<i><b>BAREED MISTA3JIL: TRUE STORIES
BY MEEM
bareedmista3jil.com, 2009</i></b>

Bareed Mista3jil—roughly translated as “Express Mail”—is the perfect name for this collection of 41 personal stories by “lesbians, bisexuals, queer and questioning women, and transgender persons from all over Lebanon.” I waited by the door for my copy to reach me, with its urgent evidence and affirmation of affectionately-dubbed “Lesbanese” lives in process.

from The Independent They slept in tents. They slept on the pavements last night. Lebanon is cold in winter. Not as cold as Ukraine but the frost that has lain over Lebanon these past 29 years is without temperature. Never has the red, white and green Lebanese flag been used as so poignant a symbol of unity. Only a few hundred metres from the encampment, Rafik Hariri was killed. And so, the Lebanese are supposed to believe, the murder of the former prime minister has unleashed the "cedars revolution". The cedar tree stands at the centre of the Lebanese flag. With the resignation of the pro-Syrian Lebanese government, the equally pro-Syrian President, Emile Lahoud, was looking last night for a "caretaker" government ­ without much success.

On Feb. 27 the unpopular, pro-Syrian Lebanese government announced a ban on all demonstrations, and the illegality of an already 2 week's long sit-in in Martyrs' Square. The Lebanese Army was deployed, blocking all entrances to the square. The Opposition, a political grouping of convenience spanning most of Lebanon's sects and held together by their goal of ousting Syrian control, called on people to defy the ban. Over the course of the night the sit-in grew from 200 people to over 7,000. That morning, as word went out that the Lebanese Army was not actually stopping people from entering the square, 30,000 - 50,000 more entered. On Feb. 28 - exactly two weeks after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri - the government resigned.

from Informed Comment It is often pointed out that presidents get too much praise and blame for the economy, since the domestic economy has its own rhythms. We are now going to see everything that happens in the Middle East attributed to George W. Bush, whether he had much to do with it or not (usually not). What is now Lebanon consists of relatively hilly territory along the eastern Mediterranean coast. The abrupt rise of the land from the sea to the mountains is what led the French to refer to it as the Levant (i.e., "the rising (land)." The mountains allowed small and often heterodox religious groups to survive, since the mountain inhabitants were relatively isolated and central governments had a difficult time getting hold of them.