Archive for the ‘Social’ Category

world AIDS day

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

World-AIDS-day-low

Lebanon’s sexual revolution drives up HIV infections

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

Source : Deutsche Welle

Changing sexual behavior puts young Lebanese at greater risk of getting infected with HIV/AIDS — especially gay men. Yet social taboos hinder measures aimed at helping those in new risk groups cope with the disease.

Unlike much of the Middle East, HIV infection patterns in Lebanon are increasingly mirroring those of the West.

Although HIV/AIDS is seen in most Middle Eastern countries as a broad-based, low-risk epidemic among heterosexuals that affects less than 1 percent of the population, the infection profile in Lebanon is realigning to include homosexuals, intravenous drug users, prison inmate and sex workers – the same at-risk populations as in the West.

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LEBANON: Sex workers still shun condoms

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

Four years ago, at 16, Rana’s husband forced her into prostitution. Despite the risks of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), Rana, like many local sex workers – estimated to number at least 6,000 – often did not use condoms.

“It’s up to the client,” said Rana (not her real name). “I want to use condoms, but most of the clients don’t.” Asked why she ignores the risks of contracting HIV or STDs she simply says: “I don’t want to lose the client.”

Elie Aaraj, head of Lebanon’s SIDC association, warns that the lack of condom use among local sex workers could soon become a public health issue.

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A smoke-free Lebanon: Reality or pipedream?

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

Source : CNN | By Schams Elwazer

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

* Lebanon has one of the highest smoking rates in the world, according to WHO

* No minimum age to buy cigarettes; 65 percent of 13-15 year old boys smoke

* Anti-smoking guru Dr G Saade says patients with smoking-related diseases getting younger

* Lebanese unlikely to give up the weed easily as they associate smoking with freedom . . .

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Secret Israeli Weapon Can Fix Mideast

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

by Amity Shlaes

      Americans think of war or religion when they think of Israel. But Israel is also an unusual high-tech success story.

     A survey last May of non-American companies on the Nasdaq counted three Korean companies, five Irish businesses, five from the U.K. and six from Japan. Israel had 64.

     In 2008, Israel drew more than twice the venture capital per citizen than the United States. It drew 30 times as much cash as continental Europe, and 350 times more than India.

     There are some pretty familiar ethnic explanations for the Israeli tech miracle. Jews are supposed to be smart. Jews from overseas will fund Israeli companies regardless of quality. And so on.

     But those explanations don’t suffice, as Dan Senor and Saul Singer point out in “Start Up Nation.” (Senor is my colleague at the Council on Foreign Relations). The Israeli record of innovation has less to do with tribe and more with policy. The Israeli military has also played a surprising role in the process.

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“Ain’t No Smoking Tonight” A Failure

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

by Layal Al Khatib | Article

“Ain’t No Smoking 2nite” was an event organized by Rotaract which took place in Gemmayzeh pubs in Beirut on the 28th of October. This was in an attempt to spread awareness about the dangers of smoking and to encourage decision makers to promote non-smoking policies in Lebanon. Lebanese bloggers covered the event saying it was a failure.

At first, the participation seemed impressive even before the start of the event. Thirty-five pubs in Gemmayzeh street announced their participation and the campaign sounded promising.

Maya Zankoul, a Lebanese blogger at “Maya’s Amalgam“, a graphic designer and one of the campaign sponsors designed the poster and saw how it was all over the streets:

no-smoking-campaign-211x300

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Shooting in Lebanon, Part II

Friday, October 16th, 2009

A lack of state funding in Lebanon has stifled diversity in moviemaking, but plucky independent initiatives have borne some fruit. Part II.

Nathalie Bontems

Click here to read Part I.

Potential private investors are not interested in financing movie ventures, or even in acting as patrons on a smaller scale. They deem the domestic market to be too small to be profitable. Their question, therefore, is whether Lebanese films can export themselves with success.

Lebanese feature films, costing $500,000 on average, often end up being funded by European cultural institutions and programs such as Euromed, a series of agreements between the European Union and Mediterranean countries. That two-year program granted Lebanese cinema nearly $22 million between 2006 and 2008, and provided writing workshops, meetings with foreign professionals, and projections in European theaters.

But only a certain number of films can be produced each year and many directors and writers are left out of the action. Between 2005 and 2006, five full-length features made it to the screens, but for the past few years production has lagged at a weak rate of one film a year. With 90 percent of the Lebanese production financed through channels like this, some sort of dependence is unavoidable.

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Assad decrees Syria smoking ban

Monday, October 12th, 2009

Syria’s president has issued a decree banning smoking inside cafes, restaurants and other public spaces.

The decree also outlaws smoking in educational institutions, health centres, sports halls, cinemas and theatres and on public transport.

Workers must not smoke during meetings and businesses need to provide well-ventilated areas for smokers.

The restrictions include the nargile, or hubble-bubble pipe, which is a favourite among locals and tourists.

The decree, signed by President Bashar al-Assad, a qualified medical doctor, imposes a fine of 2,000 Syrian pounds ($46) on those who break the ban.

Syrian government has passed several laws restricting smoking in the last two decades.

A decree in 1996 banned tobacco advertising while a 2006 law outlawed smoking on public transport and in some public places, introducing fines for offenders. Under-18s are not allowed to buy tobacco.

The World Health Organization is unable to provide details on tobacco consumption in Syria, but levels of smoking in public is high across the Arab world, especially among men.

Iraq’s cabinet recently agreed a draft law outlining similar measures, causing uproar amongst smokers.

3a ‘belna…

Syria’s Blogosphere Explodes With Competing Masturbation Campaigns

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

 

All Headline News

The vices of the Syrian public seem to have become overbearing for Mr. Fadal, who earlier this month took it upon himself to launch an online campaign against masturbation in Syria.

Masturbation, Fadal wrote, is “spreading like wildfire.” In the name of God the Merciful, he called on young Syrians to join a national campaign to “eliminate the secret habit” and sign a petition.

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Syria: First Bloggers’ Contest Winners Announced

Monday, September 28th, 2009

The first Syrian bloggers’ contest has come to an end. The contest was organized by the Syrian blog aggregator Al Mudawen [ar/en], where voters were asked to rate blogs competing in four categories: Ideal Blog, Best Content, Best Design, and Best Interactivity. The winning blogs first had to go through a rigorous process of public voting, then a panel evaluation.

Following are the winning blogs:

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Provincetown of the Middle East

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

It looks like in the news lately Beirut is the capital of everything except a real country.

“So many questions today about what ‘gay Beirut’ is like,” he told me. “I’m just like, ‘Wait and see, you’ll like it, you’ll like it!’”

Read the article at this link:

Beirut: The Provincetown of the Middle East

مصلحة القطاع العام في القوات اللبنانية

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

header

Beirut: Best party city?

Thursday, July 30th, 2009

A CNN piece titled: Beirut: Best party city?

After years of political instability, Beirut comes out of its shell as a party city.

Click here to watch the video

Touffic Ibrahim 2009-07-23

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

Zone Interdite : …Tel Aviv : les nouveaux “paradis” de l’été

Friday, July 17th, 2009

Voici une émission télévisée diffusée le 15 juillet 2009 sur M6, qui avait pour thème : les nouveaux “paradis” de l’été : Île Moustique, Rio, Doha, et Tel Aviv

Je vais m’intéresser au reportage sur Tel Aviv, pour vous montrer l’énorme campagne de séduction que mène le gouvernement israélien en ce moment. (Pour info, partout dans les grandes villes européennes, on voit des panneaux d’affichage sur la promotion des voyages en Israël)

Pour voir la vidéo, cliquez sur le lien ci-dessous. Vous allez être redirigé vers le site officiel de M6 replay. Sur le menu de gauche, cliquez sur la vidéo 3 (Tel Aviv : paradis israélien)

VIDEO

Résumé :

Chaque été, Zone Interdite vous fait découvrir des destinations de rêve. Des endroits surprenants, mystérieux, secrets. Interdits au commun des mortels, comme l’île Moustique, un minuscule paradis pour milliardaires situé dans l’archipel des Grenadines. Ou accessibles à tous, comme les love-motels brésiliens, des nids d’amour pour les couples qui refusent la routine conjugale. Des îlots préservés, comme Tel Aviv, une bulle de fête et de liberté dans un pays en guerre, ou Doha au Qatar, véritable jardin d’Eden pour les expatriés français.

À Tel Aviv, on s’amuse, on fait des affaires et on danse jusqu’au bout de la nuit… C’est dans cette ville de 400 000 habitants que les israéliens se réfugient pour oublier la violence de la guerre et se ressourcer. Des centaines de bars, de boîtes de nuit et de restos branchés attirent une clientèle jeune et cosmopolite. Atmosphère dynamique, liberté des moeurs, essor économique… la ville est en plein boom.

Kalem el ness 2009-07-16

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

Introduction (Samy Gemayel speeches)
Tribute to Touffic Ibrahim
Issa Chamas : Part 1Part 2
Samy Gemayel : Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6
Murder of Omar and Akram El Kaissi : Part 1Part 2
Samy Gemayel : Part 7Part 8
Lebanese expats festival
Samy Gemayel : Part 9Part 10
Tony Issa : Parramatta

Man jailed for wearing T-shirt

Monday, June 29th, 2009

Raffi Nernekian, a Lebanese national, was arrested after an argument with a local man about the T-shirt, in which the key parts of Beckham’s body are obscured either by her hands or the logo “Protect the skin you’re in”.

Mr Nernekian was subsequently jailed for offending public decency for a month, a sentence upheld on appeal. He will be deported after serving his sentence, even though he has lived in the city for five years

[Full Article]

Dabke Dance in the Guinness book

Friday, June 26th, 2009

The Lebanese Student’s Association in Montreal, Canada succeeded in placing a testimony on the Guinness Book of World Records by organizing a dabke dance with 4475 participants.
The event titled ‘Our Unity Through Our Dabke’ was held at Montreal’s Marcelin Wilson’s Park gathered the longest dabke dance in the world despite the few drops of summer rain [Source]

Suzanne Tamim

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

Hisham Talaat Moustafa

Death sentences for both business tycoon Hisham Talaat Moustafa and a former police officer convicted of killing Suzanne Tamim.

Will they go through with the sentence? Or some kind of mircale (The Arab Justice System) will change the sentence?

SAUDI WOMAN DEFENDING THE HONOR OF HER PURSE

Friday, June 19th, 2009

I was having a wonderful and peaceful dinner with my family at Julia’s, Le Mall Habtoor. Nothing was going to ruin my evening (I always knew that after our dinners together each month, new wardrobe shopping would be coming, that it is why we have our dinners at malls, the real reward would come afterwards). We finished our dinner and like usual, my favorite part came, and I ran toward the shopping stores not knowing what to choose; then suddenly a woman’s voice came soaring with loud screeches into the air, everyone in the mall gathered around to see what was going on.

A bearded, skinny and dark skinned man was beating one of the Habtoor Hotel security guards and the young girl who shouted was cursing and jumping all around. I approached one of the viewers to get an understanding for all of this mess that what going on; to be honest it looked as if we were surrounded by barbaric animals in some sort of zoo; sometimes people lose control as if they are some sort of animals, and unfortunately we would only see that within the Arab world and seldom in the European world where people are far more civilized and educated.

So what happened? As we all know, whenever we enter Le Mall at Habtoor, a security man asks us to open our purses so he could lay an eye in it to make sure that we are not hiding some sort of weapon; so as usually the security man asked this young woman (who turned out to be a Saudi and yes, a Saudi with a headscarf wearing very tight black pants with the line of her string showing) to open her purse, so she did; the security man doing his job gave a look into the purse (then why the hell would he ask her to open her purse if not to look at what is inside!) when this civilized girl smacked him in the face and started to yell in Arabic obviously “how dare you look into my purse?”, her husband, fiancée or whatever he is (also a Saudi) went completely mad and started beating the security guard just because he looked into his wife’s, fiancée’s purse. As we all know, the Habtoor Hotel is for a Saudi man and he will stand for his people, especially for the honor of the Saudi woman’s purse, and I am sure that the fate of this poor security guy won’t turn out to be very good.