Aah Ya Beirut!-Part I
December 7th, 2007I’m at Queen Alia Airport rightnow waiting for my flight to take off to Beirut, as I’ll be speaking at the 2nd Arab Free Press Forum, organised by the World Association of Newspapers. Thanks to my wonderful friend Esra’a who nominated me for this event.
My Presentation will be on Monday December 10th about Blogs as alternative news outlets in the Middle East, I will bring up live examples of blogs that are popular and known to be good sources of news, Mideast Youth, 7iber.com, and Global Voices online will be the main blogs I’ll be talking about. Thanks again to Esra’a and my other wonderful friend Elisheva who also helped with materials about Mideast Youth , and also thanks to my good friend Lina who provided on 7iber.com and to Amira, whom I’ve got to know very recently for helping with regards to GVO.
Beirut has a dear place in my heart ,I visited the city on different occasions, last time I was there was in May, 06, two months before the 33-day war started!.I remember people were very optimistic about the future!, they were looking forward to a fruitful and economically productive summer!!.I would see construction cranes everywhere in the city, a good indication of how the city was in dynamic change!,but the summer came and with it came a war, a war that depleted the country’s resources and left it with even a greater dept than it had!
In a country, were tourism represents the spine of a fragile economy, such a war was hurtful to a damaging extent,as tourism went down to unprecedented and certainly not expected levels,which in turn resulted in higher levels of unemployment and higher levels of inflation.
I leave for Beirut tonight, and it’s facing a new challenge, the challenge of electing its new president,it has been causing a huge divide among various political forces in the country which led to it being postponed many times, and no one knows really when will they reach a final decision it!
I’ll write more when I arrive and certainly when I come back, but I leave you now with some pictures from my last trip there.
Also, when I come back, I’ll be talking about two new initiatives in my life, the first is called Soliya, and the second is Global Voices Online, but more on that will come later!
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You mean December 10th! Dec. 9 is Sunday.
I’m so glad you’re going. Put in a really good word for us!
and if possible, please do something like a video or podcast, it would be great if we can have that to document the experience.
Anyways have a safe trip, a great time, and take this opportunity to meet the most amazing people behind the Arab news and blogosphere! There will be a Moroccan journalist called Souad Rodi there, she helped us launch our French project for Mideast Youth: Please say hi to her as well! And also Sami from Yemen.
You’re in amazing company!
Looking very forward to read about your experiences!! I hope your camera’s fully charged.
Thanks Esra’a,
I’m sorry my post was full of spelling and grammatical mistakes, and even missing words!, but I needed to post it before I left!!,so I was in hurry!, but I corrected everything now, including the date of my presentation:-)
Very cool, Mohammad. I agree, a podcast would be great. For whatever it’s worth, December 10 is International Human Rights Day, so your discussion of MEY seems even more relevant, especially given all the blogs focusing on human rights that MEY (Esra’a and colleagues) has birthed.
Have a great time. I was going to go, but was refused exit from Qatar.
Nigel, I just read your story. I’m really sorry you had to go through all that. It really doesn’t make any sense why you would be refused from exiting the country, I sure hope you’ll follow up on this story and I’m sure that your presence will be missed in the forum.
There will be other opportunities in the future, and hopefully we get to meet someday.
Beautiful pictures Mohammad. I hope the last war be the last war, and no more wars, no more power in the hands of those who wage wars, who stimulate the tension and move toward the opposite direction from maintaining peace. Bon voyage
Hope it went well! Looking forward to reading what the responses were.
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