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Thank you for not smoking!
Wednesday night was an almost smoke-free night on Gemmayzeh Street in Beirut. Around 35 pubs and restaurants took part in the “Ain’t No Smoking 2nite” campaign, an initiative by Rotaract Club. Rotaract Club is currently trying to push the authorities “to provide a non smoking section in every pub, bar, restaurant, café or public place” in Lebanon. There’s an online petition that can be signed to support this cause. I didn’t get to go to Gemmayzeh on Wednesday to see the atmosphere first hand, but I came across the following article which I thought I’d share with everyone.
Beirut’s smoke-free night draws widespread public support
From the Behavioral Health Central
Courtesy of © Maya Zankoul http://www.mayazankoul.wordpress.com
It’s Wednesday night in Gemmayzeh, and busy too: blue clouds loiter above large groups of revelers, bunched up outside clubs and bars on what is usually a quiet night for Beirut’s party hub. Despite the crowds, inside the majority of the many venues the air tonight is unusually clear – because on October 28 there “Ain’t no smoking” in Gemmayzeh.
Some 35 clubs, bars and restaurants throughout the street took part in “Ain’t No Smoking night;” a Rotaract Club initiative to encourage venues to consider regular smoke-free nights, and raise public awareness about the risks of second-hand smoke.
One of the Rotaract Club’s organizers, Patrick, said the objective of the campaign was to give nonsmokers comfortable places to go out and enjoy themselves without having to breathe in second hand smoke.
“It is about rights for nonsmokers” he said, “We hope some of these bars will adopt a weekly nonsmoking night to attract more nonsmokers to the area.”
Abbas, another Rotaract organizer, said that many more pubs and restaurants have participated in the event compared to the last one they threw and noted that lots of people had turned up especially for the smoke-free event. Abbas also said that they have “even found many smokers to be encouraging of this idea and giving us their support!”
Carmen and Mira, two regular smokers standing outside “Mue” agreed with Abbas.
“We think it’s a good idea. We don’t have to suffer the second hand smoke of others,” said the pair. “Even though we smoke ourselves it’s good to get away from such a smoky environment. We hope a permanent ban happens, like many European countries.”
Another smoker added: “It means fewer people will smoke, especially the youngsters.”
However, not everyone on Gemmayzeh agreed.
“I should have the freedom to smoke where I want. If they want to improve people’s health they should install better ventilation systems,” said Rashad, a regular smoker.
It is not just the patrons that hold strong opinions on the issue.
“Personally I hate smoking but our bar cannot afford to force its customers not to smoke on the premises. Wednesday is our busiest night and people do not like change,” said Tony, from the Melting Pot – one of the few bars not participating in the smoke-free night.
“A lot of our customers are heavy smokers and it would be very harmful for business to overlook that fact,” he added.
Not all business owners agreed with Tony’s sentiments. Abir from Olio said that she thought the night was a good initiative.
“Most places in Gemmayzeh don’t have good ventilation and after a long night it can get very annoying breathing in lots of smoke,” she said. “A lot more people would go out if smoking was banned as they would feel more comfortable not having to breathe in passive smoke.”
However, she also noted that considering Lebanon’s strong views on the matter, a ban would be highly unlikely to occur any time within the next five years, at least.
While there were definitely mixed opinions on the subject, most people seemed to enjoy themselves.
In a country known for its heavy consumption of tobacco, most people seemed to adapt to the smoke-free night well and no one tried to break the rules.
The smoke-free bars packed to weekend capacity suggest there may be hope yet for a smoke-free Lebanon. However, for the time being at least, initiatives like this are the closest nonsmokers are going to get.
Lebanese Event: Meet, greet, paint and have a cookie, please.
Yesterday, Ceramics Lounge in Saifi Village, Beirut hosted the Comics on Cermiacs event which included the book signing of Maya Zankoul‘s Amalgam. The event was a great way for people of all ages to meet the woman behind the idea, potentially get her book signed, paint on ceramics with friends and taste the new cookies by Cooki3man! I went there to check out myself and I thought I’d share some photos as well. I hope more socially interactive events of this sort will take place in the future.
Maya Zankoul signing her book Amalgam
An attendee painting on ceramics
One of the kids who were at the Comics on Ceramics event
More youth participants at the event
One kid's masterpiece.
Cookies or what's left of them by Cooki3man.
What’s the funniest Lebanese ad?
I came across this Lebanese ad for the first time today and it made me laugh. This got me thinking about what could potentially be the funniest Lebanese ad out there. If you’ve got one, please don’t hesistate to send it over! We all need a good laugh.
First Swine Flu Death in Lebanon
Here is what has most recently been reported in the news on Swine Flu in Lebanon.
From Middle East Online
Lebanon confirmed its first swine flu death on Monday, with the health ministry saying the A(H1N1) virus claimed the life of a pregnant 30-year-old woman.
“The deceased was thirty years old and eight months pregnant,” a ministry statement said, adding that the woman died on Saturday.
The woman had been suffering from respiratory problems and high fever but tests done “before and after the death show she was carrying the new flu virus,” the statement said.
From The Daily Star
[…] International College (IC) announced it would be shutting its middle school in Beirut for six days starting Tuesday because of the high number of students suffering from the virus.
In a letter posted on the school’s website Saturday, IC President John Johnson said 50 students were absent from classes on Friday alone. “To date we have had 31 cases of this influenza in the Ras Beirut Middle School, 12 of whom have already recovered and returned to school,” he said.
Johnson said IC was following regulations issued by the Center for Disease Control, which required siblings of swine flu patients to also stay at home for a five-day incubation period. All students are requested to stay at home and avoid contact with classmates until the school reopens on November 2.
Lebanon takes part in the International Day of Climate Action
Activists demand climate action
From Al Jazeera English
Thousands of people have gathered for protests in more than 180 countries, calling for international action to curb the emissions causing global warming.
The International Day of Climate Action focused on the number 350, referring to 350 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 in the atmosphere which some scientists say must not be exceeded to avoid runaway global warming.
[…] In the Lebanese capital Beirut hundreds of activists, many wearing snorkels, held demonstrations in key archaeological sites.
They gathered around the Roman ruins in central Beirut, in the ancient eastern city of Baalbek and along the coast, carrying placards bearing the logo 350.
“It’s not the first time Beirut will have gone under water,” Wael Hmaidan of the IndyACT group organising Beirut’s protests said, explaining the goggle-wearing. “But this time it’s going down because of climate change, and not earthquakes.”
Photo Credits: AFP
AFP: Lebanese youths carry a banner bearing the logo “350”, to call for carbon emissions cuts to 350 parts per million
Kibbeh? Check. Hummus? Check. Tabbouleh?
Photo Credits: AFP
She said ‘conservative’ and she was right.
I don’t understand what the big deal is. In the recent Oprah episode which featured Lebanese singer Nancy Ajram, Oprah described Lebanon as a “deeply conservative” country. Today, I came across a Facebook group entitled “Dear Oprah… Lebanon is NOT like that,” and the photo for the group is a shot from the video used on the show. It’s a photo of veiled women. And so now I’m thinking, are these Facebook people serious? Are they really insulted by that image or by that word? You guys, Lebanon IS a conservative country. Sure, it’s the most liberal in the Arab World, and sure not all women are Muslim or veiled, but hey it falls under conservative. Ajram was featured as a star from the Middle East and not just from Lebanon. So why retaliate against the use of the word ‘conservative’?
Please, consider the following. People from different religious backgrounds in Lebanon have to travel 150 miles to Cyprus in order to get married. A couple can’t under Lebanese law live together unless they’re married. And some still argue about the use of the word ‘conservative’? Trust me, there’s a lot worse that can be said besides conservative.
Nancy Ajram earns a new title: UNICEF goodwill ambassador
Photo Credits: AFP
Lebanon pop star appointed UNICEF goodwill ambassador
From AFP
Lebanese pop star Nancy Ajram has been appointed a goodwill ambassador for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), a UN official said on Thursday.”We are delighted to welcome Nancy Ajram to UNICEF,” Sigrid Kaag, UNICEF regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in Beirut.
“Goodwill ambassadors help focus the world’s attention on the needs of children and can act as agents of change,” she told journalists.
Ajram, 26, is the second UNICEF regional ambassador after Egyptian actor Mahmud Kabil, who has held the title since 2003.
“Being appointed UNICEF’s goodwill ambassador to the Middle East and North Africa is the biggest dream come true, the best thing that’s happened to me as an artist, a person and a mother,” Ajram told reporters.
“This is the first time I feel that I’m doing something that’s for others, that I’m using my fame to help others — to help children.”
Ajram won the 2008 World Music Award for best-selling Middle Eastern artist. She has been compared to the young Britney Spears and is well-known for her children’s songs.
She is married and has one daughter.
Robert Fisk on freedom of speech in Lebanon
I came across the following article written by Robert Fisk on the rights of journalists and freedom of speech in Lebanon. As an aspiring journalist myself, this raises a lot of concerns. Please feel free to comment.
Robert Fisk: End of an era for Lebanon’s free press
Once a bastion of journalistic independence, Beirut’s newspapers are losing their edge
From The Independent
By Robert Fisk
For decades, Lebanese journalism has been applauded as the freest, most outspoken and most literate in the heavily censored Arab world. Alas, no more. Beirut’s best-read daily has just shed more than 50 staff and LBC, one of the country’s best-known television stations, has just fired three of its most prominent presenters. The Lebanese media are being hit – like the rest of the world – by the internet and falling advertising revenues. But this is Lebanon, where politics is always involved. Is something rotten in the state of the Lebanese press?
Is it by chance that An Nahar‘s culture editor – whose supplement campaigned against assassinated prime minister Rafiq Hariri’s plans for rebuilding downtown Beirut – has been fired after the paper cosied up to the politics of Hariri’s son Saad, now the Lebanese prime minister designate? Is it a coincidence that the three senior presenters on LBC represented the last supporters of the old Lebanese Forces (of civil war infamy) still working at the channel?
Neither An Nahar nor LBC are saying anything. But the Lebanese are waiting to find out which of their more than 20 dailies will be the next to shed staff for “economic reasons”. Will the old lefty As Safir find that it has politically recalcitrant staff (unlikely) or will the lovely French-language daily L’Orient Le Jour – whose 18th century French is Royalist rather than Republican – have a battle with those writers who still love ex-General Michel Aoun, Maronite Christian ally of the Hizbollah?
The problem is not so much the politics of Lebanon but the feudal state of the press. You cannot start a newspaper in Beirut – you have to buy an existing title from someone else. This costs money. So the rich own newspapers. Not much different, you may say, from the rest of the world. But the system in Lebanon is archaic; there are families in Beirut who own newspapers but don’t publish them – they are still waiting for a buyer.
As Elias Khoury, the sacked culture editor of An Nahar, a prize-winning novelist and academic and one of 53 men and women fired by the paper, puts it: “Newspaper owners were originally journalists – and with capitalism, the system did not change. Television in this country are not the press – they are propaganda, owned by confessional groups or parties. It’s the papers that are real journalism.”
But “real” journalism is sometimes hard to come by. When the Syrian army was still in Lebanon, An Nahar was as careful as the rest of the press in making sure than no boats got rocked. Indeed, when the Syrian military first arrived in Beirut in 1976, its offices were raided – to make sure that its journalists realised that they would have to be as compliant as their colleagues on Al-Baath and Tichrin, those titans of Baathist journalism across the mountains in Damascus.
But, along with As Safir, An-Nahar had an edge about it. It poached a wonderful analyst called Jihad Zein from As Safir, and under boss Ghassan Tueni it upheld independent journalism. “Tueni offered me the cultural supplement,” Khoury says, “and if he was still in control, none of this would have happened.” It is now his granddaughter Nayla who is in charge. Along with Khoury, Edmund Saab, co-editor in chief, Saha Bahasin and Georges Nassif also lost their jobs. They were told to collect their dismissal notes from a Lebanese postal official on the pavement outside the paper’s central Beirut office.
“One journalist came to work at 6pm on a Friday – when the postman had left,” Khoury adds. “He worked the Friday night and on Saturday and Sunday – and read in our rival paper on Monday that he had been fired! This reveals things about our work and about Beirut. The formula that our supplement is independent – that we can say what we want – is no longer acceptable. I didn’t fit. My supplement campaigned against Solidere [in which Rafiq Hariri held 10 per cent of the shares] and we got journalists and architects to write about how the company was destroying Ottoman Beirut and saving only the French colonial buildings. No-one stopped us. I could play the role of a leftist intellectual.”
No more. Nayla Tueni’s involvement in the majority March 14th movement, led by Hariri’s son Saad – who himself runs a rather dull daily called Al-Mustaqbal – means An Nahar has taken on a distinctly pro-government flavour.
At the same time, LBC has dismissed three of its best-known journalists, apparently because they were the final remnant of the Lebanese Forces on the channel. Diamond Rahme Geagea, Denise Fakhry and Vera Abu Munsif were sacked along with dozens of fellow staff members, including one woman who was six months’ pregnant, a fact which would normally make her un-dismissable under Lebanese law. Even the Christian Maronite patriarch, Nasrallah Sfeir, has expressed his concern.
The Lebanese journalists’ union has no mandate to help unemployed writers. “Who protects the rights of journalists?” L’Orient Le Jour asked last week. In Lebanon, it seems, the answer is no one.
A Lebanese expat’s poetry on Lebanon
One of the contributions that came to The Cedar Tree was the following piece of poetry written by Ahmad Rai. Ahmad is a Lebanese expat in the United Arab Emirates. He writes poetry and prose in Arabic. Thanks Ahmad for sending this, regardless of what the sentiments expressed in the poem are.
تطلبين منّي أن أكتب عن لبنانِ
ماذا أكتب عن بلد جفاني
لفظني بعيداّ, بعد البحار أقصاني
رماني من جباله سرق منّي مكاني
قطع عنّي هواه, فتنفست سموم الغبارِ
أي مجرمة أنتِ
لترشقيني الاتهاماتِ
سرقت منّي هويتي و قلت عنّي لبناني
صدّقيني إنّي بعيد كل البعد عن الحدود الأوهامِ
صدّقيني إنما وطني واحدّ
يمتدّ بين الألف و الياءِ
اقرئي, فما أكتبه عن لبنان لن يرضيكِ
أنظري إلى كراسي الحكّامِ
هم نفسهم مجرمي الزمانِ
هم نفسهم أصحاب صبرا و شتيلا
و قطاع طرق كالجرذانِ
هم نفسهم يرفعهم شعبٌ أحمقٌ
يتغنّى بالديمقراطيّة و هو مهان
أيّ ديمقراطي ذلك من يقنع بالعيشِ
عيش القطعان
أيّ ديمقراطي ذلك من يقنع بالعيشِ
خارج الأوطان
أنظري إلى لبنان, ابحثي لي فيه عن شعبٍ
فلست أراه مأهولاّ سوى بفصائل الحيوان
ابحثي لي فيه عن فردٍ يمشي وحيداً
فلست أجد فيه إلا أسراب إنسان
طُبع على جباههم كلمات أوهامٍ
و أسماء أحزابٍ و عقائد أديان
و هم مذّاك يمشون بلا ضياءٍ
ينفّذون بلا فهمٍ و استفهام
أو على الأقل تعجّب و استنكار
شعبٌ ديمقراطي و لكن أعمى
شعبٌ حرٌ و لكن عطشان
مريضّ و ليس لدائه دواء
عذراً… لم يعد لي وطن يدعى لبنان
لي وطنٌّ واحدٌ
رسمه أحمد مطر و نزار و النّواب
لي وطن أتمنى لو ترسم حدوده بين مخارج الأصوات
فيبدأ بألف عربية و ينتهي بالياء
لي وطن واحد أحلم بهِ
قويٌ, عادلٌ, حرٌ
يتغنّى بالفكر والجمال
لي وطنٌ أتمنى لو تسقط من خريطته الأسماء
فيبقى له اسم واحد و واحدة من الصفات
عربٌ, عربٌ, و بشرتهم سمراء
لي وطنٌ شعبه يمتد من صحراء موريتانيا إلى الصومال
و نحو الشام
لي وطن لغته واحدة
كتب بها عنترة و السموأل و بن عبد الله
لي هذا الوطن الصامد في عالم الأحلام
لي هذا الوطن الذي لن يتوطن طالما أن الشعب مخدّر نعسان
لي هذا الوطن الذي أفضّل العيش في أوهامه على أن أعيشَ في لبنان
Please note that the poem was posted in the center, so that none of the words get cut off.
Learn About Khede Kasra
Khede Kasra is a women empowerment program in Lebanon.
The Cedar Tree 
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