Equal Votes, Unequal Wars

Plato warned that democracy counts an informed vote and an uninformed one the same. Now it's deciding wars that way too.

This Isn't Hypocrisy. It's Survival.

Why Lebanon walked out on Netanyahu at the UN while still negotiating with Israel This week, Lebanon's delegation walked out of the UN General Assembly hall as Benjamin Netanyahu began speaking. Confusion followed almost immediately. Lebanon is in direct negotiations with Israel. Lebanon's own government has

Behold the New Prophets. They Built the Fire and Now They're Selling the Exit.

On Anthropic, OpenAI, and the oldest power move in human history. I was at my desk last week, building. For six months I have been developing AI applications focused on transparency and public accountability. Tools that help citizens understand where public money goes. Every day I work on the guardrails,

In Lebanon, Half a Tank Costs a Barrel. Let's Just Buy the Barrel.

A simple guide to where your fuel money actually goes, and a polite suggestion for the 2027 budget. Let me tell you something that will ruin your morning. You already know it. You just haven't seen it written out this simply before. A barrel of crude oil on

Lebanon's Greatest Export Is Not Its Wine. It Is Its Children.

On the two bets Lebanese parents make, and what neither of them says about Lebanon's future. I have been writing for months about Lebanon's recovery. About port governance and institutional reform. About the IMF and frozen deposits and the political system and what needs to change.

What Are We So Afraid Of?

Why AI governance is built on the wrong comparison, and what that costs us. Step into an elevator. Press fourteen. The doors close. You don't think about it. You trust it completely, the way you have trusted it for thirty years. It is a machine. Machines do what

I Was at a Concert While Forty Men Were Trapped in a Tunnel Eighty Kilometers Away. I Am Not Sorry.

What a traffic jam between Faqra and Mzaar reminded me about how humans survive war. I have been sitting in this car for forty minutes. The road between Faqra and Mzaar is ten minutes on a normal day. Tonight is the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. The

Resilient? Lebanese? I Doubt!

A confession about the most overused word in Lebanese public discourse. Congratulations. You survived another year in Lebanon. The international community would like to call this resilience. We would like to call it Thursday. Every year, after every war, explosion, currency collapse, bank failure, and government paralysis, the same sentence

Two Kinds of Injustice. One Disease.

The powerless wait for a trial that never comes. The powerful make sure it never does. From the port victims' families to the prisoners rotting in cells, Lebanon's broken judiciary fails them all. His name does not matter for this story, because the point is that nobody

Lebanon Is Not Broke. It Just Acts Like It.

Why the IMF deal keeps stalling, what Lebanese people actually want, and the assets nobody is talking about. The dinner was winding down. MPs, ministers, and diplomats were saying their goodbyes to the French ambassador, whose posting in Lebanon was ending. It was sunset in Faqra, Lebanon's mountain

I Ran in the 2022 Parliamentary Elections. The System Is Not Broken. It Was Built This Way

What running for office in Lebanon taught me about how power actually works, and why it was never meant to be reformed. The Illusion of Elections Lebanon holds elections. They are real, contested, and occasionally produce surprises. The 2022 elections sent a record number of independent candidates to parliament, including

The Rabbit Always Works. Except When You Need 43 Votes

Nabih Berri is searching through the constitution. Constitutional clauses. The Taif Agreement. The ambassador's legal authority. He is not specifying what he means. He is leaving it vague, letting people wonder if he has a legal weapon or if he is just buying time. But here is the

The Framework Is Imperfect. For Lebanon Right Now, That May Be Enough.

When Hezbollah's ministers did not resign from the Council of Ministers yesterday, that silence was more significant than the tire-fires burning in Beirut's streets. A government party rejecting a framework is theater. A government party rejecting a framework while staying at the cabinet table is

Disarm Hezbollah With What Army? The Missing Conversation

In 2000, Israel withdrew from Lebanon. As part of that withdrawal, the Lebanese state accepted a structural limitation: keep the Lebanese army disarmed enough that it could never threaten Israeli territory. For 26 years, this constraint held. The Lebanese army was permitted to exist, but not to build the capacity

"We Won," Said Everyone. Except Lebanon.

Here's the final draft, this is the current state of the file you'll publish. Within a day of Donald Trump and Masoud Pezeshkian signing the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding at Versailles, Israeli strikes continued hitting Lebanon. The same document that declares an "immediate and permanent

Lebanon Was in the Room. The Decision Was Made Next Door.

The morning after the US and Iran announced their memorandum of understanding, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun received a phone call. The caller was not the American president who had spent months building a sovereign Lebanon-Israel negotiating track. It was not the secretary of state whose department hosted four rounds

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The Real Battle for South Lebanon Will Be Fought With Checks

In 2006, the bill was $3 billion. Today it is past $20 billion. The fight over south Lebanon is moving to a front the state cannot afford to lose.