Qifa Nabki
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Christopher Hitchens Gets Beaten Up In Beirut
I went to hear Christopher Hitchens speak at AUB tonight. Before leaving work, I called my friend S. to see if he was still planning on going. He picked up the phone and said: “Did you hear? “What?” “There’s a rumor that Hitchens got beaten up by SSNP thugs in Hamra a couple of nights … Continue reading
A MasterCard for the Financial Crisis
I thought of a worthy new MasterCard advertisement. Here goes: Tax credits: $115,000,000,000 State medicaid programs: $87,000,000,000 Refurbishment of the electrical grid: $30,000,000,000 Other stimulus bill expenditures: $557,000,000,000 Using taxpayer dollars to bail out Wall Street and avoid the greatest economic disaster in the history of the United States: Priceless.
Nasrallah Tips His Hand
In a speech commemorating the one-year anniversary of Imad Mughniyeh’s death, Hizbullah secretary-general Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah lingered briefly on the subject of Rafiq al-Hariri’s assassination, saying that it was an event that the entire nation mourned. Striking a tone both solemn and conciliatory, Nasrallah paid homage to the idols of his political opponents by way … Continue reading
A Nineteenth Sect, or None at All?
The editorial in today’s Daily Star discusses Interior Minister Ziad Baroud’s order authorizing “personnel at his ministry to grant any request to have confessional identity removed from one’s official file at civil registries across the country…” This is a very significant move, yet another feather in the activist minister’s cap. As the editorial goes on … Continue reading
Martyrs & Broken Bones
View from a ’72 Benz C250 series, issue no. 3 Last night, I took a taxi from Gemmayze to Hamra. The driver seemed to be in his 40’s, and he wore a smart felt cap and a wool sweater vest. A little wooden cross dangled from the rearview mirror. As we drove past the tens … Continue reading
Qifa Nabki 
And the people say…