Tag Archives: Al-Akhbar

Is Hezbollah Sending a Message to Bashar Assad?

14 Thursday Jun 2012

Posted by in Arab Spring, Arab World, LB Politics, Media Monitoring, Politics, Press, Syria

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You might not take me seriously if I told you that the below cuttings are taken from an Al-Akhbar article (here is the Arabic version), written by its editor-in-chief Ibrahim Al-Amine.

Al-Akhbar has close links with Hezbollah, with Al-Amine considered the unofficial spokesman of the Party of God. I am not talking about the portrait of Imad Mughniyeh behind his desk, but rather his editorials.

He is a staunch supporter of Bashar Assad’s regime, but he goes out of his way sometimes, mostly in the wrong way, but I can’t fault him this time. This is what he gave us this time:

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Questioning the Syrian Casualty List?

01 Thursday Mar 2012

Posted by in Arab Spring, Arab World, Media Monitoring, Politics, Press, Syria

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Every time I discuss the Syrian tragedy with an anti-revolution or pro-Assad person, I would be faced with these questions: how do you know the numbers of killed people are right? Can you verify them? Why not count the killed soldiers too? Obviously, these people try to muddle the core problem and cover (unintentionally sometimes) for the Syrian regime atrocities. This is exactly what blogger Sharmine Narwani did in a long article in Al-Akhbar English. From a previous conversation with her on twitter, Sharmine might not be a pro-Assad person, but she is doing her best to doubt the genuine outcome and intentions of the peaceful uprising (yes peaceful, that’s how it started, ok).

In her mentioned piece, she asks:

Perception is 100 percent of politics […] How then does one count 20, 40, or 200 casualties in a few hours while conflict continues to rage around them?

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The religious farm of Lebanon: marital rape is allowed

04 Wednesday Jan 2012

Posted by in LB Social, Lebanon, Media Monitoring, TV

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It’s very pleasing and reassuring to see members of the Lebanese parliament drafting a law to protect women from domestic violence, or rape in some cases. But such law can never pass without our disease getting in the way – religious Lebanese theocracy. Some MPs want to remove the reference to rape in the new law, thus making it useless in practice, and keeping our laws dating back to the middle ages. Apparently, according to this opposition to the law, rape can’t happen if the couple are married, and this law tears the ‘social and religious fabric’.

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Censorship in Beirut

24 Tuesday May 2011

Posted by in LB Culture, Lebanon

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When I read this article in Al-Akhbar last Friday morning, about the World Press Photo (WPP) exhibition in Downtown Beirut, I said: Oh God, this is not going away easily. The article was about the Beirut exhibition organised by the respected Netherlands-based WPP, which featured many international award-winning photographers including: the Israeli Amit Sha’al.
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Syrian or Iranian Wikileaks will do

10 Tuesday May 2011

Posted by in LB Politics, Lebanon, Politics, Syria, Wikileaks

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From all the US diplomacy cables released by Wikileaks related to Lebanon, I can say that almost all Lebanese politicians, opponents or allies to Hezbollah, are wary of them in a way or another.

On the same note, I came across an article about new leaked cable originating from the US Embassy in Damascus – 08DAMASCUS7 – which showed Syria befriending the US diplomacy, offering to do a package deal with the US over the common issues: peace, Hezbollah, Hamas and others.
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Wikileaks and the anti-Hezbollah militias

07 Saturday May 2011

Posted by in LB Politics, Lebanon, Politics, Wikileaks

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In my ‘Lebanon, the medieval Ottoman country’ post yesterday, I described 14March leaders as a bunch of sectarian warlords. I was not indicating only to their history during the Lebanese civil war, but rather to their current and recent history in peace time.

These leaders are currently advocating building a civil unarmed society in Lebanon (which is their main argument against Hezbollah), but in reality they do not mind getting armed to fight Hezbollah. I think they surely serve foreign interests in a way or another too, or at least they accept to be used. Let’s be practical here, we know how international politics is conducted, and politicians have to exploit international balances and political opportunities, and this is fine. But to ‘exploit’ opportunities to go back to civil war? I am not sure about that.
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