Tires are burning, smoke is rising towards the sky. It is October, the 18th day of the month, the capital city of Lebanon, in the past known as the “Paris of the East”, is covered in smoke. For years I was warning that the country governed by corrupt, indifferent elites, could not hold together, indefinitely….
I thought the days when I kicked burning tyres off roads had ended. I used to clear the road in Belfast in 1972. Then, often, I did the same in Beirut. But there I was yesterday, as my faithful driver Selim waited patiently for me to shake hands with the local militiaman and explain why…
It’s a time that only happens once or twice a century. A new world order is emerging. All previous references disappear. Those who were doomed to grieve triumph, while those who ruled are thrown into hell. The official statements and interpretations made by journalists clearly no longer correspond to the events that follow one another….
What happens when democracy fails to deliver? What happens when people give up on democracy? What happens when a majority or militant minority decide that the constitutional rights of free speech, free elections, peaceful assembly and petition are inadequate and take to the streets to force democracy to submit to their demands? Our world may…
At the end of August, the Lebanese organisation Hezbollah fired two rockets at an Israeli armoured personnel carrier at the border. Several Israeli soldiers were injured. In response, Israeli troops fired on Lebanese territory adjacent to the border. The shells fell on bare ground, without causing harm to people or nearby buildings. Hezbollah chalked up…
There’s a déjà vu feeling to this year’s wave of protests across the Arab world. It’s not that this year saw the toppling of the leaders of Algeria and Sudan as a result of popular revolts, a harking back to the 2011 protests that overthrew the leaders of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. It’s that…
