Archive for April 21st, 2020
Mining my diary: A Christmas Eve in Lebanon
Posted by: adonis49 on: April 21, 2020
Mining my diary: A Christmas Eve in Lebanon
Note: Re-edit of “Christmas Eve in a Christian family: Lebanon; ( Written in 2006 and posted on August 17, 2009)”
It is Sunday 10:20 a.m. of Christmas Eve 2006. The sky is clear, sunny, and somehow cold in the 15 degrees C . I woke up around 7:30 a.m. and my mom was already working in the kitchen.
My little niece Chelsea (6 already) was helping her out through countless suggestions; mom’s fingers were so cold that they felt crippled and then she decided to heat some water.
Nephew William was already gone. (Forgot to where)
I worked for an hour in the garden and gathered greens. Victor and family are off to Orthodox church (in M7idssi). Victor had to pick Cedric up from work late last night because Cedric had misplaced the car keys.
There was an explosion across from the American University in Beirut; we learned that it was a gas container of a small eatery.
I read and wrote till 11 a.m. and drove to Beit-Chabab. I did not find aunt Montaha. I dropped off three books at the local library and walked to visit my cousin Joseph Ghoussoub. I visited my aunt Theresa on my back home.
Victor dropped off Adrea home and resumed driving toward the supermarket Spinneys and returned around 4 o’clock.
I helped niece Adrea carry a few groceries. Joanna showed me the area where the gifts are stacked in a corner of the dining room in her grand-mom apartment.
I counted about 36 wrapped gifts and it seems that Yuhanna (Joanna’s beau) contributed about 5 gifts and helped Joanna last evening in wrapping gifts before they went out together.
I had lunch with mom because dad had already eaten, and Cedric and Adrea were eating in front of the TV screen.
I had a siesta from 2 to 4 p.m. Mom was exhausted and had a sponge bath. I picked up the dried clothes off the lines and went to my study room in the lower floor.
Adrea asked me whether I saw Joanna and she checked William’s bed because Joanna sometimes slept there for total privacy.
Mom is at my sister Raymonde’s on the third floor, helping her put the last touch for this evening dinner.
Ethiopia, backed by the USA, started the war against the Somali Islamists who are supported by Sudan and Eritrea. They found another 46 unidentified bodies in Iraq and half a dozen US soldiers were dead and injured yesterday.
Italy’s Brodi PM is in Lebanon and had visited his troops (the UNIFIL) in the south within the multinational forces.
I would like to spend my night at the Downtown where the opposition has erected 1,500 tents and four huge tents complete with all the amenities; each one of the large tents can accommodate 2,000 persons; a midnight mass will be held at St George’s cathedral there.
Joanna and Yuhanna had left around noon and spent 7 hours walking City Mall for a last spree of buying.
Ashley did her hair and dyed it and left about 2 p.m. with Cedric carrying a box of cake.
Cedric went jogging about 4 p.m. in the cold and froze his ass off.
The former boyfriend of Joanna, Hikmat, paid us a visit; he is on vacation from Toulouse (France) and working on lab research for the electromagnetic switches of micro robots (nano-technology) that are injected in the human body to perform non-invasive controlled surgery. In addition of grant money for his graduate studies, Hikmat teaches courses and loves Toulouse. As long as Hekmat is excited in his research project there are no chances that he might return to settle in Lebanon.
I joined the entire family after 8:30 p.m. and had a light dinner of salad, asparagus soup, an assortment of cheese and cold cuts, some pizza, and wine and Coca-Cola.
My dad went to sleep around 9:15; he usually sleeps by 8 p.m.
As usual, by 9:45 , little Chelsea started whining that she wanted to open the gifts so we moved to the sitting room and the unwrapping of gifts began.
William, Victor, Ashley, and Adrea took turn taking digital pictures. It took the better of two hours for this exercise and everybody was satisfied with his gifts; after much hugging and trying out of the gifts the midnight mass project was shot.
Adrea did not have to complain and cry this year because she got more than she expected and spent an awful lot of time trying everything she received.
Chelsea was ecstatic with the skirts and the red bunny pair of slippers.
My mom said that by tomorrow Raymonde will have to make room for the new clothes and send the older ones to the “Bon Pasteur“, a close-by Christian institution of nuns, where the offered bundles are supposedly redistributed to the needy.
Joanna prepared four copies of a 1.2-meter laminated board spread of her photos with her friends and family.
Yuhanna complained that the dog Misha had twice more photos than he had; worst, his two photos were not satisfactory because they showed him wearing the baggy white suit that he and Joanna were asked to wear while cleaning up a stretch of a beach for cleaning it up of oil spill during Israel pre-emptive July War.
Cedric was sprawled on the carpet amid his gifts of Jeans, the deodorants, and the underwear heaped upon him.
William received a “tak wan doo” white suit and a very long woolen shawl that he wrapped over his head as the Sikhs.
By midnight William went to sleep because he had to wake up at 4 am in order to join the yoga ashram in Gemmayzeh; Cedric hit the sac also.
Yuhanna brought with him the saxophone, expecting that we might enjoy a family concert with Joanna at her Jazz flute, and Adrea at my classical guitar (that I never touched), and William at my accordion (that I never played). This concert did not happen.
Around 12:30 we had cakes and most everybody was feeling drowsy; Yuhanna was to sleep overnight and William prepared him the folding sofa downstairs in the basement floor where he had set up his study, by my room study.
By 1:30 a.m. my mom and I carried our gifts down to our first level flat.
(Funny why I failed to mention what where the gifts I received or the one I gave?…I usually offer books that go unread, or cash in envelop, and so does mother…)
Who has this deficient strategic mind in the Middle-East? Israel or the USA?
Posted by: adonis49 on: April 21, 2020
Who has this deficient strategic mind in the Middle-East? Israel or the USA?
A couple of years after its creation in 1948 as a colonial implant, the State of Israel proved that its strategic mind, to impress upon its neighboring people to recognize its legitimacy, was failing in a consistent pattern of refusal to negotiate a peace treaty.
The State of Israel was recognized by a majority of a single vote in the UN in 1948, when most States had not earned their independence from colonial powers. And the partition of Palestine bypassed valid political negotiation by the concerned people.
Invariably, it is the Mossad agents (hired from Israelis, Palestinians, and “Arabs”) that planned and facilitated terrorist attacks everytime foreign States pressured Israel to resume peace negotiations.
Currently, the Israeli government is very unhappy: No “terrorist activities” are witnessed because the Palestinian government in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza are in better position to control and apprehend Israel’s Mossad agents.
Even Lebanon has dismantled over a dozen Mossad cells that initiated terrorist activities of missile launching and assassinating Palestinian leaders.
The “Wall of Shame” has been erected, supposedly to prevent external influences in this “happy ghetto”. And Israel has no excuses left to bring up terrorist scare tactics to bear on foreign States initiatives for peaceful negotiations.
Palestinians factions cannot infiltrate Israel unless aided by the Mossad and Israel’s security services.
There are no terrorist activities and yet Israel is adamantly resuming State assassinations of Palestinian leaders: Israel is praying that armed reactions by Palestinian factions will extend stupid excuses to Israel for putting negotiation on hold.
It is the habit of Israel to refuse peace since it is only happy on terms of total capitulation and apartheid humiliation behaviors.
Ariel Sharon proved to be by far the worst strategic mind as PM and as Defense minister.
In 1982, Sharon invaded Lebanon, entered the Capital Beirut, and “liberated” Lebanon from Yasser Arafat’s military wings.
Lebanon breathed easier as the “legal occupier” in Yasser Arafat was shipped to Tunisia in French ships.
Now, instead of withdrawing from Lebanon, Sharon decided to park in Lebanon for 25 more years.
This Israeli occupation in south Lebanon encouraged the Lebanese to fine tune their resistance activities. Israel was thus forced to vacate Lebanon in 2000 unilaterally and without any pre-conditions.
Currently, Lebanon is united against Israel: Hezbollah has captured a strategic position of military “retaliation capacities”.
Israel has to start dealing seriously with peace negotiation; it has no other options left.
Israel has no excuses left to decline negotiations with the worn out excuse “We have no reliable parties to deal with”.
Military mentality and successive military tactical “pre-emptive” victories are no basis for long-term strategic peace agreements that convince the neighboring people.
The US 6th fleet and overwhelming military and economic supports have limits.
The US can no longer convince its citizens that Israel is the best protector of its interest in the Middle East and has to shell $4bn a year to support Israel Industrial military infrastructure and vicious illegal settlements or colonies in Palestinian lands.
Israel has been encouraging “terrorist activities” through its agents in order to lay claim to its “rights” of defensive massive and disproportionate violent “reactions” and pre-emptive wars in Lebanon, Gaza, and the Palestinian camps in Palestine (West Bank and Gaza) and Lebanon.
In fact, all investigations showed that Israel undertook pre-emptive wars in periods that No “terrorist activities” were undertaken by Palestinians either in Lebanon (1982) or in Gaza (2008).
Israel behaved as if it didn’t need to delimit its borders in its Constitution and opted for an open border as pre-emptive military incursions allowed it to expand.
We are experiencing a paradox in Israel’s political and strategic decisions:
First, Israel refuses to submit to the UN an official map of its borders with the neighboring States and
Second, it built the “wall of shame”, a reminiscence of its “ghetto mentality”, under the unconvincing excuses of reducing “terrorist attacks”. In fact, it is a tactic of “No see Palestinians, then they do Not exist”
Since its creation in the Near-East, Israel never relinquished its British “apartheid” rights and detention laws to humiliate the Palestinians youth and commit State assassinations of Palestinian and “Arabic” leaders.
Almost every year, Israel invades Palestinian camps (supposed to be protected by the UN) and lay waste to camps and kills hundreds of Palestinian refugees under various pretences that the world community stopped to believe in their legitimacy.
Israel has been winning tactical military “victories” with unlimited supports from the successive US Administrations after Eisenhower.
Israel failed so far in securing peace and recognition by the Palestinian people and the neighboring Arab people.
The peace treaties with Egypt (under emergency law and dictatorship rules since the assassination of Sadat) and the monarchy in Jordan are not convincing and basically unilateral relative to the concerned people.
Israel conquered all Sinai in 1967 and waited until Gamal Abdel Nasser declared “What has been conquered by force cannot be recaptured but by force”. Thus, Israel was obliged to pump useless funds to defend far-flung borders until Israel was pressured to restitute conquered lands in 1973 by a victorious counter military offensive by the Egyptian and Syrian army.
The US refused to support Israel’s military expenditures in the Sinai and thus, Israel let go of desert lands after it alienated over 70 million Egyptians (currently 100 million).
In a sense, Sharon permitted Israel to rethink its strategic mind after many strategic failures against his will and Israel’s will.
In the final analysis, the US tax payers are paying the tabs twice: Once for expanding Israeli colonies and developing the Golan Height and again for Israel’s withdrawal from colonies and the Golan.
I am wondering who is the most deficient in strategic mind in the Middle East: Is it Israel or the US of America?
Tidbits #32
Posted by: adonis49 on: April 21, 2020
Tidbits #32
Funny. In the Western developed States, with this lockdown, the argument is: Do we have a moral imperative to continue the financial support of your hairdresser , your dog walker, babysitter, the kid’s piano teacher, your yoga instructor?
Rewilding? The term was popularized in the late 1990s by two American biologists (pdf), who argued that conservation shouldn’t mean just conserving an area of land but bringing back predators that kept the ecosystem functioning in its natural state.
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In States that established social safety net for employment and health.. allowed individualism to reign. But in places without those means, collectivism is often the order of the day.
Lockdown reminded us that “When a poor person fall, we fall together. Survival is a collective exercise”
Should I feel much better? The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 has already been identified, genetically sequenced, and given a name (SARS-CoV-2). And what the next in line SARS-CoV-3 will spread?
An estimated 280,000 US health care workers don’t have papers and they still have to worry about being deported.
Palestinian prisoners in Israel are being subjected to a harsher version of Auschwitz: Let them all die of Covid-19. Let them take all their time to die in their confinement.
Guess why. There were no US school shootings in March. It was the first March without one since 2002.
France King Charles 9 in the 16th century, eldest son of Catherine of Medici, moved the new year from April 1st to January 1st and labeled April 1st, April Fool.
April 1st was the new year in all Middle-East since antiquity. March was the month for celebration to culminate on the first of April.
A new breathing aid device would deliver oxygen to the lungs while cutting the need for ventilators, helping keep patients out of intensive care.
“The combination of uncertainty and danger…feeds an intense desire for certainty, better known to psychologists as the need for cognitive closure,” writes psychologist Arie Kruglanski in The Conversation. “It is the time when authoritative, confident direction is much preferred over flexible, laissez-faire guidance. We need to be told what to do, plain and simple.”
The world’s biggest manufacturer of condoms said its stockpile will last just two more months.
Remember: On this date April 17, Israel bombed a UN compound in Qana (Lebanon) killing 106 civilians who thought they were fleeing to “security”. The US blocked all judicial attempts in their courts for reparation (I was in the US and witnessed a few lawyers valiantly lodging complaints in the names of victims, at no avail)
The purpose of Share on social platforms is to disseminate what opinions and articles match your world view. Use it instead of pressing Like.
India’s idle huge rail network trains with carriages having plenty of space could be used for Covid-19 patients.
And this fat and flatulent Winston Churchill visits the battle field of Zama near Carthage. He wanted to pay his respect to the victory of the Romans in 1942, just as the allies recaptured north Africa. This ultimate of racist claimed that this battle was the beginning of the barbarian western civilization. And culture and civilization was at an end and mankind wasted 2,500 years of sustained growth and progress
Carthage was New York and Shagai combined.
It was the financial and economic power of the Mediterranean Basin
It was the industrial capital of the ancient world.
It had 700,000, most of them were foreign workers and artisan of about 500,000, sort of Dubai
Its building were of 8 floors, nothing comparables then
It could produce in record time scores of ships, for commerce and navy
It had ports almost in every known country where it stored its raw materials and traded with the autochtones.
Tunisia produced as much wheat as Egypt and had the best agricultural experts.
On April 17, French mandated troops over Syria vacated the land forcefully. Since then, French institutions were trained to hate the valiant Syrian people. France had handed to Turkey Syrian lands the size of current Syria.
Africa’s total external debt is $700 billion and its debt service this year alone is $44 billion, so the fear is some of the world’s most under-resourced health systems would suffer with debt repayments being prioritized in the middle of a global pandemic. The World Bank and IMF were early to call for some form of debt relief, perhaps forbearance. China alone loaned $140 bn
It is dawning on me this hypothesis: the air in airplanes and sleeping quarters in ships contributed largely in spreading the Covid-19
Adonis Diaries 