Qifa Nabki
Lebanon
Secret Witnesses in the Hariri Investigation?
Check out this story by Jean Aziz in al-Akhbar. What I’m wondering is where the TV station got the information about the route that the “secret informant” traveled after the interview with the STL investigators, among other things. I’ve posted an English translation of part of the article below, courtesy of Mideastwire. (I’ll fill in … Continue reading
Tribunal Investigators in Lebanon for 3D Filming
That’s right, folks. The Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) has dispatched a team of 3D filmmakers to Lebanon to shoot a sequel to Avatar set in downtown Beirut. Or something like that. There have been several notable items in the press over the past week about Hezbollah. Rather than spending an hour trying to figure … Continue reading
Lebanese 2009 Election Reports
The National Democratic Institute has released its report on the Lebanese parliamentary elections of 2009. (Download a PDF in English or Arabic.) See if you can spot this blog in the footnotes. The EU Observation Mission released its report (pdf) back in October; the Carter Center has yet to publish a final report. It now … Continue reading
The Prodigal Son
As many of you know, the Lebanese-Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim Helou was in Lebanon last week meeting with political and business leaders and discussing various projects of interest. Slim, who recently regained his title as the World’s Richest Man, was given a medal by Lebanon’s President Michel Suleiman, and fêted in the Lebanese press for … Continue reading
Axis(tential) Questions
A couple of days ago, I sat in on a lecture about Nasser’s foreign policy in the 1950’s-60’s, and the importance of regional axes in the Cold War world. It left me wondering about the extent to which we still live in such a world today, at least as far as Middle East politics are … Continue reading
Qifa Nabki 
And the people say…