Archive | July, 2014

Happy Eid and 3 day holiday!

A worker prepares traditional sweets called Maamoul a day before Eid al-Fitr, in Sidon's Old City in southern Lebanon September 9, 2010. Eid al-fitr marks the end of Ramadan, the holiest month in the Islamic calendar, during which Muslims around the world abstain from eating, drinking and sexual relations from sunrise to sunset. REUTERS/Ali Hashisho  (LEBANON - Tags: RELIGION FOOD SOCIETY)

How awesome it is when Sunni and Shia observe Eid E-Fitr on two different days? While Dar El Fatwa announced a while ago that tomorrow is the first day of Eid, The Higher Shiite Islamic Council observed it on Tuesday instead, and now we get to enjoy a three day holiday around the country instead of two!

Anyway, happy Fitr to your and your families, and take it easy on the ma’amoul!

photo via The Washington Post

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Saint Hoax’s take on the war on Gaza

Saint Hoax is a Beirut based activist who was best known for the series of posters that went viral a while ago, showing Disney princesses being forcefully kissed by their fathers to raise awareness at statistics around rape and incest.

Below are his latest posters showing his take on the ongoing war on Gaza nowadays. You can’t but respect his spot on work!

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You can stay up to date with Saint Hoax’s work by following him on Facebook and Twitter.

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Beirut Beer – A new beer from Kassatly Chtaura

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Looks like the spirits industry is one of the hot investments in the country right now as we keep hearing about both entrepreneurs and big companies releasing new alcoholic beverages. Over the past few years 961 beer was launched and several wineries were established in Bekaa and the north, and earlier this year we got J2 Vodka (Polish made with Lebanese water) while Almaza kept on updating their offering with both Almaza light and Almaza lemon.

And just today, I was browsing Massabki’s page on Facebook when I was surprised to learn that Kassatly Chtaura are also launching a new beer in Lebanon called “Beirut Beer”, which is going to be produced in the Bekaa valey and will be available in supermarkets over the coming few days.

I also managed to find the below two ads for it on YouTube and they seemed a bit similar to Buzz’s ads (another product of Kassatly).

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Lebanon withdraw from Jones Cup

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It really sucks to see Lebanese basketball suffering once more after the Lebanese Basketball Federation decided last week to cancel participating in 2014 Jones Cup in Taipei because they’re unable to cover the participation costs .

The Lebanese Basketball Federation confirmed Thursday that the men’s national team will not take part in the Jones Cup tournament which was due to take place Aug. 9-17.

The federation had initially requested a wildcard invitation to take part last month which was granted by the Taiwanese federation, before they decided to withdraw due to financial difficulties and absence of key players.

“The men’s national team is really in danger,” head coach Ghassan Sarkis said. “While our Asian counterparts are preparing seriously and playing right in China [ FIBA ASIA Cup], we are at home and can’t decide whether to take part or not.

“In addition, the financial aspect has been a huge barrier in front of us. As long as we are not solving it, there will be no national team and this is the federation’s duty to do it.”

“I want to thank the players for accepting to go even without pocket money, some of them even offered to pay for their flight ticket.” Source

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That poor Syrian kid got beaten again!!

Al Jadeed TV interviewed the parents of both Abbas and Khaled last night. Abbas’ father defended himself by claiming that who recorded the video are actually a group of teens and that he got upset when he saw it. It was all fine until the correspondent moved to Khaled’s mother and asked her how did she react to what happened, the woman then explained that she took the kid to his uncle who beat and kicked him because of that video! (Start watching at the 9m00s mark)

I’m surprised the correspondent remained calm and didn’t even argue about it with the woman.

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Ellie Goulding live at Biel next week

Compared to all the artists coming to Lebanon this summer, Ellie Goulding’s concert on July 23rd at Biel is definitely going to be the biggest act this season!

I already got my tickets from Mix FM and you can reserve yours online at Ticketing Box Office or at any Virgin store in Lebanon.

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Why is our internet getting worse?

Following the ministry of telecommunications’ announcement two month ago about the broadband internet packages upgrade and price reductions, you would expect the average speed across the country to be significantly better and our global ranking to improve a bit. But unfortunately, this doesn’t seem like the case since a lot of ADSL subscribers are complaining about their connection!

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The chart above from netindex.com proves people are right. While July was supposed to witness the new plans taking effect, it is instead turning into the worst month for our internet with the lowest speed in over a year!

If Boutros Harb knew the upgrades were not feasible then he should have simply just reduced the prices instead of messing the speeds for the sake of coming out better than his predecessor Nicolas Sehnaoui.

It’s very clear that the top priorities for the minister right now is to work on upgrading the infrastructure to provide households with better speeds as well as supplying internet providers with more E1s to cater for their subscribers.

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Yeah right!

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The ISF can forever claim that they have their “own ways” to stop these stupid motorbikers. But in fact nothing is being done that even 12 years old kids now do wheelies on the streets!

photo via YASA

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NSFW – 1973 Liberality VS 2014 Rigorism in Lebanon

I just stumbled upon this old scene from a 1973 Lebanese movie and quickly recalled AlJoumohouri’a article yesterday bashing the beach parties at C-Flow Jbeil.

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مسبح أو كاباريه؟

ففي نهاية الأسبوع قررت الصديقات الاستجمام في لبنان وزيارة أحد المسابح المميزة التي تجمع اللبنانيين على اختلاف أعمارهم وطوائفهم وإنتماءاتهم السياسية، وتهتم بهم وتقدّم لهم «خدماتٍ خاصّة».

فإستُقبلن بحفاوة وترحيب كبيرين ودخلن المسبح الضخم محاولاتٍ الاختلاط بلبنانيين ولبنانيات أمثالهنّ لكنّ الامر لم ينجح. فما رأينه على شاطئ الـ«سي ف» اللبناني من مظاهر خلاعة وسكر ورقص مبتذل وتصرّفات وقحة غير أخلاقية يتجاوز بأشواط مشاهدَ العراة على الشواطئ اليونانية.

فلِيضمن المنتجع لرواده عيشهم تجربة مريحة ومسلية مليئة باللذة والمتعة والشغف، أوجد «باراً» في وسط بركة السباحة وسمح لعشاقه بإصطحاب مشروبهم معهم الى المياه. أما الموسيقى الحماسية التي يلعبها فتدفعهم الى الجنون وتطلق العنان لمخيّلتهم فيبتكرون رقصات مبتذلة تصل الى حدّ ممارسة الجنس علناً.

لا يكتفي المنتجع بتدليل زبائنه بهذا القدر فقط، وإنما في ذروة اللذة يحضر لهم ثلاث عارضات من جنسيات غير لبنانية يرقصن على المنصّة أمام أعين مئات الرجال والنساء، إلّا أنه لا يسمح إلّا للفتيات بمشاركة العارضات الرقص مباشرةً على المنصّة.

Source

I found it really funny that back in the ’70s it was quite normal for Lebanese actors to french kiss in movies and even perform erotic scenes, while Beirut also had licensed brothels and our newspapers used to advertise vibrators!

Fast forward 40 years, sex toys are banned from the Lebanese market, we make a fuss in the press every time a couple of actors kiss on TV, and then comes a journalist from Al-Joumhouria criticizing the beach parties at C-Flow Jbeil which caters for adults only!!

I don’t want to imagine what’s coming next in another 40 years time!

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