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A Lebanese Blog

Tag: Lebanon

  • Lebanon ranks 69th in the Happy Planet Index

    The New Economic Foundation issued the Happy Planet Index for 2012 showing how well are nations doing to keep their inhabitants living a good life, while ensuring to maintain the conditions for future generations to do the same.

    The index was calculated following this formula:
    Happy Planet Index = (Experienced well-being x life expectancy) / Ecological footprint

    The Ecological footprint is by the way measures how quick humans consume nature capital compared to how much time earth takes to renew them.

    Anyway, the report shows Lebanon in the 69th position with a life expectancy of 72.6 years, which is quite surprising knowing how much we nag here!

    Globally, Costa Rica came first while Botswana was ranked last (151st). On the other hand, Algeria came first among the Arab countries in the 26th place, and Israel was ranked 15th.

    You can download the full report here.

  • Kamashtak – More naming and shaming of Lebanese drivers

    Kamashtak is a new website by a group of people aiming to document the various parking violations causing traffic jams around Beirut by taking photos of the violating vehicles, tagging them on a map, and finally posting them on the website along with the violation type and the vehicle’s plate number. It’s a bit similar to Cheyef 7alak initiative by LBC Group, except that Kamashtak is limited to parking violations and is not crowd-sourced.

    I don’t know how effective will this initiative be. I mean Cheyef 7alak is already quite popular but did it change a thing? Thousands of photos have been uploaded so far and we still suck ass at driving… talk about wasted efforts. Anyway if you ever see the above sticker on your car, just know that you’ve done something wrong!

  • Claire Danes in Beirut

    So as I mentioned in a previous post, the events in the first episodes of “Homeland” take place in Beirut, but its producers decided to shoot these scenes in Tel Aviv and make it look like Beirut as shown in the above photo. Still, the result didn’t seem pretty convincing to Karl from Karl reMarks blog, and so he offered the below alternatives!

  • Xriss Jor performance on The Voice

    Xriss Jor is a Lebanese contestant on the Arabic version of “The Voice” currently being aired on MBC. Judging by her first performance, she looks so talented and promises to hopefully make it to the final rounds.

    You can follow and support Xriss on both of her twitter account and Facebook page. I have no idea by the way why does she write her name this way…

  • Beirut featured in Homeland TV series

    Fatima Ali, the first wife of a Hezbollah district commander, has information about an attack on the United States. Fatima refuses to speak to anyone but Carrie, who knows another secret from having recruited her eight years ago: She loves Julia Roberts movies. (What did she think of her in “Charlie Wilson’s War”?) This leads CIA counterterrorism director David Estes (David Harewood) and avuncular CIA vet Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin) to pull Carrie back into the business for a three-day, one-off mission to Beirut, Lebanon. (The Beirut scenes, however, were filmed in Israel.) Source

    Funnily enough, the scenes in Beirut were all filmed in Tel Aviv.

  • Electricity all over Lebanon affected by today’s rain

    We all know the electricity situation here is very miserable, but I really find it hard to believe that three power plants, Jiyyeh, Zouk, and Deir Amar, went off the grid in the afternoon because it BARELY rained around the country today! Electricity consequently went off in the Beirut, Mount Lebanon, and the North.

    This winter is definitely promising to be a fantastic season for all generators owners!

    Update:

    Even worse, check these two videos showing what the rain did to some regions. And don’t blame the rainfall amounts, it’s actually all because of the poor infrastructure we’ve got thanks to our dear government!


  • Rina Chibani Miss Lebanon 2012


    Congratulations to Miss Lebanon 2012 Rina Chibani! It’s been a few years since we last got a really nice looking beauty queen. And it’s cool that there’s actually two of Rina 😛 Her twin sister Romy was also competing for the title and ended up being the first runner-up, which is kind of weird but logical at the same time…

    Anyway here are some photos I managed to find of Rina Chibani.

  • Ziad Rahbani’s interview on Al Mayadeen TV

    This post goes to Khaled and all those who missed watching Ziad Rahbani on Al Mayadeen TV last night. Al Mayadeen will be airing the second part of this interview next Friday at 9:30PM.

    Many thanks to Hani for uploading the interview.

  • How it all started for Lara Kay


    Maintenant nous voulons connaitre qui est cette copine de Lara!

  • Will “Fetih 1453” be banned in Lebanon?

    Seems like it’s now the Christians turn to get upset over a movie!

    “Fetih 1453” is a new Turkish movie that started showing yesterday in Lebanon about the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans led by Sultan Mohammad II. And I’ve heard several times on the news that some people are finding it insulting because of how the Romans were shown in the movie.

    With a budget exceeding 18 million dollars, “Fetih 1453” is a Turkish action film and one of the most important movies showing the conquest of Constantinople from the Turkish point of view.
    However, the Byzantine Church in Lebanon seems not to agree with the Turkish analysis, and considers that the film insults Christian sanctities and symbols.

    In the past few days, a number of activists on Facebook have been protesting against the reformulation of the history of Constantinople in the film “Fetih 1453”, which, according to them, contains false historical facts.

    These activists will be holding a sit-in on Saturday September 29 at 4 pm at Sassine Square in protest of what they consider “an offense to the Christian civilization”. They will also protest outside the movie theaters that will be showing the film expected to be released on September 27. Source

    The movie is showing at City Mall and Empire theaters by the way, and I just found it available online here on Vimeo.