Doing Some Writing

I wrote a story on the initial cleaning operations in Dahiye. Since my newspaper decided to change its format tabloid, most articles are limited to 600 words, and I think I’ve mentioned this before, but it is mighty difficult to get the point across in 600 words without resorting to clichés. I’ve done an earlier piece on Nasrallah’s charm offensive. (But you’d need to have a membership on the paper to read it). When I was down there yesterday, I bought some ‘souvenirs’; A T-shirt with Hassan Nasrallah, some key chains with the Hezbollah logo. People in Holland almost gasp when you say you can buy Hezbollah flags on the street. They all want to have one. In Europe it is inconceivable that you could buy Hezbollah supporters stuff in the open.
I had an American colleague here who bought a flag for her brother in the States, but was looking for all kinds of ways to hide it in her luggage. “This will never make it through customs,” she said.
In the meantime, there still seems to be a pretty effective marine blockade in place, courtesy of Israel. Which means that food products not made locally cannot be imported. So we no longer have liquid milk, just powder, and we’re running out of that. Among others.
Tomorrow I’m going down south to do a piece on cluster bombs.