Qifa Nabki
Uqab Saqr
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
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
Lebanese Political Talk Show Rumbles: A Tentative Top Five
As regular readers will attest, I’m something of a Lebanese political talk show junkie. Shows like Kalam al-Nas, Bi-Mawdu`iyyeh, al-Fasad, and others, in my view, do a much better job of derailing politicians off their talking points than most of their counterparts in the West. In a country where the print media is largely ignored … Continue reading
FPM: Let’s Avert Disaster in Lebanon Through False Witnesses
The Lebanese political talk show Bi Mawdu`iyya recently hosted an interesting debate between two young political operatives, `Uqab Saqr (a March 14 MP) and Ziad Abs (an official with the Free Patriotic Movement, whom I interviewed in May of 2009). The two-hour discussion covered several topics, but the most interesting bits dealt with the much-anticipated … Continue reading
Citizen Zero
As things have been too slow in Lebanon to warrant serious commentary and too depressing to warrant satire, I’d like to direct your attention to one of the best publications on Lebanese affairs, The Monthly. It’s published in English and Arabic by Information International, a research and consultancy firm based in Beirut and headed by … Continue reading
And the people say…