Lebanon

*"the people demand TREES. or at least I demand trees"*

*--Gregory Severin*

## Eulogy 1

*By Cam Cain*

Lebanon is a country in the Middle East

It takes its name from Mount Lebanon, which despite its name is a mountain range, not a singular mountainI

ts population is 54% Muslim and 40% Christian

It experienced a deadly civil war from 1975-1990

The Syrian Civil War has also spilled a bit into Lebanon

## Eulogy 2

*By Gregory Severin*

Lebanon is a small Mediterranean country north of Israel

In antiquity, the ancient Phoenicians called modern-day Lebanon home, meaning that the Lebanese invented the alphabet

One Phoenician city in Lebanon is Tyre, one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world, the birthplace of the legendary ladies Europa and Dido, and a city-state that Alexander the Great famously besieged by building a land bridge large enough for his armies to invade it at low tide (before this causeway it was on an island). Tyre also invented purple, and Tyrian dye was a famous symbol of status in the Roman and Byzantine eras

Lebanon is notable for its ethnic and religious diversity. It's the most Christian country in the Middle East, but it's also still majority Muslim. Also, a sizeable minority of the population are Druze, a totally real religion that has a lot of secret practices and strongly forbids converts and marriage outside the faith. The Druze were important figures in the foundation of modern Lebanon, and were very active during the 15-year Lebanese Civil War

Ok yeah war stuff: this, like many sources of ethnic conflict in the Middle East, can be traced back to the legacy of World War I. France took over from the Ottomans, mismanaged it, World War II happened, Israel happened, defeated Palestinian militants went to Lebanon to hide out, Christians didn't like that and fought them, each group split into factions and fought each other, Syria got involved, Israel got involved, the UN and US got involved, and eventually things sort of got worked out in the nineties

The twenties have not been kind to Lebanon. 2019 saw mass protests in response to a series of unpopular taxes and perceived government inability, and just as it looked like the country was getting somewhere covid broke out and the capital fucking exploded. That last part isn't hyperbole, one of the worst manmade explosions that didn't involve nukes happened in Beirut in 2020. All of this has resulted in rampant inflation and currency devaluation, leading the current economic crisis to be considered one of the worst recessions in human history

Ok now let's talk about something nice for a change: Lebanese food is straight up delicious. We got tabbouleh, we got baba ganoush, we got kafta, we even have these little balls of dough stuffed with meat called kibbeh and hot damn am I hungry now. Lebanese wine is also quite tasty, as the Phoenicians were among the first to discover viniculture and spread it through the Mediterranean

Notable Lebanese people include artist Walid Raad, singer Serj Tarkinian, Twitter personality and diss track subject Mia Khalifa, and lawyer/Clooneywife Amal Alamuddin. Flames center Nazem Kadri is of Lebanese descent, as is the guy who wrote Misirlou (you may remember it as the song the Black Eyed Peas butchered when they released "Pump It") and singer/noted truth-teller Shakira

## Tournament

Lebanon was defeated by Kiribati in Round 1 Matchup 87 of FlagVote. As the 93 seed, it was defeated by Kent in Round 2 Matchup 59 of FlagVote 2 after previously defeating Colombia. As the 373 seed, it was defeated by Aruba in Round 4 Matchup 29 of FlagVote 3.

## Results

### FlagVote 2

**Round 1:** Win over (420) Colombia 5-1

**Round 2:** Loss to (164) Kent 4-3

### FlagVote 3

**Round 1:** Win over (652) Kent 8-2

**Round 2:** Win over (140) Cameroon 6-5

**Round 3:** Win over (117) Hokkaido 6-5

**Round 4:** Loss to (12) Aruba 8-3