Buddha Bar Lebanon Shuts Down

Here’s yet another nail in Lebanon’s economic coffin. Buddha Bar, one of Lebanon’s trendiest go-to places, is shutting down permanently, according to the Daily Star. This will get approximately 200 employees laid off from their jobs.

The cause for Buddha Bar shutting down is non-other than the great situation the country is going through. If you haven’t been in the loop, which I doubt, here’s what it breaks down into, grosso modo.

  • A very poor touristic season over the summer.
  • Civil unrest that ignites at any moment.
  • A seemingly camping-site friendly Downtown Beirut, which is where Buddha Bar is located. It has been turned into such a place twice in the past four years alone. They also offer discounts if you want to join them in rainy weather.
  • Political leadership with absolutely no idea whatsoever on how to run things.

And things don’t seem that they’ll drastically improve anytime soon with rhetoric that keeps sinking, politicians who believe acting feisty over Twitter will bring forth change and supporters who are more than convinced that their corresponding side of the political spectrum has done absolutely nothing wrong over the past few years – or has done things that are entirely justifiable.

Meanwhile, 200 families have just lost means of support. And if Buddha Bar is closing down, what does that say about the countless other smaller businesses that are suffering in this country? How many other families will have their jobs taken away from them just because our country is always the playground of others?

We cannot really work on fixing our economy until we fix everything that’s ruining it and herein lies the problem: where do we start fixing?

 

LBC and the LF: Don’t Celebrate Just Yet

There was a news item which overtook Friday’s Achrafieh bombing today and that’s the judge ruling in the lawsuit between the Lebanese Forces and Pierre Daher, the head of the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation, who was accused by the LF of abusing the trust they put in him when they handed him the TV station which was founded by their founder more than two decades ago.

A similar ruling had been given last year but Pierre Daher chose to take it to higher courts. LF supporters seem to think that today’s ruling is the final one in the case. Simply put, it is not. According to Agnes Sema’an, a good friend of mine who recently graduated from law school, there are more details about the ruling which seem to have escaped most people.

This is apparently an indictment which came out from the criminal division of the court of cassation (temyiz). It declares the previous case, whose ruling turned out to be in favor of the LF, valid. The argument presented by Daher  at this court was that time had passed on the events that were being argued which makes the initial case invalid; LF argued that Daher should be arrested for fraud and embezzlement.

This opens the way to the ownership trial which means that the case will now be forwarded to the single criminal judge of Beirut and he will look into it. That judge will listen to witnesses and he’ll be given documents by both sides to prove their points and he will give a ruling which might go either way – however, his ruling can go to the appeals court.
The appeals court, also, has way too many ways with which it could advance. So the LF have won a fight in a battle that has not ended yet and will keep going for months to come. Headlines that say “LBC is owned by the LF” are erroneous. LF supporters should not pop champagne bottles all over Facebook just yet. There’s still a long way to go.

But the real question is: what will this mean to LBC as a TV station if it returned to the Lebanese Forces?

If we go by other Lebanese TV stations which are handled by political parties (Future, NBN, Al Manar, OTV), this means that the quality of LBC as a TV station will degrade rapidly. Most of these TV stations are unwatchable due to their extreme bias and ridiculous one-sidedness so even if the TV shows that are offered remain at a certain relatively high standard, the news won’t be. I expect the viewership of the TV station to decrease the more biased its news service becomes.

I also expect a lot of political hiring and firing to happen. Many LF-supporters searching for jobs will suddenly find a spot for them in the midst of LBC. It has already started with my Facebook timeline filled with excited mass communication majors who also happen to be LF supporters and for their supporters to be hired, others have got to go. How disappointed will those people be when they find out that it won’t be that imminent.

All in all, while it is perhaps the Lebanese Forces’ right to own LBC, I have to wonder if it’s the best thing for Lebanon’s leading TV station to become deeply and politically involved? One thing is for sure though: even if the LF end up winning the whole thing, it will not be an easy walk in the park for them to run a station.

Al Manar & The Lebanese Forces Israeli Agent

He’s a “known” Israeli agent. He’s roaming the streets of Beirut. He has pictures with Israeli soldiers in the background. His name is Pierre Nammour. And he’s “threatening” with murder in Downtown Beirut.

They focus on his neck. He’s wearing a Lebanese Forces Cross. Because it’s common knowledge that the LF are known for being Israel-loving, non-Lebanese Lebanese. Showing that Cross, with its split base and the delta, will definitely add credibility to the report, they thought.

Throw in an interview there and you’ve got a scoop. Al Manar just unveiled an “Israeli agent” who wants to start war in Lebanon. There’s even a video.

A few comments though.

1) Assuming the pictures are real and not photoshopped which they may clearly be (Al Manar are sure pros at forgery), I’m sure I can find many, many pictures of Lebanese with Israeli soldiers in the background. It’s a byproduct of them occupying part of the country for approximately 20 years. If you go and take pictures at the Lebanese border now, odds are you will have an Israeli soldier in your picture’s background. It’s not enough for me to call them traitors but apparently it is for Al Manar. A Hezbollah militant decides to smile for the camera with an Israeli soldier in the background… Automatic traitor. Or not.

2) If Pierre Nammour is such a known traitor and those pictures are real and he has served in the Israeli army and he has killed Lebanese, etc., then why isn’t he in jail? I’m certain his political affiliation cannot pull enough strings to keep him out as Al Manar’s party did with “others.” Because even when it comes to treason, Lebanon has various degrees. There are some which don’t serve you politically and there are some which do.

3) How this shows that Israel is behind the assassination of Al Hassan is beyond me. And that was Al Manar’s conclusion apparently.

4) Al Manar has certainly made a splash out of the man saying that he’s willing to kill those who threaten him if the need arises. I wonder though, how many of the militants that Al Manar loves and cherishes would say the exact same thing and have probably done it more than once before and not only against Israelis?

5) What’s probably the best testament to the bullshit in Al Manar’s report is the fact that it’s one minute long. I would assume exposing an Israeli spy who’s threatening civil war would warrant more airtime.

Pierre Nammour is definitely an instinct-driven man, like many other Lebanese, who thinks with his beretta first and foremost. That’s definitely not acceptable but he’s not the only one in the country who thinks that way. Should he be turned into a news item? How about we turn the million or so Lebanese who think like him into news pieces too?

No one should expect anything remotely acceptable from a TV station like Al Manar, known for the absolute and utter crap they air day in day out. But it is a sad day when treason becomes a passe-par-tout accusation.

Till when should the Lebanese airwaves be littered with “n’importe quoi” news just because their target audience likes them?

The Political Side of the Achrafieh Explosion

A three meter crater took the life of eight people in Achrafieh on Friday. One of those eight people was the head of Lebanon’s ISF intelligence, Wissam Al Hassan.

The assassination of Wissam Al Hassan cannot be tackled except by asking two main questions: how and why.

How was he assassinated?

No, I’m not referring to the bomb which went off but as to how this bomb found Al Hassan on the day that he returned from abroad, on a busy street in Achrafieh at the exact same time he was passing. The answer cannot but be clear: there was an informant among Al Hassan’s entourage who monitored his every move, waiting for the right time to press the trigger.

Why was he assassinated?

Some people want to think it’s Israel. Al Hassan has rounded up many Israeli spies – but the biggest fish that he caught was non-other than Michel Samaha who happens to be Bachar el Assad’s favorite man in Lebanon, possibly surpassing the allies that are giving men in Syria to defend the regime. Being the head of the investigation with Samaha, Al Hassan managed to find connections and revelations about the work of the former and the involvement of the Syrian regime in the everyday lives of Lebanese, something that existed in theory before. But never this practically. Al Hassan managed to create causality between Samaha and many incidences which took place on the Lebanese scene and by virtue of Samaha’s proxy, the causality extended to our neighbor to the East.

Al Hassan has also created a tough link between Samaha and high ranking Syrian officials, such as Bousayna Chaaban, who – it transpired – had asked Samaha to work on dismantling the fragile status quo that existed in Lebanon. In order to do so, Samaha had too much help.

The investigation has also led to the unveiling of documents which accused one specific party on the Lebanese scene with an assassination that is uncannily like Hassan’s: a man who just returned from a trip abroad, as he went to a meeting, on a side street in a bustling region.

1 + 1 = 2

The informant who managed to conjure up the plan that took away Hassan’s life, as well as the lives of eight other people in Achrafieh, is most definitely Lebanese. You need to be Lebanese in order to have that much proximity to the second man of the ISF. The execution of the idea was also Lebanese – and God knows we have way too many Lebanese traitors in our midst who can’t wait but execute the commands they get. The command is, obviously, Syrian – straight out of Damascus. The Syrian regime in its current state can only send out a request. Some Lebanese are all too willing to abide.

The question to be asked is: why would a beaten but still fighting Syrian regime want to get Al Hassan out of the way, fully knowing that this won’t stop the investigation taking place into Samaha?

The answer is simple: the investigation was going way too fast for the liking of the crumbling regime and its Lebanese arms that were readied to be broken by it. Killing Al Hassan would buy time for the parties affected by his work to catch their breath and ready their upcoming steps. This is the tip of the iceberg for Lebanon. What will come soon will be much worse. After all, isn’t time valuable enough to kill for?

The assassination of Wissam Al Hassan is also another attempt by said “foreign agent” to instill chaos between Lebanon’s Sunnis and Shi’a. Those who benefit from such a scenario are Israel and Syria, the former because it would weaken Lebanon, especially its foes, and the latter because the Alawite leadership sees no problem in pitting the Sunnis against the Shiites. Iran, on the other hand, doesn’t have it in its best interest to have such a strife in Lebanon because it would damage the only section of the country it cares deeply about.

Israel is probably smiling giddily at what’s happening in Lebanon now. This is all too good to be true. But it stops at that – because the immediate interest in the whole matter is for the Syrians to defuse some of the tension on their regime. And that’s a gamble they’re willing to take. Will most fingers be pointed at them? They’re sure of it. But they can take it because the whole world, apart from Russia and China and Iran, have their fingers already pointed at the regime and they haven’t succumbed. They can kill their own people for months on end and get away with it. What’s a top ranking Lebanese official compared to the tens of thousands that have been killed already?

Israel may have done it too. They’ve killed tens of thousands and have assassinated Lebanese officials before (Imad Moghniyeh comes to mind). But I believe Syria is more plausible and it seems our president and prime minister share that belief.

The Future for Lebanon

This won’t be the last of assassinations to hit the country. I hope it is. But my instincts tell me it’s not. The March 14th movement is effectively comatose after what they did on Sunday. The big comeback they were planning to make turned into a knife that got sunk right through their heart – could they recover from it? I don’t think so. The anger in the streets is the most substantial in recent memory – even surpassing that of the May 2012 events in the Sunni streets. The dichotomy couldn’t have been clearer: as people celebrated with baklava in one part of the country, others were protesting with burning tires. Because burning rubber brings dead people back. The country is on the verge of a volcano if things keep escalating. Our politicians need to sober up for just one fraction of a moment and see exactly how big a mess they’ve all made out of things.

The 2013 elections are definitely in jeopardy. If the situation doesn’t start to get better really soon, I don’t expect we’ll be heading to the ballots in May to vote for the same people all over again.

The government should obviously not resign at the moment because a political void is exactly what those who planned the Achrafieh blast want from us. Our president needs to head out to the U.N. and immediately ask for “peace” keeping forces to be spread around our borders with Syria. I’d even call for the borders to be shut down because their economic value has become non-existent.

May all the victims of the Achrafieh massacre rest in peace.

The Superb Discourse Level of Nadim Koteich

This is a tweet by “journalist” Nadim Koteich. Let’s just leave it at that.

 

No, this is not photoshopped. This is a screenshot I took of this tweet. Tell me again, why shouldn’t this man be fired?

He didn’t even bother apologizing for the mayhem he caused in Beirut yesterday. He justified himself as being righteous – down to getting authorization from his wife. A mother who called him and asked what would have happened if one of those boys died got an answer about the courage of the Syrian Revolution. Because that makes so much sense, telling a woman that her son dying is okay.

And some people over on my Facebook timeline are “proud” to have him represent them.
كما تكونون يوَلّى عليكم.

And this, my readers, with his “air” and “sharmouta” is a future MP in our lovely state. God Bless the current form of March 14!