some guy in lebanon

Another UPDATE – jeez….

Anyways, exciting news – not much to report just yet but I will deliver soon, God Willing.

So that everyone can see that I still have a head (it has not been dislocated from my body by shrapnal, swords, or a taxi), and to see the awesome hat I have currently on indefinite loan from the amazing Karma Hamady (also pictured), check out the picture.

In other news, given the likely demise of the Daily Star, I would like to (probably illegally) reproduce the entirety of Hani Bathish’s wonderful First Person on the collapse of Lebanon’s oldest English newspaper, published in The National. If anyone reads this who cares about said illegal-republication, please contact me and I’ll take it down.

Eclipse of the Star that burned so brightly in Lebanon

By Hani Bathish, reproduced entirely without permission

I found myself teary eyed suddenly when I read that Lebanon’s Star had been extinguished and declared insolvent, its offices closed and shuttered by security officials within an hour of a court order to close down the struggling daily newspaper: not for political reasons this time, but for economic ones – it is in debt to a Lebanese bank to the tune of several hundred thousands dollars.

So The Daily Star is no more, at least for the time being. Perhaps, by some miracle, the money can be found and the paper can be rescued. But for now my former employer, the English language newspaper of record for the Lebanese, is just a memory.

Like our Lebanese railway, The Daily Star was an uncomfortable fact of life, an annoyance and a real nuisance for many in power. There is a popular joke in Lebanon that the railway went out of business because it was the only thing in the country that travelled in a straight line, while everything and everyone else took a circuitous and meandering course. Similarly, The Daily Star was an irritant to many in power simply because it was independent. How we will miss you.

For those of us who worked there, the newspaper provided an invaluable opportunity to excel at our craft and to show that “we have what it takes”. It was where I met many wonderful people, brilliant and gifted writers and journalists, not just from Lebanon but from all over the world. It was at once a newspaper and a university for the many interns who churned out copy each day. It was a home away from home and a fully functional news operation with all the stress and frustrations that come with it.

Although I made the choice to leave it for economic reasons, it will always be “my newspaper”, just as it will remain so for the many multilingual Lebanese expatriates in the diaspora. Its closure, which some would argue was inevitable in the present economic climate, was nonetheless a shock. We all saw it coming, even a year ago, but with absolute naivety we firmly believed that somehow it would struggle on.

The Star was the first pit stop for many journalists and graduate students from Europe and the Americas hungry for information on the mysterious Middle East. Students gained much sought-after practical experience at the Star in between partying at Gemayzeh’s many night spots and attending lectures at the American University of Beirut (AUB). It was also serious business, especially during the Nahr al Bared conflict in 2007, when the road leading north to the refugee camp was in the crosshairs of terrorist snipers.

The Star gave every political viewpoint a fair hearing. We were among the few local newspapers to publish the comments of both the Lebanese armed forces and Fatah al Islam on our pages, until all contact was lost with the terror group. We endeavored to present all sides to any argument. Pro-western March 14 and pro-Syrian March 8 Lebanese politicians may not have seen the Star as “their paper”, but they respected our stand. And that is not to say the Star was not subject to criticism because of its independence.

The paper allowed me to write freely on many issues that were deemed sensitive. The unregulated quarrying activity in Lebanon was one of my favourite targets, as were the corrupt politicians and ineffectual bureaucrats who perpetuated that illegal practice that has scarred our landscape. The job also afforded me the opportunity to be first on the scene of some of the most tragic events in Lebanon, the many bombings that took away our country’s best and brightest. Everyone at the Star felt we had to tell the world what we saw, what was happening, but without injecting opinion into our copy: in that we were unique in the Lebanese press.

Economics should never be allowed to muzzle a free people, whether it is a struggling independent newspaper or an employee bullied by his employer to vote in a certain way. And yet in the real world, economic realities rule our lives, as unfair as that sounds. In the United States, for example, the very global financial institutions whose policies contributed to the current crisis are rescued with taxpayer dollars, but those on the bottom rung of the ladder are railroaded out of their jobs. The Daily Star is just the latest casualty.

The Lebanese will still eat, drink and be merry. Some might pause for a moment and reminisce as they pass Marina Tower in Gemayze, the Star’s Beirut HQ. But most will not even know what went on in there, some will care less. Life marches on.