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"A picture is worth a thousand words"
Monday, May 14, 2007

Labels: i love life, lebanon, photos

posted by Angry Anarchist @ 5/14/2007 10:54:00 PM, ,

The Studio
Sunday, May 6, 2007

Labels: music, photos

posted by Angry Anarchist @ 5/06/2007 11:36:00 AM, ,

April 29 ODEO Special
Sunday, April 29, 2007

Labels: anarchism, class struggle, music, photos

posted by Angry Anarchist @ 4/29/2007 11:43:00 AM, ,

Photo Thursday
Thursday, April 26, 2007

Labels: photos, poetry

posted by Angry Anarchist @ 4/26/2007 01:32:00 PM, ,

Photo Thursday
Thursday, April 19, 2007

أنا أعتقد أن قول الحقيقة وتسمية الاشياء بأسمائها، أهم من الإمساك بالعصا من النصف، ولذلك كنت أول من أطلق على اعتصام المعارضة في الساحتين اسم «احتلال» لان الصفة القانونية لاستعمال أملاك الغير هي «احتلال».ا

I think that telling the truth and calling things by their name is more important than holding the stick in the middle, and this is why I was the first to have labeled the opposition sit-in in the two squares as "occupation", because the legal term for using the properties of others is "occupation."

Can you guess who said this? The first to guess correctly will receive a generous reward.

Labels: lebanon, photos

posted by Angry Anarchist @ 4/19/2007 07:22:00 PM, ,

Photo Tuesday
Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Every now and then, in Lebanon, you stumble upon an oddly named place, an oddly named store, an oddly named building (yup, they name 'regular' buildings here... of course, other than the ingenious "Our place is the 3rd building after Hajj Hassan's uncle's house, third floor, 2nd door"). And now, the "tower" thing seems to be in fashion. Every now and then, a new 6-7 (or 8) story building pops up, and is honored by the term "tower". Today, as I walked around in New Jdeideh, I noticed this "tower", and snapped a shot. I kept wondering what the word "developers" was all about. What is the meaning of "Developers Tower"? Is it some sort of gathering place for developers? But then, the apostrophe is missing at the end, so it couldn't be that. I couldn't help but wonder what all those buildings will serve. There is no shortage of buildings, apartments, office space! On the Rabieh road, there are at least 3 new centres; then there are the older ones that are pretty much out of use, since all the stores that opened there closed down due to lack of business. It seems that every person with some money to waste is now buying a plot and erecting a building -- or tower. I am sitting here in my room, surrounded by 3 -- THREE!! -- construction sites. Apartment buildings, 4 stories high (with some "wasta" you can also add a 5th floor in this 4-story zone). They say there's no money to buy anything, no money for cars, no money for new apartments, but then, where is the money for the construction coming from? These are not isolated phenomena, they are widespread (at least where I live) and are not housing projects by companies, they are individual initiatives. And then there is the issue of the treatment (or rather, abuse) of the laborers, who are mostly Syrians. I once woke up to horrible shrieks and yells, it turned out the owner of the construction site and the engineer were yelling at one of the workers and abusing him physically... Those who whine and continue to cry "there's no money", have the best of luxuries, whereas silence rules over the poor, the exploited, and dispossessed.

I keep wondering, if there is no money, how come I saw at least a 100 brand-new Nissan Tiidas parked in only one tiny "suburb" of Beirut, which claims to be "suffering" (it just can't be that all of the Tiidas belong to "visitors")? And what is worse than the whining and the brand new shiny cars (some quite expensive, topping the $50,000 level) is the condescending attitude towards those who do not have any of these luxuries; for example, towards taxi drivers with oldish cars, who struggle to feed their families, a fact which the poor suffering brand new car owners forget (how convenient). The poor, economically depressed cry-babies turn into abusive monsters when they come across real samples of what they claim to be going through (but aren't in reality). What's worse, sectarianism has plagued this country so much that it seems there are now different standards to judge poverty. A Christian with a yearly salary of $20,000 is considered "poor", whereas a Sunni or Shi'ite with 1/4th of that salary would not even be considered to be anywhere close to being poor. And Iraqi and Palestinian refugees are... not considered at all (except when keeping track of their sectarian "belonging", lest it threaten the "delicate sectarian balance"; batrak Sfeir will demand that we bring some more Christian Iraqi refugees to maintain the 6-6 balance).

Welcome to the world of capitalism and sectarianism... and Lebanon! Enjoy your towers, and don't forget, they (we?) love life...
Oh and, Syria is a hundred times better than Lebanon in almost every respect. Now shut the hell up and get over yourselves.

You demand a tribunal to try the (unknown) killers of Hariri?
I demand a tribunal to try the (known, clear as light of day) killers of 1200 people!!

Labels: class struggle, i love life, lebanon, photos

posted by Angry Anarchist @ 4/03/2007 04:22:00 PM, ,

Photo Monday
Monday, March 19, 2007

Labels: lebanon, photos

posted by Angry Anarchist @ 3/19/2007 05:54:00 PM, ,

The Good, the Bad and ... the Saint
Monday, March 5, 2007

Labels: episodes, hariri, lebanon, photos

posted by Angry Anarchist @ 3/05/2007 09:59:00 PM, ,

Photo Saturday
Saturday, March 3, 2007

Labels: lebanon, photos

posted by Angry Anarchist @ 3/03/2007 12:01:00 AM, ,

Photo Saturday
Saturday, February 24, 2007

Labels: lebanon, photos

posted by Angry Anarchist @ 2/24/2007 12:19:00 AM, ,

Recollections
Thursday, February 22, 2007

Probably not many of you will be familiar with the location in the photo! This is (was) Cine Vendôme in Mar Mkhael. The long stairs that take ages to climb will lead you up to Ashrafieh. The street pictured above leads to Electricité du Liban. I still remember the specific odors that used to come out of different parts of that long street. I even used to cross the street in some places to avoid the smells. I went back last September and the smells were not the same anymore.

Stepping on a banana peel and slipping does not happen only in cartoons. One day on my way home from school, passing by a grocery store, I stepped on a banana peel and whooooooooooosh, I slipped. I didn't know what hit me, or how I got up. I remember my face was burning with embarrassment. I looked around to see if anyone had seen me, then ran home. As they say, blame Canada Syria.

I was someone's 'lifesaver'. In grade 1. A boy had forgotten to bring his sports attire for the phys ed period that day and he needed a notice from his parents to be exempt from that day's phys ed class. Having an abusive jerk of a phys ed teacher, he was quite scared for his life. Someone came up with the idea that we should write a letter and pretend it was from his parents. Being famous for my excellent handwriting (yes, even in grade 1), I was chosen without having any say in whether I wanted to do it or not. After yes no yes no yes no, I thought what the hell, I will write it for the poor boy. I wrote the letter and quite happy with our achievement we folded it and gave it to the boy... Phys ed period. The teacher asks the boy, why aren't you dressed? He says, I have a letter from home. He gives the letter. A few seconds. All eyes are fixed on the teacher. He walks to the boy and asks him, did you write this letter? The boy starts crying, no no I did not, it was someone else. Who was it? He didn't say. He orders us to line up side by side. He says, if you don't tell me who it was you will run around this court 100 times. No one opens his/her mouth. Bad threat. He tries a second time, if you don't tell me who it was, I will find out and then I will send you all to the principal and you will be kicked out of school. Silence. He is walking in front of us one by one. In retrospect, I felt like I was in boot camp. What the hell. Then a boy broke down, he was standing next to me, he said, it was her, she wrote it! It was the worst feeling, a feeling of nakedness in front of the whole world. Exposed. Betrayed. He walked up to me, picked me up, carried me to some high platform and sat me on it. You thought you could fool me? I didn't reply. I was too shocked to say anything. I managed to steal a glance at the 'traitor' boy. He shot me a blank glance. The teacher was yelling at me bla bla bla I don't know what, and all of a sudden he slapped me twice. I felt like my jaw was no longer part of my body. My eyes watered, not because I was going to cry, but because of the force of the slap. I couldn't see in front of me. The 'poor boy' was spared any punishment. That was the whole point, wasn't it? All the teachers found out what had happened. One of the teachers who adored me came to me later in the day and wanted to talk but I refused to talk to anyone. I was too angry, embarrassed, and felt really stupid. He slapped me. And goddamnit, I didn't return the slap.
In the first year of kindergarten, I hated everyone and wouldn't talk to them. In the second year, I wouldn't shut up. In the third year, I wouldn't sit down. I would get up and start wandering around in class while the teacher was explaining something. Sit down. No, I want to watch the hamsters and fish. Much more interesting than learning addition and subtraction.

In the third year of kindergarten, at age 5, I learned the true difference between a 'boy' and a 'girl'. No, really. Don't laugh at me. I opened the main door of the restroom to enter the girls' room, and to my luck the door to the boys' room was open. I didn't even need to peek in, I just saw. I went home and told everyone that one of the boys had 'something'. At first I had thought it was just him. Then they told me, all the boys have it. I am surprised I did not say anything foolish in front of anyone before going home. Close call.

When we moved, our new neighbours had two sons our age. In the summers we used to play football (soccer), the three of us. They used to call me to go down and play with them. Then, one day, they were playing downstairs and didn't call me. I waited and waited, and they didn't call me. The next day I went down to play, and called them to come down and play with me, they said they couldn't. Why? Our mom said she doesn't want us to play with girls. FUCK OFF. That was the last time I talked to either of them. I used to go down and play alone, first playing football 'with the wall', then basketball. Whenever I was downstairs they used to secretly watch me from the balcony. If they had played with me they would have 'turned' gay. Their mom is a genius. Somebody hurry up and nominate her for the Nobel Prize.

Labels: lebanon, photos, recollections, war

posted by Angry Anarchist @ 2/22/2007 12:05:00 AM, ,

Downtown Beirut: A Sense of Disney
Thursday, February 15, 2007

She does a brilliant job at discussing the translocation of the war and its memory into downtown Beirut, which has become the center of Hariri's economic terrorism.

She provides a very interesting, innovative (although by no means comprehensive and often innocently (?) ignorant of the real politics and economics of the "reconstruction") analysis and critique of the translocation and transformation of the narrative of the war (or the wish to erase the memory thereof) -- through urban architecture. I will quote some bits and pieces which I have arranged thematically, but I recommend that you read the whole thing to make more sense of what she is trying to convey.

The Narrative

Stories were written to make sense of the chaos, to stand witness and thereby create conditions for the construction of a moral memory. Narrativity, Hayden White writes, is “the impulse to moralize reality, that is, to identify it with the social system that is the source of any morality that we can imagine.” That is why war stories are told and also why their authority has been so policed. Some, like male combatants, will be authorized, others, like female civilians, will not.

"Mobilized Amnesia"

After 1990, the fiction of morality was even harder to sustain. A tension arose between the need to forget this war, this bad patch in Lebanese history, and the need to remember in order not to repeat. Between forgetting and remembering comes a moment of crisis in representation. Such moments, Donna Haraway writes, can be both numbing and empowering because when “historical narratives are in crisis . . . something powerful—and dangerous—is happening. Figuration is about resetting the stage for possible pasts and futures.” The aftermath of the Lebanese war, stretching from 1990 until today, has produced just such a powerful and dangerous discursive moment that will dictate how the stage can be reset for possible pasts and futures.

Political-Economic Power: A Defensive Shield

The survival of this financial artery through the Burj “front,” both in fact and in memory ... complicates the telling of a moral story. It suggests that even in a place that was represented as the epicenter of lethal chaos there was control, and further, that those who made sure their buildings were spared might have other forms of power. These are the details that some want to forget.

Engineering Forgetfulness

First of all the extent of the war must be reduced and contained, even as the official war memorial is placed elsewhere. If the Downtown were to be remembered as the place of the war—its front—it would compel attention to that particular place, and it alone, as the site of immorality. With time and in the absence of a counter-narrative, this translocation of the war may succeed despite the fact that it was generally known that the Downtown was merely a stage on which confessional enmities were spectacularized while the real fighting happened elsewhere.

Silencing Collective Memories

If all the anarchy can be identified with this one location, it can be made to bear all the history.

The key then is to shape that history, transform it so that it will be useful and not continue to harbor unpredictable collective memories.

OGER & Solidere

The first level of destruction after the outbreak of violence was demolition work. Saree Makdisi writes that it is now known that between 1983 and 1992 there were cycles of demolitions in the Downtown, many of them unnecessary. The first demolitions were conducted in 1983 by Rafik Hariri’s engineering company, OGER. The pretext was to clean up the mess to enable reconstruction. The process “involved the destruction of some of the district’s most significant surviving buildings and structures . . . in total disregard for the then-existing (1977) plan for reconstruction, which had specifically called for the rehabilitation of those areas of the city center.” In 1984 fighting flared up again and destruction continued by other means.Two years later, a temporary calm allowed OGER to resume the demolition work they had started in 1983. In 1992, the year Hariri was first elected Prime Minister, the government called for further demolitions.

"A Sense of Disney"

The visitor to the new Downtown is struck first of all by a sense of Disney, or Epcot. SOLIDERE has created generic Arab Mediterranean facades. [The Master Plan] describes the Saifi and Jmaizi districts, the brand new pastel housing blocks, as “restored Levantine vernacular . . . carefully integrated.” [It] calls Saifi an “urban village” and although construction is clearly new, the Plan vaunts the “large number of existing buildings that have been retained.” The buildings in this formerly working class area resemble their antecedents. But not quite. And it is this “not quite” that is so important because it serves to cloud the memory. The slick lines and surfaces of housing blocks targeting the wealthy middle classes cannot harbor the unpredictable collective memories that lurked in the thick green of the weedchoked Downtown ruins.

Profit Without Guilt

SOLIDERE promised a return, a reversion to a pre-war past ... The promised return capitalizes on nostalgia for communal harmony and desire for profit without guilt or memory, in the hope that the repressed will not return.

"A Land Without a People for a People Without a Land"

SOLIDERE, too, is using the instrumentalities of the civil war to displace it from the country and scattered locations of its capital to the site of the Downtown and then elsewhere. It is erasing its traces by drowning them. SOLIDERE has bulldozed the debris into the sea, and is using the ruins to build a new foundation that no one can claim because the sea does not belong to anyone. According to Edward Said, the new colonizer claims, names, and inhabits the land said to be empty. The occupied land can then appear to be productive of culture. The new Downtown has been made to absorb the history of the war and in the process it has emptied it of meaning.

Resisting the Memory of the Forgotten

SOLIDERE’s inflated claims for a glorious history for the Downtown glosses over the war that is finished, and prepares a vision for a brilliant global future that will owe its regeneration to SOLIDERE ... It revives the regional past (Phoenician and Greek) to erase the local past (the war) and to launch this new Beirut into a global future. The war is over. A monument to a conventional (hence, moral) war has been built and installed somewhere in the mountains. The traces will soon be gone. It will no longer matter who was responsible for the war nor why it was fought.

Labels: economics, hariri, lebanon, photos, solidere, war

posted by Angry Anarchist @ 2/15/2007 06:56:00 PM, ,

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