Hi everybody im abir awad from lebanon 16 years all my pleasure to meet you all here today. Im going to talk to you about politics and protests. Some people say that a teenager talking about politics is some how silly or weird by believe me most teenagers i know are interested in politics but the only problem is that they dont have the chance to express their points of view. politics controls our lives ad our societies and being from lebanon politics has a personal effect on my life. Offscreen gave me the opportunity to deal more with politics especially when we met alan duncan a conservative member of parliament. It was interesting to meet him, i feel i benefited a lot by meeting him there were two points specifically that had an impact on me. Firstly he shared with me and everybody that was there a british point of view the oppositions point of view which was some how new for me, on topics i was concerned with with Lebanon and other countries the Middle East. For example when I asked him about the war in Iraq and he had a differnet idea, that they were somehow against whats going on there right now. the second thing is that I learnt to be more diplomatic in my opinions, which, actually, im not used to doing.
And now Brian, who i met outside parliament whos been protesting there since the beginning of the iraq war - can you imagine that?. Hes an interesting character to say the least, i had mixed feelings about brian. On the one hand i respect and admire his strength and what he stands for. But on the other hand, he told us his family abandoned him and he doesnt see his children, so i think he could do it in a way so he can keep his family and be more productive.

Someone told me once you cant have peace unless you have justice, so can never have peace because you will never have justice.. thats why I guess brian is going to stay there a long time.

But with respect to us, middle east teenagers believe we can have peace, we want peace, so we are asking you, please pave us the way.