DC, the chocolate city, of protesters and counter-protesters, immigration, asian tourist

There is no doubt that DC belongs to the black americans, with all their beautiful boisteressness, block after block of colorful Ethiopian diners, well dressed motorcycle riders, and variations in African-American fashion that I haven't seen on the west coast. The Chocolate City, as the funk group Parliament dubbed it, certainly is by no means a safe city, but even if I were mugged here I think I should still like to live here for a year or two.






With so much to do, and by "do" I mean "make fun of," i could be entertained for ages. After visiting the Air & Space Museum, dodging skateboarders (who must be thankful for a city built from marble laid out in broad steps and accompanying handrails) and tour buses filled with 8th graders, Jeremy and I ran into one of the many asian tourists crawling amongst the shifting herds of people holding brochures for museums. The asian tourst man asked Jeremy a little sheepishly if he would mind taking a candid picture as he strolled in front of some building. "Ofcourse," Jeremy replied. Instead of walking along the path as he would've done had this truly been a candid shot he instead decided to walk perpendicular to the path, parallel to the building that seemed to have little importance. He would pause in mid-step looking back at the camera, one foot frozen in the air. the result was the least looking candid shot of all set-up candid shots I've witnessed. I captured the moment in all its intentionality.


he was nice enough to take a photo of Jeremy and myself.




A few days later, Jeanette, an old friend of mine (also my host in DC), took me down to the Washington Monument in search of an anti-immigration protest that we had hoped to infiltrate, and by "infiltrate" I mean "sit with and take pictures of (and with)".

this man claimed, "I like to take pictures with pretty girls." He also had a swath of sunscreen that gave his face the appearance of man from England three hundred years ago who had forgotten his powdered wig at home.


On their website, the group claimed that the date of this protest would be known as "the second independence day" in the annals of American History. We arrived at the phallic symbol representing our country's current position of world dominance and could really only see south asian Indians dressed in either sky blue or orange sarongs. They sat in groups according to the color of their dress, some of the men wearing red or blue baseball caps with hindi writing and english that explained nothing of their purpose for congregating. I imagined the anti-immigration folks rumbling up the lawn pushing cherub faced Indian babies to the side shouting general non-sensical slogans about supporting our troops and practiced epithets about whoever might be stealing america at this time. It didn't quite work out that way. Jeanette and I sat on the lawn, I ate a veggie pita. She ate a nasty looking piece of pizza.



After some time we decided to take a walk around the premises and find these anti-immigration folks. We did. Welcome to the Second Independence Day!!! As the picture clearly illustrates this was to be a monumental day in DC history, if not the world:



Atleast sixty people strong, jeanette and I might've been a little intimidated at first, but we decided that, if asked, I was a philipino american who has just gotten back into the country, interested only in seeing what I've missed in politics these last few years.







"US Senators Breds Amnesty!" among many other things!!!


They spat the usual rhetoric about how amnesty for undocumented workers would ruin america, yadda yadda, but the real fun began when the counter-protesters arrived with their signs and plastic pail. Counter-protesting at its worst.




Compared to the goliath of the anti-immigration people these folks "pailed" in comparison. Atleast five people strong, plus a bicycle, one of their brood carried a sign stating, "CHANGE YOUR NAME, YOU ARE STILL THE KKK." The black man, a sympathizer with the anti-immigration folk, was pretty happy about that statement. Way to completely over-simplify and dehumanize on both sides.

The "Patriots" remained calm and eventually got back to doing their thing after the police came and removed the counter-protesters to a safe 200 feet away. Pointless really when you only have five people.


Except for that little political instance we've been doing nothing but relaxing and eating and drinking. Crabs last night, a play at the Kennedy Center the night before, and Jumbo slice the night before that.








Its a good town for hungry folk. keep on rolling.

beirut manara blast, broken windows, assassination of walid eido, atleast 8 dead

manara bomb, windows broken, lebanon, beirut, first bomb intent on killing.
Category: News and Politics

via my online life, I've just been speaking with marina and heard the horrible news that a bomb has just gone off less than a block away from the house I used to live in, the same house on Beirut's seafront that Marina is still living in now. Most news sites are reporting that the blast killed an anti-syrian lawmaker Walid Eido, his son, and his two bodyguards, plus a few innocent bystanders.

On a strange sidenote, there's this taxi driver who always parks at the beginning of the entrance to that area and though he would always try and rip me off I hope he wasn't parked there tonight.

The highest count of total deceased from this blast is ten, once again relayed to me via msn messenger from one of the coaches from GAM3. His profile picture is of him standing next to Saad Hariri, the son of slain former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. In case it's unclear, and I'm sure it still will be, Rafik Hariri founded the Future Movement Party who are staunchly anti-Syrian, the same party that Walid Eido belonged to. Coach Mohammed was obviously upset and shaken, "fuck Syria," "fuck them all." And though it may sound dramatic, Lebanese can come across that way, he wrote to me that, " we will not stop we want our freedom."

This isn't good. From what I can tell this is the first bomb in this most recent string of blasts set with the intent to kill and not simply scare. As I type this Marina is cleaning the glass from the broken windows in our bedroom and Ya Libnan is reporting that the amusement park across from where we live has been "totally destroyed." Marina disputes that last part, as she can see it across the street. She described her experience from the living room of our Caracas home via msn messenger, "you feel it in your stomach and it seems like it goes on forever." From our balcony she said that tons of windows all over the neighborhood are blown out, including the glass at our downstairs hamurger spot, Hani's Snack. Marina's a little shaken up, but she's fine and I should hear from her as soon as Charles finishes writing his blog on our computer. He's a familiar face around our house and happened to be at a cafe no more than 50 feet from the bomb when it went off.

As for myself, i've felt better. The feeling of helplessness is similar, but not the same as '06's summer Hezbollah/Israeli war. Last year, Marina and I were both in the states together watching the poor coverage of the conflict, but this time she's still there and this latest string of bombings has affected us far more directly than any of this has before. Luckily, I've only been back in the states about a week, so the my imagination isn't taking off. I'm very clear on the extent of the damage and have no fear of becoming overly worried.

As for the country of Lebanon, the lives lost and the structural damage caused so far could pale in comparison to the aftermath that this might all bring. It's safe to say that Lebanon is creeping closer to the abyss that is civil war, a conclusion that could leave this last summer's conflict overshadowed, a sidenote in the pages of history when we look back at this era for lebanon. Inshalla, cooler heads will prevail.

this pics were taken in the alley where the latest explosion went off, the same alley Marina and I would take relaxing walks to the tasty, if not deserted, Maharaja Indian Restaurant.

above: on the left you can see two cabs, they don't look too badly damaged so hopefully their drivers will be free to rip off tourists for the rest of their lives. On the right is the back wall of the Luna Amusement Park and above it (not in picture) is where the ferris wheel Marina and I took pictures from when we first got back to beirut in the fall. You can see them in my beirut photos album. Behind the building on the right is where the bumper cars were. Hopefully there weren't any kids riding around at the time.

Lebanese people help an injured man after a bomb exploded in a narrow street off the main waterfront in Manara
Sources: Ya Libnan, AP

I'm in DC right now and had a whole 'nother blog planned, but it'll have to wait.

Mexican Ninja, A Beirut day that will be funny a month from now, General Security retards

According to Lebanon's own news radio this country ranks among the worst when it comes to work week hours for government offices. From Monday through Thursday the Office of the Security General closes at two in the afternoon, except for Friday when it closes at noon to accomodate the Islamic friday prayer. So I made sure I was on the bus at 10:15 in the morning for the 45 minute ride to the center of Beirut, leaving me plenty of time to blow my lid/pop my top as I prodded and poked the idiot military bureacrat's for answers regarding the whereabouts of my passport that has now been in their custody for almost three months.

Upon arriving, I was greeted by a guard dressed in the gray camouflage uniform designed for city combat, but it seemed that the only action he's seen involves artillery of the sandwich, cookie, cake, and pie variety. He was eating a schwarma as he spoke to me. Incoming!!! He told me that the office was closing in three minutes at 11 am due to unknown factors and that I would have to circumnavigate the building and enter through the main entrance so I could speak with one of the officers upstairs. I wanted to tell him that it would be easier than circumnavigating his waist line. Zing!

I got upstairs and saw the same faces I've come to know over these last few months. They've become familiar to me like a dentist to a candy-addict, except that I'm attempting to extract information about my passport rather than teeth while they're apparently in the process of extracting me from this country.

Today, not in the most direct words, I was accused of being a spy. And though it IS pretty cool that not just some random joe-lebanese dude, but the government itself, would confuse me with someone who is capable of "covert-ops" I realize that this is a matter I cannot take lightly. Five days. They told me I have five days to leave the country, but after some angry faces and mistranslations I was able to explain to them the meaning of the word "impossible." How am I to change my ticket in five days when my travel agent is on vacation nowhere to be found? . . . not to mention her base of operations is in Anaheim.

I left the building with a three week grace period . . . minus my passport. That leaves me three weeks to jostle my way into the government's good graces and eventuallt let me exit this country on the ticket I came in with. Want me to patrol the Israeli border? I'll do it. Need me to help in the reconstruction of the big bridge that was bombed on the way to the Bekaa? I'm there, just let me stay to see out what I had originally come to do . . . watch Marina graduate.
My cab took me to the doctor's office pretty quickly for the amount of traffic that crowded the streets and I'd like to say that that made me happy, but I was on my way to be fitted for a brace intended on stiffening my ankle after spraining it, itself a result of a recently sprained knee buckling whilst playing basketball. I arrived to meet the doctor a little early, he was nice enough, but he made arrangements for me to walk four blocks to pick it up because in his own words, "I didn't want to make you wait the half-hour it would take to deliver it."

After hobbling around for a half hour on my sprained ankle, eventually I found the building, limped in, and was greeted by the woman who worked there. She asked me if I was Miguel. I said yes. She asked if I was Japanese. I replied that I was not and that "I am constantly being confused for Japanese and Chinese, but I'm Mexican." Maybe it was the inflection I used when uttering the word "constantly" or perhaps it was my face which betrayed my frusteration, but I could tell she felt bad and explained that the doctor had told her to look out for a Japanese guy. Before I leave, which may be sooner than expected, I'm gonna' get one of the full-body black chadoors that the Yemeni women wear, wash it, then dry it like a hundred times on the warm setting until its nice and snug around my body, buy some throwing stars, and prance around Hamra like a ninja, like a stumbling chubby mexican fucking ninja.

American Passport in Beirut, Lebanese Humor, japanese terrorist

Moments ago I was in a cramped cab sharing the car with three middle aged business men in suits, one of them using english as if he picked it up from a Radio Shack commercial, peppering the conversation in arabic with words like "optimum" and "number one on the market." My head was on the window and my mind was going back to a conversation I had with my Swedish journalist roommate, something about how hard it is to remember what people would find interesting to read about back home after being here for this long. The traffic was pretty bad on the one way street that would be considered three lanes wide in the states, that's if Lebanese drivers actually remained between the lines. It was becoming ridiculous, we hadn't moved for almost five minutes so the cabbie turned off the engine of his beat up BMW. It shut down without a complaint while the driver struck up conversation with people in the cars beside us. From the arabic that was spoken, I was able to figure out that something was going on in front of us. My youth spent in California traffic could've told me that.

We made progress, a few meters here . . . ten meters there. After a half an hour we had finally reached the peak of the hill and that's when I realized that all the side roads leading from this main street had been blocked off by the military. We had go straight.
Tanks were staggered along the avenue in a pattern that forced every vehicle to weave between them in a single file line. As I caught my first glimpse of the checkpoint, my first thought was that a politician had been killed somewhere in the city while I was tutoring the Jung Yun and Ji Yun. I've never been interviewed, much less been in a car that's been pulled over before. My previous experience told me that there was nothing to worry about.

Five minutes later:

I'm sitting on the side of the road staring up at the soldier who I think is asking me where my passport or I.D. is, but he's speaking arabic and I have no idea what he's saying. He says "Yaboni" a few times with a questioning look on his face to which I reply, "La Japan. U.S.A." My arabic basically non-existent, but getting my point across. I've already paid the cab driver and told him he could go on without me. The business men stared back at me through the rear windshield as the first soldier grabbed my arm.

There's a paddy wagon, aka a truck with a fence around the bed, parked across the street. Young Lebanese men are sitting in the back of that thing wondering what the fuck is going on, scratching their heads and telegraphing windmill-like gestures at the soldiers with their hands, in a way I've only seen arab men do. A soldier who speaks English finally takes the photo-copy of my passport and the slip I've kept with me that proves that the government still has the hard copy. He examines it and tells me, "there's a problem." I'm looking at that paddy wagon like damn, watching the young people passing on the sidewalk as they get stopped and frisked, a few of them arrested and thrown into the back of the truck apparently for doing nothing more than leaving their I.D.'s at home. I'm thinking about the fake-gun I took my picture with when Brian was here, and how it doesn't seem so funny anymore when a soldier has an automatic pointed in my general direction, just enough to send the very clear message that I'm not to move until told.
I try to explain to the soldier that the reason I don't have my passport is because the government still has it, and that I was actually just there today to see if I could pry it from their sticky fingers, but his only response is to tell me that he learned his English in Jordan. He asks for the cell phone of another soldier and calls someone, apparently someone from the office of immigration. He gets off the phone as I'm putting my Ipod in my backpack, preparing to jump up on the truck. Then, with a stern look etched into his young face, he says, "I'm sorry . . . . .," pauses for dramatic effect then finishes the sentence " . . . for keeping you. You're free to go."

Funny guy.

I still don't even know if anything actually happened in the city or if this is all part of an attempt at tougher security. None-the-less I'm about to google my part of the world right now.

gaps in the BBC and CNN news regarding Beirut, Lebanon, explosives found, pro basketball

From looking at BBC and CNN I noticed a little gap in the news coverage about the goings-on in Beirut. My Pop has a CNN alert that sends him an email whenever there's an article containing the words "bombing" and "Beirut," but I don't think he'll get a message about this. So I figured I'd fill in the blanks using the Daily Star as my guide, though it's not always the best, atleast it's in english.
It started last week with the discovery of two kilo's of TNT found in a tire sold to a mechanic. The tire was found near the Arab Univeristy where the second of the most recent riots took place. Some abandoned tires can fetch as much as six dollars, decent money for someone without much. A day or two later, nine kilo's of TNT were found stashed in a dumpster in the Achrafieh district, a primarily well off Christian neighborhood, home to many of the Phalange and Lebanese Forces supporters. After the recent blasts that destroyed two buses, injuring 20 and killing 3, people have been a little on edge but many feel that these latest discoveries were meant to be found, in an attempt to scare rather than actually explode. Inshalla.
However, this weekend in an abandoned apartment building in Ras Beirut, 20 kilo's of C-4 were found, the equivalent of 100 kilo's of TNT. The explosives had been found on a floor once rented by a man named Jamil Shamali, a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, now living in Achrafieh. The police went to his house, but he was not there. Later that Saturday night, another explosive was found outside the home of Ajaltoun Mayor, Khalil Tabet, with a note threatening the same fate as Saddam Hussein for some undisclosed Arab leaders. Then, in Tripoli, a box of grenades was found, not something all that scary, but it's the suicide bomber belt accompanying it that makes this new find all that more ominous.
But not to worry, our world has not been affected by this new news. We went to a Lebanese pro-game yesterday, our team Riyadhi showing off their new small forward, former NBA shooting guard Dion Glover. He had thirty three points before the first string team was pulled, at that point Riyadhi was beating the opposition by a margin of almost 40 points. I've been teaching and Marina's been thinking real hard about her thesis. We saw The Prestige last weekend, it appealed to the nerdy kid in me who likes magic and the adult in me with its dark and twisted story. peace in the middle east.

Tony the man, Beirut and a different set of rules, a day at the race track, lebanese wasta

These days its nice to be picked up by a car that isn't a cab, especially when it's driven by a man named Tony, the head of sports for the Beirut Municipality Board (he's in charge of a lot of the goings-on in the athletic arenas across the city), saving us from a Sunday of potential boredom and delivering us into the laps of luxury and corruption. My roommate Mac met him during his ongoing work as spokesman for an NGO looking to set up a Lebanese youth Basketball Tournament.

Mac, Marina, and I jumped into his Sedan just after noon. His varicose veined nose greeted me in the rearview mirror. He greeted me and gave me a polite look until he met marina's eyes the same way. He looked at her longer, smiled bigger, and well . . . I think he also noticed her boobs.

As the four of us drove to the Hippodrome Horse Track, I realized that this was the nicest car I had ridden in for months, and as I gently fingered the leather mid-seat armrest I began to wonder how it was that my friends and I occasionally find ourselves in the company of the elite Lebanese. Perhaps as Americans, we're considered upper-class and are not necessarily confined to all the social constructs of Lebanese Society, and though I sometimes feel like nothing more than a curiosity to them, at least I get the chance to see and do things I never would if I were in the States – like listening to Tony recommend betting on the first and third horse in the seventh race to his friend over a cell phone, even though Tony owned a horse in that race, which was neither of those two. He explained, "I don't care about winning. I will ask my jockey not to win."
We drove through the gates and into the track parking lot, dirt and asphalt crunching beneath the tires, everyone from the guy selling racing sheets on the street to the armed soldiers patrolling the grounds, waving to our host. Tony pulled into the closest spot next to the VIP entrance as he explained to us that it wouldn't look right if he had his name next to the horses he owned on the racing sheet, so he put his friends or families names. Did I mention he's also the manager of the track itself? He is. Now, he didn't come right out with it, declaring that these races to be crooked, and by judging the tone in his voice, he didn't really seem to think that there was anything wrong with what he was doing. He confessed some of the inner workings of the track with no hesitation, as if we were people who share the same world view. Not that I'll ever be excepted as Lebanese, even if I do learn fluent arabic (which people say takes atleast seven years) I'll generally considered to be of Asian origin in the image oriented society.

Our little trio of Americans walked ahead of Tony, while well wishers, big shots, and most everyone in between shook his hand, right up until the moment that we were waved into the VIP elevator. He kept his eyes on Marina, flashing her smiles, not the perverted kind, but the kind that are designed to remind people of his power. It was a confident smile on the face of a sixty year old man who's probably never been considered handsome in his whole life. I noticed that Tony was holding an expensive looking cigar and ventured to ask what it was. He answered, "It's a cigar." Then he told Marina that she was a beautiful girl while he patted Mac on the chest, giving props the way fathers congratulate their sons, away from the eyes of mom. I'm sure it was an odd moment for us all.

Once on the upper-most floor, Tony led us through a few rooms until we were in the VIP lounge itself. He sat us at a plastic table (this is still Lebanon after all) next to the viewing window, surrounded by guido looking characters in suits and scarves and slicked back hair, and with out much time until the first race, he told us that he had to tend to some things and left us. Of course, before he went, we did get "recommendations" from Tony on every race scheduled for the day. After all, we're not retarded. Did I mention Tony is also the Director of the Lebanese Olympic Committee, the non-elected one?

We figured we'd watch the first race without betting, to check and see if all this was for real. Sure enough, horses two and three both placed just like Tony said they would. We bet on the second race and guess what? We won.
Below us, the shebab who had placed bets whooped and whirled their shirts through the air in either dismay or elation, but their excitement couldn't have been much more than our own, as we had just come to realize that, even if it was only for a few hours, we were playing by a different set of rules.

lebanon, beirut, busy people, hizbollah march, Free Patriotic Movement, Lebanese Forces

sorry to blow up the blog-o-sphere, but shit's been going down, not that I've witnessed anything from my seaside apartment. It's been business as usual: teach some koreans, teach some more koreans, take the hard earned money from my friends in texas hold 'em.

I wrote this in a hurry so it might be a little unclear in some spots, but I was also weirded out because just across from us in the cafe we left only minutes ago, two latino's who looked semi-familiar, like berkeley familiar, kept staring at us. We didn't really know where we knew them from so we did nothing. Who the hell are they???

Whoever they are I hope they know what they're in for. People have been busy in this part of the world.

· On Monday, bottles were thrown at the Aounists (Free Patriotic Movement, the Christian group aligned with the opposition: Hezbollah, Amal, etc.) as they attempted to replace the banner of their leader, Aoun, in Sassine Square (a block from where Marina and I saw Borat) that was "torched and torn down by the LF (Lebanese Forces) after last week's assassination of Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel." Apparently hundreds of LF members, mostly young men accompanied by a few men in their fifties, hassled the Aounists and instigated fisticuffs until as many as 2000 troops and special police forces diffused a situation that could've turned ugly.
· The US got into the mix this week when Bush accused Damascus and Iran of "undermining the government in Lebanon," but when John Bolton was asked about a letter sent to the UN Security Council on Friday by the Syrian Government suggesting "Damascus may not cooperate with the tribunal because it was not consulted on the plan." He deflected the question by saying, "They haven't cooperated adequately from the beginning…" true enough, but that's being pretty rough for a country who refuses to even to have diplomatic relations with Syria.
· Tuesday, the Daily Star reported that the leader of the Syrian group Al-Tawheed Wal Jihad, "one of several militant organizations pursued by the Syrian Authorities," blew himself up as he attempted to cross the Syrian-Lebanese Border armed with a pistol and as many as nine fake I.D. cards. No one else was injured.
· also on Tuesday, "two loud explosions were heard by the residents who live near Maisera Mountain . . . in the Eastern Bekaa Valley." Residents in the area claimed the PFLP (Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine), now operating out of Syria with a training camp in the Bekaa valley area, cordoned off the blast zone in order to avoid injuries. Who knows what those guys are up to out there. Getting ready? …and if so, for what?
· An-Nahar reported on Tuesday that pro-Syrian "Fatah-al-Intifada" "posts" at the Nahr Al-Bared Refugee Camp in the North of Lebanon had been taken over Monday by a group calling itself "Fatah-al-Islam," considered by many as Al-Qaeda's branch in Lebanon. We already know that Al-Qaeda has been in Lebanon at least since last year, and more recently Robert Fisk has written an article in which he talked about the videos he's witnessed in which young Sunni men from the north of Lebanon pledge themselves to Al-Qaeda in Iraq as they cross the border into Syria, the stepping stone to the war, but this is an odd move.
· . . . and perhaps the most disturbing news of the day: Lebanese Forces Media denies that nine LF personnel with US and Israeli made weapons were arrested Monday. LF claims that the men in question were the bodyguards of Pierre Daher (not to be confused with the recently assassinated Pierre Gemayel), the general manager of satellite TV station LBCI. However, An Nahar and other media outlets reported that the nine men were veteran's of LF's "Collision and Swat" squad, "which gained notoriety for it's actions during the civil war," and were arrested during a training exercise in which "the men were shooting at targets from moving vehicles." hmmmmmm. Local daily papers reported the seizing, not just of US and Israeli weapons, but of maps leading to Michel Aoun's home and Michel Murr along with "unspecified monitoring systems." The Daily Star claims that the group has been "monitored by Lebanese Army Intelligence for quite some time."

Seriously, when I think of the "Lebanese Army Intelligence" I think of some fat guy sitting in a car, cursing in a mix of Arabic and French, smoking cheap cigarettes, becoming tangled in the strap of his binoculars whenever he reaches for his pack on the dash board. None-the-less this is weird, this is the same side that mourns the death of the recently assassinated Gemayel, practicing the same techniques that he was killed with using US and Israeli weapons, how odd. Remember, this is the same group, and the only group, who had the backing, that's right, THE BACKING of Israel during the civil war.

. . . on a sidenote, Marina just received an email from Timur Goksel, former spokesperson for UNIFIL with the info that Hizbollah will be staging their rally within the next 48 hours, most expect it to take place after the friday prayers.