These Terrorists who resemble us

By Joseph El-Khoury

I was at the gym the other day. Cycling hard next to other Middle-Class fitness enthusiasts while watching the continuous news broadcast on Sky News. Flashing again and again on the screen were portraits of those accused of the plot to blow up transatlantic flights using concealed liquid explosives. I wasn’t particularly interested in the plot itself, depicted in a series of cartoons, which seemed to involve diet coke and a prolonged stay in the aircraft’s toilet. What I found myself doing instead was checking the reactions of fellow gym goers to my right and left. 'Did I look suspicious to them?!' Was my first thought. After all didn’t all Middle-Eastern men look similar to the untrained Caucasian eye? And was that Racism? It is rarely said that we are all more adept at distinguishing subtle differences within our own ethnic group: A fact that was first highlighted to me by a friend from Botswana many years ago when she unemotionally threw in my face ‘All white men look the same’ and that included me apparently. But she was right, I find it hard to distinguish between a Japanese, a Korean and a Chinese. Similarly I could easily pick up a Saudi, an Egyptian and a Syrian in a crowd while for most Americans they are all “A-rabs” (with emphasis on the A) with no distinguishing features between them. So going back to my gym session, I felt slightly uneasy and paranoid. I say paranoid because frankly these guys on screen were from a South Asian background and bore no resemblance to me. In normal times I should have dismissed my fears completely, but these are not normal times. And after being stopped at numerous airports and even driving my car on a central London Street for ‘random’ police checks my suspicions that I do stand out have unfortunately been confirmed.

Let’s face it! It is a bad time to be a young Arab male. But what for me has been a mere nuisance, has the potential of a humiliating damaging effect on the self-esteem of generations of young Middle Eastern, Asian, African men who from a young age are bombarded with images of ‘evil men’ who look like their fathers, uncles and them. Moreover, this phenomenon is not new and precedes 9/11, the 1980s and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Whether in works of fiction or on the 10 o'clok news these dark skinned men are almost always depicted as evil, unreliable, deceitful, untrustworthy, irrational, fanatic, immoral. Whenever in addition, the script require them to be attractive, the character is played by a European actor with European features, suitably dressed and tanned for the occasion. The problem is so extensive that someone managed to write a book about it in 2001(Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood vilifies a people by Jack G.Shaheen).And if Hollywood has the power to create such an image then it has the power to modify it. What a better way to contribute to the ‘war on terror’ than to release an Arab Batman or a Pakistani Spiderman. Or even better… just tell the truth!

Lebanon: Student Housing with a Touch of Design

Lebanese Universities graduate hundreds of Architecture students on a yearly basis. They do not lack enthusiasm but opportunity. Creativity is sacrificed in the interest of quick profit. As a result Beirut and other cities from a hilltop view, helped by the absence of state regulation, have become urban sprawls that lack harmony. In our efforts to promote homegrown talent we present The USEK Student housing project developed by the team of Henry and Samer Eid. It is certainly visually stunning while blending in the chaotic architectural environment of the Zouk locality, North of Beirut. Following is a presentation of the project in the words of the people behind it.

Arabdemocracy

It is a 9000-square-meter residence, delivered in 2007, it has a capacity of about 200 young female students coming from all over Lebanon, and its U-shaped layout includes a sheltered atrium with space for studying, meeting and socializing.
At first, the chaotic urban environment of the site was a real challenge. However, with an elegant modernism, the architects managed to invest, to the utmost, the potential of a difficult plot of land, brilliantly solving the issues of intimacy and community, investing the site’s negative constraints to support a positive reality.
Moreover, the project combines, through bits and pieces, numerous architectural themes of the USEK campus. Nevertheless, the edifice maintains a formal autonomy and originality within the context. Despite a contemporary aesthetics and a spirit of independence, this building is well-rooted in its milieu and reflects a certain relationship with the functional architecture of the overall campus.
Therefore, the project astutely responds to the challenges of scale, context and function, with an effect of contrasts, coupling monumentality and refined details, mass and lightness, compactness and openings. The edifice directly conveys its message and converses with the scenery, offering selective views of its environment.
Furthermore, lights and colours add life to the premises. A rich array of colours with luminous hues undoubtedly enhances the beauty of the edifice, which symbolically borrows some conceptual patterns, incarnated through a nautical metaphor.
With this new building, the designers succeeded in giving a degraded urban site a new lease of life, hence joining the campus with its surroundings by reshaping the university’s identity without compromising its historical and architectural value, providing an architectural solution that is lively, measured, and definitely contemporary. Finally, this residential housing illustrates a singular portal into another world free of worries, a gateway to freedom, a true dreamlike journey, a unique place, indeed, that is suitable for rest and study.

• At the ground floor, public activities are available. The collective space is thus composed and animated by the following functions: welcoming desk, administrative offices, visiting room, lounge, cafeteria and chapel.
• At the six upper floors, the privative space comprises the vertical circulation elements, the floor kitchens and the rooms. Each room has an entrance, built-in wardrobe, bathroom, sleeping area and study corner.
• Three underground levels comprise parking and general utilities.

The Student Housing project at the USEK campus in Lebanon was developed by Henry Eid Architect + SE.Arch Samer Eid Architect.

Picrures: Courtesy of Samer Eid / SE.Arch © 2007
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The Fools of April (and 11 other months)

By Bassem Hassan

Picture: http://beachblogger.net

Seriously, now, who doesn’t love a good lie? Especially if it is one of those lies that you tell to get people all worked up about something only to burst out laughing when they realize the joke’s on them. In fact we homo sapiens sapiens (yes, that’s our official name) love lies so much that we dedicate a specific day in the year- this very day, April 1st- to lie and laugh about it. And you know what…good for us! As long as it’s all in good fun, why not?

As long as it’s for fun…that’s the key. There are some lies you just don’t tell, even on April 1st. You don’t tell a father, for instance, that his child has just been taken to hospital after being hit by a car; or a woman that you just saw her partner kissing someone else (unless you really did of course!). You get the point; you don’t tell lies that can have profound effects on people’s lives. The vast majority of humans abide by this rule. It is strange then to see that when it is no longer a personal issue the very same decent people seem to have no qualms telling the types of lies that can ruin the lives entire generations. I refer of course to the profound lies we are told on a daily basis by a whole herd of neo-liberal Arab ‘intellectuals’, whose numbers- and the numbers of media outlets they speak through- seem to be rising exponentially by the second. Of course what is terribly funny-sad about this (and “the worst of evils is what makes you laugh”, as the beautifully elegant Arabic saying goes), is that the vast majority of these people used to be leftists until that well dried up and was replaced by oil-well media outlets.

Here’s a small sample of neo-liberal “April Fools” I personally experienced. The individuals perpetrating this nonsense shall remain anonymous, of course.

1- The American project in the Middle East is to support democracy in the region: Obviously, these pundits must be referring to the havens of democracy such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Tunisia… the list of US supported Arab democracies seems endless!

2- If Palestinians (or Lebanese) stop “attacking” Israel, it will stop “retaliating”: here our neo-liberal geniuses are referring to the brutal occupation of Israeli land by the nuclearly armed Palestinian State and the constant bombings of the civilian population, including 20 day-old infants, by the heavily armed Palestinian army and its fearsome air force. Truly…what are we thinking?!

3- Continued resistance undermines nation building: quoth the raven of the Vichy government during the Nazi occupation of France! Need I say more?

4- The problem is not sectarianism, the problem is the lack of democracy: this is of course why our neo-liberal friends oppose free and fair elections when they bring radical Islamists to power. What the neo-liberal does not seem to understand is that he cannot have it both ways. Yes, sectarianism is exactly the problem and it is exactly what the neoconservative fascist thugs running America’s military and foreign policy are encouraging in Iraq, Lebanon and the Gulf.

And now my top three favorites. Drum roll please…

5- At least Israel is a democracy: oh, yes, of course, because people vote there. Never mind that Israel is (not was, is), by its very definition, an apartheid state based on a racist ideology, founded on the transformation of a mythological religious narrative into a pseudo-national identity. But, wait a second, people vote there! They also vote in Iran, Morocco and Pakistan, you know, but we don’t call those democracies…do we?

6- We should accept any peace we are offered because it allows us to build our economic prosperity: why didn’t I think of that one?! I mean look at the prosperity that peace brought to Egypt resulting in a huge increase in per capita income, decreased infant mortality rates and the almost complete abolition of unemployment and foreign debt…or not!

7- Attracting foreign capital investment will trickle down to the rest of the population: Are you not in awe of the limitless genius of the neo-liberal brain? Trickle-down, supply-side, economics reinven…I mean photocopied (again!). Obviously since these policies failed miserably in Europe and the United States in the 80’s, they must- by definition really- succeed in the far more advanced, much less corrupt Arab world.

By now, you are wondering “what is it about the neo-liberal mind that allows it to be so insightful?” Of course, we silly leftists are incapable of fathoming the depth of the neo-liberal intellect. However, as some of us can actually read- and occasionally do- we have been able to gather clues to share with you. First, neo-liberals de-contextualize the problem. Second, they substitute analysis and evidence with example and anecdote. The combination of these two tricks is what brings out the most powerful neo-liberal voodoo: the irresistibly delicious, magnetically inviting, GENERALIZATION. You see, it is their capacity to generalize ahistoric, nonscientific nonsense that allows them to come up with theories like the “clash of civilizations”. Islam vs. the West they call it. Religion vs. Geography: good one! Or the “inherent irrationality of the Arab/Eastern mind” as if Al-Razi, Ibn Arabi, Ibn Al Haytham, Jaber Bin Hayyan, Al Khawarizmy and Ibn Sina, or the hundreds of modern Arab scientists, from Ahmed Zuweil on down, who practice their craft all around the world, hailed from Norway, Poland, Wales and South Dakota. Or better yet, their favorite baby “Globalization” as if it were a new thing. They forget that Capital has always been globalized and has always attempted to extend its global reach. From Marx and Engels to Teddy Roosevelt, thinkers and politicians across the spectrum have written about this fact more than a hundred years ago. Then again, I forget that the neo-liberal is the master of reinventing the squeaky wheel, because he does not bother reading the manual. Oh, the list of their “theories” is inexhaustible, but enough is enough.

So, the next time you come across neo-liberal venom spewing in your face, remember the old Arabic saying “the wise is not bitten by the same snake twice”. Or better yet, just pretend its April 1st and have a good laugh.