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This photo you see above is shot by my friend Antoine Khater from All Day I Dream About Photography (ADIDAP) and titled “Give peas a chance”, he took it nearly 1 year ago on May 22 2007.

Antoine is another Lebanese blogger who feels disgusted of the current situation in Lebanon. For that he launched a campaign today to give peace a chance in Lebanon, and he’s calling to spread it across the Lebanese blogsphere, non-Lebanese blogs are also welcome to join! All we have to do is to copy a little piece of code into our blogs to add a ribbon on top of the page, and the ribbon will remain there until violence is stopped in the street of Beirut and Lebanon.

I hope keeping the ribbon will be for a VERY short period of time. If we were blogging back in the 1975 we would have kept this ribbon for 15 straight years!

Anyway, here is the code that you should insert in your blog (preferably in the header of your blog):
<script language=”javascript” src=”http://www.adidap.com/LebRibbon.js”></script>

I look forward to see it on other blogs as well, we are no more than bloggers and I don’t think we can demonstrate in the roads against war, and we don’t want to do that in the first place, but the least we can do is to unite and express our rejection for what is happening.

I live in Ras El-Nabeh, where clashes have been raging for the last 2 days, and thanks god today is relatively calm and under the Lebanese army control. But still, I didn’t go to work in fear of not being able to come back! Yeah feels like being under siege!

So far the opposition has defeated the Future Movement militia in our neighborhood and in almost every other area in western Beirut. Although this result was expected (to me at least), but I really didn’t expect for the Future Movement militia to fall apart that fast!
Lesson learned: A cat should never mess with a lion.

I am wondering what will the opposition do next, I am pretty sure things will not be over at this stage, but I hope the situation will not get worse.

Oh and by the way I really feel like going out and shooting with my camera, I’m sure there will be a lot of scenes that are worth keeping for history, but I am afraid someone might beat me… Anyway here is a panoramic photo I took today morning from my balcony (it’s made of 3 photos), it shows “Basta” to the left and “Ras El-Nabeh” to the right. Unfortunately my camera is a DSLR and doesn’t capture video, otherwise I would have posted some very interesting sounds from yesterda’s clashes!

Click to enlarge

Today I would like to join Tantalus in saying FUCK YOU to each and everyone involved in today’s incidents in Beirut. And to those who launched RPGs I say FUCK YOU twice, since you made additional effort in fucking up the day.

Also FUCK those who try to pretend they’re angels, while we know very well that it takes AT LEAST 2 to start a fight, so it’s quite obvious that 8 March and 14 March are both assholes.

I’m at work now and I still don’t know if it will be safe to go back home or not… Oh that’s one more FUCK YOU to the “wado3” (situation).

I feel frustrated tonight, I have just found that the videos site is not working! This is what you get when you keep on messing with the source code…! I’ll be working on it.

Anyway, I’m publishing today a trance music file for a song titled “This is Beirut”. A small part of the file has been widely spread as a ringtone for cell phones, so for anyone who might be looking for it, here is a download link for the full version.

Update: The videos site is working again!

Using the political situation to make an advertisement is one of the things that I would describe as “حربقة” (Clever in english), or shall I call that creativity..? Check their latest advertisement below.

To those who don’t understand Arabic, the advertisement tells that Lebanese people have been celebrating and drinking Almaza since 1933 and kept on doing that throughout the good and bad times they went through (Independance 1943, Earthquake 1956, Miss Universe (Georgina Rizk) 1971, Beginning of the Lebanese war 1975, End of the war 1990), and at the end they say that in 2008 nothing will keep them from drinking and celebrating (given that the political situation is in deep sh*t).

**By the way, you can find other Lebanese videos like Almaza’s on Plus961 Videos.**

And while searching today, I found another photo of a billboard from their campaign last summer on Lebanon-Update.

The billboard says: “All eyes are on the chair this summer”, knowing that last summer everybody was wondering who’s going to be Emile Lahoud’s successor and become the new president.

I believe they can still use this billboard yet again this summer! don’t you think so?

I came across this news article in Annahar newspaper today.

The article is about a campaign launched by the municipality of Beirut to exterminate pests (roaches should be afraid now). It’s quite a normal news.

But notice the attached photo, showing some personnels along with the head of the municipality taking a photo beside the vehicle to be used in that campaign. Isn’t that similar to taking a photo beside a Baygon bottle? I just wonder…