Category: Lebanon
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Cafe owners protesting for their arguileh
Lebanese tobacco control law number 174 which prohibits people from smoking in all enclosed public spaces went into effect as of today but cafe owners are as expected protesting against this law and calling for exceptions to be made!
Those cafe owners had more than a year to adapt to this law, yet they chose to wait till the last day to express their concerns about it claiming that it puts their business at risk and might force them to fire a lot of their employees.
What I believe these businessmen are missing is that the main reason for people go to coffee places for is basically to socialize, gathering around an arguileh is of course a reason, but I highly doubt people will stop going to restaurants if arguileh is banned as they will still need to get together over a lunch, dinner, dessert, or even a cup of coffee…
Second, what I recently have noticed is that most of the people are missing the definition of an “enclosed public space” according to law 174. Here’s how the law puts, and below is an illustration of it.
Enclosed public places include any of the aforementioned places that is covered by a ceiling and bounded by more than two walls, regardless of the type of materials used for the construction of the ceiling or the walls, and regardless of whether the construction was permanent or temporary. Source
Taken from Smoke Free Lebanon FB pageNow don’t tell me it was hard to get around that… I’m pretty sure cafe owners were generating enough profit to carry out a redecoration to remove some walls, install curtain glass instead, and leave them open during summer season.
But NO, we love to make a drama out of everything!
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Chi.N.N – Ramadan’s events recap
Last episode of Chi.N.N was really impressive. Salam El-Zaatari made a recapitulation of the events that happened during Ramadan to remind us how bad Lebanon is becoming because of our ignorance… Make sure to check it out.
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Fasateen – Lebanese web drama series

Fasateen (Dresses) follows the lives of three very different Beiruti women. Meet Aliya, a single mother; Lama, the bored, flirtatious housewife to a rich husband; and Karma, a single career woman with a secret. Fasateen – because life isn’t a dress rehearsal.
You can follow Fasateen here on Yahoo! Screen. News episodes are released on Tuesdays, with 2 alternative endings on Thursdays.
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Cheyef 7alak – Discrimination
Libneineh? Fashkhara w akel hawa! -
Alfa Midline
More info about Alfa Midline here, it’s not clear though whether 3G can be activated on it or not. -
Video of the army officer shot during BLOM Bank robbery in Elissar
A friend of mine sent me the below video today showing how the army officer,
RayanZayan Al Jourdi, was shot during BLOM Bank robbery a few days ago in Elissar.I wish that officer a fast recovery and I hope for those two criminals to be caught soon so that they rot in jail! Update:
I was asked to remove the video by the Captain’s immediate family. I apologize for any offence I have caused.
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Boobs, Botox and the Babes of Beirut
… that was actually the title of a recent article at the Huffington Post by David J Constable.
I visited a nightclub one evening to witness the dolls and their dates myself. In Taïga Sky, a rooftop nightclub in Batroun (30 miles from Beirut) everyone is smoking, bouncing on the spot and eyeing each other up, not in a complimentary way but diamond gazes of fierce competitorship. The top trump card here is a tan and a good set of pins, and in that respect it’s no different from the techno cattle clubs in the UK, however in Lebanon the women look like Cleopatra, with a dark natural beauty beyond anything Max Factor can supply and into the billion dollar industry of plastic surgery. Their partners are a mixture of bodybuilders in Lycra t-shirts or fat, pony-tailed Arabic mafiosi. It’s as captivating as it is frightening.
Back in Beirut, in the VIP corner of Le Capitole, another five-star rooftop bar, I see the wives and girlfriends of artists. They must be the better-halves of surgeons as surely no one can afford to spend that much of their own cash on reconstructive surgery and blow-me-up operations. There are benefits to marrying/dating/having sex with a plastic surgeon, as these well-ironed and unwrinkled faces suggest to me that they don’t reach the age limit of nightclub entry, such is their youthful appearance, bronzed with potions and powders.
You can read the rest of the article here.
It’s amazing how some foreign journalists are willing to judge the whole Lebanese society based on a few visits to some of the country’s posh bars and clubs!

