I haven't said anything on this blog about what's going on in Lebanon. One of the advantages of writing an "occasional in-depth commentary" blog instead of a "daily news" one is that I get to keep my mouth shut and just listen to everyone else when I don't know enough to say anything informed.
But a local friend, a Lebanese-Canadian, has directed me to the Lebanese Bloggers, a blog that's co-written by several different Lebanese citizens. The posts are moving, but it's the comments that are the truly fascinating bit of blog culture. It's being read by people in both Israel and Lebanon, and both sides are commenting on current events in real time as the missiles fly.
I wish courage to the Southerners. Is the shelling targetting residential areas? Please keep us updated, the MSM can be painfully slow.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Blogging in a war zone
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3 comments:
Thanks for the link, I will have to check that out.
On a less actual day-to-day conflict, more can-we-live-with-this philosophy, I wanted to ask - do you think can we live with Stephen Harper's determination to change our long-and-hard-established position in the world, particularly in the Middle East, as a mostly neutral country, in his statement that Israel has the right to defend itself? This more hard-right conservative philosophy is apparent in a whole host of other (more local) issues, but since this one's on the board... any comment? (I, for one, think we can't live with it...)
Jen,
If you mean "can we live with" as in "can we support," then no, I certainly can't support the position Harper's taken. If there's anything I've learned over the past couple of weeks it's that the situation that provoked this conflict is complex and can't be adequately addressed by landing firmly on one side or the other. I would had hoped that we would have come up with a more nuanced approach, or else stayed out of the conflict entirely.
I don't even mean about what the statement itself said, or that it wasn't nuanced, but the fact that doing so effectively changes Canada's long-held position. Can we ever get our credibility for being a neutral nation back? The thing is, we're always neutral... now we're just bending over in front of Bush waiting to be *ahem*.
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