Future Movement (Lebanon)

Last modified: 2008-01-19 by eugene ipavec
Keywords: lebanon | party | rafik hariri | future youth | future movement | cedar | tree: cedar | tree (white) | tree : cedar (white) | ring (blue) | text: arabic (blue) |
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• Rafik Hariri Memorial Flag
• Possible Flag of Future Movement
• Future Youth

See also:

• Political Parties (Lebanon)
• Lebanon

image by António Martins-Tuválkin, Neda Juraydini and Eugene Ipavec, 26 Oct 2007

Flickr shows a photo of flags in a demonstration in Lebanon, taken on Feb 14th, 2007. Regular LB national flags, as usual, and some political flags. The most prominent of these is not in [the LB pages].

It looks like a regular LB national flag with blue instead of red and someone's likeness in b/w added to the hoist side white space, slightly overlaping the tree, and a smaller regular LB national flag added vertically to the fly. While the image and the flyside FoF may be improvised, the blue-for-red LB national flag seems to be carefully and purposefully manufactored.

António Martins-Tuválkin, 26 Oct 2007

I think that may be a caricature of the late PM Rafic Hariri (compare to photo at Wikipedia). There are many flags of the youth section of his Future Movement in the crowd too, and of allied parties.

Eugene Ipavec, 27 Oct 2007

The blue-for-red Lebanese flag may be that of the Future Movement itself, by the way – it is the only one among the major Lebanese parties to lack a distinctive flag (excepting the much smaller DRM.)

Eugene Ipavec, 27 Oct 2007

شبـاب المستقبل, Shabab al-Mustaqbil

image by André Coutanche, 15 Jun 2007

The BBC caried some of the funeral of assasinated Lebanese MP Walid Eido today. Only one flag other than that of Lebanon was in evidence; quite a number of them were shown being waved by the mourners. It was white, with an emblem made of two curved arrows in a sort of Yin-Yang arrangement, one yellow and the other sky-blue (also resembling a "Recycling" sign with one arrow missing). The symbol was enclosed in a double ring of thin (darker) blue lines, with a circular inscription between them. The only part I could read was the English word "YOUTH" at the bottom.

Eugene Ipavec, 14 Jun 2007

I think we must have seen the same footage. Like you, I automatically assumed I was looking at a double arrow "yin-yang" symbol, which shows how we often see what we expect to see – 'cause it ain't! I also noticed the word "Youth," and closer analysis of the clip frame by frame showed that it was saying "Future Youth" – and googling did the rest.

"Future Youth" seems to be the youth wing of the late Rafic Hariri's "Future" movement. Its symbol is a blue arrow moving anti-clockwise from the "south" point to the "east" point against a white cedar of Lebanon with an orange background, which both Eugene and I initially perceived as a double arrow. The shade of blue on the flags seems variable, many of them being a darker blue, but the logo on the website (and on the website of the American branch) is clearly a lighter blue. A photo shows the sea of flags at the funeral; another shows the "Future Youth" name (this large version of the flag also has additional writing on it in Arabic, but this seems to be a one-off).

André Coutanche, 15 Jun 2007

The inscription in Arabic is "shabab al-mustakbil" which not oddly means the same...

Dov Gutterman, 15 Jun 2007

Apparently spelled "شبـاب المستقبل"

António Martins-Tuválkin, 15 Jun 2007