When the Regiment of Pleasure marches by, accompanied by music and flags; when the senses shake and tremble, All of the laws of morality, incorrectly understood, incorrectly applied amount to zero when the Regiment of Pleasure marches through.

Do not allow any dark virtue to restrain you. Do not believe that any obligation ties you down. Your duty is to give in, give in to the Desires, the perfect creatures of perfect gods. Your debt is to enlist as a dutiful soldier, with simplicity at heart, when the Regiment of Pleasure marches. Do not confine yourself at home and be deceived by false theories of justice, with the superstitions of the badly behaved society.

Do not say “My effort is worth that much and I owe it to myself as much to enjoy it, not more”. Just like life is inherited and you did nothing to earn it as a reward, pleasure should be inherited as well. Do not confine yourself at home; yet keep your windows open, wide open, to be able to listen to the Regiment of Pleasure marching by, flags waving, music playing. Do not allow to be deceived by the naysayers stating that the service is dangerous and painful. The Pleasure service is of long-lasting joy. It will exhaust you, with divine intoxication. Finally, when you reach this road your fortune will be admired.

When your funeral passes by, the Creatures that your desires have formed will be throwing white roses on your coffin and young Gods of Olympus will hold you on their shoulders and burry you at the Resting Place of the Ideal where the mausoleums of poetry are whitened. (Konstantinos Cavafy 1923)

Life in fragments means life in shatters. Life divided in parts of different origin, life cut down into pieces of diverse placing, life that is not continuous, a kind of life that is felt, lived and perceived as a bricolage of totally different life patterns, sewd up together in the clamsiest way.

Life in Beirut means many lives together. Maybe this is why many Lebanese act as if they are fearless of death. Because they have over-lived life way. One life in Beirut includes war and peace, death and birth, normality and surrealism, kindness and brutality, game and fame, and all their nuances in-between.

This phenomenon, namely living a life in fragments influences even the ways that one remembers the life that one runs. It is exemplary that Lebanese have a very confused memory of their lives. Many would invent events in order to replace gaps in their memory, others would do as if nothing has happened.

Fragmented life results in fragmented memory. Even events like flirting, meeting, partying, graduating, working, finishing a project are entering the fragmented framework and are impossible to be remembered in the way that they happened. In the best case, no second person in lebanon would maintain similar memory of the same events.

Fragmented memories result in fragmented communications. The backbone of any deep social relationship is the sharing of a common ground of the past. One could add here the sharing of a common vision for the future, but one would be way too romantic here. Sharing common past means technically sharing common memories, carrying similar ways to re-live past experiences. The fact that most of the Lebanese or people who live longer in Lebanon are unable to re-constitute such a sharing habitat of memories directly influences the type of the relationship between every ordinary Lebanese. One is forced to find refuge is constructing a common past through highlighting overlappings and downplaying grievances.

But again that cant last for long. Cracks on the surface appear after the first bump is driven over. After this, a huge enterprise of mending the common memory re-starts and the circuit repeats itself almost spontaneously. Only a common memory could fix things, but this would require a common communication which that would require in turn a common “life”. But that is elusive. If not impossible.

Fragments thus becomes the modus vivendi in Lebanon. We breathe through fragments, we see through fragments, we communicate through fragments, we speak, make love and even die through fragments. Nothing can be thought of as coherent, let it be the state, the history, the building we live in, the lunch we just had, the air we breath, the future we envision. Fragment is the order of the day, fragment is the rule of the night, fragment is the law, fragment is the life itself.

If one would look at Beirut through a looking glass, one had to break it first in order to make sure that at least some of it, in fragments, reflect what’s really has to be reflected.

I am not sure what is worse.

To be bombed by a Western drone in the name of democracy or to be preached by a Western moron on the most correct ways to apply it.

Apologies for Greek! I am sure u can imagine whats the main point here…

Από τα τέλη Απριλίου, η Ελληνική Κυβέρνηση προσανατολίζεται στη δημιουργία στρατοπέδων συγκέντρωσης μη εγγεγραμμένων μεταναστών. Ως μέλη της επιστημονικής κοινότητας αυτής της χώρας, οφείλουμε με τον πλέον απερίφραστο τρόπο να καταδικάσουμε ενέργειες που θέτουν όχι απλά υπό αμφισβήτηση, αλλά υπό αίρεση τα ανθρώπινα δικαιώματα των μεταναστών, τοξικομανών καθώς και άλλων αποκλεισμένων, γηγενών και μη, που επιβιώνουν σε όλη τη χώρα. Η ιδέα της κοινωνικής ανάπτυξης που με τόσο σθένος παρουσιάζεται σε αυτή τη χώρα τα τελευταία 30 χρόνια, δεν είναι δυνατόν να συνοδεύεται από εγκλεισμούς σε στρατόπεδα συγκέντρωσης. Όταν η μεταναστευτική πολιτική μιας χώρας συρρικνώνεται σε ένα θέμα, τη σύλληψη και επαναπροώθηση ανθρώπων, τότε τα προβλήματα της κοινωνίας αυτής βρίσκονται όχι στη μετανάστευση, αλλά στην ανάπτυξη ακραίων και αντιανθρωπιστικών ιδεών στους κόλπους της κοινωνίας μας. Η ακαδημαϊκή κοινότητα δεν θα παραμείνει αδιάφορη απέναντι στην καταστρατήγηση βασικών ανθρωπίνων δικαιωμάτων, όπως η ελεύθερη μετακίνηση, και ιδιαίτερα όταν αυτά φαίνεται να πλήττονται με ένα τόσο βάναυσο τρόπο από την Ελληνική Πολιτεία και την Ευρωπαϊκή Ένωση. Η ελληνική επιστημονική κοινότητα εκφράζει τον αποτροπιασμό της και δηλώνει πως με μοναδικό μέσο και σύμμαχο τη γνώση θα σταθεί απέναντι σε τέτοιου είδους απαράδεκτες μεθοδεύσεις.

Sign the petition here

“Live your myth in Greece” is the main slogan of the ad campaign of the Hellenic Tourist Organisation. For illegal immigrants from Africa, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq the authorities use a slightly different slogan: “Leave your myth in Greece”

To be sure Iran, among other things, managed within a week to do what Palestine has so much failed to accomplish in the past 25 years: to create a unparalleled wave of sympathy for the destiny of a Middle eastern peoples in the West. Post-Iran sympathy in the West is what Palestinians can only dream for long.

Moreover, post-Iran even managed to change the meaning and usage of the fundamentals of Islamophobic discourse. For Post-Iran-West, “Allahu Akhbar” is a fantastic cry for freedom poetically orchestrated on the rooftops of Tehran on midnight instead of a fanatic cris de guerre spelled out from the dirty mouths of bearded semi-savages; For post-Iran-West, suicide bombing carries symbolism and meaning instead of based on irrational hopes for paradise’s 70 maidens.

A moderate Arab extremely happy about West's endorsement of "Allahu Akhbar"

Moreover, post-Iran-West seems to have been positively contaminated through a new interest in issues such as tear gasing, press suppression and twitter slowdowns. When Athens downtown was transformed into a huge gas chamber for a whole month past December, when the IDF was imposing an embargo on all journalists willing to enter Gaza during January’s slaughter, twitter was still running unabated and insignificant.

Post-Iran-West is a beautiful place, a paradise for humanists and all kind of visionaries. Full of people who believe in human dignity and the collective good, in Post-Iran-West every single individual life counts and every single tear gas canister is counted.
Post-Iran-West has decided to rehabilitate itself.
It wants to stand up to the legacy of the Enlightenment and decisively leave behind its amnesia for daily killings by drones and dragons in Pakistan, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq.

Iran may help the West become a better West actually… Iran may help the West understand what Allahu Akhbar, dignity and Jihad stand for. Iran may help the West and its people to re-enter a field previously regarded as disgusting or boring at least: World politics!

Actually, post-Iran-West may become a place where all past visionaries would love to live in.

A place where the green color is not anymore symbol of Islam, but of Freedom.

A place where state brutality mobilizes millions around the world in solidarity.

A place where demonstrators resisting state violence are welcomed as a bona fide “civil rights movement” instead of Sarko’s “scumbugs”.

A place where we would all literally die to live in, with or without maidens.

Nikola Kosmatopoulos,

social anthropologist and paradise candidate

Sri Lankan maids wait in a shelter in Beirut after escaping their employers’ households. (AFP/Anwar Amro)

Imagine you are a woman in Lebanon. Not just any woman, but a mother of three from a faraway country called Madagascar, working in Lebanon as a housemaid. For $150 a month, you take care of a senile old woman who regularly abuses you verbally and makes you sleep on the living room floor.

When you plead to your agency to switch employers, instead of helping you, they physically assault you and send you back to the same house.

Then, when you return to your “madame’s” house, her son-in-law rapes you. Afterward, he gives you 5000 LL ($3) and a piece of paper with his cell phone number on it.

This is Mbotizandry Beravo’s story, told to NOW Lebanon through one of her relatives, a volunteer at the Malagasy consulate, an anonymous informant and two social workers from the NGO that was involved in the investigation.

Beravo did not have the money, language or freedom of movement to go to a doctor to collect the physical evidence required to prove that the sexual assault took place. So she kept the rape a secret, only telling her relatives who work in Lebanon about the unbearable circumstances she was in.

Two weeks after the rape, at the request of her family members who live in Lebanon, NGO workers went to Beravo’s employers’ house, and she finally got the chance to tell her side of story. It should have ended there, and Beravo should have been able to take her employers to court or at least collect her pay and leave the country, but it only got worse.

Beravo was taken a few days later to the detention center at General Security in Adlieh where she was forced stay for the duration of the investigation, some 10 days. Meanwhile, the person who allegedly raped her remained free. At one point, our sources say, she was even handcuffed and put in the same room as the man she said raped her, while being asked detailed questions about what happened in front of him.

Eventually, Beravo’s story was judged to be false, and she was charged with lying and defamation and slapped with a sentence of 15 years in jail.

Luckily, some people helped her escape the country before trial.

Beravo’s case was described and her full name revealed when a local newspaper published an article at the end of May entitled, “A maid claims she was raped in order to return to her country.” No one else’s name was printed except that of the judge.

The article accuses Beravo of “concoct[ing] a tale” due to her unwillingness to work and her desire to go home, “as if there weren’t any other means for her to travel other than by slandering a person trying to help her.” There was no mention of Beravo’s condition during her employment or the investigation.

Needless to say, rape and sexual abuse is not taken particularly seriously in Lebanon. The law does little to encourage sexual assault victims to come forward, and moreover, proving rape in general is difficult, as physical evidence needs to be gathered immediately after an assault.

Also, according to lawyer Tony Bou Abboud, when a woman cannot produce enough evidence to prove her rape, she can go to jail for defamation, usually between three and 10 years.

And, just as outrageously, if the rapist marries his victim, the law clears his name. A husband can rape his wife legally, which is to say he does not require her consent to have sex with her.

With all the problems facing women who have been sexually assaulted, live-in maids have additional problems in proving rape. Like in many cases of abused maids, Beravo was not allowed to leave her employers’ house alone, making it nearly impossible for her to seek medical help and have a physician prove the crime took place. Worse yet, after a foreign worker is sexually abused by her employers, she must remain in their custody while the case is sent to General Security – the law-enforcement arm of the Ministry of Interior. It can take days before an agent from General Security arrives to investigate.

Once the domestic worker is taken to General Security, she is almost always ill-represented, ill-treated and ill-judged, and social workers have limited access to her.

The result is that in Lebanon, not a single maid who has been raped by her employer has seen the perpetrator sentenced to any kind of punishment, according to an NGO whose heads requested that it remain anonymous.

And there is the corruption. According to W, who was involved in the case and asked to remain anonymous, Beravo was put in jail during the investigation because the general prosecutor knew the family she worked for, although normally she would have been allowed to go to a safe house. Even before her allegations were declared false, Beravo was treated like a criminal, W said – a common situation for domestic workers who run away from their employers without their papers.

In the end, W says she was able to use every connection she had to make the perpetrator drop the case and allow Beravo to return to Madagascar.

No one but Beravo and the man she claims raped her know what happened for certain, and both sides have a right to defend themselves. But the way Beravo was assumed “guilty until proven innocent,” and the clear discrimination she faced throughout the investigation, reveals the inability and unwillingness of the Lebanese law and legal system to protect the truly weak.

After Beravo returned to Madagascar, the public prosecutor continued the trial, and she was sentenced in absentia to 10 to 12 years in jail for defamation, according to W.

W questions the results of an investigation based on information taken from Beravo when she was under stress, saying, “I know her. She was not lying… And you have to understand Malagasy people. Even if they don’t understand, they will say yes because they just want to please you. It’s in their culture.”

Hayeon Lee, NOW Staff , June 14, 2009

One of them was about to hit professor Friedman with his black helmet when he tried to take a picture of the thugs, but he was stopped by the other one. Apparently they had taken orders from their bosses to refrain from physical violence. When I called the same man a “fascist”, he turned to me in a threatening way and called out “Here it is Greece”, apparently implying that in Greece fascists are free to do whatever they like. Personally, I felt like reliving Bertolucci’s film 1900 (1976) documenting the rise of fascism in Italy, but also the lack of popular support for resisting the fascist movement. After that the fat leader ripped off the banner on the podium that had the name of the book in Greek and Macedonian and confiscated a copy of the dictionary. They tried to push everybody out of the room, yelling “It is finished, everybody out!” and also intended to take a picture of everyone in the room. But when they heard police was on its way, they swiftly left the building. Nobody was arrested, but later the commander of the police force told me they had accompanied them to the nearest metro station. When the presentation started there was no police to protect the event, but according to a member of the audience a police force was stationed in front of the building just before the invasion of the building by the Golden Dawn activists. A second police force, called upon by a member of the audience, arrived long after the fascists had left the area. The attitude of the Greek riot police that night raises serious doubts, to say the least, about their ability to protect academic freedom and freedom of expression, a basic human right guaranteed by the Greek Constitution. It confirms the claims made by serious newspaper, such as TA NEA, about the close relationships between part of the Greek police force and neo-fascist groups such as the Golden Dawn (see report published by TA NEA on 17/04/2004).
During the whole incident, both the audience and the panellists kept their calm and showed their resolve not to give in to their attempts at intimidation. After the fascist thugs had left the room, we shortly discussed the incident and then continued the presentation. The incident can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hVZYz_gH5k.

Independently of the specific occasion that led to the incident described above, we would like to alert international public opinion to the fact that Neo-nazi organizations such as the Golden Dawn present a serious danger to Greek democracy. They are increasingly involved in violent or even murderous attempts against immigrants, leftist activists and members of ethnic minorities. On 24 February 2009 a hand grenade was launched against the premises of a network supporting immigrants, just after Neonazis celebrated in Athens the anniversary of the foundation of the German Nazi party NSDAP. The Golden Dawn Party openly supports National Socialism and theories about Aryan purity. Members of the Golden Dawn participated in the Srebrenica massacre of Muslims during the Yugoslav war and were decorated by Radovan Karadzic, now due to be tried by the Hague Tribunal. They have also participated in racists attacks against immigrants in Athens and elsewhere. In September 2006 a prominent member of the Golden Dawn, Andonis Androutsopoulos, known as “Periandros” was convicted to a 21 years prison sentence for attempted murder against three left-wing students, while another member carried out a knife attack against participants in an antifascist demonstration in February 2008.
Still shocked by the brutal experience I have lived through, I would like to urge the international community and especially fellow academics to urge the Greek government to take measures against such violent actions which violate the Greek Constitution and international human rights legislation and to ban such dangerous formations as the Golden Dawn from parliamentary representation.

Riki Van Boeschoten
Associate Professor of Social Anthropology
University of Thessaly

Now, in Europe the extreme right wing, the enemies of otherness and diversity, are on the rise, based on that ritual. In Lebanon, the extreme right wing Christian parties won the elections too. Democracy is offering its enemies the rope to hang her.

For now, the healthiest attitude is to stop believing in that ritual. As the slogan goes, if the elections could really change things, they would have been illegal…