Lebanon's National Day, 2011of Reluctant Celebrations

An Ode to the 'two white peaks' of Lebanon...

"Happy Independence day ya Lebanan ya watani (nationality, my country) lebanan
This is Lebanon , this is my country that i love so much."

"Most countries around the world celebrate their “Independence Day” with ecstatic joy. To all of those countries, it is a reminder of their struggle to break free from superpowers that were using their land, their people, their resources…"

"Much like BeirutBeauty.com, Haifa Wehbeh is also back in action."

LEBANON V AUSTRALIA: A friendship in immigration faces challenges from the blogosphere:

"Something must happen to our representatives when they are stationed down under. First we have Lebanon’s Consul General in Sydney, Robert Naoum, who filed a defamation lawsuit against an Australian blogger for calling him a ‘Zionist’. Naoum then went on to protest against paying legal fees (after losing the case), warning Australia that forcefully docking his salary would amount to a declaration of war between the two countries."

"When a man protested social injustice with a suicidal move of burning his own body, he triggered a whole revolution that broke the boundaries of his own country to hit many other Arab countries. He was crowned as a hero, idolized a copied many other times!"

Taking issue with the naked issue and the controversy it has aroused:

"I was an art student, not so many years ago. The idea that nudity in an artistic context could be “outrageous” did not often occur to me."