Lebanon
The Sawfar Bridge
Aug 18th
The Sawfar bridge on the road leading to the Bekaa valley was the Highest bridge in the Middle East, that was until Israel bombed it during last year’s war, the bridge was bombed twice, the first strike only made wholes in the bridge making it unusable for cars, but that wasn’t enough for Israel, unlike they said they did not to only want to cut the communication routes of Hezbollah, they wanted to destroy Lebanon, so they made a second hit which practically destroyed the whole bridge foundation and made it fall.
After the war was over the USA promised to rebuild the bridge, but as you can see in these pictures they did not even start yet, so where is all the help the USA promissed us? When every country announced what they were going to rebuild, the media pointed that the USA chose to build the most expensive bridge and Iran took care of the small inexpensive ones, now every day we see on the News a bridge re-build by Iran being opened to the Public, but the construction on the bridge the USA promissed to rebuild did not even start yet! So is Iran better than the USA? The USA needs to fix its Public Relations in the Middle East if they really want to stop the extension of Iran!!
Zahle Statue
Aug 17th
Two days ago I went with my family to Zahle and on the entrance of Zahle I saw a statue of a women, I took a photo of the statue searched for what it symbolizes, I found a site about Zahle with these info:
Wine And Arak
Zahle’s association with the grape is pervasive, for it lies at the heart of an area that has been making wine since early antiquity. At the city’s southern entrance the statue of a graceful female personifies wine and poetry, but you don’t have to look far to see evidence of the real thing. The hills north of town with names like Wadi Hadi, Harqat, Bir Ghazour and Tell Zeina are covered with the neat rows of vineyards that supply Zahle’s wine and arak industries.
Many of the wines have been formally recognized abroad for their fine quality – equal to some of the best in Europe.A tour of Zahle’s Ksara winery is a good way to see how wine and arak are made. Of special interest here are the extensive underground caves built around a natural grotto known and enlarged by the Romans.
Zahle is a great city, I invite you to visit someday, it has everything in it, a river with restaurants around it so you can enjoy the view while dining and a lot of known shops so you can shop in its streets.
Lebanese Air Force Bombing Terrorists
Aug 17th
Wednesday Annahar newspaper showed a picture of an LAF helicopter bombing Fath L Islam positions in Nahr L Bared Palestinians refugee terrorists camp, sadly I heard that the bombs the LAF is using are launched from Lebanese made launchers because the countries that “are helping us” fight terrorism help us in a really weird special way, apparently to fight terrorism you need helicopters without missile launchers (UAE removed the launchers before sending the Helicopters) and if things get complicated we get some ammunition, new equipment and heavy arms are something we don’t need to fight terrorism apparently.
The US only makes promises and rarely delivers, it’s still better then other countries who never deliver, but I guess it’s not entirely there fault, let’s face it we will never get decent equipement just from help, we need to buy new stuff from any country that is ready to sell us and it’s the government’s job to find those countries and buy ammunitions.
Anyways in spite of all this the army is fighting and exterminating those terrorists and here’s the picture from Annahar newspaper taken by Michel 7allak.
Orange Tayyar Land Rover
Aug 16th
Today I saw this Orange Land Rover with Tayyar signs, GMA pictures and FPM’s slogan all over it parked in Rimal Beach Resort! I know every one is free to like whoever he wants, but seriously this guy needs to find a hobby!!! I am pretty sure all he thinks about is politics!
2006 Summer War
Aug 15th
Last summer was supposed to be one of Lebanon’s greatest summers, tourists where everywhere and the economy was recovering from the shock it received after the murder of Rafic Hariri the previous year. That was until the 12 of July, on this “Holy day”, Hezbollah decided to kidnap a couple of Israeli soldiers to exchange them with Samir L Kuntar who’s basically a guy who entered Palestine with a Palestinian organization to Liberate Palestine but who is still considered Lebanese by Hezbollah for some reason, That’s not all the Government members (Hezbollah was part of this government) had also agreed that Hezbollah can attack the Chebaa farms to free them but that the government was supposed to take care of the prisoners issue through “diplomatic channels”.
Anyways Hezbollah attacked and Israel “replied in a proper way” (for Israel that means destroying Lebanon), so for 34 days Israel bombed the bridges, factories (Important military ones, ex: Milk Factories, pre-fabricated houses Factories…), Cellular towers, TV Antennas and every village in south Lebanon killing more than 1200 civilian, Hezbollah replied by launching rockets at Israel some of them destroyed a couple of buildings but most of them did nothing.
Israel also tried to enter Lebanon but Hezbollah succeeded in inflicting heavy damages to the Israeli troops so during the 34 days they were never able to control a village!
After 34 days, on the 14 of August 2006, UN resolution 1701 was voted and the war ended, Hezbollah declared victory over Israel (A Divine Victory to be precise) and that was it, you cannot question Hezbollah’s decision to launch the war and you cannot say we didn’t win -not that I don’t like winning, but 1500 martyrs (civilians + Lebanese Army + Hezbollah fighters), a destroyed economy and no goals achieved aren’t really my idea of winning and that doesn’t mean we lost by the way- so let’s just hope a new divine war is not declared anytime soon because we are seriously tired of holy battles!
The Internet is Back
Aug 15th
In Lebanon you can’t have decent internet, it’s either an over priced modem connection, a bandwidth Limited ADSL connection (that didn’t reach my area yet) or a not very legal (nor illegal) Cable connection depending on the region, I picked the 3rd option, so I have a 256K connection with unlimited bandwidth.
What’s bad in this connection is that it is not very stable, usually they manage to make it work 24 hours a day, but sometimes it just disconnects for an unspecified period of time, for example yesterday at midnight it disconnected and it just came back 10 minutes ago (18 hours!), but that’s the best we can currently get here, so I just have to live with it!
Hezbollah in Canada!
Aug 14th
Apparently not all Lebanese go to Canada to escape politicians, in fact some of them decided to even put up posters of the opposition in Windsor, so now Canadians can also enjoy the sight of Hassan Nassrallah surrounded by Michel Aoun, Emile Lahoud, Salim El Hoss and L Istiz Nabih Berry!
