Honestly, I’m extremely surprised NOT A SINGLE Lebanese TV, radio or newspaper has mentioned Team Lebanon in the epic Peking-Paris race. It’s sad that only Najib and I are following up the historic feat two Lebanese men are accomplishing, by driving across all of Asia and Europe, from Beijing all the way to Paris over 35 gruelling days across some of the most rugged, gorgeous roads on Earth!
I am extremely happy to announce that with just 5 days left, team Lebanon has maintained their impressive second position in their class!
In a chat with Charbel on Tuesday evening, the team is now in Reims, Northern France, and Wednesday morning they will embark on the final 200km stretch to arrive in Paris on Sunday!
The cars take the long way, avoiding highways as much as possible and passing through the most adorable European villages in countries like Poland and France. The journey is so difficult on the classic cars, that local Porsche dealers get shipments of the spare parts from Beirut ahead of the team reaching them, to make the necessary repairs to keep going, which team Lebanon does themselves!
Here are a few photos they’ve sent through. We are all rooting for you guys! Drive safe and see you at the finish line!
Follow their updates on Classic Lebanon and stay tuned for Sunday!
If you’re on Android, then you’re automatically awesome, congrats! All you need to do is to download the APK file from a mirror by Googling it and in your security settings, allow installation from “unknown sources”
Settings
Security
Pull the toggle “unknown sources” (allow installation of apps from sources other than the Play Store)
Google “Pokemon Go APK” and download the file, install the game. Make sure it’s a somewhat trustworthy site.
If you’re on iPhone, it’s a bit trickier. First, light a few candles in your Apple shrine at home, then recite a prayer to Steve Jobs. Then, ask permission to change your App Store’s country.
Sign out of your Apple ID
Go to Settings
Select “Language and Region”
Select either USA, New Zealand or Australia
Sign in and open the App Store again, it should show
If it doesn’t (thank you overlord Apple), then stay signed out and go back into the app store and click a random free app, then “create new apple ID”
Make sure the new Apple ID is either US, NZ or Australia, and that should do it
Congrats iOS folks!
Pro Tips After a Few Days Playing It
Turn off the augmented reality camera. When you see a wild Pokemon and tap it, on the top-right there’s an AR toggle. Turn it off. This will make catching them less awkward, and people on the street won’t think you’re snapping pics of them or attacking them with your phone
AR OFF
AR ON
Catch all the Pokemon, not just the rare ones. It’s ok if you have a lot of the same, even with low CP (combat power) since you can “transfer” them for “candy” which you use to “evolve” the Pokemon with good CP.
Focus on evolving. It gets you a lot of XP, which you need to go up levels.
Understand the “nearby” feature. It’s either 3, 2 or 1 steps next to the image. This means that the Pokemon is within range (circle around you) 3 is three times radius, 2 is twice, etc. So, if you’re walking in a direction and the steps are getting more, then it’s the other way round.
Gym battles. I find them boring honestly, and would rather just walk around and catch Pokemon. I’m sure Niantic will make it a bit more fun, not just mindless, random tapping. Till then, try to team up with folks from your team and destroy and capture rival gyms.
Use Ingress Intel Map. I’m already level 18 after only 5 days playing it, and that’s because Pokemon GO uses the exact same locations as my favorite game of all-time: Ingress. Pokemon GO doesn’t have a map yet, but Ingress does. Check it out here on https://www.ingress.com/intel (portals in Ingress are either pokestops or gyms, so you can plan ahead before you go out to make sure there are enough things to interact with. You’re welcome!) Also, if you decide to start playing Ingress, join the ENLIGHTENED, not the Resistance smurfs!
Ingress Intel on Mobile
Before You Head Out
Get a battery pack, you’ll definitely run out of juice (use the battery saver option, and hold your phone upside down, that way, the screen will power off but the game stays running and will vibrate is a pokemon appears)
Be courteous to other players, you will bump into them live. Lots of agents in ingress are absolute assholes and psychopaths and scuffles and threats became common among some. If you encounter such players, make sure to stay safe and try not to play with them and send Niantic emails complaining if they are abusing other players.
Be careful in Lebanon, imagine explaining Ingress or Pokemon GO to a Lebanese police officer… So, be smart and be careful, don’t let them think you’re loitering or taking photos of them, trust me, they hate that.
I love Tyre. I properly discovered it when I was 23 years old, and immediately regretted not doing so earlier. It’s an amazing city and one that for me, challenged a lot of the stereotypes many Lebanese sadly have about it.
Apart from the breathtaking ruins scattered all over the city and in its waters, Tyre shuts down its maritime avenues to cars every weekend, making the “car-free days” there a weekly event in summer, not just every couple of months like Beirut-dwellers like us are used to. The tolerance is another thing that made me love it, with other cities so clearly demarcated along sectarian lines, you can wear a bikini and have a beer on the beach during Ramadan without anyone harassing you in Sour. But, that’s not even the best part, the beach is free there, as it should be. Free, clean and well-kept. An example that puts to shame the $50 entrance fees to swim in the exact same sea just a few kilometers north.
The last thing I loved was how much the people from Tyre adore it. Perhaps the government would never in a million years think of developing the city’s streets and giving them a facelift. No problem, local families and individuals happily donate their money and time to beautify what is already a gorgeous port city mentioned time and again in ancient stories about conquest and resilience.
That’s why I was very happy to see so many photos of Tyre on my Instagram feed this weekend and tried to get my hands on some myself to share here.
Live Love Beirut and Red Bull teamed up for #MySummerEdition that plans to tour different parts of Lebanon that many of us have yet to experience. First on the list was Tyre, where the Red Bull “Makana” truck parked on the famous Tyre public beach with C U NXT SAT DJs providing the soundtrack to a day spent on a public beach that’s clean, and free, a basic right Lebanese people are robbed off everywhere else.
In the evening, Red Bull did their first ever Vertical Stage in Tyre with Latoya, Gurumiran and Karim Khneisser, three local artist I love and feel very lucky to call friends. Vertical Stage events group different local artists together for one night on a balcony or terrace of a traditional Lebanese house or the sole purpose of making beautiful music. I loved that it was above Al Fanar in Tyre, where I highly recommend you go for a drink and dip at this summer if you missed it last weekend.
If you wanna find out about the other places #MySummerEdition is going to next, check the calendar here. I also might be leaking a few of those events here too, so stay tuned and like the folks behind the campaign say: try something new this summer!
I know many of you start to whine when we say “all of them means all of them”, but this is a classic case that proves this beyond any reasonable doubt. The corrupt, rude and stupid people who OK-ed this are on the Hariri payroll, the “Bayarita List” with all the bribes and below-the-belt tactics that beat Beirut Madinati by a very slim margin. It’s also true that it was Hariri senior’s lifelong dream to rob the last remaining piece of Beirut from Beirutis, after doing that to Downtown Beirut, Zaitunay Bay, etc.
The rest? If they didn’t get a cut of the cheese, they were allowed a free pass by the ones that did on another corrupt, public-money-stealing project. A good example of this is the Jana Dam scandal, which political parties who aren’t getting millions from it, like the FPM, shut up about it because they’re getting their own illogical failure of a dam somewhere else.
The Activist Dilemma
Don’t get me wrong, this new infarction is just as illegal as the 1200+ other that dot the Lebanese coast. However, pretending Ramlet el Bayda was a heaven-sent, inclusive and accessible beach is far from being true. Lebanon has many faiths and they are always at odds. This means that elevated testosterone levels from religious conservative always ruin things, at the expense of the rest of us who aren’t as militant about our faith (or lack thereof)
I’m not sure someone could wear a bikini and enjoy a pint of beer there this summer without being harassed or asked to leave or “be more respectful”. Public beaches might be a place that merges all socioeconomic backgrounds and communities in a country, but one that does not tolerate others, isn’t exactly the thing I’d want to defend, even if the alternative is just as shitty.
The reason I never go down to Ramlet El Bayda and prefer going somewhere more secluded and tolerant, like Sour in the South or Batroun in the North, is that no one is gonna come and tell my friend she can’t wear a bikini here, or ask us to stop drinking Almaza with electronic music blasting from a waterproof portable speaker.
A grotesque “luxury” “exclusive” and “privileged” hotel and residential tower is definitely not the answer, and the way they’ve bended and broken the law is impressive in how rude it is, so soon after the municipal elections all the crooked politicians colluded in to try to stop the momentum of progress Beirut Madinati ignited. However, the current alternative is also one I cannot get behind and one I cannot support wholeheartedly.
When was the last time any of you went there?
When was the last time you went to Ramlet El Bayda to swim? I think the answer of most of you will be I can’t remember, and for good reason. Exclusivity is no longer an acceptable thing, whether it’s excluding people with less money than you, or excluding those that do not share your fanatic zeal for your religion. A corrupt crony capitalist is just as bad as an intolerant religious conservative. Public beaches should feel welcoming to everyone, but as a Lebanese citizen and taxpayer, I never felt welcome there. I definitely won’t feel welcome in that ugly new resort being planned there either.
Standing against this project is half-hearted in my case, because I don’t want the crooked politicians to make millions off our back unfairly. However, I also don’t like what the beach stood for before the bulldozers rolled in. Without guarantees that this beach would truly be inclusive and accepting of everyone who wants to take a dip there, campaigning for this issue will never be wholehearted, at least from my part. I definitely don’t want Hariri to make many millions off of public space that should be free to access, but, I also can’t defend something that would not tolerate who I am as a person and the choices I make in life.
Vote Better
Most of the people who voted for Hariri’s list probably go to Ramlet El Bayda. I want to ask those people, is the 100,000 LBP bribe worth losing that one last space you were allowed to access by the Hariri clan? Do you think it’s fair they gave you 60$ when they were making over 90 million?
Highsam is one of my oldest and closest friends. We went to school together, and even before we ever had a single hair on our bearded faces, we always used to do cool shit all over Lebanon. We were scouts, and there isn’t a single inch of Lebanon we haven’t walked, climbed, swam or slept in over the years.
Sadly, I’m not as able to disconnect and go into these hidden places and experience their wonder, but Highsam has taken that to another level and regularly documents pieces of Lebanon few of us ever wander into or even know exist! Here are 16 photos I asked Highsam to publish here to show you all the good sides of Lebanon still exist, and we all have a lot of it we have yet to experience, as I’m sure these photos will make you realize.
Follow @HighsamAchkar on Instagram for more breathtaking photos like these ones!
It’s day 11 in the 35-day epic race across across all of Asia and Europe in a 1961 Porsche 356C. If you haven’t read my initial post detailing this massive feat, check out my article from two weeks ago here.
Photos from Mongolia’s Legendary Steppes
Centuries ago, this is where The Silk Road snaked through the unforgiving wilderness of China and Mongolia and other parts of central Asia. Today, the same wild horses and eagles inhabit those Steppes, but instead of the Khan’s hordes, a convoy of hundreds of classic cars is taking on the unforgiving dust and rivers that dot the seemingly endless, uninhabited steppes. Check out these amazing photos sent to us by team Lebanon, Charbel Habib and Walid Samaha!
Team Lebanon’s car!
The breathtaking views on the off-road, unpaved tracks
Giving way to beautiful wild horses that call the Mongolian Steppes home.
Some much needed rest and relaxation and a quick way to dry clothes that got wet while negotiating deep creeks and rivers on their way.
Team Lebanon helping another team with a Porsche who got into some minor trouble on the rough terrain.
The unforgiving race has sadly gotten a few cars out of the race and onto the tow trucks, but Team Lebanon barrels on with just a few glitches Charbel and Walid have been able to handle on the spot!
Team Lebanon Currently SECOND in their Class!
I was able to have a quick chat with the team as they entered into Russia earlier today. The terrain covered in Mongolia was more than 90% off-road, which took a heavy toll on many of the cars which are extremely tricky and difficult to drive on unpaved roads. As of publishing this post, Team Lebanon has already covered an incredible 3684 km through China and Mongolia with no major hiccups and a fantastic performance so far.
I’m extremely happy and proud to announce that even though Team Lebanon’s car is one of the smallest in the race, they are currently ranked an impressive second in their class! Looking at the pics and hearing the stories makes me wish I was there with them to experience these fantastic locations. Who knows, maybe one day!
Stay tuned for more updates here and exclusive shots and videos in the coming days and weeks.
Good luck Team Lebanon! Everyone back home is rooting for you!
The government is finally taking action against the blundering idiots that have caused so much unnecessary pain and death to show us they need to compensate for their abnormally small penises by firing in the air for their za3im, or their stupid kid not failing the official exams, or other incredibly stupid reasons.
REPORT
I know many of us are too scared of calling the cops, for fear they will implicate us, or put us in danger. This is especially true if the people you are reporting about are armed and don’t mind shooting out entire magazines in urban and residential areas.
However, if you are worried about being named in investigations or court, you can send in an anonymous tip from their website. Just go to their website and hit the “ballegh” button and if you’d prefer staying anonymous, select “no” on the contact me tab. There are several crime categories, including gunfire.
We can always whine, but as we’ve seen the past week, a string of arrests across the country targeting celebratory gunfire idiots means that the government, after all these years and pointless deaths, is finally taking action. Report, try to catalog too, and keep the pressure up to make sure this keeps happening and isn’t just to quell the anger of the Lebanese after an exceptionally deadly month.
Enough is enough, no one should die minding their own business, sitting on their balcony, or driving their family home. Time to get with the times and use the brains some folks have let decay into standing on rooftops and shooting into the air…
Last night, the Minister of Economy and Trade, Alain Hakim, dropped two bombshells. The first, was highly publicized and it was his resignation from the current cabinet along with another Kataeb minister. This was a bold move by the Kataeb and came as a strong stance against the overt corruption and malicious negligence in the humiliating disaster that is the garbage crisis, which, next month, will celebrate its first anniversary.
The second though, is no less alarming, yet, barely got a 40-second voice over on the evening news. It’s that the total money spent during the latest municipal elections in Lebanon was around 100 million US dollars, the ministry estimates. Of those 100 million, some 30 were spent on ads and campaigning, but as much as 70 million dollars were spent on bribes.
Boost in Consumer Buying
70 million might seem like a steep number, but the ministry confirms tha consumer purchasing power increased year-on-year for the month of the elections. Usually, a spike in those numbers means the tourism season is alive and kicking, but with the continued boycott of wealthy gulf tourists and less inclination from the Lebanese diaspora to visit their hometowns, coupled with a host of embarrassing crises like the garbage one, and illegitimate parliament and a vacant presidential palace, and of course the security situation in the region, the increase sadly isn’t due to a spike in tourists.
Why No One Cared
I guess a big part of the reason no one really batted an eye, is because first, we kinda all expect that to happen. Lebanese political parties’ bribes are a staple of campaigning in Lebanon, sadly. Another reason why this didn’t cause an uproar is because of the lack of faith in government reports and data. I still think 70 million is a huge number, but then again, who else would better detect the increase in money flow than the ministry of economy and trade?
Why Proportional Representation is More Important Than Ever
The solution to most of our systemic problems in Lebanon can be solved with proportional representation in parliament. The way our laws currently stand, if Party X gets 51% of the popular vote, and Party Y gets 49%, Party X gets all the allotted seats for that district. This makes bribery an extremely efficient tool for politicians. Instead of running a campaign based on ideas and programs, all they need to do is rile up their base, and pay a little extra to make sure you win by a slim margin. But, margins don’t really matter in Lebanon’s “bostat” or “ma7edel”, you just need that 51% to win it all.
This, though perfect for political parties, is a nightmare for proper representation. One way to start weeding out the current crooked politicians is by voting them out. In fact, it’s the best and should be the only way. The last municipal elections showed us that that was possible, and indeed happened all across Lebanon.
As you all know, the elections have been stolen from us twice by this illegitimate parliament, and the main reason is that the current political elite know that there is no way in hell they’re gonna keep all their seats after everything they’ve done. The people have spoken, they’ve rattled the politicians’ cages and they’ve been trying to postpone the inevitable for years now.
That is why we need a proper electoral law, one that ends the extremely corrupt and misrepresentative current one. The politicians’ weaknesses are unraveling, and in-fighting in the parties is ripping them up apart from the inside. Enough so, that integral stumbling blocks in Lebanon’s path to proportional representation, have raised their arms and said they are willing to accept it. Perhaps it’s keeping true with their self-deprecating tone of late, in the face of humiliation in front of their bases in the past few years. Perhaps it’s just political maneuvering as usual. Point is, this is something we should all care about, and activate for.
Care About This, It’s Important
In the coming weeks, there is a lot being prepared with regards to the new electoral law and the upcoming, long-time-coming parliamentary elections. All I ask is that you care about this, and demand what’s right for us, the people, the taxpayers. The garbage crisis is important, but getting people like you into power, would hopefully stop such a disgusting, horrific scandal from ever happening again so that politicians can fill their pockets with ill-gotten gains they give a fraction of back to their loyal subjects as a bribe on election day…
The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) is asking for your help with Syrian refugee children in Lebanon. With the Syrian conflict in its sixth year, more than 1 million refugees now live in Lebanon. Many families have exhausted their savings and are unable to earn an income. They are increasingly reliant on food assistance to meet their most basic needs.
ShareTheMeal’s current goal is to support 1,400 refugee children between the ages of 3 and 4 in Beirut for a entire year. Their parents receive vouchers, allowing them to buy food in local shops, ensuring that assistance goes into the local economy in those local grocery stores and supermarkets.
One day is just 750LL, a week is 5,250LL and a month is for 22,500LL. The options include 3 months, and an entire year. So far, more than 87% of the goal has been reached, so, donate what you can spare this Ramadan for folks who cannot afford an iftar every day…
I was happy to find out that my Facebook friends and I had contributed over 330 days of meals for the refugees, with an app, just by tapping how many days you’d like to share. You then see a photo of the child you’re making sure doesn’t go hungry for a year, in this case adorable Woorood who I hope can make it to a park this summer ❤
It’s easy to forget how dire the situation is, but, it is and is only becoming more dire with insufficient funding from international donors. Anyone can help, with as little as 750 LL, so, please donate and always spare what you can and a thought to the millions of people that go to bed hungry every day…
If you drive in to Beirut, it’s certain you’ve seen the scary black cameras surrounded by other high-tech-looking devices and tools peering at you from virtually every spot in and around the city. This is horrifying on so many levels, and I can’t believe how no one’s said a peep, save for the corruption allegations in the awarded contract. No one even considered the massive privacy breaches this 40 million dollar monstrosity paid for by your taxes.
Court Ruled the Contract Illegal in 2014
“The municipal council named the accepted bidders without studying their qualifications in advance.”
The court added, “Since this measure has also led to limiting the competition to the five invited companies and subsequently excluded other companies that have qualifications and material and technical capabilities to carry out this kind of deals … this deal lacks the right legal basis and therefore, it needs not to be accepted.
So, in other words, this “project” like every single government contract in this country’s history was painfully corrupt. Rival politicians had a blast last year tweeting about how each camera cost taxpayers 27000 USD when it should have been no more than 7000 USD according to them. The supporters of this massive surveillance project said that the cost wasn’t just the cameras, but the sophisticated systems that come with it. As a citizen, both of those scenarios are nightmarish.
No Clear Mandate
After a string of devastating bombings in Beirut and Tripoli in 2013 and 2014, the Beirut Municipality decided to install a network of cameras to survey the city at 350 different spots.
In former municipality chief Bilal Hamad’s words:
“Given that security in the capital is a red line and that the national duty requires taking extraordinary measures to boost citizens’ confidence in the security situation, we have decided to install a network of cameras that would cover Beirut’s street […]”
His choice of words are very telling. “Red line” and “national duty” followed by “taking extraordinary measures”. This has become a common motif we see by overreaching governing bodies holding up the security scarecrow to justify an overt breach in rights and privacy.
Basically, they’re saying: “Terrorists might strike, so we’d like to look and listen at everyone all the time without asking their permission or telling them who is surveying them, why, how and under what jurisdiction”.
The company that executed the legally disputed contract’s website says that there are two control rooms, a central one managed by the Beirut Municipality, and a crisis control room run by the ISF.
The end result is a city-wide network of cameras controlled from both a central control room managed by the municipality, and an additional crisis control room managed by Internal Security Forces. Both rooms house fifty operators and two data centres with a total storage capacity of five petabytes
Why does the municipality get to monitor some 2 million citizens across Beirut 24/7, everywhere for not particular reason? If it was for security or terrorist concerns, like spotting a fake license plate number that might be a suicide bomber, what can the municipality do? Send its unarmed municipal guards? The security aspect is for the ISF and Army, not the municipality. So, this brings to question who has access to these 5 petabytes of data and how can they use it for nefarious, or simply petty and smutty reasons. Intelligence work in Lebanon is known to often focus on extramarital affairs of those in power, than security threats. Imagine what they can do with 2000 4K cameras across the city.
The core problem in all this issue is the complete lack of trust most people have in the government, judiciary and police force. No one is against a sophisticated surveillance system meant to spot possible suicide bombers (the initial stated reason of this 40-million dollar project). However, since the bidding process, there has been a breach of trust of Lebanese taxpayers, who know or at least believe that some politicians made a handsome commission off what the executing company calls a “first of its kind” and “future template for other city-wide surveillance systems”.
We know the ISF and LAF monitor our communications. We also know they sought to purchase secret mass surveillance software from Hacking Team, a company that offers services to repressive regimes trying to spy on their people illegally. We know that they were devastated when Whatsapp turned on end-to-end encryption, with one officer complaining “teb why shouldn’t we be able to read people’s Whatsapps?” at a forum I was in a few months ago…
Bottom line is, I don’t trust the people behind this project enough. I can’t believe if I need to go do paperwork in a governmental institution, fax machines are considered futuristic, but when it comes to spy on taxpayers, budget caps disappear and the best technology is invested in. So, instead of trying to digitize something that is useful to our lives, like court documents and personal status services (our ikhraj ed is still handwritten in 2016), they blew it on spying on us with no clear checks and balances.
I hate that our taxes get used to spy on us. I hope more of you will start asking these incredibly important question like: who is sitting behind those monitors and speakers? What is that data being used for? Why is there zero transparency in this incredibly intrusive breach of privacy?
For this to become remotely acceptable, the municipality and interior ministry needs to come clean and tell us what these are for, who’s running them and how is the intelligence gathered being used. Is their any court oversight? Or is the municipality and ISF free to do whatever they want with this system? So far, none of these questions have been addressed, and honestly, I find that extremely worrying.
So, next time you’re driving or walking in Beirut, make sure you smile wide and blow a kiss to whoever is behind those ominous camera towers…
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