Category Archives: Lebanon

Lebanon’s Byblos Festival Line-up: No Lana Del Rey, Yes For Calvin Harris

Calvin Harris

Blame the sources and Lana Del Rey’s rabid fan club, especially its Lebanese base, but Lana Del Rey isn’t coming to Lebanon on July 10th to perform at the Byblos festival despite earlier very sure confirmations on the matter. Sorry to those who got their hopes up.

However, she is replaced by someone who is equally, if not more, popular these days: Calvin Harris, the producer behind recent huge hits with Florence from Florence + The Machine. That concert will take place on July 20th.

I’m not sure if the concert that will be offered by Harris is comparable to that of Del Rey but at least it’s still an interesting choice and not some God-forsaken band or artist whose glory days are long past.

Apologies, again, and here’s the full line-up of the Byblos Festival, as per a picture of what will be announced this week:

Byblos Festival Lineup

 

And this is the source (link).

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Update: Lana Del Rey NOT Coming To Lebanon For The Byblos International Festival

Update: Lana Del Rey won’t be attending the Byblos Festival, which is very odd since the news was also confirmed by her fanclub. She will be replaced by Calvin Harris.

Lana Del Rey

 

According to Frodo’s Blog who has been actively leaking major performers throughout the past several months, the rumors about Lana Del Rey coming to the Byblos festival this year are true.

The singer who’s famous for her melodramatic songs will be coming to Lebanon as part of the aforementioned festival for a concert on July 10th, beyond her showing up for the opening of Skybar on May 30th.

I’m not a fan of Lana Del Rey but I’m actually  surprised  the organizers of any festival in Lebanon were able to draw in such a currently “in” name to come perform here. I expect this to be the most hyped concert of the summer, if no other surprises happen.

For those who don’t know who Lana Del Rey is, you may recognize her sultry voice from the most depressing songs you encounter on Lebanese radio (if you listen to it). The songs that I know and which I believe are good enough are the following:

Born To Die: 

And The Great Gatsby song, Young & Beautiful:

You can check out ALL of the lineup for the Byblos Festival here.

Lebanon’s Oldest Church Discovered & Will Be Destroyed Soon?

Downtown Beirut  the gift that keeps on giving when it comes to archeology. After a blogger (link) and Daily Star journalists were assaulted for taking pictures at the District S site, it turned out a nearby site, where the Roman gate and road were discovered, was more important than originally perceived.

Our ministry of culture Gaby Layoun has no problem in allowing the demolitions at the site in question to continue. But new evidence is now surfacing according to this source that the site in question may contain Lebanon’s first and oldest Church. And yes, that possible Church is part of the things that are going to be destroyed as well.

Source: The Beirut Report

Source: The Beirut Report

What will replace the Roman gate and road as well as the potential Church? A five star hotel and mall. Because that’s precisely what Downtown Beirut is so desperately lacking. After all, why would any tourist in their right mind want to see anything in Beirut that doesn’t revolve around the Zaitunay Bays and the Solidere edition of Downtown Beirut?

Gaby Layoun is well on his way to be Lebanon’s prime minister of culture to allow the most transgressions against Lebanon’s culture. From the Roman hippodrome, the Phoenician port, Amin Maalouf’s house and the constant destruction of Achrafieh to the current site at hand. Of course, all of the aforementioned entities are not  things that can be milked electorally for them to be anything substantial for Layoun and his friends. Roman hippodrome and Christian rights sure doesn’t sound catchy enough.

We, as Lebanese, have apparently no right to at least have the parts of our history that are discovered be fully studied and documented because it will ruin the plans of multi-billionaires who are paying our government in droves to turn a blind eye to every single transgression taking place.

It’s not only about stone, mosaics and ancient significance. It’s about this monumental carelessness and barbarism with which authorities handle every single situation in this country, including ruins and culture and houses and highways. And quite honestly, I’ve come to expect nothing less of people who probably find the pillars of Baalbek are enough for this tiny country.

What Happened At LAU With The Lebanese President’s Son

I can say with absolute certainty that terrorizing campuses is not something they teach us in medical school – and I’m going to the same medical school Mr. Charbel Sleiman went to. Why can’t I be the son of the Lebanese president so I get to have my own henchmen following me around, threatening security guards who are doing their job just for the fun of it?

A sense of unlawful superiority isn’t restricted to our politicians nowadays. It has become infectious and spread to their offspring. I have no idea why Charbel Sleiman wanted to enter LAU’s campus but does it really need armored vehicles and security personnel? After all, pardon my honesty, but how is Charbel Sleiman relevant again?

This is political inheritance fair and simple. If Mr. Sleiman doesn’t manage to create a halo while his father is the president of the Republic, how will he manage to do that when his father’s term ends in 2014? How will he make absolutely sure he will have a political future for himself?

It starts with simple measures: threatening journalists at basketball games, injuring campus security guards… until everyone accepts your situation as something special, something important, a force to be reckoned with. I, for one, sincerely hope the protective laws governing our president’s stature don’t extend to his son.

They can park in handicapped spots. They can box in your car on the highway. They can do whatever they want. And they get away with it every single time. It’s worth mentioning it for the sake of venting. But at this point, is it really something worth getting upset about? It’s their country and we’re just doing our best living in it.

W ya Charbel Sleiman, ya m3ayyishna – what the people of Jbeil will probably find themselves saying a few years from now.

 

Oil Was Discovered in Lebanon Back in 1953

I recently stumbled over this newspaper clip from 1953 that talks about the discovery of an oil field in the Bekaa valley as well as the launching of a digging site to extract the oil present at the field in question. You can see former president Camille Chamoun heading towards the site’s opening:

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I’m sure that place wasn’t the only site where oil was discovered through some geologic research done prior to the civil war. My hometown and neighboring regions in the Batroun caza were also hotspots for oil interest. Or so I’ve been told for years.

I wonder, are we using that research today to search for oil in our soil? Or are we considering it obsolete due to time passing?

Moreover, how is it that the notion of Lebanon potentially being an oil-rich country got erased so drastically from the nation’s collective memory only to resurface in 2009? It can’t all be due to the civil war.

I guess Lebanon wasn’t “allowed” by higher powers to tap into its natural resources back then. Why’s that? Because it would have strengthened the country to a point where those powers wouldn’t have been able to use it for all sorts of regional bargaining, which begets the question: will our current foray into the world of oil and gas be smooth or will hurdles beyond those caused by the country’s sectarian calculations pop up at each bend in the road?

After all, we’re already terribly late (link).

Lebanese Politicians And Their Love For The Handicapped Parking Spot

If Freud were alive, he’d make some twisted psychoanalysis out of this. Lebanese politicians have a natural affinity for the handicapped parking spot at malls and whatnot. I wonder what could be drawing them to that given they are physically competent.

First there was Ghassan Moukhayber at one of Lebanon’s malls with his security personnel threatening the person who took the picture:

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The above picture made the rounds online on Rita Kamel’s blog (link).

Ironically, another politician also got caught parking in a handicapped spot today – minister Adnan Mansour:

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The above picture is taken from Stop Cultural Terrorism in Lebanon’s Facebook page.

Violating laws and overtaking the weak just because they can has now gone literal with our ruling class. Shi bisharref. Next time a person who has a handicap tries to park in one of Lebanon’s parking places, he’ll be asked to leave because a V.V.V.I.P person is 1) too lazy, 2) too self-indulgent and 3) too important to park in a regular place.

What Lebanese Christians Are Not Entitled To

Entitlement. The word thrown around so loosely lately it’s become the go-to term in Lebanese politics, especially when it comes to Christians and their – forgive me, our – rights.

As such, I have decided to make a list of things Lebanese Christians think are entitled to but are not:

  • We are not entitled to vote for our half of parliament all by ourselves.
  • We are not entitled to have laws that govern us and only us.
  • We are not entitled to legislate in ways that only benefit us and pretend it’s for the common good of all.
  • We are not entitled to vote for an MP solely because he Crosses himself when he “prays.”
  • We are not entitled to play victims all the time, at every single turn.
  • We are not entitled to blame the Sunnis and only the Sunnis for our predicament in the country.
  • We are not entitled to pretend as if we live in a country alone because it’s the best way for us to sleep soundly at night
  • We are not entitled to bring Jesus into the petty fights of our politicians in order to prove a point that doesn’t even exist to begin with.

    • I’ve been disappointed by the Lebanese Forces for a very long time now. But if there was a time when I felt they made a “decent” decision, it was them deciding to go for a law that’s not as dim-witted as the Orthodox Law and which might come back to bite them because many Lebanese Christians feel their sense of entitlement has been breached.

    For those who actually think that some politicians are there to protect their “rights” with such electoral laws, humor me and answer the following question: How is moving back and forth between a law that supposedly gives our vote a maximum impact (Orthodox Law) and one that gives it the least impact (Lebanon as one proportional representation district), while saying they are the only two viable options, protecting our rights exactly? How is it ANY different from the political auctioning of our votes and to which many fall victim because of the fixed delusion that our rights are only equal to voting for our kin and our kin alone?

    You know what Lebanese Christians are entitled to? We are entitled to proper representation and proper legislation. But first and foremost, we are also entitled to proper politicians who actually think of their constituents as more than numbers to form a tsunami 2.0, who actually don’t count on the one-sidedness of so many people out there to cash in points here and there and who actually don’t think of our potential in the terms of where we pray only and who actually believe our rights are not summarized by the religion of who we vote for (link).

    Judas is rolling in his grave at using his name in vain these days.

    Fadel Shaker Wants To Fight in Syria

    I find it very hard to believe this is the same man who, a few years ago, was busy churning out hits about romance and love. Looking at him now, singing about love is the furthest thing from what I’d expect.

    Fadel Shaker, currently serving as Ahmad el Assir’s right-hand, wants to fight for the honor of Muslim women in Syria. Therefore, he wants your support and money. He even has an email.

    I’d write a line about the need for jihad calls in Syria emanating out of Lebanon to be illegal. But that would defeat the purpose seeing as Hezbollah is fighting with one side while Sunni extremists are fighting with another. And this isn’t really about the message behind Fadel Shaker’s message as much as it is about the radicalization of this former pop-star who now sends greetings to Sunni Muslims and only Sunni Muslims on Twitter, insults the patriarch and bashes anyone who dares criticize his master Ahmad el Assir.

    Lebanon’s psychologists, wouldn’t he make a fine specimen for a case study?

     

    Thank you Kalim Chidiac for the tip.

    Lebanese Blogger Gets Assaulted In Beirut’s Downtown… For Taking A Picture

    Habib Batah, a professor at LAU and blogger at The Beirut Report, got physically assaulted today by a bunch of henchmen at Downtown’s soon-to-be-constructed District S… because he dared take a picture of the ancient ruin inside the property which they were busy dismantling.

    After being forced to delete the pictures off his phone, Habib tried to complain to Lebanon’s police who dismissed him with their typical “nothing to see here.” Again, we’re only paying our police so they can have Malek el Tawou2 for lunch or dinner. Protecting us or trying to keep our rights, the simplest of which is us being able to take a damn picture at a construction site of our heritage, is just too mainstream to be included under their umbrella of duties.

    You can read the full story here (link).

    In this occasion, I believe a series of thank yous are in order.

    • Thank you Solidere for your beautiful work in Downtown Beirut. It’s perfectly understandable that ancient ruins aren’t business-centric. The Khalijis sure don’t like them. 
    • Thank you Lebanon’s Ministry of Culture. Your continuous efforts in making sure there’s nothing about this country’s history that  isn’t history are much appreciated.
    • Thank you Lebanon’s Ministry of Interior. You’re just too busy not looking at those self-enforced anti-Syrian curfews and not working on elections for you to get your police to do their job.
    • Thank you Lebanon’s police. I feel safer every single day you tell me to “forget it.”
    • Thank you to every single entity in this God-forsaken country that makes me hopeful and happy and content into what I’m being offered every single freaking day.

    How much more shit are we supposed to take before someone out there decides to do their bloody job? How many more people need to be assaulted because they tried to stand up to their constitutionally-given rights? How many more of our rights are we supposed to forsake because of well-connected people everywhere? How many people need to become victims before someone out there wakes up and realizes that this – all of it – is downright unacceptable?

     

    LBC’s New TV Show: Splash!

    I get competition shows that are centered around singing or dancing. I may not be a fan or watch them but at least I can fathom their premise.

    Then comes Splash! also known as LBC is really desperate for a hit TV show à la Dancing With The Stars.

    The TV show will start this coming Sunday. It has been adopted from the UK version which ranked only #16 weekly among British TV shows. Not impressive at all. And yet Splash! is here.

    A few Lebanese celebrities will be competing against each other in diving. That’s what the show is all about. Lame? You bet. Silly? An even surer guess. What’s the point? I guess it’s still better than airing AUD’s graduation ceremony on Sunday, Roula Saad – Star Academy’s person – has been without a TV show for a while now and there will be public voting, obviously. Money, money, money!
    And there’s of course seeing Nancy Afiouny in a bikini. I sure want to see her meow, meow. If you know what I mean.

    The candidates, also known as celebrities whose days have passed and want a career reboot, include:
    - Nancy Afiouny
    - Nelly Makdessy
    - Arze Chidiac
    - Antoinette Akiki
    - Katia Keady
    - Nicole Tohme
    - Rita Hayek
    - Laurette Hnayno
    - Elie Massaad
    - Salah Tizani
    - Rodolphe Hilal
    - Naser Abou Lafy
    - Sevag Demerjian
    - Wajih Saker
    - Silvio Chiha

    Yes, I have no clue what most of those “celebrities” do and yes, there will definitely be cannonballs.

    Our TV stations are adamant about bringing growingly lamer TV shows from abroad just to create some buzz. Will you be watching Splash!?
    Somehow the thought of most of those people doing twirls before they splash everyone is getting less and less appealing by the second.

    Thank you @Joseph__Saade for the info.