The Lebanese authorities, like every country, issue out statistics on various economic indicators. Below is the chart that shows the number of employment permits issued for various professions between 2003 and 2005. Click to get a bigger image and look at under “specialized professions,” where there is a category for “knight.” A holdover from the [...]

International Crisis Group - Hizbollah and the Lebanese Crisis:
Looking back over the past ten months, Lebanese can feel somewhat relieved. The massive demonstrations in December 2006, followed by a general strike and clashes between pro- and anti-government forces with strong sectarian overtones, as well as a series of assassinations and car bombs, brought the nation [...]

Israeli in Lebanon under investigation in muder case and on espionage charges - Haaretz:
During questioning, it emerged that Sharon had visited Lebanon 11 times on his German passport over the last two years. He denied allegations he was on an espionage mission and said he was in Lebanon for leisure purposes, according to the source.
Media [...]

 (Designed by Chroniques Beyrouthines) 

This may be rather naive, and considering the vitriol being thrown around on the issue of Lebanon these days I want to tread carefully: but how come analysts have such detailed knowledge of the voting patterns according to sectarian affiliation in the recent Metn by-election? Are these published in official records? Are they based on [...]

There’s been an interesting scandal brewing in the last few days about Lebanon Examiner, a section of the Beirut Daily Star sponsored by USAID to carry out investigative journalism. A piece that recently came out about Solidere — surely the first and foremost investigative business journalism story to do in Lebanon — apparently pissed off [...]

I remember last year journalists covering Lebanon were quite positive about the professionalism and relative openness (for a militia that faces constant dangers) of Hizbullah’s press officers. I had read before (from McClatchy reporter Hannah Allam’s excellent blog) that they were now impossible to deal with, and it is confirmed again by Charles Levinson’s recent [...]

Charles Levinson visits a Hizbullah exhibition on last summer’s war:
The first exhibits are two reconstructed Hezbollah bunkers. One looks like some sort of command post. There is a manikin dressed like a Hezbollah fighter in fatigues with an AK47 slung over his shoulder. He’s eyeing a wall map of “Occupied Palestine”. There’s a desk with [...]

Via Larbi. (If you don’t get it, Cecilia Sarkozy apparently helped charm Qadhafi into releasing the nurses held in Libya. Bernard Kouchner, the Frennch foreign minister, just got back from Beirut in an attempt to resolve the split government there.)

LEBANON: One in three Lebanese wants to leave:
BEIRUT, 10 June 2007 (IRIN) - Researchers warn that economic instability and persistent security threats are driving ever more young, educated Lebanese abroad, creating a brain drain that threatens the country’s economic and social future.
“We’re suffering a huge brain drain,” Kamal Hamdan, head of the Lebanese Centre of [...]

Two essential pieces on Lebanon appeared in the last few weeks. The first, a review piece by Max Rodenbeck in the NYRB, looks at the last two-three years and draws a convincing portrait of what happened. Considering how confusing Lebanon’s politics are, that’s quite a feat. Plus Max gets the way I react to Lebanese [...]

Something of a nasty fight has emerged between two of the most prominent commentators on Syria and Lebanon, Joshua Landis and Michael Young. The two seemed to be on cordial terms before, with Landis frequently referring to Young’s writings on Lebanon, even though it’s always been clear that they had opposite attitudes. Young has long [...]

This Le Monde article focuses on an arms race in Lebanon that is driving up prices as militias re-arm themselves:
Le fait est, néanmoins, que d’après les connaisseurs, la demande ne cesse de croître sur le marché noir, où le prix des armes individuelles aurait augmenté. Une kalachnikov se vend désormais entre 500 et 600 dollars [...]

The great, independent Lebanese editorialist had died. Asa’ad AbuKhalil knew him well.

Abu Muqawama has a question about recent Israeli reports that Hizbullah has recovered its pre-war firepower:
doesn’t this report shoot holes in all those claims made by the IDF in the aftermath of the summer’s war about how this wasn’t a Hizbollah victory on account of all the damage Israel did to Hizbollah’s infrastructure? If Hizbollah [...]

Is another civil war about to start in Lebanon? The general strike called by Hezbullah and its allies yesterday turned into a day in which 3 people were killed, dozens injured, and gangs of Sunni and Shia youth threatened and insulted each other.
Novelist Elias Khoury and historian Fawwaz Traboulsi–two major Lebanese intellectuals–are in New York [...]

Rather obvious, of course:
The Central Intelligence Agency has been authorised to take covert action against Hizbollah as part of a secret plan by President George W. Bush to help the Lebanese government prevent the spread of Iranian influence. Senators and congressmen have been briefed on the classified “non-lethal presidential finding” that allows the CIA to [...]

I missed this at the time, but this Le Monde article says that Hizbullah (via al-Manar) has accused close Walid Jumblatt collaborator Marwan Hamade of helping the US Ambassador in Lebanon to locate Hassan Nasrallah during the Summer 2006 war — so the info could be passed on to Israel. Walid Jumblatt has replied by, [...]

So Russia is helping Syria get some PR points by trying to name and shame countries that are not cooperating with the Brammertz report — which probably includes at least France. But why is this “playing games,” as the NY Sun predictably puts it, when the same pressure was put on Syria and that it [...]

The economic side of Lebanon’s current crisis is examined at the Nation:
But in most conversations with people at the sit-in and protests, economic concerns quickly emerge: Siniora’s government is corrupt, has failed to reduce Lebanon’s crippling $41 billion public debt and has done little to improve people’s lives. Shiites are especially forgotten in the country’s [...]