Stephanie d'Arc Taylor

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Syrian Palestinians pack Lebanon refugee camp

A very special piece for me: a story about people living where I lived during the summer of 2012, teaching English to refugee kids, published in The Los Angeles Times, the newspaper that was delivered to my parent's house every morning of my childhood.

BURJ EL-SHEMALI, Lebanon — The midday heat is stifling in the living room of the cramped apartment where Rania resides with her two sisters, their husbands, children and various other relatives who have invited them in. Fans in the corner are still: The power is off 20 hours a day in this densely populated Palestinian refugee camp, east of the southern Lebanese city of Tyre.

Decades ago, tents here gave way to gray concrete buildings, with heat-trapping zinc roofs that were meant to be temporary. This room, immaculately kept, is for visitors; a peek inside the only other room reveals a tangle of bodies, sleeping off the hottest and hungriest hours of this scorching day in the recent fasting month of Ramadan.

Rania, 36, and her husband, Yusuf, 51, fled here with their two children in December from their home in Yarmouk, a sprawling district in the southern fringes of Damascus that was founded as a Palestinian refugee camp but evolved into a bustling home to both Palestinians and Syrians.

Yarmouk, like many other areas on the edges of Damascus, is now another debris-strewn battleground in Syria's raging civil war.

For their entire lives, Rania and Yusuf were Palestinian refugees in Syria. Now they are Syrian Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.

Finish the story here.

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Lebanon's Internal Security Forces dodges Human Rights Watch bullets

Another July piece, this time about the response from leaders of Lebanon's Internal Security Forces - the feared darak - to allegations by Human Rights Watch of physical and sexual abuse of vulnerable prisoners, including those accused of drug use, prostitution, and homosexuality.

This blasé attitude toward the alleged abuse of prisoners accused of homosexual acts not only suggests an attempt to legitimize this torture – torture the ISF makes no attempt to deny – but also raises concerns that the ISF is operating outside the law in terms of its interrogation tactics.

In comments made to NOW, Ziad Kaed Bey, head of the ISF’s six-person Human Rights Department, stays the course set by last week’s statement when asked about abuse of prisoners accused of homosexual acts. While insisting that “we don’t believe in sexual abuse” of prisoners, he brings up Article 534 in the Lebanese penal code forbidding “unnatural sexual intercourse,” and notes that “the majority of people [in Lebanon] don’t accept [homosexuality].” He did not address specific accusations of abuse listed in the HRW report.

The ISF’s repeated invocation of Article 534, rather than address specific instances of alleged abuse, points to an attempt to vindicate, not deny, the accusations. The response “makes perfect sense,” says Georges Azzi, former director of Helem, a non-profit advocacy group for Lebanese LGBTQ youth. “[The argument is that] it’s OK to torture someone because [what they’re accused of is] against the law.”

Read the rest of the story, including an incredible zinger at the end, here.

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Aiming at Iran, GCC hits Lebanon

A July piece for NOW about proposed GCC sanctions on Hezbollah, inspired by a conversation I had on a flight to Dubai with a nervous Lebanese expat banker. 

Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states are expected to meet Thursday 4 July to discuss what sanctions to impose on Hezbollah, having agreed on 10 June to begin punishing the group and its members for their involvement in the ongoing Syrian war on the side of President Bashar al-Assad.

While the GCC’s institutionalized punishment of the Party of God may be meant as a warning to its neighbor across the Persian Gulf, it’s Lebanon, not Iran, which stands to suffer the most – especially if we take past punitive measures as indications of what is to come.

Read more here.

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After I reactivated my Twitter account (@sdarct if anyone's interested) I began compiling a list of the fascinating people who follow no one. Here's the original blog, for NOW:

It takes a special type of person to have a Twitter account for the sole purpose of tweeting messages to one's subjects followers. What kind of person is that? Let's take a look at this completely uncomprehensive list of famous Twitter users who follow 0 others:

Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader: 11,061 followers, 0 following  

Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi: 1,533,360 followers, 0 following  

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama: 7,128,302 followers, 0 following  

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan: 2,856,729, 0 following  

His Holiness Pope Francis has 2,582,617 followers and follows 8; however, the only accounts he follows are versions of his own, tweeting in different languages (including Latin).

Anyone sensing a pattern here? Fanatically religious, politically isolated megalomaniacs, uninterested in the news and opinions of their acolytes? I suppose it shouldn't be surprising. 

I'll be updating this list from time to time. Let me know if I missed anyone!

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Jabhat al-Nusra's rising stock in Syria

My first piece for Al Jazeera. I'm thrilled!

Here's an excerpt:

Jabhat al-Nusra has been regarded as a bogeyman in the West, and this preoccupation is readily apparent in statements from American policy-makers.

Just one month after Jabhat al-Nusra announced its formation, then-head US diplomat Hillary Clinton cited it and similar groups in Syria as one reason to withhold aid from the Syrian opposition. In a February 2012 interview with CBS, she said, "We know al-Qaeda's Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria. Are we supporting al-Qaeda in Syria?"

But Syrians, watching a well-disciplined and organised group of fighters gain more and more ground against the Assad regime, are increasingly throwing their support behind Jabhat al-Nusra - in spite of its Islamist ideology, several Syrian activists and commentators say.

Support - or at least resigned acceptance - comes from many sides, some unexpected. Noor, a cosmopolitan young Syrian activist based in Turkey, said she's "not threatened by [al-Nusra] or their approach," as long as they continue to win battles against the regime.

Read more here.

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If media covered America the way they cover foreign cultures

"Yet another massacre has occurred in the historically war-torn region of the Southern United States – and so soon after the religious festival of Easter. Brian McConkey, 27, a Christian fundamentalist militiaman living in the formerly occupied territory of Alabama, gunned down three men from an opposing tribe in the village square near Montgomery, the capitol, over a discussion that may have involved the rituals of the local football cult. In this region full of heavily-armed local warlords and radical Christian clerics, gun violence is part of the life of many. Many of the militiamen here are ethnic Scots-Irish tribesmen, a famously indomitable mountain people who have killed civilized men – and each other – for centuries. It appears that the wars that started on the fields of Bannockburn and Stirling have come to America. As the sun sets over the former Confederate States of America, one wonders – can peace ever come to this land?"

Reposted from Eric Garland.

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Turkey + catch-up

I just got back from a week in Turkey with my brother and sister. We met up in Istanbul, rented a car, and hit the road. Days were spent tramping over ruins, trying to impress my gear-head (but very intelligent!) brother with my manual transmission skills, thinking of nothing in particular; in the evenings I read novels, gorged on fresh fish, and fell asleep at old-people time. It was just what I needed to come home ready to face a new chapter in Beirut.

One indulgence I partook in was a scrub at an Ottoman-era hammam in Istanbul: an excellent decision. You go in, lie on a heated marble platform with other naked people while looking up at the light filtering through the star-shaped skylights in the domed ceiling, and wait for an old lady to come and wash your hair. She took good care of me, which is all you want for someone to do when you're on vacation.

Besides this room, this was my favorite place in the city, and yes, it has to do with food.

The jolly men who work on these boats grill fish, shove them in fresh bread with onions and lettuce, and give it to you for cheap. If you know what's good for you, you'll squirt lemon juice on the bread, salt the shit out of the whole thing, then consume as quickly as is socially acceptable at the surrounding low barrel-tables, before vacating for the next hungry customer and going for a digestion-assisting stroll in the incredible melee that is Eminonu on a Saturday. It was refreshing to go down here on my days in Istanbul, to escape the tourist village that surrounded our hotel in Sultanahmet; the only Turks in the entire area were restaurant or hotel workers. It was depressing, especially after our night as the toast of Balikesir.

I feel more rejuvenated than I ever have after a holiday, but I don't know whether that's due to the quality of the trip or because I was so stressed out and shitty when I left. Anyway, it feels good.

Here are some little distractions for you while I get back on track. More soon.

Turkey gave me the travel bug again; this is a trip I'd love to make someday. Even with the weird food!

The executive editor of the NYT and me... sooooo much in common. So much. Does the sarcasm read in that sentence? But she seems like a badass, and I bet she'll come through this laughing.

Which is the scarier part of this picture: Justin Bieber, or his fans in the background?

The Left's relationship with Palestine is a 'special topic' in the new issue of Jacobin magazine, and predictably, it's dealt with in an intelligent and thought-provoking manner.

Remember Bush? Yeah, that guy was the worst. Just try to finish one of the videos linked to in this article by Jonathan Chait. 

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Stevie Nicks "Wild Heart"

This video, recorded backstage at a 1981 Rolling Stone photo shoot, doesn't get old, not ever.

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Over that last mountain

I went on a much-needed rejuvenating hike last weekend, and blogged about it for NOW.

As Zac Brophy for Executive Magazine wrote recently, Beirut has become the Detroit of the Middle East [see below post].

No wonder people drink here.

In order to make life here tenable, sometimes you’ve got to just get out of town. Drives along the congested highway north or south, with the depressing concrete human-hives and super night clubs where you imagine rest lonely and besieged Syrian girls, don’t cut it. The road doesn’t even get marginally pretty until you pass Saida in the south and about 10 minutes north of Jbeil to the north.

Last weekend, I took a hiking trip to the Nahr Ibrahim region inland from Jbeil. The road leading from the town of Adonis into the gorge is one of the most spectacular I’ve ever driven (this is coming from someone trained from birth to appreciate pretty drives). The river was swollen with snowmelt, augmented by waterfalls cascading from the peaks. Leggy asparagus grew to shoulder-height; the trails were overgrown with verdant – although sometimes spiky – undergrowth. Wild fig trees were laden with hard little knobby future figs. Grassy meadows periodically broke up the forest; it was on one of these that my hiking companion and I enjoyed brie and baguette for lunch. I came back with a sunburned neck, scratches and bruises, blisters on my feet, debris of questionable origin in my hair, and a lighter heart and dumb dazed smile that I couldn’t shake, even after the trials of Beirut forced their way back into my consciousness.

Back in the office, looking north from my 12th floor window onto miles and miles of concrete sprawl covering hills that might previously have been described as undulating, it’s comforting to know that somewhere over the last mountain one can still find lizards, and rivers, and wild growing things.

Below are some more photos my friend Aline took during our wonderful hike.

The above was taken from a bridge at the beginning of the trail.

A boy standing next to strawberry fields on the banks of the river. You can also see people harvesting the strawberries on the far right.

A new friend.

Thanks for sharing Aline!

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On Syria, Obama follows Israel's lead

My latest for NOW:

The unique threat chemical weapons pose to Israel certainly hasn’t escaped the keen attention of its government. During Obama’s visit to Israel earlier this month, three senior Israeli officials took the opportunity to make bold statements to the media about the use of chemical weapons in Syria. Newly-minted minister of intelligence and strategic affairs Yuval Steinitz told Israel’s Army Radio that the evidence of a chemical attack is “apparently clear,” intelligence borne out by the Associated Press via two more (anonymous) senior government sources. Steinitz went on to say that the use of chemical weapons “against civilians…shows the urgency of taking care of the issue.”

All of these sources declined to say whether the chemical agents had been used by Assad’s forces or by the opposition, a differentiation Steinitz said was “not important.”

“Not important.” In this casual dismissal, Israel’s representative admits that its government has no interest in – much less basic human compassion for – who is doling out grisly death to who in Syria. Its only concern is the threat these dangerous chemical agents pose to humans living on the right side of the border.

Read more here.

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Animal intelligence

This is a picture of an octopus some friends and I cooked a couple years ago:

Yes, yes, it's impressive (and/or gross, as some of my friends accused). But Frans de Waal's recent article in the Wall Street Journal, in which he reports that octopi have the biggest brains of all invertebrates, and have skin made of the same cells as the human retina that 'sees' its surroundings and changes colors accordingly, made me feel pretty bad about how delicious octopi are. This fancy technology doesn't mean the octopus is smart, exactly, but perhaps it's too sophisticated for my plebeian palate. 

Dumb animals are ok to eat, by my reckoning, but animals like apes, or even monkeys, or elephants, or octopi (maybe) are too respectable to make it to my dinner plate. At least all the time. 

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Beirut is the Detroit of the Middle East

Zak Brophy for Executive:

In the 2012 Mercer Quality of Living Worldwide City Rankings, Beirut placed a dismal 171 out of 221 cities. Money may still buy the luxuries of private beach clubs and 24-hour electricity for some, but none of us can escape the crippling traffic, the void of green spaces or lead-footed Internet. At both a local and a national level, planning and strategy-making have been hijacked by short-term political expediency and narrow vested interests. The victim has been society at large.

All true. No wonder people drink here.

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One step forward, two steps back

On Monday I blogged about the recent sentencing of Trent Mays and Ma'lik Richmond for NOW, referencing a commentary I wrote in January:

In support of this claim [that sexual assault happens equally if not more often in the West than in the developing world], I used the case of the teenage girl in Steubenville, Ohio, drugged and dragged from house party to house party, all the while being photographed, violated sexually, and even urinated on. The bevy of photographic evidence, posted online the next day (and horrifying video later dug up by Anonymous), clearly identified her attackers: football players from the local high school. Yet the football-crazed residents of the small Rust Belt town jumped to the defense of the rapists, claiming that the girl was a known liar (as if she had somehow engineered the photographs showing them laughing as they assaulted her), and had been asking for the attack by going to a party and having something to drink.

This weekend, the verdict came down that Ma’lik Richmond and Trent Mays, both 16, have been convicted of raping the girl while she was unconscious. They will be sentenced to time in juvenile hall and will be registered as sex offenders for the rest of their lives.

We can be glad about this conviction; that justice in this one instance has been served. But instead of celebrating, we should as an increasingly interconnected global society think carefully about raising better boys – and girls – who are aware of privilege, and their actions (as much as they can be as teenagers). Only collectively can we hope to prevent not only rapes and sexual violence, but the cloud of injustice surrounding them, from being as grossly pervasive as they are today.

Since the verdict, bloggers have documented many unsettling reactions on social media, among Stuebenville residents, as well as such major news outlets as CNN, pitying the fallout the convictions will have on the 'promising future' of the boys. Ma'lik Richmond himself, upon hearing the verdict, said "My life is over. No one is going to want me now." It took me a second to realize that he is talking about college football teams, and later, professional NFL franchises. In all likelihood he is not talking about friends, family members, colleagues, lovers, acquaintances; for all of these people in his life, there was nothing to forgive in the first place.

Amy Davidson, in a blog for The New Yorker magazine, astutely wonders: 

Perhaps it is too abstractly (even annoyingly) philosophical to ask what the "better" life is - one in which you have a remote shot at being in the NFL, or one in which you might be a person who treats other decently? Still, the question is worth asking.

It is worth asking, so worth asking in fact that the power of the question shouldn't be weakened by any qualifiers or apologies. 

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You don't have to comply

A friendly reminder to my Stateside friends. 

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A tactical shift for Syrian activists

My latest article for NOW. I enjoyed writing this one, as it was more interview-based than anything I've done before. Here's an excerpt:

Abysmal mistreatment of activists as a tactic of suppression has certainly not been limited to Syria. But in the context of the so-called Arab Spring, the extent and severity of the arrests, beatings, torture, and murder of activists, protesters, public figures, and opposition fighters at the hands of Bashar al-Assad’s regime has been unique.

Because, as Aya says, “the regime has made it impossible to go on the street” with so much as a camera without risking violent death, activists are now exploring other avenues by which to demonstrate their defiance.

One of these has been armed and organized resistance. As Assad’s brutal deployment of the army to quell opposition protests led to the formation of structured opposition entities like the Syrian National Council and the Free Syrian Army, on a smaller scale, the regime’s torture and murder of individuals has galvanized their friends and family to pick up arms. “Many [of my colleagues] eventually joined the FSA,” says Noor, a Damascene activist currently living in Sweden, regarding the fates of her fellow activists after increased regime shelling and sniper fire in the summer of 2012 killed too many friends and colleagues to leave traditional street-level protest a remunerative option.

Read more here.

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Catch-up

Ever since my blog got called "well-maintained" in a Time Out Beirut post about the best women's issues blogs in the city, the pressure has been killing me and I haven't been maintaining it. I'm old enough now to know better, but still young enough to make bad choices, like leaving my American cell phone plan to rot all this time, and now having to make a series of groveling Skype calls (Internet-willing) to corporate collection agents. Oops.

Anyway, for lack of a better idea for a post, here are some links (that may or may not have to do with 'women's issues'???) I've enjoyed lately. Be back soon.

The menu of Guy Fieri's really real restaurant in Times Square.

New punctuation marks for new forms of communication. I will be using these.

A friend I met in Foucault class at the New School (eye roll) has so far contributed two nice stories to NOW from Ramallah. Must-reads.

Win a fun-packed trip to Pyongyang!

Strawberries are in season in Beirut (it is still February as I keep verifying). I'm gonna make this.

Also, I am The Outpost's new editorial intern! I wrote a piece for the last issue, but I want to know more about what goes into producing a real, hold-in-your-hands magazine. So I'm going to be working on the new issue. You should buy it!

And, finally, a song for a good mood. And another, with a music video that made me LOL at work.

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Horse meat is probably delicious

My latest blog for NOW.

As the horsemeat scandal envelops Europe, food conglomerates as notorious as Burger King and Nestlé have recalled products, held press conferences, and groveled at the feet of outraged consumers. Presidents of European countries have made statements, and national and transnational police forces have opened probes on the matter.

Now, evidence that some horse carcasses contained a drug that is potentially harmful to humans is indeed disturbing. And no one wants to be duped at the point of sale.

But what’s the big deal with eating horses? I mean yeah, they’re regal and shiny and have pretty tails, but ducks and lambs are cute too and Euros just love eating them. The outcry against horsemeat is especially puzzling in France, as horsemeat is considered an old-school delicacy there. As reported by Agence France-Presse, there are even some butchers in France that specialize in horse meat.

Especially troubling is IKEA’s recall of its delicious meatballs from stores across Europe. Meatballs, traditional food staple of peasants the world over, are called such because the meat they contain is nonspecific. They’re, by definition, scraps of whatever was left over at the butcher that day, rolled into balls and served with strong sauces to mask the flavor of meat that might not be the freshest.

I will gladly (continue to) eat and celebrate horse meatballs from IKEA if they continue to slather them in delicious gravy of similar questionable provenance and sour-sweet lingonberry sauce, and continue to sell them at 12 for 3 dollars. And I won't feel guilty for that. After all, IKEA is a furniture store right? It doesn’t qualify as evil Big Food that's doesn't care about poisoning the good people of Europe if they're making a buck.

And if a French person someday wants to cook me a horse steak in a red-wine-and-butter sauce, I won’t turn that down. And I don’t think you should either.

Check back weekly, if you want to sample my brain (ha).