All the Beirut news.

Blanford on drugs (again): Abu Rida gestured proudly through the tinted windows of his battered and dusty, silver Hummer SUV at a field of shoulder-high cannabis plants. “This is the famous Red Lebanese,” he said, pausing briefly to lean out of the window and pick the soft fluffy head of one plant. The pungent odour filled the car. 

Abu Rida - not his real name - is one of the leading drug barons in the Bekaa Valley, earning millions of dollars each year from hashish cultivation and from refining and selling cocaine.More

From a journalistic standpoint, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may become known as the time and place where documentary film making excelled as a way to tell of the service and sacrifice of U.S. military personnel and their families.

If so, special praise will be bestowed on filmmakers Jon Alpert and Matthew O'Neill for bringing the wars not just into the living rooms of Americans but into their hearts as well.

New violence this week against Christians in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul has sparked an outcry from the country's religious minority. In the last week, officials said, Christian families have fled the city after coming under attack from Sunni militants.

Christians have been targeted in the city along with other sects and ethnic groups since 2003. An estimated 933 Christian families have fled Mosul in the last week, said Jawdat Ismail, director of the ministry of displacement and migration in Nineveh province.

… ولم يعودواالمقابر الجماعيةHuman Rights WatchSOLIDE
موقع ذاكرة بلا كلالة كتب معرفا عن مشروعه: أضعف الإيمان الاعتراف بأن لبنان لم يتعاف، بعد، من آثار الخمس عشرة سنة التي يجمع اللبنانيون على وصفها بسنوات الحرب؛ وأضعف الإيمان أيضاً الاعتراف بأن الحرب تلك، (أو بالأحرى تلك الحروب)، على ما تذكر بين الحين والآخر تصريحات لا لبس فيها، يدلي [...]

In 2006, the only Iraq veteran elected to the U.S. Congress was Patrick Murphy, a Democrat, who served as an Army lawyer with the 82nd Airborne Division. He narrowly defeated a one-term incumbent.

None of the other Iraq veterans who ran that season were successful. Several more are trying again this year.

In one region, California's 52nd Congressional District in eastern San Diego County, it's virtually assured the winner will be a veteran of the war in Iraq.

While a credit crunch has begun to strangle commerce in the rest of the world, the cash-rich elite of the Persian Gulf seem not to have lost their appetite for high profile deal-making.

The boy with the plastic AK-47 stood in the dust. He waited for others; they came, more boys with fake guns.

When Marine Lance Cpl. James Swain was killed during the battle for Fallouja in late 2004, his brother decided to honor him by joining the Navy and becoming a corpsman.

Benjamin Swain, a Navy petty officer third-class, is now deployed near Fallouja with the 3rd Battalion, 11th Marine Regiment.

And recently an officer who knew James took Benjamin Swain to the spot where his brother was mortally wounded.

Israeli police remained on high alert Friday evening in the northern coastal city of Acre after a third day of clashes between Arab and Jewish residents.

Tensions between the two sides boiled over Wednesday night during the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, when most of Israel shuts down to all vehicle traffic and even secular Jews avoid driving to keep from offending the more devout.

Hand By Hand Against Pollution
من المؤسف أنّه علينا دوماً تذكير الناس بأهميّة النظافة، خصوصاً وأنّهم يتفاخرون بعضهم على بعض بنظافة مساكنهم الإسمنتيّة… لكنّ هؤلاء لا يتوانون عن تلويث كلّ ما هو حولهم عن قصد أو عن غير قصد، كأنّ ما يحيط بهم موجودٌ في كوكبٍ آخر، والتسمّم الناتج عن هكذا أفعال سيصيب سكان عطارد، وليس [...]

SULAYMANIYA -- A separatist Kurdish leader sounded defiant this week after Turkey's parliament authorized more attacks against his group in northern Iraq. "We are ready and our forces are ready. We are not afraid of them. If they want to attack Iraq's Kurdistan, then the Middle East will turn into a fire ball,” Bozan Takeen, a senior leader from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), warned on Thursday by phone from his hideout in Iraqi Kurdistan.

This is from Martin Kramer's blog. WTF is he talking about? :

But in the Middle East there are people as well as oil, and they have more than the usual share of pathologies. A prime U.S. objective, then, has been to isolate the energy flow from those pathologies, by deflecting or combatting or alleviating them.

Here's a few spare photos from several hours spent riding my bicycle around Jerusalem on Yom Kippur. The annual holy day completely transforms the country. All stores shut down, and vehicle traffic is banned in most places.

But in predominantly Arab East Jerusalem, it was business as usual. Stores remained open, and cars moved around normally.

For weeks, Lebanese politicians have been warning that thousands of Syrian troops have amassed on the border of the two countries, perched to possibly invade northern Lebanon.

But a Syrian source close to the government on Wednesday disputed that claim, saying that there were only a few hundred troops deployed to the region, and their purpose was solely to interdict smuggling.

Start: 2009/02/19 - 00:00
End: 2009/02/25 - 00:00

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