From the shattered window of a Beirut bistro – or perhaps merely the gin-splattered keyboard of yours truly – comes the grim bulletin that Israel has, once again, decided to redecorate Lebanon with precision-guided indignation. Fresh airstrikes pounded the southern suburbs tonight, turning morning commutes into funereal processions. The sky, as if offended by the whole affair, wept a steady drizzle of ash.
Trump, from the gilded perch of Mar-a-Lago, issued a statement so confusing it read like a ransom note dictated by a sentient toupee. 'Israel should not be doing this,' he grumbled, before adding, 'but they have every right to do it, and I would do it bigger, better, and faster.' The UK, meanwhile, performed its national dance of utter impotence: issuing a call for restraint polished to a high bureaucratic sheen.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy, looking as though he had just swallowed a wasp, intoned that 'escalation benefits no one.' Quite right, old boy. Except for the arms manufacturers, the propagandists, and, I daresay, the purveyors of fine gin who are now my sole remaining correspondents.
The spiral deepens. Beirut, once the Paris of the Middle East, is now a smouldering canvas of shattered concrete and broken dreams. And here I sit, your faithful satirical correspondent, a lone lighthouse of bitter hilarity in a sea of misery.
The whiskey is running low. The editors are running scared. But the truth, as always, is running naked down the street, screaming.
More as the bombs fall.
