August 23, 2008 at 3:13 pm by Yehuda Berlinger · Filed under Mideast general
Since no one else is talking, and politics is depressing, I’d like to ask some questions relevant to my own field: gaming.
So, all youse guys across the Middle East:
1) What board and card games are your “national” games? I.e. the ones played in coffee shops, by all kids, and with heavy representation at tournaments.
2) What board and card games are available in your local stores? Larger toy stores? Any modern games available (from the last ten years)?
3) Any local or national board or card game organizations, such as Chess, Bridge, Go, Scrabble, collectible card games (Magic, YuGiOh, Pokemon, etc..), roleplaying, and so on?
4) Science-fiction, fantasy, and anime/comic clubs?
5) Computer gaming, arcades, and MMOG play? Nintendos, Wii, Playstations, PC gaming? Conferences? Taught in universities? Banned in schools?
6) Do you play? Off or online? What do you play?
Thanks,
Yehuda
August 2, 2008 at 5:16 pm by Yaeli · Filed under Israel, Palestinian Territories
Ramzi, Dalia, we need you to help us understand exactly what is going on in Gaza and in the West Bank right now. From the Israeli perspective what we’ve got is this: 5 qassam rockets were launched into our Southern communities from Gaza today and it was something that was expected despite the truce between Israel and Hamas. I say that it was expected because every time there is a period of calm between Israel and Hamas, then it is followed by internal strife within Gaza, which in turn sparks attacks on us in order to restore the internal calm in Gaza. I think the only surprising thing is that it has taken so long for this to occur.
Today Israel has allowed close to 200 Fatah-affiliated members and their families, many with severe injuries (including at least 12 injured children), to flee Hamas via Israel and travel to the West Bank. It is possible that more may be allowed to cross in the coming days.
Earlier this week I spoke online with a friend in the West Bank who said that things are getting not only very tense but also a bit strange, as both Hamas and Fatah propaganda/media have been attacking one another verbally using language usually reserved for verbally attacking us (Israelis) of late. Then today I read a couple of articles, one by Khaled Abu Toameh in the Jerusalem Post (whom I know Ramzi does not like or respect) but also another in the left-leaning Hebrew version of Haaretz that pretty much said the same thing as Mo did –that for the first time, Hamas this week began referring to Fatah’s leaders as “sons of pigs and monkeys,” a label that had thus far been reserved for Jews and that Fatah has begun referring to Hamas as an “occupation force.”
What is really going on? What is the mood in the West Bank? Is it possible that a civil war in Gaza and/or the West Bank is about to break out? Is it possible that a civil war within Hamas is about to break out — I read an article this week about the son of a Hamas parliament minister who converted to Christianity who said that in 20 years the big story will be about the civil war within the warring factions of Hamas who are already at one another’s throats –is it already about to happen?
What the heck is actually going on?
July 13, 2008 at 6:23 am by Yaeli · Filed under Uncategorized
Mike made an excellent suggestion for a discussion topic: what is everybody reading currently? Do you recommend your current or recent reads? Are you reading for pleasure, for work, to escape the heat? Somehow the long days of summer do seem to be the only time of the year that I seem to have the time to read for pleasure and pleasure alone. Maybe it is because, with the sun setting so late, I feel almost like I’ve got 2-days packed into each one –when I get done with work I still have a “day” ahead of me. In winter I always feel like I should be getting ready for bed around 7 with it already so dark outside!
Since it is reading time for me, I’m very interested to get some good recommendations!
July 12, 2008 at 11:21 am by Yaeli · Filed under Lebanon
It is time to help the clueless Israeli in sorting out just what it means for Lebanon, Lebanon’s future, and Lebanon’s chance at independence and democracy that a unity government has finally been formed –but one giving Hezbollah, a minority, veto power over government decisions and decisions of the majority.
To me, this looks pretty bad for Lebanon. It looks like the March 14th coalition has pretty much entirely caved in on everything and basically handed the government to Hezbollah. Am I wrong?
What does the make-up of the cabinet suggest? Where is Lebanon heading?
July 5, 2008 at 8:08 am by Yaser · Filed under Uncategorized
The third round of indirect talks are underway in Istanbul ,Turkey, a tentative agreement may lead to start of direct talks, In this context France can play a key role in providing the necessary international sponsorship as the current president of the EU .
This month will mark an important summit of the nations of the Mediterranean in France and unlike previous events ,where Syria (and Lebanon) would boycott the meeting because there is Israeli presence ,Syria will be there and the decision to start direct negotiations and their nature will be made after the summit.
The significance of this meeting should not be underestimated as in my opinion this initiative holds great economical and cultural potential ,and promises advantages from a geopolitical point of view. I am curious to know your reactions to this initiative and your opinion about the prospects of its success.
June 8, 2008 at 2:48 pm by Carmel · Filed under Israel, Lebanon
Last night I watched Ari Folman’s new amazing movie “Waltz with Bashir” premiered on May at Cannes festival, and I urge all of you: find a way to see it!
It has taken Israeli society its share of years to come up with Post-Zionist narratives to our permanent state of war and the escalation periods we actually call “wars”. Army service is a passage rite for manhood in Israeli society and I wrote once in my temporary war blog what I think it does to men. In this movie Ari Folman brings a broken narrative of manhood on the expense of a shattered humanity. The movie is a documentary but since it’s an animation movie, it provides a unique experience on the verge of real and surreal. Like a dark manga movie it could happen anywhere and anytime – to Croatians in Bosnia, to Americans in Iraq, to Japanese in China – the setting may be local but the story is personal, hence, universal.
Folman is over 40 years old and can’t remember much from the first Lebanese war he participated in as a confused 19 years old soldier. His images are so aesthetic, as if his memory turned things into a spectacle in order to protect the self. Movie aesthetics is inspired by “waking life” and is breath taking. It animates the innocence of the 80s on one hand, and the subjective narrative of war on the other hand, through animating true stories that happened to his army friends, some of them are inconceivable – all for the sake of trying to remember where he was in all of this.
Folman’s war critisizm connects with the second Lebanon war as well. The movie clearly shows that the higher your rank is the further you are from battle field: you give orders through the phone and send your pawns to die. frames also show how clumsy and scary everything is, how you aim at one bad guy and end up killing a family. and with all the cool music and animation, you dunno if to laugh or to cry. Animation plays between real and surreal and the last shots of the movie are not animated, to ground all that horror in the real.
The movie animates subjective narratives in which there is only the self and the fear in the face of the horror, being done by the self out of fear. no greater meaning can embody itself through that self, people shoot without even knowing why, war of zombies. Besides the genius cinematic masterpiece, this movie is a signifier for all those new post Zionist voices that look at war scenes and see only a bunch of different people trying to live. Not identifying with any big story that requires killing someone that has a different version of it. The world is just people - not religions, not nations, not doctorines - and when it boils down to “just people”, wars stop making sense.
Unfortunately those voices are not as common or legitimate in our neighboring countries, where stories such as ideologies and religions are still meta narratives to die for. The story protects you form going crazy because you believe it rationalizes horror. You slaughter families in Sabra & Shatila but you believe you’re doing stuff for a greater good. We don’t hear of ex militia or Hezbollah people having nightmares and going to a post trauma shrink after 20 years, do we? Now why is that, you think? You have to reach that level of development on the national level to be ready to critically detach from the big stories that made up your nation as an entity, and you have to do it without breaking that entity apart, which is quite a challenge. That’s evolution, folks.
However, once the story doesn’t protect you, you might go mad on account of what you did while your hands were in service of that story. Many cannot afford letting go of the story because they will have to face personal responsability for thier part in the horror. The middleway option to evolve would be to opress and forget, i guess.
I think one day not very far away there will be world peace. But not because everyone will suddenly get along, but because more and more people wake up to this understanding that the big stories are loosing their touch, slowly letting go of their grip, and what is left is people. A lot of people that have one planet to save and nurture and who cares which stories they tell themselves in their leisure time.
Don’t tell me terror and fundamentalism is on the rise since that is the exact symptom of the global decay of the big stories – those who still hold them tighten the grip and are afraid. We have this saying in Hebrew: the darkest hour is just before the break of dawn.
Watch the movie! please watch the trailer on the website and here’s a great scene that served as the pitch pilot for the movie, with english subtitles.
May 26, 2008 at 11:06 am by Yaser · Filed under Uncategorized
with all the things that are going on right now in the region ,and the hope signs that emerged as a result of the agreement between the various Lebanese factions in Doha ,and hopefully a more positive role that Syria need and is begining to have in the region ,I thought what best than to write about something that goes along with this positivity ,as I think we should focus more often on the bright side of whats happening instead of focusing on politics all time
please go to my blog to read my latest post about the rap group that I have met recently
May 17, 2008 at 7:13 pm by Blacksmith Jade · Filed under Lebanon
This post was originally posted on Blacksmiths of Lebanon on May 16th, 2008.
I’ll start by saying the following: I am [mildly] optimistic. And I am undeterred by the incredible let down I first felt when reading the Arab proposal. An extended examination of the proposal, especially within the context of the events of the past week, has mustered in me a semblance of contentment with it and the reality it could create on the ground.
For one, it bears echoing the disgruntlement of my readers, my fellow bloggers, and my friends within that movement which seeks to establish for this tiny country on the Eastern Mediterranean a peace and normality to which all free Lebanese aspire. This deal stinks. On the most important of issues, it dodges the very principles on which we, the members of that movement, defined our stances.
On the Parliamentary elections, it is wrong. And perhaps out of all the issues presented here, it is the most wrong, and that because it follows down the erroneous path of talks, or political negotiations, outside the constitutional institution through which these negotiations are meant to take place – Parliament – and which has been effectively shut down by a major party [not only] to the violent assault launched against the state over the past week [but also to the assault on every institution of the state that has taken place over the past 3 years]. This path was first paved when the government agreed to National Dialogue talks [in January of 2006] the futility of which is still visible in the scars left by the July War started to abort them. It is this path that, to me, poses the greatest level of worry for the future of our state’s institutions and for the precedence that it sets.
And a worrying precedent too, is being set in the manner in which the so-called unity government is to be formed [according to the proposal] in the absence of a President and the input that that President is entitled to. In a word, the Presidential vacuum that has gripped the country over the past six months is constitutionally abnormal, unacceptable, and seemingly – to all those actually interested in pursuing a solution to this abnormality – easily fixable! After all, everyone has already supposedly agreed to who the next President should be. And for those of you [of the slower variety] who continue to cling to the resignation of this government as the sole act of salvation for this country, bear in mind that according to the constitution, the government is automatically considered resigned following the election of a President – who’s first duty it is to convene with the Parliamentary majority and all the represented parties of the country in order to form the next governing executive body (i.e. Cabinet).
Of course, we all know that what has been really happening in the country has not been the occurrence of two sides coming together to find a solution to a problem, but the occurrence of one side actively blocking the implementation of democratic norms and [instead] pursuing a policy aimed at reversing the gains garnered through the Cedar Revolution. Indeed, despite much whining about the comfort enjoyed by a Sunni PM who does not have to find compromise with a Christian President (or the ministers which answer to him in a cabinet), it is important to correctly identify which group stands to gain the most from the complete paralysis and dismantling of the institutions that define our state.
And therein lays the silver lining I have attributed to the proposal. The formation of a national unity government (assuming it to be of the non-blocking-third variety), the re-drafting of the electoral law, and the election of a President have never been M8 goals to begin with. In fact, it has been the blocking of all these that have been the goal. When Saad al Hariri, or any other M14 leader announces their objection to ‘dialogue’, it is not because they are not interested pursuing any of the above, but because they are uninterested in getting bogged down in the M8 maze of circuitous demands and two-handed dialogue aimed at impeding a solution rather than pursuing it.
By moving the talks to Doha, the capital of the most active agitator of the Iranian agenda within the Arab fold – next to Syria, that is – the Arabs and the Lebanese have in fact put the major backers of the blockages within the Lebanese system at the forefront, preventing them from hiding behind their tools in Lebanon, and exposing them to the full brunt of the failed talks. And quite a brunt there is to bear, as the international community and the petrodollar powerhouses of Gulf prepare to extract due penance for the brazen power-move by Iran in Lebanon.
If anything, the speed with which the Qatar-led Arab delegation managed to push through the blockages, on paper at least, seems indicative of the failure of that power-move and the true measure of political, economic, and military balances on the ground it has yielded. Not lightly does one declare the election of a President “within days”.
With the international tribunal due to come online within the next several weeks; with the arrival of Parliamentary elections in approximately one year and Hizballah’s complete loss of any support outside (and even, to some extent, within) its sectarian base [due to the past week’s events]; and with the group’s use of its weapons against fellow Lebanese unequivocally turning it into a militia in the eyes of an ever important [and potentially strengthened, whether directly or through UNSC 1701] UNSC 1559 – even though any mention of those weapons was left out by the Arabs’ statement – Hizballah will certainly need the time afforded by such a temporary settlement to regroup and refocus its efforts (let alone process all the intelligence gathered from the raiding of FM offices throughout Beirut).
For the Lebanese too, the implementation of this latest proposal will provide a temporary relief – time needed to organize immigration papers, explore investments abroad, and secure oneself within a sectarianly-cohesive area of the country ahead of the next wave of assaults. And that is a reality Hizballah has ensured no [realistic] proposal can reverse.
May 14, 2008 at 6:18 pm by Blacksmith Jade · Filed under Lebanon, Syria
For Hizballah, the prospect of exiting this most severe of crises with anything resembling a positive [let alone a victory], seems dauntingly distant. As the dust settles, Lebanon’s besieged (literally!) government remains in place, its fortitude continuously reinforced by the common disgust felt across the nation at the fact that the Iranian-backed group turned its weapons on the capital and the mountain.
In its domestic political confrontations, Hizballah’s aggressions have left it completely bankrupt. Reminding us of the obscure reason for which the country was made to pay such a heavy toll this week, a NOWLebanon editorial writes:
Even if it achieved its initial demands – that the government rescind the phone network investigation and revoke the Shqeir sacking – it would look foolish; such gains would never justify the level of violence and trauma inflicted in the last week.
Indeed. Not only do the most recent of the group’s political demands/rejections pale in comparison to the devastation wrought by its assault, but as do the feigned calls for greater government participation, a new electoral law, and a veto on the choice of the next president over which it, and its allies, paralyzed the country for over 18 months. Twice now the group has taken the country to war, and twice at times when the country’s parliamentary majority has sought to engage it over its weapons - whether through dialogue [as in the national dialogues pre-empted by the launch of the July War] or by decree [as was the case with this war].
Fully eroded are the moral dictations of the group’s humming propaganda machine in light of the gravity of the violence has generated. Reports of atrocities, as a result [whether direct or indirect] of the assault, have given fuel to a deep-seated desire in the country’s populace to see their country transformed into one in which militant groups and militias have no part. And fully ridiculous have been the propaganda machine’s indictments of the weapons of residents of resisting neighbourhoods, villages, and towns’ weapons in light of the falling rockets, mortars, and artillery shells launched by Hizballah against them.
If you really want to laugh, consider that the noisiest indictments of the broad presence of weapons in the country have come from those parties and groups which enjoyed the most favour throughout the country’s fifteen year Syrian occupation. An occupation in which militia, paramilitary, and terrorist groups where actively maintained in order to foment the strife and discord [if it was ever needed] that could justify the presence of 40,000 Syrian occupation troops on Lebanese soil.
Indeed, many in Lebanon today believe that the pattern of violence in the country over the past three summers is part of a continuation of the Syrian strategy to incite violence and open an internationally-sanctioned path allowing a return of Syrian domination to the country – undoubtedly to restore order to the chaos started by Syria’s local co-conspirators.
Now a week into the assault, occupation, and [partial, if not superficial] delivery of its capital city back to those who should have guarded it in the first place, Lebanon is slowly reawakening to the damage inflicted on it and its institutions by an ordeal who’s end seems nowhere in sight.
May 14, 2008 at 9:18 am by Yehuda Berlinger · Filed under Syria
This. Anyone have a link to his blog?
Bayassi was arrested last May in northwest Syria for surfing sites of Syrian opposition groups and posting comments online.
Yehuda
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