Tag Archives: Beirut

Fuddruckers Lebanon Closes Down?

 

The country’s current economic situation hasn’t been kind. Buddha Bar will soon close down and rumors were swirling around about the possibility of Metropolitan shutting down too. These were later discredited. However, it seems the current situation of the country is going to add another victim to its growing list and it’s the American diner chain Fuddruckers, which opened last year.

A friend who happens to like the place had decided to visit the diner yesterday and was surprised to find it completely closed, with a ribbon in front of its main door and no parking service in sight. And you’d think seeing as November 1st is a day off for most schools in the country, the place would open in order to attract students who probably decided to go out with their friends.

I wouldn’t be too surprised if the place ended up really shutting down. Based on personal observation, business wasn’t exactly booming back when the situation in the country was better than its current state. I personally visited it once with Australian friends and wasn’t too taken by their burgers which I found to be very plain. However, we were the only people there and only three other customers came in during our one hour stay.

The question to be asked is the following: If a chain like Fuddruckers has truly shut down in Lebanon, what would that say of the much smaller businesses spread all around the country? How struggling are they currently?

And if Buddha Bar and Fuddruckers couldn’t weather down the current storm, you cannot but wonder: how thick is the bubble for the collective Lebanese population that seems to be absolutely oblivious to how horrible the economy currently is?

At the rate this is going, it won’t be long before we get another chain closing down.

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?

 

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 Achrafieh Explosion – Go Donate Blood Now!

One of Beirut’s main neighborhoods, Achrafieh, was just blown away by a huge explosion at its heart, in the midst of Sassine Square. The details are still vastly unclear but it looks to be a non-political blast – the aim could be to cause as much casualties and damage as possible seeing as it went off at rush hour.

According to the Lebanese civil defense, 8 people were killed so far with 78 others injured. You can follow the details over at LBC and MTV.

The explosion seems to have taken place in a building immediately next to the telecom center, Ogero.

Now, the casualties from the blast are pouring down to the three nearby hospitals: Rizk, Hotel Dieu and St. George (Roum) Hospital. What I ask of any reader that stumbles on this and who happens to be close is to go down to the hospital and donate blood – no matter what your blood type is.

Meanwhile, some Lebanese are beginning to worry about their weekend. My friends in Achrafieh, stay safe – your (and my) region has been through much worse than this and it has always gone through: الأشرفية قوية.

Beirut is Hosting A State of Trance 600 (ASOT600)

Armin Van Buuren will be hosting A State of Trance 600 all the way from Beirut, after a fierce online competition that was eventually won by our own capital.

The A State of Trance official Twitter account just tweeted the following:

I am not a fan of trance – country music FTW – but I guess this is quite the big thing for the Lebanese capital. Perhaps Homeland should have waited to mention this in their episode about Beirut. You know, bombs fall on one side while the beat gets dropped on another – because that’s how we roll, us Lebanese terrorists.

Congrats to all the Lebanese trance fans who worked very hard to get Beirut to host A State of Trace 600. The event will take place on March 9th, 2013.