Qifa Nabki
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Some Background Reading on U.S. Military Assistance to Lebanon
News outlets are reporting that the U.S. government has approved a startling increase of military aid to Lebanon, increasing the size of the country’s potent assault helicopter force by an unprecedented 25%. “Six Huey 2 helicopters have been delivered to Lebanon as part of bilateral military assistance,” [a diplomatic source] said on condition of anonymity. … Continue reading
A Questionable Strategy
It didn’t take long for OTV and al-Akhbar to point out the same inconsistencies that I noticed in Okab Sakr’s testimony last week, and release responses comparing the segments “added” by Sakr to the original clips that they had published. (See here for the OTV clip; al-Akhbar‘s most recent response can be found here.) Even if there is … Continue reading
The Eagle Strikes Back: Okab Sakr vs. al-Akhbar & OTV
My, my, my… what a tangled web we weave. The embattled Lebanese MP Okab Sakr treated us to a dizzying piece of political theater today (reminiscent in all of its finger-pointing and high inflection to the most spirited performances of the great master himself) and promised that there would be more to come, thereby threatening … Continue reading
Okab Sakr, Purveyor of Fine Armaments & Explosives
It’s a little late in the game for me to hide the fact that I’ve long cultivated an unhealthy obsession with Okab Sakr and his formidable rhetorical skills. His performances on the Lebanese evening talk show circuit are the stuff of legend (see here and here for only a couple of my purplest paeans to … Continue reading
Syria’s Culture War
Here’s a recording of a short interview I did with the Watson Institute for International Studies here at Brown University. I wrote about some of these themes in a piece for the Times last year (“Syria’s Defecting Bloggers”), which you can find here, and have generally been interested in the problems of representing reality in … Continue reading
Qifa Nabki 
And the people say…