LCCC
ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
ِSeptember
09/2011
Bible Quotation for today.
Jeremiah 9/12-19: " Who is the wise man, that may understand this? Who is
he to whom the mouth of Yahweh has spoken, that he may declare it? Why is the
land perished and burned up like a wilderness, so that none passes through?
Yahweh says, Because they have forsaken my law which I set before them, and have
not obeyed my voice, neither walked therein, but have walked after the
stubbornness of their own heart, and after the Baals, which their fathers taught
them; 15 therefore thus says Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel, Behold, I will
feed them, even this people, with wormwood, and give them water of gall to
drink. I will scatter them also among the nations, whom neither they nor
their fathers have known; and I will send the sword after them, until I have
consumed them. Thus says Yahweh of Armies, Consider, and call for the
mourning women, that they may come; and send for the skillful women, that they
may come: and let them make haste, and take up a wailing for us, that our
eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids gush out with waters. For a
voice of wailing is heard out of Zion, How are we ruined! we are greatly
confounded, because we have forsaken the land, because they have cast down our
dwellings."
Latest
analysis, editorials, studies, reports, letters & Releases
from
miscellaneous
sources
Kamal Salibi, crossroads to the
man/By: By Michael Young/September 08/11
Latest News Reports From Miscellaneous Sources
for September 08/11
Iran urges Assad to cease violent
crackdown of Syria protest
Iran warns Turkey against deploying
NATO missile defense system
Erdogan: We will not let Israel
disrespect Turkey, no matter the price
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak
Stresses Crisis with Turkey 'Will Pass'
Geagea: Govt. to Incur Hefty Price
Should it Avoid Funding STL
Williams Rules Out Israeli Attack,
Says Syria Unrest Will Not Spill over into Lebanon
Berri, Miqati Seek to Solve
Tribunal Funding
Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai:
Lebanon stable despite ongoing power struggle
Cabinet Overcame Electricity Test
after Miqati Banged his Hand on the Table
Bassil: Electricity Plan’s Approval
is a Victory for Lebanon
Miqati Tweets: I'm relieved Lebanon
Will Gradually Get Power 24/7
Hezbollah Deputy Secretary-General
Naim Qassem says Hezbollah will not be dragged into strife
Lebanon's Arabic press digest -
Sept. 8, 2011/The Daily Star
German police hold Lebanese-German
man over possible bomb attack
Beirut bolsters fight against dirty
money
Lebanese real estate developers set
sights on domestic market
Report on Ethiopian plane
crash finalized: Aridi
Lebanese Public Transportation Goes
on Strike to Protest ‘Government Negligence’
Not the time for free Arab labor
movement: Jordanian minister
In new audio, Gadhafi denies rumor
he fled Libya
Palestinians: Letter to UN on
statehood bid was not official request
Republicans urge Obama to veto
Palestinian statehood bid at UN
Israelis could face trial in The
Hague if Palestinian statehood recognized at UN, experts warn
Harel & Issacharoff / IDF raids
prove Hamas growing more active in West Bank
Geagea: Govt. to Incur Hefty Price Should it Avoid Funding
STL
Naharnet /Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea stated on Thursday that Prime
Minister Najib Miqati is attempting to assume his responsibilities regarding the
funding of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, adding that even if the government
were to be transformed into a caretaking one, it wouldn’t be able to escape
funding the international court.
He said: “The government will incur negative consequences if it shies away from
its duty to fund the STL.”On Hizbullah, he remarked: “The situation cannot
endure as it cannot maintain is military and security branches because that will
weigh heavily on its community and Lebanon itself.”Addressing the situation in
Syria, Geagea stated: “The international community has taken a decisive stand on
it.” The LF leader predicted that the Syrian regime would be toppled.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak Stresses Crisis with Turkey 'Will Pass'
Naharnet /Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak played down the diplomatic crisis
with Ankara on Thursday, saying the current dispute over a deadly Israeli raid
on a Turkish-led flotilla "will pass." But he reiterated his government's line
that Israel not apologize for the May 2010 operation which targeted a flotilla
of ships trying to break Israel's naval blockade on Gaza, and cost the lives of
nine Turkish nationals. "The current wave will pass, I am sure that we will get
over all this," he told public radio just days after Ankara expelled the Israeli
ambassador and suspended all military ties and defense trade. "Turkey is not an
enemy of Israel." "Both we and the Turks know the reality: our two countries are
very important to the West. The real problem for the West in this region is
Syria, and what is happening in Egypt and Iran, not Turkey," he added. The
minister admitted once again that "errors may have occurred in the way in which
force was used" when naval commandos boarded the Turkish ferry leading the
flotilla. But Barak stressed that Israel had already expressed its "regret" over
the loss of human life without making the formal apology that Turkey has
demanded. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday insisted he
wanted to mend the split with Turkey but also praised forces who took part the
naval operation. The diplomatic crisis between Turkey and Israel that was
sparked by the flotilla raid took a turn for the worse in the last week,
following publication of a U.N. probe into the incident, which found Israel's
naval blockade to be legal although it chastised the Jewish state for using
"excessive" force in the raid. Israel has so far refused to apologize for the
bloodshed and called the report's conclusions a vindication of its stance,
deeply angering Turkey. Turkey responded to the report by expelling Israel's
ambassador, suspending military agreements with the Jewish state and warning it
was considering lodging a legal case against Israel at the International
Criminal Court. **Source Agence France Presse
Al-Rahi Calls for 'Stripping Hizbullah of Excuses' to Bear
Arms
Naharnet/Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi on Wednesday asked France and other
world powers why doesn’t the international community force “the implementation
of resolutions issued by the U.N. Security Council in order to strip Hizbullah
of excuses” to possess arms, LBC television reported. LBC quoted al-Rahi as
saying that “Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must be given a chance because he
is implementing reforms in Syria.” Following talks with French National Assembly
Speaker Bernard Accoyer earlier on Wednesday, the patriarch stressed that he
supports “all constitutional and political reforms, public freedoms, religious
coexistence and the respect of minorities” in the Middle East. “We must know
where we are heading. Iraq’s example is still in mind: are we heading towards
civil wars whose price would be paid by the people, Christians in particular, as
is the case in Iraq today?” al-Rahi wondered. “Are we really heading towards the
so-called New Middle East scheme – the fragmenting of the Arab world into
sectarian states?” the patriarch added, voicing “grave concerns” over such a
scenario.
Maronite Patriarch
Beshara Rai: Lebanon stable despite ongoing power struggle
September 08, 2011 /The Daily Star
Rai: “The internal situation is good.”
BEIRUT: Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai said Wednesday that Lebanon enjoys
stability despite the ongoing power struggle between Sunni and Shiite political
factions.
“The internal situation is good despite some political disputes over power
between Sunnis and Shiites,” Rai said following talks with the president of the
French National Assembly, Bernard Accoyer, during an official visit to France.
Rai, who discussed with Accoyer the latest developments in the Arab world and
the promotion of French-Lebanese bilateral ties, said France stands firm against
attempts to target Christians in the Middle East. Rai added that Christians of
the Middle East supported the implementation of constitutional and political
reforms to boost freedom of speech and national coexistence but reject any
attempt to divide the region into sectarian states. Rai has met over the past
few days with several top French officials including President Nicolas Sarkozy
and members of the government. Prior to his meeting with Sarkozy, Rai warned the
international community that change in the Arab world, especially Syria, might
lead to genocide rather than democracy if sectarian divisions grow. The bloody
crackdowsn on the anti-government uprising in Syria has been met with heavy
criticism from the international community and calls for President Bashar Assad
to step down. Some Lebanese fear that a toppling of Assad’s government could be
followed by increased sectarian tension and conflict between the Sunni Muslim
majority and the minority Alawite sect, to which Assad belongs. – The Daily Star
Hezbollah Deputy
Secretary-General Naim Qassem says Hezbollah will not be dragged into strife
September 08, 2011 /The Daily Star
BEIRUT: Hezbollah Deputy Secretary-General Naim Qassem said Wednesday that his
party will not be dragged into the strife sought by the March 14 coalition,
which is looking to cover its own political downfall. “Let’s be clear, Hezbollah
will not be dragged into strife, no matter how much they seek it … Let them
scream as much as they want and we will confront them with work and
achievements,” Qassem said during a ceremony. March 14 parties have accused
Hezbollah of using its weapons to take over the Lebanese state and implement an
Iranian-Syrian agenda in Lebanon, and have vowed to maintain their opposition to
the party’s arsenal until all weapons fall under the authority of state
institutions.
But Qassem reiterated the party’s commitment to upholding its cooperation with
the Lebanese Army and people to defend Lebanon against Israeli threats.
“We are proud of the tripartite equation between the Lebanese Army, the people
and the resistance. This is a badge of honor for us and we are not honored by
weakening Lebanon to serve the interests of Israel,” he said. Qassem also lashed
out at the Future Movement-led March 14 alliance, accusing it of attacking
Hezbollah because of its own failures in governance.
“They suffer from depression in the ranks of their leadership, since former
Prime Minister Saad Hariri is out of the country in a period of re-evaluation to
determine the reasons behind the downfall of his party, [ which was] due to the
accumulation of mistakes,” Qassem said.
Williams Rules Out
Israeli Attack, Says Syria Unrest Will Not Spill over into Lebanon
Naharnet/U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon Michael Williams ruled out and
Israeli attack on Lebanon, noting that Lebanon is the only country around the
world that its sovereignty is being violated on a daily basis. Williams told al-Joumhouria
newspaper on Thursday that Lebanon’s commitment to Security Council resolution
1701 was flawless, praising the current and previous Prime Ministers’ commitment
to the international resolutions. Asked about the reasons preventing Lebanon and
Israel from “ending combat” to achieve a “permanent ceasefire,” Williams said
that the end of combats since 2006 was effective, however, achieving a permanent
ceasefire faces many obstacles such as al-Ghajar village issue and Shebaa farms.
He added that the ongoing Israeli violation of the Lebanese airspace, and
Hizbullah arms issue are other impediments that stop the two countries from
achieving a permanent ceasefire.
Concerning the dispute over Ghajar, Williams reiterated that Israel’s withdrawal
from the northern part of the occupied border village is nonnegotiable.
The official ruled out any Israeli attack on Lebanon, Williams said that during
his last visit to Israel, former PM Ehud Olmert said that northern residents of
Israel haven’t faced any problem with Hizbullah. However, they fear the arms of
Hizbullah, he said. The diplomat said that he’s worried from the attacks
targeting the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), and the fact
that no arrests have been made is alarming. Investigations didn’t reveal who
were responsible and this is a major problem.
Asked if the attacks on UNIFIL are a tool to convey messages to some countries,
Williams said that the peacekeepers deployment in the south is aimed at
preserving peace and not like the foreign forces in Afghanistan. Two roadside
bomb attacks have hit the 12,000-strong UNIFIL force in the past four months
while Israeli and Lebanese troops have opened fire at each other on the
unofficial border that the peacekeepers are meant to police. Williams stressed
that the Syrian unrest will not affect Lebanon because Lebanon is a democratic
country which makes it different from Syria although there are common
backgrounds between the two countries.
Lebanon's Arabic press digest - Sept. 8, 2011/The Daily
Star
An Nahar
Emergency electricity plan in the form of installments over four years, a fight
at the last minute
The decision to approve the emergency electricity bill which will lead to the
production of an additional 700 megawatts is seen as one of the most difficult
tests that Prime Minister Najib Mikati's government succeeded in passing, two
months after it was granted the parliamentary vote of confidence.
The issue of financing the Special Tribunal for Lebanon still threatens the
unity of this Cabinet and its longevity and what happened during the Cabinet
meeting Wednesday showcased the tensions among the ministers.
Sources told An-Nahar that there was a heavy dispute between Mikati and Energy
Minister Jibran Bassil at the Cabinet meeting when Mikati insisted that the
payment be in the form of installments. Bassil initially rejected such a
proposal, saying: "You're tying my hands as minister."
Al-Akhbar
Payment in installments, electricity plan showcases Cabinet unity
The dispute that took place in the last few days over the electricity bill ended
in an unsatisfactory way for the March 14 forces: the plan was approved, the
minister was vindicated, and the government has not turned into a caretaker
government.
The approval of the electricity plan brought back good relations among ministers
and proved that the government passed its most difficult test. It also
illustrates the unity among the one-bloc Cabinet.
Mikati also illustrated that this government is not led by Hezbollah but rather
that he is the head of the Cabinet. However, there is still one more complicated
task for this Cabinet and that is the discussion over financing the tribunal.
Al- Mustaqbal
Aoun succumbs, “committed to Hezbollah’s instructions,” says electricity in
hands of government
Hezbollah forced General Michel Aoun to accept an electricity plan at the last
minute, and also succeeded in pressuring Bassil to back down from his position.
Sources told Al-Mustaqbal that Aoun and Bassil held their ground until the last
minute in the early hours of the morning Tuesday. Bassil then became vulnerable
to questions. Some sources described Aoun’s behavior as extortionist.
There is no doubt the plan will be met with hurdles. Following the meeting,
there was remarkable calm as Bassil agreed to approve the entire plan.
As-Safir
Mikati gave Bassil ultimatum: either [accept] the amended plan, or I leave
The Cabinet unanimously approved, after heavy disputes, the electricity plan
that should, in its first phase, help Lebanon come out of the darkness. It
should, in the long run, provide 24-hour electricity if the conditions have been
met and tensions have been eliminated.
Each party in the Cabinet achieved its goals with the approval of the plan,
bringing together Mikati and MP Walid Jumblatt's principles and Aoun's peace of
mind.
Although all forces in the Cabinet should be given credit, Aoun is the one who
pushed the electricity plan from theory to practice.
Iran warns Turkey against deploying
NATO missile defense system
Turkey plans to deploy radar station aimed at protecting NATO members from the
threat of Iranian missiles. Iran on Thursday warned Turkey that plans for a NATO
radar station on its territory would cause tension, the ISNA news agency
reported. "We expect our friend and neighbor (Turkey) to be more careful and not
prepare the ground for policies which would lead to tension and, beyond any
doubt, to complicated consequences as well," Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin
Mehmanparast said. The spokesman was referring to a Turkish agreement to
deploy a missile defense system which is aimed at protecting NATO members from
the threat of Iranian missiles. "Strengthening NATO's presence in this
region itself would be counterproductive to both regional security and also that
of Turkey," Mehmanparast added. Turkey, with NATO's second biggest
military, has a geo-strategic importance to the alliance dating back to its role
as a front-line state in the Cold War era. But its value to NATO has risen as
Middle East states with anti-Western policies, like Iran, have developed their
missile capabilities.
German
police hold Lebanese-German man over possible bomb attack
September 08, 201102:42 PM) By Sabine Siebold
BERLIN: German police have arrested two men of Middle Eastern origin suspected
of buying material for a bomb attack, a police spokesman in Berlin said on
Thursday.
The two, identified as a 24-year-old Lebanese-German man and a 28-year-old from
the Palestinian Gaza Strip, are suspected of buying chemicals to make an
explosive device, police said.
The police operation comes two weeks before Pope Benedict is due to visit
Germany and days before commemorations to mark the 10th anniversary of the Sept.
11 attacks on U.S. targets. "We are investigating the suspected preparation of a
serious act of violence," said the police spokesman, adding that the
investigations had been going on for several months. "We are looking for
chemical substances suitable for making explosives." Police, who arrested
the pair in Berlin, had searched two apartments and an Islamic cultural center
in the German capital, the spokesman said. He did not say when the arrests were
made. Security sources said the men had acquired cooling elements and acid to
make a bomb. State prosecutors, who are usually involved in major terrorism
cases, said they were not pursuing the matter. Germany has been spared a big
terrorist attack but police have thwarted several suspected plots in the last
few years. Fears of an attack grew after Hamburg was found to be a base for some
of the Sept. 11 suicide plotters. Security officials have repeatedly warned that
militant cells may exist.
Ehrhart Koerting, interior minister for the Berlin city government, said the
investigation had been going on for some time. "A decision was made to act now
because there were enough elements, or something was about to happen," he told
reporters.
Beirut
bolsters fight against dirty money
September 08, 2011 /The Daily Star
BEIRUT: Lebanon will continue to update measures and laws to combat money
laundering and terrorist funding, the head of the Union of Arab Banks Joseph
Torbey said Wednesday. Speaking at the opening conference on money laundering,
Torbey told participants that Lebanon has demonstrated its ability to fight
money laundering and terrorist funding, and has also kept abreast with the
latest international rules and regulations on this subject.
“But despite all the efforts exerted by Lebanon in this regard, it [was] not
spared from the malicious rumors that aim to raise suspicion on the Lebanese
banking system,” Torbey argued.
Citing an example, Torbey noted that some news media alleged that $20 billion of
Syrian funds and deposits had been deposited in Lebanese banks.
“The reality is that no such funds or deposits were transferred from Syria to
Lebanon due to the restrictions imposed on the transfer of funds from abroad,
especially at this critical time [in Syria],” Torbey explained.
He added that the Lebanese commercial banks, at the request of the authorities,
do not accept any cash deposit that exceeds $10,000 unless the depositor has
proper documents about this deposit.
“Above all, total bank deposits up till now reached $4 billion and this proves
that claims of tens of billions of dollar deposits are not true,” Torbey said.
He emphasized that the total deposits in foreign currency in Syria are far below
the $20 billion which allegedly entered Lebanon.
Torbey added that some of the new laws concerning money laundering now involve
tax evasion, bribery and drug money.
The Central Bank and the financial authorities helped to set up the Special
Investigation Commission which is mainly responsible for monitoring any
suspicious financial deals in Lebanon.
On April 20, 2001, the Lebanese Parliament passed Law 318 on fighting money
laundering. This law criminalizes the laundering of proceeds of crimes related
to narcotics growing, manufacturing and trading, organized crimes, terrorist
acts and terrorist financing, illegal arm trade, stealing or embezzling public
or private funds or their appropriation by fraudulent means and counterfeiting
money or public credit instruments.
The said law defines money laundering operations and stipulates fines and
imprisonment sanctions imposed on such operations.
Law 318 established the Special Investigation Commission for fighting money
laundering as an independent legal entity with judicial status at Banque du
Liban.
The Commission has the exclusive right to lift banking secrecy for use by
competent judicial authorities and the Higher Banking Commission.
The SIC, Lebanon’s Financial Intelligence Unit, receives, analyzes, investigates
suspicious transaction reports and ensures compliance of banks, financial
institutions and other reporting entities with pertinent AML regulations.
Since its creation, the SIC reported dozens of suspicious money laundering cases
in Lebanon and has asked the authorities to lift the banking secrecy on some of
these banking accounts.
Lebanese officials and the Central Bank insist that they are fully complying
with the conditions of the anti-money laundering activities.
They also point out that the Lebanese authorities have positively responded to
inquiries and requests from the United States and other countries on any
suspicious money laundering activity in Lebanon.
Experts say that Lebanon is keen to protect the Lebanese banking system and the
cherished banking secrecy law because they are the main driving force for the
local economy.
Kamal Salibi, crossroads to the man
September 08, 2011
By Michael Young/The Daily Star
In 2009, at the death of David Dodge, a former president of the American
University of Beirut, I wrote that one might be tempted to portray his passing
as a page turned in the American educational and moral enterprise in the Middle
East, which began during the mid-19th century. However, I disagreed with such an
assessment. To me, the page was turned when Malcolm Kerr, another AUB president,
was assassinated in January 1984. That dark moment more truly marked the end of
a dialogue between Western humanism and the culture of the Arab world, mediated
by optimistic Yankee Protestants.
But I hadn’t yet met Kamal Salibi. His death last week at the age of 82
represented a new closing chapter in Beirut’s declining relationship with the
objective rationalism and confidence that AUB’s founders sought to instill,
which found its highest expression in that complex, contradictory Anglican of
Greek Orthodox origin from the mountain town of Bhamdoun. For those fortunate
enough to have met Salibi, what shone through was a Protestant ideal: modesty,
invariably more pronounced for contrasting with Lebanese grandiloquence.
I met Salibi late in his life, through a mutual friend, a protege and student of
his named Makram Rabah. Salibi’s Ras Beirut apartment was functional, a nice
painting here and there, but otherwise without superfluities, a time machine of
sorts back to the 1960s. At the appropriate moment, it was the end of the day,
he served scotch, enjoying his momentary release to vice. His latest discovery
was Facebook, affirming that Salibi, though he did not go out at night, was the
most sociable of men. Yet he could readily turn a decapitating phrase against
those he disliked, or an insightful compliment, when required.
I hadn’t read all of Salibi’s books when meeting him, but somehow he didn’t make
you feel that this mattered. However, his “The Modern History of Lebanon” had
long been a valuable companion in my research, as had his “Crossroads to Civil
War: Lebanon 1958-1976,” even though the work was soon overwhelmed by the
monumental conflict whose origins it aspired to chronicle. However, it was “A
House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered” that has proven to
be Salibi’s most influential book, and rightly so.
The essence of the book is modesty, and I would add Protestant modesty. That’s
because Salibi approaches his subject from the standpoint of an individual
belonging to a minority maneuvering among more forceful, numerically larger
minorities. A friend once noted, citing the sociologist Ahmad Beydoun, that the
better historians of Lebanon were those from marginal religious sects, including
Salibi, but also Edmond Rabbath and Zein Zein, who could take their distance
from a narrative shaped principally by Maronites and Sunnis during the years
when modern Lebanon was finding its feet.
“A House of Many Mansions” is a product of modesty because it is constructed
around the most modest of urges: to doubt. Salibi’s mission is to examine
critically the contending views of Lebanese history – essentially the historical
myths that Lebanon’s communities have adopted to assert their own prevailing
ideologies against the other Lebanese communities. It is a subtle, devastating
book, fundamentally out of joint with what so many Lebanese take as truth.
The German political scientist Theodor Hanf astutely remarked near the end of
Lebanon’s war that “A House of Many Mansions” could potentially serve as a core
post-war reference for Lebanese students, a unifying text in a country deeply
divided by historical interpretation. Yet that quality is why Salibi’s book was
never made, and never will be made, to serve such a worthy objective. Lebanon is
not a country where communities are partial to the truth when it clashes with
their self-image, let alone with tradition perpetuating a stalemate in power.
That could be one explanation for Salibi’s intriguing love-hate relationship
with the Maronites. In one sense, he was doubly predisposed and indisposed
toward the Maronites. Predisposed as a historian, for he could not avoid being
fascinated by a community whose rise in the 19th and 20th centuries was, in many
respects, that of Lebanon itself – a community that became the life-force of the
modern Lebanese state; and predisposed as a Protestant, and through his
ancestors as a Greek Orthodox, for Salibi could not help but be enthralled by
Maronite affirmation as a stand-in for wider Christian affirmation, therefore
partly Protestant affirmation, which his own minority within a minority could
never replicate.
And yet fascination can also carry with it revulsion. Salibi was conceivably
doubly indisposed to the Maronites from his vantage point as a Protestant and a
Greek Orthodox, for what is the story of the weaker Christian sects than a
yearning to strike back against what they deem to be Maronite hegemony? So that
even as Salibi wrote about the Maronites, and published a monograph on their
historians, his most potent weapon against the weight of Maronite historiography
(and not only Maronite historiography) was skepticism, expressed through a
reconsideration of Lebanese history.
Toward the end Salibi seemed torn between despair with what he identified as a
Christian, and specifically a Maronite, impulse for self-destruction, and
anxiety with how such communal suicide might adversely affect the Christian
presence in the Arab world. In an interview with Now Lebanon in 2007, he
lamented that Christians “are so bent on destroying themselves … [I]t seems that
they enjoy the lack of charity more than they enjoy life for some reason.”
Now here was a forgotten word: charity. Charity, modesty, temperance, diligence,
all virtues that this unique professor had learned from those sturdy American
Protestants of yesteryear, in whose educational institution he had thrived, now
erected by Salibi as barriers against a Lebanon, in particular a Christian
Lebanon, that seemed to be going in a different direction than what he would
have preferred. But this Christian Lebanon, concurrently attractive and
repulsive, vital and reckless, was a profound part of Kamal Salibi, a man of
myriad personalities, a house of many mansions.
**Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR and author of “The Ghosts of
Martyrs Square: An Eyewitness Account of Lebanon’s Life Struggle” (Simon &
Schuster). He tweets @BeirutCalling.