Beirut / Red Light Districts? / Kyoto

I certainly intend to get back to our long march through Poland at war, but here some comments on a number of February news events that I meant to write in more detail about and didn't get to.

Beirut, Then and Now.
last November as demonstrators started what then was referred to as the Orange Revolution in Kiev, capital of Ukraine; the country which had come to us less than two weeks after our crossing the bridge over the Vistula as German Stukas were dive bombing it, near the beginning of World War II (where the last posting ended). Now big crowds started demonstrating in Beirut, demanding the departure of Syrian troops and recovery of Lebanon's independence, in what is being dubbed the Cedar Revolution.

Almost five years into the World War, I was close to 19, a soldier in the British army and stationed in Beirut, capital of what was for the first time now to be an independent state of Lebanon. The Vichy French overlords having been dislodged by a British invasion, with Free French and other participation, all was quiet and peaceful now; no hint of Beirut's more recent reputation. So, having enlisted and still eager to fight the SOB-s of the original, fascist, Axis under Fuehrer and Duce, I had my older brother request my transfer to his unit, stationed in Italy, then the less peaceful "soft underbelly" of occupied Europe. In the period that took to come about, I had quite a vacation. There seldom were military tasks. We were billeted in what seemed to have been a fancy sports club with a swimming pool at the Mediterranean coast just outside the then much smaller very picturesque city. It was right next to Pigeon Rock. There was plenty of time to go into town, past, and through, the American College with its many trees providing shade from the Near Eastern sun.

The assassination of former prime minister, and billionaire, Rafiq Hariri, by a powerful bomb, attributed to Syrian agents and occasioning the demonstrations was reported as having occurred in front of the Phoenicia Hotel, also at the shore of the Mediterranean. I couldn't find its location on the Internet, but its blurb there does not brag about a good view of Pigeon Rock, as do other 5 star hotels. (The view of the rock I shall try to add here will show it to be well within the city now).

http://www.alovelyworld.com/webliban/gimage/liban075.jpg

To view a larger, more detailed version of this image click on it. If you are using Internet Explorer, click then on the icon at the lower right of the resulting image.

http://almashriq.hiof.no/lebanon/700/770/779/fareed/b03.jpg

Most of the time I went with Yossel. We had joined the army together and earlier had spent about two years in the first youth group of Kibbutz Hazorea. Once we went to an army supervised house of prostitution in the centre of Beirut, near the port; just to see (honest!). It was for BOR-s (British Other Ranks; i.e. not for commissioned officers, who went to the Kit Kat, termed a night club). I won't go into details of what transpired in the main room, into which women would emerge periodically from several doors to attract new clients; since this blog does not want to cater to your prurient interests (whatever those may be).

Before the entrance to that room, to the left, was the open door of a big office which had big framed photos of three Soviet marshals on the walls: Voroshilov, whose main achievement may have been long closeness to Stalin; the cossak Budyonny who had commanded red cossaks during the civil war against the Whites; and Marshal Timoshenko, the Ukrainian who was now commanding the Soviet troops driving the Nazis out of Ukraine. (The new Ukrainian prime minister is the only other Timoshenko I ever came across, so when her name first came up in relation to her role in the Kiev demonstrations, I wondered if she is related. But this hardly adds to the connections already being drawn between the kiev and Beirut demonstrations). I don't know whether those photos meant that the joint was run by Communists and possibly that they were the most reliable at the time to whom to entrust the most cherished organs of British manhood.

Red Light Districts in Canada?

I don't recall any Canadian troops in Lebanon. But had there been any, they certainly would have been entitled to Johnhood privileges there. There evidently are Johns in Canada, and a big arguments has started about whether to legalize red light districts. There was a good article in the last February issue of the "Tyee", a serious Vancouver alternative journal available online
http://www.thetyee.ca/News/current/RedLightIdeaGlowsBrighter.htm . Even the comments were largely well considered, both pro and con. The main aspect not really covered was that of protecting the Johns, the basic concern of the British army authorities. Apart from some concern for the neighborhood, the focus was on protection for the women. Especially in Vancouver, many had disappeared while working from the streets of the downtown Eastside, and were then discovered to have been murdered by the dozens.

On a wider, world wide scale, things appear much worse for the women involved than at least I was aware of in earlier days; which surely were not ideal. Trade in women tricked / forced into prostitution, e.g. in existing red light districts, seem on the way to being just one more commodity in the new globalization of trade. Where such coercive recruitment can be forestalled effectively, it is probably worth trying. And whatever the right answer turns out to be, Canada should be a good place to pioneer in it.

Kyoto.

The Kyoto Protocol for reduction of greenhouse gases went into effect. Maybe the delay in this posting will turn out to have been lucky. After about a week of attention being paid to facing dangers of climate change, it seems to be back to where it was before. So this can be kept brief; especially since clean energy should become a major topic of this blog.