Persiflage & Paroxysm

Lebanon is a land planted with idols, the living, the dead and those made of marble, throughout its length and breadth, from its coast to its highest mountains, we are a country that raises high a person, a human being, and brings low another. We forget or ignore high ideals and values, or working together for a common good, or the value of organization that outlives flesh and blood. We are out for our own personal gain and we admire those who succeed at taking what isn’t technically theirs. We also admire the superman until we discover he is just a man, fragile flesh and blood. Christian and Muslim, secular, agnostic and atheist, each of us have his or her own idol, in this case a word with multiple connotations. What Israel fails to understand is the power and indestructability of an idea and a belief. For one, the audacious idea that an inferior force of guerillas formed into a resistance movement can dare to think it can defeat Israel, a powerful idea. That’s an idea that’s har...

Money, money, money There is an ongoing if slow burning war of words, arguments and counter arguments, between Lebanon’s commercial banks and the State, which includes the State owned Banque du Liban. Run independently by a board and a governor, the extraordinary amount of power and independence allowed BDL’s governor makes him a central figure in the unfolding financial tragedy. This war of words is seeing ever rising levels of acrimony between former “partners”, in both politics and money, over who ultimately is responsible for the huge gaping hole in our financial system which deprived the Lebanese of their hard earned savings and institutions and private businesses of their liquid capital.   Each side has their truth to tell, each side’s tale differs wildly in their conclusions as to who has the legal and moral obligation to provide restitution. A recent ruling by the State Shura Council, while “inapplicable at present” as stated by the Association of...

I wasn't born yet when our side lost Jerusalem to the Zionist state, when the newly minted king of the Hashemites and sovereign over Jerusalem failed to stop the Israelis from taking it. I mention Jerusalem because my mother was born there, so technically, mom and I can be counted among the subjects of his majesty King Abdullah II and his predecessor, under who's suzerainty Jerusalemites lived, loved and prayed a stone's throw away from Israeli forces who had always made it known they would capture the eastern part of the city sooner or later. Crossing the Al Hussein Bridge into Jordan during the Naksa   Today, I hear echoes of the Arab failure of 1967 (Al Naksa) that gave Israel Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. I hear it in the defensiveness and denialism of many of my Lebanese compatriots when faced with a catastrophic failure by Hezbollah in preventing the cascade of misfortunes that befell them and their wider community this past week. Pagers e...

  I've always marveled at the apparent disconnect between literary ideals as expressed and expounded upon by the greats across the centuries, and the real human animal that by instinct pounces on his prey without much through once the opportunity presents itself, for food or fucking, reducing his victim to bare bones to feed either his desire for conquest or his burning furnace of life that requires the calories. One life is taken (metaphorically) to sustain another.    These are the true values of humanity, not "a true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good" as Samuel Johnson is said to have said once, or "a true measure of a man is what he does with power," as they say Plato once said, or J.K. Rowling who said "If you want to see the true measure of a man, watch how he treats his inferiors, not his equals." Everyone of these blow hard philosophizers seem to hold humanity up to a very high standard in...

Forgive me, I’m human too! God bless the balladeers of that Emerald Isle, they sang happy, funny and sad, they wrote down the worst of their 700-years-worth of experiences under the English boot in flowing simple rhyme that appeared to the enemy but mere harmless entertainment for inebriates, but they are so much more. Their truth echoes across the ages. After a week of disappointments from South Lebanon to Gaza and the West Bank and an ever smiling Netanyahu polluting my TV screen, I just switched off. I took my worry beads and my phone as the sun was just setting and sat on the veranda. The cool breeze and the sky’s reddish bluish tint allowed a flood of repressed emotions and deep feelings to emerge and come to the surface. I found my tears just ran free along my cheeks and I let them.   We are damaged goods, the Irish too. The racialist ideas of the 19 th century saw rational English academics subscribe to ideas that today would be shunned as unscientific and perverse,...

It’s hard for anyone to admit that they have wasted their life believing in an idea that was unrealistic and naïve even at its inception. The idea that Palestine could be liberated is one such idea that just won’t die, it keeps recirculating and reinfecting us with hope. Every 20 or 30 years some regional power decides to use this idea of liberation to achieve some kind of political success over the populations of countries in its region that it wishes to dominate.   Palestine is the perfect idea and cause, pure and good and just, just like the tale of the crucified Jesus. A story of gross injustice and cruelty heaped on a man preaching a new age religion. Same with the plight of the Palestinian people, gross injustice and cruelty. Jesus actually preached and healed and drove out demons in the very environs over which fanatical Western Jews are fighting and burning out farmers and villagers of the West Bank who have more Semitic and Canaanite DNA than many European Jews that ru...