BEIRUT - I returned to Beirut after eight months and a hot summer war and found that the city had little changed on the surface. My old neighborhood in West Beirut was intact. Civil war reconstruction continued downtown. More restaurants and pubs had opened close-in on the east side of the city. Solidere sported a brand-new Starbucks. Beirut did not appear to be reeling from war. Post-Syrian gentrification had proceeded as scheduled.
On second glance, though, all was not well. I was the only guest in my eight-story hotel, and I genuinely shocked the staff when I stepped into the lobby first thing in the morning. "Why are you still here?" one bartender asked me. Almost all my friends and even acquaintances left the country during the July War and hadn't returned. Milk was still hard to come by in grocery stores and even some restaurants because the Israeli Air Force destroyed Lebanon's milk factory. Party and sectarian flags were flown on the streets in abundance, a tell-tale sign that the post-Syrian patriotism and unity were coming apart.
All that and, you know, the private army of an enemy state was threatening to topple the government.
Is anyone else having trouble accessing Totten's blog? For the past few days all I get is:
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Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /archives/001350.html on this server.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Apache/1.3.37 Server at www.michaeltotten.com Port 80
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Help, anyone, please?
the Israeli Air Force destroyed Lebanon's milk factory.
What, they killed all the cows? ;)
Re: #1 from Bruno: I've tried many times since that post went up, and I've only gotten the same error.
Totten's site is working great for me. Maybe you should post him an e-mail. There could be a router issue with his ISP.
I'm also having trouble accessing Totten's blog.
It resembles a lot to the Basque country. The same violent and powerful faction, the same state within the state, the same Christian-terrorist alliance (Basque Nationalist Party - ETA), the majority of the people just wanting to live in peace...
The only problem I see with the milk factory is that the facility must comply with strict hygiene rules, that cannot be improvised. However, they could be supplied from the EU vast subsidized surplus.