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Serious satire
"Humor is a funny way of being serious"
-Thomas Edison
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Copyright© 2001-2010, Renato Obeid
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"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
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Monday, September 26, 2005
Somebody recently told me this anecdote about a former Arab ambassador to the Soviet Union they knew (who has since passed away from alcohol-induced cirrhosis of the liver – he liked a drink as you'll probably gather). After the 1956 Suez War, the ambassador asked for a meeting with the Soviet Defense Minister. After several requests he finally secured a meeting with the Minister, whereby he thanked the Minister for the Soviet Union’s support for the Arabs during the war and assured him that the Arabs had no expansionist ambitions towards any Soviet territory.The Minster burst into un-Soviet-like laughter and the ambassador never had any trouble securing any future appointments with the Minister.
The same person also told me an anecdote about a young man who was kidnapped at a checkpoint during the civil war. The person who told me the tale was asked by the young man’s family to intervene with his captors and secure his release. So he telephoned a high-up in the militia that kidnapped the young man who told him that they don’t have any captive by that name but promised to look into it further. He did and reported back that indeed they did not have any captive by that name but a willing hanger-on. Not a case of the Stockholm Syndrome but a case of common cause – the young man was a homosexual and had obviously found that his guards shared the same ‘’interests’’ that he did.
7:15 am
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