Posts Tagged ‘Najib Mikati PM’
Beirut Blast and Branding a Revolution?
The consequences and ramification of the car explosion in Achrafieh that occurred on Friday at 2:30 pm are in progress. More casualties (injured and killed civilians) are increasing: Infighting in Tripoli and in Beirut are still taking place, for no reasons but to vent out the anger of the jobless youth, galvanized by opportunistic political leaders, wanting to secure a ministry in a possible government shuffling…
I knew a friend living in the nearby of the blasted street and sent her a message: “Zeina, this street is familiar to me. Write something…” The apartment of Zeina and her family was blasted but they are all uninjured…
And the scores of dead victims from the blast had no anchor man or woman to cover the grieving of their families and the 110 injured civilians scattered in the hospitals of Beirut…
Habib Battah published this Oct.20, 2012 in “The Beirut Report” under “Branding a revolution”:
It’s been barely 24 hours since the assassination of the Lebanese internal intelligence chief Gen. Wissam Hassan, and the political wheels are already in full gear.
There have been speeches tonight in downtown Beirut calling for the resignation of prime minister and tents being set up for a sleep-in, which organizers promise will not end until their demands are met (see top right image above).
Politicians opposed to Prime Minister Najib Mikati are calling for a massive turnout for Hassan’s funeral tomorrow, and tonight, the media (allied to the Hariri clan) is playing its role in getting the word out.
The Future Television (Hariri or Moustakbal movement) has begun filming one of its talk shows in the tomb of slain former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, seeking to draw his supporters in by creating a visual link between Hariri’s killing and that of Hassan:
Future TV has even created a Hassan graphic with the date of tomorrow’s funeral:
Meanwhile, other stations have been filming nightly talk shows from Martyr’s square where only a few hundred party loyalists have gathered. These crowds are relatively minuscule compared to the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese that have gathered in downtown Beirut in years past (particularly in March 14, 2005), but in filming live from the area, television stations are building momentum for tomorrow’s event by treating the small crowds as a major news story.
On MTV, the scene is carefully framed with the anchor standing in front of the two tents that have been erected earlier this afternoon (see first photo in this post), which pales in comparison to the hundreds of tents set up by Hezbollah and its allies during their occupation of downtown in 2006. Yet the tight shot does not allow viewers to actually count the tents.
Neither does the wide angle, which shows a relatively small crowd of a few dozen, mainly young men holding party flags:
Similarly, Al Jadeed also filmed its evening talk show tonight from Martyr’s Square, but again wide shots revealed almost no one gathered for an event that can barely justify– in terms of news worthiness– the cost of such an outdoor broadcast.
On the other hand, LBC has chosen to film its show in studio tonight. But like the other channels, the guests are familiar faces, with very partisan affiliations, making very familiar, heated arguments.
The same was true for OTV, which is supportive of the government and thus brought out pro-government figures that Lebanese have seen on televisions for years if not decades.
Clearly, all this advertisement about tomorrow’s rally from pro-government channels may have an impact on some viewers. But at the same time, many have grown tired of being spoon-fed polarizing and often sect-specific views from entrenched party figures.
If tomorrow’s rally does not draw the huge crowds it is promising, this could be a small but significant blow to the traditional Lebanese political order, which finds itself under increasing pressure amid the changes going on in the region.
Note: The bodies of Wissam and his bodyguard Sahyoun were being readied to be buried next to late Rafic Hariri PM when a nitwits, standing by ex-Siniora PM, took the micro and harangued the masses to storm the close-by government building (The Grand Serai).
The fanatic youth of the Lebanese Forces, the Kataeb and the radical Islamist extremists surged and overturn the few policemen standing guard. The army commandos came in reinforcement and the “official” leader of March 14 coalition (Saad Hariri) spoke from Paris and ordered the masses to retreat. Why?
He claimed that the government building, constructed in the early 1910, was built by his late assassinated father Rafic Hariri PM.
Ideal case study for alienated youth: City of Tripoli, Lebanon
This week was terrible in Tripoli, Lebanon. The gunfire is relentlessly going on. So far, 120 were hospitalized and increasing, a dozen killed , and scores of Lebanese soldiers seriously injured, paying the heavy price of a pseudo-State with a pseudo government. Why this infighting between two blocks of “rocket holed” buildings in Bab El Tebbani (mostly Islam Sunnis) and Jabal Mohsen (mostly Islam Alawits)?
Jabal Mohsen is a block of crumbling building built on a small hill overlooking the Syria boulevard separating it from Bab El Tebbani.
Since 2005, after the withdrawal of the mandated Syrian troops from Lebanon, these two quarters in Tripoli have been at one another throats. Hysteric, out of work, never worked in their life, and terribly famished youth have this nack of stepping forward and grabbing the TV micro and claim that their weapon was purchased with their own saved money to protect themselves from the enemy…Whose money again? Who is this enemy?
The irony is that the government PM is from Tripoli, and he would not form the government until 5 ministers are from Tripoli, sort of securing a public base for the next election in 2013 and being proclaimed the political leader of this totally neglected city for 4 decades. These political “leaders” were totally helpless in resolving the deteriorating conditions…
The funny part is that the army didn’t officially enjoy political cover to take control of the infighting, until things went out of hand. Why?
A funnier story was told by the leader of Jabal Mohsen, Mr. Eid, that all their weapons and ammunitions are bought from the Hariri Clan (The Future movement), the same political party that extend the same kinds of weapons to the Sunni fighters in Lebanon…And from where the Hariri clan bring in this assortment of weapons? From this absolute Wahhabi monarchy of Saudi Arabia, the other absolute Emirate of Qatar, and the political cover of the USA.
After 4 decades of neglect, economically and in public facilities, generations of youth were brought up as “citizens” out of subject matter, out of touch from the remaining regions of Lebanon, a vast ghetto of famished, jobless, illiterate youth, and lead by clerics who are bought and sold for a nickel…
You cannot imagine how rotten are the brains of these clerics, under soiled turban and various headdresses…Their main jobs, these clerics is to get the youth moving out to the street, for one reason or another, preferably after Fridays’ Prayers, and chanting “Allah wa Akbar”, greater from who? They are in charge, these clerics, of distributing the proper weapons of machine guns, rocket launchers, batons, iron rods, tires to burn and block traffic…
After four decades of total neglect, the youth in Tripoli constitute the Ideal case study for alienated urban kids, to all kinds of researchers around the world, sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, archeologists, mental derangement cases…
Two weeks ago, heartless and mindless local TV reporters wanted to have their 15 minutes”glory” under the sun and took the families of the kidnapped Lebanese in Syria/Turkey by total surprise.
The “urgent news” were displayed on TV channels that a Syrian fighter jet bombed a town by the Turkish border, and that the 11 Lebanese civilians kidnapped two months ago have all perished. The news were false. But the consequences are not that false at all.
This tribe of Moqdad, and many other Lebanese tribes of Jaafar…(far more numerous than in Libya) reacted by kidnapping 40 Syrians and Turks…on the Lebanese soil and demanding their right for revenge…
Worst, the Moqdad tribe refused the minister of the interior any communication with them until the government proved that it has the kidnapped Lebanese at heart and is working diligently for their liberation and is in control of the situation…
Robert Fisk wrote a week ago:
“We have to look at the case of one Hassan Selim Moqdad, for whom Beirut’s latest hostages are held. A Lebanese Shia, he was seized by the Free Syrian Army inside Syria and videotaped babbling that he was a Hezbollah member, part of a 1,500-strong assumed contingent of Hezbollah fighters sent to assist Assad.
Now there happen to be about 17,000 Moqdads in Lebanon, all members of the same tribe but including not just Shia, but Sunnis and Christian Orthodox as well. The wife of said that Hassan Moqdad, far from arriving in Syria with a legion of Hezbollah fighters,had been staying in Syria since before the revolt began 18 months ago, because of financial problems in Lebanon.
Hassan’s money difficulties resolved, he was on his way home to Lebanon when he was kidnapped and transmogrified into a Hezbollah warrior. Hezbollah have denied that Moqdad was a member, just as they have insisted they’ve no militiamen fighting in Syria, a statement that may bear the merit of truth…
The Hezbollah Party of God cannot deny that the 40 hostages in Beirut – all but six of whom had been released last night as Maher Moqdad (another of the famous 17,000) announced an end to such abductions – were all taken in an area which the government long ago effectively handed over to the Hezbollah.
In reality, however, the kidnappings symbolise not the power of Hezbollah but the utter impotence of the divided, self-abusive Lebanese government.
Maher Moqdad said one of the detained Syrians was an army lieutenant who wanted to join the rebels. Meanwhile, those same rebels claim to hold dozens of Iranian ‘spies’ captured on the Damascus airport road, although Iran says that all were visiting a shrine outside Damascus.
But would Iranian secret agents really take a vulnerable bus to Damascus airport? The case is faintly similar to the six Iranian ‘militiamen’ captured in Homs who turned out to be legitimate power station workers.
Michel Samaha, ex-minister, ex-MP, and Lebanese supporter of Assad, is charged with plotting to blow up Lebanese politicians on behalf of Syria’s security, General Ali Mamlouk, the ‘terror conspiracy’ – without a shred of evidence publicly revealed – has become fact.
Like the mass of bank robberies around Beirut, the clan battles in the Bekaa Valley and the armed offensive against Lebanese troops trying to destroy the country’s hashish fields, the entire shooting match doesn’t exactly invite tourists and Gulf investors to sunny Beirut. Nor did it help when the Prime Minister, Najib Mikati, announced that the kidnappings “bring us back to the days of the painful (civil) war.” Nor, I suppose, is there a surgeon who can put Lebanon together again.”
Note 1: For an entire week, starting Dec.8, 2012, another round of clashes was ignited, leaving 12 dead and a hundred injured in Tripoli. Why? Two dozen Lebanese were dispatched to fight in Syria against the regime, and the regular Syrian army ambushed the infiltrators and killed them… The Lebanese army was there and was unable to restrain the shelling…
Note: One thousand personalities in Jordan signed a petition demanding that the King and his government desist from meddling in Syria’s affairs. Jordan has been submitted under heavy pressures from Saudi Arabia and Qatar to play an active role in Syria problems.
It is in the interest of King Abdullah of Jordan that the extremist Sunnis insurgents do not spill over into Jordan and depose this absolute monarchy, instated by the British Empire after WWI…
Adonis Diaries 