News From The Pending Apocalypse
Arab-American blogger Dove’s Eye View has a very helpful compendium post up:
July 13, 2006
Blogging The Lebanese Crisis
A sample of blogs covering the Lebanese crisis 2006, plus useful links:
Global Voices Online excerpts from various bloggers, including yours truly.
The Lebanese Bloggers – a multi-person blog with many links.
The Lebanese Blogger Forum is one of the original group blogs from the post-Hariri days; they have many local Beirut and Sidon bloggers. Bob the blogger is from the next village over from mine, you can see his town from my uncle’s veranda.
Ur-Shalim – on the scene in Beirut, posts the leaflet dropped by the Israelis on the Southern suburbs.
Lebanese Political Journal – live blogging from West Beirut.Someone asked in comments for a quick rundown of Lebanese political parties. You can do no better than read the Head Heeb’s Lebanese Politics for Beginners, developed in the days after Rafik Harirri’s assassination, February 2005. It’s a five-part series, thoroughly researched, and my reviewer (my Dad) says it’s spot on.
For daily Middle East and Lebanon news and comment, I depend on Juan Cole, The Arabist, Nur al-Cubicle and Abu-Aardvark. I sometimes check in with As’ad Abu-Khalil (the Angry Arab) but his style and substance are off-putting. Helena Cobban admires Hizbullah and Jumblatt too unreservedly for my taste but she is an experienced Lebanese hand and journalist.
Joshua Landis at Syria Comment always provides an invaluable perspective – he has lived in Syria, most recently last year, and is a scholar of Syria Studies. He also grew up in Beirut.For local Beirut press, I check the Daily Star, the local English language newspaper, and Naharnet, which was associated with the “Cedar Revolution”. That means, for the Lebanon newbies, that it’s anti-Syrian, very sure that the West offers good solutions, and not sympathetic to the critique of empire. I don’t agree with everything but I check it for on-site English language reporting. The plain old newswires (AP and Reuters) fed through Yahoo News give lots of information as well.
UPDATE But in times of crisis, one has to read very critically. As’ad Abu-Khalil points out failures in logic by the AP News Wire reporter. I really get tired of Abu-Khalil’s attitude, but he is still a must-read. When I look at my list, it is very heavy on the Western establishment. I read Abu-Khalil for balance, and if you care about the situation, you should, too.I look for anything Max Rodenbeck writes; he’s usually behind a byline-free screen at the Economist‘s Middle East desk (subscription required, or try free day pass), but sometimes he publishes longer analysis in the New York Review of Books. Max has his biases and quirks but he is very insightful, completely fluent in Arabic, and an old Cairo/Middle East hand. He is no leftie critic of empire but he’s no neo-con, either.Anthony Shadid reports from Beirut.A former CIA agent’s view (thanks to the eloquent, courageous columnist James Wolcott, who wrote a piece titled Punitive Response).
