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Washington blunders yet again in Syria
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May 16, 2013 12:57 AM
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It is not reassuring that we know next to nothing about the details of the international conference on Syria that has been endorsed by the United States and Russia. It is even more worrisome that both countries view the conference in very different ways. For the Obama administration, a conference...
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Culture clashes can be moveable beasts
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May 09, 2013 12:45 AM
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It is a fact that the notion of a clash of civilizations, first popularized by the American academic Samuel Huntington, is more relevant than ever in the minds of many people. Especially when it concerns Muslim-Western relations, there is a view that Muslim and Western values are incompatible. And...
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Hezbollah’s mad gamble in Qusair
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April 25, 2013 01:15 AM
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It’s still too early to tell whether Hezbollah will succeed in its bid to clear the area of Qusair of Syrian rebels, in that way assuring Syrian regime control over the passage between Damascus and the coast, via Homs, and between the coast and Lebanon’s Hermel region. Hezbollah is...
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Obama rewrites the U.S. contract abroad
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April 18, 2013 12:04 PM
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After the bomb attacks in Boston Monday, President Barack Obama hesitated to call them acts of terrorism. Obama and his officials soon rectified their conscious error, but the president’s reaction told us much about his refusal to define events in such a way that he might become a prisoner...
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Lebanon’s minorities have Syria in mind
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April 11, 2013 12:42 AM
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Lebanon’s latest political psychodrama is about whether the deadline for candidacies to the forthcoming parliamentary elections should be extended or suspended. This has produced some strange bedfellows, namely the Lebanese Forces and the Kataeb on the Christian side, and Hezbollah and Amal...
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Obama should prepare his apology now
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April 04, 2013 12:52 AM
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In March 1998, President Bill Clinton issued an apology to the people of Rwanda for having done nothing to prevent the genocide of 1994, in which between 500,000 and 1 million people were killed. President Barack Obama should prepare his apology to the Syrians. While a genocide may not be taking...
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Is Najib Mikati preparing a comeback?
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March 28, 2013 12:53 AM
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Having endured the ministers named by Michel Aoun for two years, Prime Minister Najib Mikati deserves our admiration. And yet his decision last week to resign has set Lebanon on a dangerous path, despite calls for a resumption of the dialogue sessions. Particularly worrisome is that the country...
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Iraq spurred America’s Mideast apathy
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March 21, 2013 01:36 AM
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One of the more appreciable aspects of articles written for the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq war is that most American and European commentators have finally taken Iraqis into consideration. For a long time Westerners saw Iraq almost entirely through the prism of how the war affected...
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It’s renewal time for a grim March 14
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March 14, 2013 01:28 AM
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On the eighth anniversary of the March 14 demonstration against the Syrian presence in Lebanon, the mood in the coalition is grim. Discord over a new election law, with the Lebanese Forces and Kataeb favoring the so-called Orthodox proposal against the interests of the Future bloc, has cracked...
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Drawing a line in the sand on elections
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March 07, 2013 01:28 AM
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Prime Minister Najib Mikati said two things of importance in his interview with MTV on Monday night. He backed the formation of a neutral Cabinet to oversee the upcoming parliamentary elections. And he said the government was committed to holding the elections on time, on the basis of the 1960 law...
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Lost in Geagea’s maze of maneuvering
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February 28, 2013 12:48 AM
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The tension between Samir Geagea and the Future Movement is palpable thanks to Geagea’s support for the Orthodox election proposal. But beyond the political calculations that we know – the fact that the Lebanese Forces leader does not want to appear “less Christian” than...
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Desolation gains a foothold in Bkirki
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February 21, 2013 01:33 AM
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Put aside for a moment that Christian approval of the Orthodox plan Tuesday seemed a natural misstep for a community bathed in self-doubt about its own future, as Christian numbers have declined. The reality is that the largest Christian community, the Maronites, have as their spiritual leader a...
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Don’t give in to Lebanon’s men in black
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January 31, 2013 01:24 AM
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Evidently no one can free Lebanon of its turbulent priests. The latest example is the decision of the mufti of the republic, Sheikh Mohammad Rashid Qabbani, to declare that Muslims who support civil marriage would no longer be considered Muslim. In a fatwa issued Monday, Qabbani wrote that...
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Has the American empire struck out?
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January 17, 2013 12:57 AM
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When the U.S. president, Barack Obama, appointed John Kerry and Chuck Hagel to his new administration, what did he intend? By naming them, Obama sent a message about his policy preferences. And what he also said was that he favored those who had irritated the neoconservatives, thus helping Obama...
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With a perfect storm, perfect failure
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January 10, 2013 12:39 AM
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The incompetence of the Lebanese state, it is true, is the result of decades of training. At no time was this more obvious than in recent days, as Lebanon has struggled with the devastation from a storm in the Eastern Mediterranean. With greater imagination, the leaders of March 14 might have...
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