Lebanese Brew: Courage Is Contagious

If you were like me and hadn’t heard of the new Lebanese beer in town, well, now it’s time to pay attention. In case you thought, like me, that almost no one can top off leading Lebanese beer Almaza’s ad, here comes a “Courage” campaign by Lebanese Brew.

With a YouTube video featuring Lebanese youth partying, drawing graffiti, living their life all to the backdrop of our gorgeous capital, the brand new beer’s image is glowing.

The video even starts with a guy and a girl the morning after having sex, being courageous enough to tackle something that happens very often in Lebanese society while almost everyone hides behind their shadow regarding it.

The liveliness of Beirut and its youth is the center piece of this ad to show the courage of both the city and the people. The video serves a double purpose: to show the courage of this brand in trying to enter an already almost-full market and the courage of the Lebanese people who have defied all odds and are still here.

The theme “courage is contagious” is to show that if you are courageous enough to stand for what you believe in, those who are less so will soon follow. It’s not very hard to relate this to the recent revolutions in the Middle East and how, according to Robert Fisk, the Lebanese revolution in 2005 gave the spark that started them all. After all, our courage as Lebanese is contagious.

Kudos for a very well-done video. It’s sad it only has 3000 views since it was uploaded in July 2011.

The “Democracy” of a Libyan Mercenary

Even as they buried their dead, there was absolutely no mercy for the people of Libya.

Colonel Gaddafi defines democracy as a combination of two Arabic words: Demo and Cracy. The meaning ultimately becoming: to stay on chairs. This man has been the Libyan president for forty years and it doesn’t look like he’s satisfied. He’s killing his people left and right, solidifying the notion of an iron-fist rule.

The brutality of the Libyan Revolution is the worst one yet. More people have died in the events that started unfolding one week ago than all of the Egyptian casualties in their two weeks revolution. Gaddafi is hiring mercenaries to gun down his own people, which makes it harder for them to get the voices across. The mercenaries simply don’t care about the point of the protests. They want to get paid, a rumored £18,000 sum.

And to make things worse, it looks like the media has simply lost interest after the Egyptian revolution succeeded. It seems as if Libya is simply the lesser country out of all the ones currently trying to get change going and therefore, we’re getting the least coverage of events from there. We hear that about 200 people gunned down in one day, more than 1000 wounded, descriptions of massacres… but for all we know, it could be even worse.

I will not go into the politics of it. I do not understand Libyan politics and I do not intend to say I do. In the matters of what is going on today, the way you view things is very, very simple. What is happening in Libya today is unacceptable on a basic human level. But what really hurts is that some higher-order governments simply don’t care. They side with the Libyan government, ultimately not caring about the lives being lost, to conserve their economic advantages, represented by the oil reserves Libya has.

Gaddafi wants to fight to the last bullet to stay in office. His son warned of “rivers of blood” if the protests continue. I cannot really come up with the words to describe how big of an abomination this statement is, except that the people of Libya are courageous. How many of us would go to the streets knowing that there’s a high chance we might die? They know they could die but they still protest against a brutal creature who is not a man, for man has a conscience and a man with a conscience cannot do these things.

Courage is the ultimate virtue. It is the ability to go into a battlefield to stand up for your beliefs knowing that you might not come out alive. It’s standing up for what you believe in in spite of fear. And the people of Libya do that. In what I believe is becoming a revolution overdose in the Middle East, I am, today, the most compassionate with the events going on in Libya. So today, I invite everyone to let the word out that they need whatever help they can get.

There is not much we can do individually, but I believe our collective effort can bring forth great things. I am not inviting you to become activist, but taking stands is what life is all about. And Libya needs you to take a stand – with it – today.

Gaddafi, therefore, becomes not only lesser than a man, lesser than a creature. He is a mercenary like the ones he his hiring. A mercenary who is not worthy of his country, not worthy of the concept of democracy and I believe 68 years of life are more than enough for a man like him.