Thing about #Bourdain was he didn't look down on foreign places he visited & their ‘quaintness/backwardness/insert-usual-derogatory adjective.' He dived in, hungry to experience. His wasn’t the Orientalist gaze. He saw humanity (& food) everywhere, and connected with it. RIP
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Rania Abouzeid
@Raniaab
Journalist. Words + other mags. Ex@TIME. Fellow . Author x3: No Turning Back,Sisters of the War,The Cave
Rania Abouzeid’s posts
Meanwhile, many journalists in the field (including war zones), & especially freelancers, are living on unlivable wages/per-piece story rates, compromising on everything from security to transport to cut costs. But there's always money for infotainment twitter.com/lisang/status/
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Protests in Lebanon tonight, ostensibly over taxing WhatsApp calls, but actually about a corrupt nepotistic political class that has woefully mismanaged the country. People have had enough. And as the video demonstrates, gun or no gun, never mess with a Lebanese woman!
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Admire this badass Lebanese protestor, she got the thug properly with that kick
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Guess the Saudis didn’t count on the fierce loyalty, heart and courage of Khashoggi’s editor. will not let this go, and as a Mideast-based journalist, I’m grateful to her.
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Utter bullshit.
Fairuz, the voice of #Lebanon, speaks, with a song they used to play during the war 30 years ago, about a Lebanon that would re-emerge from the black smoke
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147 students were killed yesterday in Kenya. 147 young people whose day started off just like mine & yours, and who never made it home. RIP
A scouts’ group from zahle drove 3 hours (because of traffic) to help clean up #beirut. they’re in my apartment. Notice the bus full of police sitting in the shade doing nothing
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The dead Syrian boy on a beach. The bloody Syrian boy in an ambulance. Icons for a moment, then world looks away, killing continues. #Syria
It never rains in August in #Beirut but it’s pouring now. Tens of 1000s of homes have no windows or doors, some are structurally unsound. The power is out and has been since the blast, water pipes have burst in some places, leaving many without water. 100s of 1000s are homeless.
The French president is in my neighborhood, one of the worst hit in the #BeirutBlast, before any Lebanese politician or minister visited. And the cry that ricocheted across the Mideast in 2011 rises again on Beirut’s streets: The people demand the fall of the regime #Lebanon twitter.com/sommervilletv/
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The Pope being welcomed with traditional Iraqi chobi and orchestra is the only news I needed today.
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Honored & humbled. says #NoTurningBack “offers page after page of extraordinary reporting & many flashes of exquisitely descriptive prose… Abouzeid’s remarkable journalistic & literary work has given us, at last, a book worthy of the enormous tragedy that is Syria”
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What an incredible review in this Sunday’s @nytimesbooks for the amazing @Raniaab and her powerful NO TURNING BACK! google.com/amp/s/mobile.n
"The myths America tells itself sometimes don’t make it across the oceans & seas that separate it from the rest of the world that it considers itself an exception to.” My quick take on the chaos at the Capitol for
RIP all captives beheaded by IS in past weeks: Foley, Sotloff, a Lebanese soldier, an Iraqi Kurd, many, many Syrians
8 months after the Aug. 4 #BeirutBlast & some windows are only just being replaced. Despite its devastating scars, my city by the sea is still beautiful. #Lebanon
This is how people all over the world become #refugees: suddenly, very abruptly, b/c they are forced to flee, b/c staying means risking death/danger. If you think it could never happen to you, this woman’s story is a reminder that it can happen to anybody. #UkraineRussianWar
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This woman changed a part of me when I first saw this from @BylineTV. I will never forget her.
"I don't feel myself anymore. I'm a different person. I was a journalist, very proud of myself & glamorous. Now I'm a refugee"
Everything can become nothing.
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This well-known restaurant, Dar El Gemmayze (formerly the Glass Cafe), is generously offering free #Christmas lunch to local residents, despite the state it is in after the #BeirutBlast. People helping people, near & far #Lebanon
It’s pub day for my new book, Sisters of the War! It's a YA adaptation of parts of No Turning Back. It’s the story of 2 families that find themselves on opposite sides of the #Syrian war. It’s abt family, community, courage, dignity& hope thru the eyes of children.12+
It’s always so much more than bricks & mortar. It is personal history, it is memory, it is labor & laughter & family gatherings. It is legacy. It is home. I’m sorry, Laila. #Gaza
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My grandfather was a teacher who worked very hard for many years. He used his life savings to buy an apartment in Gaza, something he could leave behind for his children to inherit. It was in the same building that was bombed by Israel that housed Al Jazeera and AP. It’s gone.
Again with this notion that battlefield victories = defeating the group. History tells us otherwise. You can’t kill an idea with a gun. Yes IS is diminished but it persists & will likely rise again for all the social, military & legal reasons so many ppl have warned abt for years
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We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.
My quick remembrance of #Bourdain, a man whose approach to the world we should all strive to emulate. Perspective | Anthony #Bourdain showed the Middle East that I know and love tinyurl.com/yc3qynf3
There's a generation in #Lebanon that is too young to remember the war but seems itching to replay it, and a generation of warlords & their cronies keenly stoking divisions rather than tackling the mess their grotesque corruption & misrule created. Pity the nation that isn’t one
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Aww, very sweet. A nice way to start the week. He’s singing ‘you are precious, you are my whole life’
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I didn't agree with everything #Khashoggi wrote & believed but he had every right to express himself without fear of death & punishment. Journalism is not a crime - killing, imprisoning, & torturing journalists is. RIPJamal & every colleague silenced 4 thinking, writing, speaking
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This is the last piece by Jamal Khashoggi, which @KarenAttiah received a day after he disappeared. Read by @KarenAttiah, @NickKristof, @HamidMirPAK, @jaketapper, @kshaheen, @NaomiAKlein, @jrezaian, @BDUTT, @Raniaab, @RamiKhouri, @monaeltahawy & @mehdirhasan. #JusticeForJamal 
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Syrian prisons like Palestine Branch were CIA rendition sites for detainees the US transported to Damascus to be tortured by a state it branded a sponsor of terrorism.
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As this remarkable piece of journalism reminds us, the ordeal for survivors of torture doesn’t end after they are freed. I’m honored to be giving the keynote at a celebration tomorrow of @heartlandhelps’ transformative work to help survivors heal.
nytimes.com/2019/05/11/wor
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"Beirut was a city shimmering with the remnants of people’s windows. Glass became the city’s soundtrack. It crunched underfoot, it tinkled as it was swept up, it clinked like icicles as it was poured into bins." -- @Raniaab:
theatlantic.com/magazine/archi
Excited and grateful for the opportunity to head to #Harvard later this year as part of the class of 2020 #Nieman fellows. Congrats to all! bit.ly/2PIVm9c
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1/2 Congratulations to all the new Nieman Fellows. Follow along as they start their journey: @Raniaab, @JasmineLBrown, @ana_campoy_, @RobChaney1, @SelyColon, @Alex_Dicko_, @matthewsdolan, @HFerdjani, @annieisi, @nnguerrero, @gulsinharman, @HornbyLucy, @johnson_carrie....
And they are from across #Lebanon. Yesterday I saw groups from Dahiyeh, Baabdat, Batroun. This in a country also dealing with Covid & a financial crisis (due to corruption) that locked ppl out of their bank accounts & robbed them of their life savings.
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The real heroes of Lebanon.
They are all volunteers, armed with their brooms, clearing the rubble in #Beirut, one house at a time.
@akhbar
People linking IS to Orlando w/o evidence are doing exactly what the group wants. It wants to be bogeyman in every nightmare. RIP victims
Sally, the #Lebanese woman who stormed a bank today w a fake gun demanding her own $ to treat her sister’s cancer:“The banks robbed us...I got to the point of wanting to sell my kidney to treat my sister. What’s the point of my life if I watch my sister dying in front of me?"
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Thrilled that No Turning Back has won the Cornelius Ryan award for the best non-fiction book on international affairs. Thank you! Grateful and honored.
Journalism is not a crime. Welcome home, Shawkan
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Egyptian photojournalist Shawkan, arrested in 2013 for taking photos during a protest, has finally been released. twitter.com/mohammedelra3y…
I've covered wars & political upheaval for yrs. Crises bring out best & worst in people. Perhaps #Coronavirus w make us more compassionate to struggles of people globally incl. refugees whose lives are upended every day thru no fault of their own.There but for the grace of God...
Nothing (temporarily) unites fractious Lebanese like foreign aggression. #Saudi warmongering, like Israeli, won't harm #Hizballah
Know her name: For 2 years, Dr ran an underground hospital in besieged Ghouta, #Syria treating victims of Sarin & chlorine attacks & airstrikes. on.natgeo.com/2XFfyg7 via
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A statue of a woman by Lebanese artist Hayat Nazer -- made out of broken glass, rubble and a damaged clock marking the time (6:08 PM) of the mega explosion at the port of Beirut -- is placed opposite the blast site in the Lebanese capital
Joseph Eid
Joseph Eid
4 months after the Aug 4 #BeirutBlast and my home repairs are finally almost done. I'm lucky & grateful and thinking of the many who lost their lives, their homes, their loved ones.
May it be remembered, never repeated. تنذكر ما تنعاد
#Lebanon
Devastating. A terribly sad loss. A master storyteller, engaging and engaged. A man with a seemingly insatiable appetite for life. His death a reminder that everyone is fighting an often invisible internal battle. Be kind, folks. #RIPBourdain
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Anthony Bourdain, a gifted storyteller and writer who took CNN viewers around the world, has died. He was 61. We have live coverage on CNN now.
Fox airs IS clip of killing Muath Jordanian pilot, but not UK & US hostages. Only Western hostages had families, friends, respect apparently
For those who have kindly asked how to help Lebanese dealing with Covid, an economic meltdown, hunger & now this massive blast, has compiled a list of relief orgs in #Lebanon & is regularly updating it. If there are others, pls also link to them. And thank you
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Resharing given today’s tragic developments #Lebanon twitter.com/ZahraHankir/st…
A sad and important glimpse at the truth about our truth-telling industry. Good work doesn’t pay, and the often rude, humiliating interactions of some editors with freelancers would not be acceptable in any other context yet it’s ok in our industry. RIP Arnaud Dubus
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The real crisis of the foreign reporter as freelancer, epitomized in the tragic demise of Arnaud Dubus, a wonderful man & excellent reporter who always had passion for writing the human rights angle behind the big story. Very sad. @FCCThai blogs.mediapart.fr/laure-siegel/b
I understand the impulse to respond to this, but we don’t have to prove our value & worth. If you can’t see it, it’s because you don’t want to (or because we’ve assimilated so well!). It’s on you
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Most third-world migrants can not assimilate into civil societies.
Prove me wrong.
Also obv worse for local journos for whom Mideast isn't a 'stint' w an end date, a place to recover from. It's home, the trauma inescapable
A man asked reporters to help him contact the United Nations for help. “Maybe they don’t know what happened in Jinderis,” he said. “No one could see this and not come here.”
In earthquake-battered #Syria, a desperate wait for help that never came
Amazing how #Lebanon's security forces have suddenly uncovered all these large stockpiles of fuel hoarded by smugglers and black marketeers across the country. Were they unknown to them all these terrible months and they saw the locations in their dreams last night?
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185 برميلاً من المازوت داخل منزل في كفركلا الجنوبية
aljadeed.tv/arabic/news/lo
That includes the dozen invited authors from the MIdeast & Africa denied visas to attend . Their voices absent, silenced, in what the festival director called 'quiet, effective cultural censorship.’ We must hear each other, not just listen to our own voices.
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Rania Abouzeid @Raniaab explains she chose to read today because we all must speak up for muted voices. #ImprisonedWriters @edbookfest
Replying to
who would have guessed somebody who works for would get his facts so wrong? do you endorse spreading slanderous & false personal claims by somebody on your team?
Thank you, Terry Gross . You got me talking about my childhood! Blacklisted From #Syria, A Journalist Says: 'I Couldn't Imagine Staying Away' n.pr/2Gh0P25
Quite the headline and subhead about the land that gave the world the alphabet thousands of years ago. #Lebanon
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'Others.' RIP Edward Said. '13 Israeli soldiers, 70 others killed' http://t.co/JwO5YIsHy0 v
Dear , most journos covering Syria r women & we're kicking the boys' asses. If we're invisible 2 u it says more abt u than us
And they are trapped: hemmed in by Assad’s advancing troops and a Turkish border that is closed to them. Turkey already hosts the world’s largest refugee population, some 4million people, 3.6million of whom are Syrians. Where will these people go? What will happen to them? #Idlib
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The tragedy of war.
The people of Idlib are again on the move. Heartbreaking.
@akhbar
The danger, injustice and hypocrisy of collectively punishing people for the actions of their leaders, whether Russian, American, Ukrainian, Iranian, etc. If you don’t want it to happen to you, don’t do it to them.
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Woah! Thx 4 nominating #NoTurningBack! “… As literary as it is wide-ranging & accurate. Its breadth & originality, both in the genre of war reportage & as a work of literary journalism, but also in its implicit conception of what constitutes stories of war. Exquisitely written.”
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Announcing nominees for the Top 10 Works of Journalism of the Decade. Winners will be selected by our faculty and distinguished judges, and will be revealed during an online ceremony Oct. 14. See the 120+ nominees and register for the free event: journalism.nyu.edu/about-us/news/
Again! There was a fire at #Beirut Port yesterday! Security forces were burning debris (or evidence? who knows) but didn’t bother to tell the public in a city still traumatized by a massive blast. I can see the smoke & smell fire from my apartment #lebanon twitter.com/lebfinance/sta
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To live in #Lebanon these days means to be mentally & physically exhausted. Tired of waiting hours for gas. Tired of hunting 4 meds in pharmacies. Tired of begging banks for ur depreciated $. Tired of rising insecurity. Tired of bracing for whatever new calamity tomorrow w bring
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Several reports of fights & shots fired at #Lebanon gas stations today amid fuel shortages.
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Living in #Lebanon these days will break your heart in a million different ways. Some supermarkets have closed, unable to keep up with rapidly depreciating currency, petrol is being rationed, food prices & unemployment are skyrocketing, & worse is likely yet to come
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The Lebanese lira is now a tenth its value against the USD compared to 2019. The country hasn’t had a proper government since August 2020, while the politicians bicker over seat on the Titanic. Today, yet again, scattered road closures and protests. A storm approaches. #Lebanon
In case you’re interested, I’ll be talking #Syria in NYC, DC, UK to mark the mid-March release of my book, No Turning Back. Life, Loss, And Hope in Wartime Syria. It’s a Syria book about Syrians. Here’s where I’ll be from March 9. Please say hello!
all of this much worse for freelancers covering the same things. Editors often don't even bother with minimum, like 'hey, are you okay?'
As #sanctions bite in several Mideast states, a reminder from Saddam’s Iraq of their disproportionate impact on regular people not regimes. At the time, the UN said sanctions resulted in deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children, a price Madeline Albright said was "worth it.” Thread 👇
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In the year 2000 @JourneymanVOD documented the impact of crippling sanctions on Iraq and Iraqis.
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My Syria book launch is a month away but FYI, in case you’re in NYC, DC, London, please pencil in these dates and say hello! Here’s where I’ll be raniaabouzeid.com/events/ #NoTurningBack
A very personal letter from Mosul by a resident, , who never left the city - not under sanctions & Saddam, the Americans, or the reign of ISIS. With beautiful pics. Walk by the Wall #Iraq newlinesmag.com/photo-essays/w
So many of the first wave of Syrian protest leaders are now dead. Today #RaedFares of Kfranbel, #Idlib, and fellow activist Hamoud Junaid joined them - killed most likely by the Islamists who hijacked a once non-violent uprising
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Replying to @3z0ooz
I have told Raed & times while we met in different cities and countries to leave #Syria because it’s so dangerous to stay there & he kept telling me that he can’t live outside of it even that will cost him his life which happened today, Raed has gone but his soul is always around
RIP Marie. She was as tender as she was tough, and always had a soft spot for the underdog.
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Thinking today of #MarieColvin who was killed in Baba Amr, Homs in Syria 11 yrs ago today. She was a great journalist and friend. Her legacy is with the @MarieColvinNet which supports female journalists in the Arab world.
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Proud of Lebanese youth !
twitter.com/LebaneseProble…
twitter.com/LebaneseProble…Pfizer, BioNTech say their COVID-19 vaccine is > 90% effective. “I’m near ecstatic,” Bill Gruber, 1 of Pfizer’s top vaccine scientists said. “This is a great day for public health and for the potential to get us all out of the circumstances we’re now in.”
So many Syrians I know who survived yrs of hell only to perish in Russian airstrikes. Many others have fled b/c of them. huge game changer
If you’ve ever experienced Syrian hospitality (in tent or villa, it’s bottomless) your heart w hurt all the more seeing pics of this exodus
Fmr victims turned protectors: Iraqi women working undercover to save others from growing lawlessness nyr.kr/1jpITpq v
Deeply moving and important discussion, Lulu. If only more foreign journalists reflected on the huge price paid by unsung local journalists, translators & drivers who facilitate their work and keep them safe. You always remember and highlight their contributions ❤️
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This episode was really hard to make. It was devastating to hear his real story of the Iraq we covered together for @npr and it was an answer to a question I’ve thought a lot about over the years - what was I doing there and what did it mean. nytimes.com/2023/03/23/opi
I don’t usually write personal pieces. I prefer to live behind the words & to privilege other voices. More journalistic projects abt #Lebanon & the #BeirutBlast are percolating, but for now, this is my Letter to Beirut. With searing images by
Quickly becoming one of deadliest attacks in yrs: 37 dead, 181 wounded in twin suicide bombing in Beirut
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Replying to @RedCrossLebanon
حصيلة انفجار #برج_البراجنة حتى الآن ٣٧ شهيد و ١٨١ جريح
#دايما_حدك
Trump in Saudi Arabia: "our vision is one of peace" (and $110bn arms deal)
ISIS worked to eliminate the ‘gray zone,’ ie an inclusive multicultural society, to drive a wedge b/w Muslims & others. Stripping Begum of citizenship b/c her parents came from country she’s never visited enforces a 2-tier system, not ‘fully’ British. ‘Where are you really from?’
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British Pakistanis and British Bangladeshis are particularly vulnerable to having their citizenship stripped. As even if they are BORN in the UK, there's an argument that they automatically qualify for citizenship of Pakistan / Bangladesh... twitter.com/sommervilletv/…
It hurt my heart to write this piece about #Lebanon’s nightmarish year after the #BeirutBlast & the deep pain of families of the dead who want justice. It was not just one tragic day, it’s an ongoing tragedy, a wound that won't heal. Pics by
A lot of people seem to be sharing a video/images of a Russian POW b/c they like what he’s saying. Reminder that it's a violation of the Geneva Conventions to parade a POW before the cameras and that he’s speaking under duress, no matter how eloquently, in presence of his captors
One of odder moments in an uncomfortable interview with a tired Lebanese PM from Riyadh. He's downed at least 4 glasses water. interviewer says PM looking at member of crew, she's working w a new (Saudi) crew. Hariri says will return home w/in 2-3 days twitter.com/AbbassJaafar1/
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The Lebanese diaspora is millions strong. There are more Lebanese outside #Lebanon than in it, and many are leaders in their fields. Lebanon’s highly educated, innovative people need opportunities to work and stay at home🇱🇧. Two initiatives aim to help them do that 👇½
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This Inititative has been in the works for a while. Jobs are the key to sustainability of Lebanese, and no better time to promote, list and support.
Follow @trust_leb
Check the site and the video. t.co/mgvws7v9xn
May we see more headlines like this twitter.com/jonleeanderson
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Journalists are still dying in #Syria. 4 this week, from Al-Jazeera & Orient TV. RIP Rami Asmi, Yousef Dous, Salem Khalil, Mahran Deeri
Journalism is not a crime
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They Documented a Massacre. Their Prize Is a Prison Cell in Myanmar. nyti.ms/2GJdwGq
Reminder that in 2011 from Tunis to Bahrain protesters called their movements a revolution not ‘Arab spring.’ And yes, editors sometimes insert that into my copy, but RIP Edward Said, let the East define the East. The chant in #Beirut is ‘revolution!’ not Arab spring 2.0
Nasrallah says Saudi intel created, armed, aided Islamic State but lost control of it. ‘is that a secret? everybody knows it’
What do you do when somebody repeatedly misspells your name in an email exchange, even after you’ve politely corrected her? It’s really not that hard to double check before hitting send ….
. #lebanon’s descent into chaos deepens. Major roads & highways blocked, currency at historic low. Shortage of medications. fights in supermarkets over milk & other staples while political class squabbles over ministerial posts in a govt that should have been formed 7 months ago
