some guy in lebanon

Hamra pub has weathered 44 years of wars and sieges By yours truly – This is the most fun I’ve ever had writing anything. Ever. Pictures are my own and were not featured in the original article. Click here for the Original Article from the Daily Star, Published December 2nd, 2008 BEIRUT: The speakers filter [...]

Waiting waiting waiting – Patience patience patience. This is my new mantra, and I’m not very good at it. Waiting to see what will happen at the Daily Star with my proposal, waiting for other people to make decisions about various other business ventures, waiting waiting waiting. This weekend I spent Saturday morning finishing Robert [...]

I’ve written and re-written the intro to this post half a dozen times. How does one sum up the feeling of being 9000 miles from home on Thanksgiving? It’s not exactly a good feeling – Actually it’s not much of a feeling at all – More of a sort of nagging non-feeling. I think that [...]

I have not been good about staying in touch (besides the excitement of TWO stories published on international news wires in two weeks…) – I am really awaiting the return of my all important laptop computer from the Apple store so that I can upload my pictures from the past two weeks. I have some [...]

From the Daily Star, November 25th, 2008, by Yours Truly: Click here for the Original Article from the Daily Star, Published November 26th, 2008 BEIRUT: Agreements, not controversy, dominated a discussion at the American University of Beirut (AUB) on Tuesday between Rami Khouri and Michael Young, the former a regular contributor to The Daily Star’s [...]

This time of year can be a little awkward for me, history being what it is. More to the point, given that I’m all the way on the other side of the world, to be fair it’s more than just a little strange this year…! But luckily yesterday gave me lots of reasons to smile! [...]

From the Daily Star, written by yours truly: Click here for the Original Article from the Daily Star, Published November 24th, 2008 BEIRUT: Amid rave reviews and the glow of high-definition television screens as far as the eye could see, the 13th edition of the Levant’s Information Technology Exhibition at the Beirut International Exhibition and [...]

Hey hey hey – so I moved today from Hamra in West Beirut to Gemayze in East Beirut. I’ll try to find a good map to show where I’m living, given the Newspaper’s office and Nick’s house. Here’s a photo gallery with the trip today across town, plus pics of my new home and my [...]

I’m sitting here at work, crafting a document which represents the future of the Daily Star’s website, which will be submitted to several of the decisions makers here a the newspaper. I’ve just finished building a mockup for the new “Latest News” section, and I’m jamming out to Linkin Park in Beirut, Lebanon.

In Jordan I was a victim of what Middle Eastern doctors apparently like to call “travel sickeness.” Whatever it is, I’m sure I only exaserbate the problem with my habit of not eating properly or staying well hydrated whenever I travel. Whatever the case, I am now emerging from several days of sleep and feeling [...]

I was the second person to arrive at the Captain’s Cabin at 7:30 PM yesterday, a bar here in Hamra where I’m staying in Beirut. I had been assured by several people that this particular bar had sworn to stay open until an American President was selected, many thousands of miles away… And so it [...]

I have arrived safely in Beirut after a long, long, LONG, flight. If you know me well enough you know I hate to fly. I’m staying with Nick Kimbrell in Hamra near AUB for the next few days, before I move into a place of my own. I’ll be stopping by the newspaper today but [...]

Daily Star’s Nick Kimbrell Reports on the state of the Lebanese economy, given the current global economic volitility: BEIRUT: The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) senior resident representative to Lebanon praised the country’s central bank late Tuesday, saying the banking sector had few direct links to the current financial crisis and that Lebanon would likely prove [...]

Nick Kimbrell published an excellent article today on the ongoing Salafi-Syrian crisis brewing in Northern Lebanon – an excerpt: BEIRUT: Lebanon’s leading Salafi cleric, Dai al-Islam al-Shahhal, has warned Syria to stay out of North Lebanon or risk opening “the gates of hell.” In an interview to be published in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Anbaa, Shahhal [...]

Update: Also read “Part 2 of the American Diaspora – Economic Consequences of the Bailout” which is currently a top-ranked article on Google for the keywords “American Diaspora”! I can’t believe I wrote this in early October… guess I had a little foresight, eh? People ask me why I’m leaving the country – why I’m [...]

Daily Star journalist Nick Kimbrell reported on Stefan Wild’s lecture at the German Orient Institute in Beirut last Tuesday: In September 2006, Pope Benedict XVI delivered a speech at Regensburg University which invoked a centuries-old dialogue between the beleaguered Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an unidentified Persian scholar. The pope quoted the emperor as [...]

Direct effects of subprime fallout muted by Arab banking practices According to the Daily Star, The prudent policies of Arab banks and financial institutions have allowed these entities to avoid the negative effects of the acute crisis that hit the stock markets in the United States and part of Europe, a leading Arab banker says. [...]