Face to Face with Beirut’s Facebook Pub

By Tom Lewis,
Special to Ya Libnan
A cartoon published in a
British newspaper earlier this year depicted a lone, balding man
clutching a can of beer in one hand, and a hammer in the other.

This season’s essential partywear’ the tag exclaimed as a jaunty
yellow arrow pointed towards the man’s tee shirt. ‘If you take a
picture of me drunk and put it on Facebook I’ll kill you with this
hammer,’ the garment read.

Facebook has become a universe all of its own. It is the pivot on
which lives now turn as daily routines are drawn by the pull of its
gravitational force. Friendships are forged at the click of a button,
flirtations made on the touch of a mouse and the world is made aware of
our movements twenty-four hours a day.

But this icon of social-networking sites is the happy upholder of a
modern-day paradox. It may bring together friends and colleagues to
proximities that leave them but the click of a keyboard away, but, in
doing so, constructs a ‘community’ woven from threads that are,
ultimately, superficial interpretations of the living, breathing men
and women they represent. The social network has created a gulf between
who its members are and the images they project of themselves like no
other, and has allowed it to flourish.

But,
things are changing; the juggernaut of cyber social life has at last
been made flesh by the cozy establishment of one Lebanese entrepreneur.
For the past six months, Facebook Pub has been happily patching up the
fissure between the people we are and the people Facebook would have us
be in a corner at the far end of Beirut’s Rue Monot. This is a
reality-check for the Internet networking goliath and the results bring
the snapshots Facebook gives of its members’ lives to bristling life.

Virtual reality and the real world, it would seem, are happy
bedfellows and have enjoyed each other’s company in a small corner of
the capital since January 2008. The effects of this happy marriage take
the packagable frivolity of the social networking phenomenon and set it
free, allowing the cyber world to echo the real, and vice versa.

Gimmicky? A little. Ingenious, Facebook Pub most certainly is as
this small hostelry brushes the dust off the theme-pub concept and
turns it on its head.

The purveyors of Beirut’s nightlife do not do things by halves, and
neither does Facebook Pub. It embraces the Facebook concept with gusto,
interprets it with understated flare and tints it effortlessly with
Beirut’s acute sense of how to enjoy itself.

Crisp,
sharp lines lead revellers into the narrow space of the main bar,
decorated in Facebook’s trademark royal blue and white. A wall on the
upper floor is emblazoned with the ubiquitous logo and the white and
blue theme is carried through in the upholstery and fittings throughout
the DJ room on the first floor.

But Facebook Pub’s friendship with the original concept is not
skin-deep. Almost every element of the networking site, which has
around sixty million active members, has been incorporated into the
four walls of Facebook Pub.

The Poke, the crowning glory of e-flirtation, becomes a shot – a
spicy, put-hairs-on-your-chest concoction of spirits and pickles. The
Lick, the crowning glory of e-indecency, also comes in a shot glass.
The drinks menus are formatted like pages from the site and The Message
is also there, in the form of small white cards passed through the
crowds from the author to the recipient by the bar staff. The Wall,
too, makes an appearance, in the form of one of the pub’s actual-walls
and a guestbook, and both become the snapshots of life their electronic
counterparts are; ‘The best pub in Beirut on the best day in Lebanon’
one happy customer wrote on the 21 May, the day the Doha Accord was
announced.

Photos, the bread-and-butter of any Facebook profile (an average of
250 thousand photos are uploaded onto Facebook every day) are also a
staple of the Pub. Staff snap away throughout the evening and upload
the smiling faces of their patrons onto the screens in the upper and
lower rooms. If only these LCD screens were framed by a YouTube-type
detail, the package might be complete.

But perhaps that would be crossing the line. Facebook Pub walks a
tightrope spanning ingenuity on one side and gimmickry on the other,
but it knows exactly how to keep its balance in an environment that has
set tongues a-wagging across the city and further a-field.

“We want to keep it simple, a funny idea,” owner Charbel Mounnes told Ya Libnan,
hinting that plans are afoot to expand and enhance the idea. “We are
looking at creating a Wall on the outer facade of the building,” he
told Ya Libnan, “where people can leave messages for their Facebook
friends and their ‘real’ ones.” The seed of an idea to expand the
Facebook Pub concept has also been sewn, Mounnes says. “We’d like to be
in a bigger place where we have different rooms, like you have on
Facebook; bachelor rooms, singles rooms, rooms for specific groups like
the website has.”

So it seems the only way is up for one of the newest jewels in the
crown of Beirut’s party landscape. Facebook Pub’s heady mix of a
popular idea interpreted creatively in a new context is testament to
the sparkling results that can be achieved when two worlds collide.

Source: Yalibnan

Does Lebanon need 10 MIG 29’s?

By Ghassan Karam,
Special to Ya Libnan
If we are to assume; and
many believe that this is a fact of life; that there is no such thing
as an altruistic behavior between individuals then obviously there can
be no altruism between states.

This in essence is a restatement of the old economic truism that
“there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch” i.e. everything has a price.

The tremendous financial constraints under which the Lebanese
government has had to operate for over two decades have pressured it
into accepting the role of an international ‘GIFT SEEKER”. Lebanon has
been transformed into a country that is totally defendant on gifts and
giveaways by other countries in the world; both well meaning and not so
well meaning; to conduct many of its state functions. Lebanon depends
on the generosity of other states to deposit money in its central bank
in order to strengthen its weak domestic currency, it depends on gifts
from other nations in order to equip its police force with vehicles, it
depends on other countries still to send its armed forces ammunition,
it further depends on other countries to equip its army with unarmed
helicopters and recently it is the “proud” recipient of 10 MIG 29.

It
might not be exceedingly problematic to justify the need for Police
cars or even Army helicopters since the quid pro quo from such
transactions cannot be very damaging but one needs to think hard about
the potential consequences of accepting such large gifts that carry
with them an inherent role of dependency. A Lebanese Air Force composed
of 10 MIG 29’s will not become operational for years, it will increase
exponentially Lebanese dependence on Russian training, radar systems,
and maintenance but above all it will help bring Lebanon into the
Russian orbit in exchange for war materiel that is ineffective and that
Lebanon does not strategically need in the first place. Anyone who has
purchased a digital photographic printer for a very low price just to
find out that they have become captive consumers for the colored ink
and photographic paper of the producer knows exactly what I am talking
about. Studies have shown repeatedly that consumers can save money,
have better quality photos and maintain their independence by opting to
use commercial print services.

At times it is the height of prudence to look a gift horse in the
mouth instead of accepting meekly and uncritically the intentions of
what is being offered. Many a time the apparent gift is nothing but a
mean to entrap the recipient into a relationship of servitude.
Obviously the best mechanism to escape from such machinations is to
build a strong and healthy society that does not need the generosity of
others in order to survive. In this case, however, what is at stake is
even more compelling. Lebanon has nothing to gain from allocating its
scarce resources in order to cultivate and maintain an Air Force that
will not be effective under the most ideal of conditions. Any rational
cost benefit analysis will have to conclude that monies, policies and
resources spent in an ineffective way are tantamount to gross
negligence and are harmful to the welfare of the citizens. Make no
mistake about it; the harboring of the illusion that a 10 MIG 29
Lebanese Air Force is worth while is nothing short of a criminal act
that can set in motion a scenario of destruction, misery and squalor
that Lebanon can ill afford.

Source: Yalibnan

155 Palestinians killed, 310 injured in Israeli air strikes on Gaza

Gaza – Israeli warplanes destroyed dozens of security compounds across Hamas-ruled Gaza on Saturday in unprecedented waves of air strikes, killing at least 155 people and wounding more than 310 in the single deadliest day in Gaza fighting in recent memory, Palestinian medical officials said.

gaza strike.jpg

The strikes came in response to renewed rocket fire from Gaza on Israeli border towns. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said “the operation will last as long as necessary” but it was not clear if it would include a ground offensive.

Asked if Hamas political leaders might be targeted next, military spokeswoman Maj. Avital Leibovitch said “Any Hamas target is a target.”

Gaza militants fired several Grad-type Katyusha rockets at southern Israel in response to the strikes, the military said. One hit in the border community of Netivot, killing a woman and wounding four people, Israel’s rescue service reported.

The strikes caused widespread panic and confusion as black clouds of smoke rose above Gaza. Some of the missiles struck in densely populated areas as children were leaving school and women rushed into the streets frantically looking for their children.

In Gaza City’s main security compound, the bodies of more than a dozen uniformed security officers lay on the ground. One survivor raised his index finger in a show of Muslim faith, uttering a prayer. The Gaza police chief was among those killed.

It wasn’t immediately clear how many civilian casualties there were.

Said Masri sat in the middle of a Gaza City street, close to a security compound, alternately slapping his face and covering his head with dust from the bombed-out building. “My son is gone, my son is gone,” wailed Masri, 57.

The shopkeeper said he sent his son out to purchase cigarettes minutes before the airstrikes began and now could not find him. “May I burn like the cigarettes, may Israel burn,” Masri moaned.

Hamas leaders threatened revenge attacks and Israel told its civilians near Gaza to take cover as militants began retaliating with rockets. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has governed from the West Bank since Hamas seized control of Gaza last year, called for restraint and Egypt opened its border with Gaza to allow ambulances to drive out some of the wounded.

Hamas officials said all of Gaza’s security compounds were destroyed. Israel Army Radio said at least 40 targets were hit.

Barak said the coming period “won’t be easy and won’t be short for the communities in the south” of Israel.

Israel declared a state of emergency in Israeli communities within a 12-mile range of Gaza, putting the area on a war footing.

Hamas said it would take revenge not just with rocket attacks but by sending suicide bombers into Israel. “Hamas will continue the resistance until the last drop of blood,” said spokesman Fawzi Barhoum, speaking on a Gaza radio station.

The first round of air strikes came just before noon, and several more waves followed.

Civilians rushed to the targeted areas, trying to move the wounded in their cars to hospitals.

Television footage showed Gaza City hospitals crowded with people, including civilians rushing in wounded people in cars, vans and ambulances.

“We are treating people on the floor, in the corridors. We have no more space. We don’t know who is here and what the priority is to treat,” said one doctor who hung up the phone before identifying himself at Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s main treatment center.

Moawiya Hassanain, a Gaza Health Ministry official, said at least 155 people were killed and more than 310 wounded.

Frantic civilians drove wounded people to hospitals in their cars.

In the West Bank, Hamas’ rival Abbas condemned “this aggression” and called for restraint, according to an aide, Nabil Abu Rdeneh. Abbas, who has ruled only the West Bank since Islamic Hamas militants seized power in Gaza in June 2007, was in contact with Arab leaders and his West Bank Cabinet convened an emergency session.

Israel has targeted Gaza in the past but the number of simultaneous attacks was unprecedented.

Israel left Gaza in 2005 after a 38-year occupation but the withdrawal did not lead to better relations with Palestinians in the territory as Israeli officials had hoped. Instead, the evacuation was followed by a sharp rise in militant attacks on Israeli border communities that on several occasions provoked harsh Israeli military reprisals.

The last, in late February and early March of this year, spurred both sides to agree to a truce that was to have lasted six months but began unraveling in early November.

With 200 mortars and rockets raining down on Israel since the truce expired a week ago, and 3,000 since the beginning of the year, pressure had been mounting in Israel for the military to crush militants.

Israeli leaders have been voicing strong threats in recent days and consider Hamas to be primarily responsible for the situation.

“I will not hesitate to use Israel’s strength to strike at Hamas and Islamic Jihad,” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in an interview with Al-Arabiya television on Thursday, adding ominously that “tens of thousands of children and innocents” would be at risk “as a result of Hamas’s actions.”

Photo: Smoke rises from Israeli missile strikes in the northern Gaza Strip as seen from the Israeli community of Netiv Hasara, Saturday, Dec. 27, 2008. Israeli aircraft struck Hamas security compounds across Gaza on Saturday in an unprecedented series of simultaneous strikes.

Source: Yalibnan

No More Shoes Say’s President Bush

Today at a new conference in Iraq President Bush was almost hit by old shoes. As most of you know this is a very big insult in the Middle East, and should be any place what else is lower to the ground then a shoe. At any rate after this insult President Bush has issued a executive order all press will have to remove their shoes before every new conferences until President Bush Leave office.  Sorry all of you in the American press core, but the President can not have any more flying shoes thrown at his head.

The Seven Villages: Origins and Implications

Nicholas Blanford1

The long-standing demand for the return of the “Seven Villages” from Israel was
renewed recently by a senior Hezbollah official, revitalizing what surely must be the most
obscure and misunderstood of all Lebanon’s many outstanding grievances toward the
Jewish state.
In a meeting with ambassadors in Beirut, Nawaf Mussawi, Hezbollah’s
international relations chief, said “The terrorist Zionist organizations moved back the
borderline [between Lebanon and Palestine] from the one drawn in the year 1920 to the
line drawn in the year 1923, and consequently Lebanon lost seven villages and 20 farms.”
He added “We cling to our rights in combating the Israeli breaches and we are
responsible for combating these aggressions.”
The Seven Villages lie just south of the present Lebanon-Israel border and were
originally populated by Shia who initially found themselves in the French mandate of
Greater Lebanon after World War I before being transferred to Palestine in 1924
following the demarcation of the international border.
The return of the Seven Villages has never featured high on the list of Lebanese
demands of Israel, partly because it is the most difficult to realize. In 1999, then prime
minister, Salim Hoss, briefly entertained the idea of dropping the Seven Villages from a
list of demands issued by the Lebanese government in preparation for possible peace
talks with Israel.2
Hezbollah, too, no longer relies on specific demands – such as the return of
occupied territory – to justify the continuation of the Resistance. Hezbollah argues its
model of resistance is a vital component of Lebanon’s national defense and the only

reliable means of confronting future Israeli aggression.

1 Nicholas Blanford is a Beirut-based journalist and author of Killing Mr Lebanon – The Assassination of

Rafik Hariri and its Impact on the Middle East.
2 The Daily Star, December 22, 1999

Mounting a specific resistance campaign to secure the return of the Seven

Villages – similar to Hezbollah’s 2000-2006 military effort in the Shebaa Farms – is
neither practical not politically expedient. The ocassional references to the Seven
Villages by Hezbollah figures should therefore be regarded in the context of the ongoing
psychological warfare between Hezbollah and Israel.
But does Lebanon actually have a justifiable claim to the Seven Villages in the
first place? Read the rest

Source:NowLebanon