The most popular explanation for blogging silences is “busy busy,” which is also usually a lie-lie. I am very busy lately, but mainly I'm suffering from the blogging blahs. I have lost my blogger's mojo and I don't know where to find it. But fear not: it's like Lassie – it'll come home again.
Today, though, I will allow my (bad) mood to hang out for the world to see with one rant and one snark.
Then I'll offer partial compensation with some links at the end.
The rant
Let's start with the criminally irresponsible actions of the Israel Electric Corporation. Three days ago they announced rolling brown outs throughout the country, explaining that they were unprepared for the sudden heat wave and the corresponding high demand for electricity. (in a country that experiences at least four months of temperatures in the mid-to-high thirties, with up to 80% humidity, every year?! Is that a sick joke?) Each power outage was supposed to last 30 minutes, although the two I experienced lasted 45. Read more here.
But that's not the point of my rant.
The point is, these were planned outages – but the IEC didn't bother to share the schedule with the already outrageously overcharged and underserviced public. The result: old people were caught for hours in elevators, in 34 degree heat; some poor guy was hospitalized when his respirator stopped working; and worst of all, a young man was killed in a car accident – evidently as a direct result of a non-working traffic light.
You know what I think? (that was a superfluous rhetorical question). I think there should be an investigation into that traffic accident. And if there is sufficient evidence of a direct connection between that young man's death and the non-working traffic light, the person who took the decision to keep the public uninformed should be arrested and tried for murder. I am quite serious.
This is a country that takes pride in its ability to mobilize its reserve army in one day, or evacuate dozens of wounded from the site of a suicide bombing in less than one hour and clean the site up in a day. Surely it can dispatch police officers to direct traffic at intersections in advance of each power outage!
I am really completely outraged. Can you tell?
The snark
Via my sister, I just watched the trailer for Oliver Stone's summer blockbuster release, World Trade Centre. Adina calls it a “disaster porn flick.” I love her synopsis:
Scored with a treacley, bombastic soundtrack,
it stars Nicholas Cage as a tough and tender cop in a moustache with
his second-in-command, played by Michael Pena from Crash, who writes,
while trapped in debris, I (heart) U on a crumpled piece of paper. “On
the Day the World Saw Evil,” read the hubristic title treatment, ending
with an ambiguous: “Two men saw something else.”
Would it be hugely insensitive of me to ask Americans, nearly five years after 9/11, to please get over it already?* Really, I think it's time. There have been many disasters all over the world – of both the natural and the terrorist variety – since then, and the ability to feel empathy is truly more admirable than perpetual navel gazing.
*Update: A number of people suggested gently, in emails and comments, that I meant “get past,” not “get over.” And yes, that is really what I meant. Thank you for saving me from myself. 
The links
Haaretz has an interesting article, called Lebanon comes out of the closet, about the gay and lesbian convention that was held in Beirut a couple of weeks ago. Mustapha, who by the way recently got engaged (photo!), blogged about his take on the convention here.
While the Haaretz reporter, Zvi Barel, acknowledges that homosexuality is still illegal in Lebanon, he sees the Beirut convention as a sign that our neighbour to the north is taking a leading role in what he calls “a new trend of permissiveness in the Middle East.” Barel also mentions that Lebanon is the only country in the Middle East, besides Israel of course, to have a gay community organization. It's called Helem, which is the Arabic acronym for Association for the Protection
of the Rights of Homosexuals and Lesbians. Helem also means “tolerance.”
[The article includes some interesting information about contemporary Lebanese society, including a passing mention of the fact that Lebanese author Hoda Barakat's book, The Stone of Laughter, was recently published in Hebrew.]
Mustapha is a bit more critical than Barel in his post, “It's legal, but keep it quiet.” Excerpt:
Our government is liberal enough to accept homosexuals (unlike the
commercial sex issue which is simply one of Lebanon’s secret touristic
cash cows), but the way the Lebanese
system handles tricky social issues can be summarized as: Do it, we
will regulate it, but let’s all try not to talk about it.
Interesting contrast in perspectives, no? The Israeli reporter is all rah-rah, while the Lebanese blogger is more “yes, but…”
More links:
My latest GVO roundup.
The Perpetual Refugee's most recent post – and his best yet, IMO.
Russell Merryman (online editor of Al Jazeera.net) has posted his contribution to the Media Centre blog – here.
Ksenia Svetlova wrote an interesting article (for the JPost, which I love to hate but grudgingly give credit for occasionally publishing something worthwhile) about a controversial novel by a 24 year-old Saudi woman, Rajaa as-Sanaa, called Banat al-Riyadh (Riyadh Girls). The novel, which has four female protagonists, apparently deals with all sorts of taboo subjects – like homosexuality, pre-marital sex and the Saudi attitude to divorced women. I write “apparently” because Banat al-Riyadh, which is a huge bestseller in the Arab world, has not been translated into English (or Hebrew). It is, however, available in French, German and Italian. This 18 year-old Saudi girl writes that she identifies strongly with the characters in the novel.
AhmedT, an Egyptian ex-pat blogger living in “greater Toronto,” happens to live directly across the street from the house in which 17 suspected terrorists were arrested a couple of days ago. He was home when the SWAT teams arrived – read about what he saw and take a look at the photos he took, here.
(Reuters article here, Toronto Globe and Mail article here).
That's it! Back soon…
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14 Comments so far (Add 1 more)
on March 12th, 2010 at 6:18 am
on March 12th, 2010 at 6:18 am
on March 12th, 2010 at 6:18 am
on March 12th, 2010 at 6:18 am
on March 12th, 2010 at 6:18 am
on March 12th, 2010 at 6:18 am
on March 12th, 2010 at 6:18 am
on March 12th, 2010 at 6:18 am
on March 12th, 2010 at 6:18 am
on March 12th, 2010 at 6:18 am
on March 12th, 2010 at 6:18 am
on March 12th, 2010 at 6:18 am
on March 12th, 2010 at 6:18 am
on March 12th, 2010 at 6:18 am