Beirut or Bust

In these last few days prior to departure, I find myself overwhelmed trying to address Christmas obligations while fretting over details regarding my upcoming journey. It has created a perfect storm  that has left me like a bunny in my own headlights.

If you want to find out how much of a control freak you are a good place to start is to plan a trip like this by yourself. Apparently, my control freakiness knows no bounds

I have researched every aspect of Turkey and Syria that I reasonably can, but my little foray into Beirut remains understudied, an ill considered dessert order after a spectacular meal.

However, I have been watching the news..................

I thought that this comment from afz at the Thorntree forum summed it up best. It seems to me that the violence in Beirut is either turned up to "11" or it is off.

In general it's perfectly safe for tourists, with the caveat that massive communal violence and/or aerial bombardment can break out with no notice at any moment. The Lebanese are generally very friendly, but they're all convinced, as they have been continuously for most of the last millennium, that catastrophe is imminent (and they're usually right). Barring war however, you'll have no worries. Street crime and personal attacks against tourists are both far less common than in Europe or the United States.

In The Beginning......

Image via WikipediaThe first chapter of Murder On The Orient Express does not begin on the Orient Express, it begins on the platform of the train Station in Aleppo, Syria.

And a lot of other things begin in Syria. Both Damascus and Aleppo lay claim to being the oldest continuously occupied city's in the history of humankind Let others flock to Italy or Greece or Egypt on their overpriced and generic tours, I'm putting my faith in Syria.

Istanbul is re-emerging as one of the great cities on the planet. Historically, Istanbul has always been a crossroads, a place where civilizations meet. In an increasingly globalized world Istanbul remains the conduit through which all history must pass, and the true interpreter of a global era.

Either way, I am nervous and excited.

I will try and keep you posted along the way, but many of the countries that I plan to visit block Twitter, Blogger,Facebook and Youtube.

30 Years And One Hour Ago

I can't exactly remember the weather that night, what we had for dinner or who was playing on Monday Night Football. My parents were recently divorced, and I was living with my father. We made a tradition out of watching MNF together after dinner.

And so it was on this fateful Monday that me and the old man made dinner and cleaned up and settled in to watch one of the most boring games ever staged in the history of the NFL. It was so boring that I retreated to my room early in the second half, and turned the radio on, something I had never done before.

Then the reports started coming in. In those days television was slower than radio. There was no CNN, no net, no nothing. If you wanted live news, you listened to the radio, and for much of the world, the radio is still it.

With my dial tuned to CFOX fm99 (The Fox Rocks!), the news began to trickle in. "We are getting reports that John Lennon has been shot in New York City".

At first, I thought that Lennon was some out of control rock star, given that he had been involved in many antics during his time in Los Angeles, and that his political beliefs had left him marginalised. I imagined him being grazed by a bullet at a cocktail party hosted by Andy Warhol and attended by Phil Spector.

As I lay in my room trying to comprehend, my father was a few feet away, watching this...



And I was hearing fragments of this on the radio.....



As I walked out of my room, I was shocked to see that my father was ashen. I said "did you hear?" He said "yeah, they just announced it".

John Lennon was just a man, but the idealism expressed through his music represents the highest aspirations of the human condition, and that is why we love him. He challenged humanity to be better, and was willing to admit that he didn't always practice what he preached.

And three decades on, I still miss the shit disturbing SOB.



http://www.goyestoeverything.com

Why I Love John Lennon

We are going to hear a great deal about John Lennon this week, and many tears will be shed about his unfortunate demise.

My main reason for my undying respect for Mr. Lennon is the fact that he was a man of principal. This film played at TIFF a few years ago, and is well worth a look. If you like the trailer, you can watch the whole thing here. Click on the link at the lower left.

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Happy Xmas!

http://www.goyestoeverything.com

WTF? Leaks Are Good, You Idiots!

When I was eight years old, I used to get mad with the television after school. It was 1973 and I was aghast at the fact that the local stations from Seattle had the temerity to show the Watergate hearings, thus pre-emptee Brady Bunch and my precious Gilligan's Island (btw its Mary Ann uber alles)

On an evening in 1974 my parents and I had dinner in front of the television. The rarity of this event was the fact that it was at my parents behest. Usually it was me and my older brother begging to have dinner in front of the TV from the PST so we could watch Ken Dryden and Guy Lafleur et al crush our underdog instincts so magnificently year after year.

But that night was different as we sat at our TV tables in the rec room . I wasn't watching a hockey game, I was watching Richard Nixon resign as president.

He resigned because of leaks that shone a light on the darkest corners of his humanity, which rightfully led to his resignation.

Woodward and Bernstein were celebrated for making that happen, the finest journalism a generation could offer. Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, which revealed the secret bombings of Cambodia, is also regarded highly.

Fast forward to 2010 and the slow rising tide of fascism. Apparently journalism is dead and anyone of you bleak, dreary, brain dead losers that pass yourself as members of the press will be given the compliance award so long as you keep your mouth shut.

Wikileaks is doing the world a great service. What shocks me is the obedience of the populace in supposedly "free democratic countries" to accept the idea that we are not worthy of listening in on the communications of those in power.

So much for that "All Men Are Created Equal" garbage, with apologies to the ladies. The real message here is that most people agree with the idea that people like you and me have no business knowing what those in charge are thinking.

Fuck them, fuck that and fuck you if you agree.

That is how we end up in a twisted world where people openly advocate for the murder of the last journalist left in this century. Hello and goodbye Julian Assange.

And when I set up my TV dinner in front of my computer to watch the story of Mr. Assange and his death,I will mostly think of how an age has passed when whistleblowers could bring down kings, while lamenting the compliance of a current time.

The real message of Mr. Assange and his upcoming demise is about the widespread acceptance of the idea that we have no business knowing what our "betters" are thinking or doing. In a "free society", these are the sorts of things that citizens have a right to know.

If only we lived in a free society.

Shame on us, our compliance, and our complicity.

Heil!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange

http://www.goyestoevrything.com