Che Guevara Alive In Lebanon?

Having my brain overloaded with Level 4 'intensive' Spanish for the past three weeks at the University of Buenos Aires, this our fourth and final week, I finally realize that I am not going to make up for all the years and years of not studying language, not since failing Level 2 back in college, twice. The professor actually told me today that my spoken Spanish is fluid, but the writing part ain’t so hot. “You’re going to have to start to read a lot, in Spanish,” she added.

Actually, one of our exercises a week ago was to choose an article in a local newspaper and write our opinions about it, forcing us to use the heinous subjunctive forms of the verbs in their many complicated and rule-bound conjugations. Never short on opinions, this was homework I could handle, so I thought. The first article I saw online in La Nacion was titled “Nasrallah is the Che of the Arab World.” Hmm… that’s interesting; a comparison between the dead Argentine revolutionary icon, reportedly assassinated in Bolivia at the hands of the CIA and the current, living leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon. The second was on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s recent visit to Iran where he compared current Israeli military operations in Lebanon with those of Adolph Hitler against the Jews in the Second World War. I stuck with the first one.

The article quotes Michel Awad, a political science professor from the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Lebanon who says ‘Nasrallah is the new Che Guevara, but in the Arab world. He’s on all the t-shirts, in all the houses and in all the hearts… uniting both Shiites and Sunnis. For Arabs, its now clearly a matter of life and death.'

I hop into bed before midnight and finish reading Jon Ronson’s “The Men Who Stare at Goats” about the U.S. Military’s continued efforts to develop psychic Jedi Warrior-like troops that can, among other things walk through walls and yes, kill goats by actually staring at them. This excellent journalistic trail of cosmic breadcrumbs takes the author on a chilling but true tale of murder, torture and the ongoing ‘war against terror’. Che was a terrorist, among other things.

Still not tired with finals now but two days away, I flip on the TV to relax a bit. Mistake. The Syrian Ambassador to the US in being interviewed on the BBC news program Hard Talk saying, “They [Hezbollah] are a grassroots guerilla movement and are popularly supported by the people of Lebanon… Israel has already invaded Lebanon not once but twice and both times we’re pushed back successfully by Hezbollah. If they want to do this again I think it’s a serious, serious mistake."

Larry King’s guest on CNN is a female reporter from the Washington Post saying that Hezbollah, with two seats in the Lebanese coalition government, shares the support of eighty seven percent of the Lebanese people, which in turn is made of thirty-four different religious groups. That’s more than you can say for Bush’s popularity, that’s for damn sure. Last I heard it was down around thirty percent.

A BBC reporter says, “…while Israel tries to destroy Hezbollah positions…” and I tune out. That’s the point of a guerilla army, as Che professed, can’t beat ‘em.

After the report, they cut to international weather and this wretched-looking weather woman takes us on a meteorological tour throughout Europe, smiling her best TV newscaster smile whenever there’s sunshine but getting more serious, almost frowning when the weather turns south. And south we head into Northern Africa, skip the Middle East and then on over to India where they have already received five meters of rain with severe flooding and says, “more torrential rains to continue.” Her report abrubtly ends and she beams a great big smile. There is a lull as someone in the control room drops the ball before they finally cut back to the studio late, leaving her standing there with that damn smile plastered on her face. But its not sunny in India, why are you smiling?!

They then went to some lighter world news which included a mimicking parrot in Germany that fooled neighbors into calling the police when it loudly screeched over and over “Mama, MAMA!”