Archive for December 21st, 2008
The house in Beit-Chabab, (continue 8)
My grand dad had a house in Beit-Chabab but it was been rented for over 30 years, and the house was rundown and needed major repairs. After the death of Dad’s father Antoun, and the definitive return of my family to Lebanon in 1961, and the children about to join universities, my father had to start a lengthy legal ejection proceeding.
Father spent plenty of money to repairing this crumbling house. We enjoyed barely two summer vacations in it, before dad’s mother and his younger brother Jean decided to return to Lebanon and stay in it.
I used to watch one of my grandmother’s father Toufic (about 80 of age) plowing the large garden, but mother never encouraged me to walk and care for it because of probable snakes and other insects that she was terribly scared of: Mother had close encounters with snakes in the house in Africa.
Yes, extra safety is not complementary to happiness and natural development. When Jean and then grandmother died ten years later, one of dad’s sisters decided to return to Lebanon and she stayed in the house. The whole lot cannot be sold because of the many inheritance problems with a large extended family; two of dad’s sisters are still alive and they are refusing to dispose of the property when we are in great need of financial support.
Something about our childhood, my brother Ghassan, sister Raymonde, and I
I read auto-biographical accounts of Edward Said and Carlos Ghosn and I found similarity in our upbringing and I said: “why not?” I was born in Bamako, the Capital of Mali that was then under French mandate or colony, and mother breast-fed me for at least 3 years and mother never let me off her sight.
I started schooling in Africa (Sikasso) when I was five, with the French White Brethren for 3 months and I was doing great and mother told me that I had memorized the multiplication tables in such a short period. The deaf black boy used to take me on his bicycle to school.
Shortly after, I suffered from Typhoid fever in 1954 and almost died. The French commander (Mali was still a French colony) flew me and mother to the Capital Bamako and I stayed for weeks in a refrigerated chamber. When I got up from bed I had to re-learn how to walk and talk.
My parents decided to whisk me to Lebanon where the climate is more favorable. My 3-year old brother Ghassan, three years younger than I, and I were enrolled in an intern school (boarding school) in Beit-Chabab belonging to the Christian Maronite brethren.
I didn’t know a single word of Arabic and it was a completely new world for me who lived at home for the last 6 years. In the same year of 1956 Lebanon experienced a major earthquake and I remember someone carrying me in his arms at night and depositing me in the open parking lot where everyone converged. Dad once lambasted the government for exacting the “earthquake tax” for over 20 years.
It seems that I was bright, but mostly I was much older than my classmates, and the next year the school decided that I could skip a year and that was my downfall. In Lebanon, most kids start schooling at the age of three. I cannot remember a thing of my first year in Lebanon; maybe I was too traumatized and my brain decided that burying my memory of this year is beneficial for my mental health.
My parents used to visit us every two years during summer and we had to re-learn that they were indeed our folks. We used to flee the rented summer-house and walk up two miles to school, taking shortcuts.
School used to take us on walking trips on Sundays and when we passed my grandfather Toufic shop in Haret Al Ta7tat (the lower part of Beit Chabab), I used to stop at the shop and I was handed a handful of sweets and “kdameh” (dried cabanza beans).
My much younger sister (6 years younger) joined us in Beit Chabab and was “incarcerated” in the nuns’ boarding school of Sacred Hearts. My sister had a rough time there…
The largest and best planned scheme in history: executed by the worst cowards of all (December 22, 2008)
The USA Administrations knew for three decades that they were no longer producing any real value-added economy and the US politicians had no guts to tell the American people the hard facts; that getting back to work harder on producing stuff that people need to buy is a must. The FED, the Treasury and all the US multinational financial institutions knew the theory of Money Trade Cycle; that when the trend of inflation is continuously on the rise then the outcome is a financial crisis. The theory established that businesses and economy follow a pattern of upswings and downturns, and if the government refrains from meddling with the normal interest rates of doing business then the market economy based on real value-added economy will adjust to the changes but there was no real economy in the first place.
The FED knowingly, through political pressures, kept lowering the interest rates below the healthy level of a normal market economy which generated inflation rates that could no longer be controlled or stabilized. The FED, the Treasury and the cartel of multinational financial institutions overextended credits through traditional fiduciary media and then through new financial gimmicks (secondary and tertiary worthless paper money) to resume world financial market hegemony that could not lead but to crisis.
What you hear from the talking heads that the real problem was lack of financial monitoring and control by the Federal government and the financial institutions is pure lies; all the financial institutions knew about the real problem and the inevitable financial crash. The Bush Junior Administration, in cooperation with the financial multinationals and the Financial Times, decided unilaterally and without a UN resolution, for a pre-emptive war on Iraq. The rationale for that catastrophic decision was that the military expense will generate many folds in profit through the control of oil distribution and blackmailing the neighboring Arab rich sovereign funds of the potential threat of Iran. The Arab rich States were no fouls of that strategy but they went along as mere small oligarchic and monarchic States with no national identity.
By the summer of 2006, the US was losing the war in Iraq and in Afghanistan and its prestige was bottoming worldwide. The US needed one last gamble to iron out its image and give the illusion of a force to be reckoned with and the power to reconstruct the world. The hasty invasion of Israel of Lebanon in July 2006 was meant to claim total victory over Hezbollah and make Iran cower in order not to face direct confrontation with the US. A victory was to announce to the world that the “Greater Middle East Strategy” was successful. The July War turned out to be a total disaster and a debacle to Israel, even after extending the war for 33 days against the will of the world community.
In August 2006, the normal scheme of siphoning in the sovereign funds of the oil rich States and the small stock investors had reached a plateau. It reached a plateau because the investors realized that a crisis is in the offing and the scheme could not function normally unless the same level of increase in junk paper investment is maintained.
The US Administration and the financial multinationals realized that all is lost and it was time to decide on the timing for the financial crash. It was normal to leave the timing to the final stages of the Presidential election campaign. If the Democrat were favored by the US citizens then a psychological shock might decide them to shift to the Republican Party at Election Day.
In the meantime, oil prices were fictitiously raised to unprecedented level for two purposes: first, the highest consumers of oil such as China, Japan, and the European Union States would refrain from purchasing at such a high price and second, the US would be accumulating oil reserve for the imminent period, since the US is not paying in hard currencies but in worthless paper transactions with Saudi Arabia.
The FED, the Treasury and the cartel of multinational financial institutions purposely engineered the crisis and they triggered the timing. The timing was perfect: since no more foreign financial rescue is coming in then the financial rescue will happen under duress from all rich States. The motto was: either you caught up under duress or you will all have to suffer a global economic recession.
The code name for the precise timing of the financial crisis was: artificial oil price reaching $120 per barrel; the messenger was the multinational financial brokerage firm Lehman Brothers. All the members in the cartel of the financial multinationals received the order to activate the countdown for the Wall Street crash; they sold out their shares to invest in anything that has real value. The little people who invested their life savings in stocks paid the price.
The US consumers were enjoying low priced items imported from China and the manufacturing bases were exported overseas to benefit from cheap manpower and limited legal constraints. Trillions of dollars were injected to extend the illusion for the US citizens to resume their lavish spending on consumerism, new gas guzzling cars, stocks, and overvalued Real Estates. The world had already experienced a vivid advance taste of financial crisis in 1989 in the south-east Asian markets, Japan and Latin America. The fundamental problem was tackled by the Asian States and they worked harder to producing value-added economy. The successive US Administrations and politicians had no guts to tell the American people the hard facts, that a recession is as sure as the sun rises, and that getting back to work harder on producing what people need to buy is a must.
The world lauded the US for its timely energetic reaction of rounding up 700 billion dollars to rescue the failing commercial banks. Wrong; the package was already decided upon before the crash and the bold figure of 700 billions dollars was psychologically marketed as covering the 60% of the unsolvable Real Estates: the US people would gladly preserve its homes and pay for it. The trick is this package is a first installment and other packages are waiting in the queue pending the appropriate political conditions.
Well, financial rescue came from everywhere but this didn’t stop recession anyway. How can you stop recession when the USA is not producing any value that people are ready to purchase? The worst part is that President Obama is not willing to challenge the US citizens with the hash facts, at least not for a long time to come.
The US people has preferred the lax attitude since the Reagan Administrations; most of the US citizens wanted to believe in an illusory wealth assuming that the worldwide acceptance of the dollars as the currency of choice is more than sufficient to keeping the illusion. The hard facts are in; tackling decades of myopia and dependence on the hard work of the other people has to be grabbed by the horns. The world recession is the making of the lazy, faint hearted US people who failed, in their cockiness, to recall what made them a great nation!
Adonis Diaries 