Tag Archives: Beirut

The Story of Ziad Rahbani, The Lebanese Left and The Syrian Moukhabarat

01 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by in Arab Spring, Arab World, LB Politics, Lebanon, Media Monitoring, TV

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I am from a generation who loved Ziad Rahbani, growing up with his music, songs, shows, plays and ‘revolutionary’ appearances and quotes like most of the youth of my time.

I can nearly recite all his plays, which I think they were masterpieces and will be engraved in our cultural heritage. I can never forget Joseph Sakr’s great songs in Sahriyyeh, the revolution of Abbas and Fahed in Nazl el sourour (which suits our current mood by the way), the social struggles of both Thurayya and Zakariya in Bennesbe La Boukra Shou, the Western conspiracy and our sectarian disease in Film Ameriki Taweel, the broken Lebanese society in Shi Fashel and the stubborn Lebanese people in his last series of Bikhsous el Karameh wel Shaab el Aaneed and Lawla Fos’hat el Amal. I adore his music and songs whether were part of his plays or not. He composed the greatest music and anthems, not exhaustively, but I mention Mays el Reem, Prelude 83, Abou Ali, People’s Winds and The Revolution Anthem.

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What should We Do With Beirut Airport Road Blocking?

07 Tuesday Aug 2012

Posted by in LB Politics, LB Social, Lebanon, Politics

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Photo: source

Ok, so the airport road was closed again yesterday in Beirut, and reopened this morning. If there are signs of impotency of the Lebanese government, surely its helpless watching of this chaos is one of them (too many signs to list here). If the government can’t impose the rule of law and ensure the safety of its citizens, may be at least it needs to regulate that chaos.

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The Attack on the Lebanese Aljadeed TV

26 Tuesday Jun 2012

Posted by in LB Politics, Lebanon, Media Monitoring, Social Media

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This is a new trial on this blog, with the below post being one of my new Storify postings.

Storify is a social media website that allows me to publish main posts from social media with ease in one post. Tonight, the big event in Beirut was the attack on Aljadeed TV and subsequent riots that followed in the capital.

In general, my Storify postings will aim to give an chronological overview of a certain current affair, possibly a ‘breaking news’ type, including relevant commentary or views of pundits or general public as appropriate from facebook, twitter and other social media.

Where there are more than one link in one tweet/post, and you wish to see more details of the links, please click first on the date/time of the tweet/post which will take you to the original source…

Excuse the clumsiness of my first Storify posting… Continue reading »

The Case of Resistance in Lebanon (18+)

07 Thursday Jun 2012

Posted by in LB Politics, LB Social, Lebanon, MB Social, MicroBlogs

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I want to introduce to you Mr. Sodico, an angry bird – sorry Lebanese – speaking about his country and the resistance in it in the below video. The video is in the Lebanese slang, so apologies for non-Arabic readers.

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A View On The Sunni Streets

30 Wednesday May 2012

Posted by in LB Politics, MB Politics, Media Monitoring, MicroBlogs, Politics, Press

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Ana Maria Luca from NOW Lebanon wrote an interesting article ‘The Sunni Streets’, following up on the clashes that took place last week in Tarik Al-Jadideh in Beirut. She interviewed me about the events and quoted me in her piece.

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The Sabotage of Hariri’s Leadership and The Death Of March 14

22 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by in LB Politics, Lebanon

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Within a matter of days, the Hariri’s Future Movement has shifted its rhetoric from the injustice the Lebanese people live in due to the control of Hezbollah, to the injustice and “persecution” – as Mohammad Salam put it – the Sunni sect is facing.

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The Lebanese Tourist “Swim and Ski on Same Day” Claim

23 Monday Apr 2012

Posted by in LB Culture, Lebanon, Media Monitoring, Social Media

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I can’t believe we still preach this tourist propaganda in 2012: “Lebanon is the only country in the world, where you can ski on the mountains in the morning and swim in the Mediterranean in the afternoon”.

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Organised Theft of Lebanese Beaches’ Sand

18 Wednesday Apr 2012

Posted by in LB Social, Lebanon, Politics

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This is how organised corruption works in Lebanon: you get the Public Works Ministry to contract out cleaning part of the public beach to a contractor, with the main benefit going to some lucky connected developer owning the nearby sea-resort, while the sponsor of this contract gets paid out from selling the surplus of the beach sand, or the whole sand they extract and transport away.

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Structural routine maintenance [Quoted in The Daily Star]

25 Wednesday Jan 2012

Posted by in LB Social, Lebanon, MB Social, MicroBlogs

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In reference to the recent collapsed building in Achrafiyeh in Beirut, and frenzy over Jal al-Dib bridge in northern suburb of Beirut, Stephen Dockery wrote a good story in The Daily Star about Lebanon’s collapsing structures. Stephen quoted me in his article.

I told Stephen:

I wouldn’t say Jal al-Dib is bad in its structure or design, it just wasn’t followed with maintenance.

We desperately need routine maintenance regimes in place for public assets, rather than reactionary plans. Moreover, construction projects, which could have adverse impact on the nearby structures, should go through rigorous approval procedures, not only for their permanent designs but for their temporary designs that serve them for the duration of the construction period.

The aim of any law should be protecting public and private assets, and maintaining the public health and safety – which are really low on the Lebanese agenda.

Please click here to read the full story in The Daily Star.

New transport plan for Beirut’s traffic problems

08 Tuesday Nov 2011

Posted by in LB Politics, LB Social, Lebanon, Politics

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The daily commute in Beirut massively imbalanced against the use of any public transport methods (or may be the lack of them!). Traffic jam is a real problem over there where the bulk of commuters use their cars for their daily movements. Lebanon is so desperate for alternative and new public transport systems. Without looking at traffic figures, I see the proposal as a combination of many solutions, which are existent somewhere else, tested and proven. Executing one of them rather all of them could render the implemented solution redundant:

1. Park and Ride: building parking outside the city of Beirut, where cars park for the day or longer, and passengers from outside the city take the bus to centre. This ‘Park and Ride’ system exists in tight cities like Oxford in UK. Parking and ride fees are subsidised to reduce the problems of the congestion and parking spaces in the city. Potential locations will be near the main access points to Beirut: Khaldeh, Choueifat, Kfarchima, Hadath, Furn Al Shebak, Sin El Fil, Jdaideh, Hazmiyeh, Dowra and others.

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The security banana republic of Lebanon

30 Sunday Oct 2011

Posted by in LB Politics, Lebanon, Politics

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On Thursday 27th October 2011, Gunmen – arriving in 3 dark tinted windows Cherokee Jeeps – kidnapped three Syrian workers in Bir Hassan in southern suburb of Beirut (a Hezbollah controlled area). The cars used didn’t have any registration plates on them, and the gunmen were in civilians clothes with uncovered faces…and all this happened in daylight (all these are signs of over-confidence?).

One of their brothers, who reported the matter to the police station in Ouzai, told Lebanese channel MTV that he found a piece of paper on his signed by ‘the guys in the Party (of God)”. Hezbollah later denied any involvement.
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Dahyieh against Tarik Jedideh

22 Monday Aug 2011

Posted by in MB Politics, Media Monitoring, MicroBlogs, Politics

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This is how it usually works : there is an STL (Special Tribunal for Lebanon) development, then Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah speaks, then March8 alliance repeats what he said, then March14 alliance refutes what was said. The ‘Zajjal’ party can last for a while.

But this time, Nasrallah accused March14 of targeting the Shia in his last speech last week, so the response came from Tarik Jedideh area in Beirut!

Lebanese daily The Daily Star was generous enough to offer a full article on a local committee called ‘The Federation of Associations and Local Influential Figures’, which I never heard off and I don’t know what they do in life, responding to Nasrallah’s speech.

I thought this was a light-weight source to be portrayed in an article, with a completely ridiculous title by The Daily Star: ‘Beirut’s largest Sunni neighbourhood criticizes Nasrallah‘.

Oh well, it seems this is where Lebanese politics is heading (or we are there now), Dahyieh against Tarik Jedideh!

Just on the same day, Mufti Sheikh Mohammad Rashid Qabbani urged rival political leaders to tone down the hate speech, Anyone listening? (I think he should check on his Mufti El Jouzou first though).

…and another explosion in Beirut today

16 Tuesday Aug 2011

Posted by in LB Politics, Lebanon, MB Politics, MicroBlogs, Politics

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After the mysterious previous two explosions because of ‘gas canister‘ in Beirut Southern suburb, and ‘personal reasons‘ in Antelias, we got another one today in Shiyyah, this time because of ‘technical malfunction‘ in the exploded vehicle.

I know that faults in cars get them to break down, and stop working, not necessarily explode! Anyway, I don’t know whether it has any political relevance or not, but I ‘liked’ that:

Hizbullah and Amal members threw a security dragnet at the blast scene shortly after the explosion

Tourists in Lebanon are Second-Top Spenders in the World!

27 Wednesday Jul 2011

Posted by in MB Social, MicroBlogs

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Just the perfect example to prove how tourism is vital to Lebanon.

According to the below graph compiled by The Economist (based on the United Nations World Tourism Organisation – UNWTO) tourists visiting Lebanon are second in the world in their spending after Australia; these are 2010 figures, with the spending figure calculated per tourist, with the figure standing at $3,000+ for Lebanon. The challenge is to keep increasing the number of tourists now!

If the cost of living is taken into consideration, I think Lebanon will take the top spot (or India). These two countries are presumably cheaper than the rest in the same chart. The two mentioned African countries are likely to be near the top too.

I am not sure if our tourists are big spenders, or we are good in sucking money out of people, or a bit of both. But it’s not bad, considering this is more than what I spend on my holiday!

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The ‘Health and Safety’ culture in Lebanon

16 Saturday Jul 2011

Posted by in LB Culture, Lebanon, Media Monitoring, TV

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What you see below is screen shot from the prime news programme on MTV – the Lebanese TV channel – on Friday 8th July 2011. It was shown as part of a reportage on the illegal advertising billboards on the streets in Lebanon. The MTV reporter was worried that these illegal chaotic billboards visually pollute the scene, and could be at risk of falling as result of strong winds (as previously happened).

MTV reporter was spot on with these worries, but what worried me of his worries was that he missed a main ‘health and safety’ concern: the men climbing, walking and working from heights without any proper protection. There wasn’t any barrier to protect them, and they were not connected with any ropes. Moreover, they didn’t wear any personal protective equipment (known as PPE).

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Fighting counterfeit in Lebanon in a fun way

24 Friday Jun 2011

Posted by in MB Social, Media Monitoring, MicroBlogs, TV

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As part of their fight against counterfeit products, the Brand Protection Group (BPG) commissioned – the international creative advertising agency – LeoBurnett (Beirut) to start a campaign to raise the public awareness about this matter.

BPG is an association launched in 2003 by 21 big corporations to fight counterfeit in Lebanon. They established a hotline 1739 to report counterfeit products. They aim to protect consumers from the hazards of counterfeit products, and obviously protect their profit margins on the way!

LeoBurnett started a public awareness campaign in March 2011 which included some nice adverts, and some ‘public stunts’; one of the them featuring Marcel Ghanem, the LBC (Lebanese Broadcasting corporation) host.

The video below is a summary of their campaign; it’s a 5-minutes video, but I found it fun to watch…enjoy!
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Censorship in Beirut

24 Tuesday May 2011

Posted by in LB Culture, Lebanon

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When I read this article in Al-Akhbar last Friday morning, about the World Press Photo (WPP) exhibition in Downtown Beirut, I said: Oh God, this is not going away easily. The article was about the Beirut exhibition organised by the respected Netherlands-based WPP, which featured many international award-winning photographers including: the Israeli Amit Sha’al.
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Lebanon, the medieval Ottoman country

06 Friday May 2011

Posted by in LB Politics, Lebanon, Politics

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Although small in its impact, and negligible to starting military clashes in Beirut & Mount Lebanon, but their recent alcohol ban in Nabatiyah showed how Hezbollah are undermining the civil society and law in Lebanon. But my personal problem is that I never really felt that the other side (14March movement) represents my ideals too.

I always saw it as having a choice between the bad and the worse. Or between Coca-Cola and Pepsi, with no option for a cup of water! Hezbollah is a militia that wants the Lebanese society to think similar to them, while the opposite side is a bunch of sectarian warlords that missed many chances before, if not ‘killed’ them.
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