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

TEN YEARS ON….and Yes, it’s been awhile……..

…but for good reason. Moving to Hermel in the North Beqaa valley makes internet as easy as teaching an organ grinders monkey to play Bach on harpsichord. Work reasons have me spending a lot of time in idyllic Baqaa splendour but who in hell would click on Fear and Loathing in Hermel?

Admittedly, there’s a slight buzz teaching English in a building where one of the promo signs for the language and culture institute says : Learning and Culture are equally vital components of the Resistance. It sounds really cool in Arabic. Teaching English for the Resistance probably gets you on a lot of no fly lists as well….

While it’s certainly a side of Lebanon many traveler’s don’t see, Hermel is not really a news and culture hub. Think of one horse, Main Street town. Think of the incredible views while waiting for electricity to return. Don’t think of trying to check email in less than ninety minutes.

Horticulturally speaking, it’s a little more *cough* well known…As Dorothy Parker reportedly said….You can lead a whore to culture but you can’t make her think. A lot of Beqaa agricultural products tend to make linear thought difficult as well. Take that from an middle aged English language whore.

More on Beqaa soon, though its probably more appropriate in the form of a thin volume of Tales from the Beqaa format….but before the year ends, this review has been gathering cyberdust and its really one of those movies you gotta check out. It will also be appearing in Amman’s JO magazine prolly sometime next month for those East of Eden; you might wanna check out their website for Jordan, Mideast related tidbits….and ?

If I had a fast enough internet connection I could post the website address sometime tonight……but alas even weekending in Beirut is not always the fastest gateway to the Matrix (TM). No small thanks to the Swines of Zions little adventurers back in 2006.

Meanwhile? The 1998 Lebanese-homemade classic:

TEN YEARS AFTER: Looking Back at Doiuie’s West Beirut

It seems fitting, for a number of reasons, to look back at Doiuie’s quiet, classic West Beirut, and to wonder why the film hasn’t received more notice. In what may be the Arab world’s greatest film to date, it mixes a coming of age story with 1975 Beirut and the events that sparked the civil war. We watched it, confined to our homes during the fighting in May 2008 and found the film had lost none of its resonance or its relevance. A top ten on any cinemaphile’s list.

Seldom do we see such moving, suspenseful and riveting films, where the story -if one can call it that- is a balance between Chekovian empty pathos and dashed hopes meets Catcher in the Rye. With one major difference. This coming of age story just happens to be set in Beirut as the civil war breaks out. Very little actually happens in this film, yet we wait for the other boot to drop as the protagonist and his friends and family face the early days of what would become one of the most notorious of civil wars. The war is not trivialized though. We see very little of it, and in West Beirut, less is more. Much more.

It is not altogether absent, rather it punctuates the decline of family fortune and individual hopes and serves to illustrate the passage of time.

The closest comparison to films this reviewer has seen is Stolen Children by Italian director Giani Amelio. One would never guess that the director of this classic Lebanese indie film has spent nearly a decade as cameraman for the fetish driven and ultra-stylish Quentin Tarrantino. This movie takes us much closer to Truffaut territory than anything I can imagine Pulp Fiction’s director will manage in his lifetime. Shot on a shoestring budget, the miseries of adolescence play against a backdrop of impending chaos and bloodshed. It is, the director admits, a largely autobiographical film and yet it doesn’t fall into the mistake of making his younger self a perfect teenager, or a long suffering, angst ridden puberty. The lead is as real as it gets. Since it’s the director’s son and his first flirtation with acting, a lot of what we see on film is more genuine than even the most polished thespian practitioners.

Although much has been made of the film’s final moments, they are – in one sense – irrelevant. By the time we reach the final reel, the damage has already been done. Teenagers turned into battle hardened survivor’s while the parent’s dreams of emigrating dwindle down to a mere far-fetched but unattainable fantasy. Even affluent and educated West Beiruti’s (ie, Muslims) are disarmingly and almost shockingly disparaged as refugees and sand niggers. This film haunts one enough to sit in stunned silence while the credits roll.

An exemplary, though untrained cast, a director with pain and the vision to bring that onto a celluloid canvas, and a life goes on attitude imbue what could otherwise be an exercise in pity, a wallowing in why-me’s . Not to mention the blast from the past for those old enough to know who Umm Walid is and why you had to wave women’s underwear over your head to visit her. Can you say khutut at tammas? Sure ya can….

Ignore the films ad poster showing three cocky teenagers with an 8mm camera that screams ‘Beirut Beach Movie.” It stopped me from giving it a chance back in 98 when it came out. Ten years later, with the mother of all civil wars behind us, the ongoing events in the Levant make this film worthy of tenth anniversary accolades.

See it, and find yourself transported to a time and place where even the events of history with a capital H cannot take the protagonists’ basic humanity, humor, nightcries and pathos away. Attitudes which mark survivors in a movie devoted to surviving. With all the pain, fear, and sense of the absurd that comes with such lives like a package deal, this is no feel good movie churned out in sunny California, but instead, a movie lovingly crafted frame by frame in sunny but sometimes embattled Beirut.

10/10 They don’t get much better than this. One only wonders what the creators of this gem have been up to since.

Classic Album: Amused to Death/Hear the Noise, Beirut

AMUSED TO DEATH

Roger Waters 1992

“I looked over Jordan, what did I see?

I saw a US marine, in a pile of debris”

-The Bravery of Being out of Range

When Waters, the brains behind Pink Floyd, split with fellow band members after The Final Cut album, fans were deeply divided. Some felt he was simply one of the group, while others felt the group was simply a backup for Waters’ lyrics and musical concepts.

His 1992 solo release, Amused to Death, should provide an answer to the “which one’s Pink” debate, and if you have never heard it, you need to pull your head up out of the sand, buy it and listen to as often as needed. It is as dark and ambitious as The Wall but showcases an older and wiser Waters; a man now deeply concerned about the state of the world. Those familiar with The Wall can readily acknowledge that traveling further down the road of nihilistic introspection beyond Wall territory is to court complete psychic disintegration. Arguably, the darkest of Floyd albums, it also proves the most uncompromising; there is no way out by the end of its twisted and chilling journey into the heart of twentieth century angst and disillusion. The fact that it is deeply autobiographical, and yet manages to reach as wide an audience as it does, is a testament to Waters’ artistry.

Fortunately for all of us, Amused to Death is Waters looking outward while still retaining the rage and fiery indignation that fueled two decades of Pink Floyd albums to the top of the charts. Inspired, according to Waters, when he heard George Bush Sr. claiming that God was on (the American) side in the first war against Iraq, Waters was -in his own words- “gob smacked” but sufficiently enraged to start writing Amused. Always a literary songwriter, the album depends heavily upon Neil Postman’s book Amusing Ourselves to Death, with abundant references to 2001: A Space Odyssey, George Orwell and a decade of news headlines. Musically and thematically it is his most coherent and satisfying offering since The Wall.

From the opening track and its haunting, autobiographical monologue by a WWI veteran forced to leave his wounded companion in No Man’s Land, the album quickly moves from it’s muted opening into an all out Floydian sonic broadside lashing out at organized religion, particularly the televised variety, and its role in justifying mankind’s worst and most venal excesses. In What God Wants you realize Waters was extremely gob smacked, not by the idea of God, but by the idea of the various hypocritical uses we make of the name. The trademark TV and radio snippets and eavesdropped conversations are all here, conceptually linking the tracks and themes.

Before we know it, Waters is ferociously attacking the repeated “Allied” attempts to control the Middle East and in particular, Iraq. In The Bravery of Being out of Range, Waters leaves no doubt as to what he thinks when the might of the world’s strongest military machine is turned on yet another third world country.

What is arguably missing in most Pink Floyd albums is humor. The omission is rectified with this album which has Waters pairing the grotesque and the outright ludicrous lyrically and sonically. For those who know Postman’s anti-technopoly writings, there is little choice but to be amazed at how deftly and seamlessly Waters incorporates themes like Postman’s alongside themes about pop culture icons and celebrity, world politics, religion and consumerism. This is truly Pink’s coming of age album, where the egomaniacal narrator in the Wall now looks at the world around him and is – predictably – not pleased.

As with any Waters/Floyd album, you can’t fault the production values and pure aural brilliance. A warning issued with the album’s first release informed listeners that – if the dog barking outside on the first track didn’t sound like a real dog barking outside your house – you needed new speakers, and the use of “Q” technology recording ensures that Floyd standards of sonic excellence are still upheld. The real treat is in the play of ideas in Waters lyrics which offer something for nearly everyone and everything for at least some of us. The trademark pessimism and anguish of previous works is finally balanced here with a more mature sense of humor and irony and the realization that comedy is frequently just one step beyond tragedy. Depending on your musical mood at the time, this should be on your top two Waters/Floyd albums list whether you feel comfortably numb or the need to run like hell.

President of Lebanon

Five pm, and the clearest of blue skies hangs over Beirut. Celebratory gunfire and fireworks rattle throughout the city. President Sulayman has been given the task of holding this fragile peace and moving forward. If speech is turned into action?

An inauguration speech addresses all the parties, was reflected in the frenzied, happy public gatherings throughout the city. Flag waving, jubilant crowds, from Hizbullah’a Dahya to East Beirut to Hamra to Maazra.

This is also, as a personal aside? an emotional day….newly immigrated here as some of us are as well as our Lebanese brothers and sistes. For the moment, the political jadedness is on hold. I’m either getting old, or have found a place and reason for patriotism. A place and a reason to care…

Peace,Ya Libnan!

UPDATE: A friend coming up from Dahya, said street thugs from opposing parties were fighting in Mazraa al Corniche and Ras an-Nabi…….hitting and shattering windows on cars coming from the direction of the Dahya…….our friend is fine. The windshield wasn’t so lucky…

“Why does it always taste then, of smoke and fire”

- Fayruz

UPDATE CONTINUED : Clashes still breaking out in the center of Beirut, between pro-government and opposition members, following a speech commemorating the anniversary of Hizbullah’s driving out the Israeli occupation in the South. Tues. 5-27-08

http://www.euronews.net/index.php?page=info&article=489677&lng=1

Never a dull moment…

UPDATED 2:30 AM 5/27/08 : More fighting broke out, this time in Aramoun, outside of Beirut.One soldier, Hussein Mohammad Janadin, was killed during the gunfighting.

The Interior Ministry has issued a ban on motorcycles, car parades, political party flags and provocative slogans. In effect as of 6 PM earlier this evening.

May 31, 2008: One soldier was killed in the north of Lebanon by an explosive device. A second such explosive device, reported the army, has been found and defused. In the Sidon area, near  Ain al Helweh camp, soldiers shot what they presumed to be a suicide bomber  carrying a grenade….when it appeared the man heading for the military checkpoint  was going to reach for the explosive vest, the Army shot and killed the suspected bomber.

More whispers too about neo-Qaida threats, and a growing number of Sunni fundamentalist cells, most newly named and relatively unknown, causing ripples in what has been described as a peaceful and celebratory  week here in Lebanon.

AFTERMATH : Un coup d’etat c’est un fait accompli?

At long last, the waiting has ended…

“The city was roughly divided, and now the sentinels on the trees and the walltops watched each other, were turned inward instead of outward.”

“Briefing for a Descent Into Hell”by Doris Lessing

There’s a lot of talk these days about the Hizbullah ‘coup.’ Few are questioning what that means and whether or not it was actually a coup d’etat in the first place. A coup implies a takeover of power, often swift and sometimes bloodless. If what happened here were actually a coup, then Hizbullah and its March 8^th allies would be sitting in the Parliament and the Lebanese military would be doing their bidding.

The army, at present, remains the sole ‘keeper of the peace” and though it has not defended the Siniora US backed government, neither has it aligned itself with the Iranian/Syrian backed March 8^th opposition. Astonishing when statistics reveal nearly 80% of the military is comprised of Shia Muslims. A coup?

The scene in Lebanon was never a ‘coup d’etat,’ in the traditional sense of the word. But the pent up frustrations and sectarian fears have been jump started as a result of nearly a week of fighting earlier in May.

A friend of a friend stopped by today. I had met him once, previously. Seeing a prayer carpet in the living room, he asked whose it was. When he found out it was mine, he asked “Do you pray like this?” and clasped his hands over his stomach; “or like this” and he moved his hands to his side. It is a clear distinction in the Muslim world. Hands down at ones side implied Shia, while hands clasped in front signified Sunni.

I started to explain that a large number of Sunni’s following the Maliki rite also prayed with their hands at their sides, but he hadn’t apparently heard much of Sunni law, and didn’t seem to care.

By itself, it wasn’t an ominous question. But having spent the previous evening watching what is being called the Future Movement’s Massacre in Halba in the north of the country, it is a question that may be asked more and more often these days. The fear is that the question will be asked with less friendly interest and more divisive and xenophobic motives. Last week’s YouTube video became today’s headline. In a poorly shot video, a gang of Harriri’s Future Movement seemed to be bashing in the skulls, and raining kicks and blows upon their bloodied victims. The victims this time where the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) ; a pan-Arab Syrian/Lebanese party aligned with March 8^th factions. Labeled the Halba massacre, it occurred nearly a week ago but thanks to the magic of the Internet, it has become once again a hot topic on Lebanese boards and blogs.

Over the past couple of days here in Beirut, there appeared a noticeable number of the stenciled spraypaint logos of the SSNP. In the same Hamra district – a bastion of Sunni Muslims- that Hizbullah had taken in the course of an afternoon last Friday.

As far as a coup is concerned? There wasn’t any. To call last weeks events a ‘coup’ one has to meet the look at the actual definition of a coup. A coup does not necessarily require army or mass civilian support, but rather, “ the infiltration of a small but critical segment of the State apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control of the remainder” ( Coup d’Etat: A Practical Handbook, by Edward Luttwak; Penguin Books) Hence we can talk of bloodless coups. Whereas, here in Lebanon, we came much closer to a civil war. There was a government and an opposition made up of anti-government factions. March 8^th supporters, despite being a small and critical sector of the State, had resigned and decided to face off against the government.. The political deadlock lasted over a year and half.

Last week was a show of power, most specifically from Hizbullah. It was a show of power that could have easily led to a civil war. Here’s hoping the toxic emotions in its wake will subside and life can return to normal. .

The good news is that, in its eleventh hour, the Doha Summit struck an agreement amenable to both sides of this endless crisis. There are still questions to be answered but the demands of the Opposition have been met, and a President is expected to be ushered into Ba’abda on Sunday. The closest thing Lebanon has seen in a while of a return to normalcy and political stability, and a win-win situation. The present government may have felt diminished or coerced, but they were at least wise enough to choose peace over bloodshed.

We can only hope that no one in the country at present is so upset with the outcome of Lebanon’s alleged coup that they decide to try it on their own. As of tonight, all the news remains positive as Lebanese from all sides gathered downtown to celebrate, light candles, open shop doors and breathe a collective sigh of relief. The word of the day, on most people’s lips, whether addressing stranger or friend, was Mabruk. Blessings and best wishes, for Beirut, and the future of Lebanon.