THE WORLD IN MY EYES

February 14 rally in pictures

2010-02-14T07:57:00.000-08:00

A PATTERN THAT I MISSED

2009-11-20T01:33:00.000-08:00

I was writing a few weeks ago about patterns of dictatorship and Hezbollah: the demonstrrations, the cult of personality, the intelligence, the propaganda.

I missed this.

Nasrallah Re-elected as Hizbullah Chief
Hizbullah concluded its General Conference which lasted for several months in the making, and endorsed a new political doctrine, the second of its kind after the "open letter" in 1985.
Hizbullah issued a communique declaring that the party has endorsed "a number of organizational amendments that fit the new developing nature of its movement and path in the recent years on various aspects."

The communique also announced the election of the party's Shura Council members and their designations for the new term as follows: Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah (Secretary-General), Sheikh Naim Qassem (Deputy Secretary-General), Sheikh Mohammed Yazbek (Head of Sharia Committee), Sayyed Ibrahim Amin al-Sayyed (Head of Political Bureau), Sayyed Hashim Safieddine (Head of Executive Council), Hussein Khalil (Secretary-General's Political Assistant), MP Mohammed Raad (Head of Loyalty to Resistance bloc).

The secretary-general will hold a press conference in the next few days to declare the new political doctrine, said Hizbullah's communique.

Why all these dictators get re-elected all the time? I've seen no democracy in this world where people elect the same man for more than two mandates at the leadership of a political party.

THE IRANIAN PROPAGANDA STRIKES BACK

2009-11-18T08:04:00.000-08:00

Do you remember last year's photoshoped Iranian missiles?

Well, it seems this time it is an Iranian ship that's allegedly being photoshoped.

After Israel released photos it said proved that a huge shipment of weapons for Hezbollah came from Tehran, Iranian news agencies publish evidence showing that the photos are forged.

Israeli naval sources recently claimed that they found a large cache of Iranian-made arms when they stormed a vessel near Cyprus in the Mediterranean Sea.

They claimed that the ship was heading for the Hezbollah resistance movement, either in Lebanon or Syria.

Iran instantly dismissed the claims, issuing a statement with which it condemned Israel's many acts of piracy in international waters.

But the Israeli government persisted in its accusations, releasing what it claimed to be photos and documents in an effort to implicate the Iranian government in the matter.

The photos and documents were carried by a number of leading newspapers in the West, including The Los Angeles Times.

"The Israeli regime has made a fool of itself with regards to what it claims to be evidence that Iran was sending weapons to Hezbollah," IRNA news agency said on Monday.

"Take a close look at the photos, one of which merely shows a couple of boxes labeled 'Ministry of Sepah' without providing corroborative evidence that they came from Iran, and you will see the huge gaffe committed by Israel," it added.

The article explained that Iran's Ministry of Sepah gave its place to the Defense Ministry more than twenty years ago. "So this begs the question of what the emblem of a nonexistent body was doing on the cargo?"

ARE WOMEN IN LEBANON ALL TO THE SPA?

2009-11-12T07:47:00.000-08:00

Cause in the government there are only 2.
In the Parliament around 3 or 4. Correct me if I am mistaken.

What are women so not into politics in this country?

LEBANON, WARNED?

2009-11-10T03:25:00.000-08:00

Here we go again.
There is a government to be held responsible now.

Lebanon has reportedly received warning of a "massive" aggression Israel plans against Hizbullah, the daily An-Nahar reported Tuesday.
The report by An-Nahar Washington's correspondent Khalil Flaihan said international military authorities have warned Lebanon that Israel plans to launch a massive attack targeting Hizbullah positions.

It said Israel is also likely to "widen its aggression to include large areas of Lebanon" under the pretext that Hizbullah continues to receive "heavy and sophisticated weapons" via Syria.

Diplomatic sources in Beirut did not rule out the possibility that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could raise the issue of the seized ship alledgedly carrying weapons for Hizbullah and the explosions that took place in Khirbit Selim and Teir Felsay as well as the Katyusha firing from the southern town of Houla.

The sources pointed out that Natanyahu would exploit these incidents to accuse Hizbullah of breaching Resolution 1701 "posing a real threat to Israel's security and that its armed forces are ready for any emergency."

They said the U.S. and French presidents, however, are unlikely to approve any new Israeli offensive against Lebanon.

SO, ARE WE PREPARING FOR WAR?

2009-11-09T01:15:00.000-08:00

A diplomat I was interviewing (off the record) last week told me it's gonna happen soon. The Israelis seem to have lost patience, or at least that's what they are hinting at. The ship scheme was obviously very well put together. The US spotted it ever since it left Iran, but only when it reached the vicinity of Israel was it arrested. It had to happen here and it had to be the IDF to seize it so that the pressure would be in the right place.

So here's the pretext: "We're sick of it we wanna end the whole issue with the Lebanese resistance," says the Israeli war propaganda.

Now they are waiting for the excuse, be it soldiers kidnapped or a plane struck by a missile.

I wrote an article about a possible strike in spring next year. Today I found a statement from Hezbollah in the Observer. Obviously, I have to rely on it since I am working for a media outlet perceived as being inclined to March 14, and the March 8 politicians ( Hezbollah and Amal) are always "busy" when we call them.

Hizbullah is rapidly rearming in preparation for a new conflict with Israel and is reinforcing fixed defense positions north of the Litani river, the British Observer newspaper reported.
"Having lost many of its bunkers in the south, Hizbullah is preparing a new strategy to defend villages there," it said.

"Sure, we are rearming, we have even said that we have far more rockets and missiles than we did in 2006," a Hizbullah commander told the Observer.

"We had to blow up or leave some of our bunkers and fighting positions, but we still have plenty of capabilities in the south. We expect the Israelis to come soon, if not this winter, then they will wait until spring, when the ground isn't too soft for their tanks," he added.

THE SITUATION UNFOLDS

2009-11-05T00:00:00.000-08:00

Hezbollah says no, they were not our weapons.

Israel gives details and even movies of the arrested ship.

UN says it has no evidence of arms smuggling into Lebanon.

Does Israel care? I don't think so. What they are saying through all the footage of the ship and with all the details released to the media (how many rockets, type, how the clues match the type of weaponry used by Hezbollah, and even papers of the ship allegedly headed for Latakia harbor in Syria) say that " Look guys, UN is a tired incompetent organization, Hezbollah is a danger to everybody around here, and we need to do something about Iran before it's too late. Who's gonna do that?"

Who do you think the West is going to believe?
We have a cultural difference here. As one of my professors in political science keeps repeating, the Israelis speak the language of the West: media awareness campaign, transparency, clear information provided in English, clear construction of the arguments and the visual proof provided.

Hezbollah clearly does not speak the language of the West. No clear arguments, no visual proof that Israel is wrong, no arguments. Some say that this is it's charm. But, they barely opened their mouths 24 hours after the whole scandal.

WHAT IS GOING ON OUT THERE FOLKS?

2009-11-04T06:06:00.000-08:00

The news of the day:

Israeli special forces on Wednesday seized control of an Iranian vessel carrying arms intended for Hezbollah, in a daring pre-dawn raid not far from the coast of Cyprus.

The ship was believed to have set out from Iran and later docked in Yemen and Sudan before sailing through the Suez Canal. Its final destination was believed to be either Syria or Lebanon.

The Antigua-flagged ship was discovered during routine patrols conducted by the Navy, according to a communiqué from the Israel Defense Forces Spokespersons Unit.

It makes me wonder as my editor has been wondering for a while: what the hell are these guys doing? Last night there was the UN report on how dangerous the Hezbollah weapons are for the region's peace. And here they are: the IDF seizes THE weapons!, coming exactly from Iran and going to, surprise!, Hezbollah.

In the meantime, there is stuff going on behind the closed doors. Two European countries in the UNIFIL are sort of diplomatically, silently quarreling over who's to be in charge of the peace keeping mission. The Italians should leave the command in February 2010 together with some 1000 troops. The Spanish, who have been in charge of the south eastern sector and have been doing quite a good job there (visited their sector several times), are the ones willing to take the leadership. But wait, not so fast.
While the Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero had already received congratulations for the move, the little devil's tail had to come in. Netanyahu, the Israeli head of government, has requested most "secretly and personally" to prime minister Berlusconi to keep Claudio Graziano, the present UNIFIL chief, in place. The Spanish were furious. They still are.

The Spanish newspapers are blaming the Italians. The Italians are praising their general telling that it's only because of him that the tripartite meetings with the IDF, LAF and UNIFIL. He is friends with Michel Sleiman, the Lebanese president, and is also very much esteemed by the Israelis.

The Spanish still believe they are getting the command in February, sources from the embassy in Beirut say.

But, why all these games? Why should the Italians stay and what is wrong with the Spanish?

The quarrel helps a bit the Israeli case. The UNIFIL troops are to get fewer and fewer. Germany wants to withdraw, the Italians want to withdraw. Until now the Spanish and the French are the only ones who didn't get bored of this 30 year peace mission.

Meanwhile, the IDF seems to build up a pretext. I have this deja vu about weapons of mass destruction already. UN says Hezbollah has weapons, Iran is busy with its own internal opposition, Israel finds the weapons, makes a big deal out of it, although a month before the Germans found another ship and it didn't get so much publicity. Then there is some rocket fire once in a while in South Lebanon, Israeli planes fly over Beirut, and life goes on.

Or just seems to do so?

The only actor in this show who has not said anything and hasn't even moved a finger is none other than Hezbollah.

BACK TO ENGLISH

2009-11-04T05:52:00.000-08:00

I neglected this blog for a long time. But that's because I have been trying to update the Romanian language one and sort of run out of time between work, my studies and blogging and other stuff happening in my new life in a new country with a new job and new dreams.

When I look at my own dreams and views and what I wrote back then when I had just arrived in Lebanon (a year and three months ago) I smile and even giggle. Lebanon changed a lot in me and I had to learn a lot to be able to understand the people around me, my neighbor at the second floor. I am a 30 year old woman doing her Master's degree in a country like Lebanon. Not an easy thing to do, when you have to leave a job and a house back home.

There were a few times I wanted to just pack my bags and run back. But I didn't and I'm glad because I'm gonna make it. So this is a new beginning for me. And my stories in English will be back online.

April's fools, huh? A la libanaise

2009-04-01T00:12:00.000-07:00

http://www.lorientlejour.com/news/article.php?id=613462

Oil & Musc? Oil in Bint Jbeil and in full center of Baalbeck? Sweeeeeeeet. Good one.

La nouvelle a fait l'effet d'une bombinette : la très sérieuse compagnie norvégienne Oil & Musc a officiellement annoncé hier les résultats des prospections qu'elle mène depuis février 2008 sur l'ensemble du territoire libanais. Il en ressort, à la surprise générale, que le Liban a bel et bien du pétrole, et pas seulement dans ses eaux territoriales : dans son sous-sol aussi !
Ainsi, pas moins de onze gisements ont été découverts. Le premier, le plus important selon Oil & Musc, se situe à Ajaltoun ; le second à Bab el-Tebbaneh à Tripoli, le troisième dans les environs de Halba au Akkar, le quatrième en plein centre-ville de Baalbeck (heureusement loin des ruines), le cinquième sous les cédraies de Baakline au Chouf, le sixième à Bint-Jbeil, le septième dans les collines autour de Marjeyoun, le huitième à Mhaydsé dans la banlieue de Bickfaya, le neuvième entre Badaro et Sami el-Solh, le dixième à Hay el-Sellom et le onzième sur la route côtière Batroun-Koura.
Ces gisements seront inaugurés en grande pompe avant les législatives prévues le 7 juin prochain. La cantatrice Sabah sera en concert sur le site de Baakline ; Joan Collins, l'ex-star de Dynasty, tiendra une conférence de presse à Hay el-Sellom ; l'architecte Ziad Akl, natif du village, sa consœur irakienne Zaha Hadid et son confrère chinois Li Pei présenteront la maquette de la raffinerie de Mhaydsé, John McEnroe et Jimmy Connors disputeront un match amical dans le temple de Bacchus aménagé en court de tennis, le prince Nayef d'Arabie saoudite se déplacera en personne à Badaro et l'OPEP entend déplacer son siège permanent à Bint-Jbeil, le Liban devenant membre d'honneur de l'organisation.
Le gouvernement libanais ne sera pas en reste : les ministres de l'Énergie (Alain Tabourian), de l'Économie (Mohammad Safadi), du Tourisme (Élie Marouni), de l'Industrie (Ghazi Zeaïter) et de l'Environnement (Tony Karam) multiplieront leurs interventions ensemble sur les onze sites ; CNN, LCI, BBC, Euronews et la télévision vénézuélienne ont d'ores et déjà assuré qu'elles les couvriront toutes en direct.
Et un bonheur n'arrivant jamais seul, Steven Spielberg aurait décidé de réaliser un long-métrage sur cette nouvelle ruée vers l'or (noir). Il serait présent au Liban du 24 au 29 avril pour ses premiers repérages en compagnie de cinq des acteurs principaux de ce futur long-métrage : Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Sean Penn, Kiefer Sutherland et Harrison Ford.
Les Libanais en rêvaient, la nature l'a fait...

VANISHED IN SYRIA

2009-02-25T00:38:00.000-08:00

Published on Media Line, www.medialine.org, in december 2008

Rana Khawand does not remember her father. She was four years old when he disappeared. Boutros Khawand, a well-known Lebanese Christian politician, is said to have been kidnapped in December 1992 in East Beirut, in an area controlled by the Syrian Army. “Witnesses saw his car intercepted by a squad of 11 gunmen who forced him into a red van and drove away,” his daughter says. “We haven’t seen him since. They say Boutros Khawand is not in Syria. But we know. Other prisoners have said they saw him in prison there,” the girl whispers. Khawand is one of the many Lebanese who vanished into Syria during the 1980s and early 1990s. “We are speaking of hundreds of Lebanese prisoners in Syria. We had a list containing the names of 250–270 Lebanese prisoners before the Syrian withdrawal. From April 2005 until now, the number has risen to 600,” journalist and human rights activist Pierre Atallah says. According to the Damascus government, there are no Lebanese political prisoners in Syrian prisons. The issue has been haunting the nascent diplomatic relations between Damascus and Beirut. “It’s been going on for a while. We say ‘give us our prisoners’ – they say they don’t have any. Then after a while, people show up at home and say they had been detained in Syria,” Atallah says. Ali Abu Dehn is one of the people who came back from the Syrian prisons. He was released in 2000 after former Syrian President Hafez al Assad died and his son and successor, Bashar, pardoned 54 Lebanese political prisoners in honor of his father. Dehn’s nightmare began on December 7, 1987, when the Syrian Intelligence took him from the Australian embassy in Damascus. He was trying to leave Lebanon for Sydney to escape the civil war. “Instead I was sent to hell for 13 years,” he says, with a bitter smile. He was imprisoned in Saydnaya and Tadmur ( Palmyra), together with dozens of Lebanese detainees. Dehn was charged at first with fighting against the Syrian presence in Lebanon, as well as with spying for Israel, a charge common to most of the detained Lebanese. He says they were tortured, beaten and humiliated. “What they did to us was inhuman. I was hanged by my wrist until the joint separated. The person interrogating me told me he would show my elbow to me. I didn’t believe he could. But he twisted my hand, so I saw my elbow,” he remembers. He also remembers how he got the dozens of scars on his body – the ones on his legs from the beatings – the broken hand, the cigarette burn on the back of his neck, the dislocated shoulder. He says he is not afraid to speak out, although he has been threatened with death several times. “I’m trying my best for the other prisoners who are still being tortured. There were many Lebanese with me. Bashar al Assad denies the existence of Lebanese in their prisons… but I left six of my friends in there. I know! We were sharing the little food, the small potato we had to split between five persons. They are still there! I don’t know if they are alive or dead – but I left them in Syria!” The situation of Lebanese detainees was an official taboo in Lebanese-Syrian relations for decades. Damascus had a military presence and control over Lebanon from 1976 until April 2005, when it withdrew its troops after the Cedar Revolution, the Lebanese reaction to the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri on February 14, 2005. Several human rights organizations and the families of the detainees missing in Syria started to pressure the government in Beirut to take action and ask for information on the missing Lebanese in Syrian jails. But there has been little progress. “The problem is important for both political alliances in Lebanon, March 14 and March 8. They cannot deny it and can’t run away from responsibility in this case,” Atallah stresses. At the request of hundreds of families, the Lebanese Ministry of Justice has recently started to update the files of the alleged political prisoners. But Atallah, who is a member of the Foundation for Human and Humanitarian Rights, says he is not very optimistic. “The Lebanese government is not well organized, it’s not serious,” he says. One by one, the Lebanese politicians who visited Syria after the establishment of diplomatic relations threw the ball into somebody else’s court. The minister of justice, Ibrahim Najjar, has acknowledged the existence of 745 Lebanese citizens missing in Syria. In a television interview, he said these citizens were divided into two main categories – convicts and kidnap victims – and that the Justice Ministry should take responsibility for the convicts. However, Najjar did not say how the Lebanese government would deal with the situation of the kidnap victims. At the end of September 2008, the justice minister announced he had received an updated list of 120 Lebanese prisoners from Damascus. But no political prisoner was on it, Atallah says. “They are criminals imprisoned for drug trafficking or smuggling weapons or working in prostitution. There was no information about the soldiers detained during the 1990 Syrian attack on the Christian areas.” After his visit to Damascus in November, Lebanese Interior Minister Ziad Baroud said his talks with Syrian Interior Minister Bassam Abdel Majid did not cover the dossier of missing persons and detainees in Syrian prisons. “The issue of missing Lebanese in Syrian jails was not excluded from discussions with the Syrians, but I did not want to exceed my authority, so we only discussed the role of the interior minister in this matter,” Baroud said in a statement on his return to Beirut. When Lebanese President Michel Suleiman asked his Syrian counterpart, Bashar al Assad, about the fate of the political prisoners, the leader in Damascus is said to have replied that it was not a presidential matter. “They diverted this case to the joint committee, the Syrian-Lebanese Committee. It’s not promising. The work of this committee is based on a routine. At every meeting, the Lebanese present a list of people who are allegedly detained in Syria, and the Syrians ask for information about their people lost in Lebanon in the civil war. In fact, this is not the same thing,” Atallah says. “They were in Lebanon for 30 years. Why didn’t they look for their people then? Now they remember?” Gen. Michel Aoun, the Free Patriotic Movement leader, also visited Syria recently. The human rights organizations, as well as the families of the people who vanished in Syria, asked him to bring up the issue in front of the Syrian president. Aoun refused to deal with the case because he said it was the responsibility of the president of the republic. The families of the people who vanished in Syria still hope they might hear from their relatives. “We hope that now, with the diplomatic relations with Syria, maybe we might know what happened to my father,” Rana Khawand sighs. “The last time they heard of him was in 2004. A Lebanese prisoner was released and he said that he saw my father in prison.” Her father would now be 79. She hopes he is still alive, but she knows that the chances of seeing him lessen every day. “If Syria doesn’t admit it has Lebanese prisoners, nothing can be done. I can’t see a good relationship with Syria if there are still Lebanese prisoners there,” she says. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem has confirmed that an embassy will be established in Lebanon by year's end. Atallah says he can hardly wait for a Syrian embassy to open in Beirut. “The day they open it, the families of the prisoners will set up tents in front of it,” he promises.

OLD JEWISH LADY IN BEIRUT

2008-10-07T08:14:00.000-07:00

The woman is obvioulsy very ill and very lonely. She lives in the building that used to belong to her family before the war. But her brothers left the country when it was clear that the Jews were not welcome in Lebanon anymore. After the civil war, being a Jew was the same as being a Israeli. It didn't matter that they were as Lebanese as everybody. But she stayed here, in Beirut with her parents, to take care of them and the shop they had. But then the Syrians took their shop. She has hired a lawyer to get her shop back. How she pays him is a mystery.

She lives with her cats in an almost empty apartment where the walls would fall on her at the slightest tremble. She's scared and paranoid as any person would be in her shoes. She's alone, with no money, no clothes other than those she's wearing and she turned into this dignified beggar in order to eat everyday. "Do you have something to give me to buy food for me and the cats? The BBC girl gave me 50 000 once. And the clothes I wear now. Do you happen to have a winter coat? You're my size. Not a new one, please. Just one you don't want anymore."
She used to be beautiful when she was young. She still wears a bit of make up. "You're from Europe. You have that Europan look. I have the Arab looks. You know, I have Spanish ancestors too. " She speaks perfect French. She doesn't even talk about Hebrew. She wants her life to be small and pass un-noticed.

THE JEWS IN LEBANON

2008-10-05T00:52:00.000-07:00

Some say they might be as few as 40 left. Others believe that there are still many, but they changed their names and now they pray in secret and avoid speaking Hebrew. I started to be interested in the story when I read this on Charles' blog.

I broke into the Beirut synagogue.

It wasn't hard. The gate has a lock on it, but it was knocked down, and the security guards no longer patrol the place as vigilantly. The Ottoman era buildings around the synagogue have been destroyed, and the edifice poses no security risk to the Prime Minister's Grand Serail or Future Movement leader Saad Hariri's future residence.

My friend and I climbed over the trees growing in the courtyard and walked into the main hall, decorated with 6-point stars. The front of the synagogue was desecrated. The holy documents were intentionally removed, but the other ornamental structures were destroyed.

When I met Charles, a Lebanese American, a friend of another friend of another friend, I had no idea he was the owner of Lebanese Political Journal, a blog I've always found interesting.
There were some 20 000 Jews in Lebanon in 1948. Official records list like 200 after 2003.

1948 Jewish population: 20,000
2003: Fewer than 100

When Christian Arabs ruled Lebanon, Jews enjoyed relative toleration. In the mid-50’s, approximately 7,000 Jews lived in Beirut. As Jews in an Arab country, however, their position was never secure, and the majority left in 1967.

Fighting in the 1975-76 Muslim-Christian civil war swirled around the Jewish Quarter in Beirut, damaging many Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues. Most of the remaining 1,800 Lebanese Jews emigrated in 1976, fearing the growing Syrian presence in Lebanon would curtail their freedom of emigration. Most Jews went to Europe (particularly France), the United States, and Canada.

In the mid-1980's, Hezbollah kidnapped several prominent Jews from Beirut — most were leaders of what remained of the country's tiny Jewish community. Four of the Jews were later found murdered. Nearly all of the remaining Jews are in Beirut, where there is a committee that represents the community. Because of the current political situation, Jews are unable to openly practice Judaism.

In 2004, only 1 out of 5,000 Lebanese Jewish citizens registered to vote participated in the municipal elections. Virtually none of those registered remains in the country. The lone Jewish voter said that most of the community consists of old women.

The community has turned into a legend. Source of stories and secrets. Apparently there are a few shope owners in Downtown and on the Corniche as I could read in different Lebanese newspapers. They pray at home, as the synagogue has been vandalized during the 2006 war. There is also a Lebanese man, Aaron-Micaël Beydoun, a young muslim guy who started a blog on the issue a few years ago.

I LIKE - part one

2008-10-01T13:06:00.000-07:00

As Raluca requested.

I like:
- the glittering lights of Beirut seen from the plane or from my balcony.
- the smell of the sea in the winter
- my coffee in the morning, the first thing that comes to my mind when I open my eyes
- fantasy novels written by Australian writers such as Garth Nix or Trudi Canavan.
-entering a bookshop and choosing books at frist sight without knowing anything about the writers. That's ahow I discovered the two Australians.
- watching Shreck for the 100th time. Ice Age too.
- windy summer evenings in my mother's garden
-sunsets
- fast Internet
- old silver jewelry
- stray cats in Lebanon who never cuddle
- little tiny kittens who show up from a huge fishery and miew at you under the table
- home made sweets
- fruit ice-cream
- cappuccino in Byblos, in a coffeshop in the old souk
- countryside trips
-mom's voice on the phone
- the smell of her embrace when I get home after a long time
-staying awake at night and writing
- having a glass of wine and talking to an old friend
- old women who always have a story to tell
- stories and fairy tales
- fantasy movies and sci fi
- people with imagination
- dancing alone in the house
- dreaming stories with plots and characters and remembering the dreams
- the smell of a library
- grandfather's records
- dancing tango with grandpa
- watermelons
- holding hands
- kissing in the storm
- Christmas mornings
- cuddling under a blanket on a stormy night.

UPDATE: How about MISHU, MARA, ALEX. You guys, Mara and Alex should write more often.

NEW REPORT ON ANTENA3

2008-10-01T09:06:00.000-07:00

The Romanian priest in Lebanon and the two Romanian sisters helping him with the service in Romanian.

"North Lebanon became a real base for extremism and constitutes a danger for Syria"

2008-09-29T12:08:00.000-07:00

Thi is what Bashar al Assad said during an interview that's gonna be published by the daily al-Bayraq on Tuesday. Does that explain the 10 000 soldiers digging trenches at the Lebanese northern border?

ANOTHER REPORT ON ANTENA3

2008-09-29T02:48:00.001-07:00

TWO DAYS IN TYRE

2008-09-28T14:14:00.001-07:00

Stayed on the Corniche, on the tenth floor (thank you Tony for the two wonderful days), I saw the sunset from the balcony, the mountain in the south ( and behind the mountainn is Israel), got a glimpse of Naqoura glittering in the night.

Went on a trip though the souk (Thank you, Tony, for that too), felt all the smells possible and impossible.

And tried the local fashion. Not for too long, though. The scarf just didn't want to stay on my head.

But it was fun, and the lady in the souk was nice to show me how to it on. I had no idea there are actually two ways of wearing it.

SO THAT'S WHY THE SYRIANS SENT TROOPS AT THE BORDER

2008-09-27T04:00:00.000-07:00

My guess is that they knew there was a possibility of a a bomb. But it happened anyway, with all the tight security and the mukhabarrat in the black Peugeut and slippers (as the Lebanese always joke around). 17 people dead, 14 injured. They don't know anything, they don't wanna say anything of course.
Of course it looks like Al Qaida. It's their style. If there was a lebanese faction trying to assasinate a politician, army leader or anybody else cause them problems they would have assassinated that particular person. Not 17 civilians. They wouldnt have used 200 kilos of explosive, although the pictures do not look as 200 kilos of explosive blew up in that area. A Sayinda Zeinab Mosque would have been blown up too. But anyway, 17 people died. Al Qaida must be pissed at Assad and his army at the border.

BURIED IN THREATS

2008-09-26T00:28:00.000-07:00

It seems like ever since Hizbullah commander Imad Mughniyeh has been killed in a Damascus car bombing in February, the Israeli officials complain they get way more kidnapping and assasination threats. The threats target mainly senior IDF officers and security officials, Yedioth Ahronoth reports. The Israelis foiled 10 kidnap attempts in the recent years. Of course, the israeli paper does not say how many years. But it says this:

"The senior security officials told the cabinet that the defense establishment has most recently helped an IDF major-general escape a Middle East country after obtaining information that his life was in danger.

"Hizbullah's drive to abduct officers and other security personnel stationed outside Israel is skyrocketing," noted a source in the defense establishment.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak urged all Israelis to abide by the Counter Terrorism Bureau's travel advisories: "The government, through its various security agencies, is doing its best to map out all of the threats and warn the public. But responsibility lies first and foremost on the travelers."

WAR'S A NO NO, BUSH SAYS

2008-09-26T00:16:00.000-07:00

I read in Haaretz a few weeks ago the Olmert was sort of upset because Bush refused to give him permission to attack Iran. Of course some of my Lebanese friends told me "Haha, they are afraid." Ya, right. Ok, now it's all in the Guardian. So something must be true. Israel would hit Iran anytime and they are ready for it. And that's why the Heybollah guys are ready for battle at the southern border. They need to defend their bank.

"The British newspaper The Guardian on Thursday quoted European officials as saying that the United States earlier this year refused to agree to an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.

According to the report, "European diplomatic sources" said that "Israel gave serious thought this spring to launching a military strike on Iran's nuclear sites but was told by President George W. Bush that he would not support it and did not expect to revise that view for the rest of his presidency."

The Guardian quoted the sources as saying that the issue was raised during a one-on-one meeting between Bush and outgoing prime minister Ehud Olmert during the American president's trip to Israel in May to mark its 60th anniversary.
The sources reportedly attributed the American rejection of an Israeli attack to two factors: fear of Iranian retaliatory attacks on American targets, and concern that an Israeli strike would not successfully take out Iran's nuclear facilities, which are not concentrated in a single area, and some of which are subterranean.

Haaretz reported earlier this month that the U.S. denied Israel a security aid package including "bunker-buster" bombs, permission to use an air corridor to Iran, and an advanced technological system out of concern that Israel would use it to attack nuclear facilities in Iran. "

YES, I HAVE TO CATCH UP

2008-09-23T00:10:00.001-07:00

Well, it's been a nice period for the past two weeks. But I neglected this blog a bit and it seems I have to catch up on writing a few things here. In the meantime I read this on Naharnet.

Syria has boosted its military presence along the northern border with Lebanon, although Damascus stressed that the move is linked to a crackdown against smugglers.

"Nearly 10,000 Syrian special forces have been deployed in the Abboudieh region along the border between Lebanon and Syria," a Lebanese army spokesman said.

"We asked Damascus for clarification and we were told that the measures were strictly internal and on Syrian territory, and that they were in no way directed against Lebanon," he added.

The spokesman said the Syrian authorities have assured the Lebanese army that the build-up is aimed at cracking down on smuggling and other crime along the border.

The strengthened deployment is visible from the Lebanese side of the border.

Al-Mustaqbal newspaper on Tuesday said the Syrian deployment was "nothing but a cover-up" for digging wells along the border.

It said Syrian trucks have carried out a similar operation a few weeks ago on the Lebanese part of the village of Wadi al-Ashaer in Rashaya province.

Al Mustaqbal said the digging only stopped following the personal intervention of President Michel Suleiman.

Meanwhile, the daily Asharq al-Awsat quoted political sources as expressing fear that the Syrian move was likely a cover-up provided by Turkey or even France for any action to be taken against "extremists" in north Lebanon.

The sources, however, ruled out any U.S. cover-up for this measure.

SECOND STORY ON THE WAY

2008-09-21T03:03:00.000-07:00

I'm uploading the footage right now. It takes ages, but I'm in a Costa's Cafe in Sassine, so the ages are a bit shorter that in my home with the broadband shit for which I pay 35 dollars a month.

The story is about Frere Felician Tămaş again. But this time done properly. He even sings. The long story will be in Jurnalul National on Monday. Mr. Christian Silva took the pictures.

FIRST REPORT ON ANTENA3

2008-09-19T07:09:00.000-07:00

A TRIP TO BEKAA

2008-09-14T13:18:00.000-07:00

It’s known as Hezbollah land. It has been bombed in 2006. It’s on the way from Beirut to Damascus. It’s one of the most fertile areas in the Middle East, where huge clusters of watermelons wait on the roadsides. Bekaa Valley is not the fortress I expected, except for the 6 or 7 soldiers who check the cars on the highway at the entrance in the valley.

To reach Bekaa you have to take Damascus road, cross the mountains and pass through the mountain resorts. The view is spectacular. Dr. Nabil Outa and his wife sit in the front. I’m in the backseat. Quite quiet. Too quite for the too many questions in my mind. Or destination: Rayak. A small town at about 10 kilometers from Zahle. We’re visiting Abdallah family. A family of physicians. Four brothers. Three of them graduated from medical school in Romania, as Dr. Nabil Outa did.

Dr Nabil is a small man, a moderate sunni. He and his wife are fasting. As he switches on the radio and settles on an Arabic music station which plays lots of habibi songs – that’s what I could make of Arabic so far - he asks me if I like Arabic music and without waiting for the answer he begins to tell me about the nice things a foreigner can find in the mountain resorts. He goes on and on in perfect Romanian about the slopes in the winter and the Saudi people who come to spend their holidays in the mountains of Lebanon. I can’t take my eyes off the window and I would have filmed everything if my camera wasn’t such a piece of sh…t.

This time Dr Nabil doesn’t talk politics. He usually tells me his worries and all his expectations. He lives in southern Beirut, although he’s a sunni. He and his wife are French Citizens too. They left during the 2006 war and they stayed for a few months in Lyon. The woman keeps mentioning “Fransa” and keeps comparing everything to it. Dr. Nabil was not impressed by France. He got bored there. He wanted to go back to his office in Corniche Mazraa. And that’s what he did. When they came back in September 2006 they found a note in the door of their apartment. The Hezbollah was offering them 300 $ to repair their house after the bombing. Dr. Nabil was very upset with Hezbollah at the time. Other people in the neighborhood had got more money.
On our way to Bekaa, Dr. Nabil didn’t ask me about the rumors I hear from fellow journalists. Nor about what I think of the politics, as he usually does. He shows me the highest bridge in the Middle East, “which was bombed and destroyed by Israel in 2006”. He told me to keep the camera out of the soldier’s sight. Not that I didn’t already know. Once we pass the military checkpoint, the air begins to feel dry and hot. I’d love to stop in one of the villages. But no can do says Dr. Nabil. We need to hurry cause Dr. Mohammed Abdallah is waiting. We take a detour through Zahle though. He can’t miss telling me that 20 of the doctors in the Zahle hospital went to school in Romaia and are part of his 1500 people association of former students in Romania who keep sending their children to study in the same country. Zahle looks different from the other city we passed through, Chtaura. Zahle is mostly Christian and the hill looks like a cluster of yellowish houses. Clean, ordered and beautiful. Disciplined.

We drive through very fast and we continue our way to Rayak. The hospital of the Abdallah brothers seems huge. Until we find the entrance in the residential complex where the four brothers live. Very similar to the presidential palace in Bucharest. Four huge orange houses, in a huge clean park with lawn, flowers and a swimming pool where a bunch of kids splash and laugh. Dr. Nabil had never been there before. His wife mentions Fransa again. They’re trying to act normal, but they seem overwhelmed. We ring the bell of a huge wooden door and a Indonesian maid opens it and invites us in a room which seem more of a museum than a living room. A collection of old Wild West guns, Louis XV like furniture, a beautiful stylish lady of the house, Persian carpets and a huge plasma TV where we could see outside the front door. The lady of the house and her elder son, a 18 year old who’s just been admitted to the second best university in Lebanon and is disappointed it is not the most expensive, invite us to sit down. Dr Nabil explains my presence quickly and then we leave to the hospital. The wives remain in the house. I’m obviously treated as something between a man and a woman. The camera and the tripod seemed to impress as much as that.

Rayak Hospital was a huge building, extremely well furnished as far as medical equipment is concerned. I had to wear special equipment to film in certain areas. And I’ve been able to film in the hospital prison. A detainee was in a coma, probably after an “accident”. The other seemed a very merry guy willing to have long conversation about how “perfect” everything was and how he got there because of a stupid person who went to the American Embassy to renew the false American passport he had forged. He had got 7 years for that. But everything was “tamam”, meaning perfect. The policemen guarding the two cells were having lots of fun with this particular guy.

We met Dr. Mohammen Abdallah in his office. His Romanian was not that good anymore. I had to shout the questions and rephrase them in very simple words. He still keeps his Medical School manual in the office. Now he wants to go to Romania and build a hospital there. He wants to see his old friends from school and mushy stuff like that. And then we headed back to the house for the Ifar, the Ramadan dinner. An amazing experience and a whole different story.

MISSED ME?

2008-09-11T04:32:00.000-07:00

I've neglected this blog for a couple of weeks because I started blogging in Romanian and it kinda caught me. You know, explaining in Romanian what living in Lebanon and adjusting here means to a journalist my age. It turned out nice, but it needs lots of work and it's taking quite some time to update.
The last couple of weeks have been more active than my first days here. I filmed a report at the Lebanese Red Cross, a center in Dahieh, the widely feared Hezbollah stronghold. It felt quite normal to me, but, hey, that's just my opinion. Rana, a journalist friend of mine, was amazed. “You went there? In your first week here? I don’t have the courage to go there so easily.” Well, Romania is not that important and I'm not that BBC star reporter to be watched very closely. And speaking about BBC, one of the reporters who had been to Beirut wrote and e-mail to me saying I should be careful in the Red Cross Center in Dahyieh because it had been threatened by a terrorist group. Thanks, Steve. Apparently it was not the same center.

The story with the volunteers in Mreygeh center in Dayieh turned out really nice. Of course, it needed more filming. It took me three weeks to get the approval from the Central Headquarters. The Press Office Chief called me and asked me for a meeting in order to "discuss" my project. Ok, fine. I went. He kept me there for an hour or so, asked me questions about who I work for and what exactly I want to do and then showed me his own work - pictures of the war in 2006. Pretty nice pictures. And at the end he told me that I have the permission to film in the ambulance, the ambulance in the street and pretty much all. And of course the interviews and inside the Center. Somebody should have called me in a couple of days. That was a week ago. Actually, it seems to me like ages ago. Nobody called. So I sent back home the footage I already got from the Mreygeh center.

It was pretty wonderful. I really loved filming that story and talking to those young people. I come from Romania, where 20 year old kids don't think about volunteering in the Red Cross. Far from them the thought of doing anything like it. Clubs, dancing, music and that's pretty much all the youth in Romania think about.

I met here, in Beirut, a bunch of kids who dug people from ruins of the houses bombed in the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. Houssein, one of them, had asthma. But he went to Qana, in southern Lebanon to help people. He found his own pictures all over the internet two years ago. And he still has them on his computer. One of the pictures was of his house. “I went there to take a shower and I came back to the center. And the next morning my house wasn’t there anymore. It was bombed.”

The other Houssein, a 23 year old fresh engineering school graduate, was 21 during the war. He was in the South in a refugee center. But he had to dig out people trapped under the rubble of the houses bombed in southern Beirut. “We were trying to give them oxygen. But some of them didn’t make it”. I felt like talking to an old person, yet he was just 23. And he was so well acquainted to death and accepted it so easily.

And then there was Bassam Mokdad.

THE Bassam Mokdad. The Red Cross volunteer who was all over Reuters and AP during the war. The volunteer who has been in the Red Cross for 23 years. The guy who spent half and hour separating the body of a mother from the child she had been embracing in the bombardment. And he told me the story so easily and so naturally. As if what he had done was so natural. I think we still have footage in the TV station Archive back home with him among the rubble at Qana.

And after all the struggle and after saving and losing people under the rubble, while hearing the bombs falling, they stayed in the center and tried to have dinner while one of them was playing the guitar. “We had to stay human and still feel we are alive”, Houssein, the 27 year old with asthma, told me while showing me the pictures on his laptop.

The younger Houssein showed me the ambulances. Very well equipped. Oxygen masks, medical kit with everything in it. And of course, helmets and bullet proof vests. A must in Lebanon. And then he showed me where an ambulance was hit by a airplane. An ambulance from Zahle, a Christian town in Bekaa Valley. “ We had painted the cross on the top of the ambulance, so that they could see it clearly from the helicopter or the planes. But they bombed it. And they hit right in the middles of the Red Cross. It was on purpose, you see. A volunteer died and 7 were wounded”.

THIS IS NOT NEW, BUT...

2008-08-22T08:56:00.000-07:00

The Lebanese complain they have been called by alleged Israelis inviting them to access a website that promises 10 million dollar reward for anybody who might have information on the fate of 5 Israeli soldiers missing in battle. One of the is Ron Arad, the Israeli pilot of Romanian origin who was shot down at the beginning of the '80s.

One editor for The Daily Star and three Associated Press staffers were among those who received the calls on their mobile telephones Thursday. A foundation spokeswoman refused to say if it was behind the calls.
Last month, similar messages in Lebanon criticized Hizbullah's leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and prompted Lebanese outrage over what some officials said was the Jewish state's tampering with Lebanon's telecommunications system.
Lebanese Telecommunications Minister Jebran Bassil said last month that he wrote a letter of protest to United Nations chief Ban Ki Moon protesting over the messages, calling them a violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the summer 2006 war with Israel, Daily Strar reports.

PREPARATIONS FOR A NEW WAR?

2008-08-22T08:08:00.000-07:00

It may seem unlikely that Hezbollah might get ready to attack Israel. But they seem also serious about it. Since i got the Internet connection, crappy but still a connection that works from time to time, even if it throws me out often, I'm getting in touch with what the local press writes and what the agenda is here. I found two news stories on two diferent outlets today. One is on Now Lebanon :

The Italian daily Corriere Della Sera on Friday reported that Hezbollah officials visited Russia in early July and struck a deal whereby Moscow would supply the party with anti-missile systems and anti-tank missiles.
The newspaper reported that three high-ranking Hezbollah officials showed great interest in buying Russian weapons that had proved effective in the recent war with Israel.
The three officials, the paper added, entered Russia on Iranian passports and visited “Expo 2008,” an exhibit of military technology and ammunition, in the region of Sverdlosk from July 9 to July 12, 2008.

The other was on Naharnet:

Hizbullah to Israel: Expect Huge Surprises Soon
Hizbullah threatened "earth shattering" retaliation against Israel which the group accuses of killing its top commander Imad Mughniyeh in a car bombing in Damascus last February."Retaliation is coming soon," Hizbullah official in south Lebanon Sheikh Ahmad Mrad said in remarks published by the daily Al Akhbar on Friday. "Retaliation is going to be earth shattering and there will be huge surprises," he vowed. "Resistance weapons will stay in the hands of Hizbullah until Palestine is liberated," Mrad pledged. He declared that Hizbullah would go deep into Palestine and vowed that "Israel will no longer exist on the map."

I might go to the South next week. It depends if we get permission or not to film in Bint Jbeil and a few other villages. It takes time for them to verify me and Antena 3 too. It shouldn't be difficult. I've got nothing to hide. :)
One of my friends is trying to find one or two Romanian doctors working in hospitals in the south. And it also depends on renting a car for one or two days. But we might just make it.

ANA HAS INTERNET. ANA VERY HAPPY

2008-08-21T06:05:00.000-07:00

:o)
Finally. I am back in business. Now I can say what everybody says - you're not alive anymore without Internet. The ISP guy came and set the antenna on my building today. Cute little guy, very shy, didn't speak English so I had to gather my French from the back of my mind.
I told him I was from Hungary. :) Well, yeah, of course, most of you wouldn't agree with that. But I've been warned that Romanian girls here usually work in night clubs or super night clubs and of course do not have a very nice reputation.
I paid 200 dollars for the nternet connection. 165 the installation of the antenna and the wires, and 33 the subscription. That's quite a lot. And it's not even the fastest one. I asked why it was so expensive. And the guy answered in French: "Parce que vous etes en Liban."
Here's an explanation I hear often. The reason it was so expensive is that I had to pay for the whole building to get the antenna. But it's not like I had a choice. There are not many people living in this building. There's me, then the girl living at the third floor whose boyfriend's name is Mario ( i know this cause they had a fight yesterday, the guy slammed the door and left and she was at the window crying and shouting "Mario, Mario"), then there is my landlord's father who's almost 90 and then there is the office of the doctor wityh the Romanian wife. So who else is gonna have internet here.
Well, I hope it's gonna be worth it and I'll turn up with lots of reports. Everybody's telling me that I'm gonna get busy very soon. looking forward to that.

REACHED THE DESTINATION: BEIRUT

2008-08-18T03:51:00.000-07:00

Now that I made everybody relax and told them I am ok and nothing happened to me yesterday (other than a trip to Byblos with the Lebanese bus on a 50 degrees Celsius day ) I can write about my first day here.

The road here was tiresome, cause I had to wait in the Budapest airport a lot. My butt and back were sore from sitting. Thank God I had the laptop with me and bought that wireless adaptor on saturday morning. I chatted, I read, and then i read again, and i fell asleep on the way from Budapest to Beirut. I arrived at 3 30 in the morning, and i had to stand in a line for an hour or so to have my passport checked.

This time it was the children's flight. Soooo many children. Like 20 babies in the plane. Last time i came o beirut I ended up sitting with a whole family of arabs, the women wearing hijabs. And the stewardess in the plane didn't serve me dinner cause she thought i was with them. Bitch!

Well, Beirut is hot. I've never been here in the summer. And the heat is killing me. The humidity too. You get sweaty in an instant. I never used the hot water in the shower and i'm sneezing. The trip to Byblos yesterday was depressing. The service, the share a ride taxis that everybody uses here because of the lack of public transportation, cost like 2000 Lebanese Pounds a ride (1 euro). And I'll have to take a service everymorning to go to the bus station near the City Mall or Nahr El Mot area (try to say it for a change, it makes people laugh when i say it) where i can get the bus to Byblos. The way to Nahr El Mot would cost me 4000 Lebanese Pounds, 2 euro, because it's very far from my place in Ashrafieh. The bus to Byblos is 1500 LL, one dollar. And then another 2000 LL for the service from Byblos to the Lebanese American University where I am to study for the next two years. Then the way back. Around 10 dollars a day. Then the bus. That's a whole story. They drive with the doors open because of the heat, you might get to sit next to a sweaty smelly drunk man and they're usually very talkative. No AC, crappy cars, dirty benches. I miss the subway and the trains inn Romania. They are much cleaner, as unbelievable as it may seem! No train here. They used to have trains long time ago. But they stopped. The explanation for that : you know, Ana, this is Lebanon! Ok, I'll need to work my ass off to get a car very soon. It's full of old Beetles here. And I will probably get one of those.

Apart from the transportation and weather problem, everything seems to be fine. My apartment is great. Thank you, Ben, for telling me about it. And thank you, Bassem, for taking care of it for me. It's in Ashrafieh, quite close to the center, it has a huge veranda, more or less of a view and no nosy neighbors. And a book shop downstairs. And a dentis's cabinet on the first floor whose wife is Romanian.

So tonight I'll get my own Lebanese number. Celebration needed. So tomorrow I'll be able to call people around and have meetings and do the stories I wanna do. :) Well, thank you Bassem, again. A SIM card here is more or less 100 $. I was amazed too. He got mine for 60 $. I really need to buy this guy a present. A big present.

FROM BUCHAREST TO BEIRUT

2008-08-15T13:22:00.000-07:00

This is it. I'm moving tomorrow. With 35 kilos of clothes, a few books, 5 pairs of shoes, a camera, a tripod and a laptop. On Sunday at 3.20 I'm gonna be in Beirut again. This time for quite a while. I'm gonna go to school to the Lebanese American University for the next two years and I'm gonna try to make a living by shooting news for Antena1 and Antena3. It's gonna be a whole different life, but I wanted the change so I'm happy to have made it.

Tomorrow I'll be for 7 hours in Budapest, cause I chose not to book a direct flight. It seems Malev, The Hungarian airlines, is much less expensive than Tarom, the Romanian Airlines. The fuel prices didn't seem to reach Hungary as they had and effect in Romania. I remember I went to Beirut in November 2007 for like 500 EUR. Now they charge you 500 EUR for just an one way ticket. Now you have to pay almost 1000 EUR for a return ticket. Pretty big difference. Malev on the other hand, charged me 360 EUR, one way.

Fortunately, I'll be going to a nice apartment in Ashrafieh, a two bedroom apartment, with a nice living room, and a huge balcony. 500 $ a month. Or around 300 EUR. Not much compared to Romania, where you'd pay at least the double for the same flat.

I'll be out of the internet for a few days until I meet the owners of the apartment and convince them I have to have Internet there. Other than that they have everything else in that house. I was very happy with it when I finally got it.

Well, that's that. I'm off tomorrow at 4 pm.

A TRUE FAN

2008-07-31T08:41:00.001-07:00

THREE WEEKS LEFT

2008-07-28T11:54:00.000-07:00

I haven't been that active lately on the blog. It seems the more time I spend in the newroom, the less I have to say. It's tiresome to just cover news and watch the newswires everey 5 minutes and do that for 8 hours a day, not getting up from the chair. I've got three weeks left until I move to Beirut. It's the thought that keeps me going, although it's scary enough. Alone, with a small camera in a foreign country for two years, trying to make new frieds, new sources, contacts and write a Disertation thesis.
Good thing I have a house there at least. It turned out the American friend of Lili, one of my frieds, who also wants to move to Beirut, left Lebanon for the US and left me the apartment he had rented in Ashrafieh. It's a two bedroom apartment, fully furnished, on the top floor of a building on top of a hill, no elevator, but who cares - I have to lose weight anyway :P - It's got three beds so my friends can stay over . The owners are a nice couple who insisted on not having "funny business" in the house. Well they might hear lots of noise sometimes, but that's because I'm used to dancing around the house. And, yeah, I can't promise I won't have a party or two on the huuuuuge balcony :).
Other than that I can't wait. I'll be busy the next three weeks, cause I have a few Frnch friends coming to do a reports on the Romanian doctors leaving this sinking country and I have to help them meet people and shoot inside a hospital in a town close to Bucharest. And I have to visit my parents and then I have to pack and I'm off on the 16th. Oh, yeah, and I have to find someone to spend 7 hours with in Budapest cause I have to wait for the Beirut flight. Lots of things to do, huh?

PARIS HILTON IN REPO! The Genetic Opera

2008-07-28T08:08:00.000-07:00

The movie is pretty violent, you can see it even in the trailer. But Sarah Brightman really sings. Why exactly they chose Paris Hilton to star in this movie, I have no idea. cause my impression is that she's shouting not singing.

TOTALLY LOOKALIKES

2008-07-27T06:54:00.000-07:00

I found these on a website and I liked them very very much. Especially the Bush lookalike, of course. But Posh Spice is something else. Maybe becasue I like Never Ending Story a lot.

But the Pope? Will he join the Dark Side?

THE WAR CORRESPONDENTS TRAINING - video

2008-07-23T12:14:00.000-07:00

It took three long week to look at the footage again and put together a few things. It's not as great as it could have been if I was a bit more patient. But I hope it's fun. :)

You can find the whole story here.

IS THE EARTH ROUND OR IS THERE A WAR OUT THERE?

2008-07-23T09:49:00.000-07:00

I really thought humanity had solved the problem of Earth being ROUND. But hey, all things are relative.

They must have solved all the issues there, and the whole war thing is just disinformation, right? Cause otherwise I can't explain why the Iraqi TV is airing a talk show on how flat the Earth is.

I found the video on Memri tv, and organization which monitors Middle East tv stations. They post really interesting stuff on their website.

ARE THE PALESTINIANS TRYING TO MAKE A STATEMENT?

2008-07-22T04:49:00.000-07:00

This happened on July 2. A palestinian ran his bulldozer in a bus full of people. 3 women died. Huge scandal.

Today, July 22, 20 day afterwards. Copycat. New, guy, new bulldozer, same action. At least 5 people wounded.

Do they have the right to do this, I was asked. I have no idea. I think nobody has the right to do this. But I remember that on July 2 I watched this video.

BE A GOOD DAD!

2008-07-21T13:26:00.000-07:00

Oh boy, I hate my dad for not doing this to me when I was little.

A Romanian cash point fraudster took a picture of his young son rolling in £20 notes.
Adu Bunu, 34, was jailed for five years on Monday. He was part of a gang of international fraudsters on target to make £1 million in weeks.
Bunu posed his smiling baby son on a bed covered in more than £4,000 worth of £20, £10 and Euro notes and sent it to relatives back in Romania to boast. LINK

The dad.

Of course, everybody in this world knows the Romanians are the top of the top when it comes to cash point frauds and credit card cloning. They did it in the UK, they did it in Spaina, Italy, Germany. They even got to Florida or Tunis. Most of them got away. But to steal a great deal of money and then take a picture of your own baby and send it to your relatives? It definetly proves Romanians have lots of imagination when it cme to enjoying being rich. And they do it all for their children, don't they?

IRAN FROM INSIDE: "Iran can attack Dubai or any target. It is dangerous"

2008-07-20T08:03:00.000-07:00

It seems my friend from Iran is better now and he forced himself out of that depression. We have very interesting conversations lately, after a while when we didn't even talk at all. He seems to have got a few forbidden books and studied the history of Islam. Right now he hates it and feels sorry for the Persians who became the "victims" of it. It's a bit shocking coming from a guy who used to be a convinced practican muslim when he was about 20.
This morning he asked me if I knew how the negotiations in Geneva went yesterday. I told him there was no change. Iran had said something like "no, no, no and no".
He knew about number 3 in the US State Department taking part in the negotiations. Then he said something quite interesting. "I thik that they wont attack right now. Coz Iran can attack Dubai or any target. It is dangerous". Weird, I thought. A few months ago he made fun of Iran's army and nuclear facilities.

"They have the missiles bought fom North Korea. I was in Tehran and I met some people from a company". The guys he had talked to worked for a company in charge of the weapons trade for the Iranian government, he said. "Iran has suspended his nuclear activities from last month. They have developed third generation of centrifuges too."

Are you sure, isn't it just propaganda?

"I am sure. They have lot of companies registered in China. And when they want to buy some equipments they start from China and if it does not work, they try it from Japan, Korea and even European countries. It is complicated. There are a lot of smugglers helping them". Then I got busy and couldn't continue the conversation and he logged off. I can't wait to ask him more.

A REAL HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST

2008-07-19T08:15:00.001-07:00

Reuters.

His name is David Remes, and he's a lawyer. He represents 16 Yemeni prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba. He took his trousers off during a news conference in Sanaa, Yemen, July 14, 2008. He resigned today because of this show off in Yemen. Well, I remember a trainer I had some time ago, who told me that if you do not get attention to your cause, you do not use the right means of protesting. Werll, if the world hadn't given a shit on the 16 Yemeni prisoners in Gunatanamo, now the whole world knows about them. So I'd pay this guy a great deal of money if he were my lawyar.

And, nice underpants I might say. And since we're speaking about underwear, here are some Romanian underpants our Antena3 correspondent used for a stand up during the floods in his hometown. Nobody knew him before this shoot. Now we all know him. I hope you all get my advice.

Reporterul amfibie :)
Vezi mai multe video din Stiri »

TO DIE IN JERUSALEM, NOMINATED FOR EMMY AWARDS FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY AND BEST JOURNALISTIC INVESTIGATION

2008-07-18T03:41:00.000-07:00

The Israeli documentary film "To Die in Jerusalem," which tells the story of a relationship between the mother of a suicide bomber and the mother of a young girl who was killed in that same attack, has been nominated for three Emmy Awards.

The movie, directed by Hila Medalia, follows two mothers: one of whom is the mother of Ayat al-Akhras, an 18-year-old suicide bomber; the other is the mother of one of Ahras' victims from the 2002 terrorist attack, 17-year-old Rachel Levy. The movie's climax is the face-to-face meeting between the two women. (Haaretz)

JOURNALISM SEMINAR IN GREECE

2008-07-18T03:24:00.000-07:00

Dear all:

We invite you to help us recruit outstanding journalists and journalism students for the
Euro-Mediterranean Journalism Institute organized by The Fund for American Studies and the Greek Association for Atlantic and European Cooperation, under the auspices of the Secretariat General of Information, Ministry of State, of the Greek Government. Alumni have always been our best source for new participants, and we hope that you continue to help us grow and thrive. Please feel free to forward this email to students and professors who might be interested in learning more about our programs.

The Euro-Mediterranean Journalism Institute (EMJI) brings working journalists
and journalism students from around the world together in Greece for an 8 day
seminar. EMJI was developed in order to empower journalists with the knowledge
and skills needed to objectively report on a variety of international
political, economic, and cultural issues. Additionally, while attending the
Institute, participants hear from working professionals and area experts, meet
with professional contacts, and form important networks.

Instructors and guest
lecturers at the Institute will be drawn from the United
States and the Euro-Med region. They will include economic and public policy
experts, journalists, government officials and corporate leaders. This
combination of instructors will ensure that students learn from both theorists
and practitioners. This year, the Institute will be held from October 18 - 26,
2008.

The Final Admissions Deadline for EMJI is August 1, 2008. Please encourage
qualified journalists and journalism students to apply for the Institute by
this deadline. Generous donations from supporters of The Fund for American
Studies have allowed us to offer substantial scholarships to those who are
admitted to the Institute.

For more information about EMJI and an online application form, students can
visit us on the internet at www.tfasinternation al.org
. If you have any
additional
questions, please feel free to contact Brigit Moore by email at
international@ tfas.org , by phone at 001
(202) 986-0384, or by fax at 001 (202) 986-0390.

"THOU SHALT NOT STEAL"

2008-07-17T10:03:00.000-07:00

Hamas TV Bunny Assud Is Tempted by Satan to Steal and Is Sentenced by Children Viewers to Have His Hand Chopped Off.
These are excerpts from a Hamas children's show, titled "The Pioneers of Tomorrow," which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on July 11, 2008.

ISRAEL LAUNCHES AN INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN AGAINST HEZBOLLAH. ON YOUTUBE

2008-07-17T07:06:00.000-07:00

Israel launched an international press campaign today meant too underline that Hezbollah is in fact a terrorist organization. The Prime Minister's Information Service together with the Foreign Ministry announced they are willing to sent to any media outlet interested footage and documents that show the Ethical values of the Jewish State and the true face of Samir Kantar, the guy they say killed a 4 year old girl by smashing her head on a rock.
The Foreign Minitry has uploaded a video on Youtube where Ofir Geldman explains in Arabic language who Samir Kantar "really" is. Here it is.

Do they really think that after 60 years of war in the region the Arabs are gonna watch the video and think "look, an Israeli who speaks Arabic! Gee, we were wrong to think they were evil when they bombed us. They uploaded this video on Youtube, so they must be nice people. We should believe this guy from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs when he tells us Kantar is a killer! ".

And YES, I know I'm doing exactly what they want me to do and post this on my blog.

THE FORGOTTEN LEBANESE PRISONERS

2008-07-16T23:06:00.000-07:00

AFP photo credit, via NOW LEBANON. Mothers of prisoners taken by Syria protesting.

While Lebanon celebrates becoming “the first Arab country in the Israeli-Arab struggle to close its detainee file,” as Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah put it in a July 3 speech, many Lebanese still languish in Syrian prisons.
The exact number of prisoners and detainees is not known, and Syrian authorities have a history of keeping silent on the issue. During the civil war, approximately 17,000 people disappeared. Following the war, the arrest and disappearance of those expressing opposition to Syria’s continued presence was common.

Here is the Whole story on NOW LEBANON, written by Matt Wire.

AFP Photo credit

In the meantime it s striking. Very much striking. Nasrallah suddenly gets out and salutes the crowds and brags abut the prisoners swap and he does it in person, and he does it in a moment when everybody expected him to get out and give a speech and brag about the prisoners swap with Israel. Pretty stupid, huh? Cause after the 34 day 2006 was with Israel the guy spoe at press conferences through a screen. He was broadcast to the press room and he never got out in public for a speech. And besides, after Imad Mougnyah's assassination is Syra if you said "boom" behind his back he'd have definetly have a heart attack. What the hell was this guy thinking?

Oh ya. And then this. Breaking news.

The Voice of Lebanon radio station reported that it has received phone calls from residents of Beirut and South Lebanon complaining of an Israeli infiltration into the telephone network, delivering short messages threatening individuals and Hezbollah.

Haha. It seems the Israeli government started an sms campaign text messaging the Lebanese. I imagine the SMS: "Silence! We kill you!"

PRISONER SWAP BETWEEN ISRAEL AND HEZBOLLAH

2008-07-16T05:20:00.000-07:00

Photo credit. AFP Photo
The five Lebanese prisoners released by Israel.

Need I say I wish I were there? Some of my friends are and they are pretty happy. Most Lebanese are very much in love with Hezbollah right now. Well, of course, all besides some people, art directors, who were so buried in their work that didn't even know something was happening today in their country and that they actually shouldn't have been working. (I'm not delusional, I haven't eaten any mushrooms like Paris Hilton, so if you can't figure out what I'm talking about, I'm telling you I'm teasing someone. :D That's a grin.)

So, as I said, Hezbollah won again. That's what happened at first sight. They promised they would bring the prisoners back, so they did. Now everybody loves Nasrallah. I'm surprised why the whole gang including the president is on the Beirut airport waiting on the red carpet for Samir Kantar to arrive. The guy is pretty controversial. The Israelis convicted him to life in prison for smashing a 4 year old girl's head on a stone and killing her father in front of her. He denied doing it. So the Israelis treated him as a common murderer, the Lebanese think he's a hero.
They did the deal. It's the eighth since 1991. So what? Will it ever end between Israel and Hezbollah? I don't think so. On the other hand, the new president Michel Suleiman slipped a weird statement in Paris: that the Lebanese would take Shebaa farms back by force if the Israelis don't wanna talk. So, my illusion of peace is a just that, an illusion.
On the other hand there are a few warrior voices in the Knesset too.
Israeli Knesset Member Aryeh Eldad to Haaretz: Israel should bomb Lebanese celebrations of the prisoner release. Might I say that it was no nice of Hezbollah to keep it as a secret that the two soldiers were dead until the last minute? Not very fair at all.

AFP Photo
The coffins of the two Israeli soldiers. One was killed in 2006 in the attack and the other was wounded. Nobody knows what really happened to them.

I'm curious what the celebrations in Lebanon will be like. I hear they've got the guns out, the Hezbollah people.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU LIVE IN LUKASHENKO'S COUNTRY

2008-07-16T04:45:00.000-07:00

Anything to survive and forget you're in Belarus. The guy is the best referee in the country, they say. And he had a little glass of "pain relief". :)

A LITTLE SOMETHING I DON'T UNDERSTAND

2008-07-15T01:14:00.000-07:00

I get on my e-mail lots of announcement about fields trips and journalism trainings organized by famous NGO's for journalists in the developping countries in Eurasia end North Africa and Eastern Europe. The thesme are quite interesting, I 'd really wanna go to some of them. Some of them I actually attended, cause i got scholarships. But lately the scholarships are gone.
I was reading today about this thing on IFJ.
The Media21 Global Journalism Network is seeking applications for its next Global Issues media workshop (Nov. 24-Dec. 7, 2008), this time on the challenges of migration in the 21st century. The first part will take place in Geneva, Switzerland (three days) with expert panels involving key organizations such as IOM, UNHCR, ICRC, MSF, World Economic Forum etc. on diverse aspects of migration, refugees and trafficking affecting host regions such as Europe or North America but also source countries ranging from Mali and Salvador to Afghanistan. This will be followed by three days in Andorra as part of the 3rd Future of Europe Summit providing access to lead European and other international business, academic, NGO and policy representatives. Participating journalists have the option to take part in a week-long field trip either to northern/western Africa or eastern/central Europe.

Deadline for the Migration I Workshop: October 15, 2008. Costs: 5,400 Euros covering all travel, food & lodging, field trip and tuition. Limited grants are available.

The purpose of this unique programme is to provide experienced local and international editors, reporters and producers with a broader perspective of global issues: peacekeeping & peacebuilding; health; climate change, human rights; world trade…It seeks to promote more informed debate by putting journalists from around the world in touch with key players. Media21 works closely with diverse partners and facilitates interactive sessions with the international aid community, private sector, civil society, governments, military, academia, media... It also organizes practically-oriented trips enabling journalists to report first-hand from the field.

Applicants must demonstrate a serious interest and a firm record of journalistic achievement. The workshops are open to journalists with a minimum of three years’ experience, though priority will be given to mid-career and senior journalists. Participants are expected to produce two reports (articles, broadcasts blogs etc.) for their own media and to make these available to the Media21 website. (http://www.media21geneva.org) As Media21 alumni, they are also invited to participate actively in the Global Journalism Network by sharing experiences, contacts and reporting.

For more information, please contact: Daniel Wermus at dwermus@infosud.org or go to http://www.media21geneva.org

My quation is, which journalist do they think has 5 400 euro to pay for this training. I mean who journalist who needs it. Cause I can thing of a few Independent, Gurdian, NY Times people who could pay for it. But do they need it? I mean their newsrooms would always pay for their trips to all those places and report there independently, without the UN people telling them not to photograph that and not to talk to that person and not to step on the grass.

I mean if I had 5 400 euro I'd definetly go on my own with a cameraman and the whole thing would cost us less than that.

ANY YOUNG JOURNALISTS OUT THERE?

2008-07-13T23:02:00.000-07:00

Jovens Jornalistas, the European Youth Press observer member organization, will host a Summer Media School in Lisbon, between 21st– 30th of September.

During 8 days 40 young media makers will work in one of the fourworkshops: television, radio, photography or printed media. You'llindulge in a rich learning environment and a fun experience, all runby young people for young people. Enjoy the exchange of knowledge andcultures, while relaying on team work. On your four last days, youwill be working online on your final project, which will call for yourcreativity. Don't worry, there is still time for party!

If you're between 18 and 25 years, active in the field of media(student in Communication or Journalism, young professional orfreelancer), you feel comfortable working in English and you havealready participated in an international event, come and join us!Send your application until the 2nd of August at sms_portugal2008@ sapo.ptThe participation fee is 250 euro. Travel costs, accommodation, mealsand working materials will be covered by the organizers.

Participants should come from one of the following countries: Portugal, Spain,Italy, Romania, Germany, France, UK, Belgium, Sweden, Austria,Hungary, Malta and Bulgaria (*). Applicants willing to participate,but coming from another country, should send an e-mail atsms_portugal2008@ sapo.pt!The application form can be found at http://s4.transfer./ ro/storage/05bf00ef65. zip

For any more information you may need, please contact asjc_bucuresti@yahoo.com

WHAT THE RUSSIANS KEEP IN THEIR BACK YARDS

2008-07-13T21:22:00.000-07:00

The valuable cars most collectoir would pay a fortune to have. Found again on Eglishrussia.com

One of these sold for $107,250 at an auction in the US at the begining of the year. (Couldnţt help it, i did some research.)

I don't know about the others but Porche 911 is a $100000 car!

Now this is the best British Ssports Car ever made, they say. A collector would pay $10 000 for it at least .

It all reminds me of an old Moskvich my dad used to drive when i was a little kid on the crappy roads going to the villages my grandmother used to live in. I used to feel so special at the time, during the communist 10 years of my life, that my dad, unlike most Romanians who drove crappy Dacias, used to drive a foreign car. Haha. Moskvich 2140, Russian, very solid, so solid it was even difficult to turn the wheel! It looked like this.

I used to get really sick while sitting in the back seat on the road to grandma and asked father to stop every 15 minutes. Then i used to get lost picking spring flowers in the woods.
By the time I turned 15 it was all rusty and deserted in our back yard, and the cats were very fond of it. It stayed there a long time, until it almost began to grow roots. That was when my mom got angry and made my dad get rid of it.

WHO'S EATING THE SWANS IN KENSINGTON GARDENS?

2008-07-13T19:12:00.000-07:00

Hyey Mister, you interviewed the wrong person! There. Polish people do not eat swans. They are the plumbers who take care of your bath pipes or whatever.

Here's who eats the swans. I remember the Daily Mail article on a migrants camp where they found a few swan carcasses. And here's the description of the place.

"A Romanian bible and cooking equipment could be seen outside another tent, while putrid food and thousands of feathers were nearby the third."

How about that, huh? I mean we, Romanian journalists, are very used to this particular story. It happened ten years ago in Vienna, too. That's why these birds are almost extinct there. And the story turned into a national joke already.

ASTONISHING STORY

2008-07-12T20:39:00.000-07:00

The kind of story that really matters. Beyond missiles, beyond the Axis of Evil.

His name is Ahmad Batebi. He was arrested in 1999 after he appeared on the cover of the Economist with a blood stained t shirt belonging to a friend who had been wounded during a protest.

I read the story here, on New York Times.

That picture has cost him 8 years in the Iranian prisons. Not pretty at all, as some of my friends say. I remember being shocked at an 18 year old Kurdish kid story, back in March. My friend, Hasan had told me the story and he wanted me to publish it here.

Ahmad Batemi went through hell. Most people wouldn't make it.

"His jailers thrashed him with a metal cable, beat his testicles and kicked in his teeth, he said. They held his face down in a pool of excrement. They tied his arms behind his back and hung him from the ceiling. At other times, strapping him to a chair, they kept him awake night after night, cutting him and rubbing salt into the wounds."

"Twice he was led blindfolded to the gallows. Once the noose was left around his neck for 45 minutes, and he passed out from fear, he recalled. The second time, he sat, waiting, as a prisoner on each side of him was hanged. "

He left Iran a few months ago, he was smuggled by the Kurds to Erbil, in Iraq, and finally made it to the US. His intervew for the New York Times is here. There is also a video.

I COULDN'T HELP POSTING THIS :)

2008-07-11T09:35:00.000-07:00

Bassem linked me to BoingBoing.com, Iran You Suck at Photoshop
They had a little contest on Photoshopping the picture with the Iranian missile test. Very funny. Check it out. The Iranzilla is my favorite. Obviously, because I like cats.

Wel, it seems like there is a world wide Photoshop frenzy on the Iran Missiles picture. There are some more on NYTimes Lede blog .

And if you follow the links you get here, in the Danger Room .

SO WE HAVE A GOVERNMENT. A HUGE ONE

2008-07-11T07:43:00.000-07:00

Lebanon has a government starting today. :) YAY!
I'm as happy as the Lebanese. A while ago my Yahoo messenger went wild with windows form my friends letting me know of the huge miracle.

michael: finaly we have a goverment halilouya
luca anamaria: :)
michael: i m gonna shoot some people coz i m happy lol
luca anamaria: :))
luca anamaria: yeah, that's the way to do it
michael: hehe a la libanais
michael: e
michael: if we r sad we shoot, if we r happy we shoot
luca anamaria: i know
michael: if we want to have fun we shoot

Well,I hope there will be no shooting.And I'm sorry I'ill miss the wonderful party Downtown Beirut tonight.

So I went to check the news on Naharnet.
Yeah, a government. A HUGE government. 30 ministers for a tiny tiny country. A government twice as big as the Romanian one.

30 ministers from the seven major sects in a nation made up of 18 religious communities.

5 Maronites, 4 Greek Orthodox, 3 Catholics, 3 Druze, 6 Sunnis, 6 Shia, 2 Armenians.

Quite a bunch of people, quite difficult to manage, I'm sure.

Well, now, that there is a government, my rent will get more expensive.

SO THEY WERE TALKING SHIT TO AMERICA

2008-07-10T12:10:00.000-07:00

It seems like the Revolutionary Guards are very fond of Photoshop, cause the missile test pictures contain one missile too many. Hehe. The picture sold by AFP to most of the mainstream media contained 4 missiles, while the same picture obtained by AP had only 3 missiles. Both news wires got the pictures from the same source, Sepah News, the media arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. The story is on New York Times.

France Presse picture.

AP picture.

It reminds me of the story Hassan, my friend in Iran told me a while ago about the Iranian president visiting his hometown. Hilarious. The national TV footage showed thousands of people applauding, while local tv which does not have the same digital technique, only showed a few local students forced by the teachers to leave the classes in order to cheer for Ahmadinejad. My question is, what happened to the guys who gave the real picture to AP?

TALKING SHIT TO AMERICA

2008-07-10T03:46:00.000-07:00

Iranian Revolutionary Guards practicing war-game maneuvers test-fired nine missiles today in the Gulf. At least one, the government in Tehran says, has the range to reach Israel. The US already says is backing Israel if it decides to attack Iran.

The tests, shown on Iranian television, come as the Iranian president accuses the West of trying to assassinate him using high radiation in his room while he was in Rome for the Food Summit. Imagine that, how else would you kill Ahmadinejad other than use nuclear stuff? Isn't that ironic? Hehe.

Seriously now, Iran's military display came just a day after the United States and the Czech Republic signed a deal in Prague to allow the Pentagon to deploy part of its contentious antiballistic missile shield in Central Europe. Damn, that makes us a target. I doubt the Iranian missile would reach us better than a suicide bomber in the Prague railway station.

It does sound serious though, cause the United States and British warships have been conducting naval maneuvers in the Gulf — apparently within range of the launch site of the missiles tested by the Iranians.

This whole thing reminds me of Maz Jobrani, Iranian American comedian. Here he is. And tell me he's not right.

WHOA! I KNEW IT!

2008-07-10T00:37:00.000-07:00

NYAHA! As a good friend of mine would say. I knew there was something wrong with this guy. I just couldn't quite put my finger on it. Hehe. Now I know. Baldy!

Belfort, French Rock Festival. Marylin Manson is attacked by a man who swipes his hat, and in doing so pulls his wig off ... pretty funny actually. Security then whisks Marilyn away with a coat over his gleaming dome.

UPDATE: Ha! It seems the video is not real. French magazine Entrevue says they called the organizers and Manson wasn't even at the festival.

TRYING TO MOVE TO BEIRUT

2008-07-07T00:12:00.000-07:00

Not an easy thing, it seems. Even tried Couchsurfing.com, typed Beirut and... no results found. Well, yeah, it is a bit difficult to try and rent a place when you're not even there. It seems like all the places that used to rent for 300$ are gone. I used to look at the adds in the Beirut newspapers a few weeks ago and I was amazed at the rent fees. I'm used to 400 Euros at least for a studio in Bucharest. They were renting one bedroom apartments for much less. But now, when I'm actually looking for one, they seem to be all gone. The houses advertised in the papers are huge 3 bedroom apartments. Frustrating.

Bassem, who's very concerned about the whole issue - thank you very much, by the way - has been through some pretty weird experiences trying to visit places and send me pictures. The first two places looked like abandoned dorms.

Interesting furniture, huh?

The furniture was terrible and looking at them I expected a huge bug to just show up from somewhere under the sink.

Now this is just creepy.

Photo credit MR. BassemB.

That is when I began sending e-mail to all my friends, announcing I'm looking for a place to rent in Beirut on my Yahoo messenger status and so on. And I found the MOVING IN story on Michael Totten blog, which is not very encouraging. it seems like the best way to find and apartment in Beirut is to go to a caffe, tell the bartender you;re looking for a place and the guy would find you somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody.... who has a place to rent. The owners don't really advertise in the papers. News travel word to mouth. So this is pretty discouraging.
Then I got together with Lili, a friend who's gonna move to Beirut next year, when she's starting her MA at American University of Beirut. She has this American friend who apparently got angry at the Lebanese way of solving problems - after he wrote an article about Saad Hariri and got a phone call not to publish a few things - and he decided to move back to the US. I pounced the opportunity. Can I "inherit" his place? She asked the guy, but he apparently is not so determined anymore 'cause of this Swedish lady coming to visit him... Buahaha. I hate Swedish ladies! Well, from this line of investigation I am currently waiting for an e-mail from a girl who's leaving at the beginning of August and would like to leave me her apartment. I haven't got the e-mail yet, although she said she'd write to me a week ago. :( She must have learned the notioan of Lebanese tomorrow very well. Hihi.

Then Bassem - thank God - told me on Saturday a friend called and told him about a studio up for rental for 200$ a month. Payment for a year, not furnished. But still 200! Well I said yes, called my father to see if he'd lend me the money and told Bassem to go see it. Haha. He found the building and asked the janitor if there was a place to rent. The guy pretended there wasn't! So my friend pretended to leave. And after the janitor closed the door, he wentback in the building, knocked on a door and found out that there was and apartment for rent. An old lady even gave him the number of the owner, which proved to be out of service. In the end he has to go during the days sometime and find the shop the owner has on the same street and visit the apartment.

The third chance I 've got is my friend Elena, who's a real estate agent in Dubai and has a few Lebanese real estate friends. She told them what I m looking for yesterday and we're waiting for results.

So nothing yet. Ouf.

BELARUS SPECIAL FORCES TRAINING

2008-07-06T08:50:00.000-07:00

I was browsing today through English Russia and found some quite interesting stuff. But these pictures really struck me, after seeing the Romanian soldiers train. The Belarus soldiers go through hell and they look like they know what pain is.

THE WITCHES - PART TWO

2008-07-06T04:55:00.001-07:00

AND GUESS WHO'S ON AL JAZEERA

2008-07-06T04:43:00.000-07:00

WAR CORRESPONDENT COURSE - THE WHOLE STORY

2008-06-29T08:05:00.000-07:00

The ANTENA3 team. Moi and Raul Timar, the cameraman. Picture by Tudor Vintiloiu (Aka Bogdan)

We've been attacked by insurgents, three of us got kidnapped and one was wounded by a sniper shooting from the woods. I became a hero too. My pants gave in when I was trying to climb an army truck. Ya ya ya... I kind of expected something like this to happen. But that's another story.

The 14 of us went through a lot at this War journalism training. Basically we were trained for embedding, learned the theory and practiced the dangers. Met people, talked tot he soldiers who just got back from a mission in Afghanistan and trained with them, watched them dismantle bombs, set up traps in the woods and practically paying with the machine guns we couldn't even lift from the table. Battalion 33, Mountain Hunters. That would be the literal translation from Romanian, cause the US Army doesn't have this particular section so there is no official translation. These soldiers are trained to survive in the cold, climb mountains and save people fallen from a cliff. They also use certain climbing procedures the professional climbers don't use. The can descend face down, which is pretty dangerous. Not to be tried at home.

They showed us how to climb and descend too. Too bad they didn't have enough equipment. And when there was one free from me, they were in a hurry to get to lunch and I didn't get the chance to climb like my fellow journalists did. Unlucky me, I thought. But, heh, all the trouble turned to be for the best. After a couple of hours, they took us to the training field and we had to take a military truck cause our bus ( I have to show everybody the picture, maybe somebody sees it and buys a new one, cause this one was terrible. We did 100 km in 3 HOURS!) couldn't make it on the country road.

The BUS. Had to take the picture for posterity.

This is the particular moment my pants became the star of the day. They gave in when I tried to climb the damn truck. Ha. Imagine that happening while climbing a cliff. The Sargent accompanying us in the truc tried to find a needle for me to saw my pants and in 5 minutes half of the soldiers there knew what happened. Hahaha! I had to saw the damn pants under escort, with the Sargent guarding the door. Picture that!

Apart from the embarrassing stuff, I have to say the guys from the battalion rock. The girls were really impressed. Hehe! And I have to do them a favor so I will put the pictures of the top 3 men of the day voted as the handsomest but the whole bunch of girls there.

Alpha Man. Lieutenant Gabi Ştefănescu. The green eyes made a few victims among the ladies. Hehe. Photo credit Ana Maria Poenaru

Za man of the week.

Blue Eyes. Mihai Grecu (at least I think that's his name) He helped the girls climb and they talked about his eyes for two days. Photo credit Ana Maria Poenaru
Florin, my favorite and Ana Maria Poenaru's favorite. The guy told us he slept in the armored transporter for 6 months because he was in an FOB, Forward Observation Base, in Zabul province, south eastern Afghanistan. He and his fellow soldiers had to save a few Americans lost in mission. Huhuuuu. Imagine that. :)

OK, I said enough with the fun part. Seriously speaking, it was a hell of an experience. Doing the physical exercises, and trying to finish the obstacle course, which was not very easy, and then wearing the bullet proof vests and the helmets, which were pretty heavy, although they were not the heaviest they have. The combat equipment is much heavier than the training one.

Raul going through fire. Photo by Tudor Vintiloiu

The exercise happened the last day. The plan belongs to Major Carol Florea. He organized everything, script and all.

Carol. Photo by Ana Maria Poenaru

We woke up at 6 in the morning. Had breakfast at 7 and by 8 we were in the famous bus with the bulletproof vests and the helmets laughing at each other. Oy, we did look funny. Two press officers accompanied us to the Military Unit headquarters where the tactic exercise was to begin at about 9.05. Alpha Man prepared 4 armored vehicles for us. Me and Ana Maria Poenaru, the photographer from Sibiu, together with Cristina Iovi, from Radio Timisoara, and Carmen Ionescu, form RADOR press agency got to go with him. Raul, my cameraman, couldn't come with us. He was too tall. So he needed the room of two people. He went with another team.

The one and only. Raul

We went to a base outside of Curtea de Arges for the tactic exercise. On the way I felt sick and sleepy at the same time. I think I even fell asleep cause Ana Maria actually shot a few pictures of me sleeping.

We went through a so called checkpoint and we were asked for our papers. It was very relieving for me, cause I got to have some air. The we got back to the vehicle, basically a can where you can theoretically fit 9 soldiers. Ana Maria kept doing portraits of Florin. Can't really blame her. In the meantime, Florin, who was closest to us told us the vehicles they had in Afghanistan were not that great as the one we were traveling in. The engines had to be changed every month because of the sand getting everywhere. One of their fellow soldiers, Sargent Aurel Marcu, died last year in such a vehicle that drove over an explosive device.

We got to our destination, a field outside the town, very close to the woods. The mission was to travel under the army escort to a school the Romanian Military was building in a village. Pretty interesting. Of course we got shot at on the way. We also got shot at on the way Back. Ana Maria, my friend and room mate, the photographer, was theoretically wounded. So she got the chance of being carried by the guys. Hihi. She was happy.

Ana Maria having fun.

Then the media pool. Hehe. Funny experience, especially for the Public relations officers there. E had to choose 4 journalists to go interview a few local leaders. We chose a radio journalist, a photographer, a news wire person, and there should have been a cameraman. But Roxana Lupu, the reporter from Realitatea TV, was going through a tough inner crisis and no matter the arguments for a cameraman to go, she didn't move. So Raul, the only guy with a camera had to stay behind. Good for him, cause the girls got kidnapped. Hihi. Carmen Gavrila, the radio journalist, was happy to say the requests of the kidnappers. Well, they were saved by a commando and that was it.

In the meantime, while the three kidnapped girls went for a beer with the kidnappers, we were struggling back at the headquarters to suck some information out of the military press office. Boy, we scared the poor people. We were pretty aggressive with the officers who were just finishing a public relations course.

Anyway, we got our diplomas on Friday from the Secretary of State, a very elegant and pretty lady, who had gone through lots of plastic surgery, who had nothing to do with the course and wasn't very interested in it and couldn't care less.

ARMY GIRL

2008-06-27T08:36:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody. I've been away for a while. 5 days actually. Army camp in Curtea de Arges, beautiful town in southern Romania close to the mountains. Boy, it feels like a month. We did lots of interesting stuff, including train with the military and a tactic exercise in real combat conditions. Well, it was lots of fun. We were 14 journalists. We had applied for the War Correspondents Course with the Romanian Military. We were supposed to be 16, but 2 people didn't show up, which messed it up a bit for us and for the organizers.I didn't expect it all to be so much fun and so informative. And we also got to know the guys from the Defense Ministry press office. Cute, nice and very helpful during the course. We'll see later if the friendship will last after we call them for real stuff. Hehe.

I'm planning to do an illustrated journal of the whole thing. But that's gonna take me some time. So I'm just letting you guys now that I'm back with interesting stuff. And keep posted. Photo credit Ana Maria Poenaru, my room mate.

WACKY ROMANIA

2008-06-16T20:11:00.000-07:00

The residents of a Romanian village knowingly voted for a dead man as their mayor in Sunday's municipal election, preferring him to his living opponent.

Neculai Ivascu, 57, who ran the village for almost two decades, died from liver disease just after voting began, but still won the election.

In the end, election authorities gave the post to the runner-up, but some villagers and Ivascu's party, the opposition Social Democrat Party (PSD), have called for a new vote.

The village is swarming with foreign journalists by now, cause, of course, this only happens in Romania. According to CNN reporters, it's an iternational first.

THIS IS ONE OF MY FAVORITES

2008-06-14T07:53:00.000-07:00

Nearly 1000 prisoners escaped from a prison in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Shocking, huh? It happened under the noses of the fellows from the ISAF and from the Afghani security and whatever kind of security they have there in mighty Afghanistan. It seems the Talibans watch the Arnold Schwarzeneger movies cause they formed a comando (yeah, a comando, I can even see them covered in dirt, shiny muscles, fancy camouflage pants and the Rambo Bandeau). They blew up the prison gate, they got in, shot a few guards and freed 1000 detainees. They also fired a few rockets at the building to make holes in the walls. HUHU! My question is why bother? I mean all they needed was a pickaxe blow and building would have fallen. But yeah, this thought us something new about the Talibans. They discovered Satellite TV. Wait until they watch Ironman.

WHILE THE ITALIANS ARE TERRIFIED OF THE ROMANIAN GIPSIES...

2008-06-08T10:52:00.000-07:00

Hey , Mr. Berlusconi, can't you see the real threat here? It's a Hamas conspiracy. The gipsies in Rome and Milan are there to distract your attention from the real invasio! While you are busy convincing the EU guys that you have to send back all the Romanians, these guys are preparing to invade Rome.

WHY WE SHOULD DRINK COCA COLA

2008-06-08T10:41:00.000-07:00

SHOP OWNER IN BEIRUT

2008-06-04T08:36:00.000-07:00

Akl El Hatib has had his shop for 35 years. War, peace, Israeli bombings, internal fighting - whatever. The man is still in his little shop in Manara. He sells little things. Toothpaste, soap, pretzels and biscuits. The shop is more or less empty.But that doesn't seem important. He's happy to talk, but not just to anybody. No conversations with Jews and Americans. Cause they are the ones behind the "global conspiracy".

PS . Many thanks to Mr Bassem Boustany who kindly helped me with the translation.

OMAR SHARIF : Americans are ignorant

2008-06-03T05:17:00.000-07:00

Al-Hayat TV on May 26, 2008

UMMMM... CAN'T REALLY COME UP WITH A TITLE FOR THIS

2008-05-29T10:16:00.000-07:00

Advice on Saudi Arabian tv for the good faithful muslim men. It would be hilarious, if there weren't real women going through all this.

CONVERSATION ON APTN DIRECT BETWEEN CHINESE TELEVISION AND THE AP DESK EDITOR

2008-05-27T05:54:00.000-07:00

China Central Television (CCTV) (1226 GMT)
From CCTV News will any live broadcasting of the bombing of North Korea Facilities?Since there are news that CNN will have live covering

APTN (1229 GMT)
China Central Television (CCTV): we are not aware of any bombing. do you have more details?

China Central Television (CCTV) (1238 GMT)
there are news that at the end of May before next round of six party talks, the cooling tower of the North korea facilties in Yongbyon would be bombed and CNN would provide live coveragei

THE NIGERIAN GUY FROM THE OLD SOUK

2008-05-26T11:56:00.000-07:00

He was right. Part of me didn't want to believe him. "Lebanon is a beautiful country, but the politicians are killing it". B totally agreed. We found him in the old souk in Byblos. Sitting in front of a shop on a chair. A thin black guy smiling. He called us in. "People don't buy anything when they come to this place unless they come to my shop", he jokes. He was right. I instantly found something to buy. The shop was a mess. The way I like a shop to be. Dusty. Clothes and bed covers and table covers and souvenirs and anything you can imagine. On a shelf at the back I found the keffiyah I wanted for a friend. B started to speak to the guy. That why he entered the shop in the first place; to find out more. "Where are you from?" "She's from Romanian and I'm Lebanese. Where are you from?" "Nigeria. But I'm married to a Lebanese woman." "Cool. Is this your shop?" "No. I work for somebody. Find anything you like?" The man kept smiling, happy I had found something to buy from his place. I bought two keffiyah. Just 10 000 Lebanese pounds. Around 7 dollars. The guy went out to another shop to bring me the change for a 20 000 banknote. "you know, you have a beautiful country, but the politicians are killing it", he told B as he came back. And we left to the coffee shop across the street to have a sandwich and a cappuccino. "You're gonna write about this guy, won't you?" "Mhm."

****
They're fighting again in Beirut. Here's the Naharnet live coverage.

9:50pm Clashes in Beirut's Kourniche Mazraa district between opposition and majority and the army intervenes.
9:45pm Clashes reported between the Hizbullah-led opposition and majority supporters in the Beqaa Valley village of Taalabaya.
9:29pm Beirut MP Ammar Houry pleaded with president Suleiman to rescuse civilians in the capital from attacks by Nasrallah's partisans.
9:27pmAt least 16 people were wounded by gunfire from Nasrallah's followers.
8:24pm At least two people were wounded by pro-Nasrallah shooting in Beirut and admitted to Maqassed hospital.

B told me like 20 minutes ago they started the firing again. Man, I really hoped they would stop. The people really believed that electing a new president would stop the fighting. And here come Nasrallah to ruin everything once again.

LEBANON AT PEACE?

2008-05-25T01:30:00.000-07:00

Downtown Beirut. May 22. Thursday evening. Around 11 pm. Noisy. Humming. The traffic is almost impossible. You get out of the service cab, you hardly find your way across the street and then you struggle to make your way among the people. People are literally pouring from everywhere. Laughing, walking hand in hand, smiling. Young people, old people. Huge coffee shops that stretch on half of the street are filled with people. Not even one free table. An old man shouts from a distance at his friend sitting in a coffee shop and opens his arms. They meet, kiss three times, the Lebanese way, and they sit down for a talk. They congratulate each other. They hope and feel it’s time for their country to have a rest.

Downtown Beirut used to be the Camps Elysees of the Middle East. You can find here all the famous designers’ shops; you can smoke the nargil, have a cup of cappuccino and talk to a friend for hours. There is even a Place de l’Etoile, where students meet and usually sit on the side walks.

In the middle of it all they staged a tv show. Live on LBC, the national television, a debate to celebrate peace. To celebrate something that Lebanon hasn’t known in decades- an agreement between the factions that a few days ago were fighting in the streets. A TV debate in the middle of the street. True, surrounded by soldiers, but they weren’t more than 4 young soldiers guarding the stage. A huge act of courage that would not have been possible…. No. An act of courage that WAS never possible in a country where people get assassinated for speaking about what they believe in.

Six months ago, the whole place was deserted. Nobody was there except a few shy soldiers who’d ask you to open your bag. All the museums were closed; the shops were almost out of business. And nobody adventured there. The Lebanese Shia militia Hezbollah had staged a sit in. They demanded enough seats in the cabinet to wield veto power over any decision the government makes, despite the fact that they couldn’t win enough seats in the last election.
The Parliament building in Place de L’Etoile was surrounded by barbed wire and the door remained closed for a few months. That’s actually why they weren’t able to elect a new president. The parliament was not functioning, cause the Hezbollah did not show up for the vote.

And then there was the Situation. With an S. A tension you could even touch and try to cut with a knife. People would avoid investing in their businesses because of the Situation. They avoided refurbishing a house because of the Situation. And made people startle when they heard a tire exploding or even fireworks. But on Thursday night it was all gone.

There have been agreements before; there have been attempts to rebuild the country. But none of them had the privilege to be the one that people believed in.
The Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and the Parliamentary Majority leader, Saad Hariri, son of the late Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and the Speaker of the Parliament, a close ally of the Hezbollah militia reached an agreement on Wednesday in Doha. They will form a national unity government and elect the new president - Michel Suleiman, the head of the army.

People are really optimistic. Happier. And they are aware of that. They see each other smile and it makes them smile again. Life got back to Beirut this week. But still everybody’s asking for how long it’s going to last.
“We, Lebanese, are like that. We just snap. In and out of war. Just like that. That’s why people don’t trust us as a country.”, B says as he snaps his fingers. But he still admits things are different now.

THIRD TIME IN LEBANON

2008-05-25T01:23:00.000-07:00

The post is a bit late, cause I couldn't connect to the Internet in Beirut.

I’m back in Lebanon. It took me a while. 4 months actually. Seems like ages to me now. And I found it different this time. Third time. Well, not the country. All that was changed about it when I got off the plane were a few dark circles on the road – from the burned tires. But the people… The people felt different. I got off the plane on Wednesday at about 2 in the morning. They double checked my passport this time. Never happened the first two times. They even “sounded” the alarm when the saw on my entrance card that I am a journalist. The airport security guys started to ask questions. Who do I work for, what station, and as they’ve never heard of Antena3 before, as I expected, they were really confused. The guy at the counter didn’t know what to do, so he called the boss. I gave him my press card, he looked at it carefully. It looks official enough although the guys who made it forgot to write “PRESS” on it. They only wrote a small “Ştiri” instead of it. The security chef only said a “hm” and then asked if I knew English and asked what my beat was. Hehe. I told him I cover international affairs and he went like “Ohhhh, NEWS! Ok, let her pass.” “WELCOME TO LEBANON!”
Well, thank you very much. What kind of journalist would you think would come to Lebanon at a time like this? Maybe a Children’s Show producer? Geez!

(UPDATE. I was told later that a few Israeli journalists had got into Lebanon with foreign passports under the Hezbollah nose and they were bragging about it on TV. "Hey, look, we're in Lebanon!")

As Ramy drove on the highway, I looked around to see at least a trace of the fighting that had been going on. Had seen a picture a friend had taken during the fighting. The usually crowded highway to the airport all deserted. Nothing alive on it but a small bird. I expected to see at least traces of the dirt they used to barricade the road.
But there was nothing. No barricades, not even a hint that they were there 4 days before. All clean and wiped. I am always amazed by the Lebanese capacity of regeneration. I remember the bridges bombed by the Israelis in the summer of 2006. I remember all the footage that came in on Reuters and AP at the time and the destroyed roads and the bridges. The Lebanese are amazing. The roads are now all rebuilt. (One more reason for those politicians bullshitting the Romanians after 20 years of so called democracy to visit Lebanon more often. Lebanon has highways, and bridges and everything a civilized country needs. Well, they are not satisfied with their roads, that's for sure. But, they are definetly better than the Romanian ones, trust me. AND THEY HAVE BEEN THROUGH DECADES OF INTERNAL FIGHTING.)

I arrived into a quiet Beirut. Hamra, where my hotel is, is now as full of people as ever. They had it closed last week after the Hezbollah fighters moved in. It was around 3 am on Wednesday morning. A few hours later I was watching on Al Jazeera that the Lebanese politicians had made up and they agreed on a national unity government in Doha. And I saw the people of Lebanon smiling at each other for the first time.

WATCH AND WEEP

2008-05-20T00:53:00.000-07:00

Look at this guy's arguments. Have you heard of anybody masturbating while watching the news? I mean ok, unless they are terribly SICK. WTF!
Anyways, Saudi Arabia is a country where they actually have executioners trained to cut people's heads with a sword.

THE BORING STUFF

2008-05-19T06:58:00.000-07:00

Representatives from around 100 countries opened a 12-day conference Monday in a bid to agree a global ban on cluster bombs, one of the most lethal weapons facing civilians caught up in conflict. The talks, at Dublin's Croke Park Gaelic sports stadium, are aiming for a wide-ranging pact that would completely wipe out the use, production and stockpiling of cluster bombs by its signatories.
USA, Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan, the biggest manufacturers of such boms, are not participating.

AND I THOUGHT ROMANIAN POLITICIANS WERE CRAZY....

2008-05-19T00:40:00.001-07:00

CHINA AGAIN

2008-05-17T10:45:00.000-07:00

In was browsing around looking for what other people report on. This one I found on Liveleak really left me speechless.

RESCUED AFTER 4 DAYS

2008-05-17T08:34:00.000-07:00

EARTHQUAKE IN CHINA

2008-05-15T03:58:00.000-07:00

Haven't seen anything like it before. Have you? And I wonder why all these disasters happen in countries like China, Myanmar, Indonesia... where the governments would rather let half of the country perish than admit they're stupid and cruel.

YAY!

2008-05-15T01:39:00.000-07:00

I'm going to Beirut! I'm going to Beirut!

Lebanese MEA said it was likely to resume incoming flights from Europe starting Thursday afternoon.

DID THE WISER GUY GIVE UP? AND WHAT FOR?

2008-05-15T00:42:00.000-07:00

I know I shouldn't push my luck. Siniora revoked those two decisions that made Hezbollah so angry they started the violence last week. The Airport Chief of security keeps his seat and the Hezbollah can have their cameras supervising the airport (as creepy as it sounds). They made the decision after the visit yesterday of Arab Committee delegation, carefully filtered by the Hezbollah some say. I've also heard people say how weak Siniora is, how Hariri, the cute guy who'll never be his father, made a fool of himself (again!)... I've read about how Siniora was weak on purpose, how Hariri doesn't want to arm his Sunnis to prevent them from fighting back.

Aaaaaanyway. Everybody's waiting for that airport to open. So, Hezbollah got what they wanted, round 50 people where killed in the process, 200 wounded, why isn't that airport open yet, huh?

"After the cabinet meeting, an opposition official said the airport road was likely to reopen on Thursday morning.", I read this morning on Naharnet.

Hey, guys, it's NOON! :((

ROMANIANS IN BEIRUT - Frere Felician

2008-05-13T06:11:00.000-07:00

Frere Felician is the only Romanian priest in Lebanon. He's my age, has the face of an angel and speaks Romanian with that Moldovan accent which made me instantly homesick. Frere Felician Tamas graduated Roman Catholic Theology in Roman, a town in Eastern Romania. I found him last November in Saint Antoine de Padoue church in Sin el-Fil, Beirut. Small Franciscan convent where you can find 7 monks, including Brazilian, French and Lebanese.
Frere Felician has been in Lebanon since 2004. God's will, he says. Otherwise he can't explain it. He knew nothing of Lebanon, besides the verses in the Bible and the cedars of Lebanon. Now he's taking Arabic lessons and has conversations with the soldiers guarding the church. He's there for the Lebanese seeking comfort in God's word. Bu the wants to be there for the Romanians in Lebanon and called them to a Easter service last year. Around 30 people came and Frere Felician was happy.
Being in Lebanon made him understand what brought most Christians closer to the church. "You don't see only women and old people in church. You see also the young. They're going through difficult times, they know what suffering is and this is what brought them closer to God ".

DAY 6: FIGHTING CONTINUES IN TRIPOLI

2008-05-13T02:01:00.000-07:00

As seen on Beirut Spring blog.

Well, more bad news for me. Fighting again in Tripoli.

At 11.00 am, Naharnet reports, Al-Manar TV, NBN and OTV stopped broadcasting in Tripoli and nearby areas. Naharnet also reports that Arab League sources say the opposition backing Hezbollah had a positive reaction to Arab League leader Moussa’s demand to open the airport road so that the Arab delegation arrives in Beirut through the facility.
I sure hope it says open. At least until next Wednesday morning.

Day 5: Lebanese dare to hope worst is over

2008-05-12T06:41:00.000-07:00

The Beirut Daily Star front page headline makes me a bit happier. I woke up this afternoon with a feeling I'm not gonna get to Lebanon next week as I'm supposed to. I got my plane ticket just two days before the fighting began. I see the things started to settle down, people are getting back to work in Beirut which is a good sign. The road to the airport is still blocked, though, but I'm sure they'll clear the way by next Tuesday when I'm supposed to leave.

I hope it's not gonna get worse. Actually at the beginning I thought it was just a one day thing, as it usually is. And it seems quite unreal to see what's happening.

I've been in Lebanon the week Emile Lahoud left the presidency. Everybody was, of course, worried. Army filters every 100 meters on the highway, people being cautious, watching the news and stuff like that. Lahoud left the office on a Friday evening, tried to declare a state of emergency so that the army could take control of the country. Five minutes afterwards on LBC Siniora almost told him "Fuck off! What state of emergency? Get real and get lost!". And it all calmed down.
The second time I were in Lebanon, in February, I found myself on a Sunday afternoon in Saint Michael square in Beirut, in the middle of a protest. I was looking for a Hezbollah flag, a present for Tote, one of my friends. I was stunned to actually find a.... HEZBOLLAH SHOP where they sold coffee cups with Nasrrallah's picture and cheep rose perfume the seller pretended it's Nasrallah's scent.
Anyway, on our way to the shop - cause I was with two friends crazy enough to give me a lift to the southern Beirut - we ran into the protest. The army had just shot a protester a few yards away. And I looked around and I only saw 14-15 year old laughing, jumping around and shouting a lot. My friends translated to me what they were saying. " They're swearing, shouting slogans against the LBC , Lebanese television, and they're also shouting "Jaja has AIDS, Jaja has AIDS!", Bassem told me. "See? This is Lebanese fun at it's best". And at some point the children started jumping again and laughing. "Let's have some fun, let's burn tires!" 8 people were killed that day as far as i remember now. 11 army officers were punished for the shooting. And that was it. People got back to they work.

They didn't even fight on Hariri assassination anniversary. Maybe because Hezbollah was busy burying Imad Moughniyah, the military chief assassinated in Syria.

Until now. I was just thinking the other day. Isn't it funny that the Hezbollah suddenly got very busy on Israel's 60th anniversary?

"HEY, AREN'T WE COOL? WE'RE TAKING TURNS SHOOTING ! "

2008-05-11T19:58:00.000-07:00

I can't believe these guys. They're actually having fun. Well, I've been told that this is the "Lebanese fun at its best" but i thought is was a joke. Silly me, I thought fighting might be stressful. But not when you bring a chair in the street, empty your gun and the sit for a while and get some rest, smoke a cigarette and let yourself filmed in action. What do these guys have to defend, huh? They don't really seem convinced of a certain cause, do they? I'm sure they couldn't care less about who's in charge of the government or how many spy cameras the Hezbollah has in the Beirut Airport.
And I'm sure there are guys like these two playing around and killing children without even noticing. Man , these guys deserve to be stripped naked in the center of Beirut and not given permission to go to the bathroom.

AND WHEN I FINALLY GOT THE PLANE TICKET

2008-05-10T20:09:00.000-07:00

I have a plane ticket to Beirut. I should leave on May 20. I was very happy about it. Definetly very happy. I got my ticket on Monday, booked the room on Tuesday and on Wednesday they started to fire. Right. Story of my life I said. The fighting between the Hezbollah gunmen and the Hariri's supporters went on and on for foru days. Last night, before I came to work and be unhappy about the reports I had to write on the turmoil in Beirut, Tote, as nice as he usually is, sent me a piece of news. Sunni Al Qaida wants to come destroy Shia Hezbollah. Great, that's just what I need. Al Qaida.
By the time I got to work, the Hezbollah agreed to withdraw from the street and leave them to the army. Great, I said. At least they let the security cheif at the airport have his jpb back with or without the special Hezbollah security cameras. I couldn't care less. I just want that airport to function at least until I get there.
But then, in the morning, at about 5. 30, France Presse served un URGENT. I'm not bothering to translate.

De violents combats faisaient rage dimanche matin à Tripoli, dans le nord du Liban, entre des partisans de la majorité et de l'opposition menée par le Hezbollah, a annoncé à l'AFP un responsable libanais de la sécurité. Plusieurs personnes ont été blessées, a-t-il ajouté, sans autres précisions. Les combats sont concentrés au nord de Tripoli, dans les quartiers de Bab al Tebbaneh, Kobbeh et Jabal Mohsen et "environ 7.000 personnes ont du fuir" ces affrontements, a indiqué le responsable. Des tirs à l'arme lourde, ainsi que des explosions en pleine ville ont été entendus, selon un correspondant de l'AFP.

Guys, please start to fight AFTER I get and answer from LAU, ok? Pf.

THE ROMANIANS IN BEIRUT

2008-05-10T07:30:00.000-07:00

This is the first of the stories I shot in Beirut in November last year, a day before president Emile Lahoud steped down from office. Lost of tension, of course.
My Romanians felt the tension and they were afraid the concert they had that week would have been cancelled due to the political crisis. Thre are about 50 Romanians in the Beirut Philarmonic Orchestra. They play every morning in St. Joseph Church in Monot street and I found them with a little help from the Cultural secretary of the Romanian Embassy in Beirut. I've been trying to call them forthe last few days, since the Hezbollah (yeah, again Hezbollah) has taken control of the western Beirut where all the nice places are. For some reason nobody is interested in this story in Romania. I can't understand why, given the fact that most of the world is carefully watching what's happening in Lebanon.

Oh, please, don't be harsh on the video. It was the first time I had to shoot my own footage and do the interviews at the same time. And it's the first video I edit alone, at home, on my laptop using Movie Maker. So, yeah, you professionals out there, be patient with me. It takes time to learn this stuff, ok? And it takes time to do the subtitles. So here's what they say.

The guy in the orange coat has been in Beirut since febriary last year and he's pretty happy there. There has been a bit of turmoil, but not as much as he expected.

The girl witht he glasses, the violonist, explains how she had to cancel her classes becasue of the SITUATION ad how scared she was to cross downtown Beirut on her way to Brumana, on the mountain, where she lives. She thanked God when she reached home a day before.

The red haired lady is a Romanian Armenian who's been in Lebanon for 37 years. She's been through the civil war, lived it as any Lebanese lived it and she says nothing impresses her anymore. She graduated the Conservatory in Romania and she left during Ceausescu's rule. Lebanon seemed better during the civil war to her than communist Romania.

PS. There will be a few more stories in the next days. Depending how much sleep I get after the nights I spend at work.

THE FINNISH WAY

2008-05-07T06:30:00.000-07:00

The City of Helsinki is to set up a two-person Romanian-speaking street patrol team. The purpose of the team is to reach out to Helsinki’s Roma beggars of Romanian origin. Originally the City of Helsinki had planned to establish a Romanian expert to patrol the streets. But, for the time being, they will buy the patrolling service the Helsinki Deaconess Institute. The institute’s workers will start patrolling the streets from the beginning of June. The Finnish want to investigate why the Roma leave Romania and go beg in Finland.
“We will ask them why they have arrived in Finland. Naturally it will also be interesting to find out they are genuinely victims of intimidation at home. And are the talks about their money lending and high interests true?” explained senior planning officer Johanna Seppälä from the City of Helsinki Safety and Preparedness Co-ordinating Division on Tuesday as quoted in the Helsingin Sanomat daily.
What complicates matters is the range and variety of beggars. There are peddlers of false gold and roses, those who stop cars, and petty thieves, but also women begging on their knees, who presumably have nothing to do with the previous. Some are street musicians. The usual stuff I might add.
The reason for the over-representation of Romania is the country’s sizeable Roma population, which is estimated at a minimum of two million people, the largest in Europe, the Finnish believe.
Several human rights organizations have reported on Romania’s systematic discrimination against its Roma minority.
So is putting pressure on the Romanian government through the EU one of the means toslove the problem? “Yes”, says a guy from the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Definetly not, I'd say. I wonder how they will react when they really find out how complicated this whole thing is and how difficult it is to change the way people think. Try make these people stay off the streets and see what happens.

I once interviewed a Gypsy chief in a town called Tandarei in southern Romania. He had two huge houses, marble plated and was very proud of it. And proud of how he got the money for the two precious palaces.
"After the Revolution we put our children in the trunks and we went to Germany. We were hundreds of thousands. There was nothing here for us. The government wouldn't give us anything. So we left. People died then. Children suffocated in the trunks and the police at the borders had no idea. But it was worth the sacrifice. I made the money for these houses in two years. How? Social assistance. We had 10 children and we got lots of money for that. My people wouldn't steal. They are Christians." Traian Bulibasha is now a pentecostal pastor and forbids his people to lie and steal. But can he?

THE UNSEEN FACE OF THE IRANIAN ELECTIONS

2008-04-27T04:28:00.000-07:00

I got this e-mail from my friend in Iran last night. His e-mails are very rare lately.

"Hi ana. Today (Saturday) was a tragic day here. After elections they suddenly changed the result to eliminate the candidate from my city. But people resisted and the riot began. They ruthlessly killed 4 innocents. Two of them were just people returning from school. Before my eyes. 500 m away from our home. Finally they changed the results again becoz people didn't give up. They burned every bank and gov. office. Now i am sure that they will arrest a lot of young people. It is horrible. I am sendig this email from my mobile. they r ruthless ancruel. i can't stand the scene I saw. Two 12 year old boys coming back from school with their bags. See you. I am exteremely cautious. Don't worry about me."

I haven't seen even one newsstory about any riot in Iran after the elections on Fruday. Just the official results, one short news story on France presse. It's interesting how nobody gives a shit about what really happens with the people in that country.

TIRED

2008-04-14T11:23:00.000-07:00

Mhm. Yeah, I'm tired. That's the word describing my life lately. I get up in the morning - a very difficult mission, almost impossible sometimes - I'm always thrilled to start a new day and hardly wait to get to the newsroom and write the same shit everyday. I'm usually half an hour late at work, i get the ""pf" look from Dana or Oana, my coworkers, I feel bad about being late and try to write more for the 12 o'clock newscast so that they wouldn't be angry with me. Then I get very angry at the deputy editor in chief who kinda shows up around 1 pm, sits down and starts bugging everybody about the typos in the info bubbles that go on screen. That's his way of living. The info bubbles give this guy's life a meaning. There is nothing else this guy does, besides checking the info bubbles. Of course, the people from the foreign news department are the first in line to be bugged about the info bubbles. "You can't write Nuremberg on the info bubbles. I told you so many times! It's Nurnberg. " "What is Lhasa? Huh? What's Lhasa? Girls, it's Lhassa, I tell you!"

The guy is not very familiar with English, you have to forgive him. He must think French is the only language in the world. :)

Ok, and then I write. And write and write. And then I check for new stories. And then I write, and I write. My friends never get the chance to talk to me like they used to do. I'm alwyas irritated and I always disappear in the middle of the conversation. So, yeah, don't try to have a conversation with me on Yahoo messenger. NOT INTERESTING! You'll end up talking to yourself. And I warn you, it's frustrating.

And in no time it's 3 pm. Time my coworkers change shift. Dana leaves, Oana comes. I don't have time to say hi to her, cause I have to check for new stories, make a list and send it to the 6 o'clock newscast editor. And then I write, and I write. And then it's 6.
Should be time to go home. But traffic is hell in Bucharest at that hour. I can't cross the town to get home. It would cost me 2 hours of my life, spent with my foot stuck on the pedals - my car is a manual purple 1996 Daewood Tico giving her last breath for my sake. So I decide to stay a bit more. Maybe I should try to have a chat with a friend, but they are all too busy. I can't do anything else but understand. So I'm browsing around the Internet and I find myself on the same damn websites I search my stories on. And I get angry. I decide to leave. I get caught in traffic, spend an hour and a half on the damn bridge I have to cross to get home. I spend half an hour looking for a place to park close to the apartment building I live in. I finally get home, open the TV, open my laptop, talk to my co workers about the same damn things we do everyday. Makes me angry. The rest of the people I know are either not online or working on some project. And then my eyes get heavy and I fall asleep. With the newschannel on. So that I can get up in the morning when I hear the morning anchor's voice. My brain has already memorized her voice.

Exciting life, huh? Just a few more months. And then I'm off.

PS. YEAH, I'M SICK OF IT!

IT HAPPENS IN IRAN

2008-03-30T04:44:00.000-07:00

Hasan is a guy who doesn't fit in in Iran. Not because he's Kurdish, but because he read almost everything western literature has to offer, although he definetly knows it's illegal. He wants to leave the country, of course, as all young Iranian people who also posess a piece of brain do. Hasan used to be a computer science teacher at the small university in his town and used to love working with students. He was so full of hope and energy when i met him. Used to work on a cowshed he and his family had started. He had just finished his Master's degree and he was so thrilled about the little calves he had to take care of. And he was as enthusiastic about the job at the university he was to start in the autumn. That was almost two years ago.

He recently resigned. Disappointement combined, he says, with the feeling of not belonging and the desire to stay in the house with all his books and study to get a PhD to a famous US University.(a US University that would not really find him eligible as a student becasue , obviously, he comes from Iran)

A few days ago he told me we were having our last chat on yahoo messenger and that he'd do something, but i won't hear about it. Of course I thought the worst. Did my best to convince him he had a lot to fight for. He really has. He's a brilliant guy. The kind of person that you know would really make a difference if he only had been given the opportunity. I have no idea if I did convince him or not. He hasn't been back online ever since. And he was really depressed. I'm afraid that he was serious and that I have no way of stopping him. I imagine how it might be to feel so lost. He can't stand talking to his own people. Most of them would betray him, of course. He almost got arrested once. I think I wrote about it before. A student asked him during a course about the Iranian president's studies. He rebelled and said Ahmadinejad's diploma's probably false. The next day the secret service people told him to keep his mouth shut or else.

One of his friends got arrested. The kid is 18 and he spoke on a few occasions in front of his fellow students about the Kurdish aspirations and the idea of a federal Iran. They took the kid to the Intelligence service office in Kermanshah and questioned him. The kid had been in Iraq recently. They already knew who he had met, of course. No PKK, nobody. But still they questioned him. They let him go only to arrest him again while he was on the bus going home. The kid was in jail for three months. This is what Hasan wrote to me a few weeks ago. Have to write this on my blog, cause which newspaper in Romania would publish this. So, they arrested the 18 year old kid.

„He was aware that they do any kind of torture just to find out what kind of relation he has with Pajak Group or PKK. And he new they would apply the most efficient of them: raping. A friend had told him about what the Revolutionary Guards used to do in 1980. The Shia believe that when a virgin dies, even unfaithful, the person goes directly to heaven. So, in order to prevent the teens they wanted to execute from going to heaven, the Guards raped them first. Stupid, but so cruel. Reminds you of the Middle Ages, doesn't it?

The first day of the arrest they tortured the poor kid. They undressed him completely and they blindfolded him. He spent 6 hours like thins on the first day. He went through the same torture the next two days, only they kept him like that longer. The kid had nothing to do with the PKK. He was just interested in Kurdish Culture and language and he went to the Iraqi Kurdistan region because he could find more there than in his own hometown.

They didn't rape him, he says. Some slams in the face and small injuries. That was all. They advised him not to ever try to contact other Kurds outside his city and try to concentrate on his study.”

And of course they used the family menace. The kid, whose name I'd rather not give, was a student. He got out of jail after his family paid some 50 000 dollars bail. A friend of his is still in jail.

„ Majid, a zealous student , a perfect atheist was the one who told him about a federal government instead of a decomposing Iran. Majid was originally from north of Iran a firm believer that Kurds are Achilles' Heel of Iran and in the case they want their independence, Iran will decompose to some small countries like Qatar or Kuwait. Majid was strongly motivated to Unite all the parties in Iran and convince them to prevent bloodshed, like it happened in Iraq. They had to recognize Kurds as a Nation not just a large tribe in order to do that. 16 Azar, December 6, is the anniversary of Student's day in Iran. An great opportunity for them to state their beliefs. They needes permission from "Daftar Tahkim" party, the opposition and the legacy of Khatami's era. They met some important figures there but they laughed at him, because every party in Iran tries to prevent the appearance of Kurds in the capital. He convinced one of them that he has 3000 Kurdish students supporting him and that they will attend the anniversary and if they don't let them organize the meeting.

The day before "16 azar " the plan was that he'd talk about the federal governing of Iran and 15 students would cover him when delivering the speech. But none of the 15 students shew up. He spoke anyway. Of course the Guards were among the public. The night after the speech some intelligence service agents and took them to "Evin", the high security jail in Iran.

It was clear that they wouldn't execute them because now everybody knew abut them from the weblogs and Websites. Some famous lawyers defended them. Majid is still in jail. He believes that in not a very distant future the regime in Tehran will be wiped out either by the people or the US.„

The Kurdish kid still has to appear in court. Nobody know when. He could be executed for trying to speak freely about his beliefs. The 18 year old had nightmares every night, Hasan says. He even has nightmares when daydreaming.

STATE SECRET IN ROMANIA, PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE IN IRAQ

2008-03-03T10:57:00.000-08:00

I remember a press conference at the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It was 2006, a year after the three Romanian journalists were kidnapped in Iraq. There was a huge scandal about the money paid by the government for freeing the journalists. I asked how much. The foreign affairs minister at the time, Mihai Razvan Ungureanu, refused to answer my question. He said no comment. We are supposed to know exactly what happened in 2005 with the three people kidnapped in Iraq only in 2055. Cause it's a state secret and a state secrete can only be made public after 50 years. That's why the Romanian Envoy in Iraq at the time didn't come to court to testify in the trial of Muhammad Munaf, the driver and one of the alleged accomplices of the kidnappers. He claims he was kidnapped too. The guy is and Iraqi-American citizen but he has been trialed in Iraq and sentenced to be hanged in october 2006 in a mock trial. A few lawyers from the Brennan Center for Justice in New York took his case pro bono and asked the American Courts for a fair trial. On February 19 this year the Iraqi Casation Court reversed the sentence for Munaf. The reason - no enough proof. Well, the Iraqis didn't think about the Romanian state secrets when they issued the decision. So they wrote a few things about what happened in 2007. One of the American lawyers, Jonathan Hafetz, sent me the translation on the decision. Surprise! The Romanians negotiated and paid the ransom. No comment!

YESTERDAY, GAZA THE LESS HORRID FOOTAGE

2008-03-02T01:23:00.000-08:00

It seems like the Palestinians are guilty of hiding behind civilians and children and everybody should believe that THIS is an excuse to kill 50 people in one day and not to care about who those people are. I'm just thinking that maybe, just maybe, if they keep killing them, Gaza will turn into a huge grave at some point. And the UN will condemn it and then we will live happily ever after, right?

STORIES MY EDITORS CHOOSE NOT TO RUN

2008-02-29T00:59:00.000-08:00

It's horrific what you can find on Google news lately if you type in Gaza. I did it this morning. Well ya, I cheated cause I saw the footage yesterday too. And, man! It made me feel like turning on happy music and close my eyes and imagine I am on another planet. Five children killed on a football field on an Israeli attack. A six moth old child killed yesterday in another Israeli attack.

Boy wounded in a „militant missile attack” on Sderot. And one headline I liked „ Child victims of Gaza war lie close, but apart”. A story about the Israeli child and a Palestinian child both wounded in the attacks recovering in the same Israeli hospital near Tel Aviv.

The images are pretty shocking, and yet most of the people I showed them to answered carelessly „So what? It happens everyday.” The editor I'm working with decided not to run the footage of the baby killed in Gaza. I insisted. He kept saying no. Well, the footage is shocking but it doesn't show the child ripped apart, does it? „'Cause that's what people want to see.” Like people care to see what bull shit Hillary Clinton has to say in the electoral campaign or the way Barack Obama is dressed in a muslim outfit and why his name is Hussein (oh, yeah, he is REALLY guilty of that). But we still have to write and feed the viewers that shit.

Ya, I guess it does happen everyday. I'm sure it happens everyday in other parts of the world too. Parts of the world we don't CARE about. Like THIS part of the world.

It makes me remember another story that actually seemed to me taken from a cheap horror sci-fi book. A story about Tigris river. It lately is a GRAVEYARD.
Every day local police haul bodies from the Tigris bearing signs of torture. Locals who live near the river constantly see floating bodies. The situation is even worse in Suwayrah, a southern area of the capital, where the government has built barriers with huge iron nets to trap plants and garbage dropped in the river but now THEY TRAP BODIES. Well I remember the answer I got from the editor. Laughter. „This is not a story! This is a stuck sewage problem in Iraq.” Well, yeah, people normally die in a war. But that doesn't mean that war is normal. When did it become so normal that we don't care to notice it?

Well, there was a story yesterday about war that made it to the headlines and made everybody run it and get the audience they crave. Stupid prince Harry „fighting” in Afghanistan. Yeah, like really fighting! Um, seen him dressed as a soldier, weapon in his hand walking around near a wall, actually touching the dust. Isn't that pretty! CNN had an hour long special report on the event. I loved the fact Adriana, the evening newscast editor chose not to run it. That woman has principles.

Well I guess Condi Rice is worried. And she told Ehud Olmert she is W.O.R.R.I.E.D. She's worried about children being killed. Let's just wait until the children grow up and turn like maybe 17. Then, ok, you can kill them. That's the age when they suddenly become „militants”. (BTW, pictures belong to Reuters).

THE WORLD STARTED TO SMELL BLOOD

2008-02-14T08:09:00.000-08:00

I told you nothing was going to happen today. Well ya, it was spectacular. Some 300 000 people carrying the Lebanese flag and as many pictures of late Hariri in the Martyrs Square. All done at about 1 pm.
Then the funeral. Nasrallah made one of his lately rare public apearances. It seems he wasn't afraid he'd be assassinated. He had nothing to fear with all the army in the area.
Well, yeah, nothing was to happen today. It was after all a funeral, lots of people were there, even the Iranian Foreign Minister - he had to come, he's the guy with the money, right? Nasrallah declared open war to Israel. Yeah, so? Israel brought more troups to the Lebanese border. "Tension in the Middle East, Lebanon devided". The world started to smell blood. And it IS going to be blood. But not Nasrallah's , who's actually selling cheap rose perfume, his own brand, and pictures of himself. Some stupid young infatuated militant is gonna bow himself up, or launch some cheap missile into Israel and then it all starts again.

THE SITUATION SUCKS

2008-02-13T13:20:00.000-08:00

My Lebanon is boiling again. Tomorrow will be a very difficult day. Not that other days were not difficult. I always laugh when my friends complain about "THE SITUATION" in their country. Beirut seemed nice to me, quite peaceful acually. I used to be European chick who just fell in love with the glittering lights of the city seen from the plane. But then I was off the plane and on my way to the hotel on the highway and I saw the armed soldiers and went through the filters, and the cab driver turned on the light inside the car every five minutes. This is THE SITUATION everybody mentions in Lebanon. It means living with the feeling that you might, just might, pass by a car bomb meant to kill some "naughty politician" or "naughty journalist".
Yeah, tomorrow's gonna be difficult. They -I'm saying "they" cause nobody knows who did it, and as I already understood by now, nobody will try to find out and tell the world - killed one of the Hezbollah leaders in Syria. Imad Mughniyeh's death in Damascus, a car bomb assassination of course, brought the spark back in Southern Lebanon. cause the gunb powder was always there. Israel was the first to blame, of course. ''We call on the leadership of the Islamic Resistance to respond totheir treacherous operation with a painful blow to the Zionist entity, The Israeli hand has reached one of the pillars of the resistance and it shouldget a strong response and this is not hard for the mujahideen", one shiite cleric told the Hezbollah militants on Al Manar TV. Syria called the assasination a terrorist act. They avoided saying anything about Israel. The US are happy. Happiest about it. It turns out the guy was the most wanted terrorist, deadliest they say, after Ossama Bin Laden.
Mughniyehwas suspected of the 1983 bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut. 63 people died there. He also was suspected in the truck bombing that year of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, an attack that killed 241 people and preceded the U.S. military withdrawal from Lebanon. He escaped american intelligence by changing his appearance.
Tomorrow they will burry the guy.
Tomorrow they expect thousands of people to come to the shrine of Rafik Hariri, the prime minister who was assassinated in 2005. They still count the days since the assassination - of course, they investigated it, but, of course again, didn't find his killers. What's gonna happen? Well, it might just be a day like any other day. Lots of tension, people not going out for fear of THE SITUATION, but in fact nothing really happening.

Mama

2008-02-05T09:19:00.000-08:00

Mama and grandpa, a long time ago. They took the picture when I was still a baby

I used to call her mama. That's what she was to me. Mama. My memories of my grandmother seem blurry to me now. But I remember the feeling of her around the old house, cooking, washing and yelling at me to get down from the top of one of the quince tree near the gate, where I used to hang out when I was a blond blue eyed 5 year old brat.

I have never seen mama without a scarf. I only remember the few strands of hair making way from under her colored scarf which became greyer and greyer and greyer. She was small, former stunning brunette. I know that from the old pictures grandpa still has stashed in some corner in the old house I haven't stepped foot in for so long. 10 years fly fast when you want to keep moving in a huge dirty city. I used to play with those pictures when I was 4 or 5. Mama was beautiful when she was young and I wished she had been a lady from the colored books I had hidden under my bed. But mama wasn't a lady. Not that classic beauty of the 1930s you see in the old black and white movies. Her father, my great grandfather, was a very tough man. His two girls, mama and her little sister, only went to school until they finished the fourth grade. Then he needed them to take care of the garden and the animals. It was the 1930s in a small, very small town in eastern Romania, frozen in time. That town seems always frozen in time, although it changes. You can see the changes every time you get there, but you're still fooled, still get the feeling that everything had stopped moving, or that time somehow moves on a different pattern, a pattern yet undiscovered, stuck somewhere between the past, present and your feelings.

My mama married my grandpa. I don't remember much of their love story. My mind links her more to myself than to other people. I have this huge inclination of jealousy when it comes to my mama, a jealousy I've never felt regarding my mother. Mama was always mine. I had slept with her ever since I was a baby, I had heard her voice constantly in my ear, singing me to sleep, telling me stories to sleep, chasing away the two scary Muppets, Statler and Waldorf, that used to creep me out in my nightmares. Mama used to sit me on the porch in front of the house in summer the summer afternoon when grandpa wasn't retired yet and still went to work and she used to tell me stories. Very strange stories I haven't heard from anybody else. I don't know if she made them up on the spot, I don't think so. She told them to me again and again. I don't know who could have told her those stories, but they fascinated me. I remember one in particular, that always made me cry and made me wonder. The story of a common girl, an orphan girl who was hungry and went into a garden and ate some grapes. The garden belonged to a stone hearted prince who ordered his guards to cut the girl's hands for stealing. And they did. And she wandered without hands in the garden and she met Mother Mary one day. And she gave her her hands back, made her beautiful and she turned the prince's heart in to a kind one and when he saw that girl wandering in his gardens, he fell in love with her and they got married.

I never had the the classic grandmother, the grey-haired small lady with a warm smiling face knitting in a comfortable armchair near the fireplace. When I was a child I used to think that's where all children put their grandmothers and I used to be very sad that mine was not from that fairytale place. But I had mama. I didn't want to see her when she died. I was 17 and felt like a stranger to her. When my mother came back one morning and woke me up to tell me mama was gone I didn't even blink. I had to clean the house. I cleaned all 4 rooms. I had never cleaned the house before. I cried for the first time after a few months. I was doing some homework. And suddenly I missed her. I realized she wasn't around anymore. And I clicked. And it was painful.

Coffee, Bombs and Happiness

2008-02-01T12:15:00.000-08:00

Jounieh Bay on a Sunday night

Well, I've been to Lebanon again. Some of the happiest four days of my life. I love that country and everything in it. The whole glittering country seen from the plane window, the palm trees,the Jounieh Bay at night, which is something you just can't capture in a picture, even subtle difference between a night club and a super night club (where the Russian, Romanian and Moldovan girls actually "work", Bassem told me), the way they called this huge super night club Hipopotame (i'm really sorry I missed the 100 chances to take a picture of it), the strong huge thunder over the sea, the little curly haired children who only speak French or English and no Arabic, the beach, although it's full of garbage all the time and nobody cares about that, the coffeshop in Byblos old souk where they actually serve real coffee instead of Nescafe 3 in 1 and where you can take a book from the shelf and read a few things while you're drinking your cappuccino and eat your sandwich, the hotel manager who brings you a glass of his own wine just to ask you for an opinion and doesn't get angry when you say it's crap and it's almost vinegar.

Most of all I love the people. Even when they're a bit upset and they tell you about the cluster bombs left behind unexploded by the 2006 war. Struggling to be happy. No, not to survive among the bombings and protests and snipers, but to actually be happy among these things. Something that people coming from countries like mine, where there hasn't been any turmoil for a long time, would find difficult to understand.

I got that feeling from a few friends I went out with on Saturday night. I had a terrible cold and didn't say much but I listened a lot.
Our meeting was the day after a bomb went off on a busy bridge at a morning rush hour. The car bomb killed one of Lebanon's top terrorism investigators who was probing assassinations of prominent anti-Syrian figures and a series of other attacks in recent years. Wissam Eid had survived two previous assassination attempts. Not this one. The attack also killed his bodyguard and three passers-by and wounded 37 people. At least these are the official numbers.

My friend, Lina, who's been covering the war in Lebanon for Reuters was upset. The Lebanese are used to political assassinations. „But here, there was a very thin line between assassination and terrorism. One of the people who died was going to work and realized he had forgotten his sandwich at home. He went back to get it.” Lina's Beirut is pure chaos and she acts like she's almost proud of it. Most Lebanese probably act the same. They are struggling to be happy in that chaos. They go out, they meet in coffee shops. „Oh, there's smoke! Nooo, not today, not when we are going out!”, my Lina goes.

My question makes Lina and her friends smile. I never saw on any news wire any news story about the Lebanese security forces actually arresting somebody for a car bombing.”That's because they never do. Whoever sticks his head out of the crowd gets killed”.