(Photo via via ca.news.yahoo.com)

You either have to joke about this photo, or else start crying.

This picture was taken in Tripoli on Tuesday by Reuters’ photographer Mohamed Azakir. I think he should win an award for saying everything there is to say with just one image. It doesn’t just capture a decisive moment, it tells the whole story.

Lebanese army troops were deployed in Tripoli earlier this week after clashes broke out between Alawite supporters of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the Jabal Mohsen neighborhood and Sunni Muslims in the Bab al-Tabbaneh area. Nine people were reportedly killed and dozens wounded, according to AFP.

Setting aside the gravity of the situation in Tripoli, here is how you can make this even more fun than it already is: just watch this and let your imagination fly.

The Anti-Racism Movement’s PSA reads: “Not allowed. We remain racist.”

Because some beach clubs in Lebanon continue to explicitly ban maids...

The good people over at Lebanon’s Anti-Racism Movement have released a new public service announcement reminding us of the widespread discrimination faced by dark-skinned customers (often migrant domestic workers accompanying Lebanese families) at the many private beaches in the country.

“We would just like to highlight that color and/or profession [should not determine] whether or not you are allowed to go to the beach. And this is such a basic statement that we don’t see why we still have to debate it or convince people about it in 2012,” says Farah Salka from the Anti-Racism Movement.

Salka also notes there is a rumor going around that the Tourism Ministry has issued a decree calling on private beaches to refrain from discriminating against their clientele based on nationality, ethnicity or any disability. As of publishing time, NOW Lebanon could not reach any reps from the ministry to confirm or deny this statement.

If it turns out to be true, Salka remains skeptical about enforcement and accountability: “How and to whom does someone complain if they go through with this decree and people are still denied entry? Until we get a concrete answer to this question, we really are in the same place we’ve been for years. And we look forward to more laws, not just decrees that criminalize racism.”

For a detailed list of policies regarding entrance and/or swimming access for domestic workers at various beaches in Lebanon, check out this article.

Syrian child holds a poster associating Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with Israel (Reuters)

Nothing, of course, should surprise us about the Assad regime anymore, but it’s still possible to marvel sometimes at how utterly, brutally contemptuous of human life it can be.

It’s also remarkable how frequently, and how uncannily, its behavior resembles the very worst of its supposed arch-rival in Tel Aviv. Take today’s report from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that the regime “opened fire on a refugee camp in southern Syria […] killing three people including a child”. Who, you may ask, are the occupants of this camp? “Palestinian refugees and Syrians displaced from the occupied Golan Heights”.

Now consider this, written by Vittorio Arrigoni, reporting from Gaza during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead: “On the previous day two doctors at the Jabalia refugee camp had died when they were hit by a missile shot from an Apache helicopter.” Or, if you prefer something closer to home, peruse Human Rights Watch’s account of how in Qana in 1996, “Israeli artillery guns […] fired a deadly mix of shells into the sprawling U.N. base there, killing over 100 children, women and men who had sheltered there.” 

But, of course, nothing the Assad regime stoops to, not even the broad-daylight murder of Palestinian refugees, will stop its cheerleaders from touting their tired slogans of “resistance” and “Arabism”. They should not count on history to be kind to them.

Criminal masterminds are finding some pretty menacing things to do with excess body fat. (Photo via telegraph.co.uk)

Terrorists keep planting bombs in more and more awkward places.

The world collectively blushed when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab hid an explosive in his underwear during the foiled Christmas Day attack in 2009. Well now, according to this article, terror masterminds are trying to find ways to surgically insert bombs into fat parts of their bodies to avoid detection by security at airports. One possible corporal location for the bombs is in portly terrorists’ love handles and buttocks, meaning that now passengers have to watch out for two kinds of explosions coming out of men’s rear ends.
 
But seriously, folks, this is all kinds of scary. Airplane travel is terrifying enough without the prospect of a rotund man using his excess lard as a bomb cocoon. This also means that now fat men as well as Middle Easterners will be given suspicious looks when they lumber onto a plane. 

The good news is that the bombs aren’t advanced enough to be put to use yet, meaning that the next time you see a stocky gentleman climbing on to your plane, he’s probably not packed full of explosives.

Banin Qataya was used as a sacrificial lamb to repair relations between religious men in Baalbek. (Photo via WikiCommons)

A sad twist in the baptized-woman-kidnapped-priest saga has occurred.

If you don’t recall the case, it pertains to a 24-year-old woman named Banin Qataya, who ran away from her Muslim family and was baptized by a priest, whom her family then kidnapped and only released after Hezbollah’s intervention.

Qataya’s father threatened to start another civil war to get his daughter back, and has been spouting some crazy stuff since the story broke. 
 
Qataya has now been returned, against her will, to her family by none other than the Archbishop of Baalbek, Semaan Atallah. What gives Atallah the right, as a non-state official, to hand over a grown adult to her abusive family is unclear. For his part, Atallah said he did it “in order to demonstrate Lebanon’s message of religious coexistence in the region.” Well at least the Christian and Shia men in Baalbek can shake hands and smoke a celebratory cigar over the resolution of this conflict.

As for Qataya, who knows what violence awaits her. My only hope is that if she tries to run away from her abusive family again, the people who are supposed to protect their flock will not use them as sacrificial lambs.

(Photo via spotlight-forums.com)

While they didn’t quite get around to it, taxi drivers in Lebanon wanted to strike a few weeks back. The then-rising price of fuel was the main driver of ire, but a side complaint was the prevalence of so-called “illegal” taxis. Methinks I saw one of these illegal cars today, and man was my driver incensed.

Right as we were approaching NOW’s office, the man taking me to work started swearing (for the umpteenth time, might I add). In front of us, there was a car with a man driving and a young woman sitting alone in the backseat (this seating arrangement being indisputable proof to my driver that the woman was paying for the ride). The car’s license plates were white – not the red reserved for official taxis that have paid numerous fees for the right to drive around and honk at anything with a pulse (honestly, if cats had money, I think taxi drivers would try to give them rides).

My driver quickly saved the man’s license plate number into his phone and told me he was going to tell the guy off. He kept trying to get close enough to yell into the window, at one point even faking a phone call – he just put his phone up to his ear, said “hello” to no one and then read off the plate number.

Sadly, I had to get out of the car before I could see this drama end. However, this incident begged the questions: Who, exactly, would my driver call to punish this presumed offender and what, if anything, will anyone do about it?

A Lebanese Sunni Muslim gunman sits with his son on Syria Street during fighting in the Bab al-Tebbaneh neighborhood of Tripoli. (AFP/Joseph Eid)

An estimated 50 people have been wounded and five people reported dead, including two victims today, in clashes which erupted between rival neighborhoods in the northern city of Tripoli over the weekend.

Amid the violence and increasing sectarian fervor, videos and pictures are surfacing showing children holding guns in Tripoli.

LBC spoke with one of the “child soldiers.” It’s not clear if the gun the boy in the video is holding is real or if it’s even loaded. But the fact remains: with this kind of preparation, if this kid isn’t shooting a gun now, give him a couple years and he will be.

English Translation:

Man: We are being attacked. Those attacking us are the remains of the Syrian regime. When the Syrian regime is [put in a bad situation], and the revolution wins there, they [launch] a battle to cover up for the Syrian regime.

Reporter: The gun is your size, how are you holding it?
Boy: Heik. I just carry it.

Reporter: Why [are you carrying it]?
Boy: Maybe something happened with us.

Reporter: Who do you want to fire at?
Boy: On whoever harms me.

Reporter: Do you know how to fire?
Boy: Yes.

Reporter: Who taught you?
Boy: No one, [I learned] on my own.

Reporter: Do you go to school?
Boy: Yes.

Reporter: Do you still go to school?
Boy: Yes.

Reporter: Which grade?
Boy: Fifth.

Reporter: And how old are you?
Boy: 12.

(Photo via Facebook.com)

In the era of Photoshop, almost anything can be manipulated or fabricated. I checked with our resident graphic design experts at NOW Lebanon, and they’ve promised me this pic is the real deal.

It's a relief to know the public perception of our average Lebanese citizen remains intact.

#OnlyinLebanon.

(Photo via petitesetgrandesaventures.com)

Spotted in today’s edition of the Daily Star newspaper, a useless article on manoushe masquerading as actual news.

“Lebanese might not agree on much, but for what it’s worth, on manqoushe there is consensus,” writes Stephen Dockery.
 
This article is on par with publishing the inane conversation you had with your girlfriend, in which she insisted on giving you a minute-by-minute recap of the pointless things she did during her day. [Disclaimer: Some of my friends are exceptionally good story-tellers, and I don't mind a tangent to hear something entertaining. But when it’s worthlessly self-indulgent crap, I’d rather just sit together and enjoy the silence; maybe think about the wonders of the solar system or something.]

To be fair, Dockery’s piece is clearly filler, but it’s not like we’re having a slow news day in Lebanon.

Sadly, Dockery himself even points out that his manoushe commentary is more popular than the story on the Tripoli clashes. [SMH]

(Photo via Twitter.com)

Still, perhaps an article on Lebanon’s high standard of living coupled with a marked increase in food prices would have been more industrious news for readers. Or how about this: ask a few of our wealthy politicians how much a carton of eggs or a carton of milk costs. I’m guessing they’re incredibly out of touch with reality.

In sum, go ahead and file this story next to the Daily Star’s hard-hitting investigation last month into an incident involving a drifter dog on the loose in Saida.

Useless article is useless.

US troops praying on taxpayers’ time and money (Getty Images)

Here’s a thought experiment: suppose that an extremely sophisticated and well-equipped Muslim-majority army was found to be instructing its officers that a “total war” on Christianity was required; this war being waged on Christendom’s “civilian population wherever necessary”, with the “historical precedents of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima [and] Nagasaki being applicable” to Vatican City, Bethlehem and the Christian quarters of Jerusalem. None of us, I hope, would dispute that this was the most fantastic and wicked fanaticism; the sheerest and most abominable religious lunacy.

Yet switch the above religions around, and insert “Mecca and Medina” in place of the Christian cities, and you have – verbatim – the material with which officer recruits at the US Defense Department’s Joint Forces Staff  College were being enlightened by one Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Dooley until April of this year.

What does one even begin to do with such a piece of information? No doubt it will do wonders for the claim – reiterated by al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri just this week – that US troops in the region are the twenty-first century’s “Crusaders”. It’s worth pointing out, therefore, that Dooley’s course was dropped after complaints from the students themselves, and that it was denounced by Chief of Staff Martin Dempsey as “totally objectionable” and “against our values”.

At the same time, this is but one in a long list of such incidents for the US army, whose ranks have been increasingly poisoned by a hideous Christian chauvinism for some years now. The late Christopher Hitchens – no dove on ‘War on Terror’ matters – wrote in 2009 of the “clique within the United States military that is seeking to use the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as an opportunity to mount a new crusade and to Christianize the “heathen””. And the intimidation and marginalization of less devout troops has grown so intense that nonbelieving soldiers have felt compelled to form groups, such as the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and the Military Association of Atheists & Freethinkers, whose websites enumerate in sobering detail the daily infringements of religious freedom that the American constitution is supposed to protect. 

If the US is serious, therefore, about confronting dangerous religious ideology, it has plenty to be getting on with in its own armed forces. The dishonorable discharge of Matthew Dooley – who is at present merely “suspended” – would be a useful start.