When Lebanese MPs Fall Asleep in Parliamentary Sessions

The following picture was apparently from a previous parliamentary session in 2006 by Al Liwaa newspaper. They are saying he was picking up something from the floor. I guess take this picture the way your logic tells you.

We made fun of the Egyptian salafis for doing it. Now it’s our turn. MP Baqradonian (sp?) was found fast asleep during the country’s latest parliamentary sessions regarding the government.

Were they this boring? I wouldn’t really know. Somehow the idea of watching half a parliament bicker away and not really change anything isn’t at the top of my TV-priority list.

And by the looks of it, it’s not even on Baqradonian’s. Those eyeglasses must be very uncomfortable and the masb7a was not entertaining enough, apparently. Sleep tight, mr. MP. I’m fairly certain you’ll be back in 2013, with a pillow this time.

Dreaming of a better country, I hope

La Wloo!!… How To Be a Lebanese Journalist/Blogger Know-It-All

This is a reply to the La Wlooo!!! column at BeirutNightLife.

It starts when you go to college and get a degree. This degree is the key to everything. Just because you have a degree in biology doesn’t mean you can’t discuss psychology and just because you have a BA in psychology doesn’t mean histology is out of reach. It’s all under the umbrella of knowledge.

And what better way to make yourself known that to express your all knowing self?

So it begins: the process of becoming a Lebanese journalist, blogger, writer, what have you, know-it-all.

1 – Find a platform:

You can start your own platform and express your exquisite level of knowledge all you want. What’s better would be to go around and search for a website that desperately needs your knowledge in order to generate debate and thus, website hits. That way, you won’t have to start from scratch and you can propagate your expertise regarding everything to a wide range of audience. They, as in the masses, are gullible. They will eat up anything you write about and help spread it around like there’s no tomorrow.

2 – Talk about anything:

Men and Facebook? How they’re gay for saying “looool?” – what an exquisite idea. You can write an op-ed about that. Women wearing strapless bras? That’s internet gold right there. Mini-skirts, showing cleavage? You betcha! A SEO-friendly title would help. How about you bring in the Arab hits as well? Let’s see… you can write: LEBANESE GIRLS HAVING SEX. That’s sure to get their attention, now wouldn’t it?

3 – Your opinion is fact:

Don’t let people tell you otherwise. After all, you know it all. Anything you know, they simply do not and they simply cannot *insert appropriate meme because they are hip these days* be correct while you are wrong. Therefore, you need a high-horse to climb. Then on top of that high-horse, add a pedestal. Because you’re that in these days. You’re also very high off the attention. Why not take it literally? The people are commenting en masse. Most of them agree with your all-knowing self. You are on cloud 9. You are on top of the world.

4 – Don’t Let Anyone Bring You Down:

Some other fake know-it-all come around and try to tell you off? Just shrug them off as haters. Write a sarcastic article about how they got you to crawl on your bathroom floor and weep. Then tell them off because that is exactly what a true-bred Lebanese know-it-all like you should do. While bashing their heads off, you can also blast Kelly Clarkson’s Mr. Know It All to get you in the mood of it. “Baby, you don’t know a THING!” you will sing to the screen while your fingers bang on your keyboard.

5 – Use Vulgar Language:

An article is never complete without dropping terms here and there that will get heads rolling. You know it all so there’s no way that such terms can be considered offensive. When you talk about hoes, you’re doing so because they are hoes – no way around telling it like it is. Those that don’t understand that are simply not enlightened enough. Vulgar language is here to serve your all-knowing self. And it will definitely make your article more appealing to the reader. There’s nothing more than a read filled with your grotesque depictions of people. You must shock people in order to get your point across. To talk about mini-skirts, you must use the language of those mini-skirts.

6 – Point Out Your Wittiness and Sarcasm:

Many of those miserable non-know it all readers will feel your article degrading and demeaning. After all, they cannot but be dimwitted lovers of those whom you’re talking about. So you must conclude with an italicized disclaimer that your article was sarcastic. People are just not on your level of intellectual capacity to know that your articles are reeking of social sarcasm at a situation you find peculiar. Besides, you don’t want to let people feel you’re attacking them personally now, you know, just in case.

“This is how it feels to be schooled in the art of writing a respectable satirical article”

Lebanese Girls: Your Guide To Look Like Sluts, BeirutNightLife’s Newest Masterpiece

No, these are not sluts.

After a horrendous piece on transsexualism in Lebanon, BeirutNightLife is at it again. This time, the article is about Lebanese girls who like to dress like “hoes.” The article’s title: La Wlooo!!!…How to Look like a Lebanese Bimbo.

After being attacked countless times for making fun of Lebanese girls who love looking like hoes, I figured ho-defenders out there are too many to be conquered by merely one loser such as myself — but I’ll keep writing about these divine creatures, who I’m so envious of, because I’m so ugly and miserable. So many of my intelligent ho-loving readers, who love me so much, accuse me of being fat, ugly, unbearable, miserable, bitter and single; they have truly exposed me for who I truly am. After weeping on my bathroom floor for weeks, I decided to emerge from my funk as an enlightened one that has come to terms with one truth: I am ugly, and prostitutes are ravishing; hence, I am jealous of them and want to look exactly like them, which is the only logical reason as to why I make fun of them.

If you’re ugly like me, you’ll need to start looking like a ho asap so you can find a gentleman who will appreciate your personality and want to marry you and have your babies one day.

This is the article’s introduction. After your outrage at this has subsided, let’s go through it bit by bit.

1) The article’s writer is basically calling every Lebanese girl that shows cleavage a prostitute. There’s no other way around this. And if this wasn’t her intention, then her phrasing was so bad that it can only be interpreted as such.

2) I don’t really care about what people told the article’s writer regarding her previous chef-d’oeuvre. I have been attacked multiple times on various blog posts here and you don’t see me coming off as bitter about it, nor do I go on writing sarcastic pieces about how they are in the wrong and I am in the right. Why? Because when you’re discussing such a topic, you don’t really get the right to be the scorned woman when you’re calling every single woman out there who doesn’t dress like you a slut and those who like such women “ho-lovers.”

3) Defending a woman’s right to dress the way she wants does not make one a ho-lover. It doesn’t make the woman a hoe. In fact, using the words hoe, ho-loving and bimbo is an insult. I’m writing this from class today. The girl sitting in front of me is sporting a mini-skirt. Do I naturally assume she’s a slut and because I like what she’s wearing, I’m a ho-lover? So much wrong.

Let’s proceed with the amazingly detailed and researched article.

The writer wants Lebanese women who are haters of the “hoes” to admit the truth that they are really jealous and that their aim in life should switch from becoming lawyers and doctors and dress up like sluts just to get a man of quality. “Real beauty is looking like a $2 h**ker,” she says.

Furthermore, the writer then gives a guideline for women to dress like hoes: show everything you can, even your private parts, while standing on hooker heels. She also gives them a dress code for daytime where they need to put on copious amounts of perfumes and “stick to scents that will make you smell like a baby wh**e.”

She then proceeds to tell the women that “when you go out dancing, make sure to rub your butt on every strange man standing nearby. As you do this, touch yourself while chewing gum and sucking your finger simultaneously. Once again, if you’re wearing those feminine h**ker heels, the stranger you’re rubbing up against will marry you within weeks.”

And after various other meaningless paragraphs, she concludes by saying: “The awkward moment when your sarcasm is so advanced that people actually think you are stupid.”

No, you don’t get to write such an article and then call it sarcasm to escape the anger of those who don’t “understand” it. And for the record, your sarcasm is not advanced. It’s way out of place. How about you dress the way you want and leave your nose out of other people’s business or cleavage for that matter? This is a free country. The only reason the article writer is up in a fit is because of the stereotypes that such women generate towards other Lebanese women. But the fact is that if this writer had been in any other country, she wouldn’t have cared. And the only reason she cares is because repressed arabs look at Lebanon as a sex paradise.

Should we care about what they think? No. Should we really be up in a fit about the way some of our women dress? No. Is it your business to begin with? Absolutely not.

If there’s anything that needs to change in this country is narrow-minded people who can’t but gossip “sarcastically” in order to prove a point. Calling people names is not the way you change things. You need to take a look at the file names for the attachments on the article: Dominique Hourani is called a Lebanese prostitute and Marwa is called a Lebanese whore. Is that sarcastic too?

16 Governmental Websites Hacked in Lebanon: What’s The Point? None.

A Lebanese hacking group calling themselves RYV (Raise Your Voice) has hacked 16 Lebanese governmental websites, in its attempt to show disdain to the situation in the country. Similarly to the international hackers who call themselves Anonymous, the Lebanese group targeted supposedly important websites. They also have their Facebook and Twitter profiles, because being part of social media is what counts these days.

They left a note on the websites they hacked, which until the time of the writing of this post have yet to be fixed:

To our dear “beloved” Lebanese Government,

We are RYV, short for Raise Your Voice, and we are simply a group of people who could not bare sitting in silence, watching all the crimes and injustice going on in Lebanon. We will not be silenced and brainwashed by your media. We will not stop until the Lebanese people mobilize, demand their rights, and earn them. We will not stop until the standards of living are raised to where they should be in Lebanon. We will not stop until this government’s self-made problems are solved, like the power shortage, water shortage, rise in gas prices and rise in food product prices. We are RYV, expect us to break the silence, whether in the streets or on the Internet.Silence is a crime.

For a list of the websites that got hacked, you can go to this link.

And it is here that I have to ask: is there really a point behind this than to make the group that did the attacks known?

I don’t think there is. Here’s why.

1) Governmental websites in Lebanon are rarely visited by people. Their effect on every day life is negligeable. I even doubt the ministers visit their own ministry’s website. As a testament to this, I, a fairly connected person, had no idea 95% of these websites even existed. Significant they are, indeed.

2) I’m fairly certain more people have attempted to visit these websites in the past 16 hours than through the entirety of their existence. Again, attacking websites people don’t care about will raise awareness how?

3) How do RYV hope attacking a meaningless governmental website that’s rarely visited going to change things? For instance, has a statement been made by blacking out the ministry of electricity’s website? Do people don’t know we don’t get electricity? Are we not nagging enough about it? How is pointing out the obvious asking for people to stand up to their rights?

4) The term activism is used so loosely it has become the prostitute of terms in Lebanon. I am not an activist. Most bloggers who think they are activists are not. And neither are RYV. Targeting websites that no one cares about, regardless of how *awesome* it seems, will not change things. It is borderline irrelevant.

Regardless of what you think of this government, or any other government, our problems as a country are way worse than something which can be fixed by a simplistic manifesto on a website asking people to stand up to their rights. Non-existant are those in Lebanon who don’t want cheap gas prices, 24/7 grid connection to water, electricity, super-fast internet, etc. But these things are not fixed by hacking websites to raise awareness, which is already there.

Either way, let them have their fifteen minutes of fame. And let some Lebanese be fascinated by them. What will change tomorrow or next Tuesday or the Tuesday after that? Yes, you guessed it… nothing.

Zaitunay Bay Observations

I visited Zaitunay Bay this past Saturday, several months after my first visit, so I was able to see the place with all its newfound hype.
The last time I visited, the place was very new. We were among the few people there. This time, however, was different.
To say Zaitunay Bay is crowded would be stating the obvious. It would also be a gross understatement. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. After all, it’s the new “it” place in Beirut. People will get over it eventually.

Until then, here are some things I observed.

1 – Lots of Arab tourists. Taking poses on the boardwalk, taking pictures with yachts. Buses dropping them off and then picking them up when they’re done. The khalijis have apparently left their previous favorite Beiruti destination ABC and are not hitting the Bay.

Syrian men posing

Khaliji women walking

2 – Lebanese girls: you know those New York Times articles that talk about Lebanese girls walking on Zaitunay bay’s boardwalk in heels? They are actually true. My friends and I were sporting your regular everyday clothes. To say we were underdressed would be laughable. We were almost beggars compared to the girls with full makeup and designer clothes, coming to strut on the boardwalk. This isn’t a catwalk. This is a marina. You’re supposed to come here to have fun and not trip 23 times/meter while walking. But they gave us a pretty good laugh.

Guys, get your eyes off from the top portion of the picture.
They tripped so many times, it was as if we were watching the two stooges.

3 – Sturdiness: The place is very well-built and has many nice views of Beirut’s waterfront, as well as the Lebanese mountains. Do I think it’s enough for publications to gush about it? Absolutely not. It’s not a ground breaking project. If anything, it’s highlighting the shallow part of Beirut that I don’t particularly like. But for an hour or so, taking a walk around it is nice.