MP Samy Gemayel Supports the Metel Ma Shelta Campaign

Behold, Samy Gemayel has supported the Metel Ma Shelta anti-littering campaign, which I blogged about a few days ago:

Moreover, LBC News has also written about the campaign on their website.

I’m very glad the campaign is gaining traction. The number of likes for the Facebook page, as of the time of writing this post, has exceeded 1900. Here’s hoping the support of Samy Gemayel, and hopefully other MPs soon, results in the formulation of a much needed law to help keep our streets clean.

You might be interested in checking out their teaser video as well:

This campaign is shaping up to be quite big. Hopefully the circumstances help it assume its full potential.

Johnnie Walker’s Keep Walking Project – Get Involved, Lebanon!

Soon after its ad featuring Nadine Labaki as the main face of the Keep Walking Lebanon campaign, Johnnie Walker has now launched a full fledged campaign called “The Keep Walking Campaign,” which is excellently explained by Nadine Labaki in the following video:

As you can see, there are three projects which you can support. Regardless of your preference, each of these projects is aiming to improve a part of our life in Lebanon which needs support. On the tourism side, I had blogged previously about how tourists need to see a side of Lebanon that goes beyond Beirut. On the business side, companies such as Seeqnce are helping startups get a foothold in the markets they are trying to get into and on the environmental aspect, Greenpeace Lebanon has recently launched a mission to increase awareness for our waters.

So as you can see, the three main projects supported by the Keep Walking project are all an essential part to improving Lebanon as a society: gain awareness for our nature, protect our nature and help our youth market themselves.

The project has five stages. The participants will be rewarded at the end of every stage with the top walkers earning a brand new 16GB iPad 2 and the two runners-up will receiving a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label. I know some of you are vying for the runner up slot now. Voting will end on March 3rd, with the results being announced a few days later.

As Nadine said, you can support your favorite project by “walking the steps” for them. The more steps you walk, the higher the chance it gets to be selected as the winner. The steps include sharing videos, talking about the project, supporting it, etc… You can download the project’s iPhone app here or the Facebook app here.

Nadine Labaki asked a very poignant question in her movie. Where do we go now? Well, this is the direction you should take. Help Lebanon one step at a time. It’s not even that difficult. All it takes is the clicks of a few buttons.

The Lebanese Hypocrisy Towards Syria: Three Fishermen Kidnapped by Syrian Navy in North Lebanon

I had blogged a while back about how the Syrian occupation of Lebanon can be considered at least as bad as the Israeli occupation of the South. I still stand by what I said. You can check that post here.

The latest regarding the Lebanese-Syrian relationship is the Syrian navy kidnapping three Lebanese fishermen (Arabic article) from the North after having their boat enter four nautical miles into Lebanon’s marine territory. Perhaps a mile can be considered as a sailing error. But four? Let’s not beat around the bush here. This was an obvious breach of Lebanese sovereignty. One of the fishermen, aged 16, has died. What is our government doing about this? Absolutely nothing.

This is but one part of a series of transgressions that the Syrian army and regime do on a daily basis in Lebanon. And yet we fail to act. Our voices are never heard when we speak against the Syrian breaches. They can kidnap our people, they can enter our land, our sea, terrorize villagers on the borders…. We do nothing. We sit around and watch TV and hope for the best.

Not let’s contrast/compare this with the Israeli scenario.

An Israeli boat enters four miles into Lebanon’s nautical territory, you’d be constantly bombarded about it in the news. An hour later, Lebanon would have had an official complaint filed in the UN. If that same boat had kidnapped three Lebanese fishermen, rockets would have been fired from the South on Israel. A war might have been started (it’s not like the 2006 war had a bigger apparent reason).

The only difference between Israel and Syria? Israel is an enemy state whilst Syria is not. The difference between what Israel and Syria do regarding Lebanon? Absolutely nothing.

“Activists,” as they like to call themselves, shout and protest against anything Israel-related in Lebanon. They have the right to, obviously, freedom of speech and all. I don’t think, however, they have the right to shove their views down everyone’s throats (especially when it comes to irrelevant matters that won’t change anything). I want to see what those “activists” will do regarding this latest Syrian breach. The answer is actually already known. It’s exactly what they have done regarding the previous transgressions: absolutely nothing.

A couple of months ago, in my anatomy lab at med school, one of the doctors told us a story. He told us about when he was in Med School at USJ and one of his professors was the late Dr. Fadi Serhal. They used to discuss politics with him. Amin Gemayel, the president back then, was going to sign the May 17 treaty. So they asked Mr. Serhal, who was an MP back then, about the situation. His reply was as follows:

“Lebanon is bound in the South by Israel. It’s bound everywhere else by Syria. If there was anything happening for the benefit of Lebanon, you should be more than certain that it will be disturbed by one of those two countries: either Israel or Syria or Israel and Syria working together.”

This was about thirty years ago. It still applies today. It’s also high time we see it as such.

Carnage – Movie Review

Based on the play “God of Carnage,” Carnage opens up with a scene of a boy who hits a friend with a stick, causing him to lose two teeth.

Subsequently, the parents of the first boy, Alan (Christoph Waltz) and Nancy (Kate Winslet), visit the parents of the victim, Michael (John C. Reilly) and Penelope (Jodie Foster), to talk about the incident. Starting off as diplomatic adults who want the matter behind them, the couples are civilized in dealing with each other. However, as the meeting gets interrupted many times by urgent phone calls  that Alan receives regarding his job as a lawyer, and both couples start to slip up, the tensions start to rise. The polite discussion soon escalates into verbal warfare, with all four parents showing their true colors. No one escapes the carnage.

The premise of Carnage is very interesting. The transition from the civilized conversation with which the movie starts to the carnage with which it ends happens very smoothly, in a logical manner. Watching the level of civility plummet in front of your eyes is what Carnage is all about. And it does so brilliantly. The fissures in each couple’s marriage is revealed. Allegiances will shift back and forth many times, never settling. Keep in mind the movie is only 80 minutes and it happens in the same place: Michael and Penelope’s living room and the hallway outside their Manhattan apartment.

The performances by all four actors and actresses are what drive the movie forward. In a way, the premise of the plot is not ground-breaking. It might as well have been taken straight out of a PTA meeting. But the way the acting ensemble interacts with each other and with the material they are given helps propel Carnage forward immensely. Jodie Foster is great as the pinched liberal who wants to get her apology out of the other parents. Kate Winslet is marvelous, as usual, as the woman trying to keep her manners while boiling on the inside. The men, Christoph Waltz and John C. Reilly, are also brilliant as the total counterpart of their women. What makes thei You’d wonder, at points, how a certain mixture of characters came to be together and actually married.

Carnage is a memorable movie but it’s not one that will leave you dumbfounded after it ends. It will entertain you during its duration. Roman Polanski manages the movie at a fast pace, never letting it get dull or redundant. The fact that all of the events take place in that same room for the whole of the movie’s duration only exemplifies how great Polanski is in directing Carnage and setting up the staging. The ultimate message the movie presents is that good manners are often shallow and that compassion, especially when it comes to one’s children, is very hard to come by. When it comes to one’s children, regardless of how messed up they might be, your children are in the right and the other couple’s children are in the wrong. That’s how it will always be. Carnage exemplifies that.

7.5/10

The Jal El Dib Bridge & The Case of Mass Lebanese Hysteria

Sure, Lebanon’s infrastructure isn’t exactly top notch. Who are we kidding, Lebanon’s infrastructure can barely be called infrastructure.  Some of the roads have massive potholes in them that can damage your car sometimes beyond repair. I saw potholes in France and Spain when I visited back in August but you know those potholes will get fixed as soon as possible there. The only way ours get fixed is someone dying because of a car accident caused by those potholes or sometime in May 2013, just before the elections.

As you know, an Achrafieh building collapsed on Sunday, taking the lives of 26 people with it. Everyone was rightfully saddened by that tragedy and many people have sought ways they could help. Soon enough, however, people started panicking about the Jal El Dib metal bridge, as well as the Charles Helou bridge in Beirut, calling them unsafe and nearing crumbling.

Those bridges are definitely high-risk. The Jal El Dib was supposed to be a “temporary” bridge until they build a better structure in its place. But one cannot but wonder, as Beirut Spring pointed out, if this is simply Lebanese hysteria (which usually lasts a few days to a week) after a national tragedy that involved infrastructure. It happened with the

Sure, both bridges are poorly maintained. The Jal El Dib bridge doesn’t even have asphalt on it anymore. We’ve been driving our cars on metal for the past four years. If that’s not enough reason to have the bridge changed, I don’t know what is. However, is the bridge about to collapse? A civil engineer friend of mine told me there’s no proof based on the pictures taken of the bridge that it is about to do so.

One of the ministers in our government, however, so aptly declared that it is about to collapse, which sent the people into a frenzy. And yet, a few days later, the bridge was still not removed. You’d think a minister declaring such a thing would get the government to work in order to expedite whatever paperwork they are cowering behind. Apparently not.

In fact, the level of panic got to a whole new level when normal Friday traffic around the Jal El Dib area was perceived by many as caused by the removal of the bridge, which didn’t as of this post happen yet. And as it is with our Lebanese lifestyle, this time next week people would have moved on to another story altogether and the bridges which should have been removed a couple of years ago will remain there for a couple of years more.

At the end of the day, life goes on, people forget… so until the next tragedy, cheers to our resilience my fellow Lebanese.