Posts Tagged ‘biography’
Is it mostly “mislove”? Irrespective of Mid-life crisis?
Note: Re-edit of “Is it Love, Regret, Mid-life crisis…or “Misslove”? April 1, 2012″
We really don’t regret the dreadful acts: We regret not having made more of them when society considered us to be at a stupid and reckless age…
We regret not having far more sex, not going out with more blind dates, beautiful women or thought they were too above our condition to talk to, lovely girls we dared not approach…
And ending up with the recollection of pretty much a dry desert of a romantic life, tumbleweeds ever blowing any which way…
You are happiest when your mind wander the least at the task you are doing: Mainly when you are having sex…
One of the partner will keep reminding you to focus on the job.
Even in close battle contact, having sex is a happier moment than shooting at someone else.
Young people and middle-age people who sign on to go to war are the one who were not “having any“: They are delusional that if they could not have sex in peacetime that wartime will bring far higher opportunities, sort of the army bringing in and paying for whores…
Best time to die for men is when your sex engagement seems to have finally reached its climax in performance…of what you could ever achieve later on.
For women, climax is an addiction, and the best time to die is when the offer is getting rare…or of much lower quality in endurance or shame attitude…Sort of the male partner having this attitude: “I don’t give a damn what you think of my performance; I just got some...”
As Marcus Berkmann wrote:
“Heterosexual men in mid-life crisis have a strong sense that, in mild weather conditions, there are more attractive women than they ever dreamed off in their youth.
Where were the attractive girls when I was younger?
The answer is that at the age of 55, men have included in their gawking a vaster range of women, starting from age 15 to 50…”
The trick is that sex was displaced to the realm of the mind: The mind is a far livelier, vivid, imaginative part that never rest or take a break from lusting…and going nowhere but circling in a vicious loop.
Trust is a one-year old baby laughing when you throw him in the air: How much trust is in any relationship? That is why sex-toys are the rage.
The largest group are the divorced people, and they enjoy the highest rate of sex frequency in an average month (6 to 10 times), and only 1% of this group admitted having none, compared to all the other unhappy cluster groups.
No wonder why people divorce in trove within the first 7-year stunt of marriage.
In the 18th century, marriages didn’t fail: They ended. How so?
Life expectancy was so short that 25% of weddings were of the re-marriage kind.
In any case, sex was truly in the 5th position on the list of priority in marriage after trust, companionship, sense of humor, and financial stability…
The extended family lived and slept together in one room…
Mid-life crisis has nothing to do with age: It is a sudden realization.
The cause of the crisis is:
“You feel suddenly that you reached an impasse, and you are in no mood for making a U-turn promptly”. By the time you decide for a U-turn, you have made a fool of yourself so abundantly that you have no shame anymore…
Mid-life crisis is the realization that we truly are going to die. Anytime soon.
And we dare not contemplate “When am I going to be next?”
We want to forget this sudden reality, anyway that tempt us, especially having more varied sex opportunities…We don’t want to die having this Regret of “Not had enough sex”
Mid-life crisis people feel that their varieties and intensity of shame and fear are far less in number or acuity.
I think that in critical situations, particularly when a childhood memory plays the catalyst, mid-age sense of shame and fear are much higher than in youth period.
In any case, Jealousy is still there, more intense and livelier.
Jealousy simply lacks the vital space of larger interactions with people, and the occasional encounters are very short, and the stamina to act on it is horribly reduced…
In Mid-life you hear more often “Let me present you my mistress, lover, girlfriend, special friend…” How about the more appropriate and dignified term “Misslove“?
In youth, mankind is an animal in the flesh; at older age he is an animal in the mind.
With rare exceptions, those very few in the very end of the tail of the “normal curve”, the rest of us 99.999% have no foundations to claim superiority over any specie.
We just take umbrage based on the performances of the very few.
And this is not a logical exercises!
This essay applies to the female gender too.
A quick biography of late Antoun Saadeh: Founder of Syrian National Social Party (since 1936)
Posted by: adonis49 on: September 28, 2016
A quick biography of late Antoun Saadeh:
Founder of Syrian National Social Party (since 1936)
Abou Majed with شوقي خير الله and 50 others.
بعرف إنو كلكم قاريين عن حياة الزعيم، بس تنشيط الذاكرة منيح
وقفات العزّ فيك بتعتزّ
أنطون سعادة (1 مارس 1904 – 8 يوليو 1949)، مؤسس الحزب السوري القومي الاجتماعي. ولد في بلدة الشوير في جبل لبنان. والده الدكتور خليل سعادة ووالدته نايفة نصير خنيصر.
تلقى علومه الأولى في مدرسة الفرير في القاهرة، وبعد وفاة والدته عاد إلى الوطن ليعيش في كنف جدته حيث سافر والده للعمل في الأرجنتين، وأكمل علومه في مدرسة برمانا. عام 1919 هاجر مع أخوته إلى الولايات المتحدة الأميركية وهناك عمل عدة أشهر في محطة للقطارات وبعدها انتقل إلى البرازيل حيث المقر الجديد لعمل والده.
في البرازيل، أقبل على نهل العلوم بمواظبة واهتمام على يد أبيه، وانكب على دراسة اللغات بجهد شخصي (برتغالية، الألمانية، و الروسية). بعدها، اتجهت قراءاته إلى الفلسفة والتاريخ وعلم الاجتماع والسياسة. وما لبث أن شارك والده في إصدار جريدة الجريدة، ثم في مجلة المجلة.
ظهرت كتاباته الأولى عندما كان في الثامنة عشرة. ونشر خلال عامي 1922 – 1923 عدة مقالات طالب فيها بإنهاء الاحتلال الفرنسي واستقلال سوريا ، واستشرف مشروع الحركة الصهيونية وخطره على سوريا الطبيعية رابطاً بين وعد بلفور بوطن قومي لليهود في فلسطين وبين اتفاقية سايكس بيكو التي قسمت سوريا الطبيعية إلى خمس كيانات.
حاول عام 1925 تأليف حزب لتوحيد أبناء الجالية السورية في البرازيل باسم “الشبيبة الفدائية السورية”، لكنه لم يلاق نجاحاً. وأعاد المحاولة عام 1927 فأسس “حزب السوريين الأحرار”، الذي توقف نشاطه بعد ثلاث سنوات.
وإثر توقف مجلة المجلة عن الصدور (1928) انصرف أنطون سعادة إلى التعليم في بعض المعاهد السورية في ساو باولو، كما شارك في بعض اللجان التربوية التي أقامتها الحكومة البرازيلية للإشراف على تطوير المناهج التعليمية، وفي هذه الفترة كتب رواية “فاجعة حب” التي نشرت فيما بعد في بيروت، وفي صيف 1931 أصدر روايته الثانية “سيدة صيدنايا”.
في تموز 1930 عاد أنطون سعادة إلى الوطن من البرازيل، وبعد إقامة قصيرة في ضهور الشوير سافر إلى دمشق لدراسة إمكانية العمل السياسي فيها، كونها العاصمة التاريخية لسوريا ومركز المعارضة السياسية للانتداب الفرنسي، فمارس التعليم لتأمين رزقه، وكتب سلسلة من المقالات في الصحف الدمشقية “اليوم، القبس، ألف باء”، لكنه سرعان ما عاد إلى بيروت (1931) وبدأ بإعطاء دروس من خارج الملاك في اللغة الألمانية في الجامعة الأميركية في بيروت. وقد أتاح له التدريس ساحة واسعة للحوار الفكري مع الطلبة والوسط الثقافي، إضافة إلى منابر فكرية أتاحتها له عدة جمعيات ثقافية في بيروت، منها : العروة الوثقى – جمعية الاجتهاد الروحي للشبيبة – “النادي الفلسطيني”. وقد حفلت هذه المحاضرات ببواكير فكرة القومي الاجتماعي في مرحلة ما قبل إعلان الحزب، وهو ما تمخض عنه فيما بعد العقيدة القومية الاجتماعية، المنهج الفكري للحزب السوري القومي الاجتماعي الذي أسسه في 16 تشرين الثاني 1932، وكان حزباً سرياً بسبب الظروف الصعبة الناجمة عن الانتداب الفرنسي على سوريا الشمالية (لبنان وسوريا).
الوطن السوري كما يراه الحزب السوري القومي الاجتماعي
في عام 1933 أعـاد أنطون سعادة إصدار مجلة “المجلة” في بيروت لتساهم في توضيح أسس النهضة السورية القومية الاجتماعية التي طرحها، وعلى صفحاتها ظهرت في المشرق العربي، ولأول مرة، دراسات تحليلية لموضوع “الأمة” استناداً إلى علم الاجتماع الحديث، وبرؤية مستقلة عن نظريات الغرب التي فلسفت الأمة من منظور عرقي، وسياسي أحياناً أخرى.
في حزيران عام 1935، وبعد أن أصبح انتشار الحزب ملموساً في الأوساط الشبابية والثقافية، أقام سعادة الاجتماع العام الأول رغم سرية الحزب، وفي هذا الاجتماع ألقى خطاباً مكتوباً هـو من أهم الوثائق الفكرية في العقيدة السورية القومية الاجتماعية، ودليل عمل حركة النهضة القومية الاجتماعية التي يهدف إليها الحزب، لكن سلطات الانتداب الفرنسي سرعان ما اكتشفت أمر الحزب نتيجة معلومة نقلها رئيس الجامعة الأميركية إلى السلطة الفرنسية، فاعتقلت في 16 تشرين الثاني 1935 سعادة وعدداً من الأعضاء بتهمة تشكيل جمعية سرية والإخلال بالأمن العام والإضرار بأمن الدولة وتغيير شكل الحكم، فأصدرت سلطات الانتداب الفرنسي قراراً بسجنه ستة أشهر، أكمل خلالها كتابة مؤلفه العلمي “نشوء الأمم” الذي صدرت طبعته الأولى عام 1938. وخرج من السجن في 12 أيار 1936.
اعتقلت سلطات الانتداب سعادة مرة ثانية في 30 حزيران 1936 (أي بعد أسابيع من الإفراج عنه) لأن مشروع سعادة أصبح يهدد السياسة الاستعمارية الفرنسية بفصل لبنان عن سوريا التاريخية ،وتشكيل لبنان كقدم لفرنسا في الشرق الأوسط، وظل في السجن إلى 12 تشرين الثاني 1936 وخلال هذه الفترة أنجز سعادة كتابه شرح مبادئ الحزب وغايته.
أعيد اعتقاله في 9 آذار 1937 وظل في السجن حتى 15 أيار 1937. وفي 14 تشرين الأول 1937 أصدر جريدة النهضة التي استقطبت النخبة الثقافية الشابة في تناول السياسة الخارجية والأمور الفكرية والردّ على القوى السياسية المناوئة، وقد حظيت ردود سعادة القومية على البطريرك الماروني والأحزاب الانعزالية في لبنان والشام باهتمام كبير من مختلف الأوساط.
في 11 حزيران 1938 غادر سعادة الوطن في جولة على فروع الحزب في المغتربات. وسافر براً من بيروت إلى الأردن ومنها إلى فلسطين، حيث اجتمع مع السوريين القوميين الاجتماعيين في عمان وفي حيفا. ثم إلى قبرص وألمانيا، ومنها سافر إلى البرازيل، حيث استقر في سان باولو مرتع صباه (كانون الأول 1938). وفور مغادرته بيروت قامت سلطات الانتداب بمداهمة مركز الحزب، وعطلت صحيفة النهضة، وحظرت على السوريين القوميين الاجتماعيين ممارسة العمل الحزبي، كما أصدرت مذكرة قضائية بمحاكمة سعادة. سجن شهراً في البرازيل بضغط من فرنسا، فغادر إلى الأرجنتين بعد خروجه وومكث فيها حتى أيار 1940 وظل في مغتربه القسري حتى عام 1947 وأصدر خلال هذه الفترة جريدة “الزوبعة”. بعد جلاء القوات الفرنسية عام 1946 حاول العودة إلى لبنان لكن تحالف بشارة الخوري (رئيس الجمهورية) ورياض الصلح (رئيس الحكومة) كان يعرقل عودته بحجة الحكم القضائي الصادر بحقه منذ أيام الانتداب. في 2 آذار 1947 وصلت طائرة سعادة إلى بيروت فأصدرت الحكومة اللبنانية في أعقاب الاستقبال الكبير مذكرة توقيف بحقه وألغتها في تشرين الأول 1947.
قام بإطلاق حركـة مواجهة قومية شاملة خلال حرب فلسطين 1948. وكان رد فعل الحكومة اللبنانية مباشراً، إذ أصدرت سلسلة قرارات منعت بموجبها الحزب من عقد الاجتماعات العلنية وحدثت عدة صدامات بين أعضاء الحزب والسلطة خلال احتفالات آذار 1949 وبعد الانتخابات البرلمانية الملغاة لجأ على إثرها سعادة إلى دمشق. استقبله حسني الزعيم، وبعد شهر، سلمه للسلطات اللبنانية وفق صفقة يوم 7 تموز 1949 فحاكمته وأعدمته فجر يوم 8 يوليو/تموز 1949.
Typical modern Neo-Liberal Expatriates: Contractor class in Lebanon political/social structure. Part 4
Posted by: adonis49 on: February 22, 2013
Typical modern Contractor class in Lebanon political/social structure
You may refer to a previous article on modern Neoliberal Expatriate Contractor class in Lebanon that added a new social/political divide in the community structure https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/complicating-the-class-divide-new-contractor-bourgeoisie-in-lebanon-politics/
The biography of how four of them have accumulated so much wealth is developed in this article:
1. Late Rafik Hariri PM left the city of Saida for Saudi Arabia in 1964. He suffered a few bankruptcies in his civil work contracts. During the oil boom that started in the early 70’s in the Arab Gulf Emirates, Hariri struck gold in 1976 by teaming up with Nasr al Rashid.
Nasr was a Saudi engineer from a prominent family. Al Rashid relied increasingly on Rafik’s ingenuity for fulfilling highly complex public civil work contracts in Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi “rentier or renter State” was an important catalyst for quickly amassing wealth once the proper contacts and connections were established.
In early 1980,Rafik acquired a private plane and the fleet increased in varieties, cost, a luxury.
In 1982, Hariri connected directly with King Fahd after Israel preempted another war on Lebanon and entered the Capital Beirut. King Fahd took over the “cleaning-up” of Beirut city center (the demarcation line among the warring factions in the civil war) and extended to Rafik the necessary checkbook diplomacy to carry out reconciliation in the Chouf war of 1983.
The checkbook was ready in the Geneva and Lausanne (Switzerland) meetings in 1983 and 84. And the diplomacy disbursement resumed in the militia agreement in 1985, to be followed by the Taif agreement on a new Constitution for Lebanon in 1989.
In the early 1980, Rafik acquired Bank Mediterranean, and King Fahd disposed of $2 bn between 1983-96 for a student loan program so that strapped Lebanese could continue education overseas. Over 32, 000 students benefited from this program, and most of them were Sunni Moslems.
In 1991, Rafik Hariri was positioned to be assigned Prime Minister…
As Rafik was assassinated in 2004, it turned out that his wealth amounted to $14 bn, and Seniora PM made sure to tax this fortune at $2 million, instead of the regulation 10%.
2. The wealth of the brothers Mikati (Taha and Najib) derives from the Arabian Construction Company, founded in 1967 in Abu Dhabi.
At some points, Taha subcontracted from Rafik Hariri.
In 1982, they founded a telecom company Investcom, which penetrated Sudan, Liberia, and Yemen. It ran an analogue mobile phone network during the civil war in Lebanon.
The Invest company M1 Group owns real estates in New York and London, and the French fashion Faconnable, and interests in oil explorations in Latin Columbia State.
In 1983, the Mikati brothers bought the licence for the British Bank of Lebanon.
In 1988, they created the Azm was Saade Foundation, which provided health and social services, mostly in Tripoli.
In 1994, the mobile Cellis had won a “Build-Operate-Transfer” (BOT) project and the brothers owned one third of the shares. The political gimmicks to extend the BOT from 10 to 20 years failed to materialize, as the President Lahoud was steadfast in retaining this State-controlled communication entity, and Najib Mikati PM allocated to himself $60 million in compensation.
3. Issam Fares, a Greek Orthodox from the district of Akkar, by the Syrian border, started as a merchant in the Lebanese-based Abela Group with vast food trading in Saudi Arabia.
Fares owned a controlling interest in Netherlands-based Balast Nedam and his civil work activities skyrocketed. This company secured lucrative contracts, such as building the bridge linking Saudi Arabia to Bahrain.
Fares created the holding company Wedge Group and opened Wedge Bank in Lebanon in 1983.
The Issam Fares Foundation was established in 1987.
4. Muhammad Safadi (current minister of finance and deputy to the Parliament) hails from a Tripoli established trading family. He migrated to Saudi Arabia in 1975.
Safadi established close relations with the head of Saudi air force Prince Turk al Nasr. He became rich building residential compounds.
In 2000, Safadi was elected deputy and also instituted the Safadi Foundation that offers health, educational, and social services in Tripoli.
Consequently, as a new wealthy Contractor who struck gold in Saudi Arabia, he allied with the March 14 movement against Syria occupation of Lebanon, after the assassination of Rafik Hariri. Seniora PM appointed Safadi minister of public work in 2005.
In 2008, Mikati PM extended to Safadi he portfolio of minister of economy and trade, and then minister of finance in 2011.
“My memories of University of Oklahoma at Norman…”: From my recollection and Iranian author Azar Nafisi memories of “Reading Lolita in Tehran”
Posted by: adonis49 on: November 16, 2012
“These are my memories at the University of Oklahoma…”: From another person recollection…
I wrote extensively in my autobiography on the city of Norman and the University of Oklahoma during two periods of higher education. And here I am reading “Reading Lolita in Tehran” and am taken aback that Iranian author Azar Nafisi also studied and lived many years there, and may have joined the same demonstrations that I participated in…
Azar started her studies in English literature early in the 1970’s, when the US students were demonstrating against the war in Vietnam.
I arrived in the summer of 1975, and the Vietnam war had ended, and the demonstrations were headed by the Iranian student movements against the Shah of Iran, and I had started my MS degree in Industrial engineering…
What follows is Nafisi’s recollection (and whatever comments I might butt in are in parenthesis).
“Red earth and fireflies, singing and demonstrating on South Oval lawn, reading Melville, Poe, Lenin and Mao, reading Ovid and Shakespeare on warm spring mornings, singing revolutionary songs…
(I read all of Lenin, Mao, and even the North KoreanKim Il Sung in Lebanon before I left to the USA. The civl war in Lebanon had just started. On several occasions, I had to rely on the Red Cross for news on my family safety status, and mails were dispatched via Paris where I had relatives…)
At night watching new films by Bergman, Fellini, Godard, and Pasolini… (I watched their movies in Beirut, and kept watching all the European movies on Friday evening, organized by the film student association, usually in the microbiology department by the main library. It is in one of these Fridays that I saw what I thought was the most beautiful girl in the wide world…)
One of my radical professor David singing on his guitar:
“Long-haired preachers come out every night
And they tell you what’s wrong and what’s right
And when you ask them for something to eat…
Work and pray, live on hay, you will get pie
In the sky when you die.
That’s a lie!”
Four of my favorite English professors were of different political leaning. Dr. Yoch was conservative, Dr. Gross was a revolutionary, and the two liberal Dr. Veile and Dr. Elconin.
Taking over the administration building, occasional streakers running across the green toward the redbrick main library…
The suffering ROTC students trying to ignore our presence, while we were protesting against the Vietnam war. (After 1975, our demonstrations were mainly against the Shah of Iran, since most of the radical students were Iranians of the two Marxist factions of Mujahideen Khalk and Fedayeen Khalk…)
Later, I would go to parties with my true love Ted, who introduced me to Nabokov, and gave me “Ada”, writing on the flyleaf “To Azar, my Ada”
I reluctantly joined the Iranian Students movement: I was more of a rebel than a politics activist, and I never fully integrated into the movement…
In the Univ. of Oklahoma at Norman, the Iranian movement was a chapter of the World Confederation of Iranian Students. The militant branch of the Revolutionary Communist Party RSB and the Third World Committee Against Imperialism were created later on.
The Marxist elements in the movement came to dominate the group and the male members wore Che Guevara sports jackets and boots. The women cropped their hair short, no makeup, and wore Mao jackets and khaki pants… I insisted on wearing long dresses, I didn’t cut my hair, and loved reading “counterrevolutionary” authors such as TS Eliot, Austen, Plath, Fitzgerald, Nabovov…and occasionally delivered speeches in rallies.
The Iranian students held study groups, reading Engels‘s “Origin of the family, Private Properties, and the State“, and Marx’s “The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte”.
The mood was revolutionary and the romantic atmosphere infectious, and the Iranian students were at the forefront of the struggle…(Eventually bringing Ayatollah Khomeini to power, who ultimately instituted a theocratic system… I was there as a few secular and radical factions supported the return of Khomeini, and I attended a few of their meetings)
In the fall of 1977, I got married with Bijan Nadiri, whom I met 2 years earlier at a meeting at Berkeley.
I felt nostalgic about places in Iran and famiyl, but the meetings mostly tried to reconstruct another Iran.
The movement started discouraging alcoholic beverages, dancing or playing “decadent” music during Iranian celebrations: They wanted us to avoid the “bourgeois” habits of studying…
The most radical faction “The Confederation of Iranian Students” convened a conference in Oklahoma City. One of the members, a former running champion, was suspected of being a SAVAK agent (the Shah’s secret services). This suspect war lured into a room at the Holiday Inn and tortured to “extract” the truth… He manged to escape.
The next day, several FBI agents barged into the conference. As the suspect reached the “culprit” or the leader, he broke down and cried and asked in Persian “Why did you treat me so cruelly?”, but he refrained to expose his tormentors, and left with the FBI agents.
The news were reported in the Univ. “Oklahoma Daily” and there were heated discussions engaged in coffee shops and the Student Union…Many boasted of the “power of the masses“. Many others quoted Stalin on the need to “destroy once and for all the Trotskyites, the White Guards, the termites, and poisonous rats…” Many defended the right of the masses to torture and physically eliminate their oppressors…
Azar warned: “Be careful what you wish for. The Islamic revolution will answer the wishes of the radical students and destroy the left-leaning and westernized citizens…Could my former comrades have predicted that one day they would be tried in a revolutionary Islamic court? Tortured, humiliated, put in jail, and executed as traitors and spies? They could not have predicted these outcomes, Not in their wildest dreams…”
I wanted to do comparative study of the American literature of the 20’s and 30’s. I thought Fitzgerald represented the 20’s generations, but I had difficulty selecting a counterpoint in the 30’s, like Steinbeck, Farrell or Dos Passos..
And here I come across the real proletarians, whose spirit was best captured by Mike Gold, the radical editor of the popular literary journal “New Masses“. Gold was a big shot in his day: Even Hemingway took notice. Gold had called Thornton Wilder “the Emily Post of culture“
Guevara the Arab: Al Kassam (1871-1935)
Have you heard of these homemade missiles Al Kassam that the resistance in Gaza launch on the nearest Israeli colonies? Particularly when Israel kill leaders using drones or fighter jets to bomb public institutions, schools, hospitals…?
Have you heard of the military wing of Hamas in Gaza called Al Kassam Brigade?
Ezzeldin Al Kassam was born in this small Syrian village of Jabli in the district of Lattakieh. In the last 20 years of his life, Al Kassam was leading groups of fighters against the colonial powers of France (in Syria), England (in Palestine) and Italy (in Libya) during the Omar Al Mokhtar mass uprising that started in 1911.
At the age of 14, Ak Kassam was sent by his father to Egypt to study at the famous religious university of Al Azhar. He witnessed the mass uprising lead by Arabi Pasha against the military occupation of the British of Egypt, and was immersed in the liberal interpretation of the Islam religion at that period.
He returned to his hometown a religious sheikh and Imam of the Mosque Al Mansouri and confronted the feudal landlords.
In 1912, Ezzeldin established a school, teaching kids in the morning and the adults late in the afternoon.
He assembled a group ofSyrian revolutiopnaries, trained them and led them to fight the Italian occupiers in Lybia, alongside the national leader Omar Al Mokhtar.
When the French troops, mandated to occupy Syria and Lebanon, landed in 1918, Ak Kassam was ready to to engage in guerrila operations. He took refuge with his insurgents in the forteress of Zion in the Lattakieh district.
Between 1919 and 1920, Al Kassam allied with the resistance heros of Ibrahim Hanano, Saleh Ali, and Omar Bitar…The small Syrian army was defeated by the French troops at the battle of Maysaloun in 1920, and the Independence of Syria was shelved for over 15 years.
Al Kassam was sentenced to be executed in absentia, and he fled to Haifa in Palestine.
By 1925, Al Kassam became chairman of the Islamic Youth Association and the Imam of the Mosque Al Istiklal (independence) in Haifa.
In 1929, the Zionist jews were planning to burn down the Mosque, and Ezzeldin refused to demand from the British protection, stating: “This Mosque will be protected by our blood...”
The mass desobediance movement of Al Kassam was waged in two fronts: First, against the British occupiers, and second, against the increased immigration of the Jews into Palestine.
In August 1929, the Zionists tried to occupy the western wall (the lamentation wall) of the Mosque Al Aqsa in Jerusalem, called the Al Brak Wall (in honor of the name of the horse of Prophet Muhammad). This incident led to many casualties and more violent activities began at a wider scales.
From 1929 to 1935, Ak Kassam organized his insurgents into 5 secret branches: 1. The religious leaders with the task of connecting with the masses and peasants, 2. the branch for supplying arms and ammunition, 3. the branch for military training, 4. the branch for gathering intelligence on the movement of the british and the Zionists, and 5. the Foreign political communication branch…
On a December night of 1935, Al Kassam lead 25 of his fighters to the hills of Yo3bod in order to disseminate the spirit of mass uprising. The British were in waiting and ambushed the guerrilas and assassinated them. Al Kassam had warned the Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin Husseini of his intention and the reply was that “the conditions are not ripe for a mass disobedience uprising…”
After the killing of Al Kassam, a monster mass disobedience uprising engulfed all of Palestine against the British for 3 full years, from 1936-to 1939. The British Empire had to dispatch 100, 000 soldiers to quell this uprising, committing all kinds of atrocities and applying new torture methods that the Nazi in Germany emulated unchanged…
Simone Weil: No credible philosophy without active field engagement, and position on Zionism…
Posted by: adonis49 on: October 5, 2012
Simone Weil: No credible philosophy without active field engagement…
Simone Weil was concerned to find links between the state of Gravity (miseries, injustices, brute force, subjugation…) and the state of Grace (Justice, equitable treatment, civil rights, political rights…) in this century of global turmoil and global wars.
How can people balance the repeated society massive submission to the power-to-be (following orders that are terribly evil) and the individual tendency to avoid harming innocent people?
Are the systematic coercive structure and violent acts of totalitarianism behind this recurring mass subjugation phenomena throughout history?
Desiring to know the truth is a yearning to be in direct touch with reality, no matter how cruel and brutal it might be. For example, if you claim to describe the conditions and represent the working class, you must be engaged in the daily work activities of the worker, and be connected to the actual working people in specific domain of productions…
Weil visited Germany in 1932 and experienced the incapacity of the German communist party to be freed from the Soviet dictate and Soviet bureaucracy. Consequently, faced this rude reality, Weil dropped her previous revolutionary positions due to the total passive behavior of the communists in Germany.
In 1934-35, Weil took a sabbatical from teaching, and worked at the factories of Alsthom and Renault as a daily worker. She kept a diary, and she had to share the workers daily conditions and feelings on the floor-shop, if she had to talk of the working class…
In 1936, Weil was side by side with the Spanish anarchists during the civil war…
Simone Weil proclaimed to study the ancient mythologies, the metaphysical texts, the universal folkloric stories…with the same intellectual probity of attitude. She was opposed to apartheid Zionist ideology and had harsh critics of the radical Hebraic practiced religion:
1. All that is inspired from the Old Testament by Christianity is bad…
2. The concept of Sanctity in the Church was emulated from the Sanctity notion of Israel…
3. Up until the Israelite were exiled to Babylon, not a single character in the Bible was not soiled by horrible acts…
4. Daniel was initiated to the Chaldean wise culture in captivity…
5. The Genesis is a compendium of all the Egyptian stories, transported and adapted… (including the Near-East culture)
6. Weil cannot comprehend how a reasonable mind can see similarity between Jehovah and the Father of the New Testament…
7. The mission of Israel was to acknowledge the unity of a God, without discriminating among people, culture, and the principles of Good and Evil…
8. The Hebrew attributed to God all that is considered supernatural, what is divine and what is demonic: Simply because they view their God in the angle of Power and not in the approach of what is Good and what is Evil…Viewing God of Power denies any intermediary between the believer and God, although there is no alternative to an Mediator. Otherwise, God is emptied of divinity and is reduced to a racial and national entity that is directly accessible to anyone (with evil intentions)…
9. The ancient Egyptians and Greeks had this recognition that God is The Good. The God of the Hebrew was carnal, collective, heavy…who engaged in temporal promises.
10. Weil rejects “National God” and refuses the notion of a “Promised Land“…
Note: Simone Weil published “Gravity and Grace”, “The rooting” (L’enracinement)
“Library Antoine” Lebanon, Antoine Naufal, Kamal Ataturk, French mandate…
Posted by: adonis49 on: September 12, 2012
“Library Antoine, Lebanon”, Antoine Naufal, Kamal Ataturk, French mandate over Lebanon (1919-1946)
A biographical book, published in French, was undertaken by Nayla, one of the 4 daughters of late Antoine Nawfal (father of the Girls) who died of cancer in 1981. The book was written by Nadia Anid.
Antoine Naufal established in 1933 the first branch of “Library Antoine” in Bab Idriss (Beirut) during the French mandate. This branch was demolished during the civil war. Another branch was opened in Hamra, and lately in Ashrafieh.
The Library initially catered for school books, and focused mainly on French publications during and after the French mandate.
Antoine had a tough upbringing: The family had to flee from Turkey (the city of Mersin) during the dictatorship of Kamal Ataturk and relocated several times before settling in Lebanon.
After WWI, Ataturk started his antics and forced the settled Levantines to immigrate, by burning the Christian houses…The father Selim of the Naufal family (three boys and two girls) grabbed the few gold coins they had and waited for the train (run by the Germans) to take them to Alexandretta (Alexandrina).
Alexandretta was part of Syria and under the French mandated power. The Levantines thought that they were finally at peace, but France reneged on its responsibility and handed over Ataturk the region of Alexandretta in 1936.
The Naufal family had relocated to Lebanon in 1930, under duress from the nationalist Turks, and settled in the town of Baabdat (north Metn district). Baabdat had many families who lived in Mersin and had returned to Lebanon.
Selim, father of Antoine, was a master tailor who practised in Marseille for a couple of years, and the family owned factories for weaving cottons and other kinds of cloths, and were living the grand bourgeois life-style.
Selim could never adapt to his Lebanese surrounding and kept repeating: “These cucumbers are no match to the ones in Misrine…while sipping on arak and nibbling on the mezze of vegetable on the table”
It happened that both major relocations took place during Christmas nights, as the turkey was readied to be served, before the fires started in the neighboring houses and in the house proper. Selim vowed: “From now on, I don’t want to see any turkey in the house...”
Kamal Ataturk had declared that “Turkey is for the Turks” and conducted campaigns to kick out from Turkey the Levantines (people from Syria and Lebanon), the Greeks, the Armenians, and basically anyone who was not a Moslem…
And who are the Turks?
They are nomads from the current State of Turkmenistan and its neighboring countries (Central Asia). These nomadic tribes coalesced under the leadership of a Seljuk Khan and defeated a large Byzantine army around the end of the 11th century and settled in the more fertile land of eastern Turkey.
The Seljuk opted for Konia as Capital and conquered Syria, Lebanon, and part of Palestine. They were the main forces who battled with the crusaders for two centuries.
Before and during the WWI, many families from Lebanon had settled in Turkey, and mainly in the prosperous city of Mersin and in Adana. Families like Khawli, Lahoud, Sayegh, Khalil, Saad (Habib Basha Saad was the first president of Lebanon during the mandate)…
Antoine once said: “I was never a child. I never had an anniversary or received any gift on special occasions. I was never called Tony. I was always Antoine, the elder son with the responsibility of taking care of the family…”
Antoine started working very early on and couldn’t finish his high school. He found a job at a library in Beirut (Librarie du Foyer) owned by Ernest Chehab who wouldn’t sell book banned by the Catholic Church, the old and the current ones…
One day, he discovered that shops in Bab Idriss, on Patriarch Hoyek Street, were for rent at modicum prices: The street was plagued with a taboo of unlucky stories of chain bankruptcies…Antoine mother handed him the 250 pounds from her secret savings, unknown to the family…
Antoine used to bike to the nearest library competitors (like Bsalti, Bugnard…) to buy the unavailable books ordered by clients, and would return while the clients are perusing the books and the magazines…
(I recall many such zeal from Lebanese overseas: Hopping to get the required spare parts from competitors not available in their initial store…)
Antoine received the French medal of Legion d’Honneur in 1964: only 20 of his family members were to be invited, and the family counted 21 members…
His mother-in-law Nazha separated from her husband after Antoine married her daughter Della (for Adel). Consequently, Nazha cut-off the head of her husband from all the picture and would never mention his name, saying only: “He was a woolf”
Note 1: You think that this book is a biography of Antoine Naufal, and it turned out to be the story of Nayla… Too many tangent stories about Samir Jaber, Georginia, Rashid Khoury, George Khoury…, just to describe the life-style in Lebanon and who frequented the library.
This book could be separated into three volumes: one on Antoine Naufal, the second tome on the many stories related to the library and what took place within the library…and the third called “The story of Nayla“…I expected more pictures of the family, the house, the celebrations, the garden… and less about the devastation of the civil war: We have too many of these kinds of sorry pictures…
Note 2: The Seljuk dynasty was demolished by the Mogul Genghis Khan in 1220 after he entered the richest city of Bukhara on the silk road and continued his progress to conquer Turkey. Mogul Genghis Khan established the vastest empire in the world stretching from China to Turkey, including all central Asia.
The grand son of Genghis Khan, Hulago, descended toward Iraq and burned Baghdad, killing the last Abbassid Calif, and putting an end to the Arabic empire in the east. The Arabic empire of the west, mainly in southern Spain and northern Africa was thriving and producing the best scientific research in all fields.
In 1097, the Spanish King Alphonse entered Toledo (in central Spain) and acquired about 60,000 Arabic volumes and hundreds of highly literate people who translated the Arabic culture into Latin. At that period, the largest library in Europe contained at best 100 books, mostly of no interest whatsoever.
“Trip to the End of the Night” (Part 1)
Posted by: adonis49 on: August 24, 2012
“Trip to the End of the Night” by Ferdinand Celine
This French book, published in the early 1930’s, is basically a collection of authobiographical stories of a freshly graduating physician who established his “clinic” in a poor working neighborhood in the suburb of Paris.
Celine (pen name) used to be called to pay visit to patients after sundown, and his medical tour will last till dawn, from a poor patient to another avorting dying girl because the parents refused to send her to the hospital for face saving…
Celine volunteered in WWI and was caught in the machinery and could no longer escape this infernal absurdity. He was able to flee to the USA and worked at Ford factories in Detroit. He returned to France and studied medicine.
The followings are excerpts, not of the stories, but of the kind of statements that the living among miseries bring up in our mind and emotions.
It is imperative to comprehend why we are so stubborn to refuse a cure for our solitude…We keep hiding from acquaintances. I recall the words of this young corporal, hospitalized during the war. He confided: “Earth is sick and dead, and we are fat decaying worms…All rotten since birth…” He was good enough to be carried by two soldiers to be executed by a firing squad: He was an anarchist as the War council decided…I didn’t know better at the time to take time and listen to these soldiers: I wouldn’t know how to ask the right questions anyway…
The old patient was saying: “I can’t feel my feet, I feel cold up to my knees. I can’t drink anything…I want to touch my feet but I can’t…” He was kind of half out of life, he couldn’t get rid of his lungs…He exhaled but air would come in anyway. Kind of his lungs relentlessly making him suffer to the very end. That’s a harsh job staying alive…He struggled as harder to stay alive as to die…
Life is a special class of boredom and annoyances, and they are the eternal pions. Boredom is here all the time, spying on you, and you have to frequently look occupied, at any price…Masturbating is an excellent pass time: You are occupied and getting some pleasure. Mostly, we would like to have an endless series of pleasure-like activities to survive the long 24-hour day. A day is really very long to surmount and suffer the ever ready presence of boredom…Even in our continuous boredom, we refuse to reflect on ourselves…Nothing very pleasurable here, self-reflection.
It is impossible to swallow truth, like the death of your lover, or the death of your kid…The more distant the lover, literally, the more you cannot communicate face to face, and smell the rotten flesh…You keep adding and heaping values, good traits and lies to the reality of love…It’s natural and regular this tendency, loving from afar…
The little people can claim to have lived, only if the manage to overcome this habit of blind obedience, inculcated in the brain since childhood, and they should vomit obeying the rich and the authority figures once for al.
The balanced youth is who can respect everyone with no discrimination whatsoever…How come we cannot find these kind of youth?
It is not relentlessness that we ever lacked, but how to be on the proper road that lead to a tranquil death. The worst case scenario is when death takes us by surprise, in between two hesitations…
War is ever ready to wake up and grumble, due mainly to the criminal boredom that gets the little people out of their confined caves…How many of the poor people should be sacrificed before they comprehend the humour of it?
Note: Read part 2: https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2012/08/26/part-2-trip-to-the-end-of-the-night/
“The New Syria”, Syria National Social Party (SNSP), and Antun Saadeh (1904-1949)?
Posted by: adonis49 on: December 16, 2011
“The New Syria”, Syria National Social Party (SNSP): Who is Antun Saadeh?
I am reading the Lebanese/Arabic book “Committment in both dailies “Renaissance” (Al Nahda) and “The New Syria” (Surya al Jadidat) by Jihad Nasri Akl. The two dailies were the media of the doctrines and opinions of the Syria National Social Party (SNSP) during the French mandate over Syria and Lebanon and after the independence of Syria and Lebanon.
After the recognition of Lebanon as a State by the UN in 1946, the party had hard time convincing the Lebanese that the party can be totally relied upon to defending and protecting the independence of Lebanon…Syria Nation is a social and cultural reality that should not be confounded with current political antagonism among States…
The founder of the party, Antun Saadeh, wrote: “What separate and distanced this party from the other ones in Syria and the Arab World is that we have defined and clarified the political and social terms for our cause and our problems. The party delivered the nation from the chaos of understanding to the realm of clarity of our current issues, from confusion to focused comprehension of what is our nation, our society, our identity, our culture, our civilization, and our purposes…”
What are the doctrines of Syria National Social Party (SNSP)?
1. Syria is a complete nation, and the Syrian people are a united society, born from a long history of coexistence, interaction and communication in trade and joint living…
2. Syria existence is a national cause, a one society independent and self-autonomous, and concerns solely the Syrian people…
3. The renaissance of Syria Nation is generated from the spirit, talent, civilization, and culture of its people…
4. Syria nation is geographically delimited by natural borders. North by the Torus Mountain Chains (current south Turkey), north-east by the Bakhtiari Mountain Chains (current West Iran), south by the Sinai peninsula to the Suez Canal, east by the Arabic peninsula, west by the Mediterranean Sea, and including the island of Cyprus. (Consequently, Syria Nation and historical Syria includes the current States of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan…)
5. Religion is separate from State politics and religious clerics are prohibited from meddling in the political policies, judicial and legal affairs…
6. Removing all barriers among the various religious affiliations and sects
7. Breaking down the feudal privileges and vast land owners and erecting the economy on the basis of production, fair work, and the sustaining national self-sufficiency and interests…
8. Instituting a strong army to protect and safeguard Syria borders and international interests…
Who is the founder Antun Saadeh?
Born in the town of Chuweir (Mount Lebanon), Antun studied in Bremana school (Lebanon) and in Egypt. He immigrated to the US at the age of 15, and stayed two years. Antun moved to Brazil and contributed in his father’s daily “The Daily”.
In 1924, Antun created a secret association and learned the languages German and Russian. He returned to Lebanon in 1930 and published two novels “Love Tragedi” and “Holiday o Saidnaya Madonna”. He was against the mandated power of France over Syria and Lebanon, and the mandated power of England over Palestine and Iraq, and warned about the long-term purposes of the Zionist organization to establishing a Jewish State in part of Palestine
Antun moved to Damascus in 1931 and contributed to the daily “The Days”. He returned to Lebanon in 1932 and taught German at the American University of Beirut (AUB), and published “The Magazine”.
In 1932, Antun founded the secret political party Syria National Social Party (SNSP) which was uncovered by the French mandated power in 1935. Saadeh was jailed 6 months and he wrote “The Origin of Nations”.
Saadeh lambasted the deal between France and the Syrian National Block that was totally biased to France interests. He dispatched a letter to the League of Nations claiming that France has no right of disposing of any parcel of land of Syria in favor of Turkey Attatuk (France had ceased the Adana region and the port of Alexandretta to Turkey in 1936).
Antun was again jailed for 3 months in 1936 and the French mandate confiscated his draft book “The origin of the Syria Nation”, never to be released. Antun completely supported the first Palestinian civil disobediance that lasted 3 years. England had to send 100,000 soldiers to tame the revolt in Palestine.
Saadeh is out of prison in 1937 and founded the daily “Renaissance”, the mouthpiece of the party. The mandated power pressured Saadeh to exile and he immigrated to Brazil in 1938. He was jailed 2 months in Brazil and Antun published the daily “New Syria”.
By 1939, Saadeh moved to Argentina and remained there for the duration of WWII. He founded the daily “Tornado” (Al Zawba3a) and published the book “Struggle of ideas in Syria literature”. From exile, Saadeh discouraged the members to side with any forces in the WWII, on the ground that both alliances are intent on dividing Syria…
Antun returned to Lebanon in March 1947 after heavy political negotiations with Lebanon government. Saadeh delivered a firy speech at the airport, which gathered the most crowded numbers of followers ever witnessed in the region to welcome a leader (about 150,000 people). The government had to issue an arrest warrant against Antun. The warrant was dropped 7 months later because the Lebanese government was unable to execute the arrest.
In 1947, Antun founded the daily “New Generation”. The Lebanese government, backed by France and England, consistently harassed Saadeh and his party and tampered with the election process and votes. Saadeh resisted the construction of the oil pipeline linking Iraq to Tripoli (Lebanon) because it was not in the current interest of Syria since England and France voted for the creation of the State of Israel. Antun demanded from the Lebanese government arms and ammunition so that the party could contribute to armed struggle against the State of Israel, but was denied any support. Saadeh waged media attack on the Syrian and Lebanese Communist parties for siding with Stalin’s support for the partition of Palestine and the creation of the State of Israel.
Antun fled to Syria and declared the first armed revolution in July 1949. The Syrian President Hosni Zaim, who grabbed power after a military coup, handed Saadeh to the Lebanese security forces.
On July 8, 1949, Saadeh was executed by a firing squad after being convicted by a mock tribunal within 24 hours of arrest. The members of the Syria National Social Party (SNSP) celebrate every year July 8 and the founding date of the party.
Antun Saadeh had three girls. His wife Julia Mir and the daughters suffered greatly from frequent persecutions by the Lebanese and Syrian governments.
What is this weekly “The New Syria”?
The term New Syria was pretty common in the beginning of the 20th century as the Syrian people were trying emancipation from the Ottoman Empire. In New York, a political party was named The New Syria and managed to open 50 offices throughout the USA. A daily by the same name was established in Brazil in 1918.
This Arabic weekly paper was published in Brazil on March 1939 and was supposedly the mouthpiece of the SNSP overseas. It had to close down on August 1941 as the Brazilian government prohibited the publication of dailies not written in Portuguese. The weekly was of 8 pages and the two Bunduki brothers owned 40% and were the effective managing directors for the first 100 issues out of a total of 125.
The weekly received news from the Associated Press, United Press, Transawosian (Germany), Havas (France), and Reuters (England). In that period, Germany was on the offensive and mastered superior propaganda media. The Arab Centre in Berlin sent quality images of Germany offensive wars and dispatched up-to-date news to dailies. Consequently, the weekly projected a bias to the Axes, against the guideline of the founder Antun Saadeh, who was blocked in Argentina and could not control the weekly efficiently.
This apparent bias hurt the members of the party in Lebanon, under French mandated power, and they were harassed by the government and put in prison for longer terms than normal. There was a natural animosity against the two mandated powers of France and England that demonstrated in actions and policies not to work for the interest of the Syrian people: Supporting Zionism, ceding part of Syria to Turkey…
“The summer of a life” by J.M. Coetzee
Posted by: adonis49 on: November 18, 2011
“The summer of a life” by J.M. Coetzee
This book is another autobiographical attempt by J.M. Coetzee of how was life and his life between 1972 to 1975 in apartheid South Africa of the Afrikaners. Actually, it is how his girlfriends perceived him, through a third-party interviewing his girlfriends after his death.
Consequently, the exciting main characters are the women in the life of the author, and when women talk frankly about their relationship you should expect excitement and hilarious different perspectives on the nature of falling in love and sexual intercourse…
I am translating from the French version a few paragraphs and sections to set the tone.
Julia says: “I had dropped two rolls of Christmas wrappings in the supermarket. This utterly non-handsome guy, skinny, and inelegant picked up the one-meter large rolls. It was obviously an accident, but one of the rolls stabbed one of my breasts. As I arrived home, I removed my bra and looked at my breasts. I could feel the touch on my nipple for a week…
I invited John for a light dinner a few weeks later. I made it a principle to look the same as during the supermarket incident and refused to beautify my face, do my hair, or wear fancy clothes. The dinner was super light, and John arrived without his father. My little 2 year-old Chrissie was on my lap and she didn’t like John, and never did. My Chrissie was as blond as her father with his blue eyes. I had the sensation that I was to her an intruder, more like our colored house helper, though my husband Mark barely was home to taking care of her…”
“The Afrikaner father of John spoke English passably: He used to underline with a finger gesture the English idioms he told me..” The father said: “John is pouring concrete around the perimeter of this humid house. We are witnessing less humidity inside. This is a huge undertaking, isn’t John?” From the tone of the dad’s voice I felt how he was trying hard to find any kind of merit in his 30 year-old eldest son…
“This week-end, my husband Mark made love to me with ardour, all the time and almost everywhere. Mark had this idea that I sensed on him the odor of his girlfriend in Durban and that I was out doing my erotic performances because of my acute woman smell…Mark had no idea that I cheated with John a couple of days ago, just for revenge. I felt a huge pride and excitement in thinking: “Wow, I am behaving like a slut, and I am discovering new horizons in my erotic abilities…”
“I spent seven consecutive nights with John as my husband Mark left to Hong Kong with his girlfriend. John would leave early in order not to meet with the house servant. My diagnostic of John’s love-making is that he was autistic in that matter. An autistic regard the person he is in love with as an automaton, an entity created to his own desires. To John I was a Woman. Like the time he came extremely excited and asked me to make love on the adagio of Franz Schubert, on the ground that only music expresses the eroticism of the period. Like if I could care less how Mrs. Schubert felt with Mr. Schubert in Vienna of the 19th century…
I think sexual autistics prefer to masturbate instead of having real rapport with a human being…”
“The Afrikaners of the period (1970-1975) liked to be viewed as the “Afrikan” Israelite, cunning, unscrupulous, hard as leather, and attacking their prey overtly…In fact, the apartheid male Afrikaners were more like a pack of babies abandoned in a forest, a tribe of little kids with slaves to care for them…
“John could never be my charming Prince. Only once did John opened up his heart to me at the sight of my predicament of not knowing where my Chrissie was. This is the only night I reached climax with John. He must have awakened at night and saw my beatific face and got scared. I didn’t see him when I awoke. Do you think that I will ever forgive John for abandoning me after that night?…(To be continued)
Note 1: J.M. Coetzee received Nobel Award of literature in 2003, mostly based on his two autobiographical books “At the age of a man”, and “Scenes of the life of a young man”
Note 2: I liked the sexual autism part. I recall slapping the behind of a girlfriend once. She was bewildered and demanded: “Why did you do that?” I replied: “I read in books that women like to have their behind slapped occasionally. This piece of intelligence is obviously not quite correct…” Enough of my dark humour for today.