Pen Thoughts

  At 6:06 in the evening on August 4, 2020, I was in my office, streaming a stand-up special while I worked through some financial paperwork. An unremarkable afternoon, the kind Beirut teaches you to treasure precisely because nothing is happening in it. Then the room shook. First like an earthquake. Then harder, until the walls themselves were drumming. I heard what sounded like aircraft. In Lebanon, that sound has never meant panic; we grow up hearing jets break the sound barrier over our heads, and we learn, the way you learn anything you cannot control, to keep working through it. That is what pacification actually feels like from the inside: a sound that should stop your heart, filed instead under background noise. This one did not stay background noise for long. I ran to the window and saw a white cloud rising over the port. Before I could work out what it was, I heard the real sound. The second one. I watched a shape climb into the sky that some part of me recognized be...

  I want to start by correcting something I almost got wrong myself. Cruise control is not, by itself, a sign of a failing organization. Some of the best-run institutions I have ever encountered work exactly like cruise control: a founder, or a generation of leaders, built a system so well designed that it began running itself, delivering results without needing a hand on the wheel every hour of every day. That is not failure. That is craftsmanship. The danger is not the system. The danger is time. Since the 1990s, the environment around every organization has been changing at a pace that keeps compressing: every few years, then every few semesters, now every few months, sometimes every few weeks. A system built for the road of 1995, however well engineered, was not built for the road of today. It can keep running, and keep delivering, for a long time after it has stopped fitting the world it operates in. That is the trap. The most dangerous organizations are not the ones that ...

I was born on a Wednesday in July 1981, in Saint Joseph Hospital, a short drive from the shelter where I would spend much of my childhood. On paper, Lebanon's civil war was six years old that summer. Growing up, I learned it had been rehearsing its provocations long before its official date. My family likes to say I was born in a shelter. It is a metaphor, but only barely. The first nine years of my life kept making it true. The shelter was the minus-one of my grandparents' building: a warehouse of perhaps two hundred square meters, cleaned out and claimed by the families above it. It had two entries, one from the parking, and one from the lobby, where you stepped over a concrete lip and climbed down a ladder someone had built by hand. We strung electric lamps against the dark. When the battles intensified, bread could vanish for weeks at a time. During the worst sieges, it reached us only rationed, passed down through the militias that held the area. My grandmother Teta Victo...

I was watching a report about KPMG Australia recently, and the irony was too heavy to ignore. The case, as reported, is not about a collapsed country, not about people losing their life savings, not about a national currency evaporating, and not about an entire population being thrown into poverty. It is about the alleged misuse of confidential information: board papers from Lendlease, reportedly used to gain an advantage in audit bids for major clients such as Westpac and Dexus. Still, look at what happened. The CEO resigned. The chairperson resigned. The head of audit resigned. Partners directly involved stepped down. Parliamentary hearings took place. Regulators moved. The whistleblower, after being badly treated, became part of the public discussion. In short, a professional misconduct scandal was treated as a scandal. Now, let us look at Lebanon. The World Bank described Lebanon’s financial collapse as possibly among the three worst economic crises globally since the mid-nineteent...

In this video from June 17, 2026, geopolitical analyst Peter Zeihan reacts with sharp criticism to reports of a proposed deal between the United States and Iran . Zeihan characterizes the leaked terms as a total strategic capitulation by the U.S., questioning whether the agreement was born from government incompetence, a lack of focus, or the health of leadership. Key terms of the rumored deal cited by Zeihan include: Financial Concessions: Immediate release of all frozen Iranian funds and the creation of a $300 billion restitution investment fund. Sanctions Relief: The immediate removal of all U.S. sanctions, covering nuclear, militant, and weapon export restrictions. Strategic Retreat: The U.S. would withdraw all military forces from the vicinity of Iran , while granting Iran the right to regulate the Strait of Hormuz , potentially including the collection of fees. Lack of Oversight: The agreement allegedly contains no provisions for Iran ’s missile program or its regional mi...

  فتح الحمار مذكرة يومياته وكتب فيها: « أنا لا أعرف كـم مضى مـن الزمن على رحيــل الأســـد  ولكن وصلت في نهاية عمري إلى قناعة راسخة لكنها قاسية و مؤلمة مفادها أن ديكتاتورية الأسد أفضل من حرية القردة والكــلاب ،  فهـو لــم يكن يستعبـــدنا بل كــان يحمـينا مـــن         قـــــرود تبيع نصف الغابة مقابل المـــــــوز          وكلاب تبيع نصفها الآخر مقابل العظام.....» من روائع الدكتور الأديب علي-الوردي .

  In late Victorian London, poverty was so widespread that even sleep came at a cost. One of the cheapest forms of shelter for the homeless was the "four-penny coffin," a wooden box where a person could lie down for the night, often covered with nothing more than a tarpaulin. For those who couldn't afford even that, a two-penny alternative existed: a bench and a rope stretched across the chest to keep a person upright as they slept. This grim arrangement came to be known as the "two-penny hangover"—a haunting image of hardship and endurance in a time when survival itself was a nightly struggle. Despite popular belief, the term "hangover" did not originate from this rope-sleeping practice. While it makes for a compelling tale, linguistic research shows that the word originally referred to the lingering effects of something left unfinished-such as unresolved business from a meeting. It wasn't until the early 20th century, around 1904, that "hang...

  I had a great interest in learning  about the Pakistani-Indian turmoil and continuous conflict since I watched the movie that depicts the life of  Mahatma Gandhi . The movie explains why the separation between Pakistan and India has happened. Naturally, the movie didn't go into detail and entailed a lot. However, it gave me an idea about the separation, the conflict, and the ongoing dispute. I wanted to learn more, so I started a journey of research with Gemini   and ended up with a well-established report that explains the root cause of the conflict (without going deeply into the historic events), the military capabilities of both countries, the risk of actual nuclear exchange, and recommendations to prevent the catastrophic outcomes that could materialize in case further escalation takes place. I enjoyed reading it, and here I'm sharing it publicly: Executive Summary The recent escalation of tensions between Pakistan and India in April-May 2025, triggered by a d...