It is being called modern-day slavery by human rights groups, and is claiming the lives of hundreds of women each year in the Middle East.

You wouldn’t think it, but domestic labor is a deadly business for migrants here, where up to 30 women have committed suicide, or died trying to escape intolerable working conditions in the last few weeks alone.

Rather than being anomalies, unfortunately, their deaths are the most recent in an alarming trend.

The women, mainly from developing countries Ethiopia, Sri Lanka and the Philippines, come in their millions to the Middle East in search of better pay and opportunities, but soon discover the move comes at a higher price.

Last month, 26-year-old Ethiopian Matente Kebede Zeditu, was found hanged from an olive tree in southern Lebanon. Kassaye Atsegenet, 24, jumped from the seventh floor of a Beirut building days later, having left a suicide note. Another, a Madagascan named only as Mampionona, leapt from the balcony to escape her high-rise virtual prison, tired of the daily grind of cleaning and minding the children.

Without the legislation to protect their basic human rights and with little access to justice in their host countries, sadly it is not uncommon for many women working as maids to experience forced confinement, food deprivation, excessively long hours and even sexual abuse at the hands of their employers.

One of the girls left a simple parting message for her employer, reading “Here are your f***ing bedsheets, Madame. I will not be cleaning them today,” before tying a noose around her neck and jumping from the balcony.

“She is one of the brave ones,” a young woman named Angelique working as a maid for a Lebanese family in Beirut tells me. “I think about killing myself almost every day. When I am hanging clothes out to dry, I watch the tiny people going by from the seventh floor and wonder how long it would take me to hit the ground.”

At 19-years-old, Angelique should not be thinking about ways to end her life, but that is all she has done since leaving her home in rural Ethiopia eight months ago.

“Anything would be better than my life as it is now,” she says, during the first time out of her employer’s house in over two months.

Angelique, who did not wish to give her full name, has had her hair cut short by her female employer, who complained she looked too pretty with it long. She is forced to wear the traditional pink maid’s uniform six days a week, 14 hours a day, and sleeps on the floor of the kitchen.

Like many other women in her situation, she was lured to the Middle East with false promises made by the agency that employed her. These agencies sell women to “sponsors,” or employers, who then pay wages depending on their nationality.

The newest on the market; Nepalese women can earn as little as $150 a month, while the older hands, the Filipinos, known for their good English and affable manner, can make as much as $300.

Angelique gets just $175, which she sends home to support her family each month. “But I don’t get paid if I am ‘bad’,” she says, “or when Madame is not in a good mood. I didn’t get any money for four months when she was arguing with her husband.”

It is not surprising human rights workers in the region are calling it slavery when these women are literally being worked to death, often for nothing in return.

US-based organization Human Rights Watch has found that at least one woman dies a week in parts of the Middle East, while many more are injured trying to escape their abusive employers and harsh working conditions.

Lebanon, Jordan, UAE and Kuwait have seen the highest suicide rates, where it is not uncommon for women to have passports confiscated or to be locked inside the house for years at a time.

In the past year, both Ethiopia and the Philippines took the step of banning all travel to Lebanon and Jordan due to the high number of suspicious deaths among the domestic worker community.

 The ban has only pushed the trade underground, however, and agencies in the two countries now smuggle women through third countries like Yemen. As long as there are women from developing countries desperate enough to be smuggled in, the onus should be on the countries letting it happen to pass the legislation ensuring their basic human rights.

Yet all but three countries in the Middle East have refused to sign the 1990 International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers, as cheap labor makes up an integral part of the region’s economy.

Not even the needless deaths of hundreds of women have given governments the impetus to sign; leaving migrant workers’ rights the gap in the law that seems no one is willing to fill.

Middle Eastern countries should sign the convention, or at least introduce their own labor laws, in order to stop more women returning home to their families in coffins.

“9: Why do you listen to 1?
5: A group must have a leader.
9: But what if he’s wrong!
-5 looks down baffled with no answer-”

I was watching the animated movie “9″, which I quite enjoyed,  and those lines inspired me to write about a topic that has always interested me and at times even disturbed me. “Leadership”.

Let’s not get into the statement “A group must have a leader” because in my opinion that’s debatable, and I’m sure that any one of you out there who has the urge to constantly follow a (/any) leader, must have a million justifying reason but the fact remains that it’s a matter of personal preferences. However, I do agree that in certain situations, one person must lead in order to avoid chaos. My debate is on WHO would make a leader!

I live in the Middle East, occasionally in Lebanon (my home country), where the concept of leadership is often flubbed (☚ word of the day – flubbed: messed up, screwed up, destroyed, ruined, etc.). If you watch regional/international news (which I avoid with great passion), you must have heard of Lebanon and its many political dilemmas due to the many leaders and parties, each trying to take over and prove their alleged rightfulness. Now don’t take that as a statement that “we suck and you rock!”. I know every country has its problems, but I’m in no position to judge something I haven’t experienced firsthand (PREJUDICE IS BAD!).

Now let’s head to the source of the problem as to what makes a leader worthy of being a leader (before you think to yourself “oh this is going to be one of those boring theses”, it’s not! It’s going to be fun and you’ll get a treat at the end.).

According to the very general definitions you would find for “Leader” or “Leadership”, a leader is a person or thing (e.g.: an organization) that rules, guides, and inspires others. Well I don’t know about you, but to me that sounds pretty vague and subjective.

Let’s try to search for “Leadership attributes” for more accurate results:

Google search engine results: about 863,000 for leadership attributes. (0.36 seconds)

Good luck reading them all to know what would make a leader! Or you can just keep on reading and get an idea based on my perspective.

One result that I found a bit reliable is this right here:

The 11 critical attributes of leadership are listed below:

1. Unwavering Courage (in some cases, courage is inapplicable.)
2. Self-Control (you’d have to know the leader personally to be able to judge on this one)
3. A keen sense of justice (based on what law?!)
4. Definiteness of decision (what about the quality or rightness of the decision?!)
5. Definiteness of plans (What about commitment to execution?!)
6. The habit of doing more than paid for (Is there an extent to what he/she is being paid to do?!)
7. A pleasing personality (Even if it’s just an act?!)
8. Sympathy and understanding (Again, a close knowledge is necessary as so not to fall for stories)
9. Mastery of detail (one side-note: in Lebanon, we have ministers heading ministries totally irrelevant to their experience and background. Not much mastery of detail there! Like a car mechanic fixing a spaceship.)   
10. Willingness to assume full responsibility (So he/she is willing, but will he/she commit when $#!+ happens!?)
11. Cooperation (Is it really cooperation or an exclusive club of plotters?!)

Answer this in full honesty: Do you look into all of those attributes before committing yourself to a leader? (Yes? What? I can’t hear you!). It is surely hard to investigate and have certain proof of all those attributes, but don’t just simply follow a leader who looks impressive because he/she has many other followers. Don’t just blindly trust a leader and follow his actions with complete obedience without having an objective sense of reasoning. Leaders are human and thus bound to make mistakes at times even if they were supermen/superwomen (BTW Superman is dead, if you haven’t read so yet.)

Where am I going with this?

Be your own leader first. learn to have the above attributes and be the best you can be as a person. No one is better than you as a human (unless you are an evil villain), but some can outshine you with their actions. Thus, learn from their actions, imitate, modify and originate, but never just follow to be in the herd!

If you find yourself with an urge for a role model, investigate, question, and always reason. Don’t just trust what other followers are saying even if they were your best friends, or wife/husband, which brings me to my next point.

Have some guts and stand up for what is right. Don’t just stand up to what your leader thinks is right and don’t defend him/her when you know he/she is wrong. Just follow the leader’s singular actions, one at a time, rather than the leader himself/herself.

Conveniently and coincidently, I just came across this quote -watching the movie Zeitgeist, that was referred to me by a friend- that directly fits my point:

“They must find it difficult… those who have taken authority as the truth, rather than truth as the authority.

-          G. Massey, Egyptologist”

Now, this isn’t a conclusion, because I still want to hear from you as to who you consider as a leader/row model (in any industry, profession, age, dead or alive, etc.), and why or how he/she inspires you.

And don’t ask me whom I consider as a leader. That position is going to be vacant until I am proven wrong or I have better alternatives, because no matter what the case is, NEVER appoint a leader by default!

P.S.: As for the treat, I consider knowledge to be the biggest treat. If you don’t agree then you shouldn’t have been here on the first place =), but you’re still welcomed.

Republic of LEBANON

stamp: 2,50 piastres

year: 1968

mammal: sheep

Amazon's Global Kindle Reader

I heard that Amazon now has a global version of Kindle. I was disappointed to find this morning that the new version still will not work in my country.

Since I’ve wanted one for some time, but have been waiting until they got a version that would work in my country, I checked out their website this morning, only to be disappointed again. Apparently the new global version will only work in SOME countries.

In case you are thinking of purchasing the new Global Kindle for a Christmas gift this year, since the new version will only work in SOME countries, I thought it would be helpful to most expats to have a complete list of which countries it will, or will not work in.

STARRED (*) countries marked below indicate that Kindle needs to be ordered from a SPECIAL PAGE on the Amazon site.

The Global Kindle version DOES work in (as of Dec. 2009):

Aland Islands, Albania, American Samoa, Andorra, Angola, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Aruba, Australia*, Austria, Bahamas, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bermuda, Bhutan, Bolivia, Boznia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burundi, Cambodia, Canada, Cape Verde, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Colombia, Comoros, Congo, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Falkland Islands, Faroe Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Finland, France, French Guiana, French Polynesia, Gabon, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Gibraltar, Greece, Greenland, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guam, Guatemala, Guernsey, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Holy See, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jersey, Kenya, Kiribati, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Latvia, Liberia, Leichtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macao, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Malta, Marshall Islands, Martinique, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mexico, Moldovia, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Montserrat, Mozembique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands, New Caledonia, Nicaragua, Niue, Norfolk Island, Northern Mariana Islands, Norway, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Puerto Rico, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Réunion, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Serbia, Seychelles, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Viet Nam, Virgin Islands – British, Virgin Islands – U.S., Wallis and Futuna, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

The Global Kindle version does NOT work in (as of Dec. 2009):

Afghanistan, Algeria, Antarctica, Argentina, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bouvet Island, British Indian Ocean Territory, Brunei Darussalam, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chile, Chad, China, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, French Southern Territories, Gambia, Guinea, Heard Island and McDonald Islands, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Isle of Man, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Korea – Democratic People’s Republic of, Korea – Republic of, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco (including the Western Sahara), New Zealand, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Palestinian Territories, Pitcairn, Qatar, Saint Barthelemy, Saint Helena, Saint Martin, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Somalia, South Georgia and the Sandwich Islands, Sudan, Svalbard and Jan Mayan, Syrian Arab Republic, Tajikistan, Thailand, Tokelau, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, United States Minor Outlying Islands, Uzbekistan, Yemen.

Two oil-lamps, leftovers from our wedding, on our terrace in Beirut. In the background: a flat piece of wood that I found on the beach in Batroun. I still have that piece of wood, it’s wrapped up for me to take home next time I come to Lebanon…

See also Qussa.nl: Stories from Afar and Up Close

HAIFA WEHBE

As there isn’t enough turmoil in the land of my ancestors — well, some of them, anyway — a popular Lebanese singer has stirred the stew by including a derogatory reference to Nubian people in the lyric of a children’s song. I won’t go into what the lyric says, but it’s described in a story in the English-language newspaper in Beirut, and that story is right HERE.

Reading that story in the Daily Star sent me on a search for the Nubians, with whom I was not familiar. I found out that the term describes more than two million black people who are concentrated in southern Egypt and northern Sudan. They are one of our links to antiquity, because they have preserved culture and tradition that dates from the beginning of civilization.

Photo of Nubian girl from Billy Gamb'ela's blog on wordpress.com

Stumbling across the reference to these people and the information available about them reminded me of an experience we once had while flying to California. On the plane with us were a group of people in rural dress who had coal-black skin and who spoke to each other in a language we were sure we had never heard. When we surmised that one white man was with that party, we asked him about them, and he told us they were aboriginal artists from Australia who were on a world tour with an exhibition of their work. That encounter made us so conscious of how diverse the world is and how little we know about the many kinds of people who compose what we call humanity.

So, too, now with the Nubians. The Daily Star quoted a fellow named Motez Isaaq, who represents the Committee for Nubian Issues: “We are one of the oldest civilizations on Earth. Instead, our image is constantly perpetuated as the uneducated doorman or waiter.” Isaaq gave Wahbe the benefit of the doubt by saying her lyric was offensive even though she may not have intended it to be. And he added, according to the Star’s paraphrase, “that stereotypes of minorities are so entrenched that referring to them in popular culture media is frequently done unconsciously.” How sad and how discouraging, particularly since Wahbe, whether consciously or not, addressed her bias to children.

A Nubian child from Billy Gamb'ela's blog on wordpress.com

Gaza Marine gasfield. © Copyright Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 2009

For nine years a slow and painful discussion has been going on. The people of Gaza, oppressed and frustrated (over 70% of the population of the Gaza Strip are UN-registered refugees), have an offshore gasfield in their territorial waters estimated to be worth at least $4 billion.

In 1994, the Gaza–Jericho first agreement (withdraw of the Israeli Defence Force from Gaza) allocated the territorial waters of the coast of Gaza to an extent of twenty nautical miles as territory of the Palestinian Authority. However, the other side of the agreement was that Israel retain full security control over the area.

In 2000, British Gas, whose product I burn to keep warm here, discovered the Gaza Marine gasfield. British Gas received its licence to explore the Gazan coast not from its owners in accord with the 1994 agreement, but from the Israeli government. It looks like the Israeli government had timed things so that the gas exploration licence would be granted before formally handing the waters over to the PA, to keep Israel ‘in charge’ of the resources. Since the gas discovery, IDF gunboats (made in Britain) have been active in the waters, destroying Gazan fishing industry by forcing fishing boats to return home (as reported by Amnesty International: 15 fishermen killed, over 200 injured). It is clear that Israel considers that the gas is theirs.

British Gas originally wanted to link Gaza Marine by pipeline to Ashkelon on the Israel coast, already a hub for gas pipelines. The PA would have got some profit from the sale, but this would go to a not-so-accountable bank account in the favour of the Fatah presidency. In 2003, Ariel Sharon, as Prime Minister of Israel, vetoed the deal, fearing that independent income for the PA would fuel terrorism against Israel. In 2005, as Sharon was ‘disengaging’ from Gaza (but still besieging it), British Gas tried a different deal to link Gaza Marine to the Egyptian offshore gasfields. The deal progressed well, being a more ‘neutral’ option without direct Israeli involvement.

In 2006, the people of Gaza, unaware that democracy should be boring, ‘accidentally’ elected the ‘wrong party’, Hamas, to power in the PA. The US and EU condemned the Palestinian electorate for not voting for their preferred party — so much for ‘exporting democracy’! Ehud Olmert, Israeli PM, drew Tony Blair into an ‘attractive’ intervention on the issue. If the deal with Egypt were scuppered and the Ashkelon deal put back on the table, the Fatah presidency (the likely corrupt Palestinian party everyone else wanted to win) would be bound more closely with Israel and have the financial weight from the sale of gas to undermine Hamas. This intervention clearly fits with Blair’s neoliberal foreign policy: forcing the opening up of new economic markets, creating economic relationships as the basis for peace and security. Wider energy security policies were discussed, including using the Gaza pipeline to complete a circuit between Eilat on the Red Sea and the Baku–Tblisi–Ceyhan Trans-Caspian Pipeline (under BP leadership) from Turkey. Blair’s intervention worked, but British Gas pulled out of negotiations with Israel on a deal that would leave the PA being paid ‘in kind’ for its gas.

When in 2007, Tony Blair resigned as British PM and immediately became Middle East envoy for the Quartet with a special remit for the economic development of the Occupied Territories. Although on paper, he is committed to the development of the Wadi Arabah, it is more likely that the development of Fatah–Israeli symbiosis via the sale of Gazan gas was his top priority. British Gas were brought back into negotiations, and Israel began bargaining fast during its six months of preparation for the invasion of Gaza. The war, misunderstood by most global media, was about securing energy supply, just as the 2006 Lebanon war was timed to coincide with the opening of the Baku–Tblisi–Ceyhan Trans-Caspian Pipeline. Perhaps it’s no wonder that Blair was quiet about the invasion of Gaza. It has been almost a year, and British Gas, the Israeli government, Fatah and Tony Blair are ready to sit down and divest Gaza of its oil with minimal benefit to its compressed hordes. Meanwhile, Gazan fishermen are still being fired on by British-made IDF gunboats as they attempt to take the fish from the sea, one of the very few other natural resources of the Strip.

German scientists experimented with frogs centuries ago, proving that if the temperature of water where a frog is submerged is gradually increased, the frog will be virtually cooked, and dies in the water it slowly came to accept despite the alarming increase in stifling heat. If, however, a frog is faced with a sudden volume of hot water, that frog will jump and save its retched life. That story came to my mind as I read the headlines of Lebanese newspapers online today as they covered the independence day celebrations and military parade. I had to smile sadly as I read about our so called independence.

What the country is celebrating, as it did since 1945, is independence from French colonial rule. Since then, the country underwent a Palestinian uprising to take over the state, Israeli invasions, various episodes of civil strife, Israeli occupation, Syrian occupation, and now Iranian occupation by proxy. Still we celebrate, a military parade by an army having less stature and arms than the militia armed by the Persians that operate a resistance on demand that takes orders from Syria and Iran. Decisions of war and peace are taken by the mercenary militia independently of the will of the Lebanese government and its citizens. The hapless citizens’ role in the resistance adventures is to die, be maimed and lose their homes and sources of income, and the government’s role is to negotiate a cease fire by begging the international community to pressure Israel to stop bombing the country, and to later beg for funds from the international community to rebuild, reconstruct, fix the economy, and resettle the displaced (who mostly vote for Hizbollah who started the war in the first place). Then that same government is blamed for not rebuilding quickly enough, while the billions that Nasrallah, the leader of the militia, avowed to possessing as a holy gift from Iran – in front of TV cameras – are spent on getting more arms, enlarging and training the militia to make more wars when it suits Iran and Syria’s agendas and political maneuvering. So, yes, independence.

Frogs will stay in that slowly boiling water, getting used to their environment, accepting the way things are, unless there was a jolt. That jolt for Lebanon came on Valentine’s Day 2005. On that day, a sudden infusion of boiling water was dumped in our Lebanese pot, and my country frog-men and -women jumped. They jumped so high, that one of their problems, their most intractable one for the past thirty years, was suddenly solved. The majority of Lebanese felt, rightly or wrongly, that the Syrians went too far with the killing of the ex-Prime Minister of Lebanon, the ex-minister of economy Basil Fuleihan and the people who died with them as a result of the terrorist attack that day. Two million people took to the streets of Beirut, squarely blaming Syria for the terrorist attack, and pressured the International Community to help them rid their country of an oppressive military presence that they have endured for decades. The one time that they united, with one voice, things seemed to work. They jumped.

Since then, Syria and Iran have gone back to the slow but methodic boiling of the Lebanese frog pot. Things are happening so gradually, as they did during the Syrian occupation, that people are back again to their state of stupor, accepting their impending doom while enjoying the dip. Recently a friend told me that we have to be somewhat optimistic when looking at the Lebanese independence that I was questioning. He said that we needed to look at the positive 10% of what is happening, or else we would be too depressed. It is precisely that sentiment of looking at what is going well that is blinding many Lebanese to the overwhelmingly existential catastrophe that is slowly looming over the country. The temperature is slowly rising. We are accepting more and more outrageous practices with the hope of saving the country and what is left of our economy.

Here is a wake up call: There will be nothing worth saving if the country is lost. Not many people seem to be seeing the writing on the wall. As long as there is “Sky Bar” and the nightspots, going out, good food, and plastic surgery to look good and go out to listen to the hundreds of new singers and performers who dot the night scene with their plastic made up faces, the Lebanese are in a kind of coma. I remember that collective feeling when I lived in Lebanon. It’s okay, as long as we make a living, go to parties, and send our fresh graduates around the world to look for jobs and send back remittances, it’s better than an all out war threatened by the Syrians that keep reminding us that they can break the country on our heads. So we cower in the corner, accept the Syrian and Hizbollah reality, and make do with what we have.

Our own President, not too surprisingly-as he is seen by many as a Syrian invention- announced out of the blue recently that Syria and Iran are not interfering in Lebanon. Hang on a minute, where does our President live? If the daily interference and the existence of, um, Hizbollah was something that he didn’t know, it’s a disaster, and if he knows the obvious and glaring truth and is saying that to win points with the forces interfering in the country, it is a bigger disaster. Whatever the reasoning, I think we have ourselves a frog King.

The Syrians have been slowly increasing our level of tolerance of what interference we would collectively accept as a nation since they orchestrated their military advent into Lebanon in 1976. They never acknowledged our independence and have been working methodically to subjugate our country to annex it, with its wealth, water, shore and its people. We are a prime piece of real estate after all. The Syrians blame Lebanon being severed from Syria (although they fail to note that there was no country called Syria at the time) on Sykes-Picot, an agreement between Colonial France and England that divided the loots of land gained after the fall of the Ottoman Empire and created Lebanon and Syria as separate entities. The Syrian selective memory neglects to note that Lebanon had a separate and quite distinct identity since the time of the first civilizations that settled in the region, it was mentioned in the Bible several times, it had a separate form of government under the rule of the Emirs during the Ottoman Empire’s four-century rule, and under the French mandate, we had our “Greater Lebanon” border declared by General Gouraud in 1920 to give us our borders of today. Since that time Syria has carried a campaign of divide and rule, allegedly assassinating whoever threatened to unite the country, as well as waging a military campaign to occupy our land which it did from 1976 to 2005.

The only setback in this long Syrian campaign came when Rafiq Hariri, the builder of after war Lebanon was assassinated under Syrian occupation. Since that date, a steady war was again waged to marginalize the independence movement, March 14th (the day in 2005 when the great majority of resident Lebanese took to the streets to feel and express the national dignity that evaded them for decades under Syrian hegemony). The leaders of March 14th were targeted with assassinations, one by one they perished either by hits by ghost killers or torn to bit by explosives. Explosions were also planted in different parts of the country, especially in March 14-strong areas, Hizbollah started playing the Shi’a card and pulling ministers from the government to claim that it was no longer legitimate without one sect being represented (replacement Shi’ite ministers not belonging to Hizbollah were threatened physically by fatwas being issued that stopped them short of taking part in the government). Then Syria allegedly orchestrated the Nahr el Bared Palestinian camp battle, resulting in civilian casualties as well as the marked killing a large number of Lebanese army soldiers in the process. Soon after that, other Palestinian camps under Syria’s control started showing signs of unrest.

Syria at various stages closed the border with Lebanon, causing severe disruptions to the economic goods and trade movement and claimed that Al-Qaeda was entrenched in North Lebanon and threatened to invade the country. All this time, the International Tribunal for Lebanon to investigate and try the perpetrators of the terrorist attack of February 14th 2005 was going forward with a snail pace in a tug of war game between the Bush administration and the Syrian regime, a stand off that was eventually won by the Syrians by virtue of the very nature of their regime, a family dictatorship which stays in power unchallenged and waits out adversary Western administrations to change as they tend to do in democracies. That happened in the case of Chirac and Bush. Syria then proceeded to instruct its proxies to close the downtown Beirut area, a primary source of income for thousands and the pride and joy of the Beirutis in particular, who were mostly Sunnis and Christians, and while Hizbollah went on what they claimed was a miscalculated unilateral act of war against Israel at Iran’s behest in 2006, Syria was secretly negotiating peace with Israel at the same time as Lebanese children were torn to bits and Lebanese infrastructure was being vaporized by Israeli plane raids.

Much to Syria’s frustration, the independence movement still showed no signs of abetting, despite veering the mercurial General Aoun into Hizbollah’s lair by promising the weak man the presidency, and despite the failed tent city that brought downtown Beirut to a standstill. The Syrians then instructed their agents in Lebanon to attack the two moslem factions of March 14, the Sunnis and the Druze. The military aggression on the Capital and the Druze mountain served to break the resolve of Jumblatt and painted Saad Hariri in a corner. An armed militia stronger than the army had its hand on their throats and they were not armed to protect themselves, nor could they depend on the army to protect them. Hizbollah had already neutralized the army by shooting down a helicopter flying over hizbollah areas, and demanded that the army officers intervening in an armed altercation in the Shiyah area started by Hizbollah be tried and put in jail. The disastrous Doha accord ensued which gave Hizbollah the obstructing third in the government, setting a dangerous precedent in quasi-democratic Lebanon. The parliamentary elections of last June gave a clear win to the independence movement, again to be reversed by forcing the Prime Minister to form a coalition government with Hizbollah and their allies as a result of their veiled and direct threats of going back to May 2008, the date their militia attacked civilians in Beirut and the mountains.

The pressure and temperature is being steadily and slowly augmented by Syria and Iran, and the Lebanese – divided as ever- are failing to see the bubbles in the boiling water around them. One voice which seems to be aware of what is going on and the gravity of the situation is that of the Maronite Patriarch, who has been the target of a never seen before slander campaign by Hizbollah clerics and Christian allies of Syria, this in a land where the moral standing of religious figures is revered by all as has been the case for centuries of co-existence between muslims and christians in the region.

The recent government was formed with a real veto third for Hizbollah, despite appearances of the contrary.

Syrian officials make daily announcements of what should and shouldn’t happen in Lebanese politics, in a flagrant trend of interference in Lebanese internal affairs.

But my fellow citizens seem content to take the transgressions one by one, and slowly but surely, the Syrians and Iranians are gaining ground, taking the country hostage to suit their regional deals at the expense of the hapless Lebanese. And in the middle of all this alarming situation that is threatening to erase the country from the map, we see it fit to celebrate our independence. If that isn’t a shot of morphine to the population and their leaders, what is?

I do hope that enough people who believe in the country and its future as a sovereign nation stay on course, and those following leaders like Aoun wake up and see where their general’s actions are leading what is left of the country. Accountability doesn’t seem to be a buzz word in Lebanon, but I hope it gains prominence before we are served as a meal with garlic, lemon and coriander on the regional table. Frog’s legs, anyone?

La Alianza del Atlántico Norte, que incluye a los países más ricos y mejor armados del mundo, ha decidido invitar a la marina israelí  a participar en unas maniobras conjuntas, es decir, al igual que Ucrania o Rusia, pasar al estatuto semi-oficial de potencia aliada que aun no es miembro de pleno derecho de la Alianza. Sólo Turquía ha puesto pegas a esta invitación, lo cual puede a la larga acarrear no solamente que se retrase para siempre su entrada en la Unión Europea, sino que en un momento dado también su expulsión de la OTAN. Esta invitación es una declaración no-oficial de guerra a Palestina, al no-Estado de Palestina en el territorio ocupado donde colonizan, explotan y asesinan a la población palestina no reconocida y desprotegida legalmente ante los ataques cotidianos de soldados y colonos israelíes.

La OTAN está por lo tanto en guerra simultáneamente contra Afganistán y Palestina, mientras mantiene contingentes de ocupación en numerosos países africanos y en Irak. Desde este punto de vista, es decir, desde el punto de vista de los agredidos por la OTAN, parece evidente que la OTAN ataca a los países más débiles de manera sistemática. Ahora bien, como la explicación oficial de las maniobras conjuntas con Israel es que forman parte de una estrategia global contra el terror, cabe hacer una síntesis y deducir de ambas perspectivas que la OTAN es una organización terrorista de una enorme magnitud que condena a los pobres a la miseria y a la violencia sin límite que merecen los terroristas. Es evidentemente una antisituación sádica en la que los ricos machacan a los pobres y los llaman, entre otras cosas, terroristas. El sadismo del capitalismo se encauza por lo tanto en la OTAN a la que pertenecemos. Nuestro Estado es por lo tanto cómplice de una agresión sádica y colectiva cuya ideología no asume en absoluto su sadismo. Si no lo asume es porque no puede hacerlo, por lo tanto hay una mala conciencia. Es la razón por la cual debemos seguir aireándola, porque así el Estado llegará a un punto crítico: cambiar o aplastar la libertad de expresión.

Republic of LEBANON

stamp: 5 piasters

year: 1968

mammal: camel

Football matches can be a tribal affair and in several parts of the world the ‘beautiful game’ can turn into a battlefield. In Lebanon, so I am told, many games are played without crowds of supporters in case they break out into sectarian fighting and restart the civil war. In case you think that sounds far-fetched, remember that the Central American states of Honduras and El Salvador did indeed go to war in 1969 in a conflict triggered by their qualifying match for the 1970 FIFA World Cup (though of course there were political issues at stake as well). In an alarming development over the past few days a similar stand-off has been brewing between Algeria and Egypt following their recent 2010 World Cup qualifier replay in Khartoum, Sudan. The Algerians say some Egyptians threw stones at them, while the Egyptians claim Algerian fans set on them. Whatever the truth of the matter, there have been angry demonstrations in both Cairo and Algiers and many injuries. Ambassadors from the two countries have been called in by their respective host governments for a dressing down and the Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, has waded into the affair, basically saying that it is normal for people to hit someone who insults their country. All this is a useful distraction for him, of course, to turn people’s minds away from Egypt’s own internal problems and the big question about what will happen when he dies or retires. Meanwhile, the new ’football war is a depressing reminder not only of how tribal soccer can become, but more seriously of how disunited the Arab world is, even within North Africa.

Sallam Alleikom

This is a Short post To Congratulate all the lebanese and all those who are struggling for freedom, and say Happy Independence day to All the lebanese people

Even today the Lebanese are struggling, those are still mourning over the loss of their relatives, loved ones and friends from the zionist attack in 06, and those who are rebuiding their homes, and those are injured from the attacks of the zionists fighting on to get their lifes back on track for the sake of Allah swt .. and be thakful of living on

no doubt Lebaon is a beautiful country as it stands by nature, and their people have to be one of the nicest people in the Arab ummah.

furthermore, i hope you understand arabic or read it, because i have made a short poem for one of the greatest men Currently if not throughout history.. a man who is not afraid of telling the truth.. a man who keeps with his promises, fighting for the people, and fighting for Allah swt.. Sayed Hassan Nasrallah.

سنين و نبحث عن العدل و الحرية

لنجد ذلك النجم الساطع في سماء امتنا

ذلك السيد الذي حمانا و له رب يحميه

سيد قلوبنا تاج على رؤوسنا

وليه الله و نبيه و اهل بيته محارب للحرية

عهد لله اننا متحررون من قبظة العدو تحت رايتك يا سيدي

ينصرنا الله تحت امرتك يا ابا عدي

و تموز شاهد لعظمتك و حبك لله

تحت امرتك انا حزب الله و بأمرك نحن نصر الله

لبيك يا سيدي حسن نصر الله

Happy Independence Day ya sh3ib Lubnan .. wo inshallah Failstein Mota7rira 8areban b2ism Allah!

Today is my country’s Independence Day. I wish Lebanon and my people many years of endless peace to come and to unite as one. We have suffered a lot from the past wars and we must build a promising future for our coming generations.

Long Live Liban

Three quick things:

First, the reader response to the first post in our “Lebanese National Agenda” initiative — which deals with #9 on the Top 10 List of priorities — has been quite inspiring. As of this writing, the number of comments is up to 120 already. If you haven’t read it yet, do so now and chime in with your thoughts about how to approach the issue of the legal disenfranchisement of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.

Second, for those of you in Boston for the Middle East Studies Association conference, here are a couple relevant panels that you may want to hit.

• “Alternative Media as Sites of Resistance” — Sunday 11:00 AM
• “Lebanon and the Lebanese” — Sunday 2:00 PM
• “Crossing Over: Negotiating Levantine Borders During the Mandate and After” — Sunday 4:30 PM
• “A Material Nahda?” — Monday 8:30 PM
• “Thinking Outside the State?” (with Marc Lynch & Greg Gause) — Monday 11:00 AM
• “External Intervention, Civil Peace, and Post-Syria Lebanon” (with Rex Brynen & Bassel Salloukh) — Monday 11:00 AM
• “Patronage & Clientelism in the Contemporary Middle East” — Monday 2:30 PM
• “The Secrets of Eloquence: Linguistic Expression in Medieval Arabic Thought and Practice” — Tuesday 10:30 AM

That last one is my own panel, which is relevant only to people who have an inexplicable craving for discussions about medieval Arabic literary theory and encyclopedic literature.

Finally, for those of you who haven’t yet joined the Qifa Nabki Facebook page, here’s one more reason to do so: “QN Sings the National Unity Blues…”

Have a good weekend!

Undisclosed Desires

– Muse

Follow up list:

Dance Little Liar

– Arctic Monkeys

Cedars of Lebanon

– U2

Run This Town

– Jay-Z/ Rihanna/ Kanye West

Dirt Room

– Blue October

View my top 20 Fav list here:  Fav Songs of 2009

Danish DJs teach Palestinian youth to work the decks

By Jackson Allers, November 8, 2009 for NOW LEBANON

Palestinian youth on the decks (© Andreas Johnsen)

“Turntables are in fact musical instruments,” Danish turntablist Martin Jakobsen explains at his Gemmayze flat the night before the start of a series of DJ workshops for Palestinian youth called: “Turntables in the Camps.”

“This is our first time in Lebanon, and Den Sorte Skole – the three-man DJ crew that I’m repping – we want to introduce the idea that there is this global DJ culture that Palestinian youth can take part in; a culture that doesn’t exclude them in the ways that they are excluded from Lebanese society, and that through turntablism, we can teach them to use sounds from their own lives to create music.”

Jakobsen told NOW Lebanon he was not sure what to expect out of the process, but he said, “I am realistic – I know that it’s not going to save anyone – but these workshops are a way of saying to them – ‘Hey, everyone can be a DJ – and, ‘You don’t need all this fancy shit’ – especially if we’re investing the equipment for them to come and experiment on from time to time.”

Jakobsen’s compatriot, Simon Dokkedal, the crew’s scratch specialist, waxes a little more street on the matter. “We training the next generation of sound pirates!” adding, “Hopefully we’ll plant the seeds here, and from this we can create a new generation of hip-hop DJ’s here in the camps.”

Den Sorte Skole, aka The Black School, or L’Ecole Noir, are not quite a household name in Denmark, but telling by the number of Danes, Swedes and Norwegians present at their showcase club gig on Thursday night in Beirut, their cult following is legion.

The DJ trio – who work their magic on six turntables – were named Denmark’s best hip-hop DJs in 2006 and best overall DJs in 2009. Jakobsen says this has given the group the ability to cherry pick the festivals and concerts they’ve played at in the last 3 years, including playing for fifty-plus thousand people at the prestigious Roskilde fest in Denmark in 2009.

This success also gave Jakobsen enough clout to approach the Danish Centre for Cultural Development in Beirut for the “Turntables in Camps” seed money.

The project itself was the brainchild of Jakobsen, who has lived the past year in Lebanon with his wife. While traveling to meet his two cohorts at DJ gigs throughout Europe and finishing a master’s degree in political science, he figured that he had to start bringing this DJ experiment into marginalized communities in Lebanon.

In this case, he wanted to venture into perhaps the most neglected youth sectors in Lebanon – ultimately making contact with five Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon: Bourj al Barajneh, Mar Elias, and Sabra & Chatilla in Beirut, and Nahr al Bared near Tripoli, the Palestinian refugee camp leveled by the Lebanese army in the summer of 2007.

Simon teaches Palestinian youth wassup with scratching. (© Andreas Johnsen)

As Jakobsen explained, the objectives of the “Turntables in Camps” project were pretty straightforward: breakdown barriers wherever they exist by providing “a space for creativity and musical dialog”.

Certainly, Den Sorte Skole are building on the traditions of the hip-hop DJs that spawned the term “turntablist” before them. DJs like Cut Chemist, D-Styles, Z-Trip, Madlib, and Beat Junkies members like DJ Babu and J-Rocc, to name a core list who have literally become the modern vinyl archivists of the black soul music traditions from the Americas to Africa. And it is this musical tradition that contributed to the group’s namesake.

During the first day of a two-day workshop held at the Sunflower theatre in southeast Beirut on Thursday, about 30 Palestinian youth from Sabra and Chatilla, Mar Elias and Bourj al Barajneh soaked up the sounds of the breakbeat drumming coming from Den Sorte Skole’s stacks of records.

“We want you to look and listen to what we do. It’s hard, what we’re doing, but you have to understand that anybody can be a DJ,” Jakobsen told the rapt audience before separating the youth into boys and girls groups – a move that was not a cultural issue according to Jakobsen. Nonetheless, the female DJ duo, Ladybox, an increasingly popular club DJ crew also from Denmark, was tasked with teaching DJ skills to the girls. “The boys just dominate in such situations,” Jakobsen said.

Ironically, it was the girls who dominated the first stage of the workshops this week – clamoring for the DJ equipment, bobbing their heads in unison and dancing to the sounds of hip-hop classics like Tribe Called Quest’s “Bonita Applebum,” Kurtis Blow’s “These are the Breaks” and House of Pain’s “Jump Around” – songs they had never heard before.

Rita Biza, aka DJ Rita Blue, said she was surprised by the girls’ openness. “They seemed quite shy at first, but we introduced them to the equipment and showed them what was possible, they were fighting to get on the decks and having such a good time. That’s exactly what we wanted. So they’re really hungry to learn.”

According to Rita’s partner Lei Miriam Foo, aka Sista Lei, “If I didn’t know where these kids were coming from, then I would never have known how hard their lives were. With this DJ equipment in their hands, it was like the world opened up to them and they were laughing and having a great time.”

Aya, 14, and Mina, 20, two workshop participants from Mar Elias told NOW Lebanon that the workshops were “cool”, but they definitely weren’t expecting a new army of female DJ’s to emerge.

“If you tell your father you want to be a DJ. What’s he going to say? What is that – a DJ?” Aya said.

The two seemed to agree that being a DJ was somewhat more acceptable because DJ’s “are behind” the decks, as opposed to scantily clad Arab pop singers out in front of the stage. They even questioned Lebanon’s only seasoned female MC, Malikah – seen regularly on Rotana Musika TV’s underground music show, “Shababiyat.”

Mina explained, “A lot of Arab culture is resistant to the idea of a girl or a boy being a DJ simply because they don’t see it as a ‘normal’ job. But if a girl started to earn good money as a DJ, they might reconsider. They certainly might just be silent on the issue if someone were making a living at it.”

Indeed, a law passed in 1995 prevents Palestinians from working in over 70 jobs in Lebanon. Palestinians cannot be doctors, lawyers or public-sector workers, but there are no Lebanese laws barring Palestinians from working as DJs.

Den Sorte Skole’s third crew-member, Martin Hojland, said that while he didn’t expect miracles from the workshops, he did hope that the participants would see turntablism as bigger than a musical genre. “There is definitely an art to deejaying and using turntables as instruments. In this way, we hope they take their own sounds as the foundations for some homegrown interpretations of turntablism.”

Adds Jakobsoen, “Hopefully, as we bring in a DJ instructor to continue the project (in the months to come), these kids will do the turntablism thing in a Bourj al Barajneh kind of way or a Chatilla kind of way. I don’t give a damn what they call it, as long as they make it their own. That’s what turntablism is all about anyway.”

Quoting from the underground hip-hop crew Dead Prez out of New York, Jakobsen extols – this project, “It’s bigger than hip-hop”.

This article first appeared in NOW Lebanon

Khalifeh business hit hard as new highway curbs traffic along old costal road
By Dalila Mahdawi
Daily Star staff
Saturday, November 21, 2009

Glass at the Khalifeh shop in Sarafand

The potters and glass blowers have long gone, with mechanics and kebab vendors taking their place. Lebanon’s once thriving glass trade hasn’t completely died out, however. One family is determinedly keeping the ancient tradition alive, albeit with considerable difficulty.

The Khalifeh family has been blowing glass for about 40 years, selling their goods in a local shop or to wholesalers. In happier times, says shop manager Nisrine Khalifeh, her grandfather taught apprentices the painstaking trade and employed several dozen locals.

The family had a thriving business, helped along by exposure at international craft fairs and friendly tour guides who would bring generous-spending Beirutis to the shop.

Today, Nisrine’s father Hussein runs the business but the locals aren’t interested in working with glass. “No one likes to do it because it’s so hard,” Nisrine says with a sigh. “Many people have asked to learn but then they can’t handle the heat.” She points to her father, who at 55 years old looks more like 85.

His face has been leathered and shoulders hunched by years sweating it out in front of the oven, designing and shaping glass in 140 degree heat. The future of Lebanon’s glass-blowing heritage now rests in the hands of Hussein, Nisrine and seven other family members.

The dearth of trained glass blowers has been accompanied by decreasing sales at the Khalifeh’s shop in Sarafand. Despite the undeniable appeal of the shop’s colorful interior, with its rainbow of ornate standing candle holders, hanging decorations, water jugs and vases, hardly anyone ever visits.

When the southern coastal highway opened a few years ago, business at the Khalifeh shop, which is situated on the old coastal road, was hard hit.

Now, says Nisrine, the only people that come to the shop are foreign clients who might not have visited in a few years or soldiers from UN peacekeeping force UNIFIL looking for presents to take home. “When the autostrade was closed a few months ago and people had to travel on the coastal road, a lot of people came in and bought things,” she says. With only the most motivated clients bothering to make the journey, the Khalifeh family’s glass products are one of Lebanon’s best-kept secrets.

Ever-rising fuel costs are also taking a toll. Because of the exorbitant prices, the Khalifehs only turn on the ovens for big orders to highbrow boutiques in Beirut who then sell the glass products for double or triple the original price.

The oven costs $500 each day to run and takes 24 hours to reach 1,500 degrees, the temperature where glass finally turns to liquid. “Sometimes we stop for two or three months because there’s no work,” Nisrine says. When The Daily Star visited, the ovens had been off for some time.

The ovens themselves are also expensive to keep, as they can only be used twice before the intense heat turns the bricks to sand.

Apart from the high fuel consumption, the Khalifeh’s glass production is environmentally sound, using only recycled glass. Behind the shop, rusty bath tubs and old oil vats groan under the weight of shattered beer and wine bottles, mirrors and windows.

The road ahead looks discouraging for Lebanon’s last remaining glass blowers. Assistance from the government has not been forthcoming, though the Khalifeh’s say they don’t expect help. If mounting costs and falling demand finally force the family to close shop for good, Nisrine doesn’t know what her brothers will do: they left school when they were 12 to learn the trade. “My brothers only know glass-blowing. There’s no work for them except this.”

By Dalila Mahdawi
Daily Star staff
Saturday, November 21, 2009

BEIRUT: The head of a leading Lebanese social justice organization on Friday lamented the absence from the Ministerial Statement any efforts toward reforming the country’s sexist nationality law. Lina Abou-Habib, executive director of the Collective for Research, Training and Development-Action, said Interior Minister Ziyad Baroud relayed to the organization his disappointment that out of 30 ministers, which includes two female ministers, only he and Information Minister Tareq Mitri had urged the Ministerial Statement include a clause acknowledging the need to reform the country’s 1925 nationality law.

The law allows Lebanese men to pass on their nationality to their non-Lebanese wives and children, but forbids Lebanese women from doing the same.

Abou-Habib said the decision was a “serious setback” for gender equality activists.

“It is extremely disappointing. We were expecting something better from this government given all the work that had been done and all the promises made” on allowing Lebanese women to pass on their nationality, Abou-Habib said.

“It shows consistency with the previous government in terms of the total disregard for women rights and citizenship rights,” she added, noting the Justice Ministry’s recent decision to appeal the granting of citizenship to four children born to a Lebanese mother and an Egyptian father. No ministers were immediately available for comment.

CRTD.A has called for a meeting Wednesday Midday at the Engineers Syndicate in Mosaitbeh to step up action.

Drew Brees is one of my favorite quarterbacks in the National Football League, and has been ever since he came to the San Diego Chargers, and led our team to prominence while he was there.

Unfortunetly for the fans in San Diego, he was traded to the New Orleans Saints after he had what they thought was a career ending shoulder injury.

Brees is having the last laugh, as he has led his Saints football team to as 9-0 perfect record of wins this season.

I hope he takes the Saints all the way, and I am still a Chargers fan, but I must show loyalty to Drew Brees because he is an entertaining and tough football player to watch. When he and Doug Flutie were quarterbacking in San Diego, they were a lesson in scrappy efficient and forceful quarterbacking.

Tragedy had struck the Brees family this past August, as his mother, attorney Mina Brees 59, died while visiting family in Colorado.

Her death today was conclusively ruled as a suicide.

It is reported that she died from a lethal overdose of prescription drugs. Mina has been reported to be under investigation by the Attorney General of Texas for business improprieties. She committed suicide only a few days after she was subpoenaed by the DA for her business records.

Drew Brees and his mom had been strained for years, and he has stated that his relationship with his mother was ”nonexistent,” saying it crumbled six years earlier when he refused to hire her as his agent.

Reports of the quarterback and Mina Brees being estranged surfaced when she was running for office and using her son’s image which he did not approve of.

Mina Brees was a well-known attorney in the Austin, Texas area.

Austin attorney Marty Akins, the brother of Mina Brees, declined comment late Friday.

Follow this link to the full AP story on the suicide of Mina Brees, mother of Drew Brees….

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gl1dWEoQU9v0SNteYnmqpBxjoxSQD9C3M6CG7