Confucius looked at the view in Lu-liang. The waterfall hung down three hundred feet, it streamed foam for forty miles, it was a place where fish and turtles and crocodiles could no swim, but he saw one fellow swimming there. He took him for someone in trouble who wanted to die, and sent a disciple along the bank to pull him up. But after a few hundred paces the man came out, and strolled under the bank with his hair down his back, singing as he walked. Confucius took the opportunity to question him.

- I thought you were a ghost, but now I see you close up you’re a man. May I ask whether you have a Way to stay afloat in water?

- No, I have no Way. I began in what is native to me, grew up in what is natural to me, matured in what is destined for me. I enter with the inflow, and emerge with the outflow, follow the Way of the water and do not impose my selfishness upon it.

- What do you mean by ‘beginning in what is native to you, growing up in what is natural to you, maturing in what is destined for you’?

- Having been born on dry land I am at home on dry land – it’s native to me. Having grown up in water I am at home in water – it’s natural to me. It is so without me knowing why it is so – it’s destined for me.’

(Chuang-tzu, chapter 9)

“In principle, however, capitalism is an impeccably inclusive creed: it really doesn’t care who it exploits. It is admirably egalitarian in its readiness to do down just about anyone. It is prepared to rub shoulders with any old victim, however unappetizing. Most of the time, at least, it is eager to mix together as many diverse cultures as possible, so that it can peddle its commodities to them all.

In the generously humanistic spirit of the ancient poet, this system regards nothing human as alien to it. In its hunt for profit, it will travel any distance, endure any hardship, shack up with the most obnoxious of companions, suffer the most abominable humiliatinos, tolerate the most tasteless wallpaper and cheefully betray its next of kin. It is capitalism which is disinterested, not dons. When it comes to consumers who wear turbans and those who do not, those who sport flamboyant crimson waistcoats and those who wear nothing but a loincloth, it is sublimely even-handed. It has the scorn for hierarchies of a truculent adolescent, and the zeal to pick and mix of an American diner. It thrives on bursting bounds and slaying sacred cows. Its desire is unslakeble and its space infinite. Its law is the flouting of all limits, which makes law indistinguishable from criminailty. In its sublime ambition and extravagant transgressions, it makes its most shaggily anarchic critics look staid and suburban.” (Terry Eagleton, After Theory, p.19)

« La violence qui a présidé à l’arrangement du monde colonial, qui a rythmé inlassablement la destruction des formes sociales indigènes, démoli sans restrictions les systèmes de références de l’économie, les modes d’apparence, d’habillement, sera revendiquée et assumée par le colonisé au moment où, décidant d’être l’histoire en actes, la masse colonisée s’engouffrera dans les villes interdites. Faire sauter le monde colonial est désormais une image d’action très claire, très compréhensible et pouvant être reprise par chacun des individus constituant le peuple colonisé. Disloquer le monde colonial ne signifie pas qu’après l’abolition des frontières on aménagera des voies de passage entre les deux zones. Détruire le monde colonial c’est ni plus ni moins abolir une zone, l’enfouir au plus profond du sol ou l’expulser du territoire. » (Fanon, Les damnés de la terre, p.44)

My translation:

The violence that has shaped the arrangement of the colonial world, has unrelentlessly paced the destruction of indigenous social structures, demolished without restriction economic system of references, modes of appearance, dress codes, will be claimed and endorsed by the colonizer when, deciding to his own history in action, the colonized mass would engulf itself in the forbidden cities. Blowing up the colonial world is henceforth a very clear image of action that can be used and understood by every individual consituting the colonized people. Dislocating the colonial world does not signify that after the abolition of borders, tracks of passages would be arranged between the two zones. Destroying the colonial world is not more nor less than abolishing a zone, bury it in the deepest ground or expel it of the territory. (Fanon, Les damnés de la terre, p.44, my translation)

Feltman answered! There is something quite desperate in this act. Check the argument: Actually, Al Akhbar is not that heroic because it does not criticize Hizbullah’s SG Nasrallah just like Syrian Tishreen will never criticize Bashar al Assad.

Apart from the fact that no one talked of heroism, well, there is a tiny detail here: Al Akhbar is not owned by Hizbullah, and actually does criticize Hizbullah virultently. Check for example the corruption case of Salah Ezzedine. Needless to say that this point was made in the original NYT article, so what is Feltman babbling about. Does he want attention?

Does it occur to Feltman that defending or supporting Nasrallah may come from a conviction (heroic if he likes this word) that the guy is a leader to be respected, and that this probably reflects a large chunk of the Lebanese population and beyond?

From then on, Feltman’s answer loses all sense of logic and becomes plain stereotyping. Feltman confuses Western journalists, with Al Akhbar ones, lifestyle like drinking wine with political choice of supporting the resistance. This dimension is not even worth it to be explored, it has been done countless times on this blog.

And what did you know about Samir Kassir and Gebran Tueni? Just because they got killed makes them heroic? Is this how you guys work? Now that they are useless as such and can’t do much except through the way their image is being manipulated by your media, yes, they become heroic…

Besides, Feltman forgets that journalists of Al Akhbar and other press outlets as well as TV stations were killed by Israeli fire? Are these considered more or less heroic act? I guess it depends who kills or on which arena you fall.

But above all as I was saying, Feltman’s answer sounds like someone’s desperate for attention. One could hear him shout: “no, someone hear me, I am that ambassador they’re talking about, and I did not have a belly ache, they aren’t so impressive believe me!” Well, someone is angry because he was not ‘received’!

American ambassadors, they come here, don’t understand anything about the politics of the place (except through the specific ideology their administration feeds them to implement). Then they leave, still ignorant, imbued by the stereotypes they could gather from this or that dinner they had the chance to go to, wondering why their projects did not work.

Update: For a more elaborate answer, just found Angry Arab’s.

Celui qui croyait au ciel
Celui qui n’y croyait pas
Tous deux adoraient la belle
Prisonnière des soldats
Lequel montait à l’échelle
Et lequel guettait en bas
Celui qui croyait au ciel
Celui qui n’y croyait pas
Qu’importe comment s’appelle
Cette clarté sur leur pas
Que l’un fut de la chapelle
Et l’autre s’y dérobât
Celui qui croyait au ciel
Celui qui n’y croyait pas

Tous les deux étaient fidèles
Des lèvres du coeur des bras
Et tous les deux disaient qu’elle
Vive et qui vivra verra
Celui qui croyait au ciel
Celui qui n’y croyait pas
Quand les blés sont sous la grêle
Fou qui fait le délicat
Fou qui songe à ses querelles
Au coeur du commun combat
Celui qui croyait au ciel
Celui qui n’y croyait pas
Du haut de la citadelle
La sentinelle tira
Par deux fois et l’un chancelle
L’autre tombe qui mourra
Celui qui croyait au ciel
Celui qui n’y croyait pas
Ils sont en prison Lequel
A le plus triste grabat
Lequel plus que l’autre gèle
Lequel préfère les rats
Celui qui croyait au ciel
Celui qui n’y croyait pas
Un rebelle est un rebelle
Deux sanglots font un seul glas
Et quand vient l’aube cruelle
Passent de vie à trépas
Celui qui croyait au ciel
Celui qui n’y croyait pas
Répétant le nom de celle
Qu’aucun des deux ne trompa
Et leur sang rouge ruisselle
Même couleur même éclat
Celui qui croyait au ciel
Celui qui n’y croyait pas
Il coule il coule il se mêle
À la terre qu’il aima
Pour qu’à la saison nouvelle
Mûrisse un raisin muscat
Celui qui croyait au ciel
Celui qui n’y croyait pas
L’un court et l’autre a des ailes
De Bretagne ou du Jura
Et framboise ou mirabelle
Le grillon rechantera
Dites flûte ou violoncelle
Le double amour qui brûla
L’alouette et l’hirondelle
La rose et le réséda

————————————————–

Poèmes sur ce blog:

Abul Hassan al Shushtari 1
Al Imam Ali Bin Abi Taleb 1
Billy Collins, 1
Mahmoud Darwish, 1
Ounsi El Hage, 1
Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, 1
Edmond Jabes, 1, 2
Ghérasim Luca, 1, 2
Henri Michaux, 1, 2, 3,
Marianne Moore, 1
Pablo Neruda, 1, 2
Sharon Olds, 1
Theodore Roethke, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Dylan Thomas, 1
Richard Wilbur, 1, 2, 3, 4

It is surely the case that the only area where Christian power can still assert itself in Lebanon is through land ownership. Let’s face it, in other areas, Christians do not have much power left. The Maronite church and other churches for that matter may well possess the largest amount of real estate and mountainous regions in the country. Seen in this light, no wonder why Harb, an attorney by formation, is interested in passing that law project.

But seen in the light of general Christian relations with the “Muslim world” or simply, the region, Harb’s type of politics that mirrors most isolationist practices of groups such as the Phalangists or the Lebanese Forces, poses a crucial problem. It is what one could call the “Zionist syndrome”: trying to enforce political presence through barricading cultural entities. Is there any long-term effectiveness to this policy? More to the point, in the age of the nation-state, how to build durable States that embrace difference and look outwardly rather than act like paranoid and security-obsessed political communities?

According to Murr, “when you want to fight terrorists,you are fighting Sunni and Shia; you need Christians in special forces to do this mission. If you maximize Christians, you will have the best results.”

I mean Murr’s statements have some rationale: creating employment opportunities for Christians (Something most sectarian leaders do in Lebanon). In order to do so, one can make this ‘cultural’ point that Christian forces would hate better. Economics, has its weird laws sometimes…

MP Nadim Gemayel noted on Friday that Lebanon was not victorious in the July 2006 war, but Hizbullah considered it a victory because it destroyed Lebanon, while its funding and weapons have been restored by Syria and Iran.
He told MTV that several Lebanese view the war as a defeat seeing as their economy and infrastructure were completely destroyed.
He said that Hizbullah is directing its battle against international justice and its Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s reading of the situation in his speech on Thursday was wrong.
“Hizbullah’s weapons are illegitimate … the false witnesses file is nonexistent as it is aimed at thwarting the international tribunal before it can try Hizbullah,” Gemayel stated.

Regardless of who killed Lebanese former prime minister Rafic Hariri, this press conference showed that just like other tracks of investigations, there is another one that could be taken and that amazingly enough has not been taken: the one of Israel. What Nasrallah proposed was a “change of perspective” so to speak. In this sense and on logical grounds, he is deligitimizing the consistency of an international tribunal that never took care of pursuing the Israeli track seriously, when the mere fact that Israel watches over every corner of Lebanese territory (and it does way more than that as shown in the conference) is sufficient enough to consider it as a “usual suspect”.

Probably the most important purpose of this conference is to say: Why wasn’t Israel considered as a suspect, and its officials, intelligence services and what have you, interrogated or asked to deliver that type of material, while you’ve been inventing all these phony suspects then due to lack of evidence forced to release them and building accusations here and there successively indicting the Lebanese security system, Syria, and now Hizbullah?

In this sense, Hizbullah does succeed in showing to what extent international organizations and missions are devoid of any ‘neutrality’ through Nasrallah’s use of what could be called an implacable methodology. The problem is does it succeed in shaking certain representations of Israel Lebanese have?

Indeed, the other revealing aspect of this event is the apathy a part of the Lebanese population has with regards to the entity called Israel. Perceptions of Israel among that part is quite revealing and runs as follows:

Israel is a criminal state in Palestine. This permits the person to empathize with Palestinians “over there”, and deplore the state of affairs in that remote place called Israel or Palestine. With regards to Lebanon, Israel is at best the bullied one. Because it is criminal and “radical”, it should not be messed with because one would suffer the consequences. That is why Hizbullah is most of the time guilty of any actions taken against Israel whatever the logics of these actions. That type of narrative considers that Israel has no business in killing anyone in Lebanon except Hizbullah-related actors, or basically people living “down there”.

It would be something if Nasrallah can shake this overall representation of Israel. The problem is that it will take more than a methodology driven by ‘logics’ to shake the anxieties of those people. Behind reason stands the passions that dictates the directions taken by the thoughts, and the particular ‘logics’ they wish to endorse.