Breaking news: BeIN Sports, formerly known Al Jazeera Sports, the Qatari TV station that has bought the rights for every single major sports tournament till kingdom come is suing Tele Liban over it broadcasting this year’s World Cup games.

Soon after the 2014 World Cup began, Lebanese people found themselves unable to watch the tournament. The government had failed to kiss up to Qatar enough to get the World Cup for free. Talks with Sama, the major Lebanese politician-owned company with exclusive rights for BeIN sports in Lebanon, failed to go through. We reverted to either buying the World Cup subscription, which did not work most of the time because the service was abysmal, or to managing with Turkish, French and, well, Israeli TV stations in some parts of the country.

But the Lebanese government wouldn’t have it, of course. How could Lebanese people have their God-given right of watching the World Cup taken away from them? So our government paid $3 million to Sama to make sure such a thing does not happen. The ramifications of that payment were as follows:

1. Cable owners in Lebanon would be able to broadcast the World Cup to their subscribers using BeIN Sports, TF1 or any other station at their disposal,
2. Tele Liban, the TV station the government is in charge of, gets screwed over as the government completely disregards it in favor of those cable owners,
3. Sama nets in pure profit for their exclusive rights,
4. The Lebanese politician in charge of Sama gets a whole lot of money while pretending to do the Lebanese people a favor.

Tele Liban, however, wouldn’t have it, so it decided to broadcast the games anyway outside of the $3 million deal. The first day of its defiance was literally Turkish before they had their very own commentator. In doing so, Tele Liban managed to fill the huge gap in World Cup viewing that the government’s deal made, especially in rural areas where cable owners have not set ship yet and where a World Cup deal would be the most beneficial.

As a result of its defiance, Tele Liban – with its minimal capacities and reach – is now finding itself in a lawsuit by BeIn sports because it broadcast the World Cup games over which BeIn has copyright in Lebanon. I guess we have our government to thank for failing to do the minimum and make sure its very own TV station is protected in this matter.

Instead of paying $3 million to make sure Tele Liban gets to broadcast the games, our government has effectively made sure Tele Liban is in the tough spot it is now. Those $3 million are definitely badly spent. Should we have paid it? My answer is a definite hell no. Those $3 million could have done the following:

1. Equipped our security forces against the current rise of terrorism,
2. Provided districts such as Akkar with much needed infrastructure to prevent its sons and daughters from dying on Indonesian rafts,
3. Enhance the living standards of people in Bab el Tebbaneh and Jabal Mohsen,
4. Contribute towards the fiber optics project to improve our internet,
5. Go towards water-centric project to prevent the typical summer drought in Beirut,
6. Go into public transport programs that could prevent people from being randomly attacked by taxi drivers,
7. Tighten our grip over our border and therefore increasing our security,
8. Work towards slightly fixing our electricity crisis,
9. Improve the non-existent roads in my home district,
10. About three hundred other thing that could come to mind.

Watching the World Cup is not the right our politicians want to fool you into believing it is, just so you can ignore their gross shortcomings in every other regard. That expenditure, however, could have been at least slightly conceivable hadn’t it gone to the benefit of cable owners, SAMA and BeIN, at the expense of Tele Liban, which spent a whole lot of resources in rebranding because it was promised it would broadcast the World Cup.

What will happen to Tele Liban now? Odds are it’ll get stuck in a mess of legal troubles, which it probably can’t handle against the Qatari onslaught coming its way. I doubt our government will take any measures to protect it. Do they want to upset Qatar? What a joke. Can they go against the politician running Sama’s influence in Lebanon? Let’s not be foolish. They threw Tele Liban under the bus once, watch them as they leave it to get squashed by a tank.

The entire problem when it comes to the World Cup and other tournaments is with Al Jazeera (now BeIn) having basically unlimited copyright over Lebanon. Have no doubt, such an ordeal is to be repeated every single football tournament. Watch as we forgot how difficult it was for us to watch this World Cup come Euro 2016 time. Then watch as we forgot that as Russia’s 2018 World Cup rolls by. FIFA is a greedy entity, sure. But there’s a definite slacking in securing our own broadcasting rights. Till when will our government sit by as that Qatari company sustains its hegemony over Lebanon’s broadcasting rights? Why is our country lumped under the auspices of BeIN sports – and subsequently at the mercy of a company like Sama – for every single major tournament? Why can’t we do as other countries do: just tune in to any of our TV stations and watch the World Cup game?

I forgot that this is Lebanon and it’s always, always complicated. Forza Azzurri! Oh wait.

Those worthless people of Gaza. How many have died since Tuesday? It doesn’t even matter but I’ll list the number anyway: 154, and those 154 people don’t matter. Some will chant praises to their martyrdom and others will lament how their lives were lost, but they are but a number in a conflict that won’t end, a number to be buried deep in the Arab subconscious between seasons of Arab Idol, Ahla Sot and Elissa’s albums. Gaza was still an open air prison a few years ago and it will remain an open air prison a few years from now. It’s just only remembered at specific instants when their going gets slightly tougher. We get infuriated at the hypocrisy that Israel killing Arabs includes when its entire existence can be taken back, in one way or another, to Western guilt over the Jewish holocaust. But when you come to think of it, are Arabs even entitled to be sad for the people of Gaza who are dying, whose homes are being demolished just so muscles can be flexed and whose deaths are being ridiculed on certain TV channels just because they don’t fit with the rhetoric of the axis currently ruling the world? How are the people of Gaza dying exactly? Is it Israeli planes? Or is it the Arab oil fueling those planes? Or is it the Arab silent towards Israeli plans? Or is it those Arabs making sure their borders with Gaza stay closed, securing that open air prison until who knows when? Or is it the Arab slumber that only finds mild wakefulness sporadically, in Twitter or Facebook hashtags, never trying to speak out against their own regimes, in bed with those killing the people of Gaza, because they are providing them with the biggest mall on Earth and a great shopping experience to boot?

Those worthless people of Syria. How many Syrians have died in the past 3 or so years? How many digits has that number reached by now? As is the case with Gaza, this too doesn’t even matter, but I’ll list it anyway: 170,000. That six digit figure comprises entire families, men, women, children who will never have the future that a few years back was rightfully theirs. The biggest injustice, however, towards those Syrians isn’t just that their death, in the grand scheme of things, might not actually matter, but the fact that their deaths are also not an absolute truth among the Arabs infuriated by Israel’s actions. How many of those crying over Gaza now actually cared as the toll in Syria rose from one digit to the next? How many of those crying wolf over ABC, BBC, CNN or MTV Lebanon actually watch TV stations that do the exact same thing to those people of Syria? Those six digit lives are nothing more than a bargaining chip in a conflict that is greater than they’ll ever be individually. Those lives don’t fit with their grand political scheme of choice and are a mere tool in the attempt to stop the big bad Sunni monster.

Those worthless people of Lebanon. There’s no estimate of those that died between 1975 and 2014. Our parents had hoped way back when they decided to stay in this country that things would get better for us, with all the lives lost to fight for causes that they believed in. But things are still the same. Young men and women fought for causes and died only to have the people they fought for forget them the moment a glimpse of power flashed in front of their eyes. And things are still the same today. From one explosion to the next, from burned flesh on Beirut’s asphalt to spoiled breakfasts in Tripoli, to acts defending the country against armies now killing innocents in Gaza, the lives of our countrymen being lost are also simple digits that will keep on adding up until who knows when because we never learn.

The causes are not similar, and the conflicts are not the same. But the people involved are dying with one thing in common: their deaths only serve to escalate numbers without changing anything. How many had to die in Gaza before the collective Arab consciousness decided to budge, before the Arab league figured it should convene or before Egypt figured it should come up with a ceasefire plan with their BFFs? How many more have to die until it is realized that the current status quo regarding the region’s countries and regarding the attitude towards Israel does not simply work? When will Arabs learn that building the world’s tallest structure, biggest artificial island and hosting the World Cup aren’t what really matter when their own people are being slaughtered like sheep right on their doorstep as they sit around and eat their fancy iftars on this bloody Ramadan?

I am a 24 year old Lebanese who lives in a country of violence in a sea of even more violence, and I do not know how to be violent. I do not believe violence is the key to any solution for this region, but I am one of very few voices in a culture that sings weapons in song, brands them on flags and salutes the world with them as they chant takbirs for everyone to hear, a culture that, for instance, doesn’t really want to see Palestine free as much as go to heaven as martyrs for that purpose.

There are a lot of things that we are not allowed to do towards those countries. We can’t do like that Norwegian doctor and visit Gaza to help in whatever way we can. Protesting the regimes of the countries filling this region has also become a dangerous matter even though those tyrant regimes do much worse to their own people than possibly even Israel, regardless of whether such a notion is even entertained by people of the region or not. The only thing we are left with is our voices and platforms to express those voices and try to change perspectives, but does the region even have a clear plan towards using modern day media in order to fight the Israeli rampage? Is there a way for us to get a clear message across when we can’t even agree on what that message should be? Are we not also losing the war of information and misinformation that, in this day and age, has become as tactically important as rockets and blasts and tanks especially with the looming threat of treason over our heads when the message we need to get across is to those whose existence we are not allowed to acknowledge? Is there a way for us to make the lives lost in the countries of the region slightly less worthless than they are as we remain completely and irrevocably lost, unable to do anything about it but be angry about biased media reporting, portrayals of the people dying as terrorists and the blindness of a world that never really had sight to begin with?

May all those people’s pieces rest in peace.

“Faith in humanity abolished” is what everyone’s been speaking about today as they circulate a video of a Lebanese child beating another Syrian child at the request of the Lebanese’s parents. The video is the following:

Certainly, the above is an abomination, a disgrace and whatever word can be inserted to describe the horror of the event at hand. But I have to wonder: why is anyone remotely shocked or even surprised?

We are a country to be pitied. Our houses are filled with maids, all of whom are Sri Lankans despite the fact that most are not, who clean after us in miserable working conditions and for minimal pay. If they ask for a raise, we ridicule them for wanting too much, but who of us would work more than 12 hour days, every day, for $100 a month?

Our injustice does not stop there. We beat those women whenever they try and speak up. We ridicule them in media if they dare to stray from the well-defined line that we’ve set up for them, and our kids observe as we bully them into mental oblivion, every single day until their contract is over and they’re free to go back to their families, mere shells of their former selves.

We are a country of hypocrisy. We’ve been ridiculing Syrian refugees for the past year, calling for them to be sent back home or to have their already miserable living conditions over here demoted even further. Multiple arguments are used and regardless of whether those arguments are correct or not, one thing is clear: when it comes to the Syrian refugees, humane we are not.

We teach our children to stay away from the Syrians around us. We tell them they are filthy. We tell them they are disgusting. We tell them they are to be feared. We tell them they are thieves. And somehow, we pretend not to be doing anything wrong about those people… until there’s a video, of course.

Many of those Syrian refugees do not get the “privilege” that the boy in that video got: to have their struggles recorded. Most of them do not get to be seen getting beaten by Lebanese who use the only superiority they get in their own country: to overpower powerless people who just want to survive.

Only yesterday, Ziad Fares – a twitter user who goes by the handle @ZiadFares1 – witnessed a similar act in a much more public location. At Sassine’s Starbucks shop, he saw a male teenage employee kick a young Syrian girl just because she was selling chocolate in the vicinity. The girl wasn’t bothering people nor was she insiting they buy her unica bars when they decline. The girls stood there, asking the employee why he hit her with him only barking at her to leave. Of course, no one caught it on video for it to become the next “it” viral sensation that Lebanese will use to absolve their conscience regarding their many shortcomings towards all those “lessers.”

Before you begin to be outraged just because it’s what everyone else is doing, take a moment and think: when was the last time you were the bully to a Syrian, to an Ethiopian or any other nationality we’ve come to associate with our unfounded arrogance as of a “lesser” breed? When was the last time you failed to stand up to an injustice to those people taking place around you, forbidding them from having your voice speak up to them when it was the only voice they could have possibly had?

We teach our children to be hateful, to despise those who are different, to feel superior to those we tell them are less important, to beat those who are weak, to take what is “rightfully” theirs by their own hand because no one’s there to fight for their “rights.” We teach our children that it’s okay for their fathers to beat their mothers when they misbehave, fully knowing that they’ll get away with it every single time, and somehow we’re shocked that those children end up becoming parents who teach their own children to beat up unsuspecting children, who can take pleasure in filming such acts on video and who laugh as those children weep in front of them? What a load of bullshit.

That Syrian kid will get justice thanks to that video. I hope for that typical Lebanese man to be thrown in the deepest pits of any given Lebanese jail for his actions, and by the looks of it he might. But I also wish the same for countless other Lebanese who have done even worse to other foreigners here and who have gotten away unscathed.

Your faith in the Lebanese humanity should have been abolished a long time ago.

Update: the father of the child named Abbas in the above video has been reportedly apprehended by the police.

Disclaimer: I was provided with concert tickets by MixFM for my personal use; this, however, came after a friend and I had already purchased tickets for the concert, albeit lower-priced ones. 

The “it” concert of the summer, which was almost threatened to be canceled at some point as our security situation degenerated, is Ellie Goulding coming for her Halcyon Days tour. Personal taste in music aside, the concert is to be a summer highlight, with it generally being an oddity for someone who’s actually “in” right now to come to Lebanon for a concert.

The ads promoting the event have been extremely tacky so far, however. Between telling us that Ellie is brave for venturing here and asking us to show the world how Beirut is truly like, I don’t know what’s sadder: the fact that coming to Lebanon is now an achievement in itself or that that rhetoric has become advertising prone or that the entire joie de vivre in Lebanon point of pride is actually still used.

In spite of that, I figured I’d come up with a few reasons why I want to go to Ellie Goulding’s concert.

1) The song “My Blood” is gorgeous, and the acoustic live version is even better than the recorded version.

2) Goulding’s song “I Know You Care” was used as the UK’s Song for Syria in order to raise money to help the children of the war-torn country.

3) She covers indie acts often and does a good job at it. Her cover of  Kodaline’s “All I Want” is brilliant, as is her cover of Alt-J’s “Tessellate.”

4) Goulding writes most of her songs and with several hits under her belt, many of which were unexpected given them being an oddity with the sounds popular at radio, she has proven not to be a one hit wonder. Her album, Halcyon, cannot be summarized by “Burn,” but has many great songs on it.

5) She’s a great live performer with a voice that stands out among her peers, as well as an awesome accent to boot.

The concert is on Wednesday July 23rd, at Biel.

Behold the greatness of Lebanese media. All eight of our TV stations decided to unite yesterday for Gaza in one news broadcast that has people talking about it today still, beating the typical Lebanese news cycle lifespan of a few seconds. Talk about influence.

About 24 hours later, I am here wondering if the dust has settled enough for us to look objectively at what was accomplished yesterday or if it’s too early for us to question the actual point of yesterday’s broadcast, at the cost of being branded unpatriotic Lebanese who don’t care about Gaza, although many of the kind do exist.

It goes to say that the only oddity about yesterday’s united news broadcast was seeing MTV’s news anchor with Al Manar’s logo above her head, or Al Manar’s news anchor on MTV. It was a chuckle worthy moment as they went on and on about Gaza, expressing their utmost sadness at the situation there with heartbreaking pictures of people that are dying too soon in a culture that is, maybe just maybe, beginning to value the importance of a life – but I could be foolishly optimistic here.

The news broadcast, cute and fluffy as it may have been, was akin to yet another Arab League meeting: full of promises, and as hollow as an empty barrel. It was us preaching to the choir, in one perfect news circle jerk, to people who are already troubled by the Gaza conflict, to people who already care about Gaza, telling them that we should care more somehow.

It is an act of solidarity, sure, for Lebanese media to stand the way it did with Palestine. What it is not, however, is groundbreaking: our news stations already have enough common ground amongst each other regarding the Palestinian matter to be able to agree to such a broadcast. The result was an empty broadcast that was full of sensationalism but low on depth, as is the typical Arab handling of the Palestinian matter. It is 2014 and they still have not learned that just saying Israel is a big bad monster doesn’t cut it anymore. We all know Israel is bad, now what will you do about it?

24 hours after the LB4Gaza news telecast is done, what was accomplished apart from a sporadic increase in discourse about the issue among a Lebanese populace that is already knee-deep in its own problems as it is and a quirky Exotica ad just to jump on the bandwagon? Wouldn’t it have been better for Gaza if, instead of failing to have a high-level discourse about the issue, all 8 stations organized a telethon that helped raise money and resources to actually help the people of Gaza beyond empty words?

It is hypocritical for Lebanese TV stations to look at Gaza in solidarity when Palestinians in our own country live without rights, without safety and in living conditions that are detrimental to their well-being, with their voices squashed beyond measure. It’s also easy to assume greatness in such a broadcast, but it is also telling that such a broadcast can only happen towards Gaza and Palestine. Could it be because having a differing opinion on the matter is illegal?

It’s been three years since the Syrian war, whose effects have been much more catastrophic to Lebanon, and we didn’t just not have a unified news broadcast, the entire country doesn’t even have a unified foreign affairs stance regarding the Syrian war. While our news anchors wept their fake tears over their Arab brethren, Bashar el Assad and the Islamic extremists were still killing innocent people who probably warranted such a broadcast to talk about their strife.
It’s been also several days since the Christians in Iraq were evicted from their homes, had their property taken from them, had their homes branded with a derogatory ‘N’ for ‘Nasrani’ to denote their blasphemous religion in a country where they’ve become, in 2014, people of Dhumma again. Isn’t the destruction of millennial communities and eradicating them from their own country also worth a discussion?

What’s even more heartbreaking is that after all this time, the only hashtag – gasp – that wasn’t used is #LB4LB. Out of all the countries at hand, the only country that can actually benefit from a unified news cast is our very own Lebanon, with the level of discourse in media and among our officials sinking to new lows every other day, akin to the times when the country was in an actual full blown war, at times of theoretical peace, in a country at the brink of disintegration.

Such a broadcast, however, will never be used. Explosions are in the eye of the beholder. Assassinations are up for interpretation. The worth of our lives is not uniform but is a variable affair that fluctuates in quantity across regions, sects and differing TV stations. Hezbollah is the antichrist on MTV. Sunnis are the big bad evil coming to eradicate those who are different on Al Manar. This is the rhetoric that will be resumed a few hours from now on those same TV stations that, a few hours ago, had been so unified in a cause that is, whether we like it or not, alien to them and of a lesser importance than what’s taking place in their own backyards. #LB4LB will never be used because it’s always [insert your favorite party/sect/whatever]4LB. And that’s how it will always be.

Either way, what our media did is commendable in its own rights. If only evil and crimes against humanity had not been, to them, only clear when they involve Israel only.

It must be tough being from Tripoli lately, or at least tougher than average for the people of a city long forgotten by successive governments, left to its own accord to make do with the little it has.

It wasn’t enough for people from Tripoli to have to deal with the fact that the other Lebanese, quick as they are to judge and believe their views are scripture, believe them all to be undercover members of ISIS or ISIS members to be.

It wasn’t enough as well for those unfazed by the ISIS threat (yet) to deal with the fact that their city has become synonymous with mayhem, sporadic fights, mini wars and hating the Lebanese army. No amount of tweets, Facebook posts or mini gatherings on the street and billboards in support of the army or in condoning the behavior of some of the city’s men would change that perception

It also wasn’t enough for those living in lala land, adorable as they are, to have to deal with the fact that being from Tripoli has also become synonymous with them having people like Kabbara, Khaled el Daher and Mer’ebi as their representatives. Granted, the latter two are not from Tripoli per so but who’s really looking at specific representation districts these days?

Keep in mind that all of this is to the background of destitute living conditions, severe social inequality, horribly poor development, high illiteracy rates and Lebanon’s highest poverty rates, just to name a few.

No, today the people of Tripoli have to deal with yet another facet to the growing saga of their city: their very own mayor being hellbent on turning the city into what it proclaims to be: Lebanon’s prime Muslim city.

When Ramadan rolled around, that mayor decided that breakfasts in the city should not be allowed. People tried to defy that order for a while but it only took him igniting the fire for the dormant Islamists, few as they are, to act on poor elderly having breakfast at one of Tebbane’s cafes, probably out of necessity to take medications. Soon enough, if you happened to be in Tripoli before iftar during Ramadan, you’d see most cafes closed to customers, afraid to make what little money they make with the circumstances reigning over their city currently.

No, banning breakfast was not enough.

Today, Mr. Ghazal is back with a vengeance. It wasn’t enough for most of Tripoli’s restaurants not to serve alcohol for customers, understandable as it is given the city’s demographics. However, the new rule of law in Tripoli is to forbid alcohol ads as well to be spread around the city, starting with beer. اجتنبوه has been modified by Mr. Ghazal’s fatwa-prone mind to include media items as well. Who knew one’s morality can be ruined by a picture of Almaza’s new low-end lager tier?

Apart from the fact that it’s probably illegal to ban such ads in his city when there are no regulations pertaining to it on a national level, Tripoli remains, even today, a city that is not actually demographically unicolor, where one of Lebanon’s biggest Christian orthodox communities resides and where the majority of the Sunni population is actually moderate, not ISIS-prone as they are portrayed by everyone.

What Mr. Ghazal seems to be entirely unaware of is the fact that his regulations are putting his city on an even faster track of regression to stone-aged times that make it incompatible with the vision most of its inhabitants want for it: a modern city with a sustainable economy, not a fertile terrain for the Islamic State. He also seems to have forgotten that his city has existed for a very long time with beer ads spread around its billboards without any sort of problems whatsoever. What gives in August 2014? Is the rise of the angry Sunni getting to his head as well?

Some people of the city decided to take their anger on social media, setting up a “Tripoli Loves Beer” Facebook page, posting pictures of them holding or drinking different kinds of beer to counteract Ghazal’s decision. However, is it enough?

The problem with Lebanon’s Tripoli goes beyond the repercussions of it being poor, left alone by governments as is the case with the entire North, ruled by factions that belong to borderline illiterate politicians, as is the case elsewhere in the region too. There’s a tangible PR problem with how the city is presenting itself, at times like these, to the rest of a country that is beginning to freak out from calls to ban alcohol, stop breakfasts and rising army hate, over-exaggerated as it is.

Tripoli’s downtown, for instance, is centered around a roundabout with the word “Allah.” Underneath Allah is a slogan proclaiming the city to be the citadel of Muslims. All around the roundabout are black لا اله الا الله flags. Welcome to Tripoli indeed.

The entirety of the coverage over Tripoli, when it actually happens, is centered around the “Allah” roundabout aspect, the ISIS flags on some sporadic balconies in destitute neighborhoods, serving as a magnifying glass on the illiterate brain-washed militants ruining their city’s reputation with each passing day. The details of how that reality came to be are irrelevant at this point. What Tripoli needs today is a gigantic shift: will it remain the city that surrenders to extremism again and again despite most of its inhabitants being against it? Or will it be the city to make sure that “the citadel of Muslims Tripoli” rhetoric exists no more?

With people like Ghazal as its mayor, with people like Kabbara as its parliament representatives, I don’t see the former happening anytime soon – even with its people fighting as hard as they can to try and change perspectives and with people on Tripoli’s side who advocate again and again to give the city a chance. We are all aware that this isn’t how the city truly is, that a couple minutes away from the “Nour” roundabout are numerous bars in Al-Mina that would readily serve you alcohol, that parties flourish and that women can dress scantily too. We are aware as well that the majority of the people in Tripoli are more terrified by what’s happening to their city and the possible repercussions than everyone else.

But all of that is put on hold with those looming ISIS flags beginning to prop around the city with politicians who are probably happy about that, and I have to wonder: till what ends can I tell people there’s nothing to worry about in Tripoli when I’m the one finding the current scene to be foreign in a place I’ve known since I was a child?

Until then, Tripoli likes beer, and the people who like Tripoli do too.

Cheers.

A couple years ago, we were being taught almost everything there is to know about neurology as part of our medical education. There are countless diseases to be feared and to hope the patients who wander our clinics don’t have, we were told. There’s one, however, that was so severe and yet had so little information known about it that it was simply brushed upon: you will rarely see this, they were told.

I saw it the following month.

I come from a family where ALS is present. I’ve had two family members die in the past few years because of it, the last of whom passed away two years ago. I saw him waste away in front of his family and children, eventually becoming unable to move. Death came upon him before he couldn’t breathe without assistance. At his funeral, his sister told me his fate was kind. Others were not as lucky. He left behind a boy at the brink of graduation and a girl at the bring of school age.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been inundated – literally and figuratively – with videos of people dumping ice water on their heads. The cataclysmic shift from complete obscurity when it comes to ALS to having the disease front and center in the spotlight has caused donations for research purposes to jump several folds. Latest estimates have donations at $4 million in July, up from $1.2 million in the same period last year.

I’ve also seen people complain about how that water can be used in Africa, going about those typical monologues that we hear so often. I’ve seen people complain about how some are doing the ice bucket challenge more for fun than for donations, but does it even matter? The more people dump ice water on themselves, the more people become aware of a disease that has been so rarely spoken about and has had so little research done about it compared to other neurological diseases. You’ve all heard of MS, which stands for multiple sclerosis. MS has J.K. Rowling in the forefront of those donating its research since her mother had it. The most famous person with something similar to ALS is Stephen Hawking.

With videos from a whole lot of celebrities, the ice bucket challenge fever is beginning to come into Lebanon. Tripoli’s Hallab were the first to undergo the challenge, in a YouTube video that they just published for everyone to see. They subsequently challenged Roadster Diner, Zaatar w Zeit, and Crepaway to undergo the same thing.

Almaza has also done their own ice bucket challenge, in a different from than what’s being thrown around:

I give it a couple of days before people start complaining about those dumping ice water on their heads with the water shortage Lebanon is going through this summer, but that didn’t stop a group of Lebanese from already making fun of the lack of water this summer:

Either way, I hope this also serves as a way for Lebanese society to become more acquainted with ALS, and to become engaged – even if in a little way – in the global move to make it known and actively fought.

I hope both Hallab and Almaza donated money as well to the research process. In case you want to donate, click here.

The best ice bucket challenge you will watch, however, isn’t that of Carrie Underwood, Oprah, Tim Cook or whatever other celebrity you’ve seen around. It’s the following one. Watch it until the very end.

For a country that prides itself with its religious diversity, branding it as a tourism slogan and all the cliche that comes with it, we sure are extremely ignorant when it comes to those who don’t belong to the sect we were born in.

I’ve been wondering lately about how it must be to a Lebanese Sunni in Lebanon today, to be a person who has to constantly wonder whether the person facing you is secretly wondering whether you are an ISIS member in disguise or whether your mother is sympathetic with the terrorists in Arsal or whether your entire existence is directed at implanting the Islamic State in our land.

I’ve been realizing, upon pondering over the issue, that if I were a Lebanese Sunni today, I’d be angry.

Army Hate:

Somehow it is assumed that being a Sunni automatically means army hate and support of the murder or kidnapping of its members. Even the army’s blood is a matter of hypocrisy, or how could you explain how the murder of Samer Hanna was easily dismissed as an honest mistake for failure to inform?

January 2008:

When Lebanese army officers acted out against protesters in Mar Mkhayel, in Beirut’s southern suburb, those army personnel were reprimanded and put on trial. MP Hashem even went out to say that the incidents are a “massacre.” No one cared at the time. Few remember that now. Stances against the army are also a matter of hypocrisy and in the eye of the beholder.

Terrorists, Terrorists Everywhere:

When Charles Ayoub decided to bring some attention to himself and his “newspaper” by fabricating a story about the banning of Crosses in a Sunni Lebanese city, people were not quick to investigate but to judge. Those Sunnis are all terrorists. They want to eradicate us from our land à la نحن هنا وهنا سنبقى .

Tak-Beer:

All hell broke loose, rightfully so, when the mayor of Tripoli banned beer ads in the city. But when this and this happened in Tyre a couple of years ago, before ISIS and all those Sunni terrorists, no one blinked an eye, because alcohol is haram, but when Tripoli did it, it was all about the Sunnis wanting to enforce the Sharia in Lebanon.

Ahrar Sunna Baalbek:

Lebanese Tweeps were also not only quick but exceedingly enthusiastic about a Twitter account proclaiming itself to represent the free Sunnis of Baalbek. No one had known who was operating the account at the time but everyone assumed the content must be real. Sunnis are all terrorists. When the operator of the account turned out to be a Hezbollah supporter, everyone who had quoted it feverishly to point fingers was quick to dismiss him as just “another lost youth.”

 One Year Later:

One year ago today, Tripoli was blasted in two of its mosques. It was fated that both explosions wouldn’t work according to plan, which was to maximize casualties. The result, however, was almost 50 people dead, including many children, and a city that saw its biggest acts of terrorism since the Civil War. By all standards, the Tripoli explosions – the first aimed at such a massive agglomeration of civilians in the country – should have shocked Lebanon into a different state of being. Nobody, however, cared. The perpetrators were even identified. They were not Sunni extremists. They were, in fact, Syrian regime sympathizers, and still nobody cared. Few expressed anger, indignation, was appalled, offended, disgusted, scared and worried about themselves.  I guess terrorism is only scary when it affects non-Sunnis and is perpetrated by Sunnis.

Hezbollah Hearts Syria:

Hezbollah decided to go to Syria to help its BFFs combat a rising mostly-Sunni opposition. The fights were hidden at first, denied, but widely known among anyone with a critical mind. Soon enough, Hezbollah was admitting to a growing list of casualties of young Lebanese men, at the prime of their lives, coming in from Syrian fights. Today, the list of Hezbollah militants who died in Syria is around 500. Today as well, if you dare speak out against what Hezbollah is doing in Syria, you are painted as an ISIS sympathizer who wants to bring them into the country – because somehow, a Shiite militant group fighting Sunnis does not put fuel on a centuries old fire between Shiites and Sunnis.

May 7th:

It all goes back to that day. The glorious day of May 7th as some would put it, when militants stormed Sunni areas of Beirut in retaliation of governmental decisions that affected their reach and power. The cover-up? Our government is working undercover for the Israelis in dismantling the opposition. The result? A complete disintegration of the fragile relations between Lebanon’s Sunni and Shiite sects, reflected first and foremost in the political status quo that has been perpetuated since that day as Lebanon’s Shiites finally assumed the banner of the country’s strongest and most powerful sect. Tripoli, arguably Lebanon’s biggest Sunni agglomeration, started its spiral decline during that period as well. The rise of Lebanese Sunni extremism and the rise of Assir were a consequence of that day too.

Assir:

Assir went to ski. Assir went to the beach. Assir took his four wives shopping. Assir took his three hundred children biking. Assir went to the bathroom. Assir made a speech. Assir belched. Assir did this or that. And it was all documented, like a bonafide Lebanese version of the Truman Show. Assir turned out to be irrelevant. His lasting effect on the perception of the Sunni sect and on the fabrics of Sunni society as well, with his fiery messages of hate, were not as irrelevant. The perception of the Lebanese Sunni sect, with the rise of Assir, became mostly seen through that lens.

Hariri & Co:

In a country where sects are bulked and extrapolated to the single political figure that represents them, Lebanon’s Sunnis have been stranded since 2011 when Hezbollah orchestrated the governmental coup that overtook Hariri and literally kicked him out of the country for a three year sabbatical between Paris, a broken leg in the Alps and occasional pilgrimages to Saudi Arabia. The effect of the Future Movement, Lebanon’s moderate Sunni political group, started dwindling to the pleasure of little Orangey Christian folks. Its ranks, with the absence of their unified leadership, began to crack both financially and politically. Dissidents began to show as its MPs started to stray from the moderate message that FM employed for its Lebanese politics, and the people followed.

 STL:

The international tribunal for Lebanon, appointed by the United Nations to investigate the assassination of Rafic Hariri and a growing list of figures after him had come to the conclusion that Hezbollah was responsible for the assassination. Trusting the STL, however, meant you are a member of the imperialistic American controversy aimed at dismantling Lebanese society. Your only option in Lebanon today is to consider the STL a clear attempt at weakening Hezbollah in the face of Israel. There are no other variables allowed to you.

Sectarian Lebanon:

In a decent country, the above list wouldn’t matter. In fact, the above issues would be a matter of national debate – as they should – as to the best way to approach the divided fabrics in our society and assure social justice to all in a civil society, which we don’t have and probably never will. We cannot, however, keep ignoring that there is a grave injustice in the media, in our minds and in our daily lives towards each other, especially the Lebanese Sunni sect, portrayed today as the prime fighter for the rights of the Islamic State in Lebanon. Once upon a time, I overhead a Lebanese say that he believes all the people of Arsal should be killed, women, children, elderly and men – just because they harbored Syrian refugees. He then added that it’s what Lebanese Sunnis have always done. This is not normal nor is it acceptable.

In the sectarian Lebanon of today, if a Sunni had written this post that you’re reading now, you’d have dismissed him as another one of those extremist sympathizers who hate the army, want Israel to eradicate Hezbollah and are against the current of what is perceived to be the Lebanese way of life. There’s more to the Lebanese sectarian reality today than the last few years have brought to us with their actions, reactions and actions again. The culmination of those past few years, however, is a Lebanese society today that is in a silent war.

The majority of Lebanese Sunnis are moderates, as is the case with Lebanon’s other sects, which is what has allowed this country to exist for as long as it has despite the many troubles along the way. The magnifying glass of the media, the people and everything in between is on the minority, regardless of how substantial it is, that does not believe in moderation.

If I were a Lebanese Sunni, I’d find what’s happening to be unfair. I’d be horrified at the way Lebanese media is portraying me, at how other Lebanese people of other sects that aren’t much better – even today – think of me. I’d be appalled that most Lebanese Christians fear me when most of them are closeted extremists who’d pick up the nearest riffle and go to war if they had the chance. I’d be appalled that Lebanese Sunnis have the country’s poorest and most illiterate populations, out of which emanate the extremism attributed to the entire sect today, and still the brush paints the entire wall black.

If I were an uneducated Sunni with nothing in sight but religion and being too easily susceptible for brainwashing, it would be a sure slippery slope for me until I become a militia man who hates the army, becomes active against it and raises the لا اله الا الله flag on my balcony.

The Lebanese situation is almost textbook-like, but we are too blinded, too prejudiced and too politically non-neutral to have a sane discussion about what must be done. Extremist Lebanese Sunnis must be eradicated, it is said. The problem is that their eradication, as is presumed forcibly, will lead to other groups that are more extreme and that can do worse things. Know why we have extremists before lashing out at their existence. What we need today is to understand why radicalization is happening in our country, why we suddenly hear of Lebanese suicide bombers, of Lebanese who go to fight for greater causes, whatever it might be. Are we ready as a country for that? I guess the correct response to that is: are you fucking kidding me?

Filed under: Lebanon

There are many things that Ashraf Rifi should care about, as the minister of justice in Lebanon today.

For instance, as a man from Tripoli he should care about the fact his own city is in deep hell right now, sinking further and further as days go by. He should care about his own people back there who are afraid of speaking up against the militants that could pop up at anytime, threaten their security. He should care about those same people who are too afraid to exist in their homes right now.

Ashraf Rifi should care about the fact that our policemen can arrest anyone they please without cause, keep them in jails and drag them through messy bureaucratic processes until they get bored, and there’s nothing anyone can do about that.

Ashraf Rifi should care about the fact that our entire Lebanese legal system is aimed at a way to decimate our women’s potential, robbing them of the ability to pass on their citizenship to their children, of having equal inheritance sometimes, of having equal pay with their XY counterpart and, among other examples, of being able to open a miserable bank account for their children without the consent of those children’s father.

Ashraf Rifi should care about how ISIS is threatening the very fragile fabrics of Lebanese society, of how they are beheading our own army members. He should care about the grave injustice that befell Ali El Sayyed, that army member whose family had to see him die in pictures, incidentally a Sunni – the people Rifi likes to kiss up to for popularity.

Guess again.

Today, the only thing Ashraf Rifi cares about is making sure you burning the ISIS flag in Lebanon is illegal, instead of going after the people supporting ISIS in Lebanon or stopping people from flying it on their cars and balconies. Why so? Because it has the emblem of the prophet Muhammad and has the slogan: There is no god but God on it, effectively making it a Muslim holy entity.

Today, Ashraf Rifi is not being a minister of justice for the entirety of Lebanon but for his very narrow Sunni sect, to the extremists there who are actually appalled at some people in Achrafieh burning a flag that has the name of their prophet on it.

Today, Ashraf Rifi doesn’t really care about being a politician for an entire country with a holistic approach towards every single person in that country. He wants to be a politician for a specific group, working to make sure he pleases that specific group at all times, at a time when such rhetoric, ideals and attitudes are extremely, extremely dangerous.

There are many things we can do to fight ISIS in Lebanon that are not military. We can be aware people who have some context and understanding towards each other, first and foremost, in order to have the minimum amount of required dialogue to establish some form of agreement on where we want Lebanon today to head.

We can transcend our petty, narrow-minded and limited sects and not fall back to what is familiar, as Rifi is doing, like most of Lebanon’s sunni politicians today: going back to what they believe boosts their popularity, gives them sectarian cred, makes them stronger and gives them more clout.

Today, Ashraf Rifi has it all wrong. Instead of doing what he should have done as a minister of justice, he is inciting sectarianism at a time when this is the last thing anyone should do, especially a politician like him, in a government aimed at ruling the entire country, not just the Sunni sect.

The ISIS flag has holy Muslims symbols, but burning it is not insulting Islam, it’s a protest to what ISIS is doing to the people of Iraq, the people of Syria, the people of Lebanon and to our Lebanese army. It’s a protest against the beheading of James Foley, Ali Al Sayyed, the many, many more Sunni muslims who were killed by ISIS and whose deaths are ignored by many. The real insult to Islam here is the existence of ISIS.

What Ashraf Rifi is asking for today is an insult to those people first and foremost and not an insult to Islam. It’s an insult to the intellect of any Lebanese person who wants their freedom of expression to remain intact in this country. It’s an insult to every single Sunni who’s having their entire reputation tarnished as a sect that doesn’t accept others, is still hung up on shallow appearances and is going more and more in its own bubble.

Sunnis in Lebanon today have many, many problems. Their politicians are one of those problems. In Lebanon today, it’s fine to burn a flag with the star of David. It’s fine to burn a flag with a Cross. But when it comes to burning the flag of a terrorist organization, all bets are off?

We need bold statements like Aliaa Magda Elmahdy’s against ISIS. We need to burn their flag. We need to rise beyond their terrorism. We need to get over the limited view of religion at a time when the people of ISIS are using religion to kill people.

If the prophet Muhammad were alive today, he’d be the first person burning that flag down. Ashraf Rifi should have known better.

Move away Game of Thrones, Lebanon is in full swing to make sure the ground is fertile – no pun – for our very own dark aged winter.

After minster of Justice Achraf Rifi decided there’s nothing more important than to go after those who burned the ISIS flag in Achrafieh, our ministry of telecommunication, spear-headed by Abdul Menhem Youssef, is aiming to stop Lebanese citizens from watching porn, by banning ISPs and Internet providers from letting citizens access a select number of sites, which are:

1) teenport.com,
2) metart-gallery.com,
3) smallteenpussy.com,
4) xnxx.com,
5) xivdeos.com,
6) teensnow.com.

Didn’t you hear, people? Our government is all about making sure the collective morals of the Lebanese community remain intact. After all, is there anything other than porn in Lebanon today that could be leading to the massive and tangible decline in manners?

Oh wait.

In the grand scheme of Lebanese things, we have other liberties being violated than the freedom to have a wider array of porn websites. As it stands, other porn websites will still remain available for whoever likes to feast their senses and bodily fluids, but what precedence are we setting with such measures, especially at a time like this when there are much, much graver things that warrant bans?

At the top of my head, before banning porn, the ministry of telecommunication should ban access to every single video on the internet showing anyone, especially Lebanese army personnel, being killed by Da’esh.

The ministry of telecommunication should also consider banning websites or platforms whose sole purpose is to perpetuate the message of ISIS, effectively making sure gullible minds don’t fall prey to it.

Between the arrest of 27 men recently for engaging in homosexual acts at a local Beiruti Hammam, and the current war against porn websites, one cannot but wonder what is this ongoing onslaught by the Lebanese establishment against sex lately?

If I were the Lebanese minister of telecommunication, I wouldn’t ban any porn websites. I would propagate them, aggressively so, hoping that some youth out there would get the release it needs to ease the horned up tension among the Lebanese populace. It’s not a coincidence that the more liberated a society is, sexually, the more peaceful it is.

But forget about all that, today Lebanese telecom ministry is telling Da’esh and its likes, with perhaps small but significant steps: Let them cum.

Spotted in Achrafieh

“We came to slaughter you, Cross worshipers,” is the sentence that made headline news in Lebanon a couple of days ago, as the people of the Northern city Al-Mina woke up to find it branded on one of their Churches. It came a day after Crosses were burned in Ain el Helwe and “the Islamic State is coming” was drawn up on other Churches in the country.

As a natural consequence to such exciting development, the news cycle will now go as follows:

1) Insert priest from Church in question spewing hate,
2) Insert local Christian lamenting about being threatened and being afraid,
3) Insert Muslim figure saying they do not support the graffiti,
4) Insert some high ranking figure saying they’re opening an investigation,
5) Insert pictures of personnel wiping the graffiti away, followed by political analysts salivating over the golden goose: the start of Christian persecution in Lebanon is finally here. Get ready for a Lebanese Maaloula soon. Or take up arms.

The saddest facet to the lives of Lebanese Christians today is that many are indeed taking up arms or considering it. Even Christian politicians are no longer hiding it. The ISIS threat is tangible and a decent enough excuse to uncover practices that have undoubtedly been taking place for a long time now. Lebanon is, perhaps still unofficially, in a race of arms, again.

I’ve heard people all around the place discussing taking up arms, being ready to fight and die. I’ve seen people who not only want to hold up arms but are thirsty for it, reminiscing over days and years that most would rather be forgotten. Those people are not middle aged men who were active during the war; they are university students, educated youth who don’t know what war is and whose expertise in weaponry extends to the occasional summer season bird hunting.

The talk about taking up arms has become near omniscient among Christians today. If you tell the people that such a race for arms is futile, the retort is typically always: they’re doing worse, and yes perhaps they are, but is that an enough excuse to further push the country and its already fragile communities off the cliff it’s decidedly running towards? Is the reply that “we must be ready” enough for such an undertaking given that there’s probably nothing for us to be ready for?

I, for one, am not afraid of ISIS, even as they knock on Arsal’s doors and find insurgents in select cities across the country, I still don’t feel remotely threatened by such an entity and I believe neither should other Lebanese Christians, regardless of their degree of religiosity for one simple reason: Their situation in Lebanon is grossly different from the situation of Christians in Syria or Iraq. The community here is far stronger, much more represented, has a bigger national footprint than their Syrian or Iraqi counterparts, who have been systematically decimated, be it in numbers or in political power, for several years now.

What makes me afraid, however, is that the households of people that I know are now being turned into barracks, that their closets are being filled with riffles instead of clothes, that the people I know and once thought were docile creatures are increasingly ready to pounce, when there’s no reason to.

What makes me afraid is that people that had for the past few years been the main buffer in the country against war are turning that buffer into a catalyst. How can Christians stay in a country they’re actively working on destroying, even if that’s not really their aim?

What makes me afraid is not a threat that needs a near miracle to find a footprint in Lebanon, but of the fact that even with such a threat looming at our doors, our politicians still can’t agree on electing a president, arguably the highest Christian position in the country, to lead. They can’t even agree on the best way to handle ISIS. Even in such extreme and drastic circumstances, Lebanon’s Christian communities are as fragmented as they’ve ever been.

With every graffiti proclaiming the rise of an Islamic state on your churches, with every news of injustice befalling Christians in the Near East and with every rise in the fear you’re having, you are faced with two options.

You can take up arms and get ready to fight again in a war that will probably not befall upon us. You can do as everyone else is doing and learn how to kill, dub it defending yourself, and make sure it’s in your own hands, not in the hands of a feeble government and its army.

Or you can ask yourself the question branded on those bracelets you wear: what would Jesus do? Odds are He would painted over the graffiti, restored the churches, remained the buffer this country desperately needs between its two clashing sides and sought normality.

Look at them burning our Crosses. Look at them drawing those things on our Churches. Look at their sheikhs and their Friday sermons. Yes, those things are happening true, but how hypocritical is it to be appalled by such things when Lebanese Christians have done similar things as well? And in the grand scheme of things how irrelevant is a graffiti and how useless is burning a piece of wood, regardless of its meaning, at a time when there are so many more important things taking place, at a time when it’s perhaps more important to ignore and turn that other cheek?

I returned home yesterday evening to find a brand new graffiti on one of the buildings next to my apartment in Achrafieh. “The Crusaders are staying in Lebanon,” it said. I chuckled as I took a picture of it. What was the point of such a graffiti in the middle to Achrafieh, an area that won’t have anything ISIS related unless it’s the burning of their flag? What was the point of such an “empowering” slogan in an area whose people don’t remotely need so? Isn’t it preaching to the choir? But then again, when have Lebanese Christians not been hung up on the superficialities of them being Christians in Lebanon? Some things will never change. What would Jesus do? Probably not this.

6-7-11.

The above numbers do not constitute my iPhone passcode. They are not random, arbitrary digits I chose to start a useless blog post that will have your head rolling: yet another nagging post by this guy? Meh.

6 is the number of civilians. 7 is the number of army men. 11 is the number of militia terrorists. These 24 people have all died in Tripoli over the past day, in the city’s heaviest clashes in many, many months. Not that you’d care. It’s understandable – deplorable, but understandable nonetheless. None of this goes hand in hand with Lebanese joie de vivre. What are we to tell the tourists?

It started when Lebanon’s army arrested Ahmad Miqati, a well known thug and terrorist, who also happens to be the henchman of a well-known Lebanese MP whose name roughly translates to “immortal going out.” Upon his arrest, Tripoli’s dormant cell of terrorists woke up from their deep slumber. How dare they?

Khaled Hoblos, a cleric at Haroun el Rashid mosque, then ignited their fury with a fiery Friday sermon. And the rest is undergoing present history.

The perfect summary for today

As Tripoli’s people suffered in national silence, oblivious to the bullets and missiles, Achrafieh was having another field day. It’s funny how Achrafieh’s 2020 days always take place when something fucked up around Tripoli goes. Conspiracy, perhaps?

It does serve to show, however, exactly how divided and segregated and lala-landish some parts of Lebanon are. 80 kilometers away they may be, perhaps, but it’s an entirely different world out there. Kids playing, young adults trying to find that perfect instagram picture versus men carrying a body out of Nahr Abou Ali, taking pictures of the burned Tebbane souk as they hear bullets echo in the distance, in areas that those bullets had never visited before.

Ironically, this seems too familiar. Around the same time last year, after I had finished watching La Vie D’Adele at the European Film Festival and, while walking home, I looked at the parties taking place in Gemmayze and Mar Mkhayel. People were alive, proving whatever point they had to prove. Tripoli and the people I knew there were tucked away in corners of their houses, convincing themselves that the following day would be better, après l’éclipse le beau temps style.

Of course in times like these, everyone and their mother have an opinion. More often than not, that opinion stems from well-rooted political convictions that are, well, as worthy as garbage. But everyone’s got an opinion, right?

And, at times of national crises such as this, the least you’d expect people is to at least keep a united front facing the terrorism, horror and death. Well, guess again.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Such people’s logic wants to have a city of half a million people eradicated from the Lebanese scene just because they don’t agree with that city’s sect, politics. Of course, young as these people are, they probably got their ideas from their parents. Do you think blinded hate is a recessive or dominant trait? I’d go with the latter.

What’s sadder is that such a point of view is not a lone cry in the Lebanese wilderness. It is shared by many. The saddest part is that the people who have such ideas are the upcoming generation on whom everyone’s hope resides. I suppose you better find better foundations for that hope you have of a one-day prosperous Lebanese nation of understanding and love and intra-sectarian mating and whatnot.

Those people in question don’t know that there are people from that city they want burned who know exactly what’s wrong with their hometown and who are trying to change it, unlike useless hateful tweets:

By Mu’taz Salloum

People such as Mu’taz Salloum, who have no problem blaming everything and everyone for the situation in their city and their country, make me happy. Is it because I’m a natural-born downer?

The situation, however, is not Muslim-exclusive. Lebanese Christians have their own share of messed up stuff taking place, from extremism against the Syrians, to self-appointed guarding duties across Lebanese towns, to their sheer inability to govern amidst self-conviction that their existence in the country is the greatest thing since sliced bread. The people of Achrafieh at today’s event were probably having the following conversation with each other:

- T’as entendu qu’est ce qui se passe à Tghipoli?

- Tghipoli? C’est quoi ça?

- Ben, j’en sais pas. Je crois qu’ils ont quelque chose qui s’appelle Daesh.

- Daesh? C’est bien demodé chez eux. La vie est jolie chez nous à Ach.

The Lebanese South, prior to its liberation in 2000, was not as disassociated from Lebanon as Tripoli and effectively much of the North and Northern Beqaa are. If that’s not saying something, I don’t know what could.

This is beautiful <3

However, ladies and gentlemen, things are not all bleak. There is news to brighten your day, news that will make all of the above disappear. Or at least that was the case for some people to pretend that we have the Paris of the Middle East again, Switzerland of the East, *insert some other possible cliche about Lebanon here.*

It’s that time of the year again. No, not Christmas. According to Siri, that’s in sixty days. It’s time for Conde Naste to publish their yearly list of the world’s best cities according to that magazine’s touristy readers. Drumroll please *drrrrrr.* For the third year in a row, Beirut has found itself a nice little spot on that list. Not only that, but Beirut has made great advances in ranks, up from number 20 last year, based on the voting of the tourists that read that magazine and have visited Beirut recently, which amounts to how many people exactly?

Beirut beat Sydney, and Paris, and Vienna, and *insert other eye-grabbing capital that makes Beirut’s feat all the more impressive.* Our very own capital. Can you believe it? The little city that could, with all its characteristic buildings, well-kept roads, clean sidewalks, enriching cultural life and activities, diverse touristic options within its boundaries, the insane amount of tourists and its charm that is overflowing.

What’s the mark of greatness in a city that’s destroying its own heritage, has little to no respect to its people and is making sure it becomes what it believes everyone wants: another Dubai, effectively losing everything that made it, once upon a time, charming?

Between people dying, people wanting those dying to be eradicated from existence, people who have no idea the former two categories exist and people who have massive orgasms every time a Western publication mentions Lebanon somehow, the Lebanese situation is utterly, devastatingly and surely, beyond measures, fucked.

BUT YOU GUYS BEIRUT IS THE WORLD’S #14 CITY. TAKE THAT PARIS. (Paris <3).

The news about the rising racism that foreigners in Lebanon, notably Syrians, keep on rolling.

Earlier this morning, Anastacia Al-Hajj was doing what she basically does every morning, take her commute road to work. On her way, she’s held up by a scene involving a Lebanese man shouting at a helpless Sukleen worker, telling him to kneel. The man put his hands over the man’s shoulders and tried to force him to the ground, insulting him in all kinds of ways in the process.

When the Sukleen worker didn’t budge, the Lebanese man animal held out a pocket knife and slashed the worker across the street. Seeing that no one was doing anything but observe, in typical Lebanese apathy to such scenarios, Anastacia went out to help the worker only to have one of the women in the nearby buildings tell her: “leave him, these foreigners all over our country, and they deserve it.”

Why was the Lebanese man assaulting the Sukleen worker? Because the latter was cleaning in front of that man’s building, which is the building’s orderly’s job.

Anastacia has reported the incident to Sukleen and they are investigating the matter. Of course, this will probably only amount to a few blog posts and a viral Facebook status, courtesy to the people in this country who still have an ounce of humanity left in them.

This is the Sukleen worker after he was attacked by the Lebanese goon. The look in his eyes is heartbreaking:

It wasn’t enough that these helpless foreigners do the jobs that many Lebanese find themselves to be too high-end to do, we now attack them when they go out of their way to keep our streets clean from all the litter we pile up, in pure animalistic fashion.

This sheer racism against foreigners just because they are foreigners is unacceptable. The argument that these foreigners have done their share of hardships against the Lebanese population is essentially mute. How despicable do you have to be, as a human being, to attack someone whose only way to provide for his family is basically collect the garbage that other people pile up in the most disorganized of ways?

I’m finding myself more and more lately wishing that these people, such as the animal who attacked that helpless worker and that woman who said that worker deserved to have his face cut with a pocket knife, end up with their sons and daughters and maybe even fathers and mothers abroad, working at low-end jobs to provide them with better quality of life, and have their family members being treated with the same racism that they’re treating those they deem are lesser.

Some people deserve to live in a barn. It’s only fitting for their inner animals, all surrounded by filth, their own manure and their ego. And, ironically, some Lebanese people have become as bad as Daesh. As I said before, some people deserve Daesh.

Student A from party B attacked student C from party D. The headline reads as such. Substitute the letters for whichever news website you follow for your party of choice, and you’ll get the gist of what happened at NDU earlier today.

An important aspect of the NDU fights has been, to me at least, a serious wakeup call as to how time is flying. It was university election season again, or as I like to call it dumbo open season. I daresay there isn’t a better description for that in 2014.

The following is a video of the fight that took place at NDU today:

And to think that it was only just last year that we had the following gem circulating:

I don’t have pictures of people from other parties

When I recovered from the shock that it was almost November, I couldn’t help but wonder: do these things seriously still exist? Universities still hold these things.

In November 2014, at a time when Lebanon doesn’t have 1) a president, 2) a functional parliament, 3) upcoming parliamentary elections and 4) people with political intellect, universities are still pretending that it’s a necessity for the parties roaming their classes to express democracy.

The fact of the matter remains that the following is correct:

1) Student elections are irrelevant. The only purpose they used to serve is to enrich the democratic spirit within students. When those students start to bludgeon each other over useless politics, the entire purpose is defeated.

2) Student councils that arise from these elections are, in most universities, essentially stillborn. Student movements that you hear of in universities regarding rising tuition fees rarely emanate from those councils. Based on my experience, those movements immediately manage to circumvent the limitations of said councils in order to make bigger impacts and get to what they need. It’s worth to note that USEK, which doesn’t have student elections, also managed to protest their rising tuition fees, albeit that didn’t get as much coverage as AUB because, well, AUB.

3) I can’t believe Lebanese students, who should – in theory – be an example of educated youth wanting to better our country and, you know, all that cliche that is associated with the benefits of higher education, still believe that them voting for Geagea or Aoun is proof enough that the latter or the former command the Christian scene. I can’t believe that they still believe voting for Hezbollah is a referendum over the resistance’s weapons, or that voting for Hariri is proof on his popularity among the Sunni scene. You’re just a tool. It’s high time you see yourself as they see you.

4) It’s sad, read depressing, that these students’ parents keep on paying hefty fees for their sons and daughters to essentially forgo their entire education for a period of a month that starts with scouting for candidates, making sure those candidates fit the required bill, going through student “pointage” to figure out who’s voting for whom. And, because that wasn’t enough, those students end up beating each other up to defend the honor of their za’im of choice. Your $20K tuition is definitely meant from broken ribs, swollen eyes and bruised prides.

5) It’s mortifying that the students going into those fights believe that the politician they’re getting beaten up for actually gives a shit. Here’s a reality check for you: he doesn’t remotely give a rat’s ass about your sorry ass. In fact, he’s probably laughing his ass off while his henchmen write up a speech to pretend he’s coming to your rescue while his last worry in the world is you. Do those students seriously think their politicians would come to their rescue when they end up in jail because of those scenes, when their future is ruined or when they end up expelled? Guess again.

6) In a country of no democracy, university elections are not the last vestige of the good times representing the Switzerland of the Middle East, the freedom of whatever that we had and whatnot. They’re irrelevant and, as it’s become apparently clear, dangerous.

High profile Lebanese universities that do not have student elections are:

• The Lebanese University
• University of Balamand
• USEK

USJ is also considering canceling their elections this year. I say good riddance; USJ is the hub of yearly problems. I mean, what would Jesus say if Hezbollah won in Huvelin? Tsk tsk.

AUB and LAU are still scheduled to hold them.

If there’s a time to cancel university elections, it’s this year. The only thing at stake is a useless student council and political websites orgasming over them winning X or Z. Nobody cares – except the students beating each other up over it.

Because there’s absolutely nothing newsworthy reporting in Lebanon. Because everything is peachy, happy go lucky, the birds are chirping, the economy is booming, the tourists are coming in droves. Because our news services, notably MTV, have so much air time and so little things to report about, they decide to come up with absolute horseshit to get the Lebanese public into yet another state of panic.

The latest fad: Jdid, jdid… MTV…. Digital drugs.

I saw the headlines a couple of days ago. It sounded exactly like those Upworthy Facebook links you never bother to check. I didn’t click. Then the news kept on growing, and people kept on talking, and parents kept on panicking and I’m sure the news service that “uncovered” such an abomination is proud of itself for leading the viral mania.
A quick google search shows you that such a topic has existed since 2012, but never gained traction. I wonder why that could be.

I figured 7 years of medical school, including heavy duty courses in addiction that cover substances ranging from caffeine to hardcore drugs, including psychiatry clerkships where my colleagues and I never encountered such addicts, were not enough. I’ve seen alcoholics. I’ve seen heroin addicts. I’ve seen people who smoke marijuana by the kilos. But I had never, ever, seen someone addicted to something digital, in the cloud, to an MP3 file.

So I decided to learn, because that’s what science and medicine are: an ever-evolving field where stagnation even if with immense knowledge means you fall behind quite easily, so I hit up my favorite scientific databases. How nerdy.

I tried all different combinations of “binaural beats” and “hallucination.” No results.

I tried “binaural beats,” and “addiction.” Zilch.

But here’s what binaural beats do:

There are plenty of things out there that could cause sensations of relief, elation, happiness, affect a person’s psychomotor performance and whatnot. Your favorite songs can make you feel happy. Making love to your partner can affect your mood. Eating chocolate can relieve stress. Practicing yoga has been shown to have tangible effects on the brain.

There are also plenty of things that haven’t been banned that can cause hallucinations. Many medications that we give at hospitals have such a thing as their side effect. If you lock someone in a room alone for a period of time, they will end up having hallucinations. All of us also get hallucinations around sleeping time. Those are called hypnagogic or hypnopompic. Perhaps they’d want to ban those too?

What’s also been proven is the existence of a placebo effect. If you give someone a substance and tell them it should do X and Y to them, many will report having felt X and Y occurring. That substance might as well be sugar, and they wouldn’t know. Placebo studies are crucial to the introduction of any new medications to the market. They are required to assess whether that new entity you want to sell is better than what’s already out there, or better than the non-medicated form. It also means that there could be a component to those “subjective” binaural beats reports of “having their mind blown away” that doesn’t scientifically exist.

Kudos to MTV for bypassing years and years of possible scientific research to come to conclusions that are years ahead of any possible credible scientific paper on the matter. Kudos to those experts as well, flaunting all their expertise at us, good on them for being such professionals at what they do.

Science Journal? Meh. Nature? That’s even worse. No, MTV is the new leading reference for scientists and doctors everywhere. Now please, educate me more.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is nothing more than what happens, every other year, when a Lebanese TV station decides to re-address satanism and its association with heavy metal. You get “experts” saying that they’ve “proven” that listen to heavy metal music causes a person to deviate from holy religious norms and worship the devils. Those people will then engage in coital activities at cemeteries and commit blasphemy against churches and mosques or whatever. Of course, it’s more often than not pure and utter shit. But people panic anyway, because that’s what media feeds upon.

I’m not saying binaural beats should be ignored, but who the hell is MTV to decide they should be banned when scientists haven’t studied them yet or have come up to conclusions on their merits, on their hallucinogenic effects, on their effects on brain matter?

You know MTV, instead of covering such unfounded things like this, and using your power to lend credibility to scientifically unfounded crap, why don’t you give more airtime to other facets of addiction in Lebanon that are more abundant and much, much more accessible and much more scientifically proven to mess people up? Or why don’t you give more airtime to Lebanese areas that exist beyond your “live love Lebanon, let’s bring the tourists over” mantra? Trust me, that’s where the real problems in this country lie.

June 20th, 2017. Save the date, for it will be the time Lebanon’s current parliament extends its mandate for the third time in a row. Some people like the taste of power. Those who like power in Lebanon can’t get enough of it.

Apart from the ramifications of the extension, many of which you will probably be hearing about until elections happen in who-knows-when, here are a few observations about myself amidst this political fuckery:

• I’m a soon-to-be 25 year old who, according to our laws and regulations, is basically equipped with full legal responsibilities and whatnot, but I’ve never – ever – voted for anything, and by the looks of it will never do.

Contrast this with my American cousins whose ages range from 20 to 26 and who have voted at least twice so far in the past 2 years alone, the last of which was yesterday. Those Americans… they fight ISIS here, Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and they still manage to hold elections every other two years. Teach our politicians, why don’t you?

• By extending its mandate till 2017, Lebanon’s lawmakers have made sure that I, along with a substantial portion of Lebanon’s youth, will never – ever – get to have a say in who becomes a parliament member.

I will immigrate and be out of the country by 2016. Ironically, I will most likely be attending (but sadly not participating) in the American presidential elections that year, but at least I’ll be able to say that the past 6 years, in which I should have witnessed, in theory, a presidential election, two parliamentary elections and municipality elections, haven’t been election-less, although I have witnessed the Syrian presidential elections on my territory; I guess the situation wasn’t bad enough for that not to happen.

Most of the people I know are against parliament’s mandate extension, and so am I. But somehow, after thinking about this for about the fifteen minutes that it deserves amidst this country’s sewage-like level of politics, I realized that the bigger travesty of this parliament’s extension is that our MPs, or all 95 of them who attended, were so full of themselves that they didn’t see anything wrong with extending their mandate for an extra two years and seven months.

The biggest and sadder travesty that occurred today is also the fact that those same parliament members who have failed to ensure quorum since that first round of presidential elections way back when, have found quorum for the sole purpose of ensuring they can fail to gather quorum for the next two years and seven months, while getting fully paid for their lack of services.

The saddest aspect of today is that there are still Lebanese out there who can’t think for themselves and who think that their politicians of choice were correct in voting the way they voted today or in not attending today’s session, as if those voting for the extension did so unpredictably and those who didn’t attend, while being in the government and making sure none of the regulations needed to make sure parliamentary elections take place are passed, have also effectively supported the extension from the get-go and were searching for the best way to go around mass Lebanese (Christians mainly) scrutiny.

Ironically fitting for Mr. Bassil and his party’s MPs to “want to fight the power from inside,” don’t you think?

Today has also revealed exactly how silly, stupid, ridiculous and retarded this whole debacle is with the realization that there are Lebanese people who will actually be voting for parliament members in Kuwait on November 7th (this Friday) and in Sydney, Australia on November 9th (this Sunday) because, as of now, we are all still voters who are supposed to vote for parliament soon, pending the publication of today’s decision in the Official Gazette. What will the votes of those Lebanese amount to? The answer is exactly the same as all our votes: toilet paper for our MP’s behinds.

But I digress. There are, believe it or not, worse things taking place today thanks to those very lawmakers that should be noted, especially today:

1 – Presidential Elections:

Get this: 97 MPs gathered in parliament today, making up more than 2/3 majority required to vote on major bills, in order to extend their mandate. Those MPs voted 95-2 on the bill in question. However, for the past 6 months, those same MPs have not only failed to gather quorum for presidential electives, many of them have actively campaigned against ensuring such a quorum. By ensuring no president is elected, those MPs have made a nice bundled argument for themselves on the necessity of another mandate extension is required to avoid that dreaded void. If you think about it, it’s a nice little Lebanese catch 22. It’s not that they’re too smart; it’s that they’ve become so accustomed at fooling everyone that they make it seem like what they do is for the best of the Lebanese population they’re busy screwing over day in, day out.

It’s okay, though, who needs a president anyway.

2 – Elections Law

When those 128MPs got to power in 2009, they all agreed that a new electoral law was a necessity to be done in those 4 years during which they would serve their country and citizens. The reality was a vacation for the first two years, a wake up call on year 3, a few months of hectic sprints in year 4, jumping from one absurd law to another more absurd law (you do remember the Orthodox proposal, of course, however long ago that seems right now) until they realized that the whole issue was too tiring and decided to postpone for themselves the first time, saying that they will use those extended 18 months to work on a new law.

How many hours have those MPs spent in those 18 months working on a new electoral law? Approximately 0.

In fact, not only is the lack of an electoral law after more than five and a half years a tragedy, but any electoral law that will arise from this parliament in question will be tailor-made to please everyone and, effectively, keep the status quo as is. Do you really think they’d agree to what’s fair if fairness meant they’d be kicked out of Nejmeh Square?

3 – What If Elections Happened On November 16th?

Let’s assume, however, that our parliament decided that the democratic process was, contrary to actuality, important. Let’s assume that they swallowed their overgrown prides and decided to campaign for our votes in about 11 days and try out for the Guinness World Record for shortest election delay ever. Now that’s something we can teach those Americans. Let me give you an example of the broad array of candidates that I could have voted for in Batroun:

2014

The names sound familiar? That’s because you know them all. Gebran Bassil (name #2) is THE Gebran Bassil. Boutros Harb (name #4) is my current MP and the minister of telecom. Antoine Zahra (last name) is the LF-go-to-spokesperson for fiery speeches and my other MP.

Now contrast the above list with that of those who were running for elections before parliament underwent its first extension in June 2013:

2013

I would advise a game of “spot the difference,” but it’d be essentially futile as there are basically none. If elections were to happen on November 16th, our tax money would be spent to make sure that those same MPs, across all Lebanese districts, get not a two year and seven months mandate that is illegal, but a four year mandate that is legal. It’s not just because they made sure we vote based on a law that preferred them, but because we are left without a choice and because the bulk of those who vote, as in the people that exist outside of Twitter and Facebook (they exist!), do not vote the same way we do. And, because who the hell are we kidding, many of us as well would vote for the same people again, just because of familiarity.

4 – They’re Working Overtime

So what has our parliament done in the 18 months of its first extension? They worked of course. Overtime. They worked to ensure that a president is not elected (read point #1). They worked to make sure that the workers’ benefits and whatnot are not voted on, that a quorum is never reached. They worked overtime to make sure that Lebanese students who presented their official exams this year never get results and end up with certificates of passing, the tales of which our parents had told us back when they were going through school during the times of the Civil War.

They worked overtime to make sure a proper bill protecting women from domestic abuse isn’t passed. What we got instead was a maimed piece of legislation, aimed to please this religious leader or that, but still managing to keep our women under the thumbs of their husbands or partners.

They worked overtime not to work on an electoral law, not to legislate a stance from the Syrian war, not to basically do anything except get paid for doing no work in overtime.

5 – The Divide Is Christian/Muslim, not M14/M8

Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the past several months on the Lebanese scene is the fact that the game has changed from being a March 14 versus a March 8 game, to becoming full blown Christian blocs versus Muslim blocs over the essential issues in the country, at a time when the Christian-Muslim divide, in Lebanon and elsewhere, is at an all time high.

As Ramez Dagher, on his blog Moulahazat, put it:

What is scary here isn’t that Lebanese politicians lie and steal and deceive and postpone elections. That, we already know. What is truly scary here is that 25 years after Taef, we are starting to witness an obvious rapprochement between the Christian parties while a rivalry between the Muslim blocs and the major Christian ones is becoming more apparent by the day. Every time there’s an important law debated in parliament – Such as the electoral law or the extension law – the rift is yet again Christian/Muslim instead of M8/M14: 10 years after the creation of these alliances , it seems that they were more based on an electoral than ideological ground.

If there was one beautiful thing about the March 8 and 14 alliances, it was that they were religiously diverse. And now – with ISIS on our gates and with vacancy and dysfunction everywhere in the political establishment – is literally the worst time to lose that.

Conclusion:

Too long, didn’t read – the summary to you is as follows: Living in Lebanon is living in shit, but at least we have the biggest platter of hummus, fattouch, lemonade cup, biggest burger, longest falafel sandwich and we’ve officially wed George Clooney to one of our daughters. You’re welcome for the realization.

It is that time of the year again, which is basically every other day, for some person you hadn’t known existed to become the talk of the Lebanese town because of something he or she did somewhere most of us dream of living in, just because that person is Lebanese.

In this paragraph, I will discuss the lineage of the person in question. Of course, it doesn’t matter if the person is as Lebanese as Lebanese people having elections, but a Lebanese origin Chromosome is a Lebanese origin chromosome and this cannot be ignored.

After establishing that whatever percentile of Lebanese-ship this person fits in, I will draw out the family tree. In the case of many Lebanese who make it abroad, that family tree brings us back about three or five generations back to the time when our grandparents hadn’t been gametes yet, but no matter. Lebanese blood never runs cold – even after several generations out in the wilderness of those countries that those of Lebanese origin will never find home.

In this paragraph, I will discuss what that person did to make him the point of national Lebanese pride, and how whatever he did will definitely reflect positively on the fabrics of Lebanese society in his home country, leading the way to a tangible decrease in sectarianism and political tension. Of course, that person could as well have gotten married to a celebrity (Amal, I’m looking at you. It’s not like there’s anyone other than you), but what do you mean getting married to George Clooney won’t bring us a president?

I will now move on to discuss immigration and how it has shaped this country for the past three hundred years, far longer than the idea of “Lebanon” possibly even existed. I will become the go-to expert on the socio-political causes that have made immigration such a tantalizing option for many Lebanese families to leave this country. From Ottoman rule, to French hegemony, to Lebanese sectarianism and the Civil War nobody understands to current times of political bankruptcy. I will

This effectively leads the way to the most massive name drop of all time. OF ALL TIME. I will start with Gebran Khalil Gebran and go on and on about “The Prophet,” a book I have probably not read, to Hassan Kamel Al-Sabbah, the inventor they bombarded us with back in 5th grade, and the conspiracy theory that it was the CIA that killed him because of his brain, up to Shakira in which case if I were from Zahle I’d go on and on about how her vocal capacities are definitely due to her ancestor drinking lots of water from the Berdaouni, all the way to Amal Alameddine, of course, who hooked George Clooney simply because she came from Baakline. I mean is there any other reason for those big fat Lebanese nuptials (in Venice and London)?

My conclusion (I can’t believe I wrote such a small blog post) will be all about Lebanon, the little country that could, that has sent millions upon millions of people to shape the world as we know it. With the mountains close to the sea, with our unparalleled nature, with our joie-de-vivre of lifestyle, with our unmatched capital, it’s really baffling to see that this little country of ours hasn’t ascended to the throne of THE BEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD. But it’s only a matter of time because, as you know, someone out there of 1/100th Lebanese origin is bound to make that happen and Lebanon will be the only thing he or she will think of when they do.

Earlier today, minister of health Wael Abou Faour decided to go on a press conference and out high-profile restaurants and supermarkets across Lebanon that are, according to him, selling Lebanese customers “bad products.”

I was sent the following pictures that detail what are “bad products,” incompatible as they supposedly are with the ministry’s standards:

This isn’t about naming and shaming the restaurants and supermarkets in question. Actually this is far from it. If you’re reading this expecting an angry blog post about Roadster or Hallab, then you’re very mistaken. What this will be is a rant about the utter lack of maturity and professionalism that the ministry has handled this with.

For starters Mr. Faour, what’s the point of a high profile press conference to name and shame restaurants without actually listing how those restaurants failed to meet the standards checked by the ministry? No, I’m not talking about what the “products” in question, but about how exactly those products failed to meet the standards.

This brings me to point #2. What are the ministry’s standards for evaluation exactly? You’d think a big ass conference that is bound to cause such a stir would at least start with that: on what basis were those places evaluated, what scientific measures did the samples go through to be assessed, how reputable are the labs where those samples were taken, how qualified are the doctors who actually oversaw what was taking place to begin with. None of this actually happened.

Mr. Faour’s press conference was yet another example of the fact-less, crowd-pleasing, let-us-get-the-biggest-buzz-possible Lebanese mentality of handling things: the less everyone knows the better; why do people need more information to be critical anyway? Faour knows best, and he knows where you should eat and where you shouldn’t.

In the next few days, everything you will hear about will be the restaurants named by Mr. Faour. There will probably not be any other piece of news that is worthy of airtime. People will freak out and panic and call for boycott all based on nothing but an empty list by a ministry known for its inaptitude. I mean, just look at the hospitals that are run by its teams. I’m rotating at one currently, so I would know exactly how miserable and despicable the conditions are over there. But isn’t this government, ministry and country all about half-assed measures?

Many of the restaurants that Faour named have standards that the ministry can only dream of reaching.

ISO-22000. This is an international certification that a few of the restaurants in question on Faour’s list have. To ensure that this certification is not revoked, those restaurants have to submit to regular quality checks. The ISO certification is internationally recognized for its high level of standards, and is applied in countries where governments are always vigilant and do not, like ours, wake up from a deep, deep slumber every now and then in order to fight for the gastroentereological rights of Lebanese citizens. That is a standard I trust, not some shady ministry measure aimed purely to create a scandal and boost a minister’s popularity.

I suggest you do the same for now.

I bet the above pictures look familiar. You saw them happening yesterday, didn’t you? Beirut’s airport being flooded, the tunnel leading to the airport being flooded and trapping cars for hours, etc…

Except the above pictures are not actually footage from yesterday’s Lebanese apocalypse. They are the same pictures I posted on this blog in 2012, around the same time of the year, when Lebanon had its first rainstorm of the season. Here’s the link (click) if you don’t believe me. And they happened again in 2013, and again yesterday.

It’s the same story every year. Whenever those dark grey clouds gather and those raindrops indicating the summer-long drought will soon be over, everyone and their mother is absolutely taken aback by how horribly our roads and infrastructure handles the year’s first downpour.

It’s akin to our ministry of public affairs and the various municipalities around the country being like the blue fish in Finding Nemo: no short term memory whatsoever. Every single year, they are absolutely dumfounded that their jurisdiction is nowhere near equipped to handle a few millimeters of rain. A state of utter shock ensues. It rained? In November? Oh my god, it can’t be!

I wonder: how much resources would it take the ministry in question to make sure the gutters are clean, the roads are equipped and that the country wouldn’t be in near-apocalypse mode when it rains?

Perhaps the energy that goes into the thought process in question is too much and too unnecessary. This is what happened in Lebanon yesterday:

1. It rained,
2. The airport’s road got inundated,
3. The tunnel leading up to the airport road got flooded,
4. Horrible traffic ensued,
5. Water piled up to 0.5 meters in certain areas, flooding houses. It wasn’t a monsoon,
6. Electricité Du Liban’s generators got disconnected off the grid, leaving the country in electrical blackout,
7. News surfaced that City Centre was closing down due to the electricity cut. This was later denied.
8. Cinema Abraj in Furn El Shebbak was flooded (check picture below), in what looks like a typical Hollywood movie that cinema was probably screening at the time.

The following are pictures that took place yesterday:

On the bright side, we can now say the four month drought in Beirut is officially over.

We live in a country that cannot handle two hours of rain, and some think we are equipped to handle the graver issues facing our great Lebanese nation of eternal beauty. It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Ladies and gentlemen, how about several pictures, two years apart, that are exactly the same in content?

Welcome to the country of utter and absolute corruption regarding which you can’t do anything. And if you thought that this year would end up in a lesson to our government to pull it together and prevent floods in 2015, you thought wrong. As they say: فالج لا تعالج. The following is a picture of Lebanon’s first rain in 1965:

So much for credible news reporting.

Our newspapers have a lot on their plates. Not only do they have a pretty screwed up political situation to wrap their heads around, dismal infrastructure to cover (link) and, well, opinions to dish out like aspirin pills, but they also have a need to keep their readers very well up to date with what’s happening and the who’s who of Hollywood and American pop culture.

Al Balad newspaper and Oprah go way back. A couple of years go, they flashed her picture for an article about Opera, the web browser:

Today, they’re at it again with what can only be considered a hit article at almost 4000 shares: Oprah has cancer. She will be dead in 12 weeks. And all her money is going to her fans.

Those three statements are bold. You’d think one of Lebanon’s leading newspapers would try to go in depth of each and every single one of them. Cancer. Dead soon. You get money, you get money, YOU ALL GET MONEY.

Guess again. The following are screenshots before the likely take-down of the article, along with a picture of Oprah weeping because, you know, she’d likely be sad because she has cancer:

Layalina and Beiruting.com were also quick to jump on the bandwagon. Anything for Facebook likes and website clicks.

A quick google news search of Oprah reveals the following top results:

You’d think someone like Oprah getting cancer would be top Google news. Anyway, then I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and make sure to include the term “cancer” in my search query:

The result is even less important news than before, not that the results before were of any importance either.

Lebanese media is going downhill. Even more renowned newspapers such as Annahar have been very prone to ridicule lately. Check the Twitter feeds of all major news outlets and you’ll find stories being flashed around for dogs with elephant trunks, kangaroos fighting, a Polish woman waking up at the morgue after she was thought dead.

You’d think a newspaper like Al Balad would at least make sure breaking such a story would at least involve making sure it exists in American sources. Guess again. I wonder, if our news outlets make such horrendous mistakes covering such obvious news stories, how badly are they handling the very important reporting that needs to take place in Lebanon?