Message in a bottle

Lebanon is, in many ways, an intricate blend of Third World (sorry, Developing World) bribery and rabid, no-holds-barred capitalism. You can do what you will, but it will cost you and the man providing the service might well take his cut, too.

Case in point: The government and the Internet.

So, the Lebanese government makes oodles of cash off the back of cell phone charges. The standard rate for a minute is 0.33 USD. That’s ridiculously expensive when you consider the average Lebanese income. 60-70 per cent of the country owns a cell phone. Do the math.

Now, the government is moving to protect this income stream by banning VOIP programs (that’s Voice-Over-Internet-Protocols, or video chat programs to the luddites out there). Nice move guys, nice move.

This is just part of the latest lesson in Self-Servicing Economics 101 delivered by the government and really boggles the mind. There’s a law up for debate in parliament that would do all sorts of unpleasantness to Internet users.

There are several wonderful measures concerning the ability of a new, unelected, body to take personal data for use in various investigations. But, perhaps the most ridiculous one is the levy on all Internet transactions.

Bizarre.

Western Union is evil and must be

punished 

Lebanon escaped the financial storm of recent times relatively unscathed thanks to some responsible fiscal policies. Now they’re in a position to reap the benefits and, by all accounts, the money is rolling in due to minimal taxation.

So… here’s a great idea. Let’s tax Internet transactions of any sort size or shape. Genius.

At a time when Lebanese Internet speeds are ridiculously slow and overpriced (at home I have a 512kb connection for $50 p/m … and that’s fast) the government is struggling to attract investment due to a decaying infrastructure. … So … instead of incentives … they start taxing….

I have an image of a guy with an abacus sliding beads across the bars. Time to join the 21^st Century methinks.

The debate has actually been postponed at present thanks to, wait for it, an Internet campaign. Who’d of thought it?

I'm famous ... ish

Recognition, it’s a painful thing

I’ve recently discovered a new twist on the “Googling yourself” phenomenon. Googling your tiny blog. Turns out that someone’s read it and rated it.

Nice to know that there are people who’ve scored lower.

TLA

Back from the Dead

It’s been a while.

No doubt you’ll have noticed that BinB hasn’t been updated in a while. There’s a reason for that: my ego.

If you don’t have a blog (and if you do, I’d like to hear from you) you might not appreciate how the process works. Essentially, you sit there thinking of a topic. Once you’ve nailed it down you then try (and I do mean “try”) to be a touch witty. Now, I’m only a simple creature and these things do not come easily to me. At the end of the day, you hit the “post” button and your thoughts disappear down the glowing pipes and tubes that make up the Interweb before appearing on some hapless individual’s screen and providing them with two minutes of mild amusement when they really should be updating that spreadsheet on accrued interest or somesuch.

So there it is. You send your thoughts into the ether … and then no bugger replies.

And if no one replies, it’s difficult to know if anyone’s reading.

Well, I recently got back from a trip to the UK during which I was asked by a good few people why BinB hadn’t been updated. Slurring into my pint, I replied that no one seemed interested. At which point they started to spin the truth in order to sooth my, obviously damaged, sense of, well, talent. “Oh no, I click on it all the time and it’s never updated”, “You’re writing’s fun, I enjoy it” and similar platitudes followed.

Now, these could all well be lies designed to stroke my ego, or they could be genuine.

Since I’m a bit of a narcissist at the end of the day, I’ll go with the latter.

Long story short, BinB is back.

Cue choirs of angels.

Comment if you want to, even it's just to say "hello". Regardless, I'm starting anew.

TLA.

State of love and trust

Skin deep

There’s an advert that’s recently caused a little controversy here in Lebanon. The ad is by a florist and is promoting Mother’s Day.

Here it is:

Now, I think that’s pretty funny.

But, I’ve come across two or three people who’ve expressed disgust at this. Fair enough … however, this is Lebanon.

This is the country in which adverts, and services, such as this exist:

Yes. It’s real. I’ve seen it.

How you can turn your average Lebanese girl into a blond, blue-eyed Aryan is beyond me, but then again, the scalpel can do wonders.

I did apply, but the full on body sculpting and the Brazilian Butt Augmentation were beyond my means.

Ahh well, back to hunting for a mortgage – yes, that’s what prompted this.

And, yes, there is a serious issue behind my amusement. It's all to do with the insane Beirut housing market, inflation etc., etc., but it's all too dull to write about (it's actually going reasonably well).

I’ll get back to the politics for the next one.

It keeps getting better

Bloody Israelis

So, they go and off a Hamas guy in Dubai and now the Arab, well, specifically the Lebanese, tendency toward paranoia has gone off the scale. Following my last post on the trials and tribulations of getting your papers in order, it turns out that Hezbollah regards every foreigner as a potential spook. Happy days.

Naharnet reports Hezbollah MP Nawaf Moussawi as saying, "We must tighten foreign passport control at the airport and elsewhere in the country," Moussawi went on to say, "Every Lebanese and Arab must deal with holders of foreign passports as potential spies."

I'd better not tell the wife.

Thelegalalien

Cheers, Avi. Really appreciate that. Honorary membership of Mossad. Great. Firstly, you steal our passports and then set the beardy brigade after us. I mean, I know we’re not flavour of the month at the moment, what with that little misunderstanding about war crimes and the whole food produce, West Bank-a.k.a.-Israel bumpf, but this is just taking the piss.

- TLA

Equality, eschmolity

And now for something close to my heart.

A friend of a friend, which, let’s face it, is a degree of separation which, in Lebanon, could account for the entire population, a country in which the guy selling kaak on the street is only two steps away from the Minister of the Interior, has just been deported. He’s been working here “illegally”. He hasn’t really been illegal, he’s been wrangling with the system, they’ve been messing him around and they’ve finally lost patience.

 

Image from here.

Fine, happens every day, right? Yes, but this fella just happens to be married to a Lebanese woman. Yes, that’s why it’s close to my heart, I’m (potentially) in the same boat as this poor sod. (I'm not, I'm fully paid up.)

The situation here is complicated in its simplicity. Essentially, if you’re married to a Lebanese woman you’re not entitled to work in the country, however you can live here… which makes about as much sense as a chocolate kettle.

Fine, I hear you say, apply for citizenship. Well, I would, but Lebanese women can’t pass on their nationality. Apparently, your rights are entirely dependent on what’s between your legs. Which I'd normally be all for, but in this case is clearly a gross violation of all that's good and holy.

So, you’re shafted, unless you can find a company to sponsor you. Then, due to various legal shenanigans, the Ministry of Labour, or General Security, will hold your passport for a while, pretend to fill out the forms before returning them to you on the basis that the quality of the fool in their local shop has gone downhill recently. Obviously, if you have money, this issue mysteriously disappears.

Why does this happen? Easy. The Palestinians. The Palestinian population in Lebanon is around 400,000, which is around 10 per cent of the Lebanese population. Yes, I know Wikipedia is about as reliable as Bill Clinton’s word, but there hasn’t been a census taken since 1932 (yes, that's true), so your guess is as good as mine.

So, the Lebanese are concerned, or rather the heads of the Lebanese political parties and institutions are concerned, that significant numbers of Lebanese women have run off with Palestinian men over the years and that by granting their spouses, and therefore children, nationality would disturb the wonderful political balancing act within the country. *Pauses for breath.*

Now, it might once have been true that, of those who had married a foreigner, the majority had got hitched to a Palestinian, but that’s no longer the case. With the diaspora resulting from the Civil War, the majority of Lebanese women who’re married to foreigners have settled down with 'orrible Westerners, myself being one. The stats are out of date and need to be revised.

At the end of the day, there is no answer to this problem. There’s been talk of changing the laws relating to children, but not to spouses … which doesn’t solve the problem. At the end of the day, Lebanon has a manyana, manyana attitude toward the issue.

So, what’s to be done?

Not a lot. However, if you’d like to add your support for reform of the law, you can sign up here and join the group on the Devil’s tool that is Facebook, here. I note that the Facebook group also accepts men, which leads me to suspect they're using it to pick up women. You know, like joining the drama society when you were at school.

In any case, it’s a good job that I’ve got a sugar momma.

- TLA