Won’t Get Fooled Again?

Dunno about you guys but hearing this within the last few days?  Nothing new is happening. It’s just what you do with the events you are stuck in.     Does any of this sound familiar? It should.  If not prescient……..I’ve never been so disturbed by a song, especially one that is about thirty years old.  Main question? How long will we fall for the bullshit, and how long will we put up with it….and how long till we decide We Won’t Get Fooled Again…?

We’ll be fighting in the streets

With our children at our feet

And the morals that they worship will be gone

And the men who spurred us on

Sit in judgement of all wrong

They decide and the shotgun sings the song

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution

Take a bow for the new revolution

Smile and grin at the change all around

Pick up my guitar and play

Just like yesterday

Then I’ll get on my knees and pray

We don’t get fooled again

The change, it had to come

We knew it all along

We were liberated from the fold, that’s all

And the world looks just the same

And history ain’t changed

‘Cause the banners, they are flown in the next war

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution

Take a bow for the new revolution

Smile and grin at the change all around

Pick up my guitar and play

Just like yesterday

Then I’ll get on my knees and pray

We don’t get fooled again

No, no!

I’ll move myself and my family aside

If we happen to be left half alive

I’ll get all my papers and smile at the sky

Though I know that the hypnotized never lie

Do ya?

There’s nothing in the streets

Looks any different to me

And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye

And the parting on the left

Are now parting on the right

And the beards have all grown longer overnight

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution

Take a bow for the new revolution

Smile and grin at the change all around

Pick up my guitar and play

Just like yesterday

Then I’ll get on my knees and pray

We don’t get fooled again

Don’t get fooled again

No, no!

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Meet the new boss

Same as the old boss

For the best version find the “Kids Are Alright” video version of this classic.  And again?  Why doesn’t this sound dated?

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss?…..and well, hell, all the rest of it.  “The beards have all grown longer overnight’ seems downright precog.

Don’t get fooled again.

Next big question as slaughter goes down in Libya, Bahrain et al  is , uw badeen?  Now what?

Are we gonna be the next version of ‘the hypnotized never lie”?  Do ya?

And no, that’ get on your knees and pray ” s not an Islamist refernce….its a desperate one. The ‘beards have all grown longer overnight”  is, though.

peace all

For God’s Sake, Spare Me the Melodrama

US Embassy 83; Hit in a Sychronized Bombing in Beirut

So, today is an anniversary.  The anniversary of the bombing of the US marine barracks  in Beirut in 83.   News reports like to point out the victims of the bombing by a shadowy , embryonic version of Hizbullah ( in reality, a mix of Islamic Jihad, a barely formed Hizbullah and other Islamic groups) were on a peace keeping mission.

Yet , I’ve heard from one too many marines in Beirut in those times that they were serving….which implies active service in a theatre of war.  As France, the US, the UK and Italy sent on their peacekeeping forces to control a volatile Beirut , the reality from the  Lebanese viewpoint was that peacekeeping missions do not fire Toyota sized shells from the USS New Jersey into the Chouf mountains, killing hundreds, if not more.

The reality from the Lebanese point of view is that there was more occupation at work than peacekeeping. Oddly enough, as Robert Fisk once pointed out, the Italians had no trouble with locals.  They integrated into Lebanese communities, tried to bridge the language gap, and generally respected the ‘hosts’ of their peacekeeping mission.

The other Western players made a Berlin of Beirut and in no way served to keep the peace.  They merely added to a war already fueled far too much by foreign policies and interests.  As Kissinger was supposed to have said “America doesn’t have friends, it merely has interests.”

It’s been going on two decades and the US sees the Beirut adventure on  the same level as Iwo Jima, or the fall of Berlin.    Would someone please do their homework, and while, yes…it is sad when people foolishly sign up to defend their countries – without realizing they are signing up to defend ‘interests’ – die?…..it’s about time the US learned to stop making themselves long suffering victims in an international conspiracy against ‘our freedoms.’

For Crissakes, America……….grow up.  You were purposefully in the wrong place at the wrong time and were unwanted there.  And yes, I am old enough to have seen  the breaking  news that day and the newspaper headlines.  And even then it felt wrong.  I asked myself , prolly in a cracking pre-pubescent voice………but what were they doing there in the first place?

If the US could move passed the preciousness of their suffering, they might be able to reclaim some credibility in the world at large.  As it stands now, most Americans I meet or interact with still think a Vietnamese, or Lebanese, or Muslim is automatically the enemy……….and that is just too black and white and stupid for words.   Next time an American wants to remember some tragic military loss? They should at least google the event first.  They might learn something.

In the meantime? Spare me the fucking melodrama of another tragedy to ‘our troops’ who are sent hither and yon to secure more corporate contracts and oil cartel pipelines.   As countries go, the US is an infant.  But now that it’s reached its terrible twos, its really time it learn the world doesn’t live to serve its interests and doesn’t necessarily mourn the loss of its violent occupiers and arms merchants……

Spare me.

IF YOU STILL GIVE A SHIT…SEE THIS MOVIE

Green Zone

Directed by Paul Greengrass

2010

There was a flurry of Iraq war movies a couple of years ago. It was quite a boom industry for those of us actors living in Jordan at the time...Redacted, Battle for Haditha, and The Hurt Locker all came to Jordan for a set that resembled the landscape of Iraq.

All of them came with a mission to tell some truth about Iraq….DePalma’s Redacted focused on the impact of the war on US soldiers…he was basically refilming Casualties of War. Broomfield came to blow the lid off the Haditha massacre and came away with a movie that showed why human beings and social order break down in wartime and how military higher ups passed sentence on local Iraqis without a clue as to realities on the ground, or the reality burned into the skulls of inner city kids turned GI Joe. The Hurt Locker, so far as I can tell, had to tell us that defusing bombs in wartime Iraq is a deadly but highly adrenalizing experience.

All three movies tried, and none connected with the bigger picture. While they may have been politically correct in real life, as opposed to the bullshit PC that passes in America for truth, they were the tip of an iceberg. Perhaps, one thought, a film cannot capture the malevolent touch the Iraq war leaves on all involved. Perhaps no one can sum up how degrading and utterly unjustified the war was.

Perhaps……….

Most film critics cringe at the twenty four hour deadline after seeing a new film. Having just survived Green Zone, my fingers itch for the keyboard. Greengrass’s Green Zone is the closest thing to date on film that provides PTSD for any of us unfortunate enough to taste the malignancy of US occupied Iraq.

It’s the first time I felt like giving five or even eight stars in a four star rating scale to any movie, much less any movie about Iraq.

Troops are still in Iraq. Iraqis and Americans and Brits and a slew of others are still dying. If you still give a shit, see this movie.

The first question I cannot answer, offline….how did the filmmakers get into Iraq to film this masterpiece? Or did they? If this is CGI, I am now a convert, since I saw neighborhoods I have been in over the past seven years of war. I saw streets, and statues, and public boulevards I frequented. To Iraq hands, one can point out, without fail……….Karada, Adamiya, or Mansour, as the film moves through the days after the invasion and the political circus made about Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).

The fact this movie opens with a jittery, handheld cam view of a WMD Army team searching yet one more site supposed to contain weapons that instigated the war, should tell us something. One naturally expects the movie to veer off topic and try to be objective and show us that war is hell for all involved. You know , hate the war but support the troops bullshit.

Instead? This film follows that logic and shows us what might have been, and shows us that many factions on the US beltway were trying to outdo each other to prove their point, or set up their ideal new Iraqi state, or simply secure oil pipelines. This film – to a US military presence still in Iraq – is a bitch slap in the face which tells us that yes, we were lied to, yes the US government knew it was all lies, and yes, they believed the people of the world were stupid enough to fall for the WMD ploy. Such thinking is usually called megalomaniacal. It’ s called that, because it is. The Neo-Cons really thought they were getting over. Blair thought he was a convincing liar as well.

Fortunately there are movie makers like Greengrass. One hoped his accurate but dependably sellable Flight of United 93 was not a one off, capitalizing on the pain of 911. It wasn’t. His latest effort has to be planted alongside All the Presidents Men and JFK as a brilliant, inspired and necessary part of the whole Iraq war mythos. I admit, it’s the first film in a long time that has shown a CIA operative as one of the good guys, but it works in the telling. In this ‘fictitious’ romp through Iraq, we see a CIA agent pointing out the logical realities of having to recruit the Iraqi military to help restore the nation to peace and some semblance of stability. As the film rolls, we see this as possible, in light of the fact that there had to be people who knew enough in DC to know that the whole Bushie Crusade was a flimsy farce and eventually people would catch on. The villains in this movie are, well, quite close to the real villains. The State Department and Pentagon Bushites that thought no one would notice if the US and her feeble allies simply marched in and took over a country. As the film shows, it seems there are just as many factions on capitol hill as there are in Iraq….that they think a positive bit of press coverage is equal to moral justification, and that these factions do not play well together.

From the journalist used as an invasion, WMD cheerleader, to the Baathist remnants of Saddam’s regime, to the DC weasels and deluded but well meaning Beltway intelligentsia who tried to stop this mess; Green Zone paints a very accurate and very frightening picture of why Iraq today is the way it is, and why so many American kids come home in Uncle Sam’s condoms, also known as body bags.

The film is grainy, fast moving, and full of dark alleys lit only by gunfire and copter beams……it is furiously bilingual and intentionally presented full on without any remedial aids for people who forget the facts and figures of the last seven years. It verges on docudrama, despite the fact that some of the key players in the movie do not actually exist in real life.

Their prototypes do though, and there are too many instances of gooseflesh and sensory overload to make this a comfortable and theoretical piece of cinema. This movie goes for the jugular. And succeeds. From the brilliant casting, to the apparently ‘on location’ shooting, to the politics in the text and subtext, to the overall concept and execution….? I have not seen a film like this in many years.

Unfortunately, it is the middle of the night and things like Imdb and the Net in general are not accessible at the moment, so I will go to press with some things unknown being left unknown. Much like a movie goer. When all is said and done, Green Zone is a masterpiece on all levels and for all I know ? It was filmed in Baghdad. The look is that good. For all I know, some of the characters are real. The movie is based after all upon someones book with the words ‘ Emerald City ‘ in the title. I saw that rolling by in the credits and knew that the book was one that was required reading. So now I have to find that book and read it. The cast……..Matt Daymon as the chief officer in charge and tired of searching WMD sites containing no WMDs, the ‘Wall Street Journal’ journalist who unwittingly helped the Bush War Machine to roll, the CIA agents and the cast of Feds both good and evil are all superb. As are the “Iraqis” who, when required speak in Iraqi Arabic or Classical, as the situation demands……..not the Egyptian Arabic of cheap and sleazy filmmakers assuming audiences don’t know. Perhaps the best acting is seen in the performance of Khalid Abdulla…an Iraqi deputized to translate by a truth driven Daymon to get to the bottom of the mess called Operation Iraqi Freedom. In a couple of moments in the film, it is his caught-between-Iraq-and- a -Hard Place rants that remind us, as the character himself says at a crucial moment in the film:

“You do not control what happens here.”

Would that Mr Abdullas character could go on network television in the US and the UK and remind people of that simple fact. If the Iraq War has touched your life in any real and personal way, Mr Abdulla is the voice of conscience that might just make you tear up as seven years of hindsight kick in.

The Iraqis will determine their so called self-determination at the end of the day. They have to. A supersized thank you to Mr Greengrass for providing a context in which to say just that. And to Mr Abdulla for a gut wrenchingly honest and simple delivery of that same message in his few star turns in the film. In Farid – or “Freddy” as the linguistically bankrupt Americans call him – we see the equivalent of a Greek Chorus…..the periodic insertion of the reality of Iraq, which is and must be, spoken by Iraqis.

Sometimes – and it happens to the best of us – the killing and chaos go on so long that the mind moves to other matters. Perhaps, we think, we should be focusing on helping Afghanistan now that all the news cams are there……perhaps we need to make movies now about Afghanistan, or say……the life of a nuclear physicist in Iran. We live in such a disposable culture. Thankfully not everyone is after the next quick fix. Green Zone may be late on the Iraqi War Top Ten, but it manages to take the title crown in the first round. This is -quite seriously- the most disturbing film I have seen in ages. And only last week I saw Passolini’s SALO for the first time. If you still give a damn about the lies that lead the US to destroy Iraq and the ongoing suffering in that country on all sides, then you owe it to yourself to see this. In spite of some hardcore ‘action’ sequences and big names associated with the project, this movie may just redefine the war movie in general. If Apocalypse Now is the 12 year old scotch of war movies, then Green Zone is Everclear…..pure grain alcohol. To see this movie is to lose your innocence of war movies. Take it from someone who has been to Iraq at war…..cinema doesn’t get any better than this.

I suppose this film might deserve a more weighty title. After all, the Green Zone is the occupied, spy ridden, resort hotel, journalist hideaway that is the most out of touch with the realities of the Baghdad that surrounds it. In a brief but brilliant sequence, we go poolside for a clandestine meeting and the whole farcical notion of running an occupied country from that same green zone is seen for what it is: Imperialist arrogance. The title might just give a wrong impression of what the movie is really about. Unfortunately the only other titles I can think of have been famously taken: Rush to Judgment and How I Came to Stop Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb…..

I guess ‘Green Zone’ works as a title. It’s less ponderous, less wordy and in today’s sound bite culture, its sexier.

Again….if you still give a shit? See this movie.

Just don’t email me for information on dealing with the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in the event that this movies take on Iraq’s tragedy has struck too close to the bone. See this movie as a vote for honesty and integrity because the lack of these things has already leeched us of enough humanity. If you ever gave a a shit? See this movie.

6/4 Stars………it’s that good, and doesn’t waste time talking down to us……Cinematically beautiful, and politically necessary.



This is the Face of Jewish Vengeance?

Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” may be the first ‘pro-Semitic’ film. Which makes it as bad as it’s opposite. His anti-Nazi bloodbath may just be one more justification for the anti-Arab bloodbaths that Israel is so fond of. Once again, the tragedies of the Holocaust might provide just the superhero image the Zionist’s need for their murderous ‘might makes right’ policies……

Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. But that Old Testament saw is conveniently overlooked in the Jewish State. Vengeance is – according to Israel’s behavior – a uniquely Jewish prerogative.

And the latest film by Tarantino is , at day’s end, is little more than Zionist porn; a palate of images for IDF jerkoff sessions.

The film works as a cross between Dr. Strangelove, and a thrash metal version of “Springtime for Hitler” but raises serious questions about hate, murder, revenge and genocide. Part of me doesn’t believe Mr. Tarantino thought all that much about it. The fact that this film garnered Academy Award nominations means, to this reviewer, that much of his shtick in this twisted film is taken at face value.

After all, who doesn’t hate the Nazis? Don’t answer that, or you’ll end up on a list. Only an unconditional agreement here will save your ass. Sometimes kneejerk reactions can save your reputation, if not your life. But I have serious questions after watching this flick.

Yes, Naziism is wrong. And so is Zionism. But to make a movie where nearly anyone wearing a German uniform is shot, stabbed or bludgeoned into worm meat, is as fair or realistic as making a movie where everyone living in Israel is just another fascist Zionist corpse in waiting. The generalization as the open door to genocide.

Don’t get me wrong. The movie has moments of great filmmaking. Then again, so does Triumph of the Will. It scares me when I think this movie probably went over well in the US. Clearly well enough for the Academy to give it a nod. And yet, why does an uber-Jewish filmmaker like Mel Brooks end up bitch-slapping the Nazis far better and with less black-hearted psychopathology in To Be or Not to Be, than this latest Tarantino offering? I get the impression we are expected to be Pavlovian dupes to anything Nazi, which translates as forgoing our humanity when it comes to one of the most inhuman regimes in the history of mankind. The inhuman regime, wherever it is , however , is peopled by human beings and this message is lost in Quentin’s latest. There is precious little humanity in this film. There is, to make up for it, a shitload of hatred and revenge and murderous rage.

I might be missing the point here when I say I don’t blame Tarantino solely for this exercise in hate-porn. I just think that graphic footage of a NY Jew fighting in World War II, with a squadron of specially enlisted Jewish troops, taking a baseball bat to a Nazi platoon leader who refuses to talk is far too loaded with pro-US (a baseball bat?) and pro-Jewish bloodlust to be considered a valid statement worthy of any thought or discussion. If one wished to show the rage, the dark hatred and the need, yes need, for revenge over the genocidal horrors of WWII, one could do it far better and with more humanity.

In a brilliant film moment, and a miserable moment for human values, a ghostly face appears upon a cinema screen starting to go up in flames, intoning “This is the face of Jewish vengeance.” Watching it, I get chills for all the wrong reasons. It could just as easily be an image of Der Fuhrer’s welcome to Auchwitz video, FDR’s YouTube clip to the people of Hiroshima, or Bin Laden’s video feed to passengers onboard planes that would soon melt three thousand people into hydrocarbons…….and maybe that’s just my problem. No matter how much I drink, I can’t drown the part of me that finds humanity in every human being, however crippled or warped or turned in on itself. I can’t find justification for barbaric cruelty and violence. Harsh punishment, even corporal punishment ? Yes. But , a baseball bat ? Scalping the dead? Firing hundreds of rounds into someone long dead? That just stinks of pathetic and sophomoric revenge fantasies that give pathetic, sophomoric barbarians a hard on. Like I said before……….hate porn. The Nazis were connoisseurs of that. Somewhere in the top ten list of hate porn addicts though, we find Zionists. You’ve come a long way baby.

Not.

None of this, mind you, is the reaction of a sensitive and PC driven individual. I just think that such twisted metaphors and fantasies of revenge have been done better and with more creativity than this latest Tarantino outing. This movie could have been a brilliant tour-de-force if it were fortunate enough to have someone like Pynchon or Chayevsky writing the screenplay. Talk about writers who can offend everyone equally? In a plot like this one, simply doing a pedestrian and superficial take on the layers and complexes of anger, grief and horror that mark the Holocaust of World War II is so distant from the issues that should be raised in a film making the claims this one does. The end result is that the film is more anti-American than anti-Nazi. Americans wielding baseball bats are hardly the moral superiors of Nazis dropping cans of Zyclon B down the shower vents in death camps. If that last sentence offends you, I suggest you look at how conditioned you’ve been to regard the Jewish Shoah as the most tragic of tragedies and how you can then define all those other horrors beneath the only holocaust we are supposed to spell with a capital H. Then I suggest you explain your pet Holocaust theories to the Armenians, the Russians under Stalin, the Cambodians, the Chinese, the Chileans, the Rwandans and the Salvadorans. Go on. I’ll wait.

Personally, if I were hiding from machetes in a church in Rwanda, or forced to contribute my skull to a museum exhibit in Cambodia? I wouldn’t give a flying fuck about six million Jews out of the twenty million plus that were killed as the Third Reich engines of death rolled on. But that’s me. Sorry, that I don’t see the second world war as a uniquely Jewish experience, but then, I live in a country that saw one thousand, two hundred or more dead from a month long onslaught from the Israeli military. And that was only a few years ago. And that hate storm only lasted a month.

Bottom line? No one should be marked for death. No one should be marked for life. No one should be marked at all by others who don’t know the value of a single human life and the secrets that a single human heart can contain. And? no one is more precious in death than another simply because one of the dead was part of a campaign against ‘their kind’ because the bottom line? We’re all one kind, mankind ……. while Tom Waits might be right in singing “the one thing you can say about mankind is , there’s nothing kind about man…” he wasn’t advocated taking off anyones head with a baseball bat, or frying a packed movie house audience to death. Or condoning an anachronistic precursor to suicide bombing. If anything, Mr. Tarantino’s latest simply proves Mr. Waits was right, in one respect……

As a race? We’re fucked.

The fact that “This is the face of Jewish Vengeance” is a line from the movie makes me wary of all things Zionist much more than ever. Next time the swines of Zion launch a ‘you’re either with us or against us “ or another ‘never again’ propaganda video to justify their inhuman strikes against another people? I’m far more likely to discount the so-called human elements of Zionism and simply drop its xenophobic and fascist ideology in a trashcan next to Naziism. Way to go, Quentin. I just wonder if you realize whose creature you have become.

MINT Linux 7…..Ubuntu for Grownups

I’ll be fair from the outset. If there’s a brand out there that annoys me as much as Microsoft? It’s Ubuntu Linux. Ubuntu, originally a fork of Debian Linux, makes using a computer as dumbed down and as downright ugly as Windows 98. I didn’t have high hopes when I booted the latest Mint 7 live DVD. It’s based on the latest Ubuntu release, with differences.

Half an hour later, I was installing it on a netbook and a flashdrive to have a complete, fast and portable OS in my pocket as well. Its good, even if it chooses to build off an Ubuntu base.

I know, I know, Ubuntu is the number one Linux distribution in the world but it has always proven to be a frustrating and hornery Operating System to work with. Its popular because it gave new users a happy gui land to play in (gui, meaning the graphic user interface , ie …..all the point and click tools when a real user would resort to a command line which is faster and less buggy.) And yes I know popularizing Linux and free software is a good thing, and they are shamelessly philanthropic……….send your address and Ubuntu sends you ten cds to install for you and friends, and it has one of the largest package repositories in the cyber universe. But they’re trying to stay up to date at the expense of stability or even usability; it quickly becomes a hobbyist’s toy. And their insistence on using a GNOME desktop for most of their development processes? made it a poor trade off for better Linux and Unix systems, especially in the workplace.

Ubuntu tends to remain a populist fad while real companies use Debian, Slackware, Suse or BSD. Best wishes to the Ubuntu / Canonical Ltd. guys…..just don’t make me use Ubuntu GNOME……no matter what the release, been there, done that…in spite of their server editions, they’re stable editions every year and a half……Free choice means you’re free not to like something, and personally I stopped trying Ubuntu a year ago.

So, what could one expect from Mint Linux’s latest release? No matter the expectation. On a default install, this is a clone for Vista visually, despite its GNOME desktop-a desktop that Linux kernel founder Linus Torvalds called just plain ‘stupid’ and? And – they may have possibly ushered in the fabled year of the Linux Desktop by making a fast and beautiful system based on Ubuntu with their own added flair. It’s the first time I have kept a GNOME desktop on my machines for more than twenty minutes. It’s the kind of desktop people actually come over and ask about…………er, is that….Vista, or Mac? And for a default (albeit tweaked and made over) GNOME Desktop? Mint is nothing short of spectacular.

And despite its good looks, it’s Linux. So it’s faster and stabler than Vista. Not many of us have seen yet what Microsoft 7 looks like, but if they saw Mint Linux, they should have soiled themselves and gone back to the drawing board.

One warning. Do not play with the 3D effects too much. Compriz-Fusion visual enhancements have always been unstable and they still are, to the point it may behoove Mint developers to give new users complete freedom with the graphics….there is plenty of eye candy and new user applications to make getting online, downloading packages and running your system a snap on a regular default installation. With Ubuntu/ Debian under the hood, it still allows you to hack and tweak the system to your hearts delight. No need to beef up the wobbly windows and 3 D effects since it generally crashes the video server (X-org) when it gets too overwhelmed with with pointless visuals. When you move a window, is it necessary that it ‘wobbles’ and looks all rubbery?

Plenty of 21st century eye-candy is already there, and during install it checks with your graphics …with enough graphics power you can tweak it for more or less afterwards.

A default install of Mint Linux is not only generous with its 1800 installed applications, its the latest in eye candy and sound and network settings that run straight out of the DVD case. For the first time in ages, I don’t have to add another hundred or two packages to make my workstation, a workstation….in addition, its running on an Asus Eee PC, which means it has eight Gbs to run on after install……and by the time you add some music and extra apps? Well, this little netbook still has a GB free. Imagine this monster on a 160 GB harddrive with all the latest hardware…? Ignore the comments on reviews that say Mint needs ten Gigabytes to install…..it installs in far less. Much closer to five or six Gigabytes.  And till now I haven’t come across the serious bugs on a new Ubuntu install.  Probably because Mint devs don’t release till it’s ready.  While Ubuntu follows a rigid six month release process, bugs and all.

And it’s an office managers dream, the default install comes with NO GAMES. They’re easy to install……….with the right administrative permissions….can’t you just see the administrators glint of the eye at this moment…? Giving out games to your employees could become a modern day paying for indulgences scheme. But I digress.

If you bothered to upgrade your office to Vista? And sort of liked it despite all the things that didn’t work properly? You’ll love Mint. Hell, I hate Vista and GNOME and Ubuntu and I love Mint. Its that polished, its that good.

I hate to admit it. I’m impressed. Linux Mint is truly a mint among Operating Systems.

9/10 The nicest surprise in ages and makes the idea of free, fast and versatile Linux on your office desktop a reality. Come to the dark side Luke, we have penguins!

RUMORS OF WAR

When a Hizbullah member in the Beqaa said the terse phrase as though it were old news, I didn’t dismiss the idea. He seemed quite certain though. “End of Ramadan, War…..Israel and Lebanon…”

It was when the rumors started to crop up in classrooms, coffeeshops, pubs and taxis, seemingly all at once, that you had to pause.

I was hearing it now from people literally on the street and from people who hated to talk politics almost as often as the people who thrived on talking politics. A war was coming against Israel. And soon.

The most optimistic predictions were merely that it wouldn’t be that soon. Of course given the instability politically, it be merely common sense that yes, another war with Israel would happen sometime in the future. But most people I talked to saw it as a near future eventuality rather than a historical inevitability.

And right on cue, the Internet News pages began to fill with leaders on both sides discussing some inevitable war and how dire the consequences would be. Israel threatened to completely devestate Lebanon’s infrastructure, while Hizbullah pointed out that they had the ability to hit Tel Aviv and that they wouldn’t hesitate to do so. Seeing the decayed condition of Lebanon’s infrastructure at present, three years after the 2006 war, I have to wonder what infrastructure is it that they missed the first time?

The roads from north to south are scarred and potholed, the once most advanced local Internet hub in the area has spotty and erratic service now, and no one will drink the tap water. Electricity outages are the norm throughout the city, often being as much as 12 hours a day in poorer neighborhoods, and even the upscale hotel districts get their share of power cuts. You get used to it. Almost forget it. Till you have to take the stairs to the seventh floor when you come home at one of those wrong hours.

True. These issues aren’t merely a result of the 2006 war alone. Lebanon has always been quick to rebuild and carry on. A lot of politics and corruption and infighting can be blamed for a great deal of the country’s failure to provide basic utilities these days. Now that Walid Jumblatt, the political zaim for most Lebanese Druze walked out of the Pro-Western Government lead by Saad Hariri? Another wave of tremors can be expected in internal politics. But as a regular visitor to the country since 1998, I know that nothing has been quite the same since the 2006 war. The damage is still something we face on a daily basis. And now Israel says that THIS time, they will completely destroy the infrastructure. It’s a very calculated rhetoric meant to reach a very divided audience. Not everyone here likes Hizbullah, despite the fact that it managed to end the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon. The 2006 war had a backlash and now people are not so sure the Resistance is a purely positive thing if it can trigger things like the month long assault on the entire nation.

Within Hizbullah opinions are divided. While remaining the only effective military force throughout much of the country, some in the Party say that it’s time to sound the high alert, raise the DefCon factor. Others argue it is merely bluff on Israel’s part. As a recent Ha’aretz article pointed out, Party dialog seems to compare this war , not to 2006, but to the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. A hellish comparison if ever there was one. In addition, and granted that at the end of the day the very liberal Israeli Ha’aretz is closer than most other examples of ‘objective’ Israeli journalism, they mention the general Arab belief that the 1982 assualt was based on the attempted assassination in London of Shlomo Argov was mistaken; that the ’82 invasion was to protect Israel from PLO attacks on the north of Israel. Strange, since most historians and journalists have provided endless argumentation and evidence that the Argov case was indeed the true and final reason that Israel decided to march into Lebanon.

I would agree with statements by Hizbullah that Israel will come into Lebanon for the least and most insignificant of reasons, just as they did in 82. The agenda to remove the so called Iranian/Syrian threat from their border is no doubt a major policy among their masters of war. But what countries often neglect to calculate is that they are as human and fallible as the next country. That even the most detailed conspiracy theory fails to account for this human error factor. The US failed in Vietnam to do anything but slaughter, maim and kill a nation. They are making the same mistakes in Iraq. It is no secret that Israel would not launch an attack into Lebanon without US approval and yet both countries have recent histories of the most disastrous kind. The question at the moment is, will Hizbullah be on guard against moves that might be considered such a ‘threat’? And if so, how far are they willing to go to stand by and do nothing when Shaba’a Farms incursions and the like continue to happen?

Sayyid Hussain Nasrallah has – over the years- proven to be a most fornidable political mind. Muhannik as they say in Arabic. A word meaning ‘fox like intelligence’ for lack of a better definition. But now, with the fate of two nations or more in his hands, how will he formulate the upcoming actions and policies of his Resistance? I commented in 2006 that the Party had certainly stumbled in triggering the month long war. Then afterwards, found documents proving quite sound reasoning behind the border raid and abduction that triggered the August massacre of a nation. This seems an even more urgent time, and one has to wonder whether – given the political state of the world- who will have a choice to fend off the option of another war, and whether they can actually do so and be politicallly sound ? Sad state of affairs to be sure. It may just mean that this inevitable war will have to happen to save dozens of political careers. Mark off the dead and wounded as collateral damage, and move on.

Even with the rhetoric on the back burner for a moment, the news reports are alarming. The Lebanese Army had to move into Shaba’a Farms a week or so ago because the Israeli’s had overstepped their bounds. And the Israeli military withdrew. The whole demented fracas over the ‘explosion’ in the South that the UN and Israel blamed on a Hizbullah weapons cache, had Hizbullah responding that no, those were Israeli weapons…..but the constant bickering between the UN, Lebanon, the Hizbullah Resistance inside Lebanon, Israel and the US? shows that fangs are being bared before a showdown. Who the next ‘showdown’ will benefit is anybody’s guess at the moment. One man I spoke to yesterday, a staunch supporter of Hizbullah, told me : “They think they will make Lebanon suffer, they want to get over the humiliation of losing in 2006. But it’s Israel who will suffer. We will hit their capital, and they don’t have the tolerance to suffering we in Lebanon have.”

Though I saw his point, and on some level could understand he was right? I had to point out the suffering that would afflict Lebanon was no small thing. Accustomed to war or not, there is only so much desperation, fear, loss and tragedy that a people can stand. And if the upcoming war that has been so accepted as fact were to occur? The suffering here would be exponentially increased even if only because of the ongoing bloodshed since 1975. Israelis have always made a calculated effort in the media to equate one Israeli life as being equal to hundreds of other, well, ‘less chosen people.’ But maybe it is time that the Arab world has to stop using the same equation. Knowing an attack on Tel Aviv would be more traumatic to them than another attack on Beirut? Doesn’t make another attack on Beirut a sane option to play with. Tourism here is at an all time high for the first time in decades for starters and the economy – in seeming defiance of global economics- is experiencing an upswing.

Opinions from military officers painted a more ominous picture. It is in someone’s best interests to provoke a Sunni / Shia civil war. Tempers are still high after last years takeover of Hamra by the Opposition. Should the country start its own war, then just like in 82? The Israelis, Syrians, Americans, or Iranians may all find cause to join in the frey…or at the very least sell millions of dollars of weapons. Most liken the upcoming conflict to the civil war and the 82 invasion, not the much smaller and more contained 2006 attack.

Some think the UN finding on the Harriri assassination may be the flashpoint, should the findings point the finger at Hizbullah. The UN findings are due on the 17rh, two day from now.

Meanwhile, in an odd and twisted way, the ongoing Levantine polical circus still tends to be an example of how democracy works. And that democracy is never a simple and bloodless prospect. While the world economy continues to sink, we oddly enough are having the best economic snapshot in years? No doubt subject to rapid change but? Lebanon is the healthiest she has been in quite a while. As we continue scanning the news for wars and rumors of war, it might help to realize that belief that an autunm war is inevitable works against everyone’s self interest. This war, should it arrive, could send Lebanon back to quite literally, the stone age and if someone plays the media wrong? Return Israel to the headlines as the endless and long suffering victim image they try to continuously project. Thinking a war inevitable is a dangerous concept in that it can, quite simply, make the war an inevitability.

(First published in JO magazine, Amman)

Free As in Speech Means Just That….

It came to my attention in a Linux Format magazine that an editorialist on the popular Linux  magazine was, well, miffed, when a major developer of Mint Linux -an immensely popular Ubuntu based distro- came out on a personal blog and said that those supporting Zionist policies should refrain from using that particular distro…..seems the woman was pissed that suddenly Linux had become political.

Ah, and previously? Linux was always a Disney paradise for liked minded folks who ignored the world around them?   Hate to break the news to you Sally (not her real name) but the whole idea of Free and Open Source software has ALWAYS been political.

The entire issue has been encapsulated by the slogan ” Free as in Speech and Free as in Beer”  with the emphasis, surprisingly on the former.  Our little apolitical Sally is under the impression that free speech is only free speech only if it’s nice, if it remains warm and fuzzy and politically correct.

Damn, she sounds like an American.

The rest of us concerned with FOSS, or Software Libre, have known that free means it as a free to the US Military, the neo-Nazis, the Green movements, the pro and anti apartheid folks, the people who are anti MS globalization, the benightedly peacenik that even a nightstick can’t bash sense into and yes, at the end of the day? The Zionists and their belligerent occupation of Palestinian territories and the ongoing seige in Gaza.  Free means free. Deal with it.

He wrote a fairly mild editorial that stated, those who supported the ongoing belligerent military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank should, quite simply, stop using Mint Linux.  There are people in Europe who are following the events and as one of those spectators?  He really didn’t want to be associated with the hardline Zionist agenda.

It was a simple political request ,  and can be ignored since Linux is free software.  But for people thinking that Free is some  Disneyland version of real life?  He had apparently done some great  wrong. He mixed reality with software.   The FOSS movement has been and will remain a volatile environment with an almost anarchist comcept of freedom some might argue.

Dunno  ’bout you but the older I get the more anarchist I become.  All he was doing was using his right of free speech.  Is it an accident that the ‘documents’ one can download as  Linux packages include a book on Anarchism, as well as a Bible Study programs and Islamic prayer time software…..among thousands of other programs…and yet no one has  decided to  make a package of  the  writings of Mao, or “Freedom and Capitalism”…..though nothing but copyright law prevents it.  If you find material offensive?  Don’t download it.  Simple.

Seems too many folks like our happy Sally think that freedoms mean that it only includes the non-controversial, the utopian and cheerful, the non politically charged.   Are they acquainted with the fact that free software allows freedom to the extent that the NSA uses a hardened version of GNU / Debian?  And that is because it IS  free software?  I for one am glad that someone used the Linux platform as part of their right to free  speech, political or otherwise.

If anything, one can hope that those in Israel opposed to the Zionist agenda will respond with either contributions to the Mint project, or create a fork of their own?

You never know.  Reality has a nasty habit of giving us the occasional “Slap me on the ass and call me Sally” treatment.

The Morning After: Politically Hungover in the Dahya

OK, ok……what did we expect? An election won fair and square so far as the vote count goes…..and we won’t mention all those guys on both sides of the divide who bought votes….Harakat Amal shipping expat Lebs from Argentina, Hariri’s planeloads from Toronto……

As we all said during and after the vote: we’ll all abide by the results.Mid afternoon Monday and life is back to normal after a few heady hours of uncertainty.

But what were we expecting when bad waves of paranoia and panic washed over Lebanon from the Beltway…given by those most concerned that there be no foreign ‘interference’ in Lebanese affairs? The US made it damn clear that if Lebanon voted right? They’d get hundreds o’millions in military aid.

And Lebanon voted right, in American eyes. How else could they vote when a win by the opposition was translated as an instant blitzkreig war from Israel, the loss of US support to a nation being led by what America still labels a terrorist organization, and the sinister spectre of a Hamas-like theocratic state arising on the Mediterranean? If you still equate Hizbullah politics with Hamas or the Taliban you haven’t done your homework. At any rate the tipping point of the voting fell on the side of the present March 14th Cabal due to the Christian swing vote. Most reports last night seemed to think Aoun was the most popular Christian leader since Jesus. Erm, since when?

Putting aside the sectarian factionalism for a moment, it’s never been a mystery that Muslim, Christian or Druse electorates don’t fall neatly along purely religious lines. They fall across fiscal demographic lines and March 8th has always been the poor who get poorer while March 14th gets richer…..

It all just feels so much like “Four more years of Nixon.” Forget Bush….the game was long over by the time the Bush Family came to roost. It was Nixon that popped America’s politically naive cherry when we all thought that impeachment meant something bad, and that lying and subterfuge deserved the sack. Now, anyone who’s anyone gets impeached. It’s a badge of honor for Crissakes.

Just imagine how badly things could have turned out yesterday if the US had decided to meddle in Lebanese politics, eh?

Mahalo

Election Day: What Color is Your Revolution?

Right about now, polls should be closing in some of the quiest days in recent memory.  Aside from moped gangs and beeping car caravans here in the Dahya, there’s no clue as to what the polls may show in a few hours.

Worries about problems during elections seem unfounded. If something goes wrong it will be after the results are posted.

One wonders, if March 18th has seen a demographic map like the one above, why they should bother at all.  That’s if the election has been straight up and transparent.  Guess who’s got the guns and who’s got the money is the name of today’s game. 

At least the lead up to the vote has produced some pretty interesting billboard art.  But Lebanon has always been closer to Madison Avenue than the rest of the Arab world……

 

Advertising / Marketing of An Election

On Hamra Street, one watched daily as traffic is slowed down  for one more loud and obnoxious caravan of cars with loudspeakers and partisan flags urging people to vote …… for blue, orange, yellow…..most parties here have their own flags. The billboards of Beirut meanwhile have been taken over to win hearts and minds with campaign slogans from the horrid and ugly headshots of old men, to bad puns changing the word ‘for’ to ‘fourteen,’ to Michel Aoun’s ‘Sois Belle et vote’  (Be beautiful, and vote) ad that is enraging the country’s  feminists by equating voting with fashion model beauty. In a play on the French ‘Sois belle et tais-toi,’ the designer, Sami Saab told AFP that ‘every ad that sparks a debate is a success.’ Naturally, another faction then trounced Aoun’s ad with the French for ‘Be EQUAL and Vote.’

To simplify things, all the candidates generally fall into the pro-government March 14th bloc with Saad Hariri’s Future party in the lead,  or the opposition May 8th bloc spearheaded by Hizbullah. To further simplify the aesthetics,  suffice it to say that March 14th is predominately sky blue, and March 8th tends towards the yellow-orange end of the spectrum. Lebanon is what would happen to the Crips and Bloods  if Madison Avenue got ahold of them.

Even the colors become subjects for commentary and counter sloganeering.  A March 8th ad has the quickly recognizable sky blue of Harriri’s  March 14th Future party ads torn and scattered and looking as though it were blasted to smithereens.  The message? No Future Without Change.

Lebanon has always had a lead on other countries in the region when it comes to advertising know-how and often display a  very twisted sense of humor about what it means to be in Lebanon.  One of my favorite ads of all time was the one in 1998 announcing the opening of the new “Dunes” Holiday Inn.  You may remember the old Holiday Inn as an icon of the street and hotel balcony wars of the 70′s.  Today, the gutted old building in Ein al Mreisse still stands as a morbid memorial of the civil war.

The ad for that  new Holiday Inn?  A simple text on a pastel background:

 The Dunes
 Holiday Inn: The Return

Six words and the idea of a new Holiday Inn was lumped alongside all the action disaster movies with ominous titles like : the final conflict, judgment day, or in this case, the return.  Subtle and macabre. The cerebral hyperlinks take you from the idea of Holiday Inn, to a Schwarzenegger version of a shoot em up action movie sequel ,to the shoot em up reality of the old Holiday Inn, to a befuddled laugh when you realize the loop those few words took your mind through.

                                                   
The elections may usher in chaos, an era of change, or just more of the same old thing, but the way that advertising firms and graphic artists handle it, one might make a study of advertising do’s and dont’s.

Many complain most about all the ugly old men’s photographs.  You may be a nice guy and all,and perhaps a competent politician,  but do you really have to plaster a mug like that thirty to fifty feet tall?  Where’s your sense of aesthetics, man?!  Clearly not everyone has a quality ad firm helping out.  Either that or they refuse to accept the advice that your own picture, fifty feet tall,  generally pleases no one but you.

In what might surprise some, it has been the current March 8th minority bloc that started early in the billboard war and with a far more subtle and comprehensive effect. March 14th is still  playing catch up.
Perhaps the most eloquent and most fraught with memories of endless internecine warfare and multinational armies is the March 8th blocs ad that simply has “Your Lebanon, Our Lebanon, Their Lebanon” crossed out in red.  And the word “Lebanon” in large print on a yellow background, with whatever faction in March 8th has put it up in the lower left hand corner.

Their ads went up earlier, and focused on simplicity.  A useful tool when you have three seconds to glimpse a giant billboard on the top of a building or by the side of a highway.  In comparison, too many of the March 14th ads are still pimping the image of the assassinated Rafiq Harirri, or the current party members in black jackets and ties grinning awkwardly into the camera.

Whatever the result of the elections, the ad campaigns show that the most powerful outdoor or print ads are still simple, powerfully direct  and not afraid of a touch of perversity, offensiveness or gallows humor. Just as PR firms advise, any press, even bad press is good.  In the advertising arena, if it strikes a chord, any chord at all, it will be remembered. Whether we want to remember it or not.

The Fear is Back/ Return to Beirut

Back to the city at last, and no more excuses for not posting regularly. Although even in Beirut the bandwidth speeds leave something to be desired.  To think I used to marvel at the Internet access and smoothly paved roads in Lebanon before 2006.

Now, as the elections near?  There’s a palpable electricity on the street and most people I know harbor mild anxieties at best about what will happen before,  during or after the June 7th elections.

And those damn Israeli spy rings seem to be popping up everywhere.

The political mudslinging and vitriol has significantly increased in the past two weeks or so as well.  Everyone blaming everyone else for what’s wrong in Lebanon.  I guess it was inevitable.

For a moment, the world spotlight was on Obama.  But once people realized he was little more than a front man forthose  very GOP type weasels that we’ve  spent the last few decades with?   Sure, he may be polysyllabic ( unlike his predecessor)  but he still spouts simplistic and jejeune nonsense when it comes to international affairs… It seemed every time he was allowed to speak, he made one more fatal blunder that trashed his dialogue instead of war mantra…

Don’t you feel so much safer now,  knowing what Mr. Obama will or won’t allow in Lebanon, Palestine and the Middle East in general? It’s so much easier getting to sleep at night knowing Barack is looking after us all by keeping those axis of evil stereotypes and diatribes alive.

Political finishing schools could use his first hundred days as an example of foot in mouth disease.

Now that the novelty has worn off, I guess we can turn our eyes closer to home once more.   Politics is politics, so why be surprised as the June election is turning  Lebanon too into a bitch-fest?

It’s good to be back, and whatever happens,  June should prove ….erm, interesting.  Plenty of time to get back to blogging.  Especially with Bas Mat Watan on hiatus till after polls close….

Mahalo