, "la guerre a prise un bon coup derriere les oreilles". Thank you for this opinion! I'm sure it went down well with the car-bombed Minister or any other people in the audience who have any kind of war experience. Anyway, I mostly think the discussion was STRANGE. A colleague of mine told me today she saw me on TV when this event was broadcast (the TV people arrived and left together with the Minister), sitting in the audience and looking bored.

I also went to the famous Gemmayzeh cafe to smoke Argileh and have Lebanese food the other day - good stuff! (Luckily I can eat again by this point).

2005-11-23T07:31:00.000-02:00

Bluesy Beirut days

So far I've been mainly talking about positive experiences here, but of course I wouldn't be telling the whole story if I didn't talk about the negative ones. They exist and have been bugging me lately, starting with the fact that it's impossible, as a foreigner, to walk anywhere without people staring, observing, occasionally even - this goes especially for old men - stopping on the sidewalk to get a better look and be able to spend more time staring. I've already told you about the security guards everywhere. I could also tell you about food problems: my stomach has had a hard time adjusting and I haven't really been able to eat anything apart from plain rice for the past week. Or about getting ripped off by taxi drivers, or the feeling of exposure to mortal danger that any pedestrian constantly experiences because people's driving over here is insane. Such 'normal' adjustment and culture shock problems are probably something most of us have experienced, and they're a bit of a bitch at times. What's really confusing me at the moment though is my situation at work, where I feel pretty lost with the tasks that have been given me as I receive no guidance, orientation or instruction by anyone. Still, I'm expected to figure everything out and be reliable and deliver on time (and to pretty tight deadlines). This seems very hard to do when around me, everything looks like chaos, I can never find the people I'm supposed to work with and the way people interact is hard to get used to. It seems that often people use a tone of voice which would be considered really rude in Germany, but it's normal here and nobody means anything by it. Conversely, this means if you want to get anything done at all, you have to be quite 'rude', in any case very determined and not put off by occasional setbacks ('Yeah yeah, I'll call you back, we will meet later today' for example is not at all a reliable statement but calls for further insistence on a meeting apparently...). And then there's of course the language barrier: sure, everybody speaks foreign languages, but all social conversations here at work, for example, are held in Arabic and it's frustrating to think that I've spent so long trying to learn this language and I still can't understand anything. I'm taking private lessons now though, so I'm hoping things will gradually improve, along with getting used to the other issues I've been talking about.

To distract myself from thinking about this stuff, I've been going to a bunch of cultural events recently. There was a lecture last week by Gayatri Spivak, the queen of postcolonial studies, at the Lebanese American University (another elite institution for sure). It's really weird because she seems to have this unique gift and charisma and everybody walked out of her lecture - essentially a plea for supporting 'the humanities' (i.e. studying languages, cultures, literature) as a counterforce to globalisation which makes everything alike and stamps of difference - thinking, wow, that was great, finally somebody has made sense of it all and explained the world and it's not so complicated after all. But the more you think about what she said, the less it makes any sense and you realise that a lot of it is basically hot air, or her talking about her own publications, achievements, basically about herself. With a week of hindsight and several accounts by people who went to a seminar she held the next day, I would even venture so far as to say a large part of what she said was bullshit. And yet, I clearly remember sitting in her lecture feeling all inspired and motivated. Never experienced anything like it. I suppose she would make an excellent populist and could whip up people's feelings for any idea. As she was keen to point out herself, someone once said to her that she could probably teach the phone book and people would think it was inspirational.

So as far as believing in the forces of good in the world, Gayavatri Spivak was not such a great help for me either. I've also gone to see a play by Rabih Mroue, apparently a really happening Lebanese director, called 'Who's afraid of representation?'. It was great and definitely the best threatre experience I (not very much into theatre and not having much of a clue about it) have had in a while. I think the main issues in it were how art deals with painful experiences - and being in Lebanon the main experience referred to was the civil war. How people deal or not deal with it seemed to be what this play was exploring, and it was done in a very clever and ironic way. The one I went to was the second performance, and interestingly (and sadly) it had been censored after the premiere. Some friends who went to see the first performance said that one recital of a poem which was quite sexual was taken out, and also several references to differences between religious sects. Instead of the original poem, the director had then put in a very cynical one which talked about a five-day festival (i.e., 'Homeworks', the festival the play was being performed at) with lots of sheep being slaughtered and blood spilt and animals being cut into little pieces and the whole barbarian mess then being loaded into a helicopter and dropped from above to fight the tanks that are threatening us, or something like that. It probably doesn't make a lot of sense this way, but when they were reciting it it was really funny and an amazing way for the directors to get back at the censors, as my friends were explaining to me. So compared to Spivak, this was definitely a lot more fun despite the heavy topic and all.

Tonight I am going to see a famous Lebanese Oud player give a concert in the 'Dome', which is a completely destroyed cinema from the 1960s which miraculously survived the civil war and is smack in the middle of 'Downtown'. I am sure in Germany safety regulations would prevent anybody from even going into this building! :) The concert is part of the Independence Day celebrations. Yesterday there was a military parade near my house and I was woken up by a bunch of explosions which were probably military salutes or something. Ok that's all for now, I will continue to keep you posted...

2005-11-16T06:14:00.000-02:00

Lebanese humour...and security

Maybe some of you have seen the slogan of the so-called "cedar revolution" (of course nobody calls it that here except some very nationalist activists I think; it's either the 14th March movement, or the 8th March movement, depending on where you stand on the issue of Lebanese-Syrian relations). It's these posters or stickers:

Now check out the latest advertising campaign by a well-known French fashion store chain, to be found all over town at the moment:

Pretty funny, these Lebanese.... Btw: I took this last picture just outside the supermarket near my house. One of the approx. 15 security guards (a very lucrative economic sector in Lebanon, it seems!) at the door noticed me doing this, so I had to leave my camera with the security at the entrance. I mean, what are they thinking??? It's a supermarket!! Am I going to snoop around to check whether they've clandestinely imported avocadoes from Israel and then publish the pictures to denounce them? This is crazy. I tried to engage the security guard in a discussion about this, obviously to no effect. Ever since I was physically assaulted by several "security" people at the marathon for trying to take a shortcut around the nonsensical, omnipresent barriers after the event was over, my patience with all things security is really running low. Maybe I'm just paranoid but these guys really do seem to enjoy holding up female foreigners. But it's no use because it's everywhere and for a good reason I suppose, so everyone has to put up with it and accept it. Still...

2005-11-14T08:30:00.000-02:00

Corniche pics

Went a bit mad there.... so nice though!

2005-11-13T15:59:00.000-02:00

I never seem to be able to figure out how to create a headline for these posts. Hmmf. Anyway! Got lots of things to tell you and a bunch of pics, which I will have to put in at a later date because.... never mind!
So today I ran the "10 K", as they call it, read: 10km run, as part of the Beirut International Marathon. 17,000 people ran in it as well, but it felt more like 170,000!!! Major crowd event!!!! It was part of a charity run for work, raising awareness for a project that tries to get kids out of work and back into school. So we weren't timed but happily running along with some colleagues from the office (Lili wenn Du das liest: meine Zeit war ungefaehr so wie bei unserem ersten Lauf, allerdings war es hier auch ziemlich heiss und sehr huegelig... ;) ) and it was quite an experience. Great fun to be part of it!! Also running as official teams were the Bank of Beirut (they must have had about 200 people), SonyEricsson, just about every business in Beirut and even (!) UNIFIL, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon as well as various branches of the security services (identified by their black tank tops with 'Security Forces' printed on them). Everybody was in for the advertising space! It just so happened that today was actually the first really warm day since I've been here, about 26 degrees I think and it was quite a hike up the steep hills here at times - and there was an especially evil climb of about 300m just before the finish line....!
Hmmm, what else... on Friday I went to a major club called Basement. I have to say it's been a very long time that I've partied like I do here. It just feels like everybody's out there to have 100%, no-inhibitions-whatsoever parties. And so far it's always been really great fun, even if the music may at times have been questionable.... especially at this pub we went to beforehand, which was playing nothing but R&B non-stop and at top volume, making any conversation virtually impossible, and which appears to be a favourite hangout for hip hop style dudes.

Before that I went to have dinner at 'Flying Pizza', decorated entirely in 80s style with a lovely Versailles-garden wallpaper completely covering one wall and a model chopper hanging from the ceiling. Apparently the owner used to be a pilot and the place was frequented by air hosts&hostesses back in the day. Or something like that. In any case it's a really nice place!

And the other evening there was a lecture by Rashid Khalidi, a historian who now teaches at Columbia Uni in NY, on 'Iraq & American Empire' held at the super-elite American University here... everybody's favourite quote of the evening was that George W.'s administration was 'faith-based and fact-free', and he had lots of similarly witty and scorching rants to give about the administration, the U.S. media etc. Very entertaining, if not really a big revelation.
Otherwise I'm trying to figure out where I can take Arabic classes that won't cost a fortune - I literally haven't spoken a word of Arabic since I've been here, especially in Ashrafiyeh you can get by without ever knowing the language it seems. I really have to do something about this. I try to pick things up by listening to the radio and watching TV - I figured watching the Smurfs in Arabic should be about my level. But even there I don't understand very much and I definitely need some teaching and lots of practice!!

2005-11-08T12:54:00.000-02:00

Life at my new office

Hello again, it seems that my working life is now picking up speed. The way people work here is quite different from what I'm used to in Germany. Everything seems totally chaotic, but there must be a hidden system to it because there's a lot of work and it's getting done. I will continue my investigation of how this system works. (Er, actually I can update this thought right now because a colleague just came in for a chat, and according to her, there simply is no system and things are actually totally chaotic. Well. Hm. I'll follow up on it...). This morning, lesson 1: don't show up at the office too early! I thought I'd demonstrate my motivation and diligence by getting here before 9 a.m., but I had to sit outside the door on the staircase for 15 minutes until somebody got here.

I went to have lunch at a nearby shopping mall with some colleagues and was kind of appaled at how un-Middle Eastern things can be here. Where's the authenticity, guys??? This place could have been anywhere, Milan, London, Berlin, probably Buenos Aires for all I know, or Phoenix, Arizona. Although I doubt that women there have this special Lebanese look, the highlights, the expensive accessories, I don't know, somehow it's very characteristic and recognisable. In any case I find it hard to believe this place is only several hours by bus from Damascus, which is an entirely different world.

Well, and now I'm going to walk back over the hill to my neighbourhood... I am thinking of stopping by the Virgin Megastore inside the same shopping mall. The most recent guidebook to come out is "A Hedonist's Guide to Beirut", written by the Arts&Culture editor of the local paper, The Daily Star. So it has all the fancy restos and bars for sure. Hm, I'm not so sure this is the kind of info I need, because these things travel by word of mouth anyway. The book I need is, "A Political Scientist's Guide to How This Place Really Works" (ideally containing a step-by-step guide "Publishing your stuff on Lebanon"), or, alternatively, "Finding a meaningful job with a decent salary in Lebanon" (mind that I'll only work at this place for 2 months), including sections on "How to avoid typical foreigners' mistakes" and lots of other helpful tips.

If any of you come across things like this on amazon or whereever, do let me know!!! For now, I'll leave you with the view from my office window of Beirut hills in the setting sun, cheesy-weez:

2005-11-07T15:30:00.000-02:00

Dear friends,

I have now arrived and started a new life over here in Beirut. As I promised, I will tell you my stories and send you pics (Bilder & Geschichten) of what I'm doing over here. Let me start by showing you a view of the Corniche, Beirut's beach promenade. That was actually not the picture I wanted to put here, but it took about half an hour to upload this so I'm not gonna change this now. Pretty though, no? This was the day after I arrived at 4 a.m. in the morning and took up residence in the chichi Crowne Plaza Hotel, where I got a room on the 15th floor with a sea view. (Will include a picture of that below.) So I had a day to catch up and adjust to the amazing speed of events, which took me from my normal life in Berlin to a completely new story here in Beirut, all in the space of barely two weeks. My new motto is 'why not?'. Many thanks again to all the people who helped me organise things before I took off and are now storing various items of my stuff, carried my beloved Vespa down the stairs or drove me to the airport!!!! :) And also, sorry once again this is all in English ---- aber sonst muesste ich alles zweimal schreiben und das wuerde wahrscheinlich dazu fuehren, dass ich gar nicht schreibe. Ich hoffe, das ist o.k. fuer Euch bzw. uns alle in der globalisierten Welt und so....:)

Ok, here we go, this is the view from my hotel room across Beirut at 4 in the morning. It looks a lot nicer than the day view actually, although that's not bad either. But anyway, to stop rambling on..... The second day I was here was also my first day of work, and I felt a bit overwhelmed by it all, especially as I had to take part in a bunch of meetings and process large amounts of information. I also met the Minister of Social Affairs, Nayla Moawad, which I hadn't known was part of the agenda that day, and I felt very inappropriately dressed sitting in her office (the other people there where having a meeting, I was basically just present). I was so confused by it all that I took the security guard at the entrance to be a participant and shook his hand, until I noticed how surprised he was and that he was carrying a gun. Just for the record: for the next two months I will be based at Rene Moawad Foundation here in Beirut. I will be doing some stuff for them and will also be helping to coordinate some projects for Friedrich Naumann Foundation, my official employer (i.e., I report to them and they pay me money). If it all seems confusing to you, rest assured that it does to me at the moment, as well. It'll all become clearer in time, I'm sure....

Ok, so I had to move out of the Crowne Plaza eventually of course (after two nights), and this is where I live now. This is Paul's apartment, and Paul is a friend of a colleague's of mine (I have met neither Paul nor the colleague who is based in Amman, but both of them are incredibly nice and helpful, for sure!!). Very nice place and all mod cons, I have to say, including a huge flat screen TV and surround-sound DVD and all. It's also located close to my work (I work opposite Hotel-Dieu, the big French hospital...) in the lovely Achrafiyeh area. A very pretty and fancy neighbourhood with lots of designer stores and funky bars and restaurants. The main clubbing area around Rue Monot is a 5-minute walk from the flat. Way to go, Paul!
My building is actually fairly modern-looking (and has a small but ugly Phalanges-logo sprayed on outside), but to give you an idea of what the 'hood looks like, here's a pic of the building across the street....(see below).
Erm, this is really addictive and I could tell you lots more stories (e.g. how I took a picture of a random, futuristic-looking high rise building and a soldier came walking up to me, machine gun dangling from shoulder, to say something with his forehead all wrinkled up and looking serious - and then he turned out to be joking. How funny! Or how I got lost walking home from the supermarket, or the adventure of taking a taxi and all these things....) but more later....I'll show you some more pics instead:

This is the building I was talking about.... and there are lots like this one around.
And this is a pic from my birthday, the first day I was here, when I went out for drinks with my friend Yasmin in Gemmayzeh:

Well, will write more soon....see ya!