Hats Off to Lebanon!

Lebanese Culture Minister Tarek Mitri announced on Wednesday. "Lebanon will not participate in this year's Paris book fair in protest at the cultural event's organizers' decision to select Israel as guest of honor."

Lebanon is the first Arab government to announce a boycott of the event, which runs March 14 through March 19, after organizers announced that 39 Israeli writers were being invited to mark the 60th anniversary of the Jewish state.

"The crimes against humanity that Israel is perpetrating in the Palestinian territories ... constitute, in themselves, a strong condemnation of Israel, making it unworthy of being welcomed as a guest of honor at an international book fair," the 50-nation Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization said.

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On Envy

It's strange to find that many people, including educated ones, still live under the influence of certain beliefs and myths that control their thoughts and actions. Many forms of superstitions that I thought were forgotten and buried long time ago apparently continue to exist. Believing in bad omens and evil eye and putting the blame on them when bad things happen are unfortunately still widespread among us.

A friend who was "obviously" pregnant denied this fact out of fear of "envy"! She aborted twice before and thought that letting people know that she's expecting a baby is a "bad omen". So, she chose to hide the fact, but her growing abdomen was definitely difficult to hide!
Many people actually prefer to withhold or lie about many things even if these things were well known to others, thus make fools of themselves and show to what extent they are obsessed of the idea of envy and evil eye.

Of course I cannot deny that envy can harm us. Allah(SWT) says (what means): "And from the evil of the envier when he envies." and Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) said, “The effect of an evil eye is a fact.” But, it is also believed that the evil eye can never harm us unless God wills so. Hence, lying, fearing , and being way obsessed with el 7asad is unjustified. God protects and supports us if we were good believers.

What astonishes me is that many people find in "envy" an excuse to justify their misdeeds ... to not face their failures and simply relate them to 7asad. "I've been envied" is the pretext given.. A couple may find in"We've been envied" an easy getaway from confronting their problems and their faults and try to fix things up. A cowardly attitude that I strongly detest.

So, what I mean to say here is that I do not stand against people who believe in envy because I am one of them, it's those who are incapable of facing reality and facts, and admit their own faults, and always trying to shift responsibility for all the bad things that happen to them onto "envy", "bad luck", or "the black cat that passed by them that morning :D".

Hanging Coffins

I came upon a picture titled "hanging coffins". Hanging Coffins? sounds so unfamiliar! I've heard of burning the bodies of the dead, and of mummifying them, but burrying them in "hanging coffins"? This is so unheard of. My curiousity drove me to search for more information about this and here's what I got:

Hanging coffin is a unique funeral and sacrifice custom of the minority groups in southern China. People put the bodies of their ancestors into wooden coffins that were later placed in caves of precipitous cliffsides.
Most coffins were made with one whole piece of wood into various shapes. It was said that the hanging coffins could prevent bodies from being taken by beasts and also bless the soul eternally.

Archeologists believe that the coffins were placed on the cliff faces in this manner so that they were closer to the heavens. Coffins were either placed in caves in the cliffs or suspended on pegs. A stairs was constructed up the cliff face so that the coffins could be placed up high.

weird!

A laptop for every Libyan pupil

This is interesting.

Libya has reached an agreement with an American nonprofit group to provide inexpensive laptop computers for all of the nation's 1.2 million schoolchildren.

With the project scheduled to be completed by June 2008, Libya could become the first nation in which all school-age children are connected to the Internet through educational computers, Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of the One Laptop per Child project, told the The New York Times on Wednesday.

The $250 million deal, reached on Tuesday, would provide the nation with 1.2 million computers, a server in each school, a team of technical advisers, satellite internet service and other infrastructure.

The One Laptop per Child project, which has the support of the United Nations Development Programme, aims to provide laptops to school-aged children worldwide for about $100 each. It has reached tentative purchase agreements with Argentina, Brazil, Nigeria and Thailand.

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I want a laptop tooo :'(. But not like the green one above, it's ugly! :p

Train Turned to Public Library

On your way to Zahleh,The Bride of Beqaa Valley, you can't but stop to take a look at the public library of Saadnayel(a small village in Beqaa valley) that was established in a very unique and original way.

The library, that makes heads turn, is in fact nothing but an old rusty train that was fixed up, painted, located at the center of the village and turned into a beautiful cultural center where people meet and read.

Take a look.

yeah, that's my car. I had to cross to the other side of the street to take this picture.

wait! I found more pictures online.

Paradise Now nomination opposed

A petition claiming that the film Paradise Now glorifies Palestinian suicide bombers and asking for its removal from Oscar consideration has been delivered to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

The petition, carrying more than 36,000 signatures garnered online, was presented two days before Sunday's Academy Awards at its Beverly Hills headquarters by Arab-American peace activist Nonie Darwish.

Darwish said Paradise Now "did not show the evils of terrorism enough".

"Any one of us could be a victim of terror at any time," she said. "Islamic terror has become an epidemic. We don't need to understand it. We don't need to excuse it ... . No more. We need to end it."

John Pavlik, Academy spokesman, declined to comment on the petition and said he was unsure whether officials would examine it.

However, he was clear about whether the nomination of Paradise Now would be withdrawn. "Not gonna happen," Pavlik said.

"It would be physically impossible to happen between now and Sunday and, beyond that, we're not going to disqualify films because some people don't like the content."


Fictional story

Paradise Now tells the fictional story of two young mechanics from the West Bank town of Nablus sent to carry out a double suicide bombing in Tel Aviv.

The film won a Golden Globe Award in January and is nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film.

The petition campaign was organised by Yossi Zur, an Israeli whose 16-year-old son, Asaf, died in a bus bombing in the northern city of Haifa three years ago on Sunday - the day of the Academy Awards ceremonies.

Seventeen people died in that attack by Hamas, which recently won Palestinian parliamentary elections.

"Paradise Now is a movie that attempts to explain away the actions behind mass murderers. This mere act, in effect, legitimises this type of mass murder and portrays the murderers themselves as victims!" the petition states.

A counter-petition in support of the film has drawn about 8300 online signatures. That petition says Paradise Now does not attempt to legitimise the bombings. "It is a story about the suffering of Palestinians and how a life of desperation can lead to an act of desperation," according to the petition website.

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