Category Archives: Lebanon

The Dark Knight Rises Release Date in Lebanon

This is downright unacceptable!

(Source)

I don’t get how we get The Hunger Games, The Avengers, The Amazing SpiderMan a day before they’re released in the United States yet when it comes to the summer’s most anticipated movie, we have to wait a whole month. What’s the logic behind this? You have no clue? Well likewise my friend, likewise.

How about we start a petition or something to bring the movie’s release date up to normal and acceptable standards (July 19th would be so awesome, being St. Elias’ day and all)? As it stands, a whole month wait is unacceptable and unjustified.

When I get to watch a movie like Mirror Mirror two weeks before it’s released in the United States, the least our theaters can do is let us watch the most anticipated movie of the year not a month after it’s released elsewhere and its hype starts dying down – let alone it possibly leaking on low quality cam-recorded DVDs.

You might want to check out the most recent trailer for the movie in order to get you more involved.

Update:

Apparently the delay is because Ramadan happens to be in July this year. So let me get this – no movies are released during Ramadan because Muslims don’t watch movies after Iftar? Impeccable logic I have to say. 

Alfa and MTC Introduce New Blackberry Services: Cheaper and Less Features

After minister of telecommunications Nicolas Sehnaoui announced on Twitter that he will be making new announcements on April 30th, I was interested in what he was going to say.

The news is for Blackberry users, however decreasing they may be. No, the service has not been made cheaper as people are saying. No, you don’t simply pay $8 for the 200MB you used to pay $24 for. Instead of having one blackberry service now, called Blackberry Internet Service (BIS), Alfa and MTC  have introduced two other plans: Blackberry social ($8 for 200MB) and BlackBerry complete ($12 for 200MB). The original BIS plan has been upgraded to $24 for 500MB.

You can see all the details here:

For BlackBerry Social, you can’t add other chatting services nor can you activate email. For BlackBerry complete you get to activate one email account.

I really don’t get the point behind this. They want new users? What’s the purpose of the 5 other mobile data plans that both carriers have, then?

1) Why is the 500MB for BlackBerry still more expensive than the 500MB for regular mobile data?

2) Why introduce new plans when there are room for improvements in the original one to begin with? For most BlackBerry users, 200MB per month is more than enough (their phones are not exactly data heavy). Why not cut the price of the original plan, which has way more functionality?

As Twitter user UxSoup said, the more suitable name for this would be BS Social.

In other news, I’m still waiting on the unlimited internet at off-peak hours.

Al Manar’s Anti-Jews Brainwashing

While reading an article by Beirut Report about how local media handled the recent Beirut fire, nothing struck me as much as a screencap that was taken of something Al Manar TV was broadcasting – a cartoon for kids.

The picture showed a bad-looking man, with a chef hat, roasting a chicken. The chef hat had the Star of David symbol on it.

Now I have to ask. I was under the impression that Hezbollah, who obviously owns Al Manar, timidly asked people to differentiate between a Jew and a zionist. How is this calling for that?

The Star of David is not a zionist symbol, it’s a religious Jewish symbol similar to the Crescent for Muslims and the Cross for Christians. Having that symbol in a cartoon aimed at young kids helps them learn that Jews are not their enemy how?

What’s worse, I’m pretty certain that parents who let their children watch such a thing approve of the ideology being disseminated. How despicable. When will Hezbollah and co know that Jews are not Lebanon’s enemies?

The sad thing is that we have a Jewish community in Lebanon that’s becoming more afraid and secluded by the day and things like this can only mean the path will get worse for them. When will Hezbollah know that Lebanese Jews have as much a right of existing freely and without fear as their Shiite followers?

I remember when I was a kid, our cartoon of choice was something on the Disney channel, Pokemon or Digimon. How about Al Manar shows the kids those stuff instead? Oh wait, I’m sure there’s a zionist mentality there somehow. My bad. Let’s teach kids how all Jews are killing us instead.

 

Huge Fire in Beirut

My twitter timeline is full of pictures taken of a huge fire taking place at the edge of Beirut today, next to the Karantina landfill. Apparently the cause of the fire is unknown at this point, but based on the pictures that it could be the landfill. The location is also very close to the fuel reserves in Dawra.

Hopefully this won’t get much bigger and the Lebanese fire department can get on top it quickly.

Picture taken by @JadRahme

Picture taken by @Habib_B

Picture taken by @JadRahme

Picture taken by @KAbouMeri

Picture taken by @LunaSafwan

Picture taken by @Betket

Picture taken by @JadRahme

Picture taken by @JadRahme

Arsenal’s Bacary Sagna’s Favorite Food

In a twitter-chat with supporters, Arsenal’s twitter account answered a question about Bacary Sagna’s favorite food. And you know what it is? Well, yes you guessed it: Lebanese food.

I support this. Lebanese food is just awesome. It’s probably the thing I missed the most about home (apart from family) when I went to France and Spain last summer.