The myth of Lebanese civil society

You know, reading the posts, the campaigns launched, and the traffic makes me sad.
I often LIKE a post; lots of what is posted seems worth supporting.
Lebanese civil society is dynamic and active, yet rarely witness national campaigns, in addition campaigns and lobbying for causes rarely reach across to the grassroots.

I often wondered why.

I notice that the campaigns are divided along the lines of the political and sectarian polarization.
Civil society activists seem to launch campaigns focused on subjects that are detrimental or criticize the political figures affiliated to the political faction they personally stand against. They never cross the bridge to bring to light wrong doings by their political faction or sect.

For example; those who support Aoun are virulently against renewing for the Parliament while those who support the Future Movement are loudly against the Deputies refusing to make quorum to elect a President. In a perfect world they would meet to launch a campaign of protest against messing with the Constitution being it renewing for the Parliament or keeping the country without a President of the Republic.
The same goes for green campaigns, if they are related to electricity, then we rarely hear the voice of the NGOs who support the 8th of March and if it’s about public spaces we rarely hear the voice of the 14th of March.

It is so sad.

It is also the proof that change cannot happen through civil society.

Again I sing with Ziad Rahbani
This is not a country; it is a bunch of grouped people
Haydeh mush balad!  haydeh urtet nas majmou3een

Blackouts are a Lebanese enigma

Not hearing any mention of electricity on the news I assumed the problem is solved.
A phone call to Beirut informed me that the situation is still the same, in some regions almost 12 hours of total blackout.

I am amazed at the silent acceptance by the Lebanese who register one the highest rates of posts on social media and are taking to the streets and engage in the practice of road blockages for many a cause.
I am more amazed because now that the weather is less hot the power consumption from air conditioners must have dropped dramatically with no change in power supply!
I am extremely amazed to hear the people of Gaza complain even though they had a destructive war just a month ago and the people of Lebanon are shutting up!

The reason it seems is that the ingenuous Lebanese have taken on themselves to step in and find solutions to the problem:

• Many buildings in Beirut have common generators that kick in when the power supply is disturbed. These are the lucky ones, they do not have to climb stairs or sit in darkness for hours.
• Those who are not so lucky but are lucky enough to be able to buy electricity from a nearby privately owned generator can watch TV and power the refrigerator, but they still have to climb stairs, sweat when hot and freeze when it is cold as these "ishtirak" do not usually exceed the 10 ampere which is not enough for a full household normal power supply.
• Then there are the unlucky ones who have to rely on UPS and APS power supply which is the least to say inefficient.
• And the most unlucky are those who cannot afford any of the above because they cannot pay the costs of two electrical bills, so they stay in the darkness of candles and in summer end up with gastroenteritis due to food that went bad as there is no refrigeration.

Fine to be resilient and clutch to a semblance of normalcy.
BUT 

Do those engaged in ecologic campaigning understand the consequences of this aberration? Thousands of generators are churning for at least 9 hours per day their fumes close to the ground, near the windows of each and every woman, man, child, and baby in Beirut.
These fumes contain Carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) and some sulfur hexafluoride (SF6).
We are poisoning our children and hindering their growth.
Don't you notice the increase in pulmonary problems and cancers around the country?
Yet I do not hear any ecological NGO or movement post about the problem and hold vigils or demonstrations. This is an easier problem to solve than many they are campaigning for.
I wish our lovely citizens come to the amazing conclusion that Christians, Sunni, Shiite, Druze, Maronite, Orthodox, Armenian, and all others breath the same air.
Yes believe me they do!

I will not lose time mentioning the extra costs to each and every citizen. They pay the regular electricity bill that seems to stay the same whether the supply is 24 or 12 hours a day??
In addition and depending on your standing in the community you must pay fuel for the building generator or electricity subscription "istirak", or for UPS replacement batteries, or for some miserable candles. And I am not accounting for electrical appliances that seem to get strokes and sudden death syndrome due to the electricity current see sawing.
Accounting is not a popular Lebanese sport.
Men and women alike spend what is in the pocket and what they expect to have in the pocket.

A crazy puzzle that summarizes the state of a country that is as Ziad Rahbani sang

Haydeh mush balad!  haydeh urtet nas majmou3een

This is not a country, it is a bunch of grouped people  

 

Criminal arrogance and double standards!

I have no lost love with the actual Turkish Islamic democrat government, but I have no tolerance to the never ending  

"The US or the U.K. or the Coalition or whoever is not happy with Turkey inaction in the face of the fighting in Kobani".

 So the Obama says "no boots on the ground whatever happens", and the U.K. votes against intervention in Syria in the face of Assad using chemical weapons against his people, YET now taking a fake high moral ground they are asking Turkey to start a ground war according to their rules and according to their priorities!

Sorry but I do not understand.

• Why it is acceptable that the world stands still for three years watching Assad butcher his people and now it is not acceptable that Turkey does not enter a ground war against ISIL?
• Why is permissible for the US or the UK to put Hamas who never took any action outside Palestine on the terrorism list and Turkey does not have the right to put the Kurdish PKK who carried tens of car bombing on the terrorism list?
• Why is ISIL's beheading of an American hostage is a horrible crime while Assad's security forces chopping both legs of a 13 years old from the knee down because he trampled a picture of the President is an event that is barely mentioned.
• Why is it acceptable for Iranian backed militias from Lebanon and Iraq to kill Syrian civilians.
• Why killing a Kurd, Christian, Yzedi, or member of any minority is an unacceptable crime while suffocating hundreds of children who were unlucky to be born to Syrian Arab Sunni parents who are the majority in Syria can be overlooked.

and I can go on forever......

The world has gone berserk!

I understand that religious fascists such as ISIL engage in hate actions but I do not understand the so called civilized world to stand still in the face of the suffering of the Syrian people.

The US, the U.K., the EU, Turkey, are to blame
All Arab countries and Iran are guilty


Each and every one of us is a witness that turned a blind eye in line with the proverb "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil".

Ziad Rahbani, the story of a generation

I heard today that Ziad Rahbani decided to leave the country for Moscow.
It is said that he left after a squabble with Hezbollah.
I do not know if the story is true or not.
Strangely I am not concerned by checking the truth of the story.
It opened a wound I carry since long.

Ziad Rahbani's music and engaged theater represents the dreams and deception of a generation who reached youth before the 1975 Civil War. They were the foot soldiers and officers of this war and most importantly they were its intelligentsia.
The war started as a clash of parties divided along Left and Right parties, Lebanese isolationism versus Arab nationalism, Cold War East West tug of war, with an underlying sectarian conflict and tension. Ziad was as a person in the Leftist camp but his music and plays were heard and played in both camps, he was the comedian and musician of a generation whatever its political ideological inclination.

I will never forget going to see one of his play in dark streets filled with the sounds of Kalashnikov fire and mortar shelling. It was intense, thrilling, airy...

The Civil War opponents changed and shifted as time went by and with the Syrian domination the pillars of the dissent shifted to become blurred for many of the romantic leftists. They remained stuck in the past struggles. Resistance remained their motto not considering the meaning and purpose of this resistance. They replaced the Palestinian revolution with the Islamic Resistance not noticing that Hezbollah is allied to the Persian power and stands in ideology against all they adhere to as principle. The enemy remained the same in name without consideration for evolution or devolution. Most surprising is that Russia melted into the old Soviet Union and they did not notice that Russia is the ultimate capitalist state now. A state with a nationalist religious identity. They look and see the old Marxist state and remember the Soviet stance as to the Palestinian cause.
Ziad Rahbani is the two dimensional model of this generation, the old Lebanese leftists.

As I said, I do not know if the story of Ziad self imposed diaspora is real or not, but I can easily imagine a scenario where Ziad who followed blindly Hezbollah, neglecting to see the religious fascist ideology. I can imagine him saying the Resistance cannot be wrong "They are fighting Israel and American imperialism"
Then came the reality check of not allowing alcohol in their regions, imposing on people their religious ideology, intolerance for any micron of dissent, nepotism and corruption....
Hezbollah became stripped from the sainthood of the Resistance, what remained is a Lebanese political party with foreign allegiance that practice politics as usual and whose aim is power and the promotion of its ideology.

I can imagine the shock of it.
I just hope that the peers of Ziad come to term with their romanticism and come back to earth.

Calling on the National Coalition for Syrian Revolution & Opposition Forces

Some time ago I wrote in disappointment a blog posted Sunday, June 22, 2014 and titled "President Obama, you cannot change history to suit you".

Today and after ISIL burst from the boundaries set by whoever helped its creation I write in pain, saying to the so called Syrian Opposition 

“Wake up; you are about to become the leadership of lost opportunities. Beware to fail the Syrian people once more. It is time to rise to the challenge. Declining the compromise proposed when Manaf Tlass (representing the Syrian Army) and Prime Minister Hijab (representing the political sphere) defected to form a government in exile led to an extension of the conflict. The consequence: hundredth of thousand deaths, destruction, and most importantly the strengthening of ISIL and AnNusrah. Today falling in line with the Arab participation in the alliance against terror while capitalizing on the refusal of Obama to recognize Assad as a partner in addition to his clear declaration that Assad cannot rule Syria after killing his people, is an opportunity that should not be missed. The US and Arab partners of the coalition are taking action to protect their interests. It is time to get the opposition house in order, to realistically assess the situation, negotiate and make alliances. It is time to lead in order to protect the interests of the Syrian people. The price of failure this time might be a return of Assad or the prevalence of an Islamic alliance that accepts the compromise. Years of suffering, millions of displaced persons, hundredths of thousands of death, torture and rape on a wide scale, destruction of Syrian infrastructure ought not to result in the replacement of military sectarian dictatorship by religious fascism rule.”

Assad was a big player in the promotion of ISIL. He nurtured its members to meddle into Iraq; a fact Maliki himself pinpointed. Then when ISIL lost its bargaining value to him, he imprisoned them. The second year of the civil uprising he liberated them and gave them free hand to fight the Free Syrian Army for domination of the then “liberated areas”. The Syrian Opposition was not able to hold on its own, it allied itself with Islamic factions fighting Assad. 

Furthermore The National Coalition for Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces failed in carrying the message of the Syrian people to the world. It failed in exposing the cruelty of the Assad regime. They squabbled over power and did not make enough on generating an effective media strategy. 

Taking a look at the nascent Syrian Free Media (media outlets and citizen journalists) and their reach one wonders why the Syrian Opposition did not engage them and use them to reach the outside world. Assad won the media battle; the image relayed was of an army fighting Islamic fundamentalists. 

The National Coalition for Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces did not capitalize on the “friends of Syria Alliance”. Their only strategy was to beg for foreign intervention. They never proposed a clear strategy that entailed a clear contribution from their part on the ground. At least it was not clear to me and many people around the world.

Today and just a few days after the strikes in Syria all I see and hear is 

“what didn’t they do this before? Syrian civilians are killed by the strikes. The strikes strengthen Assad implying that his main enemy is ISIL! And again and again begging for foreign intervention to take out Assad…..

I cannot hold myself from saying 

“Get real, nobody will help you if you do not get your affairs in order and start to help yourselves. International politics are all about interests, there is nothing altruistic in the game of nations.”

I say it out of pain; I hear and see the suffering of the people of Syria, their steadfastness and dignity, and I see the inadequacy of the leadership. I know that this leadership counts many competent persons, why can’t they work efficiently as a group?

In remembrance of Syrian children that died in the chemical attack

One year ago today, hundreds of children took a deep breath, had a seizure, coughed and died of suffocation. 
They were the victims of a chemical gas attack. 
Their crime was to be the children of Syrians seeking freedom. 
The world looked upon their tender corpses and turned a blind eye. 
They were not Kurd, Christian, Yezidi or member of any minority. 
They were unlucky to be born to Syrian Arab Sunni parents who are the majority in Syria. 
They were unlucky because their death did not threaten the interests of powerful nations. 
They will never get justice and they are seldom mourned or remembered. 
Poor poor little angels, my heart bleeds for you.

Stop squandering the future of Lebanese children!

Lebanese “competent” Parliamentarians met and decided to buy water from Turkey?!

Three years ago they met and approved renting power generating Turkish vessels at a cost that could cover the building of new power plants. The result was no change in power supply, the whole country still suffers from the same never ending power cuts on daily basis, three hours a day in the best scenario!

And all of these lavish spending is financed by borrowing at stiff interest rates.

Excuse me if I say “ :0 oh my God”

Lebanon is one of the few countries in the Middle East that has water resources that exceed its needs; many streams and two major rivers with one of them that springs on its territory and pours into the sea on its own shores; in addition one of its peaks has a glacier of sort.

The reason for the actual water shortage suffered in many cities is supposedly due to the low rain levels this year. But last year rain was abundant so it is not a trend, rather a one year problem. And by the way, Turkey suffered the same low rain levels this year, so why can they sell Lebanon water?

The answer is again, incompetence in managing the resources, planning, and improving the infrastructure. Our public administration is in dire need of strategic planning capacity building rather than wage increase of 120% as is actually lobbied for.

This said, the Lebanese population on individual level are solving their water shortage problem by buying water. Yes, a new industry is born. Water tanks crisscross the roads of the capital and small towns pumping water into the tanks of building and houses. The price for a big tank is $100 translating into an average of $10 per week or two weeks, depending on your consumption.

So the population is solving its problem by buying water from Lebanese businesses, increasing the money supply or circulation and generating informal employment for many.

What the government is now proposing is to take this business to Turkey to boost Turkish economy and place on each citizen and child in this country a debt whose servicing goes way beyond what they are paying for solving the same water shortage problem!

Stop! squandering our resources by borrowing and borrowing without a strategy on how to face this burgeoning debt in the future!

Hillary Rodham Clinton's new book "Hard Choices," depressed me

Hillary Rodham Clinton's new book, "Hard Choices," is many things. At its most basic, it's an autobiography, but it's also, no doubt, some kind of campaign manifesto (Clinton's 2016 run is now looking like more and more inevitable).
I will never be a voter in US election but I did not like what I read.

Clinton calls the Israeli prime minister a "complicated figure," who is "deeply sceptical" of the Oslo Accords and "understandably fixated" on the threat posed to Israel by Iran. She writes that she and Netanyahu "argued frequently," but worked together as "partners and friends."
Then she goes on to say about the person who took the courageous decision to shake hand with Rabin and make the Oslo Accords "I sometimes thought that while Arafat had the circumstances required to make peace but not the will” missing that it was Israeli’s who assassinated Rabin and then undermined the Oslo Peace Accords.

Clinton, distancing herself from some aspects of the Obama administration’s handling of the Arab Spring, says that she pushed for Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak to transition power to his successor but was overruled by President Barack Obama. She says she didn’t want the U.S. to be seen as pushing a long-time partner out without a clear picture of the future for regional allies such as Israel.
On Egypt too Clinton points out that the ousted Egyptian president (Mursi) had a number of bad moments, such as his clashes with the judiciary, poor economic track record, and an apparent refusal to stop religious persecution. However, she adds that some things he did – like keeping the peace deal with Israel and negotiating for a ceasefire in Gaza – were clearly positive.

Shows how Middle East events are viewed from the skewed perspective of Israel's interest with a complete disregard for the will of the Arab people or their right to democratic and fair governments.
But then her opponents for the White House do not differ a lot as to Foreign Policy. Left and Right seem to agree on considering Arab a sort of sub human species whose genes do not correspond to the ideals of democracy.

What I wrote may seem extreme, but after so many years of hope to no avail for democracy to prevail in this part of the world, depression is setting in.

President Obama, you cannot change history to suit you

I am dismayed at  Obama saying that
The American people should understand that we could not have done more for the Syrian opposition. Doctors and engineers even if trained could not have faced the regime forces so arming them would not have made a difference. This is beyond bad faith, it is outright erroneous!
The armed Syrian opposition was formed when tens of thousands of soldiers and officers defected when ordered to shoot unarmed civilians chanting in the streets. They defected with their weapons and this is how the opposition got armed. They formed the Free Syrian Army but never got weapons or support from the West.
Then regional players started arming the religious movements and they started to win the battle over the Free Syrian Army rather than the regime forces who got reinforced by Russian and Iranian technical support and direct fighters influx by the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Iraqi Shia militias.
Sorry Mr. President, you cannot change the truth to fit you.

Are we witnessing the rise of fascism?

Is anybody following up what is happening in Ukraine!
It looks as if the 21st century is the century of the rise of fascism.
Today any citizen that demonstrates or shouts against their government are extremist and terrorists.
These are the two magical words that allows the government to kill and imprison anybody that dares to protest. All collateral damages are acceptable too!
Why not "terrorists" are subhumans with no rights even not the right to live. By the way can anybody tell me who or what is the government? a collusion of lobbyist maybe?
It started with patriot acts and preventive wars and ended with Assad gazing and obliterating his people while the world stands still because some of these people might be terrorists. hooo hooo.
And today I hear journalists asking if there are extremist elements in the demonstrations in Ukraine meaning that if yes then it is OK to shoot people in the street.
Isn't it time to wake up?

True love has no ending

Updated February 17, 2017 
My love, it seems as if the thread that holds us together are breaking. Now I need to be realistic and maybe let go of material things that united us for so many years. I feel as if it will break the connection with finality. But maybe it is not true. The thread cannot be broken, you are in my heart and with me. Material things don't count. Today it is not more the killing pain of missing you. It is the pain of the loss of what could have been. The loss of this carefree happiness despite the horror of what we had to pass through from war and death to struggle and hope, and finally fighting together a deadly disease. We were together hand in hand. Love radiated over horror, and your presence with me touching me was the healing factor that transcended difficulties and heralded happiness and joy. Joy and satisfaction are feelings I lost, and it seems cannot find in my new life as much as I search. But I need to look at this new life and make, alone, the best of it while regretting what could have been. It is so hard to lose your other half.

Published February 17, 2014
The 17th of February comes once every year.
I do not know why I feel compelled to fall into the trap of commemorations.
Deep inside me I wish I could erase this day from the thread of history.
Why do I feel compelled to behave as if I remember my Love on this day when each and every day is a day of yearning and love.
At night I spread my arm searching for your warm body and soft skin to find emptiness, in the morning I wake up and chat with your pictures, in the evening I hear the news and share my thoughts with you, I watch with you a TV series, then I read and comment to you….. you are with me every second of the day.
BUT it is not confirmed in reality, I miss your comments, your feedback, your smile, your laugh and most of all you sense of humor.
I yearn for you shoulder and how you can dry my tears….
I share with you but you are not here to make it lighter to bear.
Most of all I am diminished, I can no more see myself through your eyes.
After four years it hurts less, but the emptiness and yearning are growing.
I love you, I need you.
To many who think that I am crazy or that I am stuck in the past I tell them
True love has no ending.

Pin your ears back to what Egyptian women are saying!

Ninety eight percent of those who voted in the 2014 Egyptian referendum on the Constitution voted YES.
It is high time for Western media and the West in general to start looking objectively at what taking place in Egypt.
Democracy is about people’s choice and not rigid processes. When democratic processes fails, peaceful protests and civil disobedience are a democratic course of action.
Egyptians are not minors. They can decide their own fate.

In 2012 33% of Egypt's 53 million voters took part in the referendum. The draft was approved by 64% of voters.
The 2014 results are 38.6% voter turnout participated with 98.1% voting YES to the Constitution.
Complaints of Women voters filed at the Ombudsman office were 580 in 2012 while only 157 complaints were filed in 2014

I do not approve in principle the new fashion of "blame" the media and am not an adept of conspiracy theories that plague the Middle East.
But lately I have been puzzled at the bad will towards the Egyptian secular movement.
Morsi and the Brotherhood became the darlings of the Western media and the US. We rarely saw reporting on the exclusive politics of Morsi. It was all about his accepting Camp David and the new President’s willingness to cooperate with Israel.
Few looked in depth at the 2012 Constitution. When praising the democratic process of the 2012 referendum main stream Western media did not highlight that Al Azhar, the Christian Coptic Orthodox Church and various secular political parties and figures had pulled out of the constitution drawing process of 2012. Hillary Clinton said a new Egyptian constitution should protect the rights of women and minorities, but did not comment on the proposed constitution that is up for referendum. The media followed suit and did not highlight that the 2012 Egyptian Constitution in the Preamble and in Article 10 reduces women to sisters, daughters, and mothers of men.
In the preamble: Further, there is no dignity for a country in which women are not honoured. Women are the sisters of men and hold the fort of motherhood; they are half of society and partners in all national gains and responsibilities.
Article 10: The state shall ensure maternal and child health services free of charge, and enable a balance between a woman's duties toward her family and her work.
The state shall provide special care and protection to female breadwinners, divorced women and widows.

The coverage of the 2014 referendum on the Constitution was as shallow and opinionated as the previous one. There we no real comparative analysis as to the gains of women and the inclusion of social justice measures.
Quoting an article by Mariz Tadros, a fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex
While western policy analysts and “experts” were lamenting the death of democracy in Egypt, women took to the streets during the two days of referendum over Egypt’s constitution, ululating, clapping and challenging the red lines of female propriety by dancing in broad daylight in public.
Undoubtedly what was happening on the streets of Egypt during the two days of the constitutional referendum was an expression of female agency, uninhibited and unrestrained by patriarchal mores internalized through years of disciplining of what respectable women should and should not do in public.
For the first time ever, the constitution stipulates that the state is committed to women holding public and senior management offices in the state and their appointment in judicial bodies and authorities without discrimination. For the first time too the state commits to protect women from all forms of violence (article 11). Article 180 sets a quarter of seats in the local council for women, again for the first time ever.

The new constitution has many flows and the course to democracy in Egypt is not sure with the military taking more power than it should. But it is not by pushing the people against the wall, restricting their choices to either the control of Islamists or the army that the “friends of Egypt” are assisting in the development of democracy.
Goodwill, cooperation, and assistance are the only way to curb the rising power of the military establishment. The current “smug attitude” is driving the Egyptian people in the arms of the Army.
By ignoring expressions of people power in the Egyptian constitutional referendum, some western political commentators and the media are showing a disconnect with the pulse of the citizenry and engaging in a dangerous politics of omission, argues Mariz Tadros who concludes
There is no predicting whether Egypt will pursue a path of democratization. The favourable endorsement of the constitution is not a signal that things will necessarily get better, they are not a predictor of the mood on the streets in future. However, when coverage of the constitutional referendum becomes almost exclusively focused on one segment of the population- the Muslim Brothers - and the voices of millions is simply obscured from the narrative of what is going on, it can only generate a disconnect from the pulse on the ground. Undoubtedly, there is a need to press against majoritarian rule that negates the agency of a political minority (the Brothers) and the intention here is not to justify human rights abuses. However, the negation of the rest of the population’s agency and people’s will only serve to make things worse: it creates the conditions for the intensification of ultra-nationalist voices that associate the western negation of voice with their non-recognition of the revolution of 30th of June, 2013. It also makes it harder for local human rights advocates and activists to press the government for accountability for its human rights record because they have to contend with a discourse that points to the west’s double standards in whose rights and voices count.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/mariz-tadros/egypts-constitutional-referendum-untold-story