SPECIAL VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITY: LIGHTHOUSE RENOVATION

Please circulate and email/call the UNESCWA quickly to register your names

this is a very special opportunity for you to
actively participate in saving Beirut’s heritage.

If you aren’t a member of a rowing team, you probably have never noticed
that there is a small lighthouse on the port side of the BIEL peninsula. In
fact you have to go to the very farthest end of the last parking lot at
BIEL and take a stairway to the other side of the wall that separates BIEL
from the port area to reach it. It is said to be the oldest lighthouse in
Beirut, built by the French during the 1930s, and is now in terrible
condition. The Rowing Federation that has its headquarters nearby is
planning to have a Rowing Day on June 18th to introduce people in Lebanon
to the sport of rowing, and a group of us are trying to fix up the
lighthouse for the occasion. You are invited to participate in the project.

We will have three workdays the coming three Saturdays, with two shifts
each day (9 am-1 pm and 3-7 pm):

·         May 28th — THIS Saturday (scraping old paint off the walls)
·         June 4th (plastering to fill all the holes and smooth the rough
spots)
·         June 11th (painting)

For this Saturday, all you need to bring is water and a scraper (and
probably a hat and sunscreen). You can either order lunch or go out of the
area for lunch (or just be there for one shift).

Please let me know immediately (and definitely by noon on Friday) if you
want to join us this Saturday. I need to know your name, cell phone number,
email address and which shift(s) you will be there. I think it’s going to
be great fun, and an opportunity to view Beirut from a very special vantage
point.

Please forward to those whom you think will be interested.

All the best,
neda jafar
UN ESCWA
jafarn@un.org


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Echoes from the West..

here’s an excerpt from the American Nihilist Underground Society which we’re reproducing here because it quite realistically depicts the situation in Lebanon (and similar third world countries with a rich past) from a cultural point of view:

“Decline of society is a symptom of our decline as people, as a culture, as an idea.

Decline originates in the collision between our wealth, and our resentment of anyone who has more.

It makes us passive, and instead of thinking toward creation, we think toward parasitism.

This is how most of the world thinks, and it’s why they live in poverty, have low IQs and are beset by disease and warfare.

Thanks to our prole revolt in the west, we are joining them. They have almost won; liberal democracy is their triumph.

They have one big task left: destroy heritage, and make us all citizens of the global shopping mall, fresh for imprinting without whatever trivial trends obsess them”

 

Hoping this inexorable nightmare vision doesnt come to pass.

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1 down, 200 to go…

according to fellow facebook group Save Beirut Heritage:

“Demolished on Friday 20th of May 2011, at 6am.
Plot 1132 – Classified B – Declassified by Majliss Shoura el Dawleh –
On the highway from Hamra to Achrafieh (Fouad Chehab – Burj El Ghazal), on the right hand side. After the Bachoura cemetery and before burj al ghazal. Right facing the Markazia Monroe Suites, on the other… side of the highway.

One of the most beautiful houses of Beirut is now gone.”

 

there are barely 200 traditional houses left in Beirut out of the 1450 in the first post-war census provided by APSAD. houses rated A and B are not to be touched except to be restored. not demolished. this house was destroyed in the first hours of morning while still
in near pristine shape.

we want to thank the lebanese owners of such houses and the municipality of beirut for their zealous endeavor to erase the true face of the lebanese capital. we wish to thank the lebanese government for ever postponing the implementation of the law to protect traditional houses/edifices and culturally relevant structures in lebanon and we want to thank influencial developers who build shamelessly upon the ruins of old beirut that are being discovered whenever new building foundations are excavated.

in short, since it seems beirut is in such good hands, we would like to wish it a swift and painless death (by concrete-induced suffocation).

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Mar Mikhael 1st May Protest

The APLH participated with Save Beirut Heritage in the protest which took place
near the ex-cinema Vendome construction site. the APLH made it clear that a law
to protect traditional buildings is an ESSENTIAL step the lebanese government
has to make. view the complete edit here.

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