Showing posts with label Lebanon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lebanon. Show all posts

Monday, November 12, 2007

U can’t trust a liar

I was looking at one of those old movie channels. Namely because they don’t write or make movies like the used too. And it happened by chance that I ran across one of my favorite movies of all time – The Battle of Algiers by Kevin Beary.

True, I have other favorite movies like A Clockwork Orange, Malcolm X, and Imitation of Life to name a Few, but this one is an all time classic. It made me realize that I have been thinking a lot about what has passed in recent years and presently in Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey and Lebanon to name a few places and accept that many of the problems that have evinced are the result of typical Colonial rule and imperial Zeal.


The movie details the French in Algeria, and the life of one man, a former boxer and petty criminal named Ali la Pointe. After leaving prison, he is recruited by the FLN (National Liberation Front), the terrorist/national independence group that fought the French and helped to kick them out of the country after 130 years. I learned of most of the Algerian revolution via the works of Frantz Fanon, the noted Algerian Psychiatrist.

The West has traditionally inflamed relations wit Africa and the Arab world via political policies that never served the inhabitants of the countries the attempted to colonize and more importantly, through lies, exploitation and deceit.
Looking at the movie again, reminded me that no matter what one4 does, you can never trust a liar, that you can never trust a person or entity that never keep their word, that you can never trust a person that only lives through their actions to exploit and use you. I was reminded that even people have individualized colonial zeal, that will never allow them to be trust; for they will never be able to keep their word, and will lie so much that they themselves forget the truth, just as the French forgot that the country they occupied and its people were not French, and just as the US realize and should have learned from the British, that the Arab world is not Europe and that maybe they don’t desire to be Europeans, or accept what is told to them by folks who constantly lie all the time.

Friday, August 11, 2006

Siccing the dogs on them

From Nabatiyeh to the Beqaa Valley to the south to Ashrafiyah, Israel is cutting some heads over in Lebanon. The U.S. made F‑16I, with there navigation and targeting systems have been smashing the feces out of targets in Lebanon, most of which are civilian infrastructure. The say its to get at dropping Hizbollah's military arsenal to about 50%.

Maybe I am the only one to think this but it appears as if the capturing of two troops was just an excuse and that the IDF had been planning to do this regardless for some time. I mean they didn=t invade in on October 7, 2000, when Omar Sawayid, Benny Avraham and Adi Avitan were seized by Hizbullah . They didn't even bomb at that time. But now for some reason, with the help of the U.S., they proclaim that their actions are merely a rescue operation.

No question that hezbollah runs southern lebanon, but that is no excuse to bomb indiscrimantly, even places like the predominantly Christian Ashrafiyah. What Isreal and the U.S. fail to accept is that Hezbollah is a bourgeois nationalist movement with support throughout the Arab world.

US has no leverage with any country in the region effectively cut diplomatic relations with Syria and encouraged talk of regime change in Damascus.They repeat endlessly that Israel is merely exercising its right to defend itself, and the blockade and bombing of a sovereign country, Lebanon, was provoked by Hezbollah's kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers.

They conveniently ignore the statements of the families of the captured Israeli soldiers, who have demanded that the Israeli government negotiate with Hezbollah for the release of their loved ones as part of a prisoner exchange, and criticized their own government for refusing to take diplomatic steps, wondering out loud whether the soldiers have been abandoned in the pursuit of expansionist aims.