Author Archives: eliefares

May Hariri vs MTV: The Conclusion

It all turned out to be one big misunderstanding – or so was the easiest legal loophole for May Hariri to get out of:

  1. Calling the CEO of MTV a horny old man,
  2. Calling the entire DWTS a fabrication,
  3. Making herself a victim of her support to the Syrian regime,
  4. Going on several TV shows, such as Tony Khalifeh’s Lel Nashr, to prove her point but to no avail,
  5. Trying to sue MTV for bringing Haifa Wehbe on one of the DWTS shows.

That’s the May Hariri vs MTV story grosso modo. It started with a bang (click here) and today it was apparently solved amicably with May Hariri apologizing, saying about two months of constant drama were only one “slip of the tongue.”

That’s one big slip if you ask me. Freud would be more than baffled if he had been her to witness it. As a testament to the now fixed relationship between MTV and May Hariri, she will be on this Sunday’s episode of Dancing With The Stars.

I won’t go into how big of a mess May Hariri got herself into especially that with every statement she made, she kept coming off as a bad sport who couldn’t handle being the first one to lose on Dancing With The Stars especially after all the pimping the show’s executives gave her.

The more May Hariri initially spoke about the show, the more I got convinced that a show like Dancing With The Stars where famous people will most probably end up losing could never work in Lebanon. Our famous people, regardless of how famous they are, always think they are more important than what they truly are and cannot handle not coming out as victors all the time.

That’s what I had thought. It turned out though that May Hariri is the only participant star who needs a crash course in sportsmanship:

Lesson 1:

Lesson 2:

Lesson 3:

Lesson 4:

Lesson 5:

MTV let her off way too easily. The amount of slander she threw at the network and the show is too high to be solved amicably. They should have shown May Hariri exactly how much she was mistaken to go on her unfounded foolish tirade.

But MTV doesn’t seem to care: the show is a huge success, at least in Lebanon. May Hariri is the only person who came out on the losing side and she barely registered on their radar.

 

 

Check Out Lebanon’s 2013 Voters Lists

We may not have an electoral law yet but our elections will happen regardless. And despite many of us saying that we won’t vote now, come June (or July if there’s a slight delay), we will all be heading to the polls to cast our votes.

The ministry of interior affairs has just published the lists of the 2013 elections eligible voters (لوائح الشطب ) and speaking from experience, it’s always better to check if your name is there or if there’s any mistake in advance in order to avoid any surprises come election day.

1 – Go to the website (here). It doesn’t support firefox so make sure you’re using Safari or Chrome or – God forbid – Internet Explorer.

2 – Go to the “voters list” section (القوائم الإنتخابية) and choose your mohafazat.

Lebanon Voting Elections 2013 - 23 – Next, choose your district. In my case, it’s Batroun.

Lebanon Voting Elections 2013 - 34 – Choose your village. Ebrine, in my case.

Lebanon Voting Elections 2013 - 45 – Choose your gender and sect.

My town has Sunnis. Unacceptable.

My town has Sunnis. Unacceptable.

The list corresponding to the sect, gender and town you chose will then be made available. If you are an expat who registered at an embassy, your name will have a remark indicating that you have chosen to vote abroad:

Lebanon Voting Elections 2013 - 6

If you’re not an expat, locate your name and make sure it doesn’t have any mistakes in your birthdate, father’s name, mother’s name or even your own name:

There's me

There’s me

I personally had a problem with my mother’s name on the list which missed one dot, making her name totally different. I spoke to the mokhtar about it but he dismissed it as irrelevant and didn’t fix it. Remembering a story when a friend of mine was not allowed to vote by some political observers because his mother’s name was wrong on the list, I didn’t let it go and while giving fingerprints for my new ID at my district’s Serail, I asked to have my mother’s name fixed and it was.

Don’t worry, fixing anything wrong with your registration is not a hassle. Just have some form of identification with you, an ID or a recent ikhraj eid, and head to your nearest “ma2mour l noufous” and they’ll be more than glad to sort things out.

As an example, a relative whose name appears on the list for the first time this year has her mother’s name all wrong. If she hadn’t checked the list, she wouldn’t have known that and she would have been not allowed to vote come election day. Another friend, who’s my age, doesn’t even have his name registered yet. Seeing as the lists are readily available online till March, it is our duty to make sure that human errors do not keep us from voting.

What Was Hezbollah Thinking?

Did you hear? According to a top notch Bulgarian investigative panel, we are now resisting Israel -all the way in Bulgaria.
It doesn’t make sense to you? No worries, it’s not supposed to. It’s only supposed to make sense to Hezbollah and apparently it does.

Long gone are the days when we await Israeli confrontation in order for our men to bravely fight for our land and lose their lives in the process. Long gone are the days when resisting Israel happens from our own land, the South, which pays heavily every single time we resist.

Today, the only question I can ask is: what the hell was Hezbollah thinking?

Whenever my country enters into a war with Israel, I will stand by my people and my land no matter what. Whether they are right or wrong, whether they started it or not – for the entire duration of the war, I will stand by them. When the war is over though, another story unfolds.

I cannot, however, as a Lebanese support the blowing up of the Bulgaria bus incident no matter what possible explanation is provided for the operation .

Where does Hezbollah want to take the country with this action?
Do they really think the country can handle have one of the main parties in the government to be labeled as a terrorist organization by the European Union?
What repercussions will that have on our fragile political balance, on our economy? How does it reflect on the government that Hezbollah did the operation while in power without anyone else in the government knowing about it, similarly to the 2006 war?

7 years have not taught us anything.

Why did Hezbollah want to kill a bunch of Israeli tourists? Is us resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestine now contingent upon us killing as many civilians as possible? What’s the fault of a tourist for being the citizen of a country we don’t approve of? How does us killing civilians differ us from all those terrorist groups whose goal in life is to cause as many innocent casualties as possible?

I don’t think Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. I do not agree with many of their practices but when it matters the most, I cannot but be grateful for defending my country.
But our support as Lebanese for reckless practices should not be unconditional especially when the repercussions of such actions do not reflect on Hezbollah alone but on the entire country as well.

Imagine the following scenario: Lebanese friends from different sects and regions decide to hop on a plane to Paris. While touring the city in a bus, the bus blows up and they all die. The Mossad is to blame.
Far-fetched, perhaps. But do we really want to take the war with Israel to people whose only fault is being a national of one side of the conflict?

What the hell was Hezbollah thinking? I, for one, can’t come up with convincing answers because I really can’t think how this is any good for them in any way. And if they can actually reach other countries and act this powerfully, which I can’t really wrap my head around, why don’t they do things that are more “useful?”

What I hope for though is for the party to come up with proof that the entire investigation was a politicized fabrication especially with the very fast condemnations from Israelis and Americans. Unlikely and foolish, perhaps, but I’m hopeful that one of my country’s main parties is not that short-sighted to land themselves as a terrorist group all around the world.

The Blinded Fools of Lebanon

Don’t you find some Lebanese reactions to things in this country overly odd?

I can somehow fathom some religious extremists taking it to the streets in order to protest the murder of their religious leaders even though I’m against it.
I can somehow fathom political militia groups blocking roads to get a boost in tactical power even though I’m definitely against it as well.

What I can’t fathom is how some people can be more than convinced that the best way to stand up for the Lebanese army is to block the road for everyone else and create a new mess for the army to clean up.

You try to tell them so. They say you’re not patriotic. I guess we can say now we’ve heard it all in this country.

Do you want to support the Lebanese army and have the urge to show it? How about you do so in productive ways like – say – enroll? But weren’t you the same people, like me, praying and crossing every single digit in your body so they cancel that mandatory army enrollment by the time you turn eighteen?

Those barricades blocking roads in support for our army are a mere pre-election political ploy and people eat them up. Politicians, notably Christian ones, can’t wait to come on TVs and point fingers and say: See those? Those are the people you shouldn’t trust. See us? You should vote for us all the time because with us the army is always protected.

The truth, though, couldn’t be farther away from that notion.

For instance, the people of my district, Batroun, decided that – similarly to the people of Sarba – they were going to block the highway yesterday in solidarity with the army and both its new martyrs Pierre Bechaalani and Ibrahim Zahraman.
I have to ask the people of my district one simple question: where was all this army love when one army man of our own, Samer Hanna, was gunned down and murdered like a dog, his killer never to see a jail cell?

Oh wait. What was Samer Hanna doing flying over parts of Lebanon?

Where was this fear for the army’s sake when people like Francois el Hajj, who defended the entire country during the clashes of Nahr el Bared uttering his infamous sentence: they either come out of that camp in body bags or in handcuffs. was blown up to little pieces?

Hold up again. What business was it for Francois el Hajj to snoop around?

Wasn’t the army threatened back then too? Is it truly us supporting our army when we are 1) hypocritical about it, 2) not knowing we are hypocritical about it and 3) not even knowing how to support the army?

Our army has been taught a few lessons over the past few years.

Chapter one: Samer Hanna – the South is off limits.
Chapter two: Francois el Hajj – the army is only allowed a very limited leeway.
Chapter three: The Sunni Mufti – parts of the North are off limits.
Chapter four: Pierre and Ibrahim – Arsal is another no-no.

Between chapters one, two, three and four, our politicians had differing opinions. Some of their supporters, who never see themselves as blinded because God forbid their politician of choice ever make a mistake, had differing opinions as well.

The army man who died in chapter one cannot compare to those who died in chapter four. And vice versa.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: emotional upheaval towards the army in this country is an auction. Fools are those who actually fall for it – and fools are many. Because the blood of Samer Hanna doesn’t serve some people politically so it’s never – ever – mentioned.

But I will never forget that man and how some politicians who can’t wait to flaunt army love today were the first ones to dismiss his murder a few years ago.

And who’s the victim always in this? Our army. So you support him by blocking roads and feel good about it because your twisted imposed logic tells you so. Because protesting against those “extremists” by doing exactly what those “extremists” do is not extremism and terrorism at all.

The fact of the matter is “justice” in this country is only applied to those who are weak. So when our army barges into Arsal to capture those killers and justifiably so, I really hope someone out there remembers that there are other army killers out there and that there are army martyrs who are now forgotten, who didn’t have roads blocked for their sake and whose blood has gone cheaper than dirt.

Rest in peace Samer Hanna. Every day of hypocrisy, especially from the people of your region, is another nail in your coffin.

Lebanon’s Arguileh Militia

Soon after I blogged about how the Beiruti restaurant Enab, situated in Gemmayze, was violating the smoking ban despite stickers announcing the place as a non-smoking restaurant (link with pictures), IndyAct Lebanon decided to take matters in their own hands after a growing number of complaints regarding that particular restaurant were met unanswered by our tourism police.

As I said, it’s obvious there’s an under-the-table deal somewhere that benefits off our lungs. Anything for that extra money.

IndyAct decided to use their office space, which is ideally situated next to Enab, in order to set up a huge banner announcing to people who frequent Gemmayze that the restaurant nearby is violating the law and that it is not, in fact, a smoke free place as it advertises. The people of IndyAct were surprised to find their premises violated soon after by employees of Enab who took down the poster. Apparently they wanted to break the law in peace.

And it has all been documented on video:

Soon after the incident, IndyACT procured an official permit from the municipality of Beirut to set up the poster that Enab’s employees forcibly removed. Let’s hope those employees don’t break yet another law by removing the poster.

Enab Gemmayze Smoking Ban

 

It is said apathy is the weakest point in applying the law. It is our duty as Lebanese to make sure our law is enforced, people constantly said. But I have to ask: what’s the point?

When restaurants such as Enab break the law so flagrantly and have no problem breaking it even more to cover up the initial violation fully knowing they won’t face any repercussions whatsoever, what’s the point?

The more I call that magical 1735 number, the less cooperation I find from the tourism police whose job, paid for by my taxes, is to ensure such laws are enforced. The smoking ban is dead, despite some politicians wanting you to believe otherwise.

The amount of restaurants violating the law today is way too big to count. There isn’t a restaurant in Jbeil or Batroun or Tripoli – the places I spend most of my time in, apart from very few select places like Crepaway, which is actually observing the law. And they don’t even care about it. When you ask them about the smoking ban they reply: “that little thing? No, there isn’t such a thing over here. Do you want an arguileh, sir?”

 

The solution that I have found suits me best is to reward those few restaurants that are actually observing the law by frequenting them more often. On the other hand, I have decided that when I visit a restaurant that turns out to be violating the law, I will simply leave making sure they know all the smoke in the air is the reason for my departure. They want to make money off arguileh? Well, it won’t be my money they’ll be taking.

While our minister of tourism panics over the decreasing number of tourists visiting our beautiful country and sets up promotions to boost the sector, I have to wonder: how can you expect those people who come from much more organized countries to visit a place where even arguile has its own mini-militia?

I have said it before and I’ll say it again: I will personally never visit Enab, Jbeil’s Feniqia (link) or any restaurant that violates the ban for that matter again. I invite you to do the same.