Note: This post was supposed to be a tweet. It’s not meant as an academic critique, just a quick opinion casually stated in writing.

Nadim Shehadi brings a very important perspective to the conversation about change in Lebanon. His opinion is particularly valuable because his “defense” of sectarianism, despite being a widely held opinion, puts him in a uniquely unpopular Devil’s Advocate position in western and intellectual circles. That’s why I always enjoy reading him and listening to him when I can (like at The Beirut Banyan podcast recently).

Very roughly, Shehadi argues that lebanon, in its diversity and freedom, has proven to be a much better model than the other alternatives in the region, which are nationalist, statist and authoritarian. That freedom, he contends, has brought in people from all over the region and the world to explore their ideas and to make money, for good and for ill (because sometimes even foreign revolutionaries benefited from this freedom to establish themselves at lebanon’s expense).

So far so good. I, like many, wholly agree with him. But then he goes on to imply, for whatever reason, that criticism of the current corrupt sectarian regime and calls for change like those at October 17, are driven mostly by young people who want to change Lebanon’s system from one of diversity and freedom and capitalism to one of statism, authoritarianism and socialism.

This strawman approach is at best lazy and at worst a character assassination for those of us who are trying to change the regime to make it more accountable, more effective and less corrupt, without changing its free, diverse and capitalistic foundations, which we cherish.

Yes, many of the loudest voices in the October 17 movement were on the populist Left. But they were soundly rejected by the voters in the ballots. So much so that even their most charismatic and popular Patron Saint, Jad Ghosn, couldn’t make the cut.

Nadim Shehadi spent most of his life in the U.K. So he must know that the English and the Anglo-Saxon world have managed to break from the Authoritarianism/Freedom duality. Yes, you can be free and diverse and still provide services and a dignified existence to your people. All of our intellectual efforts should be towards how we can achieve that goal in Lebanon.

Update: Shehadi wrote a response here…

The Trouble With Nadim Shehadi’s Lebanon was originally published in Beirut Spring on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Yesterday I got into a Twitter back and forth about the Hezbollah is a Terrorist chant that took place at the victims’ family protest next to Adlieh.

Joseph’s point was straightforward: “This does not help the course of justice or judge Bitar,” and it got me thinking about whether it was fair to single out Hezbollah in the families’ chants, and whether this will backfire on the perception of impartiality of the process by the many Lebanese who support Hezbollah..

Judge Bitar’s isolation had many cooks, and it was in fact Ex Minister Nouhad Machnouk who directly caused it (double curse him). Moreover, some activists seem to have infiltrated the gathering, to the consternation of at least some parents who did not want the event to be politicised.

But hold on, I still don’t think that Hezbollah should have been left off the hook; Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has again and again, in his speeches, thrown doubt on the impartiality of Judge Bitar’s investigation, called it politicised, and as far back as February implied that the investigation was for the sake of greedy insurance companies, and that as far as he was concerned, it was over. Then it all culminated in the threat that Hezbollah’s senior offical Wafic Safa made to “remove” judge Bitar, which the party didn’t even bother to deny, in a chilling display of power and unaccountability.

The isolation of Judge Bitar followed a typical Hezbollah playbook script in these years of their complete dominance: They provide the incentive, the cover, and then they let someone else, usually from the corrupt Lebanese ruling class (Gebran Basil, Nouhad Machnouk..etc) pull the trigger. This gives them not only deniability, but also spreads the false notion that somehow all Lebanese players are equally bad and evil.

All this is to say that I still believe that people should have chanted against Hezbollah. But they should have chanted instead: “Hezbollah is the master mind who carefully, over time, orchestrated the discrediting of the investigation and the isolation of judge Bitar”.

Too bad it’s not as catchy as “Hezbollah is a terrorist”.

Was it Fair to Chant “Hezbollah is a Terrorist” at the Victims’ Families Gathering? was originally published in Beirut Spring on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It seems the diaspora will be able to vote in the upcoming election (Make sure you register before November 20th on this link), and I’m looking forward to casting my vote. I wish to quickly share with you here my rationale for how I’m planning to vote and I hope you are persuaded to do the same.

I don’t know who will be standing for elections in my district. What I do know is that I’m planning to vote for whoever is standing against the politicians who ruined the country all these years.

Let me be as clear as possible: Even if the opposing candidate is a known thief, a swindler or a complete unknown with zero chance of being elected, that’s who I will vote for.

I don’t have some high-minded plan to bring the best person to do the job. I am not voting for a person’s ability to make change. My *only* objective in voting is to give the ruling class the middle finger 🖕🏼.

I don’t want a representative who will build a better future. I don’t want someone who speaks for me or protects my interests. I just want the blood of these fuckers. Because my vote is all I’ve got to get back at them.

They’ve taken our money, our lives and our freedom. What they can’t take away from me is my plan to spit in their faces and on their graves.

How I’m Planning to Vote In The Lebanese Elections was originally published in Beirut Spring on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Dear Mr. Cook.

I heard you are visiting Beirut as part of a drive to improve education for little girls in some parts of the world. This is admirable work, but you need some advice about navigating Lebanon’s famous minefields (the metaphorical kind. The real ones are fortunately far in the Lebanese south and good work is being done to find and disable them. )

Thankfully, my advice can be summed up in one phrase:

Stay away from the politicians

Listen Tim. You gotta trust me on this one. It may be difficult for you to understand this, but Lebanon has a weird way about its confessional politics. You can’t just visit the President and call it a day. In Lebanon you also have to visit the Prime Minister and the head of Parliament. You will then be asked to see religious leaders, and before you know it, you will be booked for 17 pointless meetings, and as we all know, your time is very precious.

I’m serious. Any photo op with any of the leaders will be promoted by his (never her) supporters as an endorsement for the leader’s tech vision. Some politicians in Lebanon are so deluded that they actually believe that this tiny country with little electricity and expensive internet is about to become a regional tech hub.

Another, final reason why you should stay away from the politicians: Your mission is to show Apple’s support for women and their empowerment. Imagine the optics of shaking hands with politicians in a government where the Minister for Women’s affairs is a man. In Lebanon, only 4 members of parliament are female, who are mostly there because they are related to an important man.

To sum it up, Mr cook. Enjoy the food. You can find your favorite Turkey bacon and egg white omelette in many restaurants in Beirut. I also suggest you try out some of the healthy local specialties for lunch. But make sure you stay away from the politicians.

Yours truly,

Fictitious Apple Middle East Expert

Mr. Cook. I heard you are visiting Beirut. was originally published in Beirut Spring on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

And here’s the original structure that inspired it:

Update: Check out the great photos over at Blog Baladi…

Tripoli’s Oscar Niemeyer Christmas Tree was originally published in Beirut Spring on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There is so much sloppiness around the internet and Facebook nowadays that one doesn’t bother debunking bogus statistics and “facts”… but when people start sharing and writing about things like the table below, as if it were some scientific research, it is worth doing some digging, because apparently people are too lazy making a political point to care about the truth.

Bogus

All charts were linking to a website called Numbeo , so I followed the link, and sure enough, Lebanon was on it. But something didn’t feel right. The page’s title is “Pollution Index 2016 Mid Year”, but there’s a small link at the top to access the “current” ranking (more recent than mid-2016 supposedly).

What I saw got me really impressed with Lebanon’s achievement. From mid-2016 to today (euhmm… 70% of 2016), it has managed to completely get out of the list:

So I took a look at their methodology, and this part immediately jumped at me:

Most of our data are based on perceptions (opinions) from visitors of this website.

So, according to the many many people who visit numbeo.com , Lebanon (and Ghana) are the most polluted places in the world (mid-2016, not current). This is not only a small sample (the tiny amount of people who visit that obscure site), but it’s also a measure of “perception”, i.e. what people think the pollution levels are.

But Mustapha, the page also said that they get some pollution information from the World Health Organization. Doesn’t that make it scientific?

So, sure enough, I went to the WHO’s pollution page, and downloaded their database.

First, there are absolutely no records about Ghana (supposedly the world’s most polluted country). Second, here are the only results I found about Lebanon:

The most recent data about Beirut is from 2014, the Annual mean, ug/m3 (more means more air pollution) is very low compared to the top countries on the WHO’s list:

In other words, there are many ways in which the Numbeo figures are bogus.

I’m aware of Lebanon’s trash crisis and of Lebanon’s trash politicians. But I think the lesson we can learn from this bogus chart is that we shouldn’t immediately believe something on the internet just because it’s in line with our biases.

Is it good politically in a fight against the government? Yes. Is it true? Not necessarily.

About That Bogus Pollution Chart the Lebanese Are Sharing was originally published in Beirut Spring on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’ve been reading complaints about the ads that are using Lebanon’s love of its army to sell products. Let it be known that I find nothing offensive in the idea of selling to people using symbols that they look up to. It’s how advertising has always worked. (I don’t see verbal pitchforks railing against actors pretending to be dentists on TV to sell toothpaste)

The critiques I agree with are the creative kind (some ads are too ugly or undignified) and the ones relating to using Israeli soldiers (some people are too stupid). I will even talk in favor of the insensitivity and hypocrisy argument (celebrating while some soldiers are missing or dead). But I find nothing remotely rational in this critique:

2016 will officially go down as the year when Lebanon commercialized its Army Day. It was probably a long time coming, but we’re officially there.

Why is that bad? Unless you are some kind of far-leftist who believes everything in this world should be free or that commerce is intrinsically evil and we are somehow as a species above it, I see no reason why we should be offended by this.

Sex sells, and so does the Army

What can possibly be wrong in doing something that both creates commercial activity and boost the army’s morale?

What those ads are telling us is that people really look up to the Lebanese Army and stand behind it, and that our emotions of love and admiration are sincere. There is nothing more honest than an emotion capitalists want to exploit.

In Praise of Exploiting the Army to Make Money was originally published in Beirut Spring on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I want to write a quick few words on the (deserved) victory of Ashraf Rifi in Tripoli’s municipal elections

It may feel like this completely game-changing event, but the biggest conclusion we should make is that this is truly about the failure of the leadership of Saad Hariri.

It takes a special kind of incompetence to lose an election to someone who promises to be harder on your father’s killers than you are. Ashraf Rifi was essentially running on a reinvigoration platform, on returning to the essence of March 14 and being hard on the killers of Rafik Hariri.

Ironically, while many in Tripoli are starting to see Mr. Rifi as Rafik Hariri’s true heir, it was arguably Mr. Hariri Junior’s move (allying with your enemies for the greater good) that was more in spirit with what his father would have done. But the son didn’t have what it takes and didn’t give the tripoli people what they wanted.

Instead, he took them for granted and got in bed with the same people who whitewashed the killing of his father, and he didn’t even have the decency to explain to the voters why he had to stab them in the back.

Hariri was beaten not by a stranger, or an outsider. He was beaten by a better version of himself..

Deus Ex Machina was originally published in Beirut Spring on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Five years ago, I wrote a post arguing that the time has come for the Lebanese to start using bicycles as their main mode of transportation:

Tripoli is so small you can easily walk from any point to any other point. And yet, we still have what I can only describe as pointless traffic […] Lebanese cities are ideal for bike rides. They are relatively small, dense and safe. [..] All we need is a small public and private push: Bicycle lanes from the municipality, locker rooms and showers in companies and universities, awareness campaigns — preferably with some celebrity endorsement — to make the practice cool and acceptable.

It took 5 years, and we’re still far from seeing a popular embrace of bicycles, but I’m starting to see signs, especially in Tripoli, that biking is becoming cooler and more socially accepted.

Reputation Boost

Tripoli, often seen by the rest of Lebanon as backward, rife with Islamists and dangerous, could use the kind of publicity boost by becoming a more progressive and eco-friendly city of bicycle users.

Projects like Natheer’s Halawani’s “Eves on Wheels” (check it out, Natheer is one of Tripoli’s most talented photographers), in which he highlighted female bicycle riders, many of whom are in Tripoli, serve to increase awareness and fight backward preconceptions about bicycles being somehow harmful to women.

If you’re interested in the future of biking in Tripoli and the rest of Lebanon, I encourage you to attend the upcoming Bike Tripoli event on Sunday in Tripoli. Details are on their facebook page.

Show your support for the capital of the north and for a more bicycle friendly future for Lebanon by coming on Sunday. You won’t regret it. The food is excellent and there are great things to see.

Tripoli is Becoming Lebanon’s Most Bicycle Friendly City was originally published in Beirut Spring on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Consider for a moment what Beirut Madinati had going for it as it entered the election:

The Trash Crisis and Peak Revulsion

Things were very bad in Beirut with trash literally everywhere. People were worrying about mortal threats, carcinogenic gases, super bacteria, stinking streets. Lebanon was the mockery of the world, adding wounded pride to wounded bodies. We couldn’t fall any lower

The Surprise Element

The political elite was taken by surprise by Beirut Madinati. It didn’t see it coming. It didn’t prepare for the election beforehand and had to rush things at the last moment. This won’t happen again, considering how they almost lost yesterday.

Low Turnout

Despite what you may have heard, the low turnout was great news for Beirut Madinati. This means that their opponents, who lacked their supporters’ enthusiasm, were the ones who stayed home.

Withholding Scrutiny

Many of the elite supported Beirut Madinati as a catch-all movement against the ruling class. To the extent that many have set ideology aside and suspended doubt to vote for them. Capitalists were voting for a platform that promised “guaranteed cheap housing” despite knowing in the depth of their hearts that there cannot be such a thing without other market-distorting measures like rent-control or price fixing.

Star Power

Nadine Labaki and some of the other star-appeal members of team may have forever forsaken politics after yesterday.

Breathless support of online community

Almost the entire online community was standing behind Beirut Madinati, partly because it was a refreshing and new phenomenon and partly because of the reasons above

Are we forever doomed then? Not quite. This post is not to argue that there is no future for a Beirut Madinati kind of movement. This is to say that they had their best chance, and things will never be as easy as last election.

The future Beirut Madinati will compete in a much more difficult environment, where politicians are prepared, where the trash will be gone, where people will be scrutinizing the details more carefully. In other words, they will need a much bigger effort to achieve the same results. They have their work cut out for them…

Why Beirut Madinati’s Results May be The Best We Can Ever Have was originally published in Beirut Spring on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.