a year-end solidarity gathering | musical performances celebrating Sheikh Imam
BEIRUT: Most Palestinian refugees in southern Lebanon believe greater interaction with their Lebanese neighbors would help dismantle the prejudices and misconceptions that abound between the two communities, a recent report said.
The report, entitled “Community Perspectives on Protection: A Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices Analysis of Palestinian Communities in Southern Lebanon,” also found Palestinians endured high levels of familial and community violence because residents of formal camps and informal gatherings lack the necessary space and institutions where they can otherwise release their frustration.
Photo: Mary-Ellen Davis. Nahr el-Bared refugee camp destroyed pictured in late 2007.
BEIRUT: Demonstrators gathered in their thousands at Downtown Beirut’s Martyrs Square Monday to protest against government failure to begin reconstruction to Nahr al-Bared refugee camp. Organizers claim some 2,000 protestors from all over Lebanon attended the peaceful demonstration, watched over by soldiers and a dozen police in riot gear.
As we made ourselves comfortable on a terrace at a nearby café, Rawi Hage began scanning the neighboring tables for an ashtray. “Do you mind if I smoke?” I didn’t, and reached over behind me and snagged the seemingly last ashtray that had yet to be claimed. Not lighting up right away, Hage began maneuvering a small, tightly packed cigar between his fingers as he began telling me about his travel plans for the summer: Europe, Australia and all of Canada. There is so much to see, we agreed, and any city, town or far off countryside is as good as any to start with.
BEIRUT: “We’re a growing family,” says Zeid Hamdan, describing the Lebanese underground music scene. “Audiences have been following us since the beginning and they see constant progress. They see that we’re serious about the music. Now a whole new generation of teenagers is becoming interested in what we do.”
If Hamdan gets his way, underground music will soon break into the light of mainstream media attention. One half of the defunct band Soap Kills and one third of cult rockers The New Government, Hamdan has fought to promote the alternative scene on various fronts. Now, with “The Road to Kfifane,” he is presiding over a music festival dedicated solely to Lebanese talent.
Photo: Zoriah (c) Buildings destroyed by Israeli bombings in south Beirut, 2006.
BEIRUT — Israeli director Samuel Maoz’s “Lebanon” may have won the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival but it has been given a hostile reception by critics and bloggers in the country it is named after.
“This film shows the Israeli point of view,” wrote the Venice correspondent of the Lebanese daily An-Nahar, which is aligned with the US-backed parliamentary majority.
The amount and quality of available scientific data on the global impact of climate change, I rediscovered at a seminar organized by the Danish Foreign Ministry in Copenhagen this week, is staggering. The debate that swirled around the issues of climate change and global warming just two or three years ago has vanished. There is much more certainty now on the nature and extent of the changes to the Earth’s climate that can be attributed to the impact of human activity, mainly the burning of fossil fuels that emit greenhouse gases.
BEIRUT: Saad Hariri’s resignation has once again drawn attention to the state of Lebanese politics. For many, the Future Movement leader’s resignation is a gesture designed to draw attention to the failure of the main political players’ ability to form a unity government within Lebanon. Hariri stepped down as prime minister-designate on Thursday after the Hizbullah-led opposition rejected his latest attempt at forming a unity government.
This move was seen by many as a response to the recent deadlock between the various political groups.
le film Beirut Diaries est un documentaire de la cinéaste reconnue, Mai Masri.
Photo: Masser: Golan Heights, Israeli-occupied Syria, south of Shebaa Farms.
BEIRUT: The politics of the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms, a rugged sliver of mountainside wedged between Lebanon, Israel and Syria, have long overshadowed what some Lebanese environmentalists call “the real issue” of the disputed area: its water resources. Now activists are calling for hydro-diplomacy to take precedence over political maneuvering as the most effective solution to one of the key stumbling blocks to Middle East peace.
“Rising Temperatures Rising Tensions,” a report published in June by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), funded by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, considers water to be a major trigger for conflict in the Middle East, the world’s most water scarce region.
