Street Notes 12 May 2008

Franklin Lamb
Choufeit, Lebanon

In the lower Chouf village of Choufeit with its panoramic view of Beirut’s closed airport (which will likely stay closed for 4 or 5 more days as a Hezbollah pressure point on the Bush administration to achieve a settlement that it views as fair and just), Dahiyeh, Sabra, Shatila and Burj Burajneh Palestinian Refugee Camps; Pentecost Sunday started in a somber mood for the few remaining Christians and dominant Druze population of this picturesque, rugged, hilly and ancient village.

The reason was that virtually the whole village was in attendance at a 9 a.m. memorial service for two supporters of the Druze Lebanese Democratic Party, 18 year old ____ and 22 year old _____ (names withheld at the request of family pending notification of family members living outside Lebanon) who were probably shot as they drove too fast through a newly setup check-point on May 10th. (The exact circumstances and who exactly was responsible are not clear given the myriad explanations one receives depending on who one talks to in this tight-knit village. Read the rest of this entry »

Isfahan is a short animated film inspired by stunning Persian architecture and created by Etérea Studios. H/T to friend and inspiration Ressentiment. For a great Persian culture fix (and much else besides) see also Reclaiming Space’s Iranian sister city blog Forever Under Construction, and also check out NeoResistance. The clip may need a few seconds to load.

Thousands of people marched through the streets of London yesterday to show their support for the Palestinian cause. The demonstrators were calling for an end to the siege on Gaza, the right of return for Palestinians, and an end to Israeli occupation. Looks like Neturei Karta were there as well (1:41)

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An interesting look at the militarisation of the US economy from Nick Turse. While the US has long been a permanent war economy, the consumer dimension of the corporate overlap has not–until recently–been highlighted.

War’s shopping cart

Pepsi, Apple, Krispy Kreme and other consumer firms profit from Iraq too.

By Nick Turse | LA Times

Last month, a review of 2006 congressional financial disclosure statements by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics found that lawmakers have as much as $196 million “invested in companies doing business with the Defense Department, earning millions since the start of the Iraq war.” An Associated Press article on the report, however, offered a caveat: “Not all the companies invested in by lawmakers are typical defense contractors. Corporations such as PepsiCo, IBM, Microsoft and Johnson & Johnson have at one point received defense-related contracts.”

But the Associated Press is wrong. The fact is that corporations such as PepsiCo, IBM, Microsoft and Johnson & Johnson are, indeed, typical defense contractors. To suggest that such firms, and tens of thousands like them, only receive defense-related contracts at the odd, aberrant moment is specious at best. Read the rest of this entry »

Beirut Street Notes: Hamra

Hezbollah eases up and Beirut opens its shutters

Franklin Lamb
Beirut

Saturday Afternoon May 10 2008 witnessed a pronounced easing of tension.

Is a solution at hand?

Based on a US Congressional source, the Siniora government is reportedly able, with US approval, to offer the following face-saving proposal to Hezbollah to end the current crisis:

1. Hezbollah can keep its landline optic telecommunication cables for use in its Resistance struggle against Israel. But they should be put under “State Control”. Translation: Hezbollah controls them exclusively same as now and no one else will touch them. But ‘officially’ they will be under ‘State’ control, i.e. not State control.

2. Concerning the other major issue regarding the head of Beirut Airport Security, General Wafiq Shouqair gets reassigned but Hezbollah gets to name his replacement. Translation: Wafiq stays in office, keeps his authority and puts his deputy’s name card slipped over his on the office nameplate. Read the rest of this entry »

A fair summation of the crisis and interviews with Nicholas Noe, Anwar Wazen and Mohsen Saleh from Al Jazeera’s Inside Story. Saleh is pro-Opposition, Brussels-based Wazen is obviously anti-Hezbollah. This is followed by Nasrallah’s address; a three minute highlights clip with English subtitles followed by a clip of the full speech which has a voice-over translation in English.

Inside Story - Lebanon strike - 07 May 08 - Part 1 (12.52)

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Les Jeux Sont Fait

Day Three - The Chess Match: Nasrallah opens with a Knight
Next move: Bush

Street Notes and Findings from Beirut’s Hamra District: May 9, 2008

Franklin Lamb
Beirut

“Where did they come from?”, the desk clerk at the Royal Plaza Hotel in Rauche by the sea near Hamra wondered out loud. “I have been on duty all night and saw nothing. Suddenly they are everywhere!”

Of course this observer wondered the same thing. The time was around 8:30 am, having ducked into the Hotel to escape a flash shower before the sunny morning returned.

This observer left Haret Hreik neighborhood in Dahiyeh by motorcycle around 6:45 am this morning and headed toward the airport road near the Jnah/Ouzai round-about. Dahiyeh is quiet. Essentially normal. (Around 1 pm returning from Hamra I did notice that none of the Haret Hreik guys were playing football at the local athletic fields—it dawned on me where they were). Read the rest of this entry »

Wherein the menu for terrorist acts sounds a lot like the prescription for fascism. A James Pence video (1:25). H/T Miche.

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Lebanon on the Brink

Blindsided Hezbollah mulls its response

Franklin Lamb,
Outside Beirut’s closed Airport

“The question is no longer why, for the answer has become clear. However, what is the secret behind the timing of this? What is being prepared for the future stage and which coincides with US President George Bush’s tour of the region? Has internal dialogue gone without return, and if it takes place, then what is its agenda? What will Hezbollah and the opposition do to face the new challenges?”

– Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General Naim Qassim during a just completed May 8, 2008 interview

Hezbollah sources concede that they were taken by surprise and some were shocked by the intense, incendiary bombardment of the last few days by pro-government operatives. As Hezbollah studies ‘the situation’ and how to respond this beautiful spring Beirut morning, there is a real danger things may rapidly spiral out of control. Read the rest of this entry »

Hundreds of military checkpoints, and no goods — or people — allowed in or out if you live in the Gaza Ghetto, under brutal siege. Need medical attention and care? Pregnant? Want to visit family? Need to go to work? Get fuel? Too bad. All this operates with Israeli regime impunity, who have been choking Gaza — the world’s largest open-air concentration camp — as well as “exporting” its apartheid model: see, in particular, Naomi Klein.

The graphic above was made by a wise fourteen-year-old (Adam) after hearing stories of the difficulties of life in Abu Dis in Palestine. H/T thanks to DesertPeace, originally sourced from WorldPressNetwork. Read the rest of this entry »

Graphic: Carlos Latuff.

That, of course, is the idea, the result of a deliberate strategy and as a direct consequence of Israel’s prevailing self-definition and worldview. As surely as our cosmology informs our sociology, the abhorrent siege of the Gaza Ghetto continues, the result of the internal logic of Israel’s continued existence as an apartheid expansionist state, producing policies of continued ‘low-intensity’ ethnic cleansing, divide and rule and genocide as Ilan Pappe and others have described. Zaid Khan’s words are worth quoting again:

Nearly 70 years ago, in a small eastern European city, an oppressed and occupied people were under siege, living under atrocious and brutal conditions, lacking food, medicine, electricity, water, and slowly being strangled in the hope they would just disappear.

Warsaw Ghetto 1941 - Gaza 2008. Israel, you are a disgrace.

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The One Day Poem Pavilion by Jiyeon Song is an enchanting idea that makes use of natural light and shadow to project different poetic verses depending upon the time of day.

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Mazin Qumsiyeh of the excellent Wheels of Justice peace initiative has drafted this list furnishing facts about why good people of conscience everywhere will not be celebrating Israel at its 60th anniversary this month, just as apartheid-era South Africa was not accepted or celebrated. There are many more reasons, and he invites people to add to it.

Israeli psychologist and exile Avigail Abarbanel notes, “If a day comes, and I hope it does, when Israelis decide to stop living in denial, they will have to realise that real peace will only come through justice. Justice in this context means one thing, that the ideal of an exclusively Jewish state at the cost of an entire people might have to be abandoned. Only a bi-national state and a right of return for the Palestinian refugees will come close enough to rectifying some of the injustices committed in 1948 and since. Having been ethnically cleansed, this is also what the Palestinians are entitled to under international law and common human decency.“

• Ethnic cleaning and ongoing genocide: Between December 1947 and December 1950, over 530 Palestinian villages and towns were destroyed. Half of the Palestinians were ethnically cleansed by underground Zionist forces even before Israel was unilaterally declared a state. Palestinians call these events of the late 1940s the Nakba (Catastrophe).

• The Palestinian refugees are the largest remaining refugee population in the world. Seven million of the ten million Palestinians are refugees or displaced people. They are prevented from returning to their homes and lands even though International law and UN resolutions demand it. Read the rest of this entry »

Public art for art’s sake can be a fun and participatory affair, creating a grassroots ‘collective effervescence’ in civil society. A great recent example is the Beirut installment of the global phenomenon of ‘Flash Mob’ public performances that occurred earlier this month, at City Mall, Dora. The flash mob involved a couple of hundred people converging on a city mall and freezing for 5 minutes, near the anniversary of the Lebanese Civil War.

LebMobbers (3 minutes)

As NowLebanon reports,

“This was just to have fun and to have positive vibes. Lebanon needs more positive vibes,” said the organizer in a phone interview with NOW Lebanon. “Today is the birthday of the civil war, and we wanted to give the media an opportunity to talk about something other than politics,” he added. … Read the rest of this entry »