Somehow, everyone and his brother knows that Paris Hilton is in Beirut tonight, but I don’t really find that to be too exciting, since it’s hard to walk down the street without running into one form or another of the Lebanese variants on the Paris Hilton theme. I believe in a couple of weeks, there will be a “Fuck me, I’m famous” event (concert?) in Biel, which isn’t really related to her but which reminds me of her, in any case.

But back to the main news. No, dear readers, the big news is not about the slutty hotel heiress, it’s that Bolton is in town. Not sourpuss and former ambassador to the UN John Bolton. No, I’m talking about the early nineties easy listening king of cheese, Michael Bolton.

Apparently, Bolton’s playing a concert tomorrow night downtown, for which the tickets start at $50 a pop. I like to think that somewhere downtown tomorrow night, there will be a Hezbollah cadre swaying back and forth as he mouths the words to Bolton’s rendition of “When a man loves a woman” and a tear slowly swells in the corner of his eye.

All of this pop Americana reminds me that it’s the 4th of July today, and I think I’d like to go out for some greasy American food at some place like TGI Friday’s or even the Hard Rock Cafe, although that last one might have to be disqualified, since I have it good authority that the Beirut branch is owned by one of the Bin Ladens.

The Times has some excerpts from newly released Nixon White House tapes.  This one is from a conversation with the Phillipine foreign secretary under Marcos:

NIXON: Did the president have to take these strong measures, or — ?

ROMULO: He had to, yes, he had to.

NIXON: I know some people here were, you know, coming in to my office and saying, we must lecture President Marcos. I said nope, not a lecture. I said that I hope that he realizes that this poses some problems. But he knows his own internal situation. I know he is dedicated, as you are, to freedom and all the rest. But you cannot have anarchy. You cannot have it. Your people —You once told me that the Philippines took all of the excesses of American democracy and improved on them. (laughter) …

NIXON: How do your young people feel?

ROMULO: Well, they want to clean all the streets. Cleaning the graffiti on the walls. You know what, we have some of the cleanest cities in Asia.

NIXON: Wonderful.

ROMULO: The flies have disappeared because the garbage is gone.

NIXON: Good.

ROMULO: You see, democracy, really, American democracy, is for a mature, highly developed, affluent society.

NIXON: Yes.

ROMULO: For a developing society, you need someone with strength.

NIXON: You also need it in Latin America. You need it, for example, in Korea. You’re going to need it in Vietnam eventually, you know, the truth is. I understand that.

ROMULO: But Mr. President if you had Marcos over here, your Congress wouldn’t be giving you the trouble they’re giving you now. (laughs)

It’s often difficult for me to find books on Africa in the Middle East, so I was delighted when a good friend of mine brought be Michela Wrong’s latest book on Kenya, Our Turn to Eat. I haven’t read her book on Eritrea, but her book on Mobutu’s Zaire is excellent, so I’m really looking forward to her latest.

Apparently, up until now, the book, which links tribalism and corruption, has been extremely difficult to buy in Kenya, or at least in Nairobi. All that, it seems, is about to change a bit for the better:

This week a long-mulled distribution project goes into action in Kenya, a country which has seen more than its fair share of humanitarian operations. The items handed out this time will be neither mosquito-nets, condoms, nor oral rehydration salts. They are copies of my book, It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower. The aim is to get them into the hands of Kenyans who have so far been unable to locate a much talked-about item.

Until recently I sincerely doubted the project – embracing local churches, media outlets, Kenyan branches of PEN and the Open Society Institute, and pulled together by the American development agency USAID – would ever see the light of day. I feared the very same forces that had originally prevented my book selling in Kenya would sabotage it. Then came a text message from Galeeb Kachra, the project’s 36-year-old originator. “Books safe”, it read. The first part of the consignment had cleared Kenyan customs and was securely in USAID’s hands.

Now, with the first of what will eventually be 5,100 copies being either distributed for free or at discount prices, I feel a combination of gratitude and wonder. Gratitude to those who decided to help an author reach her natural readers, wonder that this was ever necessary in the first place. Books, after all, are normally sold in bookshops, not distributed like a polio vaccine.

je m’aperçois que l’orthographe et toi, ça fait deux:

Mais l’incident le plus choquant est l’occupation du domicile de l’agent consulaire français, Majdi Chakkoura, à Gaza pendant l’attaque israélienne de janvier. En son absence, les soldats israéliens ont complètement ravagé les lieux – pourtant signalés à l’armée israélienne -, volé une grosse somme d’argent, les bijoux de son épouse, son ordinateur et détruit la thèse sur laquelle il travaillait. Et ils ont souillé d’excréments le drapeau français. Le Quai d’Orsay n’a là encore élevé aucune protestation. Une occupation semblable s’est produite au domicile d’une professeure palestinienne du centre culturel français. Avec ce tag écrit en français sur la bibliothèque dévastée : «Sale arabe, ont va revenir te tuer». C’est, dit-on à Gaza, la faute de français – le «t» en trop – qui a choqué l’enseignante.

In case you haven’t been reading him, you should check out Hamid Dabashi on what’s going on in Iran. Last week, he had a piece on CNN’s website about the allegations that this is a class conflict between the rich supporters of Mousavi against the lumpen proletariat backing Ahmadinejad.

His latest, in Al-Ahram Weekly, paints a picture of who he sees as the winners and losers of the recent events. He ends with a message to Arabs and Muslims in the region:

To the best of my knowledge, this is not a revolution to topple the Islamic Republic. This is a grassroots demand for civil rights. Iranians being clubbed and shot in the streets of Tehran are not the stooges of the United States. The Arab and Muslim mediaeval potentates suffocating the democratic aspirations of their people are. Fear the day that young Arabs and Muslims learn from their Iranian brothers and sisters and demand their inalienable human rights, freedom of peaceful assembly, freedom of expression, equal rights for men and women, economic opportunity, respect for human decency and for the rule of law.

Despite the occasional typo or technical cock-up here or there, I’ve been  impressed and pleasantly surprised by the Ministry of the Interior’s election website. I logged on again last night to do some poking around in the Jezzine results to see that there has been a new addition to the site: election results by polling station.

I certainly don’t have the time or patience to do it, but it would be great to see someone take this date and put it into a single file, or better yet, display it in map format.

Until then, though, it’s reassuring, especially given the election fiasco in Iran, that we are able to have such a high level of transparency from the government when it comes to election returns.

Lost in the shuffle of the events in Iran is the news that Washington is sending an ambassador to Damascus:

President Obama has decided to send an ambassador to Syria after a four-year hiatus, two senior administration officials said on Tuesday evening, in a sign of the deepening engagement between the Obama administration and the Syrian government.

The State Department informed Syria’s ambassador to the United States, Imad Moustapha, of the decision on Tuesday, said one official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because it had not yet been announced. Mr. Obama has not yet chosen a person for the post, he said.

The administration’s decision was first reported on CNN’s Web site. The State Department’s spokesman, Ian C. Kelly, declined to comment on the report, but other officials said it was a logical step in Mr. Obama’s pursuit of normal relations with Syria.

“It’s a reflection of Syria being a pivotal country in terms of achieving a comprehensive peace in the region,” one senior official said. “There is a lot of work to do in the region for which Syria can play a role. For that, it helps to have a fully staffed embassy.”

This could likely signal progress on a larger deal between Syria and the US, which may or may not include progress on Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations. This will be a story to follow in the months ahead. It will also be interesting to see who is appointed.

Chatham House has a report up with a preliminary analysis of the Iranian election results. Here are their main findings:

· If Ahmadinejad’s victory was primarily caused by the increase in voter turnout, one would expect the data to show that the provinces where there was the greatest ’swing’ in support towards Ahmadinejad would also be the provinces with the greatest increase in voter turnout. This is not the case.

· In a third of all provinces, the official results would require that Ahmadinejad took not only all former conservative voters, all former centrist voters, and all new voters, but also up to 44% of former reformist voters, despite a decade of conflict between these two groups.

· In 2005, as in 2001 and 1997, conservative candidates, and
Ahmadinejad in particular, were markedly unpopular in rural areas. That the countryside always votes conservative is a myth. The claim that this year Ahmadinejad swept the board in more rural provinces flies in the face of these trends.

My friend Mohamad has a review of Neil MacFarquhar’s new book on the region. I like the title and was interested to hear that MacFarquhar actually grew up in Libya. He’s in Iran now and has just done a piece on the Basij that’s worth reading.

Otherwise, Mohamad was recently interviewed on the CFR website about post-election Lebanon in which he predicts a Hariri premiership and says that the Patriarch’s pre-election remarks are what tipped the balance toward March 14 at the expense of Aoun. As usual, when Mohamad talks about Lebanon, it’s worth reading.

Because I love maps and because the Iranian demographics are important for understanding the election results, here is a very useful fact sheet about Iran that includes the country’s ethnic geography and population density.

I’ve cut out the latter two maps, but be sure to check out the file in its entirety.