Geithner’s Plan just delays nationalisation
The Treasury Plan to deal with toxic assets in the banking sector is fundamentally flawed. It deals with the issue in a cosmetic way when deeper structural changes are required. The financial system is...
View ArticleQuick and Dirty Guide to the Lebanese Elections
The Lebanese elections will occur on Sunday June 7. Despite the rather convoluted and twisted nature of Lebanese democracy, the endemic corruption and the continual pushes for changes in nature of the...
View ArticleLebanese Election Preliminary Results - March 14 win
Preliminary results show that the March 14 coalition (comprising Sunni Muslims, Druze and right-wing Christians) has won the elections in Lebanon. So far, March 14 has won (66) 68 seats, (down 2 seats...
View ArticleWhat's really happening in Lebanon?
Five months after the national elections, Lebanon finally formed a national unity government last month. Due to the gerrymandered electoral system, the winners of the popular vote March 8 (Shiite...
View ArticleThe Lebanese Summit, Hezbollah and the Hariri Assassination - updated for...
Last week the leaders of Syria and Saudi Arabia Bashar al-Asad and King Abdullah came to Beirut to meet the President of Lebanon, Michel Sleiman in a hastily-arranged summit. The speed with which the...
View ArticleAustralian Election Results: None of the above?
The polls closed 6 hours ago in the Australian federal election and usually by this time, we have a result. However, for the first time since 1940, Australia is likely to have a hung parliament. With...
View ArticleBehind the Crisis in Lebanon
It seems that rarely a year or two can go by without some crisis in Lebanon. The last one occurred in 2008 when the Saniora Government threatened Hezbollah's telecommunications infrastructure, bringing...
View ArticlePalestinian Political Prisoners in Israel - Adalah series
Since the beginning of the illegal occupation of West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza (the Occupied Palestinian Territories or OPT), over 700,000 Palestinians have been detained by Israel.*This is...
View ArticleAdalah: Palestinians Protests Brutally Repressed
While protests erupt across the Middle East and North Africa (see the latest Tahrir Mothership and Liveblog for full details as well as weasel’s country by country roundup) protesters are meeting with...
View ArticleAdalah: Libya, Syria and Bahrain: Different responses to crisis.
The Arab uprisings of 2011 started out with a great deal of hope that old structures and institutions and mindsets were being cleared away and the revolutionaries have continued to struggle to ensure...
View ArticleAdalah: "They can never shut us up"
Palestine I’ve written before about the thousands of Palestinians who are held as political prisoners or prisoners of conscience in Israeli jails. On April 21st, Ahmad Qatamsheh joined the...
View ArticleArab Protests: Repressing Uprisings in Yemen, Syria and Morocco
Yemen President Saleh has left Yemen and is currently being treated in a Saudi hospital. Many observers feel that this is the end for Salih but all that is certain is that a power vacuum remains. The...
View ArticleReading Palestine
As an advocate of Palestinian rights, I read a lot of books about Palestine. The problem is, I rarely finish reading them. (It's not just when the topic is Palestine but right now my focus in terms of...
View ArticleMiddle East Roundup: Updated with shock Yemen Election results.
Below is a country-by-country round-up of events in the MENA region Bahrain Bahrain has continued to repress protests in the capital Manama. Bahraini protesters requested international activists to...
View ArticleEgypt: President Morsi killing the revolution to save the revolution?
Egypt’s President Morsi, flushed from international praise after brokering a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, granted himself and bodies dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood sweeping powers...
View ArticleLetters to Obama from Palestine
During Obama’s visit to Israel/Palestine, the President spent a very little time in Palestine, going to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and meeting with Palestinian President Abbas in...
View ArticleSyria – the armed opposition gets a little help from Israel
On Saturday, Israel bombed a Syrian military installation outside Damascus called Jamraya in Mt Qassioun, about 15 kms (10 miles) east of the border with Lebanon, in the mountains near Damascus. In...
View ArticleMohammed Assaf from Palestine - the next winner of Arab Idol?
The news out of the Middle East has been uniformly depressing recently so I'm giving myself a break with some news about the Arab Idol sensation Mohammed Assaf. He has become an instant star and...
View ArticleIdiotic Sen. McCain goes to Syria and meets with kidnappers
Lebanese television station Al-Jadeed has broken the story (in Arabic) that Senator McCain, in his recent jaunt to Syria, has met with rebels who were involved in the kidnapping of Lebanese Shiite...
View ArticleMohammad Assaf wins Arab Idol
Mohammad Assaf has won Arab Idol.I wrote about the Palestinian refugee from Gaza in an earlier diary.I think what makes him so special, and why he has galvanized the Arab world into supporting him, is,...
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