Weddings are going strong this Friday night at my hotel on the Tigris’ bank. Nobody seems to bother that yesterday a carbomb went off in a nearby street killing two people and barely missing the health minister: just one in the string of deadly explosions and suicide attacks that shook Baghdad, Kikruk, Ramadi, Baquba, Samarra and Mosul, leaving 34 people dead and more than 100 wounded in a single day….
I stand on the rooftop of a house in Guvecci, a small village South of Antakya, a few yards from the borderline. I can see the fortified Turkish military positions, the control towers and the mined fields, the winding barbed wires cutting through the hills and the olive groves. And hear the sound of gunfire cracking in the distance. Each day the war in getting closer to this bucolic rural…
Trying to catch the mood in Cairo after the elections. The Christians are worried, althought even some of them voted for the Brothers: “Give’em a chance” they say. “Who else can bring some stability?” I went to see the Zabbalin in the Garbage City and they are not happy. They fear the Salafist will burn their churches and veil their women. I bet they won’t. “We will not allow it”…
I am back in Cairo and walk across the Nile into Tahrir square. Someone put a bandage on the eyes of the huge iron lions guarding the bridge and on the eyes of all the statues in the city: a grim reference to the “eye sniper”, the policeman who allegedly aimed rubber bullets at protesters’ heads during last week’s clashes. The lieutenant, Mahmud al-Shinnawi, turned himself in yesterday and will…
Muammar Gaddafi’s barbaric lynching by a gang of bloodthirsty avengers armed with submachine guns and cellphones, and totally unaware of any international convention on the treatment of prisoners of war, doesn’t shake the souls of our generation’s “champions of democracy” warlords. A few hurried and uncomfortable words, from those politicians who just a few months ago kneeled in front of the Coronel and his oil fields. It’s an ominous start…
When Rep. Jesse Jackson shows up in the park at dusk people gather around him asking questions. They get few answers. But it’s a sign that politicians start to pay attention to the movement. Occupy Wall Street is going global, with protesters descending on dozens of US cities and many European towns. In Rome they got violent, smashing windows and burning cars. Here in NY they are peaceful, yet determined…
There was no light in the house where I stayed in Tripoli during the fight, so I couldn’t run my blog. The generator was an old gear providing just enough power to charge our batteries (laptops, cameras, sat phones, BGan) and the fuel on the black market was hard to find, so we had to minimize the use of it. Now back home I briefly sum up. I crossed the…
His name is Mario but he’s known as El Principe.
The drug cartels run the city. There is a war between them.
Lomas de Poleo is where they dump corpses: young pretty girls from the countryside who work at the local maquiladoras, foreign owned assembly factories where they get 5 dollars a day;