I'm old enough to remember jubilant Germans standing atop a graffiti-covered wall with sledgehammers and euphoria, but I was twelve years old and not yet able to fully comprehend why what I was watching was so significant. The feeling of seeing that joy turned out to have a profound effect on my life.
But that triumph belonged to another generation. I was a child when the Cold War was escalating itself out of existence while the Islamic revolution in Iran was just getting underway and Lebanon fought its apocalypse and Arab dictators padded their bank accounts. I was three years old when Hosni Mubarak took power. I was a teenager when Islamic fundamentalism replaced the Soviet Union as "The Enemy," a result of Iran and Lebanon and the various dictatorships in the Arab World. Right now, I am listening to Ahmad, who owns a liquor store across the street, light firecrackers in the road after watching the same jubilation more than two decades after the sledgehammer crushed the hammer and the sickle. This is my generation's Berlin Wall.
Oh what a day after last night's heartbreak! I couldn't take my eyes off the Blackberry when I wasn't in a place with a television. When it was announced yet another presidential statement would be made, I hurried home and flipped on the tube. It only took 30 seconds to ignite euphoria. Aljazeera English once again showed how good it is by having not one talking head say a word for a full ten minutes as we listened to the crowd of more than 3 million make the name Liberation Square mean something again.
This is not just a great day for Egyptians or Arabs, but a great day for all of humanity. Congratulations, people of Egypt. You have been an inspiration to the whole world.
I dedicate this song about the fall of the Berlin Wall to you. (Oh, Bono and Edge, you look so young. I can't believe it's been 20 years since Achtung Baby came out. Talk about something else that had a profound effect on my life - and probably did more than any history book to help me understand just how significant those sledgehammers were.)
Showing posts with label News. Show all posts
Showing posts with label News. Show all posts
Friday, February 11, 2011
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Bang and Blame
Allahu Akbar echoes through the concrete streets of Hamra as a slight drizzle caresses the city's scars and keeps the flowers alive. It is a gray day but it is still quite bright with distant white clouds hanging somewhere over the sea. Not too far from here, Egyptians are gathering in mass protests against the 30 year dictatorship of Pharaoh Mubarak. A bit further off, Tunisians are trying to reassemble their country after a popular and mostly peaceful revolution overthrew their own dictator of thirteen years. In Yemen, thousands of people took part in demonstrations against their government, and Jordanians, too, participated in demonstrations on a smaller scale.
Here in Lebanon, they handed the government over to Hezbollah and Syria. Come on.
The world is changing before our eyes. I have vague recollections of images of Germans with sledgehammers standing atop a graffiti covered wall overcome by what can only be described as joy. What followed was a decade when the Western world was filled with hope for the future, but while we were celebrating the triumph of what we call freedom over the injustices of a failed revolution of a different sort, this part of the world in which I now sit continued to suffer from the same crushing authoritarianism that plagued the Russians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, Germans, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukranians, Belarussians, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Tajiks, Kyrgyz, Azerbaijanis, Serbs, Bosnians, Albanians, Bulgarians, Romanians, Slovenians, Croatians, Armenians, Georgians, Macedonians, and all the subsets and everyone else I may have forgotten (the list is off the top of my head). It wasn't called communism in the Middle East except on occasion and in part of Yemen, but communism is just a word assigned to one variation of dictatorship.
The worst is that the United States supported so many of these authoritarian regimes over the years. We looked at the Soviet Union as the Evil Empire while at the same time allowing Pharaoh Mubarak to rule absolutely by what he called "Emergency Decree" for three decades, giving him a pile of dough so he'd make peace with our BFF Israel. Our other BFF, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, didn't need the money but we promised them to suck from the teat of their land if they would just ignore their Jewish neighbors. Our too big to fail car companies simply adored this foreign policy, and it was porn for the filthy minds of the military industrial complex.
After 9/11, Americans asked "Why do they hate us?" as if they had been living in a bubble to keep them immune from the disease known as Realworlditis. And trust me, they do hate us. Not just the hell-bound jihadis who blow themselves up, but common folk of all backgrounds. They do have just cause. But that hate isn't a willful hate. It's a frustrated hate, more of an envy, almost, because they see our hypocrisy in preaching freedom while supporting dictators.
But Americans have their own problems to deal with, things like mortgages and failing school systems and high unemployment. We don't sit around twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week devising new schemes for hurting the people of the Middle East. Most Americans - of the 300 million of them - don't think about the Middle East at all unless something extraordinary occurs, and when that extraordinary thing happens, it usually has to do with someone blowing themselves up in the name of religion. Yet the Arab world seems obsessed with blaming America to the point of counterproductivity. The controversy surrounding the "Ground Zero Mosque" (translation: Muslim community center located two blocks away from the WTC site) was given as proof that all Americans hated Muslims.
Nevermind that a black man named Barack Hussein Obama whose father was a Muslim is President of the United States of America, elected by popular vote by a wide margin.
What I am getting at here is that I am growing increasingly frustrated by the way the Arab world blames the US for ALL of its problems. Look, I am the first person to criticize US foreign policy, as anyone who knows me is all too familiar with. What Israel gets away with makes me sick. I also view the entire system of foreign assistance as neo-colonialism (though for the most part it is not intentional. It's just a lack of awareness by foreign policy bureaucrats and NGOs in Washington who think they are doing righteous work.) But the Arab world needs to look at itself in the mirror and acknowledge that it is not innocent in its plight.
For example, I've only seen one mention of how Mubarak came to power in the first place - Sadat, beloved by Arabs, appointed him in his government and saw his rise. And nobody seems to acknowledge that the pro-Mubarak thugs are, in fact, Egyptian, too, or that in a country with 72 million people, most are not demonstrating. (Contrast that with the Cedar Revolution (R.I.P.) in Lebanon, where a quarter of the entire population of the country marched in downtown Beirut.) Now is the time to rise up, so why aren't there 20 million protesters out there? Mubarak would never survive a protest of 20 million. Also, why now? Why sit and take it for 30 years until some frustrated kid sets himself on fire?
I pray that United States foreign policy changes as a result of this uprising. I'm not going to hold my breath, especially with Israeli cheerleader Ros-Lehtinen as Chairwoman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. (Another consequence of American-voter stupidity in the last elections.) And shame on Senator Feinstein and the others who blocked a Senate resolution last fall demanding more democracy in Egypt. Why don't we spend more of our tax money on domestic programs instead of giving it to Egypt and Israel? Why give them anything at all? Seems most of what we gave Egypt went into the pockets of the Pharaoh, and the money we give Israel just makes people hate us more and makes us less safe. (I know the answers to these questions. Still, it feels good to say it aloud. If only more Americans would...)
Anyway, it's an interesting time to be in the Middle East, even if I'm sitting in a country where nothing is really happening except the same old same old Syrian puppets and Hezbollah and blah blah blah. I just played Jesus Jones' "Right Here, Right Now," a song about the fall of the Berlin Wall that feels right at this time, too. Maybe once this is all over and Pharaoh Mubarak is deposed, Arabs and Americans can finally have a real dialogue based on mutual interests in having what Americans have and Arabs want - freedom - and we can put all of this finger pointing behind us.
So, go Egypt! You have the support of the world. And you, too, Yemen. And you, Jordan, and you, Tunisia, and you, Algeria, and you, Morocco, and you, Palestine. At the end of the day, Americans really do believe in the democracy and freedom that we preach, and we are watching you with pride. Your courage is inspiring.
Here in Lebanon, they handed the government over to Hezbollah and Syria. Come on.
The world is changing before our eyes. I have vague recollections of images of Germans with sledgehammers standing atop a graffiti covered wall overcome by what can only be described as joy. What followed was a decade when the Western world was filled with hope for the future, but while we were celebrating the triumph of what we call freedom over the injustices of a failed revolution of a different sort, this part of the world in which I now sit continued to suffer from the same crushing authoritarianism that plagued the Russians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, Germans, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukranians, Belarussians, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Tajiks, Kyrgyz, Azerbaijanis, Serbs, Bosnians, Albanians, Bulgarians, Romanians, Slovenians, Croatians, Armenians, Georgians, Macedonians, and all the subsets and everyone else I may have forgotten (the list is off the top of my head). It wasn't called communism in the Middle East except on occasion and in part of Yemen, but communism is just a word assigned to one variation of dictatorship.
The worst is that the United States supported so many of these authoritarian regimes over the years. We looked at the Soviet Union as the Evil Empire while at the same time allowing Pharaoh Mubarak to rule absolutely by what he called "Emergency Decree" for three decades, giving him a pile of dough so he'd make peace with our BFF Israel. Our other BFF, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, didn't need the money but we promised them to suck from the teat of their land if they would just ignore their Jewish neighbors. Our too big to fail car companies simply adored this foreign policy, and it was porn for the filthy minds of the military industrial complex.
After 9/11, Americans asked "Why do they hate us?" as if they had been living in a bubble to keep them immune from the disease known as Realworlditis. And trust me, they do hate us. Not just the hell-bound jihadis who blow themselves up, but common folk of all backgrounds. They do have just cause. But that hate isn't a willful hate. It's a frustrated hate, more of an envy, almost, because they see our hypocrisy in preaching freedom while supporting dictators.
But Americans have their own problems to deal with, things like mortgages and failing school systems and high unemployment. We don't sit around twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week devising new schemes for hurting the people of the Middle East. Most Americans - of the 300 million of them - don't think about the Middle East at all unless something extraordinary occurs, and when that extraordinary thing happens, it usually has to do with someone blowing themselves up in the name of religion. Yet the Arab world seems obsessed with blaming America to the point of counterproductivity. The controversy surrounding the "Ground Zero Mosque" (translation: Muslim community center located two blocks away from the WTC site) was given as proof that all Americans hated Muslims.
Nevermind that a black man named Barack Hussein Obama whose father was a Muslim is President of the United States of America, elected by popular vote by a wide margin.
What I am getting at here is that I am growing increasingly frustrated by the way the Arab world blames the US for ALL of its problems. Look, I am the first person to criticize US foreign policy, as anyone who knows me is all too familiar with. What Israel gets away with makes me sick. I also view the entire system of foreign assistance as neo-colonialism (though for the most part it is not intentional. It's just a lack of awareness by foreign policy bureaucrats and NGOs in Washington who think they are doing righteous work.) But the Arab world needs to look at itself in the mirror and acknowledge that it is not innocent in its plight.
For example, I've only seen one mention of how Mubarak came to power in the first place - Sadat, beloved by Arabs, appointed him in his government and saw his rise. And nobody seems to acknowledge that the pro-Mubarak thugs are, in fact, Egyptian, too, or that in a country with 72 million people, most are not demonstrating. (Contrast that with the Cedar Revolution (R.I.P.) in Lebanon, where a quarter of the entire population of the country marched in downtown Beirut.) Now is the time to rise up, so why aren't there 20 million protesters out there? Mubarak would never survive a protest of 20 million. Also, why now? Why sit and take it for 30 years until some frustrated kid sets himself on fire?
I pray that United States foreign policy changes as a result of this uprising. I'm not going to hold my breath, especially with Israeli cheerleader Ros-Lehtinen as Chairwoman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. (Another consequence of American-voter stupidity in the last elections.) And shame on Senator Feinstein and the others who blocked a Senate resolution last fall demanding more democracy in Egypt. Why don't we spend more of our tax money on domestic programs instead of giving it to Egypt and Israel? Why give them anything at all? Seems most of what we gave Egypt went into the pockets of the Pharaoh, and the money we give Israel just makes people hate us more and makes us less safe. (I know the answers to these questions. Still, it feels good to say it aloud. If only more Americans would...)
Anyway, it's an interesting time to be in the Middle East, even if I'm sitting in a country where nothing is really happening except the same old same old Syrian puppets and Hezbollah and blah blah blah. I just played Jesus Jones' "Right Here, Right Now," a song about the fall of the Berlin Wall that feels right at this time, too. Maybe once this is all over and Pharaoh Mubarak is deposed, Arabs and Americans can finally have a real dialogue based on mutual interests in having what Americans have and Arabs want - freedom - and we can put all of this finger pointing behind us.
So, go Egypt! You have the support of the world. And you, too, Yemen. And you, Jordan, and you, Tunisia, and you, Algeria, and you, Morocco, and you, Palestine. At the end of the day, Americans really do believe in the democracy and freedom that we preach, and we are watching you with pride. Your courage is inspiring.
Friday, January 21, 2011
You know what they say about men who drive fancy sports cars
A taxi sat parked on the side of a normally busy street in Beirut, one of the common beaten up old Mercedes that have somehow survived as everything in Lebanon has somehow survived. The driver, whose face was as worn out as his car, slumped behind the wheel as he filled the vehicle with cigarette smoke. In the backseat were two women passengers whose worried expressions told more tales than an entire library could ever teach you. The three of them were listening to the Prime Minister's speech on the radio. Further down in desolation, another driver sat with his car door open on a darkened corner, listening intently with a hard face, a facade, for you could sense the truth of what he felt emanating from deep within him. Shopkeepers had televisions or radios tuned in, and you knew the blue lights glowing from the windows of houses had Hariri's oddly bearded face on TV screens.
The tone of the speech was uncharacteristically defiant as the normally weak leader challenged the militia that now threatens the (relative) stability his country. The pulse of the city itself was uncharacteristically slow. This was not the Beirut that has been featured in the travel sections of Western newspapers so many times over the last two years. No, this was the Beirut of history books.
You really have to be here to understand how it feels - the air, the atmosphere, I don't know how to describe it - but it is like there are supernatural forces at work. The feeling is something deep, like the whole universe, all of existence, all of time and space and history is inside you, and you can look inside the souls of people and see their fear in all its nakedness.
During daylight hours, one doesn't notice there is something dangerously wrong here, for the fruit vendors push their carts and the taxi drivers stand on the corners and the shwarma cooks sell their questionably safe meat. The coffee shops are filled with studying students and elderly elders and housewives both covered and not, and people buy shoes and clothes and belts and other things they don't really need just as they always would. Car horns honk, generators generate, and construction workers shout from great heights to the ground below as usual.
But with dusk come the demons and the ghouls who have haunted this land for many millennia. The streets have been emptier, never more noticeably than last night as Hariri spoke to put Hezbollah in a position where they'd have to take responsibility for any violence that may occur. And they are responsible. No one else is threatening violence. Everyone else is sick of it, sick, sick, sick. Everyone else wants to live normal lives. Everyone else wants a job, electricity, decent internet, and good schools for their kids. It isn't fair. It isn't fair to the innocent Lebanese who have suffered time and time again for the stupidity of a few.
Hezbollah may have been good for Lebanon once (pushing out Israel), but now it's acting like the playground bully. Be a man, Sayyid Nasrallah. Stand up and say no to violence. It's not the size of your gun that matters, but the courage to lay down that gun that truly makes a difference.
The tone of the speech was uncharacteristically defiant as the normally weak leader challenged the militia that now threatens the (relative) stability his country. The pulse of the city itself was uncharacteristically slow. This was not the Beirut that has been featured in the travel sections of Western newspapers so many times over the last two years. No, this was the Beirut of history books.
You really have to be here to understand how it feels - the air, the atmosphere, I don't know how to describe it - but it is like there are supernatural forces at work. The feeling is something deep, like the whole universe, all of existence, all of time and space and history is inside you, and you can look inside the souls of people and see their fear in all its nakedness.
During daylight hours, one doesn't notice there is something dangerously wrong here, for the fruit vendors push their carts and the taxi drivers stand on the corners and the shwarma cooks sell their questionably safe meat. The coffee shops are filled with studying students and elderly elders and housewives both covered and not, and people buy shoes and clothes and belts and other things they don't really need just as they always would. Car horns honk, generators generate, and construction workers shout from great heights to the ground below as usual.
But with dusk come the demons and the ghouls who have haunted this land for many millennia. The streets have been emptier, never more noticeably than last night as Hariri spoke to put Hezbollah in a position where they'd have to take responsibility for any violence that may occur. And they are responsible. No one else is threatening violence. Everyone else is sick of it, sick, sick, sick. Everyone else wants to live normal lives. Everyone else wants a job, electricity, decent internet, and good schools for their kids. It isn't fair. It isn't fair to the innocent Lebanese who have suffered time and time again for the stupidity of a few.
Hezbollah may have been good for Lebanon once (pushing out Israel), but now it's acting like the playground bully. Be a man, Sayyid Nasrallah. Stand up and say no to violence. It's not the size of your gun that matters, but the courage to lay down that gun that truly makes a difference.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Thug Life
I'm watching black smoke pour from the roof of a building. It's nothing more than burnt fuel coming from a generator, but if you were standing on the ground in front of the building, you could be deceived into thinking the building was on fire. Today is the 12-3pm block of power outage, and the streets of Hamra reek of diesel. A strange quietude pervades the neighborhood, and a few shops have even closed, all because of the actions of a few thugs early this morning across Beirut.
The didn't DO anything except stand around in bunches on the streets, but their purpose was clear: intimidation. The Lebanese people were standing directly in front of that building, and thinking it was on fire, rapidly spread rumors which caused parents to pull their children from schools, businesses to close, and various news outlets to erroneously report that myriads of soldiers had been dispatched across the city to quell demonstrations.
I walked into my usual coffee shop around 8am this morning and the employee asked me if I had heard the news about the fighting taking place. He was clearly nervous. A few other employees were huddled in a corner around a laptop. All I had with me was my Blackberry, and since there aren't really any good mobile sites for Lebanon breaking news in English (when I am agitated it becomes difficult for me to read Arabic), I went to Twitter.
After about ten minutes I was convinced tanks were rolling through downtown Beirut. But by the time I had even heard about it, in reality the crowds had already dispersed.
The law-abiding Lebanese people don't deserve to be bullied like this.
The didn't DO anything except stand around in bunches on the streets, but their purpose was clear: intimidation. The Lebanese people were standing directly in front of that building, and thinking it was on fire, rapidly spread rumors which caused parents to pull their children from schools, businesses to close, and various news outlets to erroneously report that myriads of soldiers had been dispatched across the city to quell demonstrations.
I walked into my usual coffee shop around 8am this morning and the employee asked me if I had heard the news about the fighting taking place. He was clearly nervous. A few other employees were huddled in a corner around a laptop. All I had with me was my Blackberry, and since there aren't really any good mobile sites for Lebanon breaking news in English (when I am agitated it becomes difficult for me to read Arabic), I went to Twitter.
After about ten minutes I was convinced tanks were rolling through downtown Beirut. But by the time I had even heard about it, in reality the crowds had already dispersed.
The law-abiding Lebanese people don't deserve to be bullied like this.
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