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Dec 6, 2024 | 
harpers.co.uk | Michael Karam
HomeNews By Michael KaramPublished: 06 December, 2024Elie Maamari has been spreading the Lebanese wine gospel for 42 years. The winemaker turned export director for Chateau Ksara met his compatriot, Michael Karam, during a brief visit to London at a time when their country was once again caught up in conflict.
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Sep 29, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Jonathan Spyer |Charles Lipson |Carson Becker |Michael Karam
The assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah transcends the immediate confrontation between Israel and its Islamist enemies. Nasrallah was both a leader and a symbol of Iran’s bid for hegemony in the Arab world. His fighters advanced Iran’s cause in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and beyond the region — into Europe, Africa and Latin America.
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Sep 25, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Owen Matthews |Matthew Lynn |Michael Karam |Lisa Haseldine
Whatever happened to the Wagner Group, Evgeny Prigozhin’s shadowy army of prisoners and mercenaries? In the wake of Wagner’s abortive mutiny in June 2023 — and of Prigozhin’s own not-so-mysterious death two months later in a plane crash near Moscow — most of the Russia-based units of the group were rolled into the Kremlin’s official armed forces.
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Sep 25, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Michael Karam |David Honigmann |CarsThe joy |Adrian Pascu-Tulbure
The recent fighting between Israel and Hezbollah is a war that’s not yet officially a war, initiated by a political party without a mandate that takes its orders from Tehran, in support of a Palestinian party that few Lebanese care about. Hezbollah was the jewel in the mullah’s turbanIt is a decades-old conflict, an exhausting, deadly stalemate, but this recent escalation could prove to be decisive. There’s a chance Israel could finally deliver a dagger blow to Hezbollah.
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Sep 25, 2024 | thespectator.com | Michael Karam |David Honigmann |CarsThe joy |Adrian Pascu-Tulbure
The recent fighting between Israel and Hezbollah is a war that’s not yet officially a war, initiated by a political party without a mandate that takes its orders from Tehran, in support of a Palestinian party that few Lebanese care about. Hezbollah was the jewel in the mullah’s turbanIt is a decades-old conflict, an exhausting, deadly stalemate, but this recent escalation could prove to be decisive. There’s a chance Israel could finally deliver a dagger blow to Hezbollah.
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Sep 25, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Matthew Lynn |Michael Karam |David Honigmann |Ben Domenech
Donald Trump is campaigning hard on protectionism, promising to bring skilled manual jobs back onshore. What will that look like? Huge tariffs on imports, foreign companies unable to “steal” American jobs, a re-industrialization of the heartlands of the United States. But here’s the catch: a trade war on the scale that Trump is promising is simply not feasible. He is bluffing. There is no question that Trump is ramping up protectionist rhetoric.
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Sep 25, 2024 | 
spectator.co.uk | Michael Karam
The recent fighting between Israel and Hezbollah is a war that’s not yet officially a war, initiated by a political party without a mandate that takes its orders from Tehran, in support of a Palestinian party that few Lebanese care about. It is a decades-old conflict, an exhausting, deadly stalemate, but this recent escalation could prove to be decisive. There’s a chance Israel could finally deliver a dagger blow to Hezbollah.
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Apr 20, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Roger Kimball |Toby Young |Michael Karam |Juan P. Villasmil
Undoubtedly the best moment in the testimony of Minouche Shafik, the President Columbia University, before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce last week was elicited by Representative Jim Banks. Why, he wanted to know, was the word “folks” spelled “folx” throughout an official guidebook for the School of Social Work? Shafik coyly suggested that perhaps the authors did not know how to spell, which might well be the case.
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Apr 19, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Toby Young |Michael Karam |Juan P. Villasmil |Sean Rayment
You’d assume the reaction to Scotland’s new hate crime laws would make other authoritarian governments hesitate before introducing similar legislation. Humza Yousaf has become a laughing stock and his approval ratings have fallen by fifteen points. But apparently not.
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Apr 19, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Michael Karam |Juan P. Villasmil |Sean Rayment
You might have thought that the threat of the Gaza war spiraling into an all-out regional conflagration, along with breathless travel advice from western governments urging their nationals to leave the country, would have deterred Lebanon’s expats from flying home to celebrate Eid al-Fitr this year. Not one bit. Flights, hotels and restaurants were fully booked despite Iran’s drone strike.
