Huge Land Sold In Sabbah, Jezzine to a Khaliji Princess

The saga of selling land to foreigners in Lebanon keeps escalating. After a 7000 sqm land was sold to a Saudi Prince near the Harissa Valley in Keserwan, and another land in Lassa, Jbeil was taken out of Maronite Church property to be given to the nearby Shia mosque, it’s the turn of a town in Jezzine called Sabbah to have one of its hills sold to a Khaliji woman.

The hill’s area is 40,000 sqm. It’s owned by the heirs of Habib Bassil, who owned hundreds of thousands of squared meters of land in Sabbah. His estate is run by Mona Bassil, a lawyer and one of the current members in Sabbah’s municipality. People are worried some sort of deal will also be struck regarding the remainder of his properties, which would have catastrophic consequences on their hometown.

The land itself was shown to the princess’s manager by a very renowned Maronite broker who took him on a trip around Jezzine in order to sell him some land. Of all the places that she showed him, the manager liked the hill in question because of its strategic location: it spreads from the St. Elias church near Sabbah’s center, to the edges of the Our Lady of Machmouche convent which is a very important religious place for the Maronites of the region, to the resting place of “Nabiyye Mikha” in the Northern parts of Sabbah.

The municipality is even accused of selling other properties to different people without double checking their identity, which the mayor didn’t deny although he downplayed the severity of it.

This is not the only land currently being offered in the area. Another land in a nearby town (Bteddine el Laqsh), of an area totaling 10,000 sqm, is being sold to Salafists from Saida, even though a Christian buyer is interested and has made an offer.
In another Jezzine town called Zaarour, a huge land owned by the El Helou family is in negotiations to be sold to Shia contractors who will turn the pine forest into a buildings compound. (source)

None of Jezzine’s MPs decided to intervene. Church facilities also didn’t care enough to help stop these transactions.
I guess all the people in power who are worried about Christian influence waning in Lebanon only know to preach but when it comes down to actually doing something, they are as useless as the brokers making sure the land is going to non-Lebanese or Lebanese who will change the identity of the land forever.

I reiterate – I do not raise this issue out of a sectarian agenda, but when I can’t own land in the khalij, why should they be allowed to own land in my country? And when there’s even a tendency among your fellow Lebanese to own as much land as possible for their own hidden agendas, being vigilant is of utmost importance.

It is here that I invite you to re-read (or read if you haven’t done so already) the points I raised when it came to the sale of the land in Dlebta, Keserwan.

Another Massacre in Syria: Qubair, Hama

It seems that Houla’s effect wasn’t “grand” enough for whatever force killing people in Syria to stop doing so. We all know who that force is but for the sake of keeping this about the people, I won’t throw names.

In the town of Qubair, near Hama in Northern Syria, 78 people have been killed including 35 from the same family. Half of those killed so far are women and children. The death toll is still rising. Did I mention the town counts only a 100 or so resident? They literally killed everyone there.

In the nearby town of Kfarzeita, 6 bodies were found burned till they became charcoal. There’s even a video for that.

In total, the death toll is at 130, more than Houla, and rising.

Hama has been one of the areas affected the most by the recent Syrian uprising, with it seeing some of the highest death tolls and destruction. Hama has also been the city affected the most by the current Syrian regime with another massacre taking place in it some 30 years ago.

In an interview with someone in the town of Qubair, this is what the man had to say:

Some of the highlights of what he says: “More than 18 families were murdered. Some of the bodies were burned. The massacre started at 2 pm and was executed by the army of Assad’s regime. Families were killed with knives and gunshots. Families were abolished in their entirety, from the 80 year old elder to a 4 months old newborn.”

Here are some pictures from the recent Qubair Massacre:

A mother holding her two children

The two children

Ahmad and his sister Chayma

3 brothers

2 other brothers in the same family

Their mother

Their grandmother

I will update this with more pictures when I get them.

A Collection of Timeless Pictures

Following my post about some of the best pictures ever taken, a reader started sending me her collection of pictures that she’s amassed over the years.

Some of them were part of the previous post in question while others were totally new. All of them are still striking, amazing and haunting.

So without further ado, I commence.

1957 – The first day of Dorothy Counts at the Harry Harding High School in the United States. Counts was one of the first black students admitted in the school, and she was no longer able to stand the harassments after only 4 days.

1963 – Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist priest in Southern Vietnam, burns himself to death protesting the government’s torture policy against priests. Thich Quang Duc never made a sound or moved while he was burning.

1965 – A mom and her children try to cross the river in South Vietnam in an attempt to run away from the American bombs.

1966 – U.S. troops in South Vietnam are dragging a dead Vietcong soldier.

1975 – A woman and a girl falling down after the fire escape collapses.

February 1, 1968 – South Vietnam police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan shoots a young man, whom he suspects to be a Viet Cong soldier.

1980 – A kid in Uganda about to die of hunger, and a missionary.

1987 – A mother in South Korea apologizes and asks for forgiveness for her son who was arrested after attending a protest against the alleged manipulations in the general elections.

1992 – A mother in Somalia holds the body of her child who died of hunger.

1994 – A Rwandan man who was tortured by the soldiers after being suspected to have spoken with the Tutsi rebels.

1996 – Kids who have been affected by the civil war in Angola.

2001 – An Afghani refugee kid’s body is being prepared for the funeral in Pakistan.

2003 – An Iraqi prisoner of war tries to calm down his child.

Congo: A father stares at the hands of his five year-old daughter, which were severed as a punishment for having harvested too little caoutchouc/rubber.

1902 – location in the United States not specified.

July 7, 1865 – Washington, Lincoln assassination conspirators Mary Surratt, Lewis Payne, David Herold and George Atzerodt shortly after their execution at Fort McNair.

July 1913 – Gettysburg reunion, Veterans of the G.A.R. and of the Confederacy, at the Encampment.

March 1941 – Planting corn on a plantation near Moncks Corner, South Carolina.

May 18, 1914, Washington, D.C. – Washington Post records the passing of one John A. Eaglen, 3 years.

Teaser from Carrie Underwood’s Blown Away Music Video

This was leaked from the fan club party that went on at the Opry in Nashville, a 13 second teaser from the upcoming music video by Carrie Underwood for her song: Blown Away, which I correctly predicted would be the second single off the album of the same title.

The storyline of the video looks like it’ll be what was leaked a couple of days ago:

The video opens with heavy rains. People in town running with newspapers over their heads to their cars, a lady’s umbrella gets turned inside out. The camera is zipping to different parts of the city showing people trying to deal with the storm.

The camera then zooms out of the city down a road to a big farm. It isn’t raining there, but you can see the lightning clouds coming towards the house.

The first verse starts and the camera zooms into the house. There’s an old man laying on the couch, passed out as if he were watching TV. The emergency weather service is is on the TV. Between the TV and the couch stands Carrie. Holding a picture frame and flashlight. When Carrie sings “those storms clouds gather in her eyes,” the camera zooms into her face and her eyes are watering, but she’s not crying. She shakes her head in a disgusted way, looks away from him. At the line “the weatherman called for a twister,” she shuts the TV off and walks away.

The camera goes out to the street and you see the band playing and Carrie is singing “there’s not enough rain in Oklahoma…” It goes back and forth between this and the Carrie in the house collecting all of the pictures off the walls and scrapbooks. You can see the dad still passed out on the couch and the girl walks up the stairs to her room.

When the chorus starts, the camera is switching between Carrie with her band outside (the winds have picked up a bit at this point) and Carrie in her room tearing it to pieces. She’s tearing up pictures of her dad, throwing her clothes, etc.

When the chorus ends and Carrie hits the high “Blown Away” note, the clouds are now really dark, her hair is blowing wildly and a single lightning bolt strikes near the band, tearing the ground up.

As the second verse starts, it zooms back into the girl’s room. As soon as she starts crying, it starts raining lightly outside on Carrie and the band. The winds are still blowing. It starts showing people around the neighborhood running into their cellars, gathering their kids and just kind of panicking. Carrie (the inside one) sees her father still sleep on the couch. She picks up her whiskey bottle and takes a big drink of it and wipes her mouth.

When the second chorus starts, it’s really raining hard and lightning striking everywhere and for the rest of the video, it zooms between the storm progressing, eventually with a tornado touching down right behind the band and ripping up the house and the inside Carrie who is sitting in a chair in the basement with the light right above dangling and swaying as if the house was moving. There are lots of shots of the house be ripped apart by this storm, with pictures flying everywhere etc.

At the end of the song, Carrie emerges from the basement and the entire house is gone, except for an empty couch.

Sounds great, no? Here’s the teaser for you: