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The
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August 21, 2003
Robert Fisk
The US
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Virginia Tilley
The Quisling Policies of the UN in Iraq: Toward a Permanent War?
Rep. Henry Waxman
Bush Owes the Public Some Serious Answers on Iraq
Ben Terrall
War Crimes and Punishment in Indonesia: Rapes, Murders and Slaps
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Elaine Cassel
Brother John Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Salvation Show
Christopher Brauchli
Getting Gouged by Banks
Marjorie Cohn
Sergio Vieira de Mello: Victim of Terrorism or US Policy in Iraq?
Vicente Navarro
Media
Double Standards: The Case of Mr. Aznar, Friend of Bush
Website of the Day
The Intelligence Squad
August 20, 2003
Robert Fisk
Now No
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Caoimhe Butterly
Life and Death on the Frontlines of Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
UN Bombing: Act of Terrorism or Guerrilla War?
Michael Egan
Revisiting the Paranoid Style in the Dark
Ramzi Kysia
Peace
is not an Abstract Idea
Steven Higgs
NPR and the NAFTA Highway
John L. Hess
A Downside Day
Edward Said
The Imperial Bluster of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Gridlock at Path 15: the California Blackouts were the "Wake
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Website of the Day
Ashcroft's Patriotic Hype
August 19, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Blackouts Happen
Gary Leupp
"Our Patch": Australia v. the Evil Doers of the South
Pacific
Sean Donahue
Uribe's Cruel Model: Colombia Moves Toward Totalitarianism
Matt Martin
Bush's Credibility Problem on Missile Defense
Juliana Fredman
Recipe for the Destruction of a Hudna
John Ross
Fox Government's Attack on Mexican Basques
Sasan Fayazmanesh
What Kermit Roosevelt Didn't Say
Website of the Day
Tom Delay's Dual Loyalities
August 18, 2003
Uri Avnery
Hero in War and Peace
Stan Goff
The Volunteer Military and the Wicked Adventure
Cathy Breen
Baghdad on the Hudson
Michael Kimaid
Fight the Power (Companies)!
Jason Leopold
The California Rip-Off Revisited: Arnold, Milken and Ken Lay
Matt Siegfried
The Bush Administration in Context
Elaine Cassel
At Last, A Judge Who Acts Like a Judge
Alexander Cockburn
Judy Miller's War
Harvey Wasserman
The Legacy of Blackout Pete Wilson
Website of the Day
Fire Griles!
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
August 16 / 17, 2003
Flavia Alaya
Bastille
New Jersey
Jeffrey St. Clair
War Pimps
Saul Landau
The Legacy of Moncada: the Cuban Revolution at 50
Brian Cloughley
What Has Happened to the US Army in Iraq?
William S. Lind
Coffins for the Crews: How Not to Use Light Armored Vehicles
Col. Dan Smith
Time for Straight Talk
Wenonah Hauter
Which
Electric System Do We Want?
David Lindorff
Where's Arnold When We Need Him?
Harvey Wasserman
This Grid Should Not Exist
Don Moniak
"Unusual Events" at Nuclear Power Plants: a Timeline
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David Vest
Rolling Blackout Revue
Merlin Chowkwanyun
An Interview with Sherman Austin
Adam Engel
The Loneliest Number
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Hamod & Albert
Book of the Weekend
Powerplay by Sharon Beder
August 14, 2003
Peter Phillips
Inside
Bohemian Grove: Where US Power Elites Party
Brian Cloughley
Charlie Wilson and Pakistan: the Strange Congressman Behind the
CIA's Most Expensive War
Linville and Ruder
Tyson
Strike Draws the Line
Jim Lobe
Bush Administration Divided Over Iran
Ramzy Baroud
Sharon Freezes the Road Map
Tom Turnipseed
Blowback in Iraq
Gary Leupp
Condi's
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Website of the Day
Tony Benn's Greatest Hits
August 13, 2003
Joanne Mariner
A Wall of Separation Through the
Heart
Donald Worster
The Heavy Cost of Empire
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Elaine Cassel
Murderous Errors: Executing the Innocent
Ralph Nader
Make the Recall Count
Alexander Cockburn
Ted Honderich Hit with "Anti-Semitism" Slur
Website of the Day
Defending Yourself Against DirectTV Lawsuits: 9000 and Counting
August 12, 2003
Ron Jacobs
Revisionist History: the Bush Administration, Civil Rights and
Iraq
Josh Frank
Dean's Constitutional Hang-Up
Wayne Madsen
What's a Fifth Columnist? Well, Someone Like Hitchens
Ray McGovern
Relax,
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Wendy Brinker
Hubris in the White House
Website of the Day
Black
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CounterPunch Exclusive:
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Steve
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Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
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Cindy
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A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
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William Blum
Myth
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Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
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Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
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The
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Francis Boyle
Impeach
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August
23, 2003
Exile on Bliss Street
A
"Terrorist" Threat Leads an English Literature Professor
to Reassess His Profession and Exile
By ANDREW C. LONG
This is a Beirut story, a narrative about life
as a new kind of exile, an exile of conscience, in a fabled and,
for the West, "infamous" Arab city. This is also a
recollection, or, better, a documentation of the events that
led to my evacuation from Lebanon due to alleged terrorist threats
against my life. Bluntly put, what I most want to trace here
is how this nightmare of history-my own and the geo political
mess that has plagued Lebanon (especially) since the 1960s-has
weighed like a nightmare on my consciousness ever since the United
States Embassy in Lebanon informed me that I was on a Palestinian
Islamicist "hitlist," suggesting that this was due
to my anti-war activities. I was forced by this apparent threat
to reassess my politics, my role as a professor of English literature
in the Arab world, and finally my own identity as I returned
home to a feeling of "homelessness," by no means to
be confused with real privation, though still a sense of exile.
I am an American, though just another
non-Arabophone left liberal who has no practical stake in the
region other than a job and friends. But I never thought that
Lebanon's problems would finally be so personal. Ideally, or
idealized-I admit it-I have been minding my own business and
simply teaching here in Beirut since September, 2001, as well
as learning about Lebanon and the Arab world and appreciating
the Lebanese people and their culture. But now, after the war
against Iraq and my own small-related crisis, things have changed.
I do not claim to be typical nor especially unusual in this respect,
but I feel now that the contradictions and doubts I have faced,
and not yet resolved, are those of many American left-liberal
academics today in the U.S. and particularly abroad.
Khalas Habiby? Must
you leave us?
Again, I teach English literature-modernism
and literary and cultural theory-at the American University of
Beirut, popularly known as AUB with the right Lebanese Arabic
inflection. Days after the war began a group of Americans in
Beirut formed a loose knit group--we never really agreed on a
name--and began to organize protests against the war. We stood
on the Beirut Corniche with anti-war placards to the amusement
and amazement of passing Beirutis, some went to the anti-war
rallies with signs reading "Americans against the war on
Iraq", and a group of more than 70 signed a letter of opposition
to the war in Iraq and U.S. policy in the Middle East and supporting
a just peace for the region and a viable Palestinian state.
That letter was addressed to Secretary of State Colin Powell
and we sent a deputation to meet the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon,
Vincent Battle, and to present him with the same letter. Also,
we translated the letter into Arabic and published it in Beirut's
main Arabic newspaper, An Nahar (the Day) and in the English
language daily, The Daily Star. All of the signatories'
names appeared in An Nahar, while only a few were published
by The Daily Star. My name was only published in An
Nahar. For good measure, and since I was unable to meet
the ambassador due to teaching commitments, I wrote a personal
letter to the ambassador where I strongly condemned U.S. policy
in the region and suggested that many top American government
figures should be charged with war crimes due to planned use
of depleted uranium and cluster bombs, and, of course, because
the war was outside the sanction of the United Nations. At the
time I thought little of the group letter and even less of my
own letter to Ambassador Battle as so much "sound and fury,"
and worried that I had not been more active like my friends in
the streets of Manhattan.
It was just after 5 o'clock on a Friday
afternoon, April 4th, and I was strolling across the beautiful
and sun drenched AUB campus with a colleague, when another American
faculty member approached me quickly, his face gray and drawn.
He asked me if I was "going to the 6 o'clock meeting,"
and, puzzled, I told him "no". He added that this
was about the threats and gave me a long hard look. I thought
he was losing it and afraid due to war rumors and walked on.
I had reached the other side of campus, near the far gate-the
Medical Gate-when he came running up behind me, pulled me aside
from my colleague and told me that he and I, as well as a third
American faculty member were on a hit list with 4 other Americans
from the Beirut anti Iraq-war group. I thought this was preposterous-why
would anyone in Lebanon want to hurt us for opposing the war!
In the Arab world we were media darlings some group members
had been interviewed on various Lebanese and Arab TV stations,
ranging from al Jazeera to Hezbollah's al Manar
(the Light).
So, at 6 o'clock I attended this meeting
and learned more about the "hit list". As The Chronicle
of Higher Education reported on their on-line service on
May 15th, an unnamed terrorist group threatened three American
AUB faculty. The Chronicle of Higher Education article
was misleading for the heading read "Credible threats led
to departure of 3 professors at American U. of Beirut during
war in Iraq." As it turned out the single verifiable source
for this threat was the U.S embassy in Lebanon who officially
denied any involvement in the same article. Indeed, threats
aside, the subsequent panic, which seized many Americans in Beirut,
was due to the way the US embassy handled this matter. As I learned
at the meeting, they started the panic by contacting the other
two AUB faculty members by telephone and asking them to come
to the embassy to meet with a junior security agent, Garrett
Petraia, not the head of security Glen Hirschman. At the embassy
they were told about the "hit list" and asked to pass
the information on to me and the others on the list, all members
of a Beirut based anti Iraq war group. Also, they were told
that the information was from the Washington D.C. office of the
State Department, that they were simply conduits and that the
embassy knew nothing about the origin of the information, that
is, how it was collected and when, or any details. However, they
were told that the group was an "Islamicist group based
in Ain el Helweh, the Palestinian camp near Sidon." This
same information, almost word for word, was repeated to me in
person by the same Garrett Petraia only days later when I visited
the embassy.
Curiously, my two colleagues thought
that the group in question was Esbat al Ansar, a shadowy and
small Salafist or ur-Islamicist group with ties to al Qaeda and
like-minded Salafist allies stretching from the Persian Gulf
(Taleban) to the Atlantic coast of Morocco (the Salafist Group
for Preaching and Combat). When I asked Mr. Petraia about the
identity of the group behind the threats he simply listed three
groups he maintained were active in the camps: Fatah, Hezbollah,
and Esbat al Ansar. I pointed out that the first is the old
PLO and secular, the second is Lebanese Shi'a, not Sunni like
the camp inhabitants, and the camp falls outside its mission
and area of control, while the third group is a cipher. I felt
that he was leading me to conclude that Esbat was behind the
threat, assuming there really was a threat. Also, though AUB
and Mr. Petraia recommended that I keep quiet about the "hit
list" I subsequently discovered that the Australian embassy
discussed the threats with one of their nationals while the principal
of the American Community School reported that the U.S. embassy
had informed her of the threats, though none of her teachers
were on the "list." This lack of concern for the "victims"
privacy and safety demonstrated either a serious lapse in professionalism
or even malice, and only added to my suspicions about their role
in the affair.
The evening of April 4th I was upset
and though earlier, during the meeting with the administration,
I had declared I would not leave Lebanon and that this threat
was the work of the U.S. embassy, I nonetheless began to feel
fear coursing through my body. As I explained to anyone who would
listen, it is chilling to hear such news from a U.S embassy security
representative, whatever the circumstances. Clearly we had angered
someone somewhere. I was suspicious then and today feel convinced
that the origin of this rumor was in Washington D.C., not Sidon.
Like many, I am wary of U.S. embassies
everywhere, and until that moment I had no interaction with them
and was not interested in being on their emergency contact list.
The American staff seem to have little understanding of Arabic
or Lebanese culture, and they rarely leave their fortified compound
except in armored vehicles. The embassy-fort is outside and east
of Beirut, hanging like Dracula's castle off the hillside near
a village called Awkar, eyeing Beirut across St. George's Bay.
Most Lebanese have stories about summary visa rejections and
rude treatment at the hands of the embassy staff while most Lebanese
and other residents have little faith in the intentions of the
embassy. Some will recount that the previous embassy site was
near Ain el Mreisseh in Ras Beirut, next to AUB, and that in
1984 it was completely destroyed by a suicide bomber and many
of its staff were tragically killed. Today the site is an anonymous
parking lot, a blank space overdetermined by personal and geopolitical
narrative. Of course, this was during the Lebanese civil war
(1975 to 1991), when many AUB faculty were kidnapped, and the
American university president, Malcolm Kerr, was assassinated.
This was a terrible period which still haunts Lebanon and AUB
and which The Chronicle of Higher Education gratuitously
mentioned in the same May 15th article. In contrast to the embassy's
arm's length relationship to Lebanon and the Lebanese, AUB is
still open in the same location in West Beirut.
After dealing with the U.S. embassy the
AUB administration was a marked contrast, a change for the better.
President John Waterbury and Provost Peter Heath must have had
thoughts of AUB's past and future-a reputation stained by violence
against its faculty-in mind when we sat down that Friday evening.
To their credit they remained calm and good spirited and immediately
offered us the "voluntary evacuation" plan and other
support to protect us and make us feel better. Within a week
the three of us had left the country and left behind worried
students, colleagues struggling to cover our courses, and friends
who felt that we might never return. When I peered out of the
window of the Middle East Airlines jet on Friday morning, April
11th, I wanted to burst into tears as Jounieh and East Beirut
disappeared below.
What I realized in New York was that
I was "somebody" in Beirut, or rather that I was important
to many in the AUB community, and I especially felt an unusual
sense of purpose as a professor. Yes, a kind of colonial identity
persists in Lebanon and at AUB today-given the prestige of the
school, AUB faculty are treated with great respect by most Lebanese-but
with my anti-war activities, as minimal as they were, I had also
gained a special relevance and place in Lebanon which most certainly
bothered the embassy and U.S. State Department. Consider that
I and the other Americans in Lebanon presented another, alternative
American position, a position for peace and justice in the Middle
East. We live here as well, which immediately gives us more credibility
than the pundits and experts in the U.S. media who (practically)
know little about the Arab world or Islam, and even the embassy
staff, tucked away in their bunker. Most of us speak and read
Arabic to some extent, and we travel and have gained familiarity
with the region and Arab culture. And we live in a largely Islamic
context. Again, we can best contradict the lies and bigotry
which emanate from the U.S government and mainstream media, from
Fox News to The New York Times (the bad-faith liberal
and near racist Thomas Friedman always reminds me of Phil Ochs'
classic "Love me I'm a Liberal") simply because we
are better informed and uncompromised American commentators.
Also, in the Arab world, it is rare to actually see American
dissent, that is, to meet Americans who feel as strongly as many
Arabs do that U.S. policy in the region is decidedly unjust,
biased, and must change now. It is even rarer to meet Americans
such as those of Beirut, who do not fear and actually understand
the basis of support for and objectives of various Islamicist
movements such as Hezbollah.
Mediations leading
to war
The April 4th threat report was not without
mediations and "lead up" incidents. Still, despite
the clouds of war that have been gathering since September 11th,
2001, I was not worried and felt secure and happy here. When
I signed my contract to teach here in July 2001 a Lebanese friend
in New York recommended that I read Robert Fisk's Pity the
Nation, a truly moving and occasionally frightening firsthand
account of the war. Fisk is a Beiruti today and lives on the
Corniche near AUB.
Yet from the first day I have been amazed
at the Lebanese resolve to put the past behind for the sake of
the present and the future. Indeed, the government does its
part and keeps sectarianism to a minimum, brutally suppressing
student supporters of the exiled leader of the anti Syrian and
Lebanese nationalist, General Michel Aoun, or the jailed leader
of the right wing Christian Lebanese Forces (Alquwwaat al lubnaniyya),
Samir Geagea (pronounced Jahjah). Perhaps the Lebanese national
anthem should be Leonard Cohen's "Everybody Knows,"
but I have lived comfortably and without fear in Beirut since
September, 2001. AUB is situated in Hamra on the west side of
Beirut, or Ras Beirut, the "head of Beirut" which projects
out into the sea-notably, this is the Muslim side of the city
according to the still strong sectarian Beiruti imaginary. I
recommend the film West Beirut for further insight. Like
many Americans I came here with much trepidation, but quickly
realized that the city and country is a safer and friendlier
place to live than New York City. But, all of my romanticization
aside, you can never forget the civil war and the thought that
things can change quickly and yesterday's friendly neighbor is
today's enemy. From the damaged Holiday Inn near the Corniche,
and the site of a legendary battle between the Phalange and Palestinian
fighters, to so many other beaten buildings and people, and the
daily over flights by Israeli fighter-bombers, there are many
reminders that this is an active war zone and has been since
1948. After all, Lebanon is the home to nearly half a million
Palestinian refugees, many from the 1947-48 war in Palestine,
now Israel, and from every war and conflict to date.
Obviously, at a day-to-day level recent
history permeates all, but life goes on in Beirut, and for the
most part it is pleasant and fulfilling. Still, the city was
not quiet, and in fact was seized by a weird pre war urban hysteria
over Satanists. The police visited schools and set up checkpoints
looking for young Beirutis dressed in black with long hair and
body piercing. Rumors swirled about blood sacrifices, ritual
murders, and the like, though to date the police have found no
"proof" of such activities.
And then there were the bombings. On
March 24th, at around 11 p.m. I was grading student papers, sitting
on my couch in my Manara apartment, a leafy middle class neighborhood
in West Beirut adjacent to AUB when I heard a very loud boom.
I looked out of the window towards the Australian embassy, a
nearby target to my mind, but saw nothing and felt like a foolish
and paranoid American. It had been raining, and the noise could
have been thunder, or so I thought. It was in fact a small bomb,
which security forces think was a grenade or stick of dynamite,
placed just inside the grounds of the British Council, the UK's
cultural outfit here in Lebanon. Paradoxically the British Council,
which closed down the previous week and then sent its staff home,
is best known here for its English language courses, which, by
reputation, are favored for their quality and low cost by Shi'a
and Palestinian Beirutis. The bomb damaged the center's wall
and broke windows in area apartment buildings and shops, but
was more symbolic than destructive. Some of my students, all
young women who lived in Beirut during the war and the Israeli
bombings of the late 1990s, mocked me when I described the boom
and with a smirk told me that I had obviously never heard a real
bomb explode. Chris de Burg recently recorded a song with the
Lebanese singer Elissa, about such young women, "Lebanese
Nights." Another Hamra local, an elderly newspaper salesman
described the bomb to the city's Anglophone newspaper, The
Daily Star, as a zucchini, an allusion to a Lebanese dish,
"cousa", a squash stuffed with ground lamb and rice.
The police and Internal Security Forces
rushed to the scene but did not catch the bombers and the action
was not "claimed" by any group. However, many attribute
the blast to the same group that attacked a Pizza Hut, Kentucky
Fried Chicken, and other American identified businesses. These
attacks are curious because they ostensibly build on the Palestinian
boycott of Israeli and Zionist companies, but the boycott group
has disavowed violence. Also, Lebanese business people have tried
many times to explain that these are franchises and Lebanese
owned and operated, while almost all of the clientele are Lebanese
or Arab.
On April 5th, a day after the threat
report, a small bomb exploded in the bathroom at the McDonald's
in Dora, and East Beirut suburb near the coastal highway, mostly
populated by Christians and Armenians. The bomb injured a man
and his two boys, but, more horrifying, this bomb was the trigger
for a second bomb, a car filled with 50 kg. of explosives. Fortunately
the triggers failed and with good forensic work the Lebanese
police tracked the owner and within days rounded up most of the
gang responsible. Whatever the bombers intended is irrelevant,
for this bomb would have caused huge numbers of fatalities and
destruction, and given its location would have destabilized Lebanon.
The bombers were reportedly from the same Esbat al Ansar. And
in the past week Esbat al Ansar and its splinter group, Esbat
al Nour, were attacked by Arafat's Fatah-the leader of the splinter
group was badly wounded in an ambush while returning from a funeral.
Fatah was, hitherto, the power in the Ain al Hilweh camp, but
Esbat al Ansar and its allies fought back fiercely, neutralizing
and exposing the weakness of the secular Fatah.
Another mediation to the April 4th threat
report is al Manar, again, the television station for
Hezbollah, The Party of God. One of their hosts, a graduate of
AUB, contacted me and a few other members of the Americans against
the Iraq War group, asking us to present our position to their
viewership. It astounded me, but that was Hezbollah's position,
that this was Bush's war and many Americans opposed it-and still
do!-and given my fears about being targeted, I certainly appreciated
the intervention. I had some trepidation about appearing on Hezbollah
TV, and what American would not given their fierce reputation
as the Arab fighters who defeated the mighty Israeli army and
liberated south Lebanon. Despite dates and assertions by various
American "experts" and journalists, Hezbollah was founded
in 1983, and grounded in the left Shi'a Islamic thought of Moussa
Sadr (the Lebanese Shi'a imam reportedly kidnapped by Libya's
Quadaffi) in his role as head of the Amal ("hope" in
Arabic) movement's splinter, The Party of the Oppressed on Earth.
The point is that as I understand the history of the group, Hezbollah
only fully emerged as a cohesive party after many of the events
of the early 1980s such as the bombing of the US embassy and
the marine barracks. Hezbollah's role in terrorism in Lebanon
during the early 1980s and abroad (Argentina), which their defenders
point out falls outside their mission and remains unproven, at
least as most Americans commonly understand legal proof and evidence.
Though there is (was) some overlap in people involved with the
notorious events of the early 1980s, namely Imad Mughnieh, it
is only a single and discrete aspect of the party mission which
Hezbollah them into conflict with the United States, and that
part of the mission is to resist foreign-Israelioccupation.
I am not offering a defense of Hezbollah at all, nor are their
violent actions against all sectors of Lebanese society and Americans
in Lebanon excusable, but rather this is an attempt to separate
deliberate and libelous misinformation, again the Big Lie, from
truth, as murky and elusive, as the latter might seem in our
time. Hezbollah, like Iraq, is so much more than a few people
and terrorist events shrouded in mystery, such as the kidnapping
of CIA station chief, William Buckley, and if there is another
war against Syria or Lebanon, it will surely be based on these
unfounded claims. These claims might be true, but the American
government and every talking head on TV who beats the war drum
must be called to account and required to tell the truth, not
half truths or lies.
Israel and the US have targeted Hezbollah
because they constitute effective and, in their terms, principled
resistance-bluntly put; they fear Hezbollah and its ability to
mobilize many in the Shi'a population and beyond for a Totalitatmobilimachung.
What many Americans don't know is that the resistance that wore
down the Israeli occupation was also a total Lebanese resistance,
with support from almost all parties in the country where middle
class fathers would disappear for clandestine missions in the
occupied south. Today Hezbollah retains a small fighting force
and they fire anti aircraft guns at Israeli air intrusions-daily
affairs-and occasionally battle the Israeli army in the occupied
Shebaa Farms area (the UN and the US claim it is Syrian, though
the latter and Lebanon maintain that it is Lebanese land-incredibly,
that the issue is not occupation and resistance seems to be another
Lewis Carroll inspired diplomatic canard on the part of Israel
and the U.S.).
Recently I heard a CNN reporter acknowledge
that Hezbollah is more than an effective guerilla army, and even
point out that they are the second largest party in the Lebanese
parliament, and so constitute a democratic presence here. This
same CNN reporter and others, even American politicians like
Bob Graham, all acknowledge that Hezbollah run schools and hospitals
for all of the south Lebanese residents. And they protect the
Wazzani Springs pump that provides vital water to local villages.
In Lebanon Hezbollah has its enemies, but many Lebanese see
them as the authentic expression of Lebanese resistance. Indeed,
Tony Hanania's novel, Unreal City, is inspired by this
phenomena and tracks the radicalization of an upper middle-class
Lebanese Christian man who eventually joins the Islamic resistance-right
or wrong, to many on the left this seemed to be the most effective
and meaningful way to resist overwhelming force and occupation.
Clearly, if I had spoken my mind and
stated all of the above on al Manar I would have made
many powerful enemies, especially in the United States government.
On Wednesday, April 2nd I told the al Manar host that
I would think about his request for an interview. I agreed to
appear on al Manar Thursday morning, but by Friday afternoon,
April 4th, "I'd been told."
A "Professor
of English Literature" in Beirut
The narrator of Joseph Conrad's Under
Western Eyes describes himself as "an old teacher of
languages" and "the Professor" of The Secret
Agent is an Anarchist bomber who has rigged his body with
explosives to scare off the police and avoid arrest. I teach
Conrad's novels, and often think of these figures with mocking
reference to myself, but perhaps the better literary analogy
would probably be to a Graham Greene or Malcolm Lowry novel.
Or even Orwell's Burmese Days. My point is that these
three novelists understood the corrosive effects of good intentions
in a colonial, or now, post-colonial context. In my teaching
and extracurricular work I have tried to bring a little of my
cultural studies background-British cultural studies, Lacan and
Althusser-and a related intellectual sensibility to Lebanon.
But as outsiders we must be respectful, self-critical and circumspect,
aware of the contradictions that plague "good intentions."
Indeed, I was thinking of these contradictions
when I sat in New York, and even earlier, before the war, in
March, when Edward Said addressed a large public audience at
AUB. He was welcomed like a hero and favorite son, returning
to a city that has figured so largely in his life and on the
world stage for the last 50 years. As Said he entered the large
auditorium from the back, cutting an impressive and well coiffed
figure as he walked down the stairs to the stage, several hundred
Beirutis stood up, cheered approval and loudly applauded. This
man means so much to the people here, but the disjunction between
Said the symbol and Said the intellectual was quickly apparent.
His talk was on the importance of the Humanities today, on the
eve of war, and with the lives and future of the Arab people
threatened. It was an odd argument that he has made before,
for his referent, the Humanities, was finally the canon of European
thought, specifically, literary study. Yes, he marched into
a room filled with Arab citizens of a city which was recently
ripped apart by a civil war traceable to the evisceration of
Palestine, and in a climate of fear and confusion Edward Said
proposed that we all read the English literary canon to find
answers. Of course this is a simplistic reduction, but even so
I agree with him, for at the heart of this tradition, as he eloquently
argued, is a critical tradition of reading and writing which
right now is the best weapon against Donald Rumsfeld and the
Pentagon. Against their Big Lies, and the racism of neo orientalists
such as Samuel Huntington and Bernard Lewis, we must launch our
own carefully considered responses, grounded in close reading,
responses intended for an audience here and in the West. The
Arab world must recognize and know the United States and its
cultural traditions, its discontinuities, in order to better
deal with and live with it. And he presented this position as
an American of Palestinian heritage. The students, however,
were only interested in a discussion of material resistance,
which is of suicide bombing and immediate and tangible responses
to Israeli atrocities and to further the cause of Palestine.
It was a curious disjunction of age and culture, between a college
audience and an intellectual from the Humanities (in a school
where the Humanities were eviscerated) who described himself
as an American and a Palestinian.
So, I have been wondering what cultural
studies must do to establish itself in a country that, while
radically different from the "West" and the roots of
cultural studies, nonetheless presents a historically important
challenge and site of meaningful intellectual struggle. The
role of cultural studies in Lebanon is a very personal matter
for me given that the preponderance of my graduate training is
in cultural studies and literary theory. Again, when I came to
Beirut I brought my political, intellectual, and cultural baggage
with me, and though I was by no means naïve about what I
was doing here I quickly realized that my role and politics no
longer pertained.
Class, the keyword of British cultural
studies, is overdetermined by religion here, and an effective
analysis must entail a careful and nuanced understanding of sectarianism
and possibilities and limitations of class solidarity, even as
the regional bourgeoisie demonstrate a classless solidarity.
Solidère, after all, is the name of the private conglomerate,
which seized much of the valuable land in downtown Beirut and
is currently developing a private Orientalist Disneyland that
will probably be bought by foreign investors. Gender and sexuality
are similarly loaded issues here, but one must avoid false universalist
and pious denunciations of the veil and the women who wear it-let
the Shi'a women free themselves. And after 20 years or so of
post-colonial studies in American university English departments,
even post colonialism seems irrelevant where it should matter
most. Perhaps a good part of the irrelevance of post-colonialism
is the eschewal, or avoidance of the question of Palestine-a
true colonial situation-or engaged politics as such. My first
semester, just after September 11th, 2001, I taught a course
where we read post-colonial theory and the usual array of novels-Rushdie,
Achebe, Coetzee-and the 6 novels by Palestinian and Lebanese
novelists. It is not that ideas such as Bandung nationalism or
"liminality" or a purely textual sense of "post"
do not apply here. It is just that we, my students and I, live
in the midst of the mess at hand. No amount of academic writing
fully captures the injustice suffered here, the exasperating
acceptance of Israeli and American racist rhetoric spewed by
bad faith liberals such as Thomas Friedman and Bernard Lewis,
and all justifications for barbarism grounded in rhetoric about
the "arab street" and Yassir Arafat's predilections.
Who cares anyway, even if it is all true!!! Are Palestinians
not people? Perhaps only Salman Rushdie could really capture
the evil ironies, which characterize the situation of Palestine
and Lebanon. Yet as a literature professor it is encouraging
to see the resurgence of the novel in Lebanon, where new novels
in English, French, and Arabic, seem to appear with increasing
frequency. Hanan al Shaykh, Elias Khoury, Rachid al Daif, Huda
Barakat and Rabih Alameddine are some of the many names.
Again, I am an English Literature professor,
and despite Said's defence of the humanities and a literary education-close
reading and careful reflective writing-English Literature is
in an odd political situation here. Of course there are offerings
on post-colonialism and studies of the British novel and empire,
but finally the curriculum hammers home a self sustaining notion
of Britishness, with a little America, and the anglophone cultural
preeminence. I find myself, despite my background and politics,
relying upon the aura of the tradition like so many colonials
before me, though I think there is one important contradiction
at play here. What Said did not explicitly articulate in his
talk is the need for British and American studies in Arab universities,
not as a matter of reinforcing cultural hegemony of the new Empire,
but as a matter of resistance. It is simply a matter of understanding
the occupier's language and culture, and, getting back to Said's
point, to understand the occupier's contradictions to better
deal with and eventually fend off the occupation.
Cultural Studies helps American academics
in this respect, with its tradition of self-critique and skepticism
towards the unquestioned value of freedom and the ideals of the
enlightenment. Too often we are subjected to the liberal mantra
that the Arab world must "modernize" and accept the
"gift" of American democracy. Maybe the most important
task for us within cultural studies, and indeed for all Americans
of principle and conscience, is to actually question the bizarre
and pathological imposition of these "ideals"-democracy
and modernity-on the Arab world with no moment of reflection
upon the ethics or our actions. Can freedom be imposed, whatever
this might mean in Bush/Ashcroft's America? Why can't we free
Compton, East St. Louis, and Bushwick first? Democracy is needed
in Florida. Moreover the calls for modernity and democracy smack
of over two centuries of colonial self-justification as Said
documented so well in Orientalism 25 years ago.
Exile on Bliss Street
In 1866 Daniel Bliss and other American
missionaries founded the American University of Beirut as the
Syrian Protestant College. Today the main thoroughfare at the
top of the AUB campus bears the founder's name, hence Bliss Street.
At the time its campus in Hamra was well outside the old city
limits, though now it is an integral part of city life. Indeed,
like many other university neighborhoods, Hamra is a kind of
Latin Quarter with bookshops and cafes, many young people, and
shops, which cater to them. And though Hamra is considered an
expensive area, with some of the highest rents in Beirut and
many absentee Gulf landlords, it is also a bit tawdry and sleazy.
For most of the last four decades Hamra was also the intellectual
area of Beirut with publishers and newspapers, and leftist groups
all based here. The Palestinian archive is still based in Hamra
despite Israeli bombings. Unfortunately the neighborhood recently
lost one of its landmarks on Rue Hamra, the Modca café,
a 1960s Mod establishment whose stainless steel front was still
riddled by heavy machine gun fire and where an Israeli officer
was assassinated while sipping his coffee during the brief occupation
of West Beirut. Still, though Hamra is only a shadow of its
glorious past, like Beirut itself, it is a vital place and unlike
New York and London has spaces where all sorts-artists, writers,
musicians, and oddballs-find refuge, welcome, and succor. Here,
unlike anywhere else in the Middle East you can find a mix of
sects and sex, people feeling free to be themselves. As a woman
friend recently told me, here Mohammed might live with his Christian
girlfriend, Elissa, or, his boyfriend, Pierre from Mansourieh.
And then there is the odd collection of non-Arab residents.
Things have been changing for the worse
though. Like many Latin Quarter streets in Europe and the United
States, Bliss Street is dotted with fast food restaurants, even
a Starbucks and McDonalds. The latter positioned its sign in
Arabic so that it is visible from inside the campus, through
the Oriental-looking gateway. Despite their clever positioning
and the power of the McDonald's brand name it has been successfully
boycotted here since the fall of 2001 and is still guarded by
troops around the clock, unlike Burger King, just down the block.
It is easy for a European or American
to fit in here and to live fairly comfortably, as I quickly found
out in 2001. But since that date, and especially since the Iraq
war, I have felt estranged in so many ways, a new kind of exile.
There is the usual sense of estrangement associated with language,
religion, and culture. The estrangement begins in fundamental
ways for the Lebanese, like many cultures outside the U.S. and
Western Europe, do not use toilet paper, and the Arabic toilet
replaces the usual commode. Language is not a serious problem
given that most Lebanese, like many in the Arab world speak some
English-this does not work the other way, as American soldiers
shout commands to Iraqis in English-but there are moments when
it would be easier and I could move through the city with greater
comfort if I was fluent in colloquial Arabic. Fluency also provides
some security, as people here are open to dialogue.
Still, all of the usual markers which
divide expats and foreigners from the host country-food, language,
etc.-are finally irrelevant compared to this other sense of exile
I have felt here. For me this new exile is largely political
and has to do with the public discourse about the Arab and Muslim
world in the United States, and with the exposure of my own politics,
my realization that maybe I am just a liberal engaged in apologetics
after all.
I think that this sense of exile I feel
today starts with Palestine. The second chapter of Fisk's Pity
the Nation is titled "The Keys to Palestine." He
refers to the keys many of the Palestinians proudly display to
their houses in Palestine from which they were driven by Zionist
irregular forces (yes, a euphemism). In a recent news photograph
of a pro-Hamas demonstration near one of the camps here, small
children held huge key-shaped placards, evoking the right of
return. The fact is that my stay here is haunted by Palestine,
and this was apparent to me on the first night when the AUB driver
dropped me off at the Mayflower Hotel on the evening of September
30th, 2001. Outside the hotel a huge banner was hanging over
the street declaring, "Palestinians are freedom fighters."
But part of living here has been coping with the way I feel,
my politics, and the fact that I am American. I carry Palestine
with me in a way, everywhere I go. Palestine is with me, not
as a matter of guilty conscience due to my country's support
for Israel and occupation. Though I indulge in all the usual
romanticizations of the place, there is something more at stake.
No, for me Palestine is not so much a place, but a state of
mind, and not a religious one, but a place of consciousness.
Still, Palestine is material or better, territorial, contiguous,
and for the here and now. Mostly, though, Palestine for me
is remarkable and important for the Palestinian spirit which
drives its people's struggle for a better life in the here and
now, because this is a struggle about family, friends, and life,
not obscurantism.
In a recent article (8/6/03) in Counterpunch,
Said reiterated some of the same points he made in the March
lecture but also commented,
I have spent a great deal of my life
during the past 35 years advocating the rights of the Palestinian
people to national self-determination, but I have always tried
to do that with full attention paid to the reality of the Jewish
people and what they suffered by way of persecution and genocide.
The paramount thing is that the struggle for equality in Palestine/Israel
should be directed toward a humane goal, that is, co-existence,
and not further suppression and denial. Not accidentally, I indicate
that Orientalism and modern anti-Semitism have common roots.
Therefore it would seem to be a vital necessity for independent
intellectuals always to provide alternative models to the simplifying
and confining ones based on mutual hostility that have prevailed
in the Middle East and elsewhere for so long.
This comment appealed to me for though
I (too) feel so strongly about Palestine, I also feel very strongly
about the importance of secular Jewish culture in my life and
to my identity. What I am addressing here is that apparent antithesis
or opposition between anything Arab and anything Jewish. This
is a false opposition as most of us know, but we must work hard
to overcome it. And by Jewish culture I don't mean simply the
everyday of life of New York City-food, customs, and language-but
rather a certain sensibility, a kind of joyous pessimism, all
buttressed by the rich secular political and intellectual tradition
of the American left. Maybe it is best to not identify this
tradition as Jewish anymore given how it has been so deeply assimilated
by many Americans, particularly New Yorkers. Yet, I think of
this tradition, and hold onto its Jewish character for a couple
of reasons, both ironic. The first is personal, for some of
my exilic angst plays out in the classroom when I find it difficult,
if not painful to bring this tradition and is sensibility to
my Arab and Muslim students. That is, I find it very difficult
to teach them about such a rich intellectual and political secular
Jewish tradition. Of course I can teach texts by Marx and Freud
and Benjamin and Kafka and so many others, but only as alienated
figures, who are separated from their lives as secular Jews in
contexts which mediate their work and sensibility. I think of
the sense of Deleuze and Guattari's "minority" in this
regard. Many young Lebanese of college age have traveled abroad,
and many have lived in the U.S and Europe-they are cosmopolitan
and not anti-semitic. But most are strongly opposed to Israel.
With recent bombings of the Beirut power stations, daily overflights
by Israeli fighter planes, the recent occupation, how and why
should they not feel hostility. Yet, it is my perception that
they do not want to hear about another aspect of Jewish, or even
Israeli politics and culture. This is unfortunate if only because
of alliances which might be forged.
Perhaps, finally, the problem mostly
lies with me, that I feel too eager to tell these young people,
many of whom have directly experienced Israeli brutality, that
all is not wrong with Israel and the Jewish world, and as such
position myself as a liberal of bad conscience. I taught African
American literature at Medgar Evers College, the largely African
American and Caribbean college in the CUNY system for two years,
and it was tough teaching Frederick Douglass and Walter Mosley.
I felt like a good intentioned white man, indulging his guilty
conscience, and more than once felt as though I should just do
what is "expected" and teach the Romantics and Jane
Austen.
But a return to the canonical Austen
is tantamount to capitulation and somehow and some way I must
carry on the conversation and say what I have to say about this
same secular Jewish tradition. First, I feel that this tradition
is inseparable from my support for the Palestinian people and
a viable Palestine even though these days some demagogues smear
a principled politics of conscience with anti-Semitism. It is
this tradition which provided the intellectual and human basis
for so many of the good things and fine achievements in American
public life, ranging from public services, and I especially think
of the City University of New York, to the rights of workers
and the formation of labor unions. Of course these were not
solely Jewish accomplishments, but the Jewish contribution was
significant.
Like Said, as a graduate of a doctoral
program of comparative literature I think of Erich Auerbach who
fled the Nazis and wrote Mimesis in exile in Istanbul.
And I also think of modernism, of modern art and the culture
of the city with respect to this same secular Jewish cultural
tradition. Raymond Williams commented that modernism was inseparable
from the modern city, and in turn from immigration, and he pointed
to New York as the capital of such culture, the city of immigrants.
It is hardly necessary to point out that a large number of the
American writers and artists in this time and in the various
modernist movements and those which followed were Jewish. I
think of this fact for two reasons: because I teach this literature
and because in some ways modernism still has some valence, some
value in this part of the world, in Lebanon. My favorites among
the writers I mentioned above, Rachid al Daif and Elias Khoury,
are modernists, as is a favorite filmmaker, Elie Suleiman.
Perhaps the root of this lies with the
well-known irony that both Palestinians and Jews are the consummate
world exiles, one historic and the other newly "made."
Also Lebanon itself has always been a "home" of exiles,
with its Armenian population from the genocide in the early 20th
century, the Palestinians from the 1940s, as well as the Maronites,
the Druze, and even the Jewish population, all peoples who fled
persecution elsewhere. And since the civil war, the Lebanese
have developed their own exilic culture with Lebanese scattered
around the world in seemingly every continent.
A friend from Brooklyn recently described
the quandary of the American intellectual as a matter of a few
choices. He wrote to me that American intellectuals can write
with commitment and passion like Said and frame our experience
in terms such as Globalization and its impact on where we stand,
our region (whether Brooklyn or Beirut), or we can follow the
model of writers such as Paul Bowles and Jean Genet. The former
embraced the culture of the Maghreb over and against that of
the West, New York City, while the latter was uncompromised in
his opposition to imperialism and racism.
Which brings me back to exile. In one
of his most eloquent essays, "Reflections on Exile"
(collected in a book with that title), Said examines the literature
of exile and this new interest in exilic writing and criticism.
As an intellectual tradition exile is easily traced back to
the Romantics (German and British through to the 20th century
and George Lukács' awkward idea of "transcendental
homelessness" which distinguishes us moderns-we are all
constitutively "rootless." Importantly, however, Said
distinguishes between political exiles, exilic writers who are
not "at home," and refugees. Unlike some others who
have written about exile I am not interested in etymology here
(bad faith retreat) or in preserving exile and immigration/diaspora
as opposite poles, but rather encourage an understanding of exile
as a range of possibilities and possible solidarities. Exilic
writing in my view must entail commitment. Said, then, attempts
to both "textualize" the experience of so many illiterate
refugees (or non-writers), and to point to the self absorbed
qualities of so much exilic writing-he calls these sulky exiles-which
seem to be privileged over the lives of those who have been forcibly
driven from their homes to other countries where they are not
"at home" and not welcome. This is Palestine in exile,
whether in Lebanon or Jersey City.
Yet we also think of Bowles as an exilic
writer for part of his persona and his work entailed his rejection
of American life as much as his affirmation of life in the Maghreb.
And Bowles was writing during the 1950s, a period of conformism
and repression only matched by America today. Bowles then was
an exile of conscience, and it is this kind of refusal and non-conformism
that I propose we resume today as new(er) form of exile. For
academics and intellectuals this might be real exile, that is,
a rejection of mainstream America and mainstream American life.
A rejection of the new conformism. Indeed we must refuse official
America and as a matter of content and form and bring with us
to the Arab world-with the correct measure of humility and circumspection-the
best of America's other culture, its truly egalitarian traditions
and the commitment to human rights and the defence of difference.
And so practically this rejection might entail teaching and
working abroad, and right now this should be in the Arab world.
But whether one chooses exile outside the U.S. or assumes an
exilic stance within, this new form of exile must also include
a political embrace of Palestine and the Arab world. In the
American university we must encourage the study of Arabic language,
Arab history, and an objective (and self-critical) study and
interest in Islam. Unlike the neo-cons we should speak about
the Arab and Islamic worlds from a position of knowledge and
humility. Exile, Palestine, and the Arab world, all combine
now, in 2003, at this historic juncture-it is in the here and
the now, one way or the other, that we must struggle for meaningful
peace and justice in this world.
But where do I fit in? Am I in exile,
here on Bliss Street, in Beirut, Lebanon? I certainly feel homeless
today, unwelcome in the United States due to my opposition to
the government's war, and sick at the level of public support
for the war, even in my beloved New York City where armed National
Guardsmen are posted in the subways. And I am certainly not Lebanese,
and Beirut is not really my home. What I want to establish is
that this experience is not entirely a matter of choice but something
else, perhaps best described as a professional commitment, an
unfortunate circumstance I share with so many other American
PhDs.
I thought of all of this when I was forced
to return. I realized that the school might allow me to stay
in the United States, to break my contract and never come back
to Lebanon. At least, on the face of it, I had the perfect excuse,
and everyone will readily believe my life was actually in danger.
Though my loved ones were in New York, and my mother and brother
begged me to stay, I wanted to come back to Lebanon. I missed
late nights at the Baromètre café, tucked away
off Rue Makhoul where the artists and oddballs of Beirut eat,
drink, dance and listen to Umm Kulthoum, Fairouz, Toufic Farouk,
with spots of Miles Davis, Louis and Coltrane. Again, I have
a place here, oddly enough, with all of its contradictions and
here my teaching and scholarship means something, whatever the
school and its trustees and administration finally stand for.
And there is poignancy to this battered city; Beirut has soul,
something that New York City, after (and due to) the days of
Giuliani, sorely lacks. The funkiness and liberated cacophony
of New York was silenced in the name of law and order and private
property. In Beirut things are different, and perhaps this is
because there is no housing shortage and a Giuliani-like police
state is not possible, and then there is soul, by which I mean
the vibrancy of the city. It gives me hope that Beirut is being
rebuilt, not so much in the downtown Solidère area where
the Lebanese bourgeoisie expropriated properties to develop an
Orientalist Disneyland for well-to-do tourists, but in the minds
of Beirutis in the southern suburbs in the mid to low income
Muslim neighborhoods like Basta and Ras al Nabah. Life persists
and thrives here, vibrant and defiant despite the best attempts
of the world's powers to crush these people. So, if I derive
some inspiration from the indomitable spirit of the Palestinian
people, so I also admire the bravery and love of life I find
here, in Beirut, Lebanon.
On May 11th, 2003, I returned to my job
and was warmly greeted by my students and colleagues. It was
strange to come back to this city, so far from New York, and
to find my place, on my terms. After all, I could have stayed
in New York with the blessing of AUB while the U.S. State Department
and embassy would have been pleased! But I came back because
finally my job was very important to me. One of my students,
a Palestinian whose family are from a village near Nablus in
pre-1947 Palestine, advised me to steer clear of explicit political
activity. She told me that instead of such activities the best
and most subversive act I could take was to stay around and teach
her and the other students about literary and cultural theory--to
educate a new generation of Arab intellectuals. I agree and
for now it is my form of protest. What I learned is that these
days one can easily fall afoul of the political ruling class
in the United States, and that this is due to the tenuousness
of their policy and strategy as much as their desire to crush
dissent. And it is important to continue dissent. I learned
that dissent from an American academic abroad, from the Arab
world, is especially important, for, again, I live here and know
better. So join me for a little dissent and treason at the Baromètre
in Beirut.
Andrew C. Long
teaches at the American University in Beirut. He can be reached
at: al05@aub.edu.lb
Weekend
Edition Features for August 16 / 17, 2003
Flavia Alaya
Bastille
New Jersey
Jeffrey St. Clair
War Pimps
Saul Landau
The Legacy of Moncada: the Cuban Revolution at 50
Brian Cloughley
What Has Happened to the US Army in Iraq?
William S. Lind
Coffins for the Crews: How Not to Use Light Armored Vehicles
Col. Dan Smith
Time for Straight Talk
Wenonah Hauter
Which
Electric System Do We Want?
David Lindorff
Where's Arnold When We Need Him?
Harvey Wasserman
This Grid Should Not Exist
Don Moniak
"Unusual Events" at Nuclear Power Plants: a Timeline
for August 14, 2003
David Vest
Rolling Blackout Revue
Merlin Chowkwanyun
An Interview with Sherman Austin
Adam Engel
The Loneliest Number
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Hamod & Albert
Book of the Weekend
Powerplay by Sharon Beder
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