Lessons of the Ethiopian Airlines: Chauvinism and Political Points

The tragic horrible death of the Ethiopian airlines led to a shock, and a week of mourning. In what was a stand-off between the different reactionary parties in regards to several reforms, the plane crash bought some time.

There are several shocking events that generated prior and after the terrible crash which left several people of different nationalities mourning.

The first event were the reforms to be discussed in the Parliament.

The first focused on reducing the voting age to 18. The advocator to such change came as a surprise, at least in terms of parliamentary blocs, Nabih Berri and his hooligan AMAL. This of course, provides a trauma for me, since AMAL are notorious to enter fist-to-fist fights with almost anyone (a tend that has been operational since the days of the Lebanese Civil War). Nabih Berri, for the past three months or so has advocated all types of change, supporting Ziad Baroud's proposals, and seems to be trying to bring back the legacy of Imam Moussa Sadre's goals for reform back in the 1970s. Berri was involved in sparking the "Cancelation of Sectarianism" act, protecting the Ta'ef Accords (ironically), the Age Act reform, and giving strength to the Parliament (which was shut down for over two years by Berri himself).

The clash of reforms began with the head of the Reform and Change bloc, with lunatic General Aoun, and the other two Christian parties: Lebanese Forces and Phalange. The fear from the voting age reform scared the Christians that they will be overwhelmed by 'Muslim Votes'. The Christian parties eventually proposed that the Immigrants would have the right to vote under the basis that one reform cannot go without the other. This of course hinders all possibilities to implement the age 18 voting law. Since, the new age of the new parliament began under the banner of "Age of Love and Flirtations" among the elites, it was natural that the two camps in Lebanon bickered each other along the same alliances.

Just like the 14th of March and Opposition collisions, historical insights are highlighted and others forgotten, specially when Berri attacked Aoun that the latter was not present to forge the Ta'ef Accords.

The showdown between these two reached its climax when the infamous Monday parliamentary meeting was supposed to take place. Hezbollah attempted to sooth the situation, and it was anticipated that most of the blocs (pro Harriri or not) were going to avoid the making of such a meeting by making sure that the Parliament's quorum was not met. The different news media reported that meetings between AMAL and the Free Patriotic Movement remained taking place till 4:00 in the morning. The same day, the tragic death of the Ethiopian Airlines took place. This saved the politicians of the embarrassment of shooting down the parliament's meeting to take place.

Naomi Klein dubbed the Haiti disaster as Shock Capitalism, with highlights to Israel's 'humanitarian' activities to cover away its past sins in Gaza which turned world opinion against it. This is exactly what took place in Lebanon. A national mourning day took place, the parliamentary session was postponed.

The Lebanese-Ethiopian tragedy

As the plane collapsed, and all efforts took place in a very remarkable manner to salvage survivors, Lebanese pride rose up. Everyone on facebook, msn, and whatever placed a Lebanese flag with a black strip on their profiles. This is indeed a human tragedy.

All politicians diverted their attention into supporting the Red Cross and the Lebanese Army to save the survivors.

Nevertheless, Lebanese fascism sprang. Several Ethiopian blue collar proletariat in Lebanon were denied entrance to the hospitals in order to identify the bodies of their beloved. That is a typical country of contradiction: Co-existence and racism, tolerance and intolerance, and finally democracy and tyranny.

The incident itself was preceded by a controversial acts of beating activists in front of the Egyptian embassy because the activists there found it unusual to attack the apartheid wall of Israel, while Egypt's Moubarak is building another Iron Wall on the Rafah route, to force "coexistence between Hamas and Fatah".

Back to the plane incident, as much as Lebanon's president attempted to show Lebanon's humanitarian face to the world, the Human Rights Watch group slammed Lebanon for its mistreatment of foreign labor and Palestinians. Ironically that was celebrated by Fascist Israel who never bothered to read the entire report, as well to read the reports on their own country.

The acts of racism towards the foreign proletariat proved yet again, amidst this disaster, that foreign labor needs to be protected. The proletariat across the world, like the Lebanese, need to be protected and treated as humans. Every week we hear a story about a foreign laborer being maltreated, specially those who are abused to work almost for free as maids in households. It comes as a surprise for some Lebanese (those whom I spit on their faces) that labor from Sri Lanka, Syria, Jordan, Palestinians, India, Egypt, Ethiopia, Philippines, others are their own equal: simply humans. If Lebanese culture means superiority, for me, that equates to trash (Zionism is even more terrible by the way). It reminds me of France hailing itself as democratic while it was too busy demolishing Algerian proletariat back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, or Israeli "democracy" which rotates around only Judaism while trashing the rest of non-Jewish (and giving Jews of the world a bad name).

For those racist Lebanese, thing of it that Lebanese, Ethiopians, and others died equally as humans on that plane, equals also to the wife of the French Ambassador in Lebanon. May those who mourn find peace again in their hearts.

Again, we see that the whole world is governed by Class War under the banner of different logos: racism, reform, and political points

MFL

PS: The fact Berri is proposing all those reforms is still hard for me to digest