---------------------------------------------- Serious satire "Humor is a funny way of being serious" -Thomas Edison -------------------- To have your emails deleted please write to me at renatoobeid@hotmail.com -------------------- Copyright© 2001-2010, Renato Obeid


























 
Archives April 2001 May 2001 June 2001 July 2001 August 2001 September 2001 January 2002 February 2002 March 2002 June 2002 July 2002 August 2002 October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 December 2003 January 2004 February 2004 March 2004 April 2004 May 2004 June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 January 2009 April 2009 October 2012
<< current
  • prequel













  •  
    "Top blog/Renato Obeid's World/Today's pick: This rambling weblog is worth reading not so much for its satirical posts but more for its insight into the minutiae of life in Lebanon, including the etiquette of road accidents and how to hire a taxi.” -Jane Perrone, The Guardian

    renatoobeidsworld
     
    Sunday, March 30, 2003  
    Day eleven of the attack on Iraq, aka "the Olympics" to news junkies like me.
    Within days of the commencement of the war it transpired that things weren’t going as well as projected and expected for the Allies as they met stiffer than expected resistance and as the Iraqis played what is the Arab national sport – inviting and welcoming in foreign armies then turning on them, ambushing them, trapping them and massacring them.
    The Arabs don’t drink so they’ve got to do something to amuse themselves and this game has a centuries old tradition with scores of examples.
    For example, southern Lebanon in 1982 when Israeli troops were greeted as liberators and showered with rose petals and rice by the Shiites and then, off course, eventually those selfsame Shiites turned on them and the rest is history.
    But what we're seeing in Iraq now seems to be a speeded-up fast version of that game – to continue the sporting theme, like one day cricket as opposed to the five day test game – with a lot of those said reversals and volte-faces happening within the same day.
    And they're all doing it – all the groups that had previously pushed for and favored such an intervention (the Shiites, the Kurds, whatnot) are either doing it, threatening to do it, preparing to do it or will do it in the future.
    In one of the plethora of books by foreign journalists on the Lebanese uncivil war (it may have been Thomas Freidman's "From Beirut to Jerusalem" - written in the days when he still pretended to be objective) this is perfectly highlighted and exemplified.
    I'm describing and paraphrasing from memory here but the gist is correct and accurate.
    Friedman describes how he and his fellow foreign correspondents witnessed this phenomenon with disbelief, confusion and amazement as successive foreign armies were feted, greeted with flowers and rice and then eventually, invariably and inevitably routed – from the Palestinians to the Israelis to the Americans etc, etc , etc!
    Eventually the journalists came up with the sarcastically brilliant observation that this was a "traditional Arab greeting".


    SMOKE ON THE WATER, FIRE IN THE SKY
    The Baghdad phase of the War on Tourism reminds me a bit of Melbourne's Stereo Sky Show - an annual event held on a summer night on the banks of the Yarra River of basically fireworks accompanied by music and military displays (helicopters and planes doing improbable things).
    In that one of the camera angles of the nighttime attacks on Baghdad is of the Tigris River with the city in the background and the attendant bombing, fires, flashes, anti-aircraft rounds, tracer fire and noises etc looks reminiscent (albeit tragically) of Melbourne and the Yarra en fete.


    Although Lebanese cable television leaves a lot to be desired, one thing I am grateful for is that we don’t get Fox News here – who’s motto is "we report you decide", although I think it's more like "we distort you deride".
    Speaking of right-wing fascists and derision, I'm reminded of John Howard's Hitler-like Nazi-esque rantings at some rally before the November 2001 Federal election which were subsequently made into a television advertisement.
    Apropos of "illegal immigrants", Mr. Howard ranted "we decide who comes into this country and the conditions under which they come".
    All you have to do to that quote is change one single letter to make it more accurately and correctly reflect the truth regarding the whole fascist frenzy that occurred over "illegal immigrants" and the Howard governments handling of it.
    And that letter is the C in decide, change that to R and there you have the truth – "we deride who comes to this country and the conditions under which they come".


    After the pub quiz on Wednesday somebody was commenting in bewilderment at the several friendly fire deaths that had occurred amongst British ranks after being accidentally hit by their "allies" (the Americans) and was saying to Chris something to the extent of "they're really massacring you".
    I elaborated on that, asking him "when are you going to surrender?"
    Like the old cliché "with friends like that who needs enemies".
    The BBC's John Simpson, reporting from Northern Iraq, said "we're more afraid of the Americans than we are of the Iraqis".


    Regarding this war, the Arabs have been manifesting and expressing their usual schizophrenia as they do about everything.
    I'm not even going to acknowledge or justify it with much comment but the usual riots, protests, minor bombings and whatnot have occurred in various Arab and Muslim countries including Lebanon – which is not an Arab nor Muslim country, so lets just say in Arab and Muslim parts of Lebanon.
    To wit, a tragicomic incident (amongst many) occurred yesterday when, from what I gather from the press (interviews with bank staff as the actual reporting seemed to characterize it as political), a man went to rob the HSBC Bank branch in Beirut.
    The robbery didn’t go as planned so he transforms it into a political protest – saying that he's got explosives attached to his body and that he'll blow himself up in protest against the Allied war on Iraq (particularly British involvement, HSBC being a British bank but, off course, like all the places targeted, they're staffed by Lebanese).
    Chaos ensues with the police and army surrounding the bank and apparently the robber/protestor insisting that the Interior Minister come and talk to him.
    The Interior Minister appeared at the bank with lots of fuss and accompaniment, went in alone and came out some fifteen minutes later with the erstwhile bank robber now political revolutionary.
    Apparently one of his conditions for surrender that he'd agreed upon with the minister was that he be allowed to make a statement to the waiting press.
    Which he did – some raucous rant of an illiterate peasant about the war etc.
    He was then taken away to jail presumably.
    Not the kind of way you want to deal with terrorism – let them commit their acts of terrorism and then let them address the media about it, like after a sports game or something.
    Police sources quoted in the Daily Star back up the robber-cum-terrorist theory – "several bank employees told police that Berro originally demanded money, however when an undetermined amount was handed over to him he put it back on the counter and said he was going to detonate the explosives to strike against British interests".
    So, clearly he went to the bank with the intention of robbing it, wasn’t happy with the amount of money received and decided to become a terrorist instead.
    There's no money in bank robbery anymore, all the big money's in terrorism, bank robbery doesn’t pay as much as it used to.
    God help us.
    There have been other minor acts of terrorism over the past few months, various American franchise restaurants have been bombed – Kentucky Fried Chickens, McDonalds, Pizza Hut (although I always though that Pizza Hut was Italian – pizza, Italian) and Winners.
    Winners is an atrocious American style, American wannabe and American imitation fast food restaurant.
    For all we know it could be one of their many food poisoned patrons that bombed them.
    But it appeared to have been bombed because the morons who did this presumably thought it was an actual American franchise which it isn’t, it's entirely Lebanese.
    Thanks be to God, you won't find a Winners in any other country in the world.
    Taking that absurdity even further, it is now being guarded by soldiers just as real American franchise restaurants are.
    So a restaurant that isn’t American was bombed by anti-Americans and thus is now guarded as an American restaurant.
    A further example of Arab schizophrenia would have to be one of the stupidest protests in history that I have just seen reports of on the news – protestors in Tehran chanting "death to America and death to Saddam".
    Those two wishes appear to me to be mutually exclusive – you can't protest this war by protesting against and denouncing both sides.
    In effect, all they were announcing was that they were neutral.
    This would appear to mirror their governments' stance - Tehran has said that they are "ACTIVELY NEUTRAL".
    I hereby propose to Dictionary Authorities that that be made the new definition of oxymoron and paradox.
    These protestors went to all that trouble to basically say "oh, we're neutral".
    Which is also contradictory to the spirit of a protest – you protest to indicate a stance, one way or the other.
    You certainly don’t hold a protest march to say that you're neutral.
    Its like going to a football match, say Manchester United versus Liverpool, and booing both sides – Manchester United and Liverpool.
    If you're so concerned, why don’t you take a stance?
    More schizophrenia/duplicity – Arab governments, who are all implicitly or explicitly pro-American puppet governments (or "puppets governments" as some Iraqi official said the other day), have been saying one thing to Washington and another thing to their unwashed masses.
    A couple of weeks ago I read somewhere that Washington was saying that twelve Arab governments had secretly pledged their support for the war.
    Twelve governments!
    That’s all of them!
    I wouldn’t be surprised if Iraq was one of them!
    When I say that that’s all of them I mean all the actual Arab Arab governments.
    In that, out of the twenty-two member Arab League, when you discount all the peripheral black African token "Arab" states (the likes of Mauritania, Djibouti, etc) you're left with only about a dozen or so core Arab states.
    An Arab American participating in an internet discussion forum put it best when he said "Much ado has been made here in the States about the lack of a coalition.But the US always had a coalition - the Arab regimes."
    So, about a dozen of them (out of a dozen) had secretly pledged support to Washington.
    Those words of support are for Washington, but their rabble-rousing demagogic dogmatic words to their masses are anti-war and condemning the war.
    Government television stations (which are all the TV stations in the Middle-East – when they're not directly owned by governments, they're semi, quasi or crypto governmental through government members or cronies, etc*) have been airing exploitative, biased and base wall-to-wall "coverage" of the war – montages of the suffering, the dead and injured and the destruction to the soundtrack of Fairuz's "Baghdad" (I think she has a song for every Arab city, by the way) are one of their methods.
    The masses are lapping it up, they love it!
    The prime culprit is Aljazeera, the Qatari quasi-state owned satellite broadcaster who has been carrying-on about the war, yet their country is the headquarters of the invading US force!
    The network is banned from broadcasting stories unfavourable to the rulers of Qatar, so it picks on other Arab governments (Arab "objectivity" and "freedom of speech" mainly consists of being "objective" about others").
    But the masses appear to be too stupid to recognize this contradiction.
    Just like the Labor Party in Australia, which is moving more and more to the right, can get away with making anti-immigration statements yet maintain its core of immigrant voters confident in the knowledge that most of these people are illiterate and don’t read the news anyway.
    Basically if you can get your message across on the medium of the ignorant masses, television, then you needn’t worry about the rest of the media.
    Those who are marginally smarter and have recognized this opt for the suspension of disbelief option (that people employ when viewing fantastic improbable movies) whilst watching this unjournalistic nonsense.
    Another example of this hypocrisy and duplicity is a very nebulous Saudi "peace initiative" which stands out not due to its contents but due to its actual very existence.
    Best explained by this final paragraph of an Associated Press report "news of a peace plan has baffled both Washington and Baghdad. Saudi Arabia has been quietly aiding the US war effort."
    Fifty cents each way.
    I'm not necessarily against these Arab regimes – primarily because I'm neutral, I'm not an Arab and because to selectively single them out would be unfair in that they are merely reflective and representative of their people, the Arab people.
    Maybe not representative in a Western democratic sense – I'd even go as far as to say that they're not democratically representative – but that very fact that they're not democratically representative is in itself representative of Arab/Islamic society and mentality.
    Democracy is absent from and alien to every facet of their society.
    The same man on the street, who mouths platitudes about wanting democratic government to CNN, will most probably go home and be a dictator to his wife, children and everybody else weaker than him.
    Also, this lack of real democratic representation is, deep down, probably preferred by the masses in that it spares them the trouble of thinking, doing and changing rather than just talking and criticizing, which seems to be their preference.
    It's also a perfect foil and scapegoat for them, i.e. "things are bad in Palestine, things are bad in Iraq, it's all bad, everything's bad but we can't do anything about it because it's a dictatorship and the powers' not in our hands etc".
    Perfect absolution – they're absolving themselves of blame and putting that blame on to a handful of scapegoats on top of the pyramid that they support and saving themselves a lot of work and effort into the bargain too.
    Leaving their leaders to be corrupt and to exploit the Palestinians and the Iraqis and to do all the other things that their people are complaining about.
    It must be stated that the so-called "opposition" (where available) that exists in these societies isn’t any better in that, in my view, the opposition is in fact not actual opposition but a handful of indirectly government appointed or tolerated actors.
    It's like a stage play with a dozen members of the same theatre company given the role of an opposition but, essentially, they are still the same actors from the same company acting a fiction, a sop to the stupid masses who fall for this bad acting hook, line and sinker.
    Sucked in merely by their clichéd, rhetorical, facile and banal chestnuts (which are devoured by the masses who have a taste for that sort of thing) but oblivious to their actual actions which are totally contradictory and paradoxical to what they're saying.
    What do you expect from people who vote for candidates with nebulous generic "policies" like "I want what is best for Lebanon?"
    Oh, how eccentric – your opponent says he wants what's worst for Lebanon.
    I remember, in the run-up to parliamentary elections several years ago, some unique exceptional "eccentric" journalist had the nerve to ask one of the candidates a totally irrelevant question – "what are your policies?"
    That was the only time I ever recall hearing a Lebanese journalist actually ask that question – they seem mainly preoccupied, as the electorate is, with the horse trading deal making and "lista" (ballot) composition.
    The candidate replied with the Arab equivalent of "we'll cross that bridge when we get to it" – meaning "we'll cross that bridge after I'm elected".
    Famously, for thirteen unlucky years the Lebanese have had to put up with one such oppositionist in exile promising them that he shall return imminently from his mansion in France (The General in His Labyrinth)- the former caretaker Prime Minister who “cared” (for the job) too much and got a little bit too comfortable in the role.
    He got so attached to the post that he conducted a disastrous nympholeptic war to keep it.
    In my opinion, a caretaker leader should limit himself to turning on the lights when he goes in and turning them off when he goes out!
    Worse than that, nearly a decade later, he visited Australia and managed to convince some of the Australian media that he was still Prime Minister – at least two outlets (that I know of) referred to him that way, including The Catholic Weekly, whose July 5th 1998 edition proclaimed “Lebanon’s PM visits Australia” (this was no “Dewey defeats Truman” type error – they went on the editorialise “This is not honorific title. In reality he is the sole constitutionally appointed leader the Lebanese have”).
    Even richer than that, in his delusion, he issues orders, warnings and threats in advance of this return – "you better not cry, you better not pout, Santa Claus is coming to town".
    When and if he returns will indeed be a great day.
    A great day for France.
    I recently had an intelectual arguement with a firend about democracy or the lack of it in Lebanon.
    He was trying to peddle the usual Lebanese chestnut of Lebanon being a democracy.
    His and their main crutch in support of this is Lebanon's relative press freedom and freedom of speech – spouting the usual cliché about thirteen daily newspapers bring published here (nobody seems to care that thirteen is an unlucky number – how backward!).
    I think that, whilst Lebanon does have relative freedom of the press and freedom of speech, I think that this is often a fig leaf and a safety valve for the lack of real democracy.
    A foil, a sop!
    What good is this alleged democracy when you can say practically whatever you want but you can't do anything about it, you can't act on all this talk!
    A talking shop, a talkfest!
    Lebanon's got the first part (freedom of speech) but the second and inextricably crucial part doesn’t exist (freedom of action).
    It's like one of those suggestions/complaints box that we see attached to walls; but what we don’t see is that, behind that wall, is, not a collection point, but a garbage bin where our suggestions, complaints etc only see the light of day when they're dumped at one of the many open-air tips that scar our country.
    Useless
    Having said that, I'm not sure whether democracy is conducive to the Arab world nor am I convinced that Arabs do indeed genuinely want it.
    Examples of this are manifest and abundant so there is no need to drudgingly catalogue them but one good example of this is when there is the occasional somewhat free election - either fuckwits (you won't read that anywhere else) or fundamentalists are elected.
    So, if that's what they're going to do with their democracy, then bugger it, who needs democracy!
    As Egypt's President Mubarak (not a fundamentalist) asked The International Herald Tribune's Yussif Ibrahim, "When your Americans talk about democracy in the Middle East, who do they think is going to take over, democrats?"
    So, lack of democracy in the Middle East mightn't be the worst thing in the world when you have populations that are predominantly morons.
    I must clarify here that I think that most people anywhere in the word are morons (myself included) but the difference in secular Western democracies is that the democracy that the moron masses are practicing is generally benign and non-lethal democracy.
    They may indeed vote in a fellow moron but that moron is a safe benign harmless moron whereas in this part of the world they're liable to vote in a non-benign unsafe harmful moron.
    Hence, lethal democracy.
    In the meantime, until we can aspire to voting in safe morons, I think that a good model for the Arab world is the Lebanese one, albeit much improved.
    In that we have a weak benign paternalistic regime that ensures basic human rights, doesn't have too many of us for breakfast and lets a vital free intelligent people go about their business of ignoring and supplanting the state and providing for themselves everything that their invisible state is too apathetic and corrupt to ensure for them.
    This is the best Arabs can hope for at this stage.
    Off course Arabs will tell you that they want proper democracy – don't believe them!
    I've never seen so much of a disparity and chasm between what people say and what they do then in this part of the world.
    Most people who talk about wanting change here (whether it be political, economic, societal etc) are basically people on the outside trying to get in – when and if they do get in, they, almost to a man (or to a woman – the women are even worse), do the same if not worse than the people they had criticized.
    All that talk about democracy, egalitarianism, change etc is good for them when they want to actually get somewhere (i.e. supplant their oppressors) using that as tool or ploy (the only ones really available to them) but is promptly discarded as soon as they actually get there and pull the ladder up after them to prevent anyone else who has those dangerous notions from following them or their offspring (hence the curious Arab phenomenon of "hereditary republics").
    "One man, one vote, one time".
    In 1992, for example, Ali Belhadj, a leader of the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria (who were poised to win the elections until the military stepped in and cancelled them ) even said that in so many words - "When we are in power, there will be no more elections because God will be ruling."
    Somebody summed up the Arab political system to me brilliantly the other day when she said that what we have here in the region is "state democracy" (a la China's state capitalism).
    That is democracy practiced by the state establishment and elite.
    If that sounds paradoxical or like a contradiction in terms, then that illustrates just how perverse things are here.
    I'm no Hellenist , but apparently this is closer to the original democracy practiced by the ancient Greeks which wasn’t very democratic (in the modern sense) at all but very similar to what we have today in the Arab and Third World – a clique of freemen and the established elite ruling the rest.
    So, there you have it – the Arab's have the only genuine democracy!

    Suffice to say, the Arab/Islamic paternalistic system has its pros as well as it cons.


    *In a similar vein, a UN friend of mine and her colleagues came to the conclusion that "non-governmental organizations" they were dealing with here were neither non-governmental nor organized.
    They were either aligned to the government or to political parties or personalities.

    3:30 pm

    Friday, March 28, 2003  
    Just heard an American commentator on the BBC World Service Radio saying, of American foreign policy, that America had decided to privatize the world and that they were privatizing a country, namely Iraq.
    I agree but I'd say that it's public/private though – were does Halliburton and the other companies given lucrative Iraqi reconstruction contracts end and where does the government begin?

    I just thought of a wacky play on words – Ho'Land.
    The humor lies in the fact that that looks and sounds like the country Holland and because hos are always in the "nether lands".
    Another really funny one is Ho Chi Min City.





    10:14 am

     
    TAIT (THANK ALLAH IT'S THURSDAY) TO OPEN IN BEIRUT
    Although I made that up, it's not as improbable as it sounds.
    The Beirut franchise of the American TGIF (Thank God It's Friday) chain should certainly be renamed that for one.
    Years ago I was refused a beer there because it was the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan – although it was nighttime, i.e. long after that day's fasting period had ended (the fast being observed from sunup to sundown).
    The waiter mumbled something about the owner being a Kuwaiti, to which I replied that they should change the establishment's name to Thank Allah It's Thursday in that case.
    I'm not a bigot (live and let live as far as I'm concerned) nor an alcoholic for that matter but I think that a Christian (or even a non-observing or progressive Muslim) should be able to get a drink in a public establishment in the capital of his own country - multi-confessional Lebanon which is notionally half Christian and half Muslim.
    There are nineteen officially state-recognized sects in this country – let's drink to that! Whatever and whenever we bloody want to!


    NO JACKET REQUIRED
    What I like about Sydney is that no matter how casually dressed you are, think you are or are afraid you'll be, you're never as casually dressed as you think you are and can never be too casually dressed.
    Fashion-wise, anything goes (or doesn’t go for that matter) in the Harbour city, with the exception of a few establishments – e.g. RSL and Leagues Clubs who have signs out the front informing, in words and pictures, that items such as singlets, shorts and thongs (the old Australian uniform until Melbournians came along and forced us all to dress like Italians*) are prohibited.
    Only in Australia (particularly in Sydney) is that sort of signage required!
    That's why Australia is the lucky country - "we don't (as the Australian mantra goes) take ourselves too seriously".
    The paradoxical ironic exception to that is that the only thing Australians are serious about is "not taking themselves too seriously"
    Go figure!
    My entire kingdom (namely www.renatoobeidsworld.blogspot.com) to the wise man who can solve a riddle much more complex than the Riddle of the Sphinx, namely "why are Australians so serious about not taking themselves too seriously?"
    Put that on a bloody pyramid!
    If, somewhere out there in the desert, there's an Australian pyrmaid that we've yet to discover,you can be sure that that's the inscription on it!
    My guess is that this is a consequence of Australia’s myth of egalitarianism and informality.
    But the fact is that Australians take themselves as seriously or not seriously as any other people do and the fact that they’re so serious about not taking themselves too serious by definition does indeed mean that they do take themselves too seriously.Methinks they protest too much
    Australia abolished the death penalty long ago but "taking yourself too seriously" is practically a capital offence.
    Despite all that, every year thousand of Australians somehow manage to "take themselves too seriously".
    That’s why, as a community service, I'm publishing the toll-free dob in hotline number of The National Don't Take Oneself Too Seriously Council – 1800 SERIOUS TAKERS.
    Australia – we don't take ourselves too seriously! ® **

    *I'm still Renato from the block – the block grid city (Melbourne) and proud of it but fair's fair.
    **(Paradoxical) Conditions apply


    One million Australians live overseas; five hundred thousand of them earn at least one million AUD per annum.
    I'm not one of them.
    One of them earns at least zero AUD a year.
    I'm one of them*.
    At least I've got my health and, much more importantly, I don't take myself too seriously

    *Figures correct at time of writing – I'm open to offers (come on, lets make it five hundred thousand and one Australians living abroad who are making over a million dollars!).


    The other day at the pub quiz we were asked "which European country has the smallest coastline?"
    The answer being Monaco, off course, which we, off course, got right but I overheard Peter Bollocks, on a nearby table, answering amongst his teammates some landlocked European country.
    When somebody pointed out to him that that country was indeed landlocked, thus no coastline, he blusteringly replied "well, how much smaller a coastline can you get than nothing?"
    Maybe he's right in a way.
    Speaking of pub quizzes, one of the reasons why I like Madonna's latest song, "American Life", is that the video clip is practically a table round.
    For those who, unlike me, have a life and aren’t familiar with pub quizzing, a table round is the middle round in the quiz where you're given a sheet of paper pasted with the faces of celebrities, flags of countries etc.
    "American Life" is essentially a video table round because it basically consists of a face shot of Madonna with images of the words flags superimposed in the background – albeit a speeded up table round in that those flags are shown individually for barely a split second (enough time though to recognize them though).


    W.H.O PUTS TORONTO ON SARS LIST – W.H.O TAKES TORONTO OFF SARS LIST – W.H.O PUTS TORONTO ON SARS LIST – W.H.O TAKES TORONTO OFF SARS LIST -WHO PUTS TORO

    1:10 am

    Friday, March 21, 2003  
    8.08PM FRIDAY 21st MARCH 2003
    Day Two of the second phase* of the War on Tourism – the attack on Iraq.
    The reason why I call it the War on Tourism is because that seems to be the actual effect of the so-called War on Terrorism (the White Houses' preferred name for it) - it seems to be affecting and curtailing tourism rather than terrorism.
    Airlines are suffering massive losses as people stay at home.
    Not that I care if conglomerates that make twenty billion dollars a year suffer a downturn and make only fifteen billion dollars a year instead.
    Not that I care if culture bound First World bourgeois yuppies can't go to Morocco to pretend and delude themselves into thinking that they're cultured and worldly and ever so earnestly patronize the locals but, nonetheless, the downturn in tourism is just one result of the fear and hysteria that certain Western governments have instilled in their populations – which, as far as I'm concerned, is the definition of terrorism, terrorism is fear.

    *The first phase – Afghanistan – was more of a mopping up operation than a war.


    Regarding Allied allegations that Saddam is not disarming, that’s nonsense because he's very disarming – with that little paunch, moustache, impish grin and avuncular manner about him, I think he's very disarming.
    As for disarmament of actual weapons, it's also not true that Saddam hasn’t disarmed – Saddam's been disarming for twenty-three years.
    He "disarmed" against the Iranians, he "disarmed" against the Kurds, he "disarmed" against the Kuwaitis, he "disarmed" against the Allies and he "disarmed" against the Shiites etc.
    He "disarmed", divested of and got rid of massive amounts of weaponry during all those campaigns.


    Yesterday on CNN I saw a report from Dearborn Michigan, which is one of the major concentrations of Arab Americans, from some sort of Shiite Iraqi Islamic centre whatnot.
    They were all, naturally, opposed to Saddam.
    The sheik who was being interviewed was pretty revved up in favor of the war and, to prove the unanimity of his point and its urgency, was asking those gathered if they hated Saddam and wanted to see him go etc (in a rabblerousing rally-like demagogic fashion).
    He then asked them "who here hasn’t lost a member because of Saddam Hussein?" and they all agreed that, yes yes, they’ve all lost "members" because of Saddam Hussein and started chanting "yes, yes Mr. Bush".


    On wars eve – Wednesday 19th March – at the quiz at the Shamrock, one of the questions was "what color are the gondolas in Venice?"
    We answered "black" and that was proven correct when Chris read out the answers but Peter Bollocks called out "bollocks, they're all white, they're Eyeties".
    He wasn’t joking either – apparently he'd confused "gondolas" (the actual craft) with "gondoliers"(the people who row the craft).
    "Sweaty" (David Shanks) popped in – he'd been ordered out of the country, as have a lot of foreign nationals, by his company.
    They had told him to leave that very night but he said that he couldn’t on account of the pub quiz so they agreed that he leave on Thursday morning.
    The British Embassy have advised all "non-essential" nationals to leave the country, as have a lot of embassies, and he was jokingly kind of offended that he was "non-essential".
    Chris Lambert and Peter Casey (who are staying) say that they can't leave because they are indeed "essential" – they keep the pub in business as they're always there drinking there.
    I was telling Sweaty that it doesn’t make sense for him and other foreign nationals to be advised to leave the country because there's no war in Lebanon whereas their respective countries are at war so they're essentially leaving a country at peace (which happens to be about a thousand kilometers away from Baghdad) to return to countries at war (the United Kingdom in Sweaty's case).

    PILATE ERROR
    Another amusing pub quiz error was when another team (whose paper we were correcting) answered ‘’Ponce Pilate’’ instead of Pontius Pilate.

    They say that the first casualty of war is the truth.
    The first beneficiaries of war are the alleged NGO's, alleged aid organizations and alleged charities etc.
    A friend of mine, who's involved with such organizations, was gagging for a war to start.


    Two days into this war, I can say that this war sucks and that the first one was definitely better.
    As is often the case, the sequel isn’t as good as the original.
    I'm barely watching it - in contrast to watching the first Gulf War practically around the clock.
    I just turn it on every now and then to see live footage of nothing and every now and then what the American authorities claim is an address by President George W Bush or what the British authorities claim is an address by Prime Minister Tony Blair (ala and on the pattern of news reports that say "in what the Iraqi authorities claim was an address by President Saddam Hussein" – there are a lot of rumors that Saddam was killed in the first strike of the war and that images which we've seen of him since are either one of his doubles or prerecorded).


    It's a truism to say that the world is dominated by economics but it appears that the media is increasingly dominated by economic "news" too – which in my opinion is not really news but course and vulgar philistinism and indirect advertising.
    One can see why this is so – media companies are, after all, a part of the whole corporate establishment scheme.
    So basically it's narrow corporate vested interests pushing and pursuing their own agendas and publicizing and advertising themselves and their ins and outs, machinations, profits, losses and whatnot and fooling an overwhelming part of the population that this is actually news.
    These people don’t know any better – they’ve been brainwashed throughout their entire lives by the corporate machine.
    From kindergarten on – what is formal education but a corporate training and brainwashing camp?
    To wit, if you remonstrate with these people they'll spout the propaganda, publicity and the advertising of the corporate machine – proof in the pudding and evidence of the actual efficacy of the twenty four hour business news machine.
    It works – they're getting their message across and the masses are propagating and parroting that.
    The WorldCom collapse for example.
    Despite what some New York talking head Jewish analyst interviewed on CNN says, it does not affect somebody in Bangladesh for example and if it does, which is highly unlikely, then it shouldn’t – even if it is true, that doesn’t make it right.
    Bangladeshis may be affected by the WorldCom collapse for all I know – they might lose their two dollar a day sweatshop jobs.

    8:08 pm

    Tuesday, March 04, 2003  
    2.30AM TUESDAY 4TH MARCH 2003
    OUR LADY OF THE PETROL STATION
    Yesterday, Monday 3rd March, was Ash Wednesday in Lebanon.
    For some reason or other – I don’t know how or why – Monday 3rd of March was Ash Wednesday in Lebanon.
    But wait, it doesn’t stop there, it gets funnier – promise.
    This ties in with the earlier, only in Lebanon, the land of services where the barman drives you home, anecdote.
    Further proof that Lebanon is a land of services and a service-driven economy – where else in the world but Lebanon could you get the Ash Wednesday blessing (the cross daubed on your forehead), albeit on a Monday, at the petrol station by the lady at the petrol station?
    True story – dad came home today with the Ash Wednesday cross (I'm sure it has a proper name – I just don’t know it) drawn on his forehead apparently having had it applied by the lady at the local petrol station (Reuters Daroun as a friend once called it in recognition of its unrivalled role in breaking and disseminating all the latest local news and gossip).
    Now that’s service for you!
    Would you like to upsize that cross?
    In the West we're familiar with petrol station/supermarkets/what not/what have you that sell everything from petrol to newspapers and magazines, food, videos etc but none of them, no matter how comprehensive they are, to my knowledge actually do that – the Ash Wednesday blessing on your forehead!
    I'm not too familiar with the rituals, rules and regulations etc governing that blessing but I am familiar with at least one other instance where a non-cleric, a "civilian" if you will, has applied that.
    I also don’t know how legitimate or legal that is or whether it will "work" or not but at least that’s a precedent that I know of for a civilian doing that but, nonetheless, the lady at the petrol station doing that is taking it a bit too far I think.
    Sounds like something you'd get in Los Angeles – a drive-thru Ash Wednesday blessing.
    More "only in Lebanon" - this illustrates the multi-cultural, multi-confessional aspect of Lebanon as well as the more easygoing, casual way of doing things already expounded upon here - mum, a Muslim, then proceeded to take some of the ash off dads forehead and do the sign of the cross on my forehead with it!
    A kind of secondary, secondhand blessing – literally second-hand smoke or second-hand ash, passive smoking, passive ashing.

    2:30 am

     
    This page is powered by Blogger.
    BREAKING NEWS-LOSER ACTUALLY READS RIGHT DOWN TO THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE OF RENATOOBEIDSWORLD,WORLD FIRST -