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Will Hezbollah return Lebanon’s rights?

By: Nayla Tueni, Once you hear Lebanese MP Michel Aoun threatening prime minister-designate Tammam Salam, you realize the momentum that Aoun and others derived from Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s recent television appearance.

How to spot a murderer’s brain

By: Tim Adams, Do your genes, rather than upbringing, determine whether you will become a criminal? Adrian Raine believed so – and breaking that taboo put him on collision course with the world of science.

Obama’s Syria strategy needs teeth

There is something bizarre about the debate over how the United States should respond to the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons against its own people.

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Could Natural Gas Save Lebanon? Nah.

By Ghassan Karam, No one doubts that laws of natural science; such as gravity and entropy, the second law of thermodynamics; are universal. The same logic leads us to believe also that many

Lebanon not racist towards Syrian refugees

By Nayla Tueni
Damascus’ allies and media outlets which support the Syrian regime keep reminding Lebanon how Syria provided shelter for Lebanese refugees during conflicts

How Hezbollah Trained an Operative to Spy on Israeli Tourists

By Sebastian Rotella
A rare inside look at Hezbollah during a recent terror trial in Cyprus portrayed a militant group with the prowess of an intelligence service

US targets major drug cartel: Hezbollah

By Jay Solomon
The Obama administration charged Hezbollah with operating like an international drug cartel and blacklisted two Lebanese money-exchange houses

Syrian rebels take aim at Lebanon to counter Hezbollah

By Nicholas Blanford
Rebels fighting the Syrian government are shelling villages on the Lebanese side of the border in order to curb Hezbollah’s efforts to help the Syrian regime.

Beirut continues to inspire Elie Saab

By Mike MacEacheran
Elie Saab has built a fashion empire from his haute couture and ready-to-wear collections and A-list stars across the globe to become the most successful Arab-speaking designer in history.

Why Lebanon’s PM Mikati Resigned?

By: Bilal Y. Saab – Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati surprised very few when he resigned on Friday, causing the government that he created with Hezbollah’s blessing two years ago to collapse.

Fallujah Horrors Revisited: Depleted Uranium and the Precautionary Principle

By: Ghassan Karam, We have often been told that war is hell. The residents of Fallujah, Iraq, are finding out that war for them is the worst kind of hell imaginable.

Real steps for a post-Assad Syria

The Obama administration and the Syrian opposition are beginning to grapple seriously with the core problem in Syria, which is how to topple President Bashar al-Assad without creating a political vacuum

Preventing mass atrocity after Assad

How can mass atrocity in the aftermath of the Assad regime be avoided? Above all, it is Syrians who will need to make sure it does not happen.

Syria’s bloody second anniversary

It has been 18 months since Mr. Obama first claimed that time was running out for the Assad regime. Now it is running out for him. His continued refusal to intervene in Syria will invite a greater catastrophe

Opinion: Syria edges towards disastrous partition

In this article Patrick Seale is suggesting that Syrians should seek some sort of a compromise which would end the bloodshed and save the country from partition and ultimate destruction.

We have a Jesuit Pope now, but who are the Jesuits?

Besides being the first South American pontiff, Pope Francis is also the first Jesuit Pope. This article By Daniel Pinto in DNA explains this religious order.

How the Muslim Brotherhood Hijacked Syria’s Revolution

No one in Syria expected the anti-regime uprising to last this long or be this deadly, but after around 70,000 dead, 1 million refugees, and two years of unrest,

The Rise and Fall of Iran in Arab and Muslim Public Opinion

By: James Zogby
In 2006 Iran’s favorable ratings were in the 75 percent range in the Arab and Muslim countries , but six years later the tables have turned. Now Iran’s favorable ratings in these same countries have fallen to less than 25 percent.

The Illegitimate Will Fall

by Ghassan Karam Once upon a time there used to be a pleasant village whose people led a simple but yet productive lifestyles. One day a high ranking member of the army decided that this laid back life style was not good for the villagers and so he coordinated a takeover of the government of [...]

Chavez’s death opens door for Obama to repair LA ties

US president has a historic opportunity to usher in a new era of relations with Latin America through rapprochement with Cuba and initiatives to curb gun and drug sales

Whatever we were thinking, hope for a new Middle East lost

By: Joschka Fischer
TWO years after popular uprisings began to convulse the Middle East, few people speak of an “Arab Spring” anymore.

Parliamentary Elections and Incompetent Lebanese Politicians

by Ghassan Karam It is problematic when the leadership of March 14 never tires of asking the government to resign. I happen to think that this has been a very ineffective cabinet and that the time for a change is way overdue. But one should not expect a cabinet to resign only because the opposition [...]

Give Us the Weapons We Need to Beat Assad

The chief of staff of the opposition Syrian Military Joint Command calls on the United States to provide arms, not just non-lethal aid.

Syrian war is everybody’s problem

Syria is ripping itself to pieces. The extent of human suffering is beyond comprehension. That alone should be reason enough to encourage a determined effort to bring this conflict to a quick resolution.

No Obama doctrine on foreign policy in State of the Union

Anyone hoping to hear from President Obama a more overarching foreign policy vision in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday night went home disappointed.

Sharp decline in Muslim fertility rates

Something startling is happening in the Muslim world … it is not the Arab Spring or the growth of Islamic fundamentalism. A sharp decline in Muslim fertility rates and a “flight from marriage” among Arab women.

Book Review: The Fall of the House of Assad

THE FIFTEEN BRANCHES of Syria’s intelligence apparatus, the mukhabarat, counts some 50,000 to 70,000 full-time officers, along with hundreds of thousands of part-time personnel and informers.

Leaving Syria ship before it sinks?

Russia’s action in evacuating its citizens from Syria via Lebanon is a clear sign that Moscow expects the Assad regime may fall. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov acknowledged this possibility last December.

Democracy and Sectarianism do not go together, Don’t Kid Yourself.

by Ghassan Karam- If two opposing sides are fighting each other with all what they have in order to control a major corporation then the uncertainty and the instability that their acts ….

Saudi women emerging

By: David Ignatius- With the appointment of 30 women to the Saudi Shura Council, the wheels of change may have started moving slowly in the kingdom. They do seem to be turning, but is it fast enough?

Orthodox Gathering Electoral Proposal= Electoral Apartheid + Electoral Ghettoes

By Ghassan Karam – Any and all electoral systems that are based on the archaic, discriminatory and undemocratic formula of monasafah (equal shares for Christians and Moslems) are to be rejected on both democratic as well as moral grounds.

A Syrian way out of the civil war

To help oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, an opposition group has drafted a plan for a transitional justice system that would impose harsh penalties against die-hard members of his inner circle but provide amnesty for most of his Alawite supporters.

Ruinous Lebanese Economic Policy. (updated data)

by Ghassan Karam- A common mistake that is committed, all over the world, is to assume that economic growth in the GDP of a country is synonymous with a higher level of welfare for the populace of that country.

Can Lebanon Become a Narco State Again?

by Ghassan Karam- The following is a brief summary of the final chapter of the book The Lebanese Connection; Civil War, And The International Drug Trafficby Jonathan Marshall

Taking Syria back from the extremists

By Mohammed Alaa Ghanem – The U.S. commitment to aiding the Syrian opposition against the brutal regime of Bashar al-Assad has been one of many words and few deeds. Repeated pledges of support

Russian Orphans as Political Pawns

Russian legislators looking to retaliate against a new American human rights law have settled on an exceptionally vulnerable target: Russian orphans.

Lebanese Drug Trade: Multiple Ethnicities and Political Rivalries

by Ghassan Karam – This is the 8th installment of the book: The Lebanese Connection: Corruption, Civil War, And The International Drug Traffic by Jonathan Marshall

                   

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