Moscow has announced it is ready to sell new weapons to Syria, triggering alarm from Israel.

The big boys may argue all they want, but can you guess who will get screwed over in the end, comme d'habitude? The answer is Lebanon.

This country has torn itself apart for ever; the differences are implacable. If everyone in the crowd watching Mika stopped, and sat, and started talking about their beliefs and about how to solve problems, they would probably come to blows. Everyone here has deeply held affiliations, inherited and totally incompatible with the views of their friends. Who can blame them for skirting around the issue and thinking instead about society, style and about how great they're going to look after their surgeon is finished with them?

Judging from the political vacuum that today exists among Tripoli's Sunnis, the Syrians may just be right. The Future Movement's representatives in the North are not liked at the street level. Saad Hariri is respected, but given that he has yet to create a political center of gravity in Tripoli, the approval could begin to fray - indeed is already showing unsettling signs of fraying. Hariri will have to be careful in the elections next year. Depending on which alliances take shape he may be unable to take his entire list into Parliament, and this could be a blow to his prestige. Even some politicians close to the Hariri camp are wondering whether they would not be better off standing as independents.

Just stick to the basics, BBC

The BBC is probably the most objective, reliable, and balanced Western news resource out there. Factual, up-to-the-minute reporting, ultra cautious analysis, and that trademark dry, British tone are what we have become accustomed to expecting from the British Broadcasting Corporation...



That's why I sort of have to kick myself when I read something like this on their website:

Tripoli has a large Sunni Muslim majority who, culturally at least, seem very Syrian - given the city's proximity to Syria's coastal cities.

"[G]iven the city's proximity to Syria's coastal cities"? Really? So is Marjayoun in the south of Lebanon culturally similar to Israel because of it's proximity to their Northern settlements? I mean culturally anyway, whether we Lebanese admit or deny it, we are pretty similar to Syrians anyway. Just give us the facts BBC, and stick to the basics, please...

U.S. Embassy: 670 Iraqis Approved for Permanent Resettlement in U.S.

Some things really irritate me. This story on Naharnet is one of them.

"The U.S. government is committed to resettling 12,000 of the most vulnerable Iraqi refugees by September 30. The United States has accepted 7,789 Iraqi refugees for resettlement since 2007," the embassy said.

The statement added that since 2003, the U.S. government has been the largest contributor to programs assisting displaced Iraqis, funding programs for food, health, education, water, sanitation and emergency shelter.

Reminded me a little of something I studied in economics: Bastiat's broken window fallacy. The story goes that a little boy breaks a baker's store window, but the economic benefits and work this will subsequently create outweigh any wrongdoing on his part (glazier creating new glass window, glazier buying baker's bread, and so forth).

Well it seems the US is engaging in a little broken window fallacy too, and letting us know what a great service it is doing for the Iraqi people by being the "largest contributor to programs assisting displaced Iraqis." Sort of like someone taking a huge dump in your backyard and sending you the bill for cleaning it up in the mail, if you ask me.

I'm back

I've been gone for way too long. I miss blogging, but I've been in between working, vacationing and taking in all the nonsense that is Lebanon.

By the way, I hope no one was ever fooled about my sarcasm regarding the hope I have for Lebanon. I thought I was clear about only being "Hopeful" for Lebanon, as in my description, with quotation marks to indicate sarcasm/indecision. Actually, it's not that I'm not Hopeful for Lebanon, just that I have doubts about being hopeful for the Lebanese. Anyhow, I promise to be a more active blogger from now on. Please keep reading and send me your comments always.

Shame.

Just like when a tsunami hits a Southeast Asian country and indiscriminately wipes out thousands, and the only numbers of discrete value in the press are the "1 American and 2 (fill in blank with any Western country)" that also die in the disaster, it seems that Lebanese craziness that doesn't happen in Beirut doesn't really seem to matter to the Lebanese.

There's an isolated mini-civil war going on in Tripoli, in the north. Nearly a dozen people were killed over the last week, and an explosion there today killed 2 people and injured 20.

But as long as the Grey Goose Vodka keeps pouring and "White" and "Sky Bar" keep the glamorous Beiruti skyline lit, no one seems to give a damn.

Saudization tries too hard...

Saudization refers to Saudi Arabia's national policy to encourage more Saudis to work in the private sector, rather than to play Wii and Playstation and/or rub off dead skin from between their toes all day long.

My own father got slapped on the derriere with the Saudization sandal in 2001, when his boss told him that they no longer needed him as General Manager at one of Saudi Arabia's largest insurance firms, and put a Saudi man in his place. However, when they realized that the new guy had the intelligence of a halogen lamp, they called my father back up and offered him the job again, to which he politely declined...

Anyway, Saudization has met with little success, as there is a great dependency on foreign worker aid, especially for lower income, "menial" services jobs, often filled by Southeast Asian expats, often under inhuman working conditions and physical and psychological abuse.

Nonetheless, Ghazi Algosaibi, Saudi Arabia's Labor Minister, is trying to give Saudization new life. Apparently, this week, the Minister worked as a waiter for three hours in a fast-food restaurant , in a humbling, "you can do it too," sort of way.

So let us humor Mr. Algosaibi a little, shall we. Let's say Saudis start taking more fast-food restaurant jobs. McDonalds, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Kudu, Herfy, Burger King, Crepaway, Fuddruckers and shawarma joints - all their Indian, Pakistani, Afghani, and Filipino employees gone, and in their place, Saudis. Two things would happen:

(1) All these new Saudi employees would hire back the Indians, Pakistanis, Afghanis and Filipinos to do all the work for them anyway, and hook up their Wii and Playstations in the back room, doing nothing to the Saudis' dependency on foreign workers, and

(2) Work-related hazards and incidents would increase, including thobes and ghutras, the Saudi traditional garb, getting stuck in heavy machinery (think of a ghutra headpiece getting stuck in a Pizza hut conveyor oven, or a sandal flip-flop slip on spilled vegetable oil), which would beckon the return of foreign aid workers anyway.

Mr. Algosaibi, I admire your heartfelt attempts to create change, but I think that the Playstation will still win out.

Don't hate the playah, Micho, hate the game...

Dubai at risk of attack?

Apparently, the Brits have announced that the United Arab Emirates is at high risk of a terrorist attack, presumably from Al-Qaeda or a similar group.

I say don't you fret, jihadis! Your checks are already in the mail, but you know how slow the mailing system is here in the Middle East!