Myriam Achkar and the Collective Response

On 22 November 2011, Lebanon's independence day, the body of a 28-year-old Lebanese woman, Myriam Achkar, was found in the woods of Sahel Alma near Jounieh, north of Beirut. She was murdered by Fathi Jaber Al-Salatini, a Syrian national working as a janitor at a nearby monastery. He had apparently attempted to rape her. First I want to extend my sincere condolences to her family - although belated. I cannot even begin to imagine the pain and suffering they are going through.

Although I was extremely shocked and angered by this crime, the reason I am writing this post is not to talk about the murder itself, but what it has shown about the level of discussion in the country. I may be mistaken but I strongly feel that this was one of the most widely discussed issue in the Lebanese blogosphere, from what it meant that she was a Christian and the fact that the murderer was Syrian to the debate about sexual violence against women in general and the irresponsible behaviour of media outlets. I have therefore collected all blogs addressing this heinous crime in this post, with a brief about some of the conclusions made for each. I will be adding more to it as I find them (please feel free to point out any that I've missed in the comments section and I will get to it).

The death of the retweet button*

When I first heard the term Social Media, I didn't quite grasp its significance. But then I delved into it, by joining Facebook, Linked In and Twitter and started hearing things like "You're not supposed to do stuff like that on Linked In" and "What do you mean you didn't "like" it? That's why he's angry with you." and the more common "That's not really appropriate material for Twitter." Of course I now use these expressions too, as the medium quickly develops into an independent society with etiquette, norms and yes, traditions. Since I'm not really an expert, I am not going get into the sociocultural theories behind all this. What I want to do is just express my amazement at one specific phenomenon.

The little things

This is a picture from today's Addustour concerning a news item on water costs and government subsidies. But that's not what I want to talk about. The caption below the picture translates into "Ministry of Water Secretary General in the Press Conference". Now you tell me, from the picture, which one is the Secretary General? Would you ever consider that it's not the man with the large red microphone who seems to be hogging the conversation and speaking with authority?

Well it's not. It's the lady in the back, who probably looks like she's writing minutes or just watching the audience.

Just thought I'd share this. Cause in the end, regardless of achievement, it's the little things that matter.