Because accepting a differing opinion with a free spirit is not the norm, we’ve reached a level where we attack TV stations that broadcast anything we disagree with – despite that TV station breathing “our” air, for the most time.
NewTV, which is pro-March 8 in Lebanon, was attacked yesterday by one of March 8’s supporters. His name is Wissam Alaeddine. He is one of an armed gang that committed the act.
Why did Wissam attack New TV?
Because a day earlier they had the audacity to host extremist Sunni cleric Ahmad el Assir who trashed Hezbollah and Amal, the former of which Mr. Alaeddine supports.
How did I know this? Well, everyone has Facebook. Even Wissam. And he supports the cause of “Sayyed Hassan” whatever that may be. (link).
Soon after hosting Al Assir yesterday, and after the uproar that followed, New TV basically disowned Al Assir and anything he had said using their platform. They had gotten their ratings. Their political scoop was made.
But someone saw it differently. How dare New TV stray from the path it always followed? How dare they not continue their 24/7 brainwashing – like other Lebanese TV stations – that is needed for the ignorant masses? How dare they broadcast anything that uses “Sayyed Hassan’s” name in vain?
Shame on them, shame on them. Let’s burn them down. Burn them all down.
And that’s what they tried to do.
Here’s how it is Lebanese media, now that the sarcastic bit is over: you are not allowed to diversify your scope. Some people won’t be happy with that and if they have the resources they will act upon it. Wissam Alaeddine was caught. But he’s part of a dangerous and growing ideology that those who speak differently from what “we” think need to be terminated and silenced.
Good luck Al-Jadeed with the Ahmad el Assir aftermath.
Because an AUB graduation wouldn’t be the same without a mini-scandal on the side, this year refused to be any different. Donna Shalala, former US secretary of health, was making a speech accepting the honorary degree which AUB awarded her when some students started to boo her and chant against “zionist Shalala.”
You can read the details here. There’s also a short video that shows some of what happened:
Shalala has a 20 pages CV. Some of what she has accomplished, apart from becoming the first ever Lebanese-American to hold such a high ranking position in an American government, is the following:
She is the president of the University of Miami.
She was named one of the United States’ best leaders by many publications, one of which is News & World Report.
Former president George Bush handpicked Shalala to co-chair with Senator Bob Dole the Commission on Care for Returning Wounded Warriors.
President Bush presented Shalala in 2008 with the highest honor an American citizen can get: the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
In 2010, she received the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights.
But all of this is not enough for us, as Lebanese, to be proud of Shalala apparently. There are other “things” on her CV which some deem shameful enough to cause a ruckus. Why are some calling Shalala a “zionist”?
She has three honorary degrees, among the few dozens that she has, from Israeli Universities.
She doesn’t ask to boycott Israel. In fact, she opposes the Boycott Israel movements.
She signed agreements between the University of Miami and the University of Ben Gurion in Israel.
Never mind that she has declared that “[her] experience with Palestinians in the refugee camp seared me forever as an advocate for the people of Palestine and their statehood.”
An AUB student was heard saying “I don’t want my university to honor someone who is on a normalization quest.”
I have to ask him/her something. You do know you are attending the AMERICAN University of Beirut, right? You do know that most of the funding AUB gets is from the AMERICAN government? You only need to take a stroll around the biology department to see USAID stickers plastered everywhere in case you have doubt.
Do you also know that your university presidents, all of whom are Americans, probably support normalization? For all matters and purposes, your place is not AUB if you are so deeply offended by this.
I’ve heard some AUB students say: “this makes me ashamed to be an AUB student.” You know what, I’ve got a very simple solution for you. If you believe the entirety of your academic career rests on who your university awards with a degree that person probably has thirty other ones just like it, you can simply transfer.
As students booed her, Shalala replied: “Let us welcome this demonstration of academic freedom.” Perhaps a dose of the idea of freedom of thought is what some students (and newspapers) need, regardless of whether you agree with those thoughts or not. We’re slowly getting to a point in Lebanon where we’ll refuse to welcome an American just because they may or may not support Israel.
Sure, we all support the struggle of Palestinians but what does shouting at a graduation ceremony accomplish? Nothing.
To sum this up, not everyone who supports Israel is a Zionist and before someone decides to consider me one, no I do not support Israel. As a former AUB student, I’m proud to have received the best education my parents could afford me in Lebanon. And as current AUB students, some of whom were shouting at Shalala, you should know that you are attending AUB because it is the best university in Lebanon and because this is the best education you can get in order to build a future for yourself. Stop getting carried away in useless shouting rows. You want to help Palestine? How about you become a successful individual first and then advocate it at other places than a graduation ceremony where many, many students don’t even agree with what you did?
I had a few friends go to the Evanescence concert which took place yesterday at Beirut’s new Waterfront so for those of you who couldn’t go, this is how the concert went.
It was very crowded and the crowds were so energetic that Amy Lee, Evanescence’s lead singer, was impressed and apologized to the Lebanese crowd for not coming sooner.
It’s not like they would have come before when they were much bigger and Lebanon was an irrelevant speck on their radar. But whatever, right?
The concert took around 80 minutes, which wasn’t much according to many concert goers, although that’s pretty much around the average for a set by an American band.
After the torture read that was Fifty Shades of Grey (my review), I braced myself for the second book. A sane person would have stopped reading but being the masochist that I am, I wanted to know if these books, which are still selling like hotcakes, actually had anything more to them than the sex scenes upon sex scenes which filled their pages, ultimately becoming useless and skippable.
The second book in the Fifty Shades trilogy, titled Fifty Shades Darker, doesn’t stray away much from its predecessor. But as the title suggests, it runs deeper into what the first book lacked: a tangible story.
Fifty Shades Darker picks up where Grey left off: Ana had left Christian after he beat her in one of his sexual escapades. She then starts to sink in to despair, as is typical for similar characters in other books (Yes, Twilight comes to mind). Luckily enough, that doesn’t last a whole book. A few pages later Ana encounters Christian and ends up in his arms again without much struggle. This time, however, their relationship won’t be the same. New boundaries need to be set and new rules need to be instilled. As the story progresses, Ana starts to become fearful about the prospect of Christian leaving her for someone else when he gets bored of her and the “vanilla” relationship they have. On the other hand, Christian finds in Ana a reason for living (the billions upon billions that he has are not enough) and is equally fearful about her leaving him.
As their “relationship” grows, one of Christian’s ex-subs who had never lost her fixation on him returns with a vengeance while Ana faces trouble at the publishing house she’s working at with her overly flirtatious boss.
That’s book two in a nutshell.
Is it better than book one? Only slightly. Fifty Shades Darker delves deeper and goes darker into what made Christian the sadist BDSM-loving person that he is but those insights into the character’s personality are so diluted by the overly abundant sex scenes that they eventually become irrelevant.
Ana is still as useless a character as she was in book one. Even the “improvement” to her relationship with Christian don’t rub off on her – no pun intended – to give her some spine. In fact, she even melts further into the man she’s in love with, becoming more and more useless with each passing page. She “flushes” at every turn of the page. Her infamous “oh my” is blurted out countless times. Her Macbook Pro is still called the “mean machine.” Everything about her is still the same – except much staler and when her being as stale as it can get in Fifty Shades of Grey, that’s saying something.
If you’re the person reading Fifty Shades for the sex scenes (I’m not judging), you won’t be disappointed. As I said, Fifty Shades Darker doesn’t run short on them. Among the places that get a taste of Ana and Christian’s undying libido there’s a pool table, an elevator, their corresponding apartments and a boat’s deck, just to name a few.
Fifty Shades Darker manages to go a few shades deeper than its predecessor but that’s nowhere near enough to turn this erotic “thing” a novel worth reading. The characters still use the same cues for sex. Whatever plot that takes place is as predictable as it can get and that’s without even going into the overly repetitive writing style which gets even worse on this.
Why did I read these? Yes, I read all three books a few months ago. Well, horrible as they are, they were still better than the medical school material I had to study.
Just so you don’t think I have a blind vendetta against Tayyar.org with me bashing them on different occasions (check those here & here), it’s now the Lebanese Forces website’s turn to take a hit.
We’ve all been suffering through horrible electricity outages. Even Beirut is getting 6 hour cuts. Different sides are taking different opinions regarding the matter, as usual, depending on which end of the political spectrum they belong to.
Those opinions can be summed up with the following: Blame Bassil vs Don’t blame Bassil.
I don’t like Gebran Bassil and as a voter in the Batroun caza I won’t vote for him when he runs here – again – in 2013. That won’t end up doing much since he will end up as a minister – again. But I would have done what I can.
When it comes to the electricity problem, however, there’s a drastic difference between putting the entirety of the sector’s woes on him, as some people are doing, and actually acknowledging that the problem didn’t start with him, although his handling of the whole issue isn’t top-notch. For the record, I have blogged before about the electricity problem and about how silly Gebran Bassil was when he threatened civil strife against his one-sided government if they didn’t comply with his electricity plan.
All the political talk aside, you’d expect a reputable political website which should be concerned with, well, politics not to flaunt such a post on their Facebook page, which holds over 57000 likes.
The article they linked to can be accessed (here) and it features a collection of pictures such as the following:
Some of you might think these pictures are funny and you can share them on your Facebook and Twitter timelines all you want for all I care. But it’s unacceptable for the website of one of Lebanon’s leading parties to make an “exclusive” out of them. It’s unacceptable for that website to use them as material in order to please its readers.
How about Lebanese-Forces.com and tayyar.org stop running tabloid-ish “news” and focus on real issues instead? What does either website hope to accomplish by running silly articles about the politicians of the other?
The 2013 elections, if they happen, will be here before we know it. The article in question has over 700 Facebook “likes.” Brainwashing is here in full swing.
A Separate State of Mind | A Blog by Elie Fares 