Category Archives: Miscellaneous

The Genocide They Want Removed From Our Collective Memory

I imagine life would have been much different for me had my last name ended with -ian. I’d have come from a very different place than the one I currently come from. I would have spoken yet another language.  I would have grown up listening to stories that morphed into darker and darker territory as I grew older: stories told by my grandparents, stories of my friend’s great grandparents, stories of entire families and homes and communities and towns and cities that exist no more today.

If I were Armenian, I’d have been an immensely proud person of those people who are the reason I am here today, the people who defied the cold, the heat, the hunger and the systematic killing at the hand of a ruthless sultan, the people whose stories would give me strength, enriching my view of the world, making it more and more certain each day that this is not – as many want everyone to believe – a just world.

If I were Armenian, I’d carry around a baggage of horrors around with me of things that happened to my ancestors, things few dare to speak of because of how ruthless they are. I’d never let go of those horrors, clinging to them even more when the hands of time try to take them away. Those horrors would have made me who I am.

If I was Armenian, I’d be mad as hell today that the death of 1.5 million ancestors of mine is – to some countries – nothing more than a political pawn for them to play with, for them to have a political auction with, for them to try to forget, for them to try to make me forget. for them to try to take down historical memory lane: never written, never discussed, never acknowledged, never recognized.

If I were Armenian, I’d be livid that the memory of 1.5 million of my countrymen, all martyrs because of their ethnicity and their religion, is being tarnished by some who want to portray it as nothing more but a collectively inserted piece of fiction in the memory of a far-away nation I’d still feel belonging to, a nation that is still hurting 98 years later.

If I were Armenian, I’d still be hurting today and I’d hurt everyday people across communities do not recognize my people’s struggles the way they are eager to recognize the struggles of others, just because it soothes their guilt. I’d be angry no one feels remorse and guilt for the cold-blooded murder of my people, one by one – women and children and elderly and men.

But I am not Armenian. I am but an irrelevant Lebanese with a voice that doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. But I feel it’s my duty to tell whoever listens that there is a people of this world who was systematically killed for just existing and whose killing isn’t recognized by everyone the way other genocides are. I’d tell that a country that plays with my country like a yo-yo killed those people and has been trying to convince its own people for 98 years now nothing wrong happened. And I would never forget and – until everyone acknowledges what happened – I wouldn’t forgive.

May all the martyrs and innocent souls of the Armenian Genocide rest in peace.

Tsitsernagapert, inside the museum: A photo of the museum next to the memorial, Yerevan Armenia. - Photo by Shant Demirdjian

Tsitsernagapert, inside the museum: A photo of the museum next to the memorial, Yerevan Armenia. – Photo by Shant Demirdjian

About these ads

University Crushes Taken To A New Level: Psst App

Psst App

The LAU, USJ, AUB, USEK, NDU & UOB Crushes pages which occupied 95% of our Facebook timelines over the past few weeks have gone to the next level by finding a companion in a new app called: Psst App. Yes, the “psst” is exactly what is said to grab someone’s attention “psst, psst.”

The premise is very simple: You log in through your Facebook account and use the app to talk anonymously to anyone you want, effectively making the possibilities much more diverse than simply talking to someone you like.

So if you have a crush who happens to be a Facebook friend, you can take it to the extra level now and stop posting anonymously about them on your university’s crush or hottie page.

You can add the app via your Facebook account by clicking here or downloading the Android version here. This is gossiping, Lebanon style.

Disfiguring AUB with Zaha Hadid’s Building

Zaha Hadid AUB

Towards the end of my AUB days, someone decided to close down the area that held an infirmary in order for some new construction to take place.

I am not unfamiliar with construction projects at AUB which filled my time when I was there: both the Olayan School of Business and the Hostler student center opened when I was a student. I’m no expert nor do I know anything about architecture but they never struck me as disembodied elements of AUB’s campus.

The building depicted in the above picture is what’s standing in place of the infirmary today. Is it hideous? You bet. Is it an atrocity? Definitely. Does it take away from the charm of AUB’s upper campus? Well, it is a concrete block with holes in it. Again, unprofessional opinion here.

Why is such an ugly building overshadowing Nicely Hall? Because it has Zaha Hadid affixed to it, the world’s most famous architect, who “won” the competition to build this. As if the pull of her name alone isn’t enough to sway the competition.

I have to ask – and it’s obviously too late now for such a question – but didn’t anyone from AUB’s administration get a tinge of nausea as they passed by this growing structure and saw it disfiguring the campus many of them call home? And isn’t the mere presence of such a building disrespectful to the architecture faculty at AUB which is more than capable of coming up with better and more campus-relevant buildings?

But I guess this is how things roll around the country: go with the flashiest, most expensive, most prominent names because that’s sure to be better. Issam Fares- no relation-, after whom this building is named, should probably sue them for libel.

Thoughts on Beirut’s Social Media Awards

Before the award ceremony is held next week and this gets considered as a post by one of those bad sports who didn’t like not winning, I figured I’d pitch in on the current “it” thing on Lebanon’s social media scene.

First things first, I believe I have to commend the organizers for their work. They’ve been withstanding the barrage of not-constructive negativity well and devoting their time for this – free of charge.

Now, since I cannot, for the life of me, be absolutely gushing about anything, I feel like I have to give a few remarks which I hope are taken into consideration for the awards’ next iteration:

The nominations:

The nomination process was all over the place. I personally didn’t nominate myself nor anyone else for that matter. But I believe that, since databases in all of the awards’ major categories are present, perhaps it would have been better if the judging panel relied on those and narrowed down the nominees instead. Moreover, does the fact that someone randomly nominated a blog or an institution to a category mean the nominee is particularly representative of said-category?

As an example: is the most engaging tweep category truly representative of Lebanon’s most engaging tweeps? Doesn’t it lack some names such as @TawaNicolas, @MarkInHd, @TKHaddad or @Shadonium?

The categories:

Some of the categories are either too broad or too ambiguous. For instance, my blog is nominated for “best news blog” along with several others, one being Naharnet which later pulled out of the competition to allow bloggers to compete among themselves. I personally think Naharnet should be the only one in this category because they are the only one really providing news. But they’re not a blog. And I don’t think we are really providing “news.” So which is it?

Another example that comes to mind is the best NGO/community category which has Lebanese Memes campaigning against several NGOs such as Donner Sang Compter and Foodblessed. Is it really fair for NGOs who are actively trying to save lives or change the way people think to compete with one of Lebanon’s most popular Facebook pages?

In a recent interview, Aline Chirinian – a member of the Online Collaborative running the awards – said that the NGO/Community category is the most voted on particularly because of Lebanese Memes. I personally find it nonsensical for them to win just because the category was made to include them. And Lebanese Memes are obviously winning.

The Formula:

The 50% judges/50% voting formula is fair. But it would have been better if we didn’t know how nominees stood among the judges. When the voting began, SMABeirut’s twitter account tweeted that nominees were listed in the descending order of judges’ points. If those that are not listed first were to have any “decent” shot at winning, they’d have to get a huge number of votes and I’m not sure how feasible that is with the judges re-voting on the categories later on. Revealing how the judges voted very early in the competition takes away from the competitive spirit.

I’ll take my case as an example. I’m fifth in the blog of the year category and last in the best news category. I’m not optimistic to the point of foolishness about my prospects and it’s more than okay. I’m having fun with the campaign more than anything else. After all, how many times does the Pope endorse someone? However, it would have been more interesting for me if I didn’t know that the judges prefer four other blogs over mine as the year’s best blogs.

Potential Winner Bias:

When members of the jury were announced, it was also made public that those members won’t be in for the running for any potential award. This affected Lebanese politician Nicolas Sehanoui who is, without a doubt, Lebanon’s most active politician on Twitter. However, as I was voting, I couldn’t help but notice that other categories also had some bias to some candidates which are involved in the organization of the Social Media Awards. As an example: Phoenicia Hotel is hosting the award ceremony and they are up for an award – conveniently first in their category as well. Another example: Alfa is both a sponsor and up for several categories.

Judging Panel Bias:

A question that can’t but be asked about the judging panel is the following: can they leave their own personal preference aside and judge a medium in which they are personally interacting with most of the nominated candidates and are on better terms with some than others?

Final Thoughts:

I applaud you if you’re still reading till this point. Many have been telling me how these awards may not be very useful and that their purpose is misguided, spamming timelines in the process. Well, I think this whole thing is just for fun and better have our timelines spammed with this than with posts about the weather, no?

And in case you still haven’t voted for this blog (what are you waiting for, seriously?), please do.

Kill All The Muslims

My sympathy goes to all the victims of yesterday’s Boston Marathon bombing and to all the people who died cross the world in various other bombings in Iraq, Syria, etc… yesterday as well.

I could go on and on about how such acts are those of cowardice but what good would my words do to a country struck by tragedy and to the grieving parents of the people that died yesterday?

However, is it acceptable for the mantra “innocent until proven guilty” to become “an Arab Muslim until proven otherwise” when it comes to any terrorist act taking place anywhere in the world?

Case in point: the following tweets from an American pundit. Do you want to kill all the Muslims too?

20130416-113303.jpg

Is this even allowed in the case when the bomber turns out to be, in fact, an Arab Muslim?

He later on said that this was “sarcasm.” Though I think his “sarcasm” got lost with bashing the “Islam apologetics.”

The General Situation in Lebanon

The people of Bab el Tebbane and Jabal Mohsen live off less than $4 per day. They cannot afford bread. They cannot afford food. They cannot afford basic accommodations. But they can fire missiles at each other and use weaponry that cost thousands of dollars.

Weapons > food.

———————————————

Security forces, including our lovely army, can serve as the best moviegoers ever. We should enlist them to break some form of Guiness record. After all, wasn’t movie watching what they were doing yesterday as Tripoli witnessed its heaviest clashes in months?
The Malek el Tawou2 branch in Gemmayzeit was especially busy I heard.

———————————————

Those wage increases have been approved. Rejoice. The syndicates are victorious. ALL of those poor people will not have more money in their pockets. ALL of the injustice in the country is now behind us… Celebrate small victories, rejoice for the struggles of the weak, the proletariat are here to take their natural place in the circle of governance.**

** disclaimer: this comes with an increase to 15% in VAT on phones, car parts, caviar, increase in stamp prices for bills, increase in stamp prices for phone-related transactions, real-estate related taxes, marine property taxes, enforcing taxes on water wells, decreasing tax returns to tourists, increasing taxes on alcohol, increasing travel taxes and will soon follow with an overall increase in the price of goods.

But hurray for the beautiful selsle.

———————————————

Elections are, theoretically, in slightly more than 3 months. June 9th is how the myth goes. The reality is that elections are, in fact, postponed but no one wants to admit this. In fact, you can obtain your healthy dose of comedy from politician holding press conferences to announce their resolve to “hold election on time.” – I’ve probably never used this in a post before but here it goes: LMAO.

The reality is that with almost 3 months to go, we don’t have a functional law on which the elections will happen and no prospects for an agreement on a law in the first place.
In other news, did you hear about the law championed by those who want to bring back “Christian rights” that involves turning Lebanon into one proportional circumscription? K.

Meanwhile, some people are already searching for airplane tickets in exchange for their votes in the 2013 elections – at least that’s what my blog’s stats tell me.

———————————————

Imagine the following scenario: Israel rallies troops near our border. They charge up their tanks, ready their missiles and shoot. Lebanese towns are bombed, people die, our sovereignty – or whatever remains of it – is breached. Lebanon, however, decides to take the “high road.” Our minister of foreign affairs does not complain to the UN. Our army and government decide that not addressing the issue is the way to go. After all, why the melodrama?
Pretty far-fetched right? Except that such a scenario is happening almost verbatim… If you substitute Israel for Syria. But Syria doesn’t count. Because na2i bl nafes that’s why.

———————————————

Over the past few days, I realized that the amount of people who live bl khassé as the saying goes is way too high. From people who think most people in the country are not extremist towards people from other sects and that addressing the issue is unnecessary to those who think there’s basically nothing wrong whatsoever in the general situation to those who don’t allow us to address the issue of the Syrian refugees because – gasp – racism… And the list goes on.

———————————————

If all of the above depresses you, albeit slightly, I recommend you take 20mg of paroxetine or fluoxetine daily. Side effects include nausea and possible ejaculatory delay but you’ll feel so elated in 3 weeks and your spouse will be so happy, you’d think Lebanon became some form of utopia. K?

Lebanon’s Porn Habits

Popsci has recently published, off of a website called PornMD, an aggregation of every country’s porn habits based on the search items users who are located in that country use while accessing some porn websites.

Some interesting observations that the aforementioned website noticed are the following:

  1. Finland has Oedipus complex,
  2. Iran likes to search for gay porn,
  3. Ukraine has a thing for gay raincoats.

Some observations regarding the Middle East that I noticed are the following:

  1. Syria is into some form of incest. Their top search is aunt.
  2. Israelis are into Arabs.
  3. Palestinians love their families even in porn.
  4. Gulf countries have no data involved. Could be all the blocks.

Naturally, I figured I’d look at Lebanon’s part of the info-graphic. It’s sad to say we are not very creative, although slightly nauseating (shit orgy? Really?), in our porn browsing habits:

Lebanon Porn Habits

You can access the entire infographic, which contains no pornographic material, here.

Ahmad el Assir’s Money Sources

I recently read an article about the financial means of Sunni extremist cleric Ahmad el Assir. After all, those weapons (that he doesn’t have) and the growing support he is garnering are not coming out of nowhere, despite his support arguably remaining very minimal across Lebanon, even among Sunnis despite what many want you to believe.

The article in question talks about where Mr. Al Assir is getting his money and the list is the following:

  • Qatar with input reaching the hundreds of thousands of dollars, through Beirut’s international airport and under the coverage of a member in the Lebanese cabinet. I want to know who.
  • Fadel Shaker. I regret buying that sporadic album I gave my mom on Mother’s Day way back when Fadel Shaker filmed music videos about love and with women.
  • Rashed Shaaban, owner of “Amir Rashed” restaurant and the uncle of one of the Islamists apprehended as a suspect in the assassination of Francois el Hajj.
  • The infamous “Kaak Abou Arab” shops.
  • Shawarma Abu Bahij in Saida

    • There are other sources which you can check at the link but these are the ones that seem familiar to me.

    Ahmad el Assir’s phenomenon isn’t “unusual” given the current situation in Lebanon. It doesn’t mean that this phenomenon is acceptable and I, for one, won’t support it in any way, even indirectly.

    That’s not to say those that those Al Assir speaks out against are better. They’re more dangerous than what he will ever become and he’s an irrelevant entity in comparison. But isn’t that how they all begin?

    I can’t do anything about Qatar. They have so much money they’re about to start using it as toilet paper. But I can stop going to Kaak Abou Arab and do what I can, 1000LL at a time.

    Racist Lebanese Municipalities & Marwan Charbel’s Inadequacy

    You’ve probably been inundated by picture of the town of Betchay in the Baabda district who issued an impromptu curfew on “foreigners.” It is reminiscent of something the municipality of Bhamdoun did back in August which was more precise and didn’t nearly get the same attention (link) – the issue of the Syrian refugees hadn’t been this thorny back then.

    The picture below is of the banner in the town that has gotten the country talking:

    20130225-141633.jpg

    What you may not already know is that the issue hasn’t been exclusive to Lebanon’s online community with us discussing it over and over again and the issue not reaching any form of “higher” authority.
    Lebanon’s ministry of interior Marwan Charbel knows about the municipality of Bechtay’s decision. He knows it’s illegal for them do so. But he won’t take any measures. If you don’t believe me, check out the following picture I took of the highlights of his interview with LBC:

    20130225-141926.jpg
    To “clarify” his decision not to pursue the illegal matter, he said it could be the municipality’s way of pressuring those who might want to mess with its security.
    As if that is remotely acceptable.

    The Municipality of Betchay is racist, yes. Their mayor went on TV to say the following: “We obviously mean Syrians with “foreigners” because French and Europeans won’t be driving Vespas after hours in our village.”
    And despite such statements, our minister of interior still wants to let things slide. What can you expect from someone who believes a bomb exploding in Tripoli is “a bunch of people playing with it?”

    The problem isn’t that the municipality has a backward mentality that should not be accepted. It’s with an administration that is so entrenched in apathy that they’d rather let such grave violations slide without doing anything about it.

    I don’t care what the municipality of Betchay’s justification behind such a banner and decision is. If any entity in this country, especially one that is supposed to run the affairs of other people, broke laws in such a flagrant way, it should face the repercussions that such illegalities entail. It shouldn’t face an over-philosophical minister who doesn’t want to do anything about it.

    Lebanon currently has over 300,000 Syrian refugees. They are spread across the land. All our towns have Syrians currently in our midst. The difference is our towns didn’t see it fit to break the law in order to prove a point that is mute to say the least. Not that it would matter anyway with Marwan Charbel in charge.

    Let’s categorize this as a massive failure in humongous scales. Now who wants to play hide and seek with a few Khaybar missiles? No one will mind.

    Islamophobia and Racism in an American Movie Theatre

    Fresh off the news of a New Yorker throwing a brown-skinned man in front of a train for thinking he was Muslim (click here), the following tweets were brought to my attention of Americans who decided to go and watch Kathryn Bigelow’s new craptastic movie “Zero Dark Thirty.”

    20130117-114719.jpg

    20130117-114749.jpg

    20130117-114806.jpg

    Not only is that excuse of movie Zero Dark Thirty grossly inaccurate, nauseatingly stereotypical and a disgustingly shameful propaganda (click here), but it seems to be resonating with its intended audience by rousing up their Islamophobia and racism.

    This is not an isolated incidence in the United States. The growing sense in American culture that Islam is all a bunch of jihadists who can’t wait to blow themselves up is unacceptable. And American media not only propagates that feeling, it helps fuel it.

    How is it legal to have a whole ethnicity and religion categorized as such in these times and age?

    You know something about those filthy Arabs and Muslims? They are sure taking all this crap in strides when they’re the most hated group on the planet.

    Some people need to be ashamed of themselves.

    Thank you @IsmailSakalaki for sending the tweets my way.