The Promise,
which opens in UAE cinemas on Thursday, brings the story of the
massacre to the big screen for the first time, portraying a love
triangle between a hard-drinking but fearless American reporter
(Christian Bale), a young Armenian medical student from the countryside
(Oscar Isaac) and a cultured Armenian nanny (Charlotte Le Bon) at the
outset of the killings. The film has received mixed reviews from critics, with some panning it as cliched, and it tanked at the box office over its opening weekend in North America. But
that seems to matter little to cinema-goers in Lebanon, home to
hundreds of thousands of Armenians whose ancestors fled here to escape
the violence. Nor does it seem to matter that the characters lack depth
or that the tale is told through a decidedly American lens, with a focus
on the reporter character and English used throughout the film.
What does matter is that the massacre is portrayed as a genocide. Released in Lebanon just before the annual April 24 commemoration of the massacre, screenings of The Promise have been packed. Christ Kojamanian, 23, said he cried through two showings of the film during its opening weekend. “It’s very good, it’s an excellent movie,” he said. “There is so much bad stuff about the Turks – but it’s all real.” Mr Kojamanian said he hoped the film would raise awareness about the killings 100 years ago. “We
will keep fighting for the recognition of the genocide. We are waiting
for America to do it – they are the king,” he added. The United States
is among a majority of countries that do not recognise the killing of an
estimated one and a half million Armenians as genocide. Mr Kojamanian spoke to The National
at a gathering of thousands of Armenians in downtown Beirut on Monday
to commemorate the 102nd anniversary of the killings which are generally
considered to have started in April 1915. To
Lebanese Armenians, the massacre is more than a painful historical
event: It is the reason that most of them are here in Lebanon, hundreds
of kilometres from their ancestral homeland, and represents a battle
they are still fighting. Although the first Armenians to settle in
Lebanon arrived in the fourth century as Christian pilgrims en route to
Jerusalem, their numbers remained small until after 1915.
For Just $425, These Jeans Covered With Fake Mud Can Be Yours
If you have $425 burning a hole in your pocket and are
looking to purchase some new fashion for spring that will make you look
like you’ve slipped on a rainy day at a music festival, look no further.
Nordstrom
has you covered. The “Barracuda Straight Leg Jeans” are described as
“Heavily distressed medium-blue denim jeans in a comfortable
straight-leg fit embody rugged, Americana workwear that’s seen some
hard-working action with a crackled, caked-on muddy coating that shows
you’re not afraid to get down and dirty.”
So… they show you’re not afraid to get “down and dirty,” even though you spent $425 just so that you won’t have to actually get “down and dirty” in them. Mike Rowe, host of Dirty Jobs, took to Facebook
to absolutely skewer the pants, saying, “Finally – a pair of jeans that
look like they have been worn by someone with a dirty job…made for
people who don’t. And you can have your very own pair for just $425.00.” “They’re not even fashion,” he argues. “They’re a costume for wealthy people who see work as ironic – not iconic.” Fair point.
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The Russians are using ‘a new style of attack’ against France’s frontrunner candidate
by Nathalie Bertrand — A hacking group linked by cybersecurity experts to Russia’s
military intelligence apparatus has begun taking aim at France’s
centrist presidential candidate, Emmanuel Macron, the
cybersecurity firm Trend Micro said in a report published on
Tuesday. On March 15, the group — known as Fancy Bear, Pawn Storm, Sednit,
APT28, Sofacy, or STRONTIUM — began registering domain names
like “onedrive-en-marche.fr” and “mail-en-marche.fr” in an
attempt to trick members of Macron’s campaign team into clicking
on links that looked affiliated with his political party, En
Marche.
“A huge revelation in this Trend Micro report is
that Fancy Bear has significantly upped the
sophistication of its cyber attacks,” said Greg Martin, the
CEO of cybersecurity firm JASK. “They’re taking advantage of
vulnerabilities in cloud-based email services like Gmail to trick
people into downloading fake applications, and compromising
their inboxes without even having to steal
a password.” Martin said that when targeted by this kind of attack,
known as “OAuth phishing,” the victim can’t just
change their password to regain access to their account. “It’s a new style of attack is very deadly and
unprecedented,” he said. “It’s the first time we have seen
this in the wild.”
A more primitive version of that phishing
technique was on full display during the US presidential
election. Emails stolen by Fancy Bear from the Democratic
National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John
Podesta, were fed to WikiLeaks and the website DCLeaks,
which is run by self-described hacker Guccifer 2.0, who
researchers believe was a persona created by Russian military
intelligence. “The cat got out of the bag in terms of the tools used in the DNC
cyberattacks, so Fancy Bear upped the ante this time around,”
Martin said.
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