Archive for December 26th, 2008
My High School summer: Introspection
Posted by: adonis49 on: December 26, 2008
Last high school summer, (Chap. 14).
I barely succeeded in my first “Baccalauria” (public exam) in 1968, and that summer I attended ideological indoctrination session to a political party, which would start my downfall as a student, and loss of any prospect for any civil or military positions in the government institutions.
The next year, I failed both the French and Lebanese public exams of “Matheleme“. I managed to barely pass the required Lebanese “Matheleme” in the second trial in September.
These failures were a turning point in my future and this critical summer of 1969 was a total loss in prestige as a good student and, worse, for lack of preparing to enter any university.
Indeed, I didn’t enjoy that summer, which should have been the best summer ever and spent it studying and reviewing for the nth time all the boring course materials, and not feeling like solving math or physics exercises or problems.
I recall that we rented the tiny ground floor apartment of George and Marie Ghoussoub building in Kuneitra, and I spent most of my hours walking the yards of the nearby Sisters’ convent of Mar Maroon to recapitulate my boring notes and school books while everyone were taking trips.
I recall that I noticed a smashing Yugoslavian beauty of around 30 year-old, tall, raven black hair, and renting an apartment around the convent of Mar Maroun and I used to wait diligently for her to show up on her balcony in her “negligee”. To my chagrin, she got married the next year.
I was supposed to participate in a Lebanese play at the end of summer and had memorized my part for a few sessions before I drop out from the group of first-time actors to prepare for my exam. The play was a success and was shown twice on the basketball court in Beit-Chabab.
We used to hire buses and travel all over Lebanon during summers, but I didn’t participate in the fun.
I recently read “AnteChrista” by Amelie Nothomb and she described an introverted 16-year old girl named Blanche. Blanche located a group of three girls in her class who were happy together. She forced herself in the group and never left it.
Three months later she overheard them talking how happy the three of them were and how much fun and great time they were having. Blanche discovered that she was practically invisible among them; the group didn’t even notice that she left them.
It is practically my life story when young.
Maybe that the environment is not initially a major factor on your psychological tendencies and constitution, but it does make you sink in deeper and deeper no matter how hard you try to alter to extrovert type.
I never had my own room, and even then, my mom would have not let me decorate it my own way or leave it in a state of chaos.
“Licensed to kill” by Robert Young Pelton (book review, part 1)
Posted by: adonis49 on: December 26, 2008
“Licensed to kill” by Robert Young Pelton (Part 1, December 26, 2008)
Note: My niece Ashley purchased this gift for me on Christmas Eve and my nephew Cedric selected it. If you enjoy my review you might as well thank Ashley and Cedric.
Robert Pelton met a covert team of “contractors” licensed to kill at the Afghanistan/Pakistan border in the fall of 2003. Robert embarked on an odyssey in locations where the CIA and the US State Department needed the services of these private war constructors (read mercenaries and security service operators) because these private businesses were evaluated to be more economical (fixed cost contracts) and less burdensome in legal matters, paper works, and political legitimacy than relying on the US army. (I am under the impression that beside the President, his Vice, and the Pentagon the other ministries are not entitled to request the security services of the US arm forces; or maybe the ministries do not want to feel indebted to the Pentagon!)
The hired members of private “security” businesses are ex-Special Operations soldiers, small-town cops, ex-marines, ex-rangers, ex-operators in third world dictator regimes (such as Chili, Guatemala, South Africa, and grouped under the label of third country nationals TCN), and young adventurers seeking $600 a day with license to empty the magazine of their fire arms. Many of these shadowy operators took their vacations to relax on safari trips. They mostly claim that they love their jobs and that it helps save their marriages from bankruptcy. The fact is, most of these operators ended divorced and mutilated and living in their cars.
The chairman of Blackwater Security Consulting, Erik Prince, is bidding for a “peace-keeping force” in Darfur (Sudan) since the income from the multitude contracts to massacre and maim in Iraq is dwindling. A competitor to “Blackwater”, Triple Canopy, is facing legal issues after one of its operators killed an Iraqi simply because he felt like satisfying a wish before returning home; Triple Canopy was forced to send packing its operators to their respective homes. The competitors to Blackwater are mainly MVM, USIS, and DynCorp.
The operators of Blackwater shave their heads and tattoo their bodies with Blackwater logo (the wide ass of a grizzly bear) because headquarter is located in North Carolina on a 6,000 acres of the Great Dismal Swamp. Their vehicle of choice is called Mamba, a slower moving South African-built armored Suburban leviathans, designed to withstand mine blasts and sniper bullets.
There are so many hot places in this forsaken Earth because the US has been taunted, in the last three decades, as the only serious superpower that the US didn’t feel to stooping to any diplomatic resolutions but to using brute force as a mean to discriminate itself from the rest of the pack.
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