Adonis Diaries

Archive for December 29th, 2008

Trailing a butterfly (book review, part 1)

Posted by: on: December 29, 2008

Trailing a butterfly (December 29, 2008)

 

Note:  The death toll in Gaza among the Palestinians has reached 350, the injured over 1000 and climbing steadily by the minutes. The World leaders are mute: they are waiting for the genocide to be complete. They don’t want another population reclaiming a land and chasing the original people out for a homeland.

 

I will liberally translate a few pieces from the diary of late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.  The diaries of “Trailing a Butterfly” are practically poems written in prose style from summer 2006 to summer 2007.

 

The roar of silence

I listen to silence.  I am hearing the cries of the first spirits as they found the original caves; the thump of the apple on a rock in the garden of God; the moaning of passion between the original males and females, not knowing what they are doing.  I can hear the secret negotiations among the ancient Gods; the whispering of the prophets with their wives as night falls.  I can hear the complaints of Emperors of their boredom; the music accompanying the ceremonies of the Secret sexual rituals.  I can hear the confusion of the chimpanzee as he jumped from a tree and started his first biped attempts, as he sat on the throne of the first tribe. I can hear the curses between Sarah and Hager.  If we listened to silence we would feel less the need to talk.

 

            He said “I am scared”

He shouted “I am scared”. The walls of closed in room reverberated with “I am scared” and every piece of furniture kept repeating “I am scared” for a long time.  He shouted “Stop it” but “I am scared” was the dominant cry in the vibrating air.  He went out to the street. He got afraid of a broken tree, of a military jeep screeching by.  He wanted to return to the safety of his room.  He was afraid that he forgot his keys, he was afraid that the electricity was out, he was afraid that he might slip on the staircase. He inserted the key and was afraid that the door would not open; he was afraid that someone might be sitting on his chair but he felt safe now.  He looked in the mirror and it was his face. He listened to silence and the walls had stopped repeating “I am scared”.  For some mysterious reasons he didn’t feel scared.

 

            I am absent

I live here for the past ten years. Tonight, I sit on a plastic chair in the tiny garden; I am mesmerized by a red rock.  I am counting the eleven stair steps to my room. On the right side a large fig tree overshadows a prune tree. To the left side stands a Lutheran Church.  By the staircase a rusted pail hangs out of an open ancient well; the few scrawny flowers have to content with the night dews.  I live here with 40 tenants; we are watching a live piece of theater, totally improvised, a very few in words of prohibition to cruise, to roam, to walk; a curfew on wandering about.  It is an improvised one act, sort of an ongoing composition, like our life. I look in the open window of my room and I love to improvise this sentence “Is anyone there?”  In the last act, everything will remain exactly the same and at its place, but I will fail to be in my room.  There got to be one absent, a vacant body: the location is getting too crowded.

            How far is far?

How far is far? How many are the passages and alleys? We walk toward the meaning of all of this and we keep walking.  The mirage is the guide book of the confused, to the far away sources; illusion is the negation and the hero.  We are walking, and in the desert mature our wisdom; we are not saying that the wandering is complete.  Our wisdom demands a light song for our hope not to get tired.

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Bi-weekly report (#6) on Lebanon

Posted by: on: December 29, 2008

Bi-weekly report (#6) on Lebanon (December 27, 2008)

 

The news are showing in direct the latest mass murder of the Zionist State; Israel bombed Gaza with 60 jet fighter planes and killed so far within 3 minutes 200 Palestinians and seriously injured 350; the news media showed in direct the body of forty Palestinian police officers who died in their headquarter while attending a graduation ceremony; one injured survivor was proclaiming “La illah ella lah” (God is one).  Israel intends to eliminate all police forces in Gaza hoping for total insecurity and chaos to set in.  The Zionist Foreign Affair Livny met yesterday with Moubarak, the President traitor of Egypt, and got the green light to behead the Hamas leaders; it seems the beheading of the police and the civilians too.  Read my article “Zionism: an ideology of apartheid, terror, and crimes against humanity”

 

I also followed the interview with Simon Hirsh that was conducted by Maggie Farah on OTV; the translator to Arabic was a pain in the neck and prevented me from enjoying the informative and wonderful replies of Hirsh. (I think instant written translation should be by far the most pleasant alternative).  Hirsh’s is convinced that if the decision to attack Iran was left to Bush Junior, Cheney, and Abrams they would have done it; (read my article “Will the US attack Iran? Yes, Bush and Cheney would).

Hirsh also had divulged that the US had been preparing since March 2006 for a large war on Hezbollah and it appears that Hezbollah pre-empted the timing by a couple of months; the Lebanese Seniora PM wholeheartedly encouraged the aggression on Hezbollah (read my article “Who won the war: Hezbollah or Israel” and at least half a dozen articles on the July War)

 Hirsh has written that Saudi Arabia (Prince Bandar bin Sultan being the master mind behind the all out funding of terrorist groupuscules that ultimately would turn against this theocratic and oligarchic regime) has been funding all sorts of Sunni salafist terrorists groups to counter-balance Hezbollah in Lebanon and to promote the Wahabi sect in the Arab World.

The US Administration hated the Dawha agreement among the confessional Lebanese leaders; if Cheney was not greatly diminished then the US would have vigorously disturbed that agreement. 

Hirsh consider the Bush Junior tenure as the worst history period that befell the interests of the US; Bush is a rigid dogmatic and is totally insensitive to the consequences of his decisions.  If the Viet Nam War was tactical in nature (which means once the war is over then it is over and diplomatic and economic relations resume) the war in Iraq is strategic and the consequences are long-term.

This massacre is Gaza is mainly a message to President Obama to come forward and state his position on the resolution to the Near-East problems; for the time being, Israel made sure that no further negotiations with Syria or Palestine would resume in the foreseeable future.  The Bush Junior Administration insanely refused to recognize a democratically elected Hamas; there is no possibility for a resolution to the Palestinian problems without the recognition and open diplomatic dialogue with legitimate Hamas.

President Michel Suleiman is visiting south Lebanon to check on the location of the seven unloaded missiles that were pointed toward Israel and will pass by Qana.  The Lebanese know that those missiles were planted by soldiers from the UN peace keeping force hired by the CIA in order to start a rift in Lebanon’s political conditions and also to give Ehud Barak (the Zionist Defense Minister) extra lousy excuses to bomb Gaza.  The UN Peace keeping force is the only contingent there and is the sole responsible for any military activities and for securing stability, safety, and peace

Suleiman Frangieh visited yesterday the Maronite Patriarch in company with President Suleiman and the chairman Tarabey of the Maronite civil council.

Deputy Michel Aoun is visiting the Patriarch today and had a large gathering in Betroun.  He said that Seniora PM used the money deposited by Saudi Arabia for the reconstruction after the July War of 2006 and borrowed on it to line his pockets and spend on the next election campaign in Mai 2009. Walid Jumblat said that he was not happy with the tortuous maneuvers of Seniora with the Saudi money.

We have the problem of the formation of the “Constitution Council” that is responsible for validating election results.  Five members are to be elected in the Parliament and 5 to be selected by the council of ministers. It appears that the leaders had agreed on five names to be elected in the Parliament but Seniora PM, backed by Saad Hariri, elected one judge out of the consensus.  Now the opposition in the government demands the re-establishment of a “balanced” Constitution Council.

 

Note: Within 24 hours the number of Palestinian victims in Gaza climbed to 310 martyrs and over 1400 injured, most of them seriously dying.  The Israeli war of crimes against humanity is still raging on; the infamous Bush and Condo are blaming Hamas for “committing genocide against themselves”.  Every hour these numbers climb ominously amid the silence of al world leaders; only the populace is on the street and I wish violence on the US, Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia Embassies all round the world.

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Hypnotized reasoning or logic versus faith

Posted by: on: December 29, 2008

Hypnotized reasoning (December 27, 2008)

 

This article has nothing to do with hypnosis or its techniques or about subject (people) susceptible for being successfully hypnotized. 

The need to be creative in formulating titles to draw attention is a commendable attitude since the other objective for writing is to disseminate our individual reflection on matters that we think are important to be discussed.

My original title was “logic versus faith” which could be catchy enough since people associate faith as the counterpart for reasoning which is not correct in my view.

I had to rethink my title because this “versus” smack of philosophy (read boring essay) but it should not be boring as you have already realized.

           

Having “faith” is used by adolescents to shirk the effort of using their brain when faced with despair and the complex world of comprehending new realities. It is as if they have been hypnotized and their brain was locked on a restricted manner of comprehending the environment, human conditions and world view.  Thus, adolescents have always been susceptible to extreme positions and have been used as logs to burn in the incinerator of martyrdom.

           

The quality of “Faith” is positively related to the diversity and width of our reasoning efforts through reading, reflecting, discussing, and writing.  Faith is the consequence of a lifetime effort to knowing ourselves as we try to know our environment and the human conditions. 

In my mind, the opposite of faith is logic and not reasoning, even though many would like us to believe that logic is the foundation for sane reasoning, as if a technique is to define a concept and not one of the many means to comprehend.

           

Logic to me represents the whole set of the elements that lead us to accept an existing paradigm or way of thinking as the only true reality of the environment and human conditions. 

Example of paradigms, think of Galileo (it is the earth that rotates around the sun) or Einstein (time, duration, and locations are relative to the universal system you live in) or Heisenberg (you cannot measure simultaneously the location and the speed of a particle) or the many spiritual messages of the various religions, or how to raise children, how to educate children, how our subconscious affect our behavior, the Big Bang on the creation of the Universe, the creation and development of man, and on and on.

           

Every paradigm shift to viewing the environment and human conditions, in physical sciences or human sciences, is the bold attempt of comprehending by focusing on a different angle outside the predominant “faith”. It is fundamentally a call for another kind of “faith” and for apostles and disciples to disseminate the new faith. 

It does not mean that the new paradigm is the definite “truth”, it should not or we are back to being hypnotized, but that faith undergoes a qualitative jump each time human spirit reaches a level of critical threshold for development, seek and want more knowledge; quality faith is enriched when we decide to critic the existing status quo because the thrive for expanding our knowledge is backed by a healthy spirit for taking risks and exposing our limitations.

           

When we say “truth is the result of individual reflection” and not what society boxes us in, we are fundamentally calling to critic any ideology that wants us to delegate our mind and spirit to a set of constraints. 

We do exist because we are a reflecting species; everything changes when we decide to invest time and effort to understanding ourselves and our conditions. 

Even when we sit to contemplate and reflect we are making decision to change the environment and human conditions.

You have a higher chance for receiving “grace” when you take frequent breaks to seriously reflect.  The basic of all human rights is to be permitted to reflect, encouraged to reflect, and offered the facilities to reflect.


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