Venting Toxic Gases


It seems that every step we human beings take on our planet leaves behind some form of smelly gaseous, or watery, or solid residue, its disgusting as I am sure you will all agree. But the Lebanese are alone in flaunting their total and utter contempt for the environment in their daily living habits. We have turned spewing into an art form.

We have miracles on wheels in Lebanon, vehicles that should have been put out of their misery a long time ago, spewing white clouds of poison as they go. A walk in certain parts of Beirut at certain times of day is likely to make you sick; seriously, you literally feel nautious and dizzy.

Add to the summer heat the fact that the number of vehicles on the roads seems to have doubled, probably due to the influx of tourists to our beautiful land. But the question is for how much longer will this land remain beautiful or livable?

Forget the toxic gases from your vehicle and the fact we seem to be living in a huge garage of a country and are slowly killing ourselves, think of the clouds of chemical pesticides that rise above our most fertile lands. Think of all those cancer causing chemicals absorbed into plants, into our fruits and vegetables and ultimately ingested by us. Are we playing Russian roulette with our lives everytime we eat an apple?

What about the farmer sparying banned cancer causing pesticides while wearing a sleeveless shirt and shorts, with poisonous liquid dripping down his arm and settling in his arm pits. Its not just this generation that is in danger, future generations are at risk too. Children born with congenital malformations and cancer have been linked to their parents absorbing high levels of toxins from pesticides.

The worst thing about Lebanon is people hide the fact someone dear to them has cancer or try to justify congenital malformations in infants as the result of relatives intermarrying. Therefore there are no studies in Lebanon on the link between pesticides and cancers and congenital deformaties in children.

Forget that for a moment, what about the thousands of deisel fueled private power generators, noisy and inefficient, they not only add to the toxic soup in our atmosphere, they add noise pollution and heat. Remember global warming! We seem to be having an early winter this year, how strange, could it have anything to do with melting polar ice caps and the steady warming of our planet?

There is no doubt that the Lebanese and their lifestyle can take a sizable share of the blame for the global rise in ocean levels, disappearing coastlines, islands, habitas, the chopping down of trees in the rain forests, you see we are consumer crazy! By trying to out do each other in the amount of possessions we have we are driving a crazy economy that thrives on excess. We love it, the economy loves it, but our plant is slowly dieing as a result.

So, think next time you buy a car, or drive to work one person to a car, or turn on your generator, or open your fridge , or leave the tap dripping all night, or eat a piece of fruit, or leave the light on all night, or or or or, you get the picture. You are a citizen in this government, that is you are an elector, a small part of four million true, but you still have the responsibility to hold your elected officials accountable, to force them to change things. Dont let them get away with murdering our country.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Adultery and the western media's attitude towards Dubai

Here we go again... another British woman charged with adultery in Dubai and the whole of the British and UAE press jump all over it as if its the scoop of the season. I wonder what readers think and in particular British readers? Do they feel ashamed that a compatriot is behind bars because she could not control her animal urges? Well they should be, because this is far from a crime she committed against her husband, with whom she exchanged marital vows, it is a crime against the laws of the UAE. It shows a total lack of regard and respect for the traditions of this conservative Muslim country and it is a slap in the face of every Emirati. Why does the press seem compelled to give such people extensive coverage? One hopes to enlighten the British public as to the pitfalls of sleeping around and its legal repercussions, but in truth its all about money, headlines and a public hungry to devour such shameful scandal. The press are complicit with the mob in elevating such individuals, who
Read more

Orosdi-Back: A lost Beyrouth department store from an elegant age

Image
My mother told me it was located on ‘ Banks Street ’ in Down Town Beirut , the road that leads up to Riad el Solh Square . On most maps the street is also named after Riad el Solh. The store was located opposite Bank Intra, or so I was told. Presumably the location of the store was indicative of the high end goodies on sale inside. The closest comparison to Orosdi Back is the old Allied’s department store in Dubai , for those who remember Dubai in the 1980s. But Orosdi Back was a store from a different age, an age of elegance as opposed to the vulgar modern excesses of the nouveau-riche, something Beirut ’s Down Town is synonymous with! A wonderful blog dubbed ‘language hat’ published some information about the founders of this chain of department stores. According to the blog the chain of stores came about as a result of a partnership between Adolf Orosdi, a Hungarian army officer and his sons who opened a clothing store in Galata in 1855, and the Back family, who were Austro-H
Read more

Lebanon searching for deliverance from the wolves of war, chaos and collapse

Image
There is little to do in Lebanon, little paid work to be done, and what work there is, is pointless and poorly paid. Here we live in the hope that we shall eventually be delivered from the monsters, the wolves of our Lebanese government, Cabinet and Parliament and all the power-brokers that manipulate our lives. I once asked a political science professor “why do politicians always wear suits and ties?” He answered jokingly: “so you don’t see their snake’s skin”, I guess if they wore hats it would be so we don’t see their devil’s horns, or is that meant only for men of the cloth…?   Regardless of which political side you ask about our country’s future, the answer would likely be the same, that things are looking bleak and the blame is always laid at the door of the “other side”, because your interlocutor will never make the mistake of accepting that his/her side shares any of the blame for catastrophe. Lebanese society remains highly polarized politically and ideologically. Archaic reli
Read more