Gift of Play / Cadeau de jeu | Aviva Community Fund

This is how we want this schoolyard to be - whereas so far, it is just a concrete jungle. Please help us to realize our dreams and vote for this project. This is the only thing we ask for - your vote.

There are two days left to vote for this project, here. On behalf of the kids, thank you!

Is this how the world sees us? Hope not...

Youth and New Media in the Middle-East

This is a most interesting study on the use of new media in 3 countries in the Middle-East (Lebanon, Jordan, UAE). The author is Jad Melki of the American University of Beirut (AUB). Remember his name!

The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: Youth and media in the Middle East

Lebanon again, and Syria

I have been back in Amsterdam for a while now - almost a month, come to think of it! And life is so hectic again - no time to tell all there is to tell about the rest of Lebanon, and about Syria, where I travelled with my son Jonas.

But the least I can do is to share the pictures with you. So here are some more pictures of Lebanon... and you will find the others if you scroll down this page. The captions - in sofar as they don't exist yet - will follow as soon as possible...

More Lebanon pictures:



And more:



And the first Syria album:



And the second:



And the third and last:




That's it, folks! For the time being...

Quiet days in Beirut

This is my third day in Beirut - the second full day. I have been very busy walking (and running!) up and down the Corniche - for in Rome, do as the Romans do. And then, I had to get to know the area - Ain al-Mreisseh, just west of downtown. I wondered about the derelict buildings, scattered among the new, extremely posh and often gated high-rise buildings. Well, they ARE remnants of the civil war, twenty years after it officially ended. Downtown, everything is spic and span - but all around, hmmm...

This war, still so present in the city, and so (apparently) absent from the minds of all the people I met. I seldom met such friendly, open people - they seem so peaceful... And yet, they have been killing one another for fifteen years. When I ask them, they have no explanation. And yet, one factor - apart from all the others, international and national - seems obvious: their community system. This is the basis of the whole society, everything is divided along the lines of religion and ethnicity. Their communities are much more fenced off than those in, say, Belgium. Today, in the newspaper The Daily Star, I read about the election of the Beirut Order of Physicians' chairman. And I was smiling ironically about what I perceived to be the 'provincialism' of this city - only a local newspaper would have published a news item like this on the front page, I thought. And then I started reading the article, and my mouth fell open. Because even the doctors here choose their chairman according to religious criteria, or rather, the different candidates were backed by the different parliamentary alliances. And it stated seriously that, ever since its beginnings in 1946, only two Muslims had been elected at the head of the Beirut Order of Physicians, whereas more than half its members are Muslims. And The Daily Star writes: 'Several parties have been debating the issue of rotating the post of the head of the order between Muslims ans Christians each term. Such a policy is adopted by the Syndicate of Engineers.

Really...

4&5mei2010

Lebanon: is change possible?

(Photo Mahmoud Kheir, The Daily Star)

'Thousands march in Beirut to promote secularism in politics', reads the heading in the Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star. The movement calls itself 'Laïque Pride', - an obvious reference to the Gay Pride movement, with secularism as its topic and aim.

I wouldn't have expected as many demonstrators, to be frank. So I am surprised and happy that this could happen. The Lebanese youth (for these are mainly - if not only - youngsters) definitely seems to want to draw a line.

It will be a long and tough battle, though. In Lebanon (as in Syria, and probably quite a few other Middle-Eastern countries) you simply don't exist if you are not registered with one of the 18 officially recognized religious communities.... You can't marry, you can't register a child (an an unregistered child can't go to school, for instance, it simply doesn't exist), you can't inherit. There is no civil code. Everything legal concerning families is determined by the 'code' of the community you (are supposed to) belong to. For instance, Muslims can get a divorce, Christians can't.

Also, the political representation is divided along religious line. The President of the country has to be a Maronite, the Prime Minister a Sunni, whereas the Speaker of the Parliament must be a Shi'ite. Each community is allowed so many seats in parliament - so try to build your political party around those lines... It is to drive one crazy. Constituencies are designated in the same way: this one is shi'ite, this one is Maronite, this one Greek orthodox, this one Sunni...

This system has been in place ever since Lebanon is an independent country (offcially, since 1943; but the Constitution was drawn long before, in 1926; and a similar system was introduced by the then Ottoman rulers in the 1860s, with the help of the European powers). And it was confirmed by the Taif agreement, which put an end to the 1975-1990 Civil War - with the non negligeable clause that this system was to end.

So there is a long way to go. Let's wait and see what happens next.
Read more about the demonstration in The Daily Star

Today...

... is the first day of my future life. Or something similar.
I will try, once in a while, to blog in English for my English speaking friends and relatives. But today I'm just too... busy!
Speak to you soon...