Shortly past 11 yesterday night a wild crackling of machine guns started again down the street, at the blocked Tayyouneh round about. It took a few mn for the online news to post a one-liner: "11:16pm Lebanese government revokes it two measures concerning Hizbullah telecommunications network and the reassignment of the head of the airport security."
Sounded depressing as hell, but I needed more details as to how and why. It's 6 am and there hasn't been news updates since, but Mustapha ref'ed his readers to Across the Bay for an analysis that offers more details. Extract (with my emphasis):

"All the idiotic commentators, from Paul Salem onwards, who talked about a different "political balance" as a result of the fighting, don't and never did know what they're talking about. This is political suicide for Hezbollah, who has already made contacts with Hariri through a third party informing him that they're looking for an exit. They know they're in a jam.

Not just that, now the government is in a position to leverage rescinding its decisions -- which it could never implement to begin with! -- and we're already seeing M14 and government sources expressing that.

For one, all M14 officials -- including Hariri who made a powerful, uncompromising speech yesterday -- are now unanimous about placing the fate of Hezbollah's weapons as the first item on any "dialogue" agenda. Gone are the days of the "sanctity" of the weapons of the "resistance." Minister Joe Sarkis has added that any rescinding of the decisions has to be met by not just a withdrawal of armed men from the streets and the reopening of all roads, but also the evacuation of the tent city in downtown Beirut.

The mere fact that M14 and the government are bartering the rescinding of a decision that was never going to be implemented (and if the government was illegitimate, according to Hezbollah, then why even bother focusing on its decisions and thereby affirm its legitimacy?) suggests, regardless of outcome, that they know that there's no "new balance" advantageous to Hezbollah that forces them to capitulate.

Army Commander Suleiman is now under tons of pressure. Hariri himself criticized the Army's performance, and we know that 40 senior officers submitted their resignation (which would've split the Army) in protest of Suleiman's handling of the situation (and we also know that criminal pro-Aounist officers were particularly egregious during the crisis). Saudi outlets have even criticized the Army's performance, putting more pressure on Suleiman to get his act together if he wants to become president (especially now that any gambit about Hezbollah tilting the balance has failed). The US, which also has leverage through its aid to the Army might also do the same. These kinds of pressures, domestic, regional and international, and Suleiman's susceptibility to them, is why Syria won't take a chance with him. Anyone who doesn't fall and lick Bashar's boots without hesitation at a moment's notice cannot be trusted as far as the murderer of Damascus is concerned, and it's why Syria knows that it must return militarily to Lebanon in order to rule it. Even doing it by proxy, through Hezbollah, hasn't worked.

This is far from over. In fact, this has only just begun."

For the full post: http://beirut2bayside.blogspot.com/2008/05/hezbollahs-third-botched-coup-attempt.html

What happens in the near future (tent city disappearing, the discussion of HA weapons) will show who really won this round and who simply finally found a face-saving exit.

Feeling overwhelmed and needing to take a step back. This is about all I have energy to blog about right now. But I wanted to do this and to thank my readers, my customers and my friends for being there. I try to do the same.

What are you thankful for this Thursday? It is Wednesday night here and I am thankful that I got done some of the more mundane tasks that I have been putting off today.

Now here is my list for the week.

Things done:
1) packed and shipped orders
2) took cat to vet
3) spent $200 at vet on treatment and meds
4) dragged 14lb overweight cat back home in carrier while wearing 20lb blee
5) rescheduled dental appointment
6) called about getting a pet sitter in June (expensive!)
7) walks
8) house cleaning
9) got meds refilled ($60 ouch)

Things to do:
1) tidy studio
2) print
3) sketch (whoops)
4) sleep better
5) relax
6) fast (no meat until June)
7) waste less time
8) treat cat with meds until he gets better

Tell me something about this picture. Write me a story, a poem, tell me what it reminds you of- tell me anything.

This challenge open until 05/27/08.

My normal Wednesday plans have been canceled and I am going to try and made the best of it.

Things aren't so good. My friend's illness is not getting better and my cat seems to have a problem with his eyes and I need to call the vet today. I might end up putting him in the carrier and pushing him in the stroller while I where blee down to the vet today. Good times.

But if I have some time I will use it to print and not jerk around and waste time. I still have a bunch of paper printed in various stages of completion. And while I have a fair amount of work from last week I would like to have more, in different colors.



Wish me luck. Prayers for my friend and his family and my angry little kitty.

Took the new bike out on its first jaunt today - up to the grocery store and back to time the trip. I made it up in 10 minutes, and returned in 8. I have no doubt that as my legs gain strength that I will be able to decrease this time with some significance.

Today is day 1. Next time maybe I'll actually take a pack, find a place to lock up the bike and buy a few food bits. Then again, maybe I'll just keep doing this cycle for a few more goes until I'm really comfortable riding on a busy road. It's been too many years since I've used a bike for common transportation.

I forgot to post the previous one here so you get 2 at once:

( Read more... )

Last Thursday and Friday I was finally able to get some printing done, first time since March I believe. It felt very good to be printing again and even better having new prints like these. I was able to use my latest block, but only with this one for now but I know I will be bringing it out again in the future. All of my latest creations will be making their way into my shop in the next week or two. With new pieces in the works this week my shop will stay current for a good long time hopefully. Check it out!



In the meantime I will be serving the little one as she goes through cutting three teeth at the same time. Ouch! She's handling it a lot better than I would handle sharp objects breaking through my gums! We finally got her a proper highchair, though it is a space saving one that attaches to one of our regular chairs. Boy am I feeling like an idiot for not getting this sooner because it makes feeding her so much easier. I have been stalking Craigslist looking for a used one for months and this weekend we finally gave up and bought a new one. It wasn't super expensive but we always try to go used first.

Tonight, my parents are coming over to our place, and the dropped Duncan off with my brother in the Netherlands. Duncan seems enthralled by my brother's cat, and the cat is...less then impressed with Duncan and avoids it at all costs.

To ease my mind, my brother tried to send me a MMS picture via his phone. I CAN received MMS messages on my new phone, but for some reason it didn't comes through.

It send me a link to the KPN website, and a entry code to get the message... but I can't seem to get at it!

Is there anyone out there that can reach the MMS content for me? I would really appreciate it!

( details for those wishing to help )

Thanks in advance!

Well, the house is cleaned and ready.. so now all we have to do is wait for my parents to arrive! We've been having some of the best weather so far, and I hope it'll continue throughout their stay :)

Whether that last entry I linked to is the whole truth or not, there was a new spring in my step as I went to my acrobatics class. I've been listing the HA allies and their status in my mind. From what I've read so far, and pending correction by better informed sources, here's the rundown:

HA: Masterminding the whole thing plus actual fighting, and all is not going well on all fronts.
Amal: Doing most of HA's dirty work, as usual, but Berri's not acting terribly smug.
SSNP: Knocking themselves out, as we've seen.
FPM: Aoun is barking himself into apoplexia, but his followers have been making themselves very scarce.
Marada: Being vewy vewy quiet.
Arslan's boys: Divided, for the little they were worth, with some joining forces against HA.
Wi'am Wahhab: He's insignificant, I never even heard of him before that entry, but he's cleared out with his boys. Not so confident his friends are going to come out on top?
Baath, in the north: getting their arses whipped.
Tashnak: The only thing I've heard from them since this started was a call to stop the fighting. I saw no sign at all of any kind of rousing in the Tashnak stronghold where I circulate, either.

Now let's just hope Israel leadership has the brains not to provide HA with a justification for their existence. They're committing suicide so please, for God's sake, let them.


Errata:
A new reader pointed out that the SSNP symbol represents a hurricane and is not meant to have any connection to the nazi swastika. Unfortunately in Lebanon that symbol will never be seen as anything less threatening and loathsome.
It was also pointed out to me that the SSNP motto is "long live Syria" (tahya Souriya) where I had read "tahyan" (Greeting; see picture a few posts up). But that same picture has the word Syria tagged twice with different spellings (as in one of them is misspelled), so my uncertainty as to the intended grammar can be understood. Dunces.

Anyone curious about Aoun may be interested in this .pdf report put together by NOWlebanon.com, which is brief but very informative in showing a) how rotten the man is and b) how his supposed popularity is nothing but hot wind.

Shane and the kids gave me a guitar yesterday. A real one...it's gorgeous, it's red, and it's a really really nice guitar. When I mentioned to him that I wanted to learn to play, I was thinking maybe, you know, a garage-sale guitar to learn on or something. I should know by now that's not what would happen :).

So we played outside and worked in the garden all day (which was an amazing, beautiful day) and then at the end of the day I lit a fire in the outdoor fireplace and we sat out there while I practiced my first few clumsy notes.


It was a wonderful Mother's Day.

It seems the focused coverage of the Beirut battles is making the hizb look more successful than it actually is, with them encountering severe resistance elsewhere and effectually losing their allies:

http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2008/05/jumblatts-men-s.php

Reposted from http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=42276

Beyond repair
NOW Staff , May 11, 2008



“Iza nkassar, nkassar.” If it’s broken, it’s broken. And there’s no fixing it.

Reputations, as many a mother has warned, are as fragile as a crystal vase.

Over the past week, Hezbollah has been revealed for what it truly is. And one thing it is clearly not is a parliamentary opposition.

Let’s no longer refer to March 8 and its allies in Change and Reform (if, indeed that relationship itself survives this ordeal) as such. The “opposition” in a parliamentary system is a political grouping that keeps the ruling majority in check through debate and legislation – not, for example, by mobilizing militiamen to occupy the capital and beyond, nor by ransacking, torching, closing down the ruling majority’s media outlets.

Indeed, this alliance ceased to be an “opposition” the day one of its own leaders, Speaker Nabih Berri, locked parliament shut a year and half ago. Let us not grant them the legitimacy the term “opposition” denotes.

Likewise, it would be a mistake, from now on, to refer to March 14 as the “ruling” majority. They may be the majority and they may be officially in power, but it’s difficult to imagine that, in the coming phase, after Hezbollah brings this disastrous campaign to an end, they will be permitted to genuinely rule. After all, how can they rule the country if they are being held at gunpoint by their opponents, unable to defend their own interests – let alone those of the people and the global community?

Now that Hezbollah’s supposed “purity” as a resistance movement has been defiled, now that those guns have been pointed inward, we must all expect the party to hesitate even less next time. Hezbollah cares little for the will of the Lebanese people and even less for their elected leaders: it will never represent anyone beyond its own leadership and foreign patrons.

Lebanon already had no president, no parliament; after Hezbollah’s current performance, it no longer has a political system. Instead, Lebanon has an armed gang, which will continue to allow a pretense of democracy to persist – as long as it is on Hezbollah’s terms.

The events of the past few days have effectively disenfranchised the entire nation.

Hezbollah must know that this is no real victory. They may emerge from the chaos with more power, but the scars left by this conflict will never heal for many Lebanese. By late Sunday afternoon, nearly fifty people had been killed in the fighting, a number that will undoubtedly continue to rise. Among the first victims were a mother and her son in Ras al-Nabaa, killed when a rocket-propelled grenade struck their apartment during Thursday night’s fierce gun battles. If Hezbollah was resented before, today it is despised, making any system with Hezbollah even unofficially at the top of the pyramid untenable beyond the short-term. This is only a single round in the ongoing struggle for sovereignty and authority between the Lebanese state and Hezbollah. We do not know how long it may last, this systematic targeting of one region after another by Hezbollah and its allies. But even if calm returns to the country tomorrow morning, something has fundamentally changed over the past few days.

Once it’s broken, it’s broken permanently. Any lingering positive, national image of Hezbollah has been dashed. Most Lebanese never doubted that Hezbollah would in theory turn its “resistance” weapons on the Lebanese, but knowing something and actually having such horrors play out in front of you are very different. With black moods all around, it is difficult to not to feel frustrated with the government for stepping back first. But we must resist this urge, or at least, attempt to understand what is happening. The government is trying to act responsibly as a body entrusted with the Lebanese people’s security. With half of Beirut occupied by March 8 militiamen on Saturday, the government did not have the luxury of putting principles above safety. The reality today is that Hezbollah can and, crucially, will outgun the rest of the country.

But it should provide no small amount of reassurance – particularly considering Lebanon’s past, and the pasts of many of the players involved – that we have a government unwilling to let the Lebanese people be slaughtered just to prove a point: and that is perhaps the only reason this situation may not escalate into full-fledged civil war. The government has put its people’s security ahead of its pride.

If only we could say the same for the other side. But if Hezbollah has taught us one thing over the years, it’s that the party will never flinch at triggering death and devastation at home while in pursuit of divinity.

Equilibrium in marriage restored. Nothing like a little spat to make everyone miserable for awhile though.

Ugh. And okay, this whole "light=pain" thing I've got going on today? CAN END NOW.

Owie.

Hope the mother's reading this blog had a great day and that the sons, daughters and partners were able to appreciate the mother's in their lives.

This was my first mother's day, even though last year while I was pregnant I did get a mother's day blessing from a gas station clerk while driving back from Brooklyn.

It started on Thursday when Jon surprised me with this incredible bouquet of fruit flowers. He told me later that he basically could have had the whole thing dipped in chocolate for an additional fee if he had clicked a button but I am glad that he didn't. There were more than enough chocolate dipped strawberries to keep me happy for days. Yum!

After church we spent Mother's Day at the Arboretum in JP having our first picnic and it was just wonderful. We picked up sandwiches from Ula and walked around looking for friends who we never did find. But that is okay because we had a lot of fun watching blee try to eat grass. This was really her first time exploring nature and it won't be the last. She was so much fun and being so cute. We are loving that she can sit up now!





I have new work made and coming into my shop as of Friday with new pieces added each day. Keep checking for new additions, including a creation from my latest block. More printing to follow soon hopefully as I still have a number of partially finished prints in various colors. They just need that final layer or two.

First thing on Sunday I finished hanging my show at Ula. These final five pieces took about half the time to hang as the first six. It went very smoothly and the work will remain at Ula at 243 Armory St. in Jamaica Plain until sometime in June.