The Death Penalty is Wrong.

Before I start, allow me to express my sadness and compassion to Roy’s family. I know there are no words that would help, but I am glad the suspects have been arrested, and look forward to seeing them pay the price for the horrible crime they have committed.

When the Death Penalty Fever in Lebanon Flares Up

It’s maybe normal to feel the urge for revenge after horrible events happen to someone in Lebanon. Who among us wouldn’t love it if a horrible person dies horribly as justice for what they’ve done? The question is though, who will succumb to that visceral urge for revenge, and who will make the decision to never kill as a society, no matter what, but punish the irredeemables and try to rehabilitate ones with lesser crimes.

Every time a case like Roy’s, or Sara’s, or any of the amazing young men and women we have lost so often in Lebanon for the most unacceptable of reasons, that should never result in someone’s death.

I asked on Twitter where people stood on the death penalty, and at the time of writing this post, it was an even 60% against, and 40% for.

https://twitter.com/GinoRaidy/status/872815445321166850

I am in the against camp, no matter what, and here’s why

Killing is Wrong

Absolutely no circumstance makes it ok to kill another person. Self-defense isn’t premeditated murder, and when someone kills in self-defense, they do not intend to murder, just to protect themselves. It’s absolutely not the same like calmly, years later, killing someone as a society.

Execution Doesn’t Deter Crime

No one thinks, “oh, damn, I don’t wanna get the death penalty, I’m not gonna kill this person! But if it was just life behind bars, sure, I’d go murder people and nothing would deter me!”. Come on. And if you’re still skeptical, every study made demonstrates there is absolutely no deterrent force as a result of executions. It just doesn’t affect if people will murder or not.

It Doesn’t Help the Victims’ Families

Aside from the “revenge killings” and “honor crimes” people, no one in their right mind would think killing someone else would bring them any sort of relief. It’s easy to yell for blood being spilt when you’re not directly affected by a crime, but trust me, if someone you love has been killed, the last thing that would quiet your grief is killing the person. Justice does, and there is no worse punishment than the rest of your life in a Lebanese prison.

When the State Kills, We Kill

When the state executes someone, the state includes you. Most people that are part of the state are not ok with their representative authorities killing someone. This is a deep question, and not one that’s case by case or crime by crime. Either we decide as a society to not include killing in our justice system, or we decide to kill some to appease a perverse sense of vigilante justice.

Judicial Reform is What Lebanon Needs

You’re a terrorist piece of shit that beheaded Lebanese soldiers and killed innocent civilians. You are the worst of the worst. A government official’s car is sent to pick you up from prison, and you’re free. In your arrest, you managed to kill a Lebanese police officer. The real massive issue here isn’t that you weren’t executed, it’s that a political leader got you out of jail, despite your heinous crimes and a martyr from Lebanon’s police force.

The answer to that isn’t killing criminals. It’s making sure that politicians who try to help criminals escape justice and their sentences, get sentences of their own and go to jail to join whoever they were trying to get off the hook.

Giving the excuse that our politicians are too corrupt and will always bail out really bad guys, so that’s why we need to kill criminals, is absolutely fucking insane, and unbelievably stupid.

Killing is wrong. Lebanon should never bring back the death penalty.

Lebanon technically still didn’t officially abolish the death penalty, however, no crime has a mandatory death sentence since 2001, which basically means the courts never have to execute anyone, and thus haven’t since 2004. In other words, Lebanon has de-facto abolished the death penalty, and if anything, we need to remove the possibility altogether, not reinstate it as mandatory.

As for politicians who use terrible crimes to rile up the crowd with calls for death penalty returning, you should be ashamed of yourselves for making use of a family’s grief to rile up your base.

A TEDx Talk Every Enlightened New Age Yogi Needs to See

My Mentor and How I Fell in Love with Neuroscience (My Serotonin Tattoo)

Arne Dietrich was my Neuroscience professor at the American University of Beirut. However, to me, Arne was so much more than that. I doubt he knows the profound impact he had on me, but I am the person I am today because I studied under him at just the right time in my life.

I used to be angry, conservative and intolerant. I wore a giant gold, gem-encrusted cross. I hated gay people. I thought life was just a test for an afterlife. I was stupid, petty and unimpressed. The world never made sense. I was never really happy.

I was in a Catholic school, so instead of being taught Natural Selection, we were taught Darwin is a demon and ignored the parts in the official curriculum that had to do with Evolution. My parents paid a shit-load of money for years, I had to jump through hoops and got accepted into a top university, but I hadn’t even learned the first thing about Natural Selection.

Love Affair with Biology and Psychology

Luckily, AUB changed that, and I fell in love with everything alive and life itself. Nature was the most fascinating thing to me, and life was its crown jewel. Organisms that eat, fuck and try to survive. An arrangement of cells and molecules that could feel, think, hope, love, hate and all those things we never think of in a scientific, mechanistic way. That was fucking awesome to study.

I had to take a social science elective, and a friend’s older sister taught an intro to Psychology course. Pre-med me thought, “nice, easy 90!” and I signed up for it. I, like many, thought Psychology as the Freudian bullcrap we see in pop culture. When I took the intro course at 17, I discovered Neuroscience, and to me, Psychology seemed like a beautiful extension of Biology. There’s only so much you can tell from the molecular level, and that’s where circuits and networks come in and create who we really are, our beautiful brains. I fell in love, and the next semester, I signed up to Arne’s “Behavioral Neuroscience” course, then took “Cognitive Neuroscience” with him and even History and Systems.

I was teetering on the edge of belief, and lack of it. I felt guilty for losing faith after discovering how wonderful nature is, and how there is no need for a creator. The elegance of it all, though tough to swallow at first, made life make sense. It made people’s behavior make sense. It was all so elegant and imperfect and beautiful. I was on a ledge when I started, but I was on the far side of that valley by the end of it, and I loved it.

That’s when I became a happy person. I felt the good things more deeply, and focused less on the bad ones. I was less angry, less hateful and extremely tolerant and understanding. If I met pre-Biology me, I’d probably slap the shit out of him.

The serotonin tattoo on my wrist was the moment when I finally was convinced with who I am and how I see the world and myself in it. And even though it definitely wasn’t Arne’s doing, I was lucky enough to study under him when I needed it the most, and for that I will be forever grateful.

New Age People, Watch This

With the rise of the yogi and vegan trend, a lot of people feel enlightened and become anti-science, believing fodder and pseudoscience and “metaphysics” and other stuff that I feel is counterproductive to our progress and awareness as a self-reflecting species. My personal belief is that these people took too much LSD or mushrooms, and feel “enlightened” and bombard us with conspiracy theories and testimonials that are just as annoying as the religious kind. The preachy, evidence-less, anecdotal, feel-good, self-help, new age stuff that replaced the boring, rigid religious beliefs of yesteryear. But reality and nature is so much more fascinating, and understanding is so much more fulfilling…

So, this TEDx is for you. Grab a cup of coffee or tea, and focus for a few minutes. Follow Arne’s line of thought, and go in with an open mind. I promise it will make you think, and appreciate a lot of things you never even considered. It also is a nice slap in the face back to the reality many of us ignore and never really embrace. So, I help this can help you snap back to reality and understand consciousness and its altered states better, and in that, yourself and your brain better. It really helped me at one point, and I really hope it helps some of you too.

And if you like it, and I’m sure you will, Arne’s published a new book: “How Creativity Happens in the Brain” which you can buy here.

Lebanon Makes WEF’s Top 20 Most Dangerous Countries

Lebanese people are usually ecstatic when the country makes it to a “Top Whatever” list. This time though, it’s a little less flattering. The World Economic Forum ranks 136 countries based on how safe they are for tourists. Lebanon was number 12 out of the top 20 most dangerous ones. The criteria are violence and terrorism, not petty crime.

Now, I know most of you will get furious and start coming up with conspiracies that this is to ruin the tourism season in Lebanon, but this list could be a nice wake up call to many of us suffering from the bubble syndrome of thinking skiing and swimming in the same day makes us the best country in the world.

Name One Road Rage Murderer in Jail

Just this week, a 24-year-old man called Roy Hammoush was gunned down because of a minor traffic incident. No leads so far. Remember that poor father who was stabbed, repeatedly, to death in Gemmayzeh and it was caught on camera? He’s still not sentenced… Does a week pass by without us hearing of someone being killed by a stray bullet or absurd traffic disputes or family feuds?

Sure, murders happen everywhere in the world, but the difference is, in other places, at least most or some of the murderers are sent to jail. Here, they roam free, while kids smoking pot are entrapped and jailed for absolutely no good reason when a non-violent, victimless “crime” is all they did.

Safety is for the Rich and Powerful

After a bombing, you see security step up in Lebanon. Usually, that means closing down or fortifying the street or neighborhood where a minister or public official lives. The rest of us just hope for the best and that the crazy cowards don’t choose the place we’re at to get their virgins from.

More resources are spent illegally breaking into phones and calling up everyone to come and pee in a cup, than following leads for possible terrorists plot in Lebanon.

Foreigners Get Arrested and Deported for a Joint

According to the Hobeich Precinct drug bureau, more than 60 foreigners are arrested for drug use every year, over 67% of which for hashish or pot. Foreigners means non-Arabs, since Arabs and Lebanese are grouped together in their stats. So, more than 50 tourists a year get arrested and have to go through our Dark Ages justice system and are often deported, for smoking a joint. That’s definitely not a country that’s safe for tourists.

Political Unrest and Fabricated Charges

When the people went to the streets to protest, the illegitimate government used forced urine tests to trump up charges to target activists. What does protesting have to do with drug enforcement? Why force protesters arrested, including minors, to pay for illegal pee tests cause you couldn’t charge them for sharing their frustrations peacefully in the street, while faced with a savage attack by security forces that included expired tear gas canisters and bombs, rubber bullets, live rounds in the air, water cannons, and that shameful wall they put up, then down, then up again.

In a country where the government fabricates charges against protesters, and still jails people for writing a status about a president, yet does nothing to guarantee the safety of its citizens from violence and terrorism, this country is not safe.

So

Sure, Lebanon might not be as bad as Yemen, Venezuela and El Salvador, but those countries are going through much more serious shit and catastrophes than we are. Bottom line is, if you’re going somewhere with friends, and a douchebag with tinted windows hits your car, there’s a very good chance you’ll end up in the morgue later, and a very little chance they will go to jail.

How many people have been shot while out on the night? On their balcony having a smoke? At an intersection in the capital? How many of those murderers were caught, and from the ones that were, how many are sentenced or behind bars? The answer is, not nearly enough.

If you think I’m exaggerating, imagine the worst happens to you, like an abusive husband beating his wife to death. Would you immediately call the cops? No, you’d consider your options, and think if calling them will actually help, or hurt the victim who often is told at police stations to “suck it up” and “go back to your husband” so that he can eventually kill her like so many innocent mothers, and to add insult to injury, gets custody of the abused and traumatized kids.

So, yeah, it’s not as safe as most of us like to think it is, and the big part of that blame lies on the government, busy wasting our taxes prosecuting status-posters, protesters and college kids smoking pot, instead of organized crime, terrorists and murderers.

Link to article in Business Insider

This Week’s Extra Special Schedule in Beirut

I really enjoy doing these lists, and I’m ecstatic when one of you guys and gals tell me that you enjoyed one of the recommendations I give on here every week.

Starting this week, I will focus more on the less mainstream flavors of Beirut’s nightscapes, to make sure you guys have choices beyond the usual bangers we get on Fridays and Saturdays.

Submotif: Cursive on Friday June 9

Techno might be my lifelong sweetheart, but there’s a lot more sexiness that turns my ears (and in this case eyes) on. Drum & Bass might be an acquired taste, but Beirut is definitely a perfect place to hone your electronic palate.

Submotif have been doing their thing for years now, and their steady rise in Beirut’s underground has created a tight-knit community that’s all about surgically crafted soundscapes that are reanimating Lebanon’s alternative music scene.

Think of submotif as more than your usual party with tables and bouncers and all the stuff we don’t like. It’s a veritable showcase of corners of sound you’ve never heard before, beautifully put together and paired with live visuals to enhance the sonic experience into an audiovisual journey.

If you want more of a feel of what’s in store for the night, check out this awesome Live Mix from Submotif. It’s happening at KED on Friday, and entrance is for 20$ with 2 drinks before midnight. RSVP Here

Onslaught LIVE in Beirut on Friday June 9

All you Thrash Metal fans, this one’s for you! Onslaught, the pioneers of British Thrash Metal, will be live at Station Beirut this Friday. I absolutely love it when I see Metal back on the rise in Beirut. I will say this, the Metal community is one of my favorite in Lebanon, and I always have a blast and feel extremely welcome at their concerts. I even got tutoring on how to properly head bang and was part of a mosh pit last time!

Tickets are for 20$ pre-sale, and 25$ at the door. RSVP here and find out where to get your pre-sale tickets.

Metrophone Presents A Tribute to Ferial Karim — Save Beirut Heritage Fundraiser on Wednesday June 7

Save Beirut Heritage are fucking awesome. Save Beirut Heritage is a volunteer-led NGO founded in 2010, dedicated to raising awareness and pushing for the protection of Beirut’s endangered built and urban heritage. They’re the folks that go down on the ground after organizing themselves online to fight to stop expensive concrete slabs replacing the irreplaceable Beiruti mansions and buildings and courtyards our government is eager to sell off to greedy realtors.

This Wednesday at Metro El Madina, Metrophone are doing a tribute to Ferial Karim. Metrophone bring back forgotten but extremely significant music from our past. They bring back the art, lyrics and tunes, that have been largely eclipsed these days, to revive the Lebanon’s rich and beautiful musical history.

Tickets are for 40$ with a Colonel beer. If you love Lebanese music, there is no better cause to support and event to be at this week! RSVP here and make sure you like Save Beirut Heritage on Facebook.

Glitter at AR_KA on Thursday June 8

Glitter is a party crew where lighthearted music meets cutting-edge fashion. The crowd is one of Beirut’s friendliest and most inclusive, and be sure to wear something you wouldn’t waste on just any other party! Philvader and Seah will be on the 1s and 2s!

RSVP Here

When Women Play at Haven for Artist on Friday June 9

I won’t be able to describe it better than they did, so I’m gonna quote their event page: “With our last event’s tremendous success, we decided to bring something with a lot more pizazz to the table: they don’t care about your daddy issues, they aren’t here to coddle you, they’re here to show you the PINK of the 21st century; To show you that egalitarianism is the future.”

On the ticket are Tash, Maya // Flugen, and Sally Ch. Open bar is for 20$ and 10$ gets your 2 drinks at Haven for Artists. RSVP Here

Video Works 2017 at Ashkal Alwan — Friday till Monday

Every year, Ashkal Alwan gives grants for Lebanese movie makers to create their first short movie. Form this Friday till Monday, at 7PM sharp, these movies will be screened at Beirut Art Center. Entrance is free, but seating is first come first seated, so don’t be late. RSVP Here

The Weekly Favorites

C U at the Beach

C U NXT SAT is moving to Batroun’s coast this weekend with Lehar! (click on the title to RSVP)

Decks on the Beach

The Friday ritual at Sporting Club Beach is back for another awesome Decks on the Beach night!

The Garten Presents

The gorgeous new Garten hosts Hector this Saturday!

The Real Reason Jounieh is Cracking Down on Pubs?

I hate not knowing the real reason behind the authoritarian actions taken by big corporations and/or the government in Lebanon. Remember when MTV went on an all-out war on LBC and Al Jadeed? I felt it was fishy then, and brought you the real reason they suddenly became ultra-conservative and really took on the role as Fox News of Lebanon: bad ratings that didn’t live up to how big they hype themselves up.

Last weekend, Jounieh’s municipal police went into a club called Allure and pepper-sprayed the shit out of people there. Witnesses have said that the club was asked to turn off its music and shut down. The club’s management asked for a few more minutes to settle everyone’s bill and not ruin their patrons’ night. It ended up with the municipal police (who thank goodness are not armed in Lebanon, and should never be) pepper spraying people. Some patrons were even taken to hospital for respiratory complications.

This is outrageous on so many levels, that I will break it down into segments below.

Municipal Police Jurisdiction

This untrained, unchecked local police force is scary, and every time someone mentions they should be armed, a chill runs down my spine thinking what these undisciplined, untrained people would do if given a real weapon. Just look at the damage they caused with just pepper spray.

It’s unacceptable that municipal employees would storm a nightclub, force it to close down and use violence when the compliance wasn’t quick enough. We need to know more about the jurisdiction the municipal police has, and if they have the right to use non-lethal weapons against innocent taxpayers for whatever reason they got flustered with the club’s management.

Someone Tell Jounieh’s Municipality About All the Brothels

The thing about corrupt and opaque government bodies, is that they think the rest of us are just as stupid as they are. How do they expect us to believe that it’s neighbors’ noise complaints that justify this excessive use of force, when at least 3 or 4 brothels operate nearby, with dozens in Jounieh’s jurisdiction.

What kind of fucked up neighborhood resident isn’t bothered by illegal sex trafficking, that takes advantage of refugees and trafficked sex slaves from abroad, but bothered by a pub’s music just a smidge after midnight? I wonder why they don’t crack down on all the brothels *cough* bribes *cough* commission *cough*

The Real Reason: New Management, New Dynasty and Elections Soon

Pub owners aren’t usually Keserwen voters. Many of the residents nearby are however. What better way to appease a local population than by complying to their requests in such a mafioso, macho way? You complain about noise, the guys come in pepper-spraying young men and women having a good time, much to the delight of the allegedly angry neighbors. Add to that absurd slogans like “we are fighting the tourism of drugs and prostitution”, and you get a nice campaign slogan (knowing that the dealers and pimps still roam free and unhindered).

The more important reason though, is that the new head of municipality is from the FPM, and thus has virtually unchecked power with a president from that party and a handful of ministers and top government employees.

Of course, no such action can be explained without a monetary incentive pushing this attack on the nightlife industry (at least the part that doesn’t sell sex and drugs). Looks like Jounieh has caught the “villages” syndrome, where wealthy individuals decide to open up several pubs/restaurants in close proximity to each other in the heart of residential areas.

This is the approximate area where the new complex of pubs/resto is set to open

It seems there are plans to open such a project, including a mall, in the stretch near Saniour right above Maameltein. The first phases of this project might open as soon as this summer, so it’s super important to try and kill the competition before such a project sees the light of day. Already 3 pubs in Jounieh’s main street have shuttered up their businesses after constant harassment by the municipal police. Another example of “new mangement” trying to kill off the established ones is 2 summer festivals in Jounieh this year (does that mean twice the traffic too?).

Just the other night, while having a beer with some friends in a Jounieh pub, a grumpy, old municipal policeman and ordered everyone to turn off the music, three times in the span of less than 15 minutes. It wasn’t even 5 minutes past 11PM. He’d just stare down everyone in the pub from the street, like some stalker. So, the harassment is real, and I saw it for myself, a person who barely every goes to pubs, much less in Jounieh. Yet, even that one time, I got a front row seat to the gestapo-style behavior that definitely is not good for business.

Advice to the Jounieh Authorities

If you want us to take you seriously, start with the brothels. After the Chez Maurice catastrophe, do you really expect people to believe that a standard club or pub is the pertinent issue your city faces? (I say standard cause the brothels call themselves “super” night clubs). Come on, put a little more effort if you want more people to buy your alibi.

If it’s about business, look at what these malls and resto/pub complexes do to residential areas: clog up traffic, increase noise pollution and drive up the rent for local residents (minor noise complaints are kinda better than a rent hike, no? Unless of course you’re landowner like those in power. Hmmm). Can you imagine even more traffic on the Sahel Alma highway? Come on, have a little mercy.

Shutting down competitors by abuse of power is not new, and Jounieh itself was a victim of it not so long ago. Back when Downtown Beirut wasn’t a ghost-town to beat protesters in, during Hariri senior’s days, choking checkpoints would be set up near the Nahr El Kalb tunnel on the way to Jounieh. The reason was to annoy the fuck out of everyone going to Jounieh/Kaslik for dinner or drinks. The purpose of doing that? Encourage people to switch to the Central District in Beirut, instead of the usual hotspot for a nice drink or bite. It kinda worked back then unfortunately. Let’s hope it doesn’t now. This time though, it’s the area’s own municipality doing the abuse of power, not someone trying to switch Jounieh/Kaslik clientele to Beirut.

The Allure incident might have been just one, but the policy of harassing nightlife businesses in the area is not new. It started when the new municipality took power. Now, the fact brothels remain untouched, while pubs and clubs get pepper-sprayed, poses serious questions on why this is happening. The plans to build the project in the area now dubbed “New Sahel Alma”, seems to put things into perspective.

Will this continue? Will we see smaller pubs and nightlife establishments get harrassed out of business, so that this large complex and whoever is behind it can take their business? Who knows, but given Lebanon, and the sudden surge in already sky-high corruption scandals with this new “3ahd”, I’d say probably yes.

Jackmaster Drops “Jenno w Notto” in a Set in Barcelona

No, the sound of the original video wasn’t edited. Jackmaster actually played “Jenno w Notto” in Barcelona’s Par Del Forum as part of the Primavera Sound Barcelona 2017.

The Hadi Azrak song that swept Lebanon by storm (or at least it feels like it because dozens of people keep yelling “Gino w notto” when they see me for the past few weeks) made it all the way to a festival in Barcelona.

Mabrook! :’)

Moophz.com’s Awe-Inspiring Astrophotography

Moophz is a good friend. He’s super picky about sharing stuff online, but I’m gonna take the liberty of showing you some of his absolutely wonderful photos of our universe when it’s dark.

Moophz’ obsession with capturing the night sky in ways we never saw is something I really admire about him. Whether it’s near the North Pole, or wilderness in Lebanon’s most rural areas, Moophz has toys that allow him to go beyond what any person with a camera usually could. One device I love is the one that’s geared to rotate opposite the Earth’s rotation, but at the same rate, so that the stars don’t look like lines in the final shot, but actual stars, galaxies and nebulae. It’s his deep passion (despite weather that never helps!) and unique eye that captures photos like these wherever he goes around our little blue dot.

Anyway, I’ll stop babbling and let you enjoy his masterpieces. There’s a lot more on his website and Facebook page here. I hope he’ll take me with him someday 😛

6 Tracks To Prep for the Weekend

What a massive weekend coming up in Beirut! With most of the summer venues now open and fully functional, the first weekend of June is looking epic!

Polina (Original Mix) — Agents of Time

I absolutely love Agents of Time! Embedded above is Polina, one of the first tracks I discovered for them and hands-down one of my favorites of theirs. They’re going to be at C U NXT SAT this Saturday, and LIVE, so get ready and see you on the dance floor! To sweeten the deal, you get access to B018 too starting 3:30AM. 12 hour party time again ❤

RSVP Here

Wander To Hell (Locked Groove Remix) — Vaal

I love Vaal so much, that I’m including several tracks and remixes of hers in this post. When someone says “Life and Death”, I immediately think Vaal. The shadowy style of her music beautifully reflect her path in music, choosing to hone her craft and sound for years before ever letting anyone experience, and boy am I glad she did!

This is a masterpiece many of you might already know and have danced to before, but if you haven’t, you’re welcome!

Creep (Tale of Us & Vaal Remix) — Vaal

This gem of Vaal’s was remixed by Mind Against, another artist I respect massively

Cine (Mind Against Remix) — Vaal

Excuse My Wildness (Carl Craig Remix) — Audiofly

The boys are coming to The Garten on Saturday! I met Luca and Anthony a few years back at Electric Sundown, and have since bumped into them in several cities across the world. I’m so excited to see them play at the new Garten this Saturday!

RSVP Here

Acid Phase — Emmanuel Top

https://soundcloud.com/emmanueltop/acid-phase

The last track in this week’s selection is one from the early 1990s phase of Techno. If you’re as in love with Techno as I am, you’ll probably know this track or at least Emmanuel Top. This 1994, fast-paced, analog gem makes me wonder what it would’ve have been to rave back then…

[EDIT: Just Got Banned] Chill, Wonder Woman Isn’t Banned in Lebanon

EDIT: So, movie theaters across Lebanon got an email asking them to not screen Wonder Woman as planned tonight. More details as I get them.

I don’t think this has happened since the last Tiesto concert… The kind of fuss and hypocrisy by some overzealous slacktivists waging BDS wars on phones with chips manufactured in Haifa. I guess the boycott just stems to stuff you don’t like or need, not everything. Regardless though, I will not get into this complicated clusterfuck right now.

Wonder Woman Debuts in Lebanese Theaters Tonight

If you’re a fan of Wonder Woman, and are glad that there’s finally a superhero movie where the main character and most the cast is female, you can watch Wonder Woman in theaters tonight. I spent today and yesterday following up this issue with several concerned parties, and the movie is definitely not banned and probably won’t be.

The General Security OKed It

The General Security Censorship Bureau is notorious for their absurd censoring and banning practices. So much so in fact, we have an entire museum dedicated to everything they’ve banned, both online and offline.

The General Security is also headed by Abbas Ibrahim, a staunchly pro-Hezbollah security chief that would definitely not be, as the slacktivists would say, “pro Israel” because he didn’t ban the movie.

That means the only way of this getting banned is if the boycott and divestment bureau in the ministry of trade and economy decideds to ban it. Lebanon and Syria are the only two countries in the world where there’s an actual government body tasked with banning Israeli stufff. However, given the track record of this bureau, they usually just shy away and waste time instead of bear the brunt of criticism for censoring something. Remember the Viber thing? And more recently, they thought they censored Batman vs Superman, when all of you went to the movies and stuffed your disappointed faces with popcorn at the unbanned, but shitty movie.

So, I don’t think the MoE is gonna ban anything, and anyway, they’re kinda late and lots of Lebanese have already seen it in the press screenings and avant premieres this week.

Colluding with Oppressive Governments Because You Hate Israel is Kinda Ironic

Israel is an occupying foe. The Lebanese government is supposed to be our public servants. You’d expect a vicious, evil regime like the extremist zionist one to behave that way with Palestinians. What’s our government’s excuse for their behavior? They don’t let elections happen, they steal all our public money, they assault without getting punished at every chance they get, they even fucking built a wall of shame like Israel’s when we were protesting them drowning us in garbage.

So, how is colluding with a horrible government much better than “supporting Israel” (as you blame those against the ban) exactly? How is working hand in hand with an illegitimate, oppressive and rudely criminal government to ban a superhero flick any better? It’s like the people who love Assad just cause he says he’s against Israel, disregarding the fact he has done far worse to many Arab peoples, including his own, than Israel has ever done.

Boycotts Are Good, Please Do Them, But

Boycotts are a civilized, effective and peaceful way of voicing one’s political opinions and applying pressure against causes you do not support. However, boycotts are very different from bans. People boycott things willingly, bans are done by force. So, if you ban things, and chuck it in the category of boycotting, you’re kinda missing the point, and maybe apply to be an Arab dictator instead of an activist fighting an occupier and oppressor of Arab peoples.

In other words, it’s kinda like fasting for Ramadan. If you’re doing it willingly, then bravo, you are a good person practicing their faith. But, if you force everyone else to fast too, that kinda defeats the purpose, and you’re a terrible human being for thinking and doing that. Same goes for boycotts, you can win over people’s hearts and minds to support your cause, but forcing them to without having a choice, cheapens and distorts the good work you’re trying to do.

So, if you are with the government banning this movie, then you do not have my support and the support of many who support the idea of BDS, just not the kind that’s institutionalized by the same government that won’t let Lebanese moms pass down their passports to their kids for fear their dad might be Palestinian.

Hypocrisy Has Some Limits

I know you guys love Facebook and Starbucks too much to boycott using them, so no one holds it against you when you do. However, to be a hypocrite, you need a little more sense. How did half a dozen movies featuring the same artist in the past few years escape your vigilant boycott eyes? How did it take you like 7 times to notice Tiesto has performed in Israel? What about all the anti-BDS celebrities, like Steven Spielberg, Kanye West, Scarlett Johansen, Seth Rogen, Kelsey Grammar (Fraiser) and many others? Does that mean we can’t watch ET anymore, or Pineapple Express?

And here, I’m not saying this because I want to force you to not be hypocrites, like you are trying to force Wonder Woman fans to not watch the movie. I say this because I’m sad when I see the subjective flip-flopping which makes an otherwise noble and just cause, look silly and stupid, like the Catholic Information Center banning The Da Vinci Code. Y’all really wanna be compared to those people?

Enjoy the Movie!

Censorship is wrong. Period. Even if it’s stuff you’re against, banning it is Saudi and Iran shit, not ours. You have every right to boycott and criticize, even protest. However, getting in the league with censorship done by the Lebanese government is an unforgivable sin, and I hope you don’t fall into that.

Book your movie tickets here or whichever is your closest or favorite cineplex!

Pimpin Video of Lebanon in the 60s

There’s a page on Facebook I really like that shares photos and videos of Lebanon’s “golden days”, which basically means before the Lebanese Civil War that started in 1975, and before our current politicians/former warlords rose to power.

The video is more than 5 minutes of rushes following a couple from Beirut’s airport all over the country. It’s such a nice snapshot of the times, whether its our streets, buildings, food, beach, mountains, historical landmarks and just about everything else during the time when Beirut was the “Paris of the Middle East”.

Here are some nice photos too of Lebanon in the 1960s