The Cedar Island: A Lebanese "Truman Show"

By Bachir Habib

It has been confirmed. Noor International Holding unveiled last week its plan to build an artificial "Cedar Island" off the Lebanese coast, in the Damour area. The Cedar Island has even a website, with pictures strongly reminding us of Dubai’s "Palm Island".

Noor International Holding presents itself on the website as a company "specialized in real estate development, who acquired experience after developing since 1994 more than 12 projects in the Middle East and the Gulf region". But their "vision" goes even further as it aims to "(…)transform the virgin land into a blossoming productive community scoring a distinctive benchmark". This sentence is in my opinion more important than the project itself. It is the best starting point to think about the project before looking at how it has been perceived by the public so far.

Transforming the virgin land may be an accurate terminology to describe the process that has been taking place on the sands of the Emirates to boost development and employment. It has been equally accurate on other occasions throughout History. In the United States for example, large arid areas were transformed in the late 19th and early 20th century with the expansion of the industrial revolution to the rural and impoverished regions. This is how many American cities developed and flourished: First with the expansion of the railway network, then around industrial metallurgic factories, and later on around oil fields. In these two examples, it is relevant to talk about virgin undeveloped areas where big investments and projects are the only way to prosperity. But Lebanon unfortunately lost its virginity a long time ago, and there are no more virgin areas in the land of the cedars.

Lebanon can be described today as the anti-model of good urbanism. The construction process was extremely chaotic even before the civil war (1975-1990), only getting worse during the years of conflict and has never really recovered since. The law in Lebanon is often a tool in the hands of the entrepreneurs, who are usually well connected to the circles of power, when they are not already in it. It is useful here to remind ourselves that in the mid nineties, MP Michel Murr changed the law for just 24 hours in order to issue a clearance for his company to build two residential towers named "Cap sur Ville". This was in an area where building was and now is again limited to five-storey.

Lebanon is a country experiencing an advanced stage of clientelism. In that sense, building the Cedar Island will set a dangerous judicial precedent and pave the way to other similar grand projects. It somehow looks there is a trend to build ghettos for rich people, while the need is to invest in the organization of the human, environmental and urban Lebanese chaos. However, mainstream Lebanese opinion seem uninterested in the latter, as is revealed from a quick search on Facebook, the pro cedar island groups exceed 13 thousand supporters, while the anti barely reach 3 thousand. These figures are very revealing of the current Lebanese mentality and the direction in which the country might be heading in the near future. Of course, Noor’s project will need to pass the parliamentary, governmental and presidential test to become a reality, but the Island, according to Noor Intl, has already received the blessing of Lebanese Tourism Mnister Elie Marouni.

It will only be a matter of time before the creation of the Lebanese “Truman Show” begins: An unnecessary excess built on the ruins of our natural environment, and surrounded by rings of chaos and poverty. In the age of the Resistance, this visionary project will still be exposed to the madness of the Israeli Air Force. If and when D day strikes again, the F-16s will destroy our fake cedar after allowing its A-List population to flee in luxurious yachts.

The Failed System and The Roaring Crisis

By Bachir Habib

“The Wall Street that shaped the financial world for two decades ended last night, when Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley concluded there is no future in remaining investment banks now that investors have determined the model is broken”.

Christine Harper and Craig Torres, bloomberg.com, 22-09-08

The financial dinosaurs are finally realizing that we are simply witnessing the end of an era. The model that lasted for more than two decades is being dismantled, and it looks like the substitute is not yet in the pipe line.

The domino effect started with the credit crunch in the United States more than a year ago, and its direct impact in the financial field was predicted almost immediately by sensible analysts. High inflation rates driven by the flying energy prices and the global food crisis were a determinant factor in shaping the global dimension of the economic slowdown which spread from the US through Europe to affect seriously different markets around the globe. The current situation is one last episode in the bad economic saga created in part through a combination of economical and political policies that deserve a lengthy analysis. However it is important to pinpoint the invasion of Iraq as the starting point and its consequences as the main political engine to the economic crisis.

Beyond the fall of Lehman Brothers, the difficulties faced by Merrill-Lynch and the US governmental attempt to rescue AIG, it is the decision this week to reshape Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley into banks that is the clearest indication that the current financial model has reached its limit. It is such an irony to see these capitalist powerhouses expecting to be saved by public initiatives, in another word by an intervention of the state in the market. It is ironic because such big groups were the main promoters of neo-liberal principles criticizing and opposing any interference of the state in the economy.

A journalist colleague’s reaction after covering the events at the Lehman’s HQ in London was to echo the sadness of the “city boys” who were now facing unemployment for the first time in their life. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t share his empathy for these young boys and girls, aged between 25 and 35, who had plans to retire at a very young age without any financial worries, because of the accumulated wealth in salaries, benefits and bonuses. My real concern was not for the young finance workers at Lehman but for the security employees and low-level administrators who earn salaries in line with the rest of us. They will now have to compete in a very difficult market to secure jobs that will guarantee them and their families a decent life in a time of recession and increasing cost of basic goods.

As for the young and dynamic category of investment bankers who have gotten used to playing “masters of the universe” from their glass towers, it is now time to come back down to earth with modesty and experience the reality of a life where your actions do have consequences. And it is also time for the specifically Arab elements among them to reflect on how they could use whatever skills they acquired in the interest of moving things forward in a Middle East they helped create through a combination of antisocial policies, while turning a blind eye to bad governance and colluding with dictatorships. It may sound like a wishful thinking, but who ever believed a Republican administration would be proactive in nationalizing Wall Street.