Daily Archives: August 17, 2010

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Aoun Ridicules Murr

M.P and Ex-army General Michel Aoun on the establishment of a bank account to donate to the Lebanese army:

I asked media outlets not to respond to Minister Murr. The funds do not end the army’s shortcomings as Israel receives USD 8 billion in military aid besides its actual budget. [the Lebanese people should ] not to be deluded into thinking that donations will benefit the army.

It’s no secret that Gen. Aoun has no love lost for the Murr family. He might as well have said: “The Minister of Defense is a silly, silly man who likes gimmicks”

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Electricity Horror Stories

The electricity situation in Lebanon has become so bad bloggers are using the very little they have of it to vent to the rest of the world. Here are two such accounts with details guaranteed to annoy you like this one:

The standard crescendo of UPSes went off, a veritable Christmas-like twinkling of little red and green lights flickered as appliances turned off as the apartment reverberated with beeps and pings.

You read those and you feel like pulling someone’s hair.

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This Is Going To Be Fun

Naharnet:

A U.S. delegation headed by Treasury Department Undersecretary Stuart Levey is in Beirut to verify with Lebanese officials the country’s commitment to [..] sanctions against Iran. The delegation will check how far Lebanese banks and companies are abiding by the [UN] resolution

On one hands, many banks and companies will be frightened to be blacklisted for breaking UN sanctions (if a bank was found to be dealing with the bad Irani guys, its operations in the US and Europe will be shut down), on the other hand, a large part of Lebanon trades actively with Iran and receives large amounts of aid and guns from that country. So it would be very difficult to disentangle from the Iranian banking system.

I wonder how we’re going to sort this one out..

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Tug Of War Over Oil Revenues

Here’s a quick summary of who stands where on managing the Oil revenues:

While [Minister Gebran] Bassil is demanding the formation of a higher committee headed by President Michel Suleiman to manage the oil sector’s revenues, al-Mustaqbal Movement MPs are calling for the formation of a ministerial committee as the governing body of the sector. Bassil is also insisting on assigning negotiations with oil exploration companies to only one cabinet minister while al-Mustaqbal wants such talks to be headed by a ministerial committee headed by the prime minister.

In other words, it all boils down to who controls the power levers: The (Christian) President or the (Muslim) Prime Minister.

As a purely theoretical matter, there is no dispute that the executive branch of government should be responsible for such matters, but this being Lebanon and the politics being the way they are, I expect a fudge where it’s not not clear who will hold power.