Lost in Translation: Oh Dear, Hizb ut-Tahrir

Scrolling the website of the caliphate loving, supposedly pacifism professing, pan-Islamic organization Hizb ut-Tahrir BEIRUTSTATEofMIND happened upon this rather interesting profession backed by images of Pakistani political figures. An excerpt from the Hadith of the Prophet Mohammad BEIRUTSTATEofMIND couldn't help thinking that something had got a bit lost in translation. Since when did holes sting people? Zardari looks happy enough though. Maybe Hizb ut-Tahrir think he's a "believer"? Seems somehow doubtful.

Ahmad Qassas, Media Director of the Tripoli branch of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Lebanon. He might not
even have been stung once. Tripoli, April 2013. 

An extract from BEIRUTSTATEofMIND's interview with Ahmad Qassas:

BSoM: So Ahmad, does Hizb ut-Tahrir accept donations from external donors?

Ahmad: Hizb ut-Tahrir refuses funding from anyone and everyone.

                   

Whether the donations are offered from the West or the East. We only take funding through oUr youth groups and internally from supporters of the party.

BSoM: In 2009 Hizb ut-Tahrir accepted a grant in excess of £100,000 from the British state for the building of a number of Islamic schools in various London boroughs via the Islamic Shaksiyyah foundation whose lead trustee was Yusra Hamilton - a leading Hizb activist and wife of the party's chief spokesman in Britain, Taji Mustafa.

[CHECK THE LINK HERE]

Given the party's stance on external aid and donations how would you jutify this? 

Ahmad: (long pause...)Hizb ut-Tahrir doesn't take a single dollar. It's not true.

BSoM: Thanks Ahmad.

Beirut be buggin' out

Seasons change, mad things re-arrange. It's bug season in Beirut.

And BEIRUTSTATEofMIND be buggin' out.

A portrait from Antep

A couple weeks back BEIRUTSTATEofMIND had the pleasure of visiting the Turkish city of Gaziantep - en route to some reporting in the Aleppo province of Syria. An hour and a half dolmuc (bus) journey from Kilis, from where we crossed into Syria, Gaziantep acquired the epithet "Gazi" (War Hero) in 1973 to commemorate the city's succesful defence against French troops eager to add Turkish lands to their holdings in Syria and Lebanon in 1920. Most Turks simply refer to the city as "Antep."

Antep is also renowned for its famous fistik (pistachio) - something which BEIRUTSTATEofMIND had the pleasure of enjoying again and again although having overdosed quite severely on Ulker's finest chocolate fistik on a visit to Diyarbakir last year that resulted in some quite severe hallucinations during an in-bus screening of "Battleship" - dubbed in Turkish, the main culinary revelation of the trip was found in the simple pleasures offered by tost.

Due to its proximity to Aleppo province Gaziantep and the surrounding area has witnessed an increasing influx of Syrian refugees. Purportedly as of April 15 2013 there were 31,000 refugees registered in Gaziantep, with a further 13,500 in Kilis, and 90,000 in Sanliurfa. This figure is a conservative estimate, as many Syrian citizens -who lack passports - smuggle themselves across the Turkish border and do not seek registration.

Antep provides home not only to civilian refugees, but Syrian charities active both in Turkey and in Aleppo province and members of the Syrian opposition - some stationed in the city permanently and others who frequent the city for short breaks before returning to their brigades across the border. 

A particularly unexpected highlight of the trip came during a visit to the offices of a Syrian charity that had set up shop in in a third floor block in the Karagoz district of Gaziantep - where it was revealed by the charity's head that one of the first priorities upon moving into the facility has been to set up a Syrian hairdresser's. 

BEIRUTSTATEofMIND could somewhat understand this example of the difficulties one faces enculturating in a new environment. Something is not quite right when it comes to hair-dressing culture in Antep. One Friday night 10 minutes shy of midnight, returning from a tost & efes mission BEIRUTSTATEofMIND passed by two hairdressers completely full. The clientele? 18-25 year-old men.Given the time and place the main question that came to mind was:

"Really? Now?"

Dismissing the sighting as a freak incident it was only later discovered that this late night barberry was in fact an established youth culture. BEIRUTSTATEofMIND couldn't help thinking that the below pictured mansdem would not have been frequenting such gatherings in his hey day.

Mansdem, Gaziantep, March 2013.

Fresh Tobacco, Gaziantep, March 2013. 

We love bread, Gaziantep, March 2013.

Approximately 50% of male hair salons in Gaziantep display images of Brad Pitt in their shop-fronts, a similar
phenomenon can be found in Beirut. Gaziantep, March 2013.

Lolipop demonstration, Gaziantep, March 2013.

Chin-strap and bee-bee gun, Gaziantep, March 2013.

C. Ronaldo, Gaziantep, March 2013.

Shabab and Recep, Gaziantep, March 2013.

Beside the Masjid, Gaziantep, March 2013.

Visually impaired Assad tag

The below tag can be found beside the Electricite du Liban building on the Mar Mikhael side. On the right beneath the visually-impaired Bashar it reads: "The people overthrow the system."

On the left: "In memory of the Free Syrian Revolution whose ideas have become imprisoned in Saudi jails."

Visually impaired Bashar, Mar Mikhael, 23/04/13.

And one from the vault:

"Crown of the Nation," Hamra, Summer 2011.

Al-Mustaqbal, Kilts and Virility

A quite unexpected offering from al-Mustaqbal today in which the Lebanese March 14 paper reveals that a research team from the  University of Erasmus in Rotterdam recently discovered that wearers of kilts are more virile than your average man. Apparently rocking a kilt "provides an optimal environment for sperm to live:"

.وأشار العلماء إلى أن هذه التنانير من دون ارتداء البنطلون تحتها توفّر بيئة مثلى للحيوانات المنوية كي تعي 

Al-Mustaqbal's source for the article: The British Daily Mail - good to see someone at the Future team is scanning the British tabloids for pick-ups. Shame they missed the one about the rabbit that is capable of wearing many different kinds of hats, the other day.

(Check the Al-Mustaqbal article, HERE)

Attempts to modernize the kilt have mainly lead to the wearers looking like twats.

Syria Diaries: Jabhat al-Nusra, Beards, and Smoking: The Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Syrian People

Abu Jood, a former electrician and now member of Jabhat al-Nusra, on patrol in the town of Mayer in the
Aleppo countryside, March 2013.

Sitting at a checkpoint on the outskirts of the village of Mayer in the Aleppo countryside, Abu Jood, a former electrician who fought with the Free Syrian Army before joining the Islamist group Jabhat al-Nusra, sports a camo baseball cap, finely coiffured salafi beard, and an all in one blue NIKE tracksuit. Abu Jood decided to join the Nusra Front due to what he perceived as a higher ethical standard within the group - something for which Nusra are also admired for amongst many of the inhabitants of the Aleppo countryside.

"When the war started people began growing beards," says Abu Jood surveying the damage wreaked by a recent government aerial bombardment off Mayer's main thoroughfare.  "Increasingly people are wearing beards. It is a sign of piety."

"But it is not neccesary to have a beard to join Jabhat al-Nusra," he remarks casually before lighting up a cigarette, in clear breach of Nusra ethical principles.

"Today, it’s my day-off. Its normal. I am going to smoke. Of course when I am with my brigade I don't smoke."

The growing influence of beards in the Syrian opposition since the beginning of 2013 has been interpreted by many critics as a principle factor in the international communities hesitancy to supply armed aid to support the insurgency against embattled Alawite President Bashar al-Assad. Mainly focused in the Aleppo province there have been growing reports in the international media that beards have now become a "national phenomenon" in the Syrian opposition. Reports that sync with the Assad regime's vilification of the FSA in the media as a terrorist organization bent on establishing a caliphate based on the principle of a homogenized beard culture.

In the Aleppo countryside not only has wearing beards become increasingly prevalent. Displaying beards on mobile phones has also become an established culture.

Shaab, a former clothes retailer whose shop was destroyed by government shelling displays an image of his
former beard on his mobile phone. March 2013.

Sitting in his family home in the border town of Azaz - Shaab a former clothes retailer, proudly displays his former beard on his mobile-phone.

"When the regime troops started fighting the FSA here in Azaz I didn't know what to do," says Shaab - a non- combatant whose younger brother fights with the FSA in Aleppo. 

"I remember I grabbed the shotgun we used to use to shoot pigeons...After that we sold my brother's car to buy some weapons."

Shaab intimates that whilst at times he yearns for his beard, he has no regrets regarding his decision to discontinue wearing it.

 "Sometimes I miss my beard, but it didn't suit me. I liked growing it when the revolution started but it is better without it," says Shaab, his eyes fixated on the screen of his phone. 

Shaab intimates that his growth of a beard had little to do with an increase in faith brought on by Syria's civil conflict. Pointing to yet another still of his former beard on his mobile phone, he jokes.

"Look. Jabhat al Nusra." It is a fairly common joke.

"According to Jabhat my jeans are haram, my red jumper, the gell in my hair, this cigarette in my hand, this music," he says before querying with himself as to whether there is in fact a Christian brigade within the notorious Jihadist group.

"No, I think they are just European," he decides after a 30-second pause.

If I want I can still look at it (his beard) - on my phone, on Facebook." 

Abu Jood (far left) with other members of his brigade in the Sakhur neighbourhood of,Aleppo, March 2013.

 In the Sakhur neighbourhood of Aleppo, Abu Assir a member of the Ahrar al Sham brigade of the FSA stands with others from his brigade. He is the only one of five sporting a beard, others in the group prefer moustaches. Assir explains that with ongoing clashes and aerial bombardment beards are not a priority for all.

"You can't go down this street. We call it the Street of Death. There is an Iranian sniper there. You kill one sniper, another 10 will come," says Abu Assir walking away from the Street of Death on to safer ground.

"In a true Salafist beard you shave the moustache, shorter than the beard," he explains drawing an example diagram for BEIRUTSTATEofMIND. It is not unlike his own.

Back in Azaz, mobile phone images of beards are once again on display.

"What's the difference between a protest and a strike?" asks Amr, sidetracking BEIRUTSTATEofMIND's attempts to explain the concept of "Movember", as he leafs through a dual English-Arabic dictionary.

Amr fought with the FSA in Aleppo province for six months. After two of his friends and fellow comrades were killed in combat, the former English major, returned to civilian life. He know works in the Azaz Press Office. He too is keen to scroll through an assortment of photos on his mobile phone of his time wearing a beard with the FSA.

"Alot of people grow beards, it’s like a fashion," he says as a group of his friends gather. "Not everyone who wears a beard is a Salafist or even that religious. It is just what people do."

Abu Assir, drawing an archetypal Salafist beard.
Aleppo, March 2013.

In the small Sunni town of Bayanun, 15km from Aleppo, talk is not always light-hearted when it comes to beards. Some people take beards very seriously. Amongst them is Hulal, a member of the Ansar brigade of the Free Syrian Army. 

"There will be no implementation of homogeneity in the nation's beard culture once Assad falls. These are merely rumours the regime spreads to scare the people," states Hulal, owner of a fine moustache-less beard replete with a light smattering of henna."Some (in the FSA) have strict principles but they will respect others."

"There are many people with moustaches in the Free Syrian Army," he concludes before departing.

As the Syrian Civil War continues unabated thoughts have turned towards the potential power struggles that could take place in Syria after the fall of the Assad regime. In Aleppo province, the growing prominence of beards both in the armed opposition and in popular mobile culture may be interpreted by some as a worrying development in the battle for the "hearts and minds" of the Syrian people, perhaps regardless of the motives of many of the wearers.

Back in Mayer, sunset is beginning to fall. A couple of members of the local FSA brigade finish their shift, and head home as others arrive to replace them. Abu Jood, shifts from one foot to another, searching in his pocket before pulling out another cigarette.

"I want to smoke the pack because I am joining Nusra again tomorrow," he offers nonchalantly before saying his peace. 

A member of a local  FSA unit takes a break in Bayanun, March 2013.

Tagging Beirut: The PSP (Progressive Socialist Party)...

These tags, inked by supporters of Walid Jumblatt's Progressive Socialist Party - the secular, non sectarian party mainly supported by Druze were spotted in the vicinity of the AUB campus near Ain Mreisseh. Noticeably the tags not only feature Kamal Jumblatt, founder of the party, assassinated in 1977 in an act in which many suspect Syrian collusion; but also Gebran Tueni, the former politician and editor of An-Nahar, killed in a 2009 car bomb - another act in which Syrian complicity is widely suspected.

Kamal and Gebran, vicinity AUB, March 2013.

The famed PSP logo, vicinity AUB, March 2013.

Kamal and Gebran (2), vicinity AUB, March 2013.

Kamal, vicinity AUB, March 2013.

Syria Diaries: Sectarian enmity in Aleppo province

A farmer in Bayanun stands beside a shell case in his garden that he says was fired from the neighbouring

 town of Nabul. Tensions between the formerly amicable communities have been pushed to breaking point

 by Syria's civil conflict. Bayanun, Aleppo district, Syria, March 2013.

Staying in the FSA controlled towns of Bayanun, Hayyan and Mayer, approximately 15km from Aleppo, BEIRUTSTATEofMIND  recently observed how sectarian tensions have begun to develop between the three aforementioned Sunni towns and their Shia neighbours in the regime controlled towns of Nabul and Zahraa - bastions of pro-Assad sentiment in an area that has been under opposition control since Summer 2012. 

BEIRUTSTATEofMIND spoke to characters including Bashar Hajj, a former mechanic and member of the Nasr brigade whose Shia wife was kidnapped by her own pro-regime family; Abdul Rahman Ali, a former Baath Intelligence Officer rallying against a regime policy that favoured Alawites and Shia at the expense of Sunnis in the appointment of government and military positions; Mustapha Outroo, whose older brother was brutally killed by Shabiha from Nabul whilst buying ammunition for the FSA, members of the Islamist militia - Jabhat al--Nusra patrolling the periphery of the village of Mayer lying only 1km from Nabul, in addition to others including school teachers whose Shia colleagues are no longer able to make the short journey to work each day, and two hostage negotiators working at great personal risk to bridge gaps between the estranged communities.

The results of Government shelling in the Qoreitem neighbourhood of Hayyan, Aleppo District, Syria, March 2013.

Whilst locals in Hayyan, Bayanun, and Mayer were quick to point out that they traditionally enjoyed an amicable relationship with their Shia neighbour it is clear that the civil conflict has shattered this dynamic. Such is the isolation of Nabul and Zahraa that regime helicopters fly in supplies to the communities everyday. In the streets of Bayanun it is not uncommon to hear rumours that Lebanese Hezbollah operatives are active in the Shia towns, working in tandem with local Shabiha.

As the Assad regime has continually vilified the Syrian opposition as a foreign-influenced Al-Qaeda esque Sunni movement in order to vouchsafe Alawite and Shia support, a sectarian counter-framework has been established with which both civilians and members of the armed opposition increasingly view the conflict.

Abdul Rahman Ali, a former Baath Intelligence Officer, who left his position after expressing objection to the Hama massacre of 1982, stands outside his former home -destroyed by government shelling.
Hayyan, Aleppo province, Syria, 2013.

Residents in Hayyan, Bayanun,and Mayer see Syria’s civil war for its international dynamics in which Bashar al-Assad is viewed as part of a Shia triumvirate aligned with Hezbollah and subservient to Iran. 

Walking through Bayanun the most common message graffitied on the town’s streets reads : “Leave Iranian Dog.” Others read “Hizb al-Shatan” (The Party of the Devil), a derogatory reference to Hizbullah. Such messages are scrawled on streets throughout towns in Aleppo.

As sectarian lines are increasingly drawn in Syria’s civil war one wonders whether the sentiments expressed in such tags in Bayanun and Hayyan are by association increasingly extended to the Shia inhabitants of Nabul and Zahraa. In part raising concerns qabout where Syria's Alawites and Shia will fit into a post-Assad Syria.

An FSA gunmen stands on the outskirts of the opposition controlled town of Mayer, 1km from Nabul.
Mayer, Aleppo Province, Syria, March 2013.

Such dynamics are worrying portends not only in Syria but also in Lebanon with the political dividing line so clearly drawn along sectarian lines. Intermittent clashes between Alawites and Sunnis in the Tripoletan neighbourhoods of Bab al-Tabaneh and Jabl Mohsen have been blowing hot and cold since June 2011, with a recent emergence of a spate of tit-for-tat kidnappings pitting Shiites against Sunnis in the north of Lebanon marking a further worrying development of overspill.

To read the article penned by BEIRUTSTATEofMIND during our stay in the Aleppan countryside, hit the below link:

Standing outside the secondary school of Bayanoun, a town in northwest Syria on a sunny Monday morning, headmaster Mahmud Bayanuni ushers a couple of latecomers into the school building. Other pupils can be seen preparing for the day’s lessons from the street through a large hole in the side of the school building—the result of government shelling that ripped through the concrete structure in January.

“Last year I used to drive to Nubl every day to collect four teachers and then return them to their homes in the evening,” says Bayanuni. “Now it is impossible. It is too dangerous, and the teachers are too scared.” 

The cities of Nubl and al-Zahraa are less than three miles from Bayanoun. Both are majority Shia and are bastions of pro-Assad supporters in an area otherwise controlled by the opposition Free Syrian Army, who took control of most of the Aleppo province in July 2012. Government helicopters visit the isolated towns three times a day, bringing in troops and food supplies. Rumors are rife in Bayanun, a majority Sunni town, that Hezbollah operatives, aligned with the Assad regime, have also been flown in to train the local civilian militias called shabiha. Those claims have been flatly denied. But that hasn’t quelled local tension between Sunnis and Shia. Further upsetting the already war-torn landscape, a spate of tit-for-tat kidnappings is driving a wedge between once peaceable communities.To continue reading, hit the link, HERE.

Members of the Free Syrian Army pray beside a burnt-out government tank on the outskirts of the town of Bayanun, Aleppo District, Syria, March 2013.

Syria Diaries: Distributing Aid in Aleppo

BEIRUTSTATEofMIND recently travelled with an aid convoy from the Turkish city of Gaziantep, across the Turkish-Syrian border to Aleppo to gain an insight into the difficulties charitable groups face in distributing aid in a conflict zone. Looking at issues such as the difficulties groups face communicating in an area with intermittent internet and mobile connections,passing from opposition to regime controlled areas and in ensuring aid is not stolen and sold on. 

The article one of the BEIRUTSTATEofMIND team penned as a result of the experience additionally looks at how international aid is stymied by legislation dictating that host government's must give approval before international aid organizations are legally permitted to enter a country. It is linked below:

Sitting in a modest, third floor office in the Karagoz district of Gaziantep, Turkey, Yasser Mousa, 37, a lawyer and native from Azaz, Syria paces back and forth, mobile phone in hand, a look of concern on his face. As his conversation comes to a close, he puts down his phone and sighs.

“We cannot go today,” says Moussa in a gentle, high-pitched voice. “It is too dangerous.”

Mousa is director of The Syrian Youth Association for Relief a small charity that distributes basic aid items, including food, medicine, blankets, and clothing in the region around Aleppo, Syria. Operating from its base in Gaziantep across the border in Turkey, Mousa says that the organisation reaches around 25,000 families in the war-torn region. Today, the organisation’s latest aid mission has been postponed by unconfirmed reports that chemical weapons had been deployed in Aleppo.

To read more, hit the link, HERE.

Syria Diaries: Celebrating Nawruz in Efrin

Child at Nawruz, Efrin, Syria. 21/03/2013.

On a recent trip to the Aleppo region of Syria BEIRUTSTATEofMIND had the pleasure of joining over 60,000 Kurds celebrating the Ancient Persian, Zoro-Astrian New Year. Located only 40km from Aleppo, the largely tension free celebrations provided a complete contrast to the utter destruction plaguing Syria's second city, serving both as a reminder of the localized nature of Syria's civil conflict and the opportunities it has served for some communities to realize greater self-autonomy in the present. 

The article and some of the photographs one of the BEIRUTSTATEofMIND team penned can be found below:

When I first got to the large field overlooking the northern Syrian town of Afrin, I wasn’t quite ready for the scale of the celebration I had come to witness. Nawruz is the Ancient Persian New Year, the beginning of the Iranian calendar that is celebrated by the Kurdish diaspora as well as Persians and Zorastrians around the world on the vernal equinox. Afrin is only around 25 miles northwest of Aleppo, the rubble-strewn city at the center of Syria’s bloody civil war. But on March 21, the towns felt worlds apart.

The sight of 50,000 people clad in the traditional Kurdish colors of red, yellow, and green greeted me that morning. Many held flags emblazoned with the image of imprisoned Turkish PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. A few female Kurdish security guards stooped on rooftops, Kalashnikovs in hand. But Nawruz was a largely tension-free celebration, filled with traditional Kurdish dancing and accompanied by calls for the realization of Kurdish democratic rights within a “new Syria.” The celebration was stunning and eerie in contrast to the ongoing destruction and loss of life plaguing Aleppo and the more vitriolic atmosphere of the Nawruz festivities across the border in Diyarbakir, Turkey. 

For more, hit the link, HERE.

Nawruz, Efrin, Syria. 21/03/2013.

Nawruz, Efrin, Syria. 21/03/2013.

Nawruz, Efrin, Syria. 21/03/2013.

A very strange fatwa...

The other day, purely by chance, BEIRUTSTATEofMIND happened upon this rather bizzare fatwa on the website IslamQA.com, the brainchild of Saudi Wahabi Sheikh Muhammad Salih al-Munajjid. Set up in 1996, IslamQA.com has consequently been translated into 11 languages: English, French, Russian, Hindi, Spanish, Urdu, Indonesian, Chinese, Japanese, Turkish, and Uyghur.

Wahabi TV Sheikh Muhammad al-Munajjid: Imam of the Umar Ibn Abd al Aziz
 Mosque in the Southern Saudi City of al-Khobar and a regular on "Iqra TV."

Sheikh Munajjid, a regular on Saudi channel "Iqra TV" who professes to have recorded over 4,500 hours of recorded TV programs and tapes on a variety of subjects regarding Islamic ethics, is never one to shirk his responsibility to express an opinion.

On the causes of  the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake has notably commented:

"The problem is that the (Christian) holidays are accompanied by forbidden things, by immorality, abomination, adultery, alcohol, drunken dancing, and revelry.

"A belly dancer costs 2500 pounds per minute and a singer costs 50,000 pounds per hour, and they hop from one hotel to another from night to dawn...Haven't they learned the lesson from what Allah wreaked upon the coast of Asia, during the celebration of these things forbidden? At the height of immorality, Allah took vengeance on these criminals."

Elsewhere in January 2011 a video appeared on the internet in which Munajjid sanctioned the hacking of Jewish websites as an exception to the rule regarding general prohibitions against such web-based sabotage:

"This is a special case that requires a special answer. The people whose property and websites are protected do not include criminal aggressors.

"These Jews are bombing from land, air, and sea, perpetrating a genocide against our brothers, killing women and children, and destroying homes and mosques with people inside... There is no doubt that they are criminals, corrupters, attackers, and saboteurs. Their websites are targeted in the context of the war against them."

In the particular fatwa linked below Sheikh Munajjid switches it up a bit, providing some advice to a worried mother to be expressing concern that giving her child a particular name may be both un-Islamic and lead to the child being bullied:

Fatwa No. 172347

Ruling on Calling the Baby Azaan

My mother in law suggested name Azaan' for my son but I'm confused as to whether I should agree to it or not. My concern is that when the baby does poo, or he pees, there will be many stances when I will have to use the name Azaan with pooh or pee while talking for others for example: Azaan did poo or Azaan peed. I'm also concerned about nick-names that one uses out of love by changing the original name for example, Azzoo or Azzi etc...

To read the rest of the enquiry and Sheikh Munajjid's thought-provoking response, hit the link, HERE.

http://islamqa.info/en/ref/172347

Exploring the Green Line: Caught in Decay

A couple of weeks back BEIRUTSTATEofMIND went exploring pon de Green Line,that separated East and West Beirut during Lebanon's Civil War, and happened upon the below photographed building just up the road from the famously feuding falafel brothers Sayhoun on the Eastern fringe of Downtown.

Inside the building an array of hastily scribed love notes stood alongside more political motifs, decaying furniture, sand bags and old sniper spots - testament to the building's front line location during Lebanon's Civil War and consequent lodgers who have passed through the long neglected structure...

Small Tree, 5th floor, Old Green Line, March 2013.

Jerry Cans, Old Green Line, March 2013.

"Abu Shanur", Old Green Line, March 2013.

Sandbags on upper floors, Old Green Line, March 2013.

قناص , Old Green Line, March 2013.

قناص (2, Old Green Line, March 2013.

The heart loves, Old Green Line, March 2013.

In remembrance of ... Nobilis, Maison d'etition, Old Green Line, March 2013.

Mainly gibberish, Old Green Line, March 2013.

Old Candidate, Green Line, March 2013.

"from the Lebanese Forces": (reads) The Salvation of Lebanese Christians. On the path of Sheikh Bashir (Gemayel), long live Doctor

 Samir Geagea - Saviour of Lebanon, and to all that collaborate with Syria -my boot, The Lebanese Forces will decide Lebanon's Future.

 Signed "Menahim Peres" , Shalom, Long Live Lebanon.

Old Green Line, March 2013.

SAKO: Love odes and political profanities. Geagea's name appears one again, alongside a scribble
 that best be translated as "Fuck the (Palestinian) Intifada." Old Green Line, March 2013.

Old Bed pushed up against open door way. Old Green Line, March 2013.

Chairs... Nobilis, Maison d'etition, Old Green Line, March 2013.

Fucked TV, Old Green Line, March 2013.