Peak Protein

As published at SubStack, 2/15/23:

[sausage plate in German Village on Namhae Island, South Korea on 5/14/20]

In Bangkok, I was happy to see again my friend Jonathan and his wife, J. I had met them in Tirana, Albania, and a few months ago, Jonathan even dropped by Vung Tau to see me. J said something to Jonathan he thought hilarious, “Linh is more Western than you! He’s like this 60-year-old American. Wherever he goes, he’s looking for a good burger, decent pasta and Tex-Mex!”

A damning verdict, admittedly, but true enough. Though I mostly eat local, with forays into the weirdest even, I can’t help but hanker, often bitterly, for serious dill pickles, non bastardized ketchup and grown up mustard on a straight ahead beef patty, and don’t you dare slap a fried egg on it! If it’s done, though, I’ll eat it, just to experience the local.

The mistranslation of food is a continual source of ghastly entertainment. In Beirut in 2020, I found myself alone in a carefully decorated Chinese restaurant, Rice and Spice. There were painted vases, oils of ballerinas and semi nudes, and statues of headless nudes and an ascetic monk. I suspected most of the art was done by the same artist, perhaps the restaurant’s owner.

When my stir fried beef with vegetables came out, there was no rice, so I asked about this. The owner, cook, waiter and artist was surprised, “You didn’t order it…” Even weirder, he said there was no rice ready, so would I mind having noodles instead?

In Oriental countries, eating is almost synonymous with eating rice. A common Vietnamese greeting is “Ăn cơm chưa?” meaning, literally, “Have you eaten rice yet?”

[Thủ Dầu Một, Vietnam on 7/6/19]

Here’s how the Lord’s Prayer is Vietnamized, “Please Father give us this day our daily victuals, and forgive our debts, as we forgive those who owe us debts.” [“Xin Cha cho chúng con hôm nay lương thực hằng ngày, và tha nợ chúng con, như chúng con cũng tha kẻ có nợ chúng con.”] So no bread or trespasses, but victuals and debts.

If you owe any Jewish bigwig other than Jesus, be prepared to learn much about compound interest. Even funnier, he lent you money he didn’t even have, thanks to fractional reserve banking. Freeing up capital, lordly Jews expand the economy and stimulate growth, so shut up already, you stupid deadbeat!

Since living in the Age of Oil is equivalent to having many slaves and draft animals, many of us don’t quite feel our own enslavement, but the depletion of oil also means scarcity of protein. That’s why we’re being urged to eat fake meats and bugs. To wash them down, we can chug the Singaporean Newbrew or Danish Pisner, but it’s probably easiest to just drink our own piss.

In Cambodia and even Thailand, you can find edible bugs in touristy areas, but ordinary Cambodians and Thais don’t relish such treats. Most consume as much pork, chicken, beef and fish as they can afford. Many also love foreign dishes, of which there’s plenty to choose from. Humanity won’t eat this well again.

Within two blocks of my room in Siem Reap, there’s an excellent Korean restaurant, a legitimate French bakery, a Thai joint I haven’t tried and I Am Pizza. Only fools would walk into such a place, but that’s what I did this afternoon.

Bypassing Crabstick, Chicken Sausage and Durian pizzas, I chose Smash Beef. Though it came out looking and smelling fine, I needed just one bite to realize I had committed an irreversible crime against my body, dignity and God’s natural order. This “pizza” had no tomato sauce or cheese, but was slathered with a weird, sweetish concoction, and there was no crustiness to any part of the dough. The lumps of smash beef were fine, though, so I had my protein, at least.

At I Am Pizza, there was a woman and her son, and as I left, a man came in, so such travesties do have customers, just as in Beirut, there are diners at Rice and Spice, if it’s still open in that collapsed economy. To escape the usual, people everywhere welcome exotic dishes, even when botched or parodied. I’ve written about a Vietnamese hamburger paste that was squeezed from a packet normally associated with ketchup. This is what they eat in America was its selling point.

Sampling food from across the globe has been, for most people, a fairly recent phenomenon, but already, this is winding down, so enjoy your bratwurst, pad thai, lahmacun, lángos, pelmeni, pilaf, pasties, biryani, mangú, moussaka, bunny chow, peri peri chicken or chicken tikka masala, etc., for these glimpses beyond the horizon are flickering out.

With runaway inflation, disrupted supply lines, animals needlessly culled, food warehouses going up in flames, restaurants and pubs shut down, vaccinated workers disabled or dead, and war threatening everywhere, we’re corralled into the New Normal, with millions already dead.

For years, Ice Age Farmer, real name Christian Westbrook, shined the brightest light on the deliberate destruction of our food supply, then YouTube canceled him, before he disappeared altogether. Maybe Westbrook just got tired, but they only go after those who threaten them.

After I discussed the Paul Bowles story where the protagonist has his tongue cut out, Kevin Barrett sent me a grim message, “It’s actually the Americans who are cutting off my tongue—by shadowbanning me and nuking my YouTube, GoFundMe and Patreon accounts, etc.”

Blowing up Nord Stream, Uncle Sam proves, again, he’s a serial terrorist. Cutting off Russian gas to Europeans, he threatens not just their standard of living, but lives, for less energy always means less food.

As millions of Europeans become destitute, their governments send billions to war criminal and draft dodger Zelensky. Across the West, people are expected to just eat bullshit then die.

Last month, a German friend emailed me to say his health food store had closed after 25 years, for lack of customers. Going to the gas station, he noticed its glass door was broken, for it had just been robbed. At the train station, littering had become endemic, “More and more people just throw their trash on the floor with the garbage can two meters away.” Volunteering to clean it up, which he does twice a month, my friend encountered a young man who was slapping Antifa stickers onto those that said “VACCINATION KILLS.” Western radicals now back Big Pharma, you see, as well as the dying American empire’s war machine.

It’s nearly 10PM, so too late for me to grab a bite somewhere. In my fridge, I do have some Danish blue cheese and French paté, so that’s dinner. Around 7AM tomorrow, I’ll get breakfast at Le Pain du Coeur, a short walk away. Since Orientals can eat noodles whenever, I’ll order spaghetti carbonara. Although there’s no discernable olive oil and its slivers of onion are false notes, it’s actually pretty good, and a steal at five bucks.

Of all our pleasures, food is most ephemeral, a mirage almost, so we crave it even when we’re not literally hungry.

See, it’s already gone!

[tagliatelle with beef at Shanghai Express in Podgorica, Montenegro on 7/15/21]

[Ghanaian dinner at Raissa M. Akwaba in Toulouse, France on 8/23/17]

[$5 plate at Detari Fish in Tirana, Albania on 8/2/21]

[breakfast in Ea Kly, Vietnam on 8/22/19]

Held Hostage and Violated, with Much Worse to Come

As published at SubStack, 7/17/22:

[Mayflower Hotel in Beirut, 12/16/20]

Born in Belfast in 1950, Brian Keenan sought to escape the civil unrest of his homeland by diving straight into Lebanon’s civil war, for he had a job offer from the glamorous and exotic sounding American University of Beirut. That’s as cool as listing Timbuktu Community College on your resume, no?

Plus, at age 35 Keenan had yet to see the world beyond Northern Ireland, so it was past time he roamed. Just four months into this new life, Keenan was kidnapped and held hostage for the next 4 1/2 years, however.

Interviewed in 2018, Keenan said his initial strategy for coping with this trauma was to “diminish” what was happening, “and I would say to myself, ‘They'll only keep me for a week, most, and then I'll get outta here […] It'll be great for dinner parties. What a story I will have to tell!’”

We need stories to tell, then, for without stories, we’re as good as dead. Plus, stories redeem, at least partially, even our worst misfortunes, so that those whose lives have been nothing but monotonous shifts, numbing television, repetitive music, online diatribes and chronic masturbation must feel envy. Why haven’t I been shot at at least once? Craft beers or designer ice creams don’t quite cut it.

In his 1991 book, An Evil Cradling, Keenan got to tell his story most memorably. Even before landing in Beirut, Keenan had entered a new universe, for Heathrow was exotic enough. Waiting to board, this working-class Irishman was surrounded by Indians, Pakistanis and Africans. Having pushed himself from all that was familiar, Keenan was finally free.

In country, Keenan found himself at a decrepit airport “stiff” with armed men, “Each of them had a gun and they watched our amoeba-like movement, encumbered with luggage, the way predatory birds might watch the last living movements of their intended prey.”

Very atmospheric, this experience, and it certainly beat The Troubles as glimpsed from a college campus. If you’re stuck in some Annandale or Redwood City cul-de-sac, the allure must be that much greater. In town, Keenan was ensconced at the Mayflower Hotel in the chic and intellectual Hamra neighborhood, just two blocks from the university. Getting comfortable, Keenan then moved to a “Turkish villa” with a serene garden that often attracted “a blizzard of butterflies.” Spotting a corpse or burning building on his stroll to work only added to his excitement.

Though “suddenly” is routinely overused in talking or writing, real catastrophes are often sudden, as in having something so traumatic suddenly happens to you that can’t be reversed. One second, you’re fine. The next, you’re no longer in charge of anything. Keenan:

I went out through the gate, locking it behind me, and began to walk off in the direction of the University. I had taken, I suppose, no more than twelve steps. I was barely away from the gate and the fence which enclosed the garden when an old Mercedes, hand-painted dark green with a cream roof, pulled up alongside me. The driver’s door opened, preventing me from passing on the narrow street.

Out jumped four men, the driver with a hand pistol and three other young men in their mid-twenties, each with a Kalashnikov in his hand and a hand gun in his belt. I stood and we exchanged silent glances. How long this took I do not know. But I remembered looking at them, them looking at me. Then I was quickly pushed into the back seat with two of the Kalashnikov-toting gunmen.

The doors slammed and the car moved off quickly. I remember smiling to myself, looking at these men. The driver was watching me in the mirror, and his friend on the passenger seat turned full face towards me, half smiling. The two men in the back seat beside me were silent, grim and I think somewhat fearful. The car gathered speed and I was ordered down on the floor. I could not, would not go down on the floor amongst their feet. I simply bowed my head, resting it on one of the men’s knees. This seemed to cause much confusion. The driver was angry, he wanted me on the floor. His friend in the passenger seat was smiling and laughing. The guard on whose knee I rested my head seemed perplexed.

For us in July of 2022, two key themes should resonate: the sudden disappearance of normality and a defiant refusal to accept this new normal, as in no way was Keenan going down “on the floor amongst their feet.”

In prison literature, there is a dichotomy routinely depicted, that of abject compliance, to the point of turning and ratting on your fellow inmates, or stubbornly maintaining your much assailed dignity at all costs. Though Keenan survived his integrity, or pride, if you will, he could easily have been killed. Keenan on one beating:

Again I felt that searing tension flash through me, waiting for the blows to come, not seeing them or where they would land. I hissed quietly to myself “Get it over,” echoing the words I had heard Frank cry out days before. Said began by taking deep breaths, deeper and deeper, faster and faster he breathed in and out. He was working himself up. I sat and listened to him exciting himself into violence. Down it came, hard, on my shoulders, driving into my chest. Then along my thighs, banging against my knees, Said’s excited breathing becoming louder. Every part of my body was being insulted. I could feel the heat of this man beside me. I could smell the perfume that he always wore, mixed with his sweat. This man was the violent lover and his abuse of my body a kind of rape. I felt the closeness of him and knew he was sexually excited by what he was doing. The blows rained down and I felt only anger; to be raped by a man so filled with fear revolted me. A man fascinated by violence and obsessed with sex. In that moment I hated him, I did not fear him. I made no noise as each blow landed and was driven into me. My resistance was a joyful thing. Said became more passionate, more vicious, always seeking out the tender parts and banging the butt of his rifle onto my flesh. He worked himself into exhaustion and finally, as a last humiliation, he pressed the butt of the gun tight onto my neck, pushing down hard till I felt the air being choked out of me. How long would he keep this up, and how long before I would burst out screaming for air? But it was his final insult.

Much of the West has not had an existential crisis in decades. No aerial bombardments, being herded into concentration camps, dying of starvation, enduring a psychotic dictator or escaping one’s homeland on an unseaworthy boat, etc. Politics for them has been no more grave than voting, haranguing one’s “enemies” online or protesting for an hour, often in a cute costume or even naked, then it’s time for cappuccino or mojito.

To hide their gulag or killing field envy, many have become stridently militant, but only image wise, so they can post cool pics on FaceBook, Twitter or Instagram. Nothing is risked. Others slake this deficit with video games or Hollywood movies, where carnage as spectacle has become a staple.

Suddenly, though, many realize they’ve been shoved into a strange, hostile vehicle and taken for a ride to an unknown location, with their faces pressed to the floor. Most still insist it’s not that absurd, much less horrifying, with normality returning in any case, and even if it isn’t, the new normality isn’t much of an inconvenience.

Still more curious, many who expect the worst can’t wait for it to happen, such is their ennui and self-hatred, for anything is better than their meaningless life.

Seventeen years after his release, Keenan returned to Beirut. “I couldn’t say I was happy and excited to be back—it was far more than that. I was falling in love," and understandably so. It was where Keenan had found the most meaning.

Unlike Keenan, we may not have a chance to tell our own stories, no matter how badly.

[Holiday Inn in Beirut, 12/17/20]

Covid Feuilleton #8

As published at SubStack, 1/9/22:

[Sidon, 11/13/20]

I flew into a darkened country on 10/28/20. In Lebanon, I saw a society in deep crisis after being attacked by Jews through several decades. Jewish wars had flooded the country with refugees from Palestine and Syria. Jewish meddling had pitted different Lebanese factions against each other, though not entirely successfully, for I saw Muslims and Christians coexisting peacefully in adjacent villages, with regular interactions, as in Muslims visiting Christian stores to buy alcohol.

My driver was a Muslim, Ali, who boasted of drinking first thing in the morning, then all day long. Though his alcoholism didn’t affect his steering, it sometimes crimped his memory, so he’d forget where he was taking me.

“Ali, are we going south? We’re not supposed to go to Saida. You’re supposed to take me to my hotel in Beirut.”

Despite their extremely difficult circumstances, the Lebanese were very gracious and composed, gentle and smiling, and I didn’t have to worry about street crime. In Beirut, I wandered about whenever, often in the dark down empty streets late at night or before dawn

Still stylish, beautiful and sophisticated, Beirut was severely damaged, with broken buildings everywhere. Punctured by mortar rounds and thousands of bullets in 1975-76, the 26-story Holiday Inn stood unrepaired as a permanent monument to war, like the bombed TV station and Department of Defense buildings in Belgrade, or the “hollow tooth” in Berlin. Next to the Holiday Inn, the Phoenicia was a burnt out mess for nearly 25 years. Reopened in 2000, it’s an empty wreck again, due to the port explosion in August of 2020, which most Lebanese believe was a Jewish attack. Many saw airplanes just before it happened, and both the US and Israel have refused to release satellite images to aid the investigation.

Lebanon is constantly surveilled by Jews. Daily, Jewish planes violate its airspace. I stopped looking up after three days. On my first day in Cairo two months later, I instinctively thought “Israel” when I heard an airliner overhead.

When a society’s in trouble, food and fuel become scarce, and the government increasingly fails to provide basic services. Even in Beirut, street and traffic lights were often not turned on at night, so there were more accidents. With the army so weak, Lebanon’s southern third had been ceded to Hezbollah, which managed to maintain impressive order, and even some social welfare. Insolvent, the government printed money to pay bills, which led to runaway inflation, forcing citizens to cut back on basics. I met Lebanese who had stopped eating meat. Walking around, I was often hounded by beggars, many of them children. To the embarrassment of passersby, they’d spread out their tiny hands while pleading, “Baba! Baba!”

Even privileged Lebanese were affected. With capital control, they could withdraw only so much from their banks each month. Still, they were dining out and shopping at upscale malls. Living far from shabby neighborhoods, they witnessed none of the worst misery. Driving around, it was easier for them to ignore beggars, though there was nearly always one or two at each intersection. “Oh, they’re not Lebanese,” I’d hear, “but Syrian refugees.” Or, “They’re professional beggars. They walk around barefoot to look more miserable.” A cleanly dressed middle-aged man digging through a trash can was glibly deemed mentally ill by a comfortable Lebanese. In the US, I had heard similar verdicts about its many hundreds of thousands of homeless, that they’re just alcoholics, junkies or, simply, losers.

You’d think a country with a disintegrating economy would not attract immigrants, but there are always direr levels of destitution, so in Lebanon, there were plenty of Filipina, Sri Lankan and Ethiopian domestic servants. Why import these, when there were so many Lebanese barely surviving and not eating meat? Why not, since foreigners cost less?

[Leeba, 11/8/20]

With Israel an impossible neighbor, most Lebanese couldn’t wait for it to disappear. While in Lebanon, I was even told an attack from the Axis of Resistance of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah was imminent, as in months and not years. With Hezbollah tunnels deep inside Israel, tons of sophisticated weapons were being smuggled in, so the Jews were terrified, with many already fleeing Israel, I was told. Gaza was ready to rise.

Entertaining this finale, I fantasized about entering a liberated Palestine, but of course that didn’t occur, and it can’t happen now, more than a year later. When it comes to the workings of history, we’re mostly in the dark, for we don’t decide anything. The big boys toy with us.

On 10/15/20, there was an ad on American television, “Why Not Vietnam?” Since it pitched the country as a post-Covid destination, people didn’t just assume Vietnam would reopen soon, but Covid was about done. Stuck in the dark, we were dead wrong, of course. The main Covid act, with its most deadly aim, was still ahead. Billions of the duped or cowed still had to be injuriously or fatally jabbed, by force if necessary, for as long as it takes.

On 11/9/20, Pfizer proudly announced the arrival of its mRNA “vaccine.” Accepting a Theodor Herzl Award from the World Jewish Congress on 11/10/21, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla would point out that November 9^th has a darker significance:

As the son of Holocaust survivors, to me, November 9^th has always been synonymous with Kristallnacht. On that Night of Broken Glass, the antisemitism that made Nazi Germany went from discriminatory words and policies to outright violence. The destruction of property, the killings, the arrest of 30,000 Jews who were sent to concentration camps marked the beginning of the Holocaust. Because of this, November 9^th, 1938 will always be remembered for the horrors that racists and hatred can bring to our world. But then came November 9^th of 2020, a day that will always be remembered as well, as an example of the hope that human ingenuity and determination can bring to the world. This is the day that Pfizer delivered the news to the world that it has been waiting for, that clinical trials demonstrated that our vaccines worked. That news brought great joy to billions of people around the world. Grandparents could soon be able to have their grandchildren. Coffee shops, restaurants and movie theaters could soon welcome back guests. We will be able to get on a plane again, and most important, lives will be saved.

Bourla isn’t the only one linking his “vaccine” to the Holocaust. Unaware of his speech, I wrote on 11/18/21, “The Jewish controlled mainstream and social media are certainly uniform in pushing this genocide. It’s how we atone for their mostly mythical Holocaust.”

I hope you’re not asking, “Which genocide?”

 

[to be continued, of course and unfortunately]

[Beirut, 12/14/20]

Goodbye, Lebanon

As published at Unz Review, 12/26/20:





It’s cold yet sunny on this Christmas morning. Standing outside, I’m surrounded by a squadron of winged insects. Dots of light, they hover and meander in air tirelessly. Like drunk pinballs, they jerk, dance and bounce down invisible grooves, and around unseen obstacles. No, they’re more like ponderous thoughts. (Your jumped-up synapses are but flying insects.) Now and then, one would dart decisively, like a jabbing boxer unleashing a right cross or hook, but for what purpose, I have no idea, being no insect, not even a very stupid one.

After nearly three weeks in Beirut, I’m back in southern Lebanon, in a village where life is still tranquil, and signs of obvious economic or social distress are nonexistent, unlike in the capital. Extended families ensure no one starves, or goes without shoes.

The day after I returned, there was collective mourning, however, for a 22-year-old native son had just been martyred in Syria. Within half a day, his body had been brought back, and banners and posters bearing his handsome portrait went up.

At dawn, speakers broadcast a plangent prayer, and this went on, episodically, throughout the day. On foot or in cars, mourners converged on the funeral, with some children dressed in military uniforms. They’re all proud to honor one of their own. With so many Hezbollah fighters clustered, security was airtight.

A community can’t survive if no one is willing to die defending its values.

As if to reinforce this most obvious, yet still often forgotten, truism, I just received a most incisive email from a Lebanese-American, Frank Isabelle.

Born in Columbus, Ohio, Isabelle has been lucky enough to spend many “restful and carefree summers” in his ancestral Lebanon. At the entrance to his grandmother’s village, there’s a mural, “Salima, the village of the resistor Ghassan Saeed, welcomes all.”

Isabelle:

Who is this man Ghassan Saeed? Frustrated with what he felt was a tepid response to the Jewish occupation of Lebanon, Ghassan and his fellow countrymen organized an informal cell to engage in resistance activities. Acting of their own initiative, and without any support from the all too numerous militias of civil war Lebanon, Ghassan was eventually imprisoned in an ambush while his comrade Pierre attained martyrdom. Today, Ghassan works as a mechanic.

Is it possible to imagine such a noble and pithy sentiment adorning the entrance of an American suburb? Of course not. For Americans, nothing seems more natural, more scientific than allowing their life to be rationalized for them. They not only live at the end of history, they also love nothing more than gloating over their static, passive existence. I can’t think of anywhere else in the world where people are proud to be so aggressively babied. But that’s the way it is with Americans.

Too harsh? Hardly. Cowering offensive lineman-sized babies can certainly use a few Younghoe Koo kicks in the ass, to jumpstart them, finally, into battle against their Jewish occupation.

First, though, they must give a shit about their village, hood or subdivision. Isabelle:

Communal life breeds sensitive people. That is why so many poets and martyrs are found among the ranks of the Lebanese, while pornstars and petty thieves are a dime a dozen in the vapid consumerist wasteland of 21st century America […] Every nook and cranny of our [Lebanese] village was crafted by our ancestors, and the trajectory and inertia of our common heritage feels almost inevitable. Each generation adds another level to our living quarters, or expands the garden a little more, or dedicates a new roadside shrine.

All day on Lebanese television, there are scenes of exuberant or somber Christmas celebrations in Lebanon and Syria, and it’s impossible to not be moved by reverent images of Biblical sites, historical churches, lovingly restored frescoes, children praying at home or Holy Communion taken in magnificent settings.

In Muslim-majority Lebanon, folks of whatever faith, or none at all, still retain enough of an innate sense of decency to not put up with any Christmas-capped talking turd or psycho Santas slashing innocents. Unlike in Israel, Christians are not spat on here. Meanwhile, Americans have long been conditioned to laugh at, and even pay for, their own degradation.

*

Most may think of Lebanon as a land of sectarian violence, with religious militias slaughtering each other, but coexistence has actually been the norm. Ancient Christian villages abut Muslim ones.

A short drive away from me is Anqoun. With its large portraits of Nasrallah and 25 martyrs who died expelling Jews, you know you’re in Hezbollah country, but just five minutes away is Maghdoucheh, the most sacred Christian site in Lebanon. Its resilience is worth examining.

The Christians of Maghdoucheh count themselves among the earliest. Saint Paul and Jesus preached in nearby Sidon, visible down the hill.

In 326AD, Saint Helena summoned a Maghdouchian to Constantinople, for she had heard about a sacred cave in faraway Phoenicia. There, the Virgin Mary had sheltered as her son preached, locals believed. Finding the Maghdouchian’s account convincing, Saint Helena sent an icon of the Madonna with baby Jesus to Maghdoucheh, where it still is today, locals believe, inside the cave.

For a millennium, both cave and icon disappeared. After the Muslim conquest, Magdouchians fled to Zahle and Zouk, each a day’s hike away. Abandoning their village, they covered their sacred grotto with earth, rocks and vines.

Returning 900 years later, they could no longer find it, however. Another century passed before the cave was rediscovered, by accident, when a kid goat fell into a hole in the ground. Thrilled, Magdouchians placed their icon inside a new chapel, but twice, it returned by itself to the cave, locals believe, so there it was the other day. In the soft yellow light, three women prayed to it.

Outside the cave, there’s a marble statue of a sitting Madonna, with a plexiglass sign behind her, in French, Arabic and English, “I’m waiting for my children.”

No sightseer, I had been to Magdoucheh a dozen times, but only to visit Abou Jihad “King of the Drink” Liquor Store. This is also Ali the driver’s favorite pilgrimage.

With Ali translating, I asked the 60-ish owner how long she had lived in Magdoucheh? Looking surprised, she answered, “All my life! My grandmother was here, and my grandmother’s grandmother.” On her wall was a mock but life-sized M-16, and two fake pistols, as decorations.

When Israel attacked Lebanon in 2006, some Magdouchians were nervous their village might be targeted by enraged Muslims, but Hezbollah reassured them this would not happen. It backed this up by protecting Magdoucheh and all other Christian villages inside its territory.

*

2020 saw the assassinations of a top Iranian general and its leading nuclear scientist. An explosion in Beirut wrecked its port and hundreds of buildings. Though the war in Syria has cooled down, it persists. To most Lebanese, these attacks are parts of the long-standing Jewish/American war on the Iranian/Syrian/Hezbollah Axis of Resistance (against Israel).

So who’s winning this conflict? Obviously Israel, if you consider how their recent assaults have met with almost no retaliation, and how many Muslim nations have normalized relations with the Jewish state. Just this year, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco have done so, and soon, Oman, Pakistan and Indonesia may join them. Israel is here to stay, it’s clear, while the Axis of Resistance is economically crippled, diplomatically isolated and militarily impotent, no?

A closer look, though, will reveal that Israel’s solidity is entirely illusory, for its sugar daddy, slave and hired gun has been economically, politically, socially, intellectually and morally imploded, thanks, in large part, to the machination of Jewish power, ironically.

Driven by spite, hubris and contempt, it doesn’t know when to stop. Wagging the dog for decades, the all-too-clever tail has just about killed it. Uncle Sam has been reduced to a limp and blathering cross-dresser with less than a penny in his pockets.

Ah, but Sammy and his Jewish boss still have plenty of nukes! Going under, they may not hesitate to unleash a bunch. To get rid of the Jewish/American Axis of Evil, this might be the price Lebanon, the Middle East and the rest of humanity will have to pay.

Flying into Beirut two months ago, I suspected explosive events by the end of the year, especially near the American presidential election. Despite continuing turbulence everywhere, life has limped on, however, within the sick terms of our new normal.

In three days, I’ll leave for Cairo, the Mother of the World. Lovely Lebanon is still at peace, and that’s what I will remember. I won’t forget its rocky hills, olive groves, large curtains over entire balconies, old houses still stunning despite much neglect, quirky purse-shaped bread and relaxed, pleasant people everywhere.

Though the next cataclysm seems imminent, it will surely rise from the ruins.

Lovely Lebanon

Dear Linh,

I have just finished reading about your travels in Lebanon, and I am deeply moved.

Although I had the misfortune of being born in Wextopia — that is, Columbus, Ohio — I have had the pleasure of spending many restful and carefree summers in my grandfather's village of Qanebeh in Mount Lebanon.

For a short period, I also lived in Qantari in a mixed Shia-Syrian street on the outskirts of west Beirut adjacent to the Green line, and I have even been behind the giant rampart on Bliss Street separating the American beachhead of Beirut from al-Hamra.

The fortifications that you are encountering in central Beirut have more or less been present since the nineties. They ostensibly exist to protect the public from terrorism, but they really serve the more insidious function of helping to colonize central Beirut. Borrowing from Hausman's renovation of Paris, it was obvious following the non-end of the Civil War that the financial and administrative center of Lebanon would never be able to function as a proper parasitic bureaucracy should it have to coexist alongside the common residents of Beirut.

This resulted in the creation of Solidere, a development and real estate agency dominated by the Hariri's and tasked with the restoration of downtown Beirut. Their first action was to promptly evict the shopkeepers and bulldoze the residential areas. The result is the hollow fortified consumer center found today so reminiscent of European capitals, and which obviously exists as a speculatory token should the Lebanese ever capitulate to global Jewry.

Due to the feudal ethos animating Lebanese culture, I have spent very little time outside of Mount Lebanon. I have, however, travelled to the South on two occasions, and once would have been more than most of my native-born relatives. The first time I visited Sour and the second time I attended a Julia Boutros concert.

For such a small country, the Muslim Lebanon that you describe in such vivid detail is still very foreign to me, but the spirit of resistance is not. At the entrance to my grandmother's village, a large mural reads "Salima, the village of the resistor Ghassan Saeed, welcomes all."



Who is this man Ghassan Saeed? Frustrated with what he felt was a tepid response to the Jewish occupation of Lebanon, Ghassan and his fellow countrymen organized an informal cell to engage in resistance activities. Acting of their own initiative, and without any support from the all too numerous militias of civil war Lebanon, Ghassan was eventually imprisoned in an ambush while his comrade Pierre attained martyrdom. Today, Ghassan works as a mechanic.

Is it possible to imagine such a noble and pithy sentiment adorning the entrance of an American suburb? Of course not. For Americans, nothing seems more natural, more scientific than allowing their life to be rationalized for them. They not only live at the end of history, they also love nothing more than gloating over their static, passive existence. I can't think of anywhere else in the world where people are proud to be so aggressively babied. But that's the way it is with Americans.

In a village, victory exists for the courageous and aggressive. Power doesn't need dissected or explained by critical theory or any other academic mystifications. Power is obviously alien and abhorrent precisely because analyzing it doesn't change it. It doesn't need your consent to dominate your life. In a village, the vast gulf between production and consumption that exists in developed economies is marginal. No one is anonymous, and you can't avoid the consequences of your actions. They stare you in the face. In spite of all the sabotage, wars, and austerity, even in the cities it is not uncommon to find entire blocks that have been occupied by one large, evolving, extended family for generations and even centuries at a time.

Communal life breeds sensitive people. That is why so many poets and martyrs are found among the ranks of the Lebanese, while pornstars and petty thieves are a dime a dozen in the vapid consumerist wasteland of 21st century America.

It has been a year and half since I have been to Lebanon and don't know if I will ever be able to return. If the wretches at the World Economic Forum have their way, traveling across the world won't be a possibility for us plebes, and much less for those of us who refuse the biometric surveillance and invasive non-medical procedures that will soon be made mandatory in the name of "public health".

The idea that I may never again set foot in Lebanon, makes your essays all the more gut-wrenching. When I contrast my experiences in Lebanon among such witty, vigorous and grounded people with my day to day interactions here in America I become all the more depressed.

Every nook and cranny of our village was crafted by our ancestors, and the trajectory and inertia of our common heritage feels almost inevitable. Each generation adds another level to our living quarters, or expands the garden a little more, or dedicates a new roadside shrine.

In America, nearly every moment of my waking life I inhabit some lowlife developer's greedy imagination. Still people here make an effort. Just yesterday someone scratched a penis on the restroom mirror of the local Speedway. We certainly haven't become a civilization on par with the Lebanese yet, but if another renaissance does emerge out of these dark times, it will once again be thanks to the steadfast inhabitants of the Levant.


Frank Isabelle






[Salima]

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

[Holiday Inn]


.

.

[Holiday Inn]


.

.

[Bourj Hammoud, the Armenian neighborhood]


.

.

[Bourj Hammoud, the Armenian neighborhood]


.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.