Gather round, it's time you heard the legend of Lebanese MP Cynthia Zarazir.
Lebanon is in crisis. The crooks who've been running the country for the last 50 years stole all the money. There's no electricity. Half of Beirut was blown up by that huge fertilizer explosion. People are at the end of their rope and demanding change.
Beirut after the explosion.
Everything in Lebanon is governed by which religious sect you come from, and they love to split hairs. It's not just a matter of Christian or Muslim. Which kind of Christian are you? There are seats in parliament reserved for Maronites, Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholics, Armenian Orthodox, Armenian Catholics, and Protestants (which are a kind of Armenian). But those 6 categories aren't enough to include every Christian sect in the country, so there's also one seat set aside for all the other smaller Christians sects. This is the seat that firebrand activist Cynthia Zarazir, an Assyrian Christian, was elected to. The Lebanese electoral system is incredibly confusing but apparently she managed to win with just 486 votes somehow. Girlboss moment!
The October 17 protest demanding the overthrow of the elites.
So what is her platform? She's against the corrupt thugs who've bled the country dry. And she's also against the Syrian refugees who make up about a quarter of Lebanon's current population. By against, I mean she's said she wants to kill all of them, including the women and children. Later on TV she was asked to clarify this and confirmed that yes, she said that and she totally means it. Hello, based department???
She's also controversial because she's kind of an instagram ho/e-thot except she's actually really attractive. When she was elected she made a really cringe video where she's sitting in a g*mer chair thanking her supporters like she's some kind of youtuber. And apparently she's been thotting around on TV too. All of this sounds really hot but she's got a tattoo of Michel Aoun on the back of her neck from many years ago when she was supporting him. We're gonna have to get that lasered off, honey.
Lebanese President Michel Aoun.
Unfortunately it's not so easy for an e-thot to make it in the male-dominated world of the Lebanese parliament. It's a boy's club and all the boys are gangsters. The speaker is the Shi'a warlord Nabih Berri who has possibly killed more Palestinian kids than the entire nation of Israel. Just to emphasize that this was going to be a hostile work environment they assigned her to a filthy office littered with used condoms and porno mags. Oh yeah, and threatened to kill her. When she tried complain in parliament, Berri told her to sit down and shut up and then one of his MPs made fun of her because her name rhymes with "cockroaches".
Our queen was not intimidated. She's announced that she spoke to the commander of the Army and he told her that as an MP it's perfectly legal for her to carry a gun inside the chambers. Scrotes better watch themselves, Cynthia Zarazir don't play.
Artist's conception of what it may look like when Zarazir returns to parliament.
Links
Bio - Note her focus on the issue of people disappeared by the Syrians during their occupation. Maybe she knew one of them and that's what's got her so mad?
Instagram - You're lying if you don't admit this makes you feel straggoty.
Reddit thread on recent news
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
How many are Arab vs not Arab?
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Some fringe weirdos claim stuff like "I'm not an Arab, I'm a Phoenician", but basically they're all Arab except for the Armenians.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
What about the Assyrians and Arameans?
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Good question. I don't know. The Assyrians are refugees from a genocide in Iraq after WW1 and there's very very few of them, so I don't know much about them.
The whole question of who is an Arab is something I'm not too sure about because there's so much diversity in the region. Like a lot of these people were still speaking Aramaic into the 1800s but are considered Arabs now.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Are they considered Arab or rather βArab?β
Tangentially, are there any Greeks still in the Levant? Every once in a while I hear some Greeks talk about the Greek minority and how they, along with Christian Arabs, are being oppressed.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
No. The Greek Orthodox aren't Greek, they're Arabs who are part of the church going back to Byzantine times. And the Greek Catholics are an offshoot that broke off (1700s?) and follow the Roman pope but mostly maintain their old traditions.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Oh I know that the Orthodox and Melkites are full fledged Arabs, Iβm talking about actual Greeks who still lived in the Levant after Islam and the Ottomans and are members of either Church.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
There's all kinds of people around there but not ethnic Greeks that I know of.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
I heard there used to be a decent number of them but the Turks got to them during the first world war.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context