Lebanon

No Santa Claus for Christians of Lebanon, Syria or Palestine this Year as US Piles on With Sanctions or Neglect

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Why is America imposing hardships on the Christians of the Middle East? Xinhua’s reporter visited Syria and found that the Christians in Damascus don’t appear to be able to put up much in the way of Christmas lights in the Christian district of Bab Touma. They complain of a lack […]

Arab World

How Lebanon became the latest Battlefield in the Cold War between Saudi Arabia and Iran

Middle East Monitor

By Amira Abo el-Fetouh | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – Lebanon is plagued by crises, with a new one added almost daily. The people are suffering from power cuts and fuel shortages, and queue for hours at petrol stations and bakeries. Daily life has become unbearable. There is also the conflict between the […]

Hizbullah

Violence has broken out in Beirut Again, but it isn’t Senseless – it is caused by what Lebanon has not Done

Human Rights Watch

By Lama Fakih, Crisis and Conflict Division | – ( Human Rights Watch) – Scenes from Lebanon shocked residents and the world on Thursday when the streets of a residential and commercial district in Beirut descended into a level of violence last seen during the country’s the civil war: Families sheltering in hallways, bathrooms, and […]

Inequality

Could Lebanon, Looted and mismanaged by its Plutocrats, become a Failed State?

The Conversation

By Tony Walker | – In the midst of a pandemic that has wrenched the world off its axis, Lebanon’s precipitous decline has not received the attention it deserves given the country’s strategic importance. Bordering Syria to its north and east, and Israel to its south, Lebanon occupies a critical space in the Eastern Mediterranean. […]

Bush

Top 4 Times US Troops were Bombed under Republican Presidents and No one Resigned or was Impeached

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The silly season has descended permanently on Washington, D.C., so that minor congressmen are calling for the resignation or even impeachment of President Joe Biden over the ISIL-K bombing at Abbey Gate in the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on August 26. Chris Cilizza called out the Nikki Haleys, […]

Corruption

Lebanon: one year after Beirut explosion, failing state struggles amid poverty and sectarianism

The Conversation

By John Nagle | – ( The Conversation) – Twelve months on from the disastrous port explosion which killed more than 200 people, injured thousands and left an estimated 300,000 people without homes, Lebanon’s dramatic descent into economic and political crisis deepens. So grave has been Lebanon’s economic collapse that the World Bank ranks it […]

Banking

Let Lebanon be Lebanon: Paris should Stop Threatening Beirut with EU Sanctions

John Hickman

John Hickman “Governing Lebanon is surely more daunting than governing France.”[1] That pearl of wisdom in an essay defending consociational democracy by University of Pennsylvania political scientist Brendan O’Leary has never been more accurate. A delicate balance of domestic interests with institutional vetoes at the best of times, Lebanese politics has been stalemated for months […]

Brazil

How the son of a Lebanese Migrant and Street Sweeper became Brazil’s first Muslim Federal Judge

Middle East Monitor

By Eman Abusidu | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – Ali Mazloum is one of millions of migrants whose story illustrates the determination and success of so many Lebanese refugees. When his father Mohammed arrived in Brazil in 1950, he could never have known that his son would one day become a federal judge. […]

Displaced and Refugees

In Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestinian territories: Refugee camps contain the hidden victims of Covid-19

Ramzy Baroud

( Middle East Monitor) – With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in late 2019, interest in the plight of the world’s most vulnerable populations, refugees, began to wane. A year later, and it is as if the refugee crisis has disappeared completely. It hasn’t, though. In fact, the world’s erstwhile leading humanitarian crisis has […]