Qifa Nabki
Qifa Nabki
Lowering the Voting Age: No Real Impact on Percentage of Christian/Muslim Voters?
So, as is well-known, many Christians in Lebanon are worried about lowering the voting age to 18, because they think that this will swell the ranks of Muslim voters in a disproportionate way. Or so say Abu Michel and Abu Samir… However, an informed reader of Qifa Nabki has made an astute intervention that busts … Continue reading
A Better Daily Star?
The Beirut Daily Star newspaper has one of the worst websites I’ve ever seen. It is slow, clunky, and hideously ugly. The navigation is awful and it crashes browsers on a regular basis. What’s worse, the IT people have installed some kind of ridiculous automated advertising code that scans articles for certain “keywords” and links … Continue reading
Railroads and Ferries
Traffic in Beirut is awful and it’s getting worse. When I was in town a couple of weeks ago, it took me an hour to traverse the 3km from Hamra to Sodeco on a weekday afternoon, and then another hour and half to get from Sodeco up to the mountain village of Roumieh (which would … Continue reading
U.S. Names Ambassador to Syria; Different Ali Tajeddine Onboard Ethiopian Airlines Crash
Sources are reporting that the new American ambassador to Damascus will be Robert Ford, former ambassador to Algeria and current deputy ambassador to Iraq. It’s funny: I was having tea with an NPR journalist yesterday afternoon and we were remarking on the fact that we still have no inkling of what the Obama Administration’s Syria … Continue reading
Electoral Systems and Lebanon
A friend of mine recently drew my attention to the fact that the ministerial statement (al-bayan al-wizari) of Saad al-Hariri’s government contains a surprising clause: a commitment to begin developing a new electoral law for the 2013 parliamentary elections within the next eighteen months (see article no. 20) It’s not clear to me how binding … Continue reading
Qifa Nabki 
And the people say…