Code Vault

I was hoping my next post would be a technical one, but sadly that didn’t work out. They assassinated another MP today using a car bomb. It was placed in a car parked next to a vital road that always has a lot of traffic. From the amount of destruction it left behind, it seems that it was a big bomb.

At this point, i would usually have some witty remarks or sarcastic comments. But, to that i would answer in the same way as one area resident answered. “We just got used to it.”

You can tell from the TV coverage that people are frustrated with this whole thing. During the first few explosions, TV stations would do live coverage for about 3-4 hours and now they just zip through to the explosion area, zip back to the studio and transmit all the politicians calling in with their “blablabla”s…and that’s about it. Two todays later, people don’t even remember where the last explosion was.

Ofcourse everybody will remember what politician died during that explosion, but what about all the other people whom nobody remembers. What about that innocent person who’s only error was being in the same area with that MP?

I used to think that there might be a bright future…I don’t anymore.

Taken from page 170 of State of Africa book.

Much of what is going on in some of these countries is fully explained in terms of the normal lust of human beings for power and wealth. The stakes are high. Office carries power, prestige and money. The power is incredible. Most West African Ministers consider themselves to be above the law, and are treated as such by the police. Decision making is arbitrary. Decisions which more advanced countries leave to civil servants and technicians are in those countries made by Ministers, often without consulting expert advice. The prestige is also incredible. Men who claim to be democrats in fact behave like emperors. Personifying the state, they dress themselves up in uniforms, build themselves palaces, bring all other traffic to a standstill when they drive, hold fancy parades and generally demand to be treated like Egyptian Pharaohs. And the money is incredible. Successful politicians receive, even if only money is also incredible. Successful politicians receive, even if only elected to Parliament, salaries two to four times more than they previously earned, plus per diem allowances, traveling expenses and other fringe benefits. There are also vast pickings in bribes, state contract, diversion of public funds to private uses, and commissions of various sorts. To be a minister is to have a lifetime’s chance to make a fortune.

This quote talks about some African countries right after their independence between the 60s and 80s(1960-1980) or so. But what really surprised me is how accurately it describes the current and former Lebanese politicians.

The problems with these African countries was the destructive influence that the former colonization forces had on them. It isn’t the only reason, but at that time period, it was the most influential. But in the case of Lebanon, it has become “the usual thing” even without any influence.

When i was in school and i used to complain about this situation, my teachers would tell me that this is because of the Ottoman occupation and the subsequent French colonization and the 20 year civil war. This could be considered as a legitimate answer but it masks what their true answer would have been if they weren’t stupid. “We don’t know and we’re too lazy to do anything about it”.

To me that is definitely not a legitimate answer, and i always take Germany as an example. Germany started two world wars. Not one but two global wars within the span of 35 years and still rebuilt itself into Europe’s biggest economy. So why didn’t Germany turn into this corrupt mess that is Lebanon?

Why is Lebanon infested with corruption? Why is it that the simplest technical problems such as delivering electricity to citizens turns into this huge political mess that threatens to re-ignite the dormant civil war? Why is it that the same problems that we’ve had 17 years ago are still unresolved? Why is it that the most frequent prayer i hear is “God, please bless me with a visa to ANY other country so that i may leave this hell hole”?

And most importantly, why is it that in spite of all these problems do the Lebanese rush to vote for the same people every election period and rejoice in the streets whenever any politician farts or speaks(same action)?

The definition of a stalemate condition stems from chess where the player that has to move cannot move in any legal way, yet it is not in a check position. This term has also found its way into conflicts where the entire situation is at a standstill. This normally happens when neither party accept any kind of compromise.

If you are still trying to guess what i am talking about, then you obviously are not a regular reader of this blog. For everybody else, yes that’s right. I am talking about the current political situation in Lebanon.

Well, i say current because they’re the most recent. But really this has been going on for the past year or so. The story is still the same, and everyday some idiot of a politician comes up on TV and tells us that the solution is really close and that we should expect good news in the next few days. I have been listening to such statements from 1992 which was 15 years ago. Those “next few days” never seem to come. And that all-elusive “solution” also never seems to come.

The conflicting parties(the pro-Syrian and the anti-Syrian camps) have tried to solve it amongst themselves and failed. They went to the Arab league for a solution and that failed. Saudi-Arabia and Egypt held talks with Iran and Syria for a solution and that also failed. The US and Russia even interfered and….wait for it….yes, that also failed.

So where are we now? I have no idea.

The situation is still the same. The governing anti-Syrian camp wants the international tribunal to take place and the Hizbollah disarmed and a new President. The opposition pro-Syrian camp wants a veto-powered stake in the government which basically gives it the power to control all the rest of the things that the anti-Syrian camp wants. So to push for those changes the pro-Syrian side’s ministers have resigned from the government and they also launched a big sit-in and frequent demonstrations in down-town Beirut, the area that the late Rafic Hariri rebuilt. To reciprocate, the anti-Syrian camp refused to accept their resignation and chose to ignore everything that they do.

So what happens now? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The shattered economy has taken a huge hit. The whole political process has been completely halted. And ….Well, should i really continue?

So who is paying for all of this? Well, the people ofcourse…..As usual.

I’ve been meaning to write a post for some time now, but not a lot has changed since my last one. Well, to be truthful, tons of things have changed, but none that are interesting enough for me to write a post about.

Remember the whispers I heard last time about the date of the pro-Syrian movement against the government. Well, I am hearing some now. Word on the street is that another big shift will take place right after the new year. I have also heard rumors about it being in the first ten days of the new year.

What you see on the news can be misleading sometime. For those of you who are not up-to-date on the whole subject. Several countries have now taken a direct role in the negotiations to settle things once and for all. And once the big boys interfere, this usually means a big change. So, you would expect things to be heading towards a positive ending.

Not true. At least, I don’t think so. I remember the last time foreign powers interfered in Lebanon, and we all saw what happened afterwards. Remember the civil war?(ok, so that was before I was born, but you know what I mean)

There are tiny clues that are being dropped which would allow me to draw a possible picture. A few weeks ago, the opposition(aka the pro-Syrian parties) stopped asking for a national-unity government and started asking for an early parliamentary election instead.(which is exactly what it threatened it would do) And ofcourse the ruling majority is refusing.

Now, the ruling majority is calling for a parliamentary session to take place.( I think to call for election to replace the assassinated Pierre Gemayal) And the head of the parliament(Nabih Berri being also the head of the Amal movement, Hizbollah’s closet ally…in fact, Hizbollah started out of Amal members) is refusing to do so. Warning that if a parliamentary session and the resulting decisions were forced by the majority’s lead over the parliament, then the entire pro-Syrian block in the parliament will resign.

The ruling majority also submitted a petition today accusing the president of breaching the constitution and thus by law has to appear infront of the higher council that is charged with prosecuting president and politicians. Our president isn’t well known to abide by the law or the constitution and to be fair, none of our politicians are. So now, the petitions needs the approval of 2/3 of MPs(28 have already signed it out of 128 I think)

When I was in college, I got stuck on a homework assignment(it was a theory of computation course). So I went to my professor to ask him about it. He couldn’t solve it right away either.  So after struggling with it for about 20 mins and scribbling on the white board while I was counting sheep and looking puzzled. He looked at me and asked me “Do you see it?” And I said, “Do I see what?”. He said, “It’s right there. The answer”. So this professor was very smart, and I didn’t want to look too dumb. So I told him, “Ofcourse I see it. But can you please explain to me how you got there in the first place”. Needless to say, I still do not get it.

So now I ask you, do you see it?

If the ruling majority in the parliament forces this petition to pass, the pro-Syrian block will reign from the parliament. Thus invalidating the parliament and forcing an early re-election.

So, will this happen?

I really don’t know. All the things that I am seeing seem to indicate that we are heading that way. Unless Amro Moussa(the secretary general of the Arab council) has some magic trick up his sleeve. Then again, Arabs were never too good at solving political problems by themselves.

On a final note, and just to show you how bad things are here. I have received an Arabic rap song that talks about the current situation. I don’t who has done it but its pretty good. So listen to it here.

And for those of you who do not know understand Arabic, my next post hopefully will include a translation.

Thank you for the comments, I appreciate them, and as always…keep them coming.

Well, it isn’t actually a front. Not yet anyway, but it is beginging to feel like it….

Well, it happened. Just like i said it would. The big movement of the Hizbollah and other parties to topple the government started last Friday and is still ongoing. It included a big demonstration and then a big sit-in.
The security forces(which are under the command of the anti-Syrian camp) estimated the crowds to be a few hundred thousand. Just by looking at the crowds and by knowing the area where they were at, i would estimate it at over a million people. The current ruling anti-Syrian camp would of course never acknowledge that. Because if they did, one would be able to deduce that we have a huge rift in the country.
You see, Lebanon is made up of about 4 million people. There is no official census since the French were here and thus these numbers are just estimates. During the war, any attempt at doing a census, or even introducing computers to some of the governmental agencies that deal with people’s welfare such as the national social security agency , would be immediately stopped by the maronite president since it could show the true composition in Lebanon and would clearly reveal its demographics. And thus, with those demographics revealed, some people would start questioning the fairness of the Taif agreement that stopped the civil war by dividing the power among the warring parties and warlords. And so we got to have a maronite Chrisitan president, a Sunni Muslim prime minister, a Shia Muslim speaker of the house and a Druze chief of staff.
In the last 20 years, the demographics have changed. Now the Shia Muslims make up the biggest group in the country and the people within this group overwhelmingly support Hizbollah and Amal parties(Hizbollah being the larger, in fact the largest). So what do you get when Hizbollah and Amal call to a big civil movement to topple the current government? You get a coalition of anti-Syrian politicians that have the support of about 1.5 million people and are in control of the government, against a coalition of pro-Syrian politicians that have the support of 1.something million people. So what do you get when you get when you put 1.5 million people with another 1.something million people in a small pan and then pour some boiling water on top of them? Yup, that’s right. A big rift, a lot of boiled people, a politically-charged alphabet soup, and maybe even a civil war.
The problem? Well, the current ruling majority which controls the parliament and thus controls the government actually had an alliance with Hizbollah during the elections. And so wouldn’t have achieved the majority status if it weren’t for Hizbollah supporters voting for some of them. The current ruling majority knew that at the time(again because of the country’s demographics) and so promised Hizbollah to stick with them against all the upcoming international pressure to disarm. To those of you who are still reading and are just starting to smell a rat(in fact a stinkin’ rat), you are completely right.
So, mix all of the above with a lot of international pressure and promises and with several countries funneling money and weapons to the country and toss them all together with some vague conspiracy theories that are way too subjective for me to discuss. You get the state that we have reached. It is in fact starting to get a bit dangerous to go out at night.
Why? Well, it seems that some people just want to cause trouble. And so every night we hear about a group of guys going to another area(for example Shias going to Sunni areas or vice versa) and just causing trouble like breaking the windows of cars and throwing rocks at people(this mostly results in a few people injured and so far one dead). Most of these people are being pursued by the army which is spread out inside the city now with APCs around every corner. Mostly an all-out fighting has not erupted yet because the Hizbollah are immediately stopping such individuals and surrendering them to the army with the other side also doing the same.
So what we have now is the Hizbollah(Shia Muslim), Amal(Shia Muslim), General Aoun(Christian mixed) supporters along with a few other smaller parties facing the Future movement(Sunni Muslim), the Kataa’eb and Lebanese Forces(Chrsitian mixed) and the Progressive Socialist Party(Druze) along with a few other parties. Right now we are in the quarter finals, stay tuned for the elimination matches and the semi-final matches.
My take on all of this? Well, i don’t know yet. You see, i only tend to listen to the people who can make decisions. Which means Hassan Nasrallah for Hizbollah and Saad Hariri for Future movement(along with Samir Gaga for Lebanese Forces and Walid Jumblat for PSP). When these people talk, i listen. When they start swearing at each other, i start to worry. Meanwhile, the remaining people are just grunts for these so-called leaders. We see them every single hour on TV shouting and swearing and threatening. We also see a bunch of people sitting-in and demonstrating and also sometimes trying to do something crazy such as storming the prime-ministerial office. And just to keep up with the action, we have the Manar TV channel(Hizbollah funded) and the Future TV channel(Future movement funded) organizing smear campaigns and cussing matches at each other.
So what am i doing in the meantime? I am trying to wait it out and ride the wave just like all the other people who think that such things are stupid and that some people just don’t appreciate the consequences of their actions. When i start hearing bullets flying, i will either join the fight(i am druze after all) or flee. So in case you don’t hear from me, look me up on CNN or aljazeera(they have it in english now)… I would be the one telling stories from the front…
Alaa
P.S. Keep those comments coming, i always feel encouraged to write when i see that some people are interested in reading about all of this.

Sorry I haven’t been posting lately, I’ve been kinda busy. I am not sure I even have any readers left. But whatever the case may be….

First of all, I didn’t get to thank all of the people who wished me a happy birthday in the comments. So thank you for all the kind words.

I assume everybody has heard of what happened yesterday. The new assassination of Pierre Amin Al-Jamyel, the minister of industry. Poor guy. I really didn’t like him, but that’s not the way to go. They shot him 8 bullets in the head from a machine gun with a silencer from a close range. You should see the picture of his car.

Hardly an hour after this incident, several personalities made press conferences or issued statements accusing the other side of doing it. The pro-Syrians accused the anti-Syrian faction of prior knowledge and some even accused them of doing it. While the anti-Syrian faction accused “those who want to de-stabilize Lebanon” and the Syrians. The guy’s body has hardly got cold and they were already using his death in a propaganda campaign. There’s a special place in hell for such kinds of people.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise for people who have been keeping up with the evolving situation here in Lebanon. It has been a couple of weeks of stress whereby both opposing factions threaten each other with big demonstrations and with replying with bullets to bullets. Although everybody is saying that they don’t want a civil war, they all threaten the other side with it.

I am not scared yet, although I am bit worried. Mainly, people wouldn’t go for another civil war because they still remember the horror of the first one. Anybody who thought that I was going to say that they will not have another civil war because we all DON’T hate each other has his head way up in the clouds. I heard what some people are saying and it is not pretty. When the common man starts speaking with such hatred and contempt, then you need to start worrying.

I am not even sure where all of this went wrong. Maybe we weren’t ready for our own independence. Before, we could always blame the Syrians for anything that happens, but now we have run out of scapegoats. And the shit keeps getting brownier and stinkier.(sorry, English mixed with a lot of feelings)

The anti-Syrian faction is always blaming the pro-Syrian president and pro-Syrian faction of interfering with everything and blocking any real advancement in the country. The problem is that I have seen how the anti-Syrian faction has taken over the governmental organizations and especially the future movement of the late Rafic Hariri. I have also seen how they think that once they take over everything, all the issues will be solved. Yet, corruption has increased and scandal after scandal are  being exposed.

I fear how things could evolve if the pro-Syrian faction takes over. But I also fear of how things could evolve if the anti-Syrian faction takes over. So, what is the solution?

Throughout today, we are losing more and more of our hearing by the loud motorcades that the 14th Feb movement has ordered to move around to show their popularity.

This is just below our building. I also have a video if you wanna hear their chants. I am writing this post at 1am and the moving carnivals are still doing their magic.

Whenever I want to write some post about Lebanon, I get lost with all of the different ideas  and I think what’s the use….

Is it any wonder that most of my friends have left the country to live and work somewhere else…

Just finished reading a book called Desert Storm by Eric Laurent(translated from french). Its not a bad book, its not a good one either, but its not bad. Mainly the problem is that this is a one-sided book and only covered a small percentage of the events that took place and the whys and the how’s. Especially interesting is the media blackout imposed on all the media organizations during the entire 100 day war although the entire war was a positive one in regards to the US side. Only special and specific leaks were allowed.

The latest Robert Fisk article is a must read. The link is here. If I wanted to quote the parts that I especially liked, I would quote the entire article, but here are some samples.

The columnist Roger Cohen placed her problem in a nutshell. The problem are the facts. And they include the fact that, in the 65-year period between 1941 and 2006, the US has been at war in some form or another for all but 14 of them. And people around the world have got tired of this. They got tired of America’s insatiable need for an enemy – and suspicious of all the talk of democracy, freedom and morality in which every war was cast. They stopped buying the US narrative.

The fact they don’t speaks sorrowfully of our double standard of morality. Almost all Lebanon’s 1,300 dead – which comes close to half the total of the World Trade Centre murders – were civilians. But we don’t care for them as we do our own “kith and kin”. This is the same sickness that pervades our policies in Iraq where we never counted the number of civilians killed, only the tally of our precious soldiers who died there.

Like  I said before, and a million other quotes. Its a bit long, but its beautiful.(and yes I rarely describe things as beautiful)

Another interesting article that is from way back. The URL to the full article is

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/29/opinion/edavi.php

“Israel’s recent hopes for peace, fueled by the disengagement from Gaza and elections won on plans to cede the West Bank, have given way to another war and to grim talk of eternal fighting. Israelis now speak of the Arabs’ hate as a chronic disease that Israel is destined to live – or die – with. To revive its hopes, Israel must dare to consider a change of paradigm: transform itself into a Middle Eastern country.

While Israel has flourished economically and technologically by modeling itself on the Western European culture of its early Ashkenazi pioneers, the cultural alienation from its neighbors has intensified Israel’s pariah status in the region. Even the peace with Egypt and Jordan remains cold, while hate toward Israel in the Arab street heats up to new records.”

I found an interesting article written in Annahar newspaper by Jihad Al-Zein. This is from 10 days ago, so it is a bit old, through quite interesting in content. Sorry about the crude english translation….analysis to come in later posts.

As soon as the naming of “moderate arabs” returns to popularity in the American diplometic language, it means a return in American foreign policy to the cold war standards in regards to the middle east.

The term “moderation” at the time meant the governments that weren’t in the political shadow of the old soviet union, and weren’t communist or socialist. It had nothing to do with how democratic the said governments were. Democracy as a measure of the extent of “moderation” as it is supposed to be in western values.

After the fall of the USSR, that idea started losing in value until the events of September 11 shoved it way back into the drawer……

If it was doubtful that Condoleeza Rice’s visit to the region carried an initiative to re-shake the stagnant peace process, even if that meant that the current US administartion realized the danger of constantly failing in solving the Palestenian crisis, then what’s for sure is that secretary Rice is coming to re-vitalize-if not to resuscitate- the “moderate camp” in the region, as in the camp that is against the Iranian-Syrian allied front that stretches through Palestine in the form of Hamas and rooted into Lebanon in the form of Hezbollah.

You cannot belive how much is corruption rooted into every governmental organization here in Lebanon.

Today, we recieved a two months electricity bill. The charge was 600,000 L.L. which is about $400. This is a ridiculous amount since one of the two months that we are supposed to be paying was the month during which the Israeli aggression took place, and thus the electricity was hardly on for a few hours each day.

Never mind that, we’ll assume that the amount is the correct amount read of the meter and that no one is trying to steal from us(ya right). Each electricity bill carries a late charge of 5,000 L.L. per month(~ $3). This is inspite of the fact that the electricity company sends a person to collect the bills and that we always pay on time. So what is this late charge for? Nobody knows. If you want to complain and actually ask about it, you have to go to the electricity company and get dragged about for days until finally you are able to meet a person who might give you a stupid answer that has nothing to do with the question(such as my all time favorite, “the government is making us do it”).

You would get an idea about the infestation of corruption in our government when you know that billions of dollars have already been paid or promised to Lebanon but nobody has been compensated yet. You would also get a clear idea when you hear about how the people are trying to make it on their own without counting on the government actually helping them(since it never did and never will).

You would get an idea about the infestation of corruption in our government when you read about the Social Security scandal and the resulting fight with the hospitals in Lebanon. The social security fund owes about $400 million dollars in debt to the hospitals and the hospitals are threatening to stop accepting patients with only social security coverage. The hospitals have even accepted partial payment but the Social Security Fund is saying that they can’t do anything(nobody really knows what that means).

I was flipping through an old notebook today and i noticed a sentence that fits the scenario of this post. I wrote that “if every generation behaves likes its predecessors, then how can we expect change”(i am not even sure that i wrote that). Ofcourse we will pay the huge electricity bill, and we will even pay the late charges. And so will everybody else.

My blog would not fit if i wanted to write about all the corruption cases that i know of(previous and ongoing). The current choir-singing government was thought to be the one. The one that will change everything. Instead they are just as corrupt as the people who came before. And even more. What’s really sad is that we used to place the blame for all our problems on the Syrians who were in Lebanon, but now they ran out of excuses. Its really really sad.(sorry for the spelling mistake if any)

Alaa