CHANCE ENCOUNTERS: THEY’VE HIRED PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS.

THIRD DRAFT--Newer and so much better--7/2/06

Happy Fourth of July!


This account has been fictionalized to protect the identity of spies, agents, spooks, and what have you of what Empire spins off of endless mediocrity.



THE LADY AT CLEVELAND PARK


An acquaintance once told me that when sweating after exercise, I should take off my T-shirt before going into an air-conditioned space. I followed his advice on a day a couple of months ago; in my haste, I ripped one lens off my eyeglasses. I searched for an old and imperfect pair and made my way eventually to my optometrist.

On the metro in Cleveland Park, a young woman struck up a conversation with me. She feigned newness to town; she was heading to “Besh-hesda” to help her sister in some health-related field, she said. Being young and not unattractive, I gave her an old professional card. Anything for the promise of reproductive access. When we arrived in “Besh-hesda,” she disappeared. I regretted accepting her overture.

Having hired private investigators for over fifteen years, I could tell later that she fit the type. But it didn’t matter, anyway.


PSEUDO FRIENDS AND PSEUDO ENEMIES

In his entertaining book, an anthropological gem, A Year in Casablanca, Tahir Shah, an Englishman of Afghani descent, is grateful to have left London in part because most of his friends there were “pseudo-friends”–-people who had insisted on befriending him. But these “friendships” had been shallow and ultimately meaningless. In contrast, while his complaints about Morocco were many, he did build a modest and fulfilling friendship with a poor and sick man, in the bidonville (shantytown) near his house. That friendship had more honor and warm reciprocity in it than all the “pseudo friendships” of bleak London.

In my case, in Empire’s capital, since I’ve started putting out this e-newsletter, I’ve developed what I will call “pseudo-enemies,” and have lost at least one pseudo-friend. By publishing the e-newsletter, I became the token Arab to a bunch of pseudo-friends. Since they had no Palestinians around them to wish them away, I became it. The pseudo-enemies are those who have staged chance encounters, eavesdropped on me by sending me a Trojan virus (through Faith), and now have hired private investigators to locate me so that they may stage chance encounters, yet again.

(Once, when a graduate student, I got a job offer in a little known college in Texas. A good friend who is (now, not then) a "high-powered" attorney in a fancy law firm explained it thus, "you'd be their token northener.")

OF NARCISSISM

“NO ONE REALLY KNEW IRAQ”

The most recent article in this newsletter, “Why We Should Leave Iraq,” spoke about an Arab man who appears tons on television. My anger with him was obvious. He had claimed on a television news show that no one really knew Iraq before the invasion--a patent lie. He was one of the academicians who played a role in laying the groundwork for the invasion of Iraq.


Why a lie? Those who grew up in Lebanon knew with absolute certainty that Iraq was a difficult country to govern. Non-uncle Tom Arabs had warned repeatedly, “Iraq is the fiercest of all Arab nations.” No one listened. Or, more precisely, they listened to those on the payroll and to those Arab academicians who tremble at the thought of being denied tenure should they say anything that could be construed as critical of Israel.

The “No one really knew Iraq” man had been studying his region of origin and informing on it for decades. Claiming therefore that no one really knew Iraq smacked of fraud. As a consequence, in “Why We Should Leave Iraq,” I criticized him using harsh words: “little bald man,” narcissistic.” I think I was justified in my anger but, as Buddhism teaches us, compassion should be our path. I have not been compassionate towards any of the right-wing Israel-centric and Israel-obsessed. Thanks to them, the Islamists have achieved victories (in Iraq, in Palestine, in Somalia–and it seems they’re on their way to a victory in Afghanistan, in spite of Secretary Rice’s assurances to the contrary.) These Islamists could not have dreamt of such victories before the aggression against Iraq. Worse, this aggression has created an environment where fires can be lit up all over the region, awaiting U.S. troops to extinguish them. And, we all know, there’s a dearth of these and of Western troops.

A few days preceding the start of the writing of this essay (I started writing on 6/28/06), the “No one really knew Iraq” man was made to stage a chance encounter with me on the corner of Wisconsin Avenue and Woodley Rd. He was in a small SUV; I was coming from Wisconsin Avenue onto Woodley, walking. His private investigators must’ve phoned him to move forward and make a right on Wisconsin Avenue as I made a left from Wisconsin Avenue onto Woodley Road. (You get it: right, left?)

( I now have another reason to be angry. This article and the one before it had consumed so much of my time that I couldn’t get to the piece I really wanted to write about the future direction of the Arab and Islamic opposition/resistance.)


ON TO WAR, BARKS THE EXTREME RIGHT. BUT, AFTER IRAQ, NO ONE IS LISTENING.


What is startling about the Iraq fiasco is that the populist Judeo-Christian right wants to continue on with mediocre policies. They insist. (I’m distinguishing this right wing from a number of smart conservatives who surrounded the former President Bush.)

For instance, a fellow from the right-wing American Enterprise Institute (AEI), who was given time to make a commentary on a market-oriented show on National Public Radio, developed an argument that Iran was the most important reason for the rise in oil prices.

That‘s another patent lie. At the risk of over-simplifying, and if I were to boil things down to their very essence, I would point to low interest rates as the most important reason for the rise in oil prices. These have fueled a terrific expansion here; and this terrific domestic expansion in turn fueled one in China, our factory. These expansions, by definition, required a lot more oil. That, along with the Iraq war, the insecurity it created, and the rush to speculate by a capital that was hungry for higher returns, drove the prices up to the current level. That–to address the AEI gentleman’s hidden agenda--in turn pumped money into the pockets of oil-rich American rivals--Russia and Iran. Which in turn allowed these two to have aggressive foreign policies. Something similar applies to affluent China, which had been swimming in huge surpluses. (I haven’t checked on China’s reserves in a while–but I suspect they’re probably in the range of a couple of trillions of dollars.)


At the risk once again of over-simplifying, the low interest rates, by fueling an oil-dependent worldwide expansion, enriched rivals and emboldened them. As a result, in the absence of a war tax, the new-found financial power of the rivals had the sorry effect of emaciating U.S. foreign military abilities in that U.S. troops had to face (I suspect) the money of rivals. U.S. troops were therefore made to go into into the field without a scenario that accounted for this possibility. What kind of imperial mandarins are these who, like the AEI genius, do not understand Empire's financial engine? Or try to?

The AEI fellow in essence was calling either for war against Iran or for policies which would be tantamount to war. Comical if it weren’t tragic, since American troops would once again be sent on a mission to fight a conventional war only to be surprised to have to fight a complex guerrilla one, thousands of miles away, with various ethnic/religious groups as allies a day, enemies another. All of this while no American politician dares mention the need to raise taxes to pay for wars, or enact the draft.

(Please don’t nauseate me by talking about counter-insurgency. In my book, this concept reeks of mediocrity. If you want to send U.S. troops anywhere, do politics first and foremost.)


THE HANDLED LEBANESE CHRISTIAN

Neither the “We didn’t really know Iraq” man nor the handled Lebanese Christian are important people–no offense meant. My authorship gives them importance because I feel they should know better, being Arab.

And I have a lot of affection and compassion for the handled Lebanese Christian.

In my first Chance Encounters series, I had described a chance encounter with an actual Israeli agent who met me (chance-encountered me) at the airport of my old vacation haunt. He seemed to be handling a Lebanese Christian cell, made up of Cuban-like expatriates, Lebanese Christians who had lived the civil war and who probably sat around and fumed about Asad, as Cubans about Castro. Having grown up Christian Maronite I can tell you that we lived in fear of Syria closing off its border to Lebanese products. Then the United States and its favored protectorate invited Syria to conquer Christian Mount Lebanon. The rest is history.

One Lebanese Christian man: I see him as an immigrant who has gotten stuck. His frame of reference probably is still Lebanon; but things have changed lots there since he left. This gentleman lived through horrendous times in Lebanon, times when the Lebanese Christians were being defeated and had sought Israel’s help as the American-controlled Army intelligence’s schemes to rein in the Palestinian resistance went awry. (See, “Lebanon; The Idiots Are Back.”)

At any rate, this man was made to stage a chance encounter with me on the corner of Rodman (a street that takes you into the Carlysle Group-owned apartment and condo complex) and Wisconsin Avenue, I (power) walking, and he in his non-metropolitan-area-plated not-recently-minted Japanese luxury car. I later regretted not having said hello to him; but it all went fast. He had squeezed himself behind the middle bar of his car, as if to hide, as if he were embarrassed that he had to do this to a fellow Lebanese Christian.


THE NAIVE ANGLO FRIEND--SORRY !

“That that---( country’s name)----intelligence would have such an interest in monitoring and intimidating you is really flattery,” said a (non-pseudo) friend. “Your newsletter–which you said you put out with the spirit of a graduate student–is being read and maybe they know something you don’t–maybe it has influence.” I nearly laughed. He doesn't know them, I thought. These guys are paranoid; they think everything is a threat. He continued, “I should actually re-consider your offer a few years ago to edit the newsletter.” He mulled it over then said with decisiveness, “Yes, I will re-consider.” I didn’t react lest I scare him away from the idea. I don’t have the money to pay him, but he doesn’t need it. He’s (filthy) rich. And I need an editor badly, since I typically continue to find gaps and mistakes in my prose weeks after I post an article. I’ve reached a point where I’ve stopped reading things I’ve posted knowing that I will find mistakes.


IDEOLOGICAL BOX: ISRAEL

I need not spend any time belaboring the fact that the American Judeo-Christian right has failed in Iraq and Afghanistan, miserably. The problem has been and continues to be that the smart ones among these ( that is, the ones who let their ambition get the best of their brain–think Wolfowitz) can’t seem to get out of their ideological boxes and have the courage to state, “We made a huge mistake.” And proceed to help here and in Iraq, to make amends, and to assure that the orphans and the maimed are cared for–-to give a part of their fat paychecks and trust funds to those American and Iraqi families whose existence has been so crushed by their ambitions and by their mediocrity.

When it comes to Israel, their rallying cry, it should be obvious to all that the Arab world and most of the Palestinians have come to terms with its existence, albeit that the Israeli right refuses to come to terms with the existence of the Palestinian nation. Only that the Jewish right’s support for the invasion of Iraq, and its willingness to provide a Jewish cover for the American imperial class and its crusaders, has set the acceptance of Israel back.

The Islamists have used that support as a mobilizing force of the Sunni Arab public. You need only consider the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic statements of Iran’s president to appreciate the usefulness of the Jewish right to the Islamists. (Ahmadi Nejad’s statements were meant mostly for the Arab Street.) The rallying cry within that street is that the Israelis and the Americans are out to make the Arabs “obedient.” (The word they use is “tatwi3,” as in “ita3ah,” obedience–to make obedient.)


COM'N YOU PEOPLE NOW...EVERYBODY GET TOGETHER, TRY...

“The Israelis and the Palestinians will be at it two hundred years from now,” is a mantra that is all too familiar among Arabs.

But that need not be the case. Those among the Israelis and the Palestinians who have a brain--that is, those who are able to have reproductive access without holding an important position or being sadistic (that’s usually the left)--should realize that one way out of this quagmire is to evolve economic interdependence between the two people, while shedding all the lands of 1967.

Here’s an example. A friend, an Israeli Palestinian, hired an assistant for his aging parents in Israel . He pays the Asian lady $800 per month, room and board included. He puts up with extensive (progressive) controls by the Israeli government of the working conditions of the Asian lady. Eight hundred dollars. For a Palestinian woman, that would be a fortune!

Now a woman like that in the Gulf would make nowhere close to $800 per month. If anything, a couple of years ago, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was negotiating with Vietnam and Cambodia to import help at the measly rate of $70 per month. As to progressive controls–-dream on.

(In Lebanon, an Asian lady brought in to help would be lucky if she made $160, including room and board. Controls over her working conditions do exist but they’re nowhere close to those in Israel.)

Wouldn’t it make sense if the $800 salary went to a Palestinian woman or man? Wouldn’t it be peace-inducing if Israel were in fact paying for the West Bank and Syrian water, seeing in this money an investment in inter-dependence and security?


IDEOLOGICAL BOX: LEBANON

The handled Lebanese Christian gentleman was made to stage a chance encounter with me by his friends. That gentleman, I suspect, has frozen in time. He began in politics as a way to protect the Christians of Lebanon and to fulfill his ambition as a possible leader of that community. (Problem: That’s a community where they all feel they are themselves leaders. Remember: We Semites invented the concept of “savior;” so delusion is our specialty.)

But the Christians had long been defeated, thanks in good part to the United States and Israel, which invited Syria to conquer Mount Lebanon.

I haven’t been to Lebanon in over three years, since my mother had become ill. But I used to go there once a year. What would strike me on these trips was how forgetful people were. You could almost say that they had amnesia: they looked at the civil war of the 1970s and 1980s as if it were an event that had taken place centuries ago. They’ve moved on. The handled gentleman hasn’t. (The very word for “person” is Arabic–-Insan-- has its origin in the verb “to forget”.)

What the Christians in Lebanon need is work and money. The Hariri Sunni have the money and the Shiite have the numbers and an overflow of them are on the government payroll. The Christians have nothing. The Americans’ horses in Lebanon are the Shiite (eventually, especially Berri) and Hariri. The Christians, like the Druze, have become relatively insignificant. And even if America wins in Lebanon, a big if, the Christian gentleman should expect to live a political life that is not central to Lebanon’s fate or future. It’s over for him, politically--no offense meant–-as it is over for so many junior Christian “leaders.”

[Why is Lebanon important to the United States now that the Crater Middle East initiative has met its death in Iraq? Russia is said to be planning to establish a permanent navy base in Tartous in Syria, which will be defended by an advanced missile system that would cover most of Syria.]

There’s a silver lining: the Christians, defeated, have gained something precious from that defeat. They have learned not to place their eggs in one basket. Geagea, the lesser Chritian leader, stands in the camp of Hariri (money),and Aoun (by far the more popular) has a memorandum of understanding with Hizballah (the majority.)

(Aoun, who I had never thought of much when a general, has grown into a seasoned politician who has forced me to respect him. He had turned the Christian street around and onto the path of survival--to the extent the Christians will stay in a Lebanon that has not much of an economy.)

Still, the Christians are impoverished.

When in Lebanon, I would hear countless stories about Christian Lebanese women heading to the gulf to engage in prostitution. That was confirmed numerous times by travelers I’ve met. If the Lebanese gentleman wants to help his community in Lebanon, he would do well to engage in raising money for the Christians there to create employment and honorable living. Allying himself so fully with his friends gets him into a conflict (Israeli-Palestinian) which may not see an end in our life time, and is of no help to his community. When the dust settles, the Christians of Lebanon, and Hariri’s Sunni, would never part with the Shiites of Lebanon. And all would have to accommodate their Palestinian Arab brothers and sisters, like it or not. And it’s highly unlikely, I’d say impossible, that the fast-growing Shiites (they are very fast growing) and the non-Hariri Sunni (think Tripoli and the north, who are the majority) would come to terms with an Israel that does not recognize a Palestinian state.

Aoun seems to have understood this. He also has understood that the Shiite, including Hizballah, a legitimate Lebanese party that is (too) an extension of Iranian foreign policy, never have turned their guns onto the Christian populace.

GIVE ME CARGO!

I don’t see myself as sectarian or into minorities in the Middle East. Minorities stay or go based mostly on economics, not persecution. There’s compelling historical evidence on that. And Lebanon doesn’t have the economic opportunities of yesteryears. Hence the importance of cargo from the diaspora.

To illustrate: An old Lebanese Christian man once reminded me that in the 19th century the Christians of Lebanon, whose population was increasing, were able to buy the lands owned by the Druze, whose numbers were decreasing, thanks to money sent to them by the Christians of Europe, through the Church. Now it’s the turn for the Shiite and the Hariri Sunni to buy the land owned by the shrinking Christians. (I suspect much of the purchased lands now, even when purchased in the names of Christians, really belong to Gulf Arabs.)

So, you see, the Christians have nowhere to go in a non-economy but to the societies of the tax-base in the West. No one is sending the Christians money. Their small country is in debt to the tune of nearly $36 billion dollars. Their only option is to leave. I can see it in my own family and close friends. Even those who had resisted leaving now are, or are sending away their children.

(I’ve always maintained that the Lebanese historically are a generation away from emigrating to the West.)

Talking in a way that the handled gentleman would understand: Taking on Israel’s cause (or Syria’s) ain’t good for nothing as far as the Lebanese Christians are concerned. Hizballah and the Shiite will burn Lebanon once again before they are made to split from Syria, and the handled man's relatives will flood him here as refugees. The Christians' best strategy is to lay low and wait it out.

Those who stay in Lebanon need to be Arab all the way, if only to avoid alienation and false hopes of an American or European rescue. The American people have been burnt by Iraq and the lies which led to it; and the Europeans--oh well, they're concerned about their pension plans.

And there's tons of good to being Arab. The gentleman should remember that throughout the Lebanese civil war, even after a Christian leader's men committed an unspekable massacre against Muslims and Palestinians (Black Saturday), there was not one single retaliatory act in the entire Arab World. Arabs looked at the massacre as yet another sign of brothers going insane. So there's a lot to say about the magnanimity of Arabs--ash-shahamah. Much more than can be said about his friends and their allies within friendly Arab intelligence services (think......) who spend their time collecting data on Tony Khater!

And those Lebanese who are here need to open restaurants and make oodles of money, or head to law school or medical school to preserve their independence and dignity.

Nor is harassing Tony Khater.

Such will not bring cargo to the Christians of Lebanon, or make them more secure. If it helps the Lebanese Christian gentleman’s career, I’d be glad to provide him with all the “intelligence” he needs to further his career with his friends. I can tell him a lot about my exciting life: my forever costly teeth, my expensive but super-competent dentist (we all love our dentists, don’t we?), my primary care physician (who I’ve never met; if anything, I'm given a nurse-practitioner), my sex fantasies (though his sponsors already know lots about that from the Trojan virus their agent Faith sent me), my trips to the doctors with my dad to interpret, my thoughts about my mother and how solid and balanced her mind was, and how loving of the poor she was (empathy which narcissists will never understand), how she loved "keeping Up Appearances" while I interpreted for her, the measly amount of money in my pension plan (Archie, a colleague, asked me not to worry about that; he opened the obituaries page in the Post, showed me all the dead people and commented, “they all had pension plans,”) my food preferences ( I claim to be a vegetarian, yet I find myself eating meat when I’m a guest or a host), ...you name it, so that his friends would have the fullest file possible.

I’m even willing to photocopy my ass for them, so they can see themselves, mirror-like.


That really should help them in their ceaseless effort to make obedient the Palestinians! Two hundred years!