Rania Khalek Dispatches from the Underclass

Tag / Lebanon

It’s been one year since the Beirut port exploded, killing over 200 people and wounding thousands. And it’s been almost two years since Lebanon’s Ponzi scheme economy started crashing. The West often blames the devastation that has befallen Lebanon on government mismanagement, sectarianism, bureaucratic incompetence, internal corruption, and their favorite boogeyman, Hezbollah. But you can’t […]

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A few weeks ago I participated in a speaking event about Syria and US foreign policy more generally. It was hosted by Massachusetts Peace Action. Below is a video of the conversation. What’s interesting about this event is that there was an attempt to get it canceled organized by a collection of pro-regime change groups […]

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This is part one of a two-part report. Lebanon erupted in massive protests this October. The demonstrations transcended sect and class, and quickly spread across the country. The movement was spurred by the levying of regressive taxes and the persistence of a corrupt neoliberal order that has mismanaged the economy and hollowed out the public […]

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The population of the Palestinian refugee camp in Yarmouk, on the southern outskirts of Damascus, was once around 200,000 people. A brutal siege by the Syrian regime and an occupation by fighters from the al Qaida arm in Syria and the Islamic State dramatically reduced that number to 18,000 in March. Now, it is somewhere […]

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