Tag Archives: Walid Jumblatt

The Substance-less Lebanese Political Media

05 Saturday May 2012

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

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Lebanon cherishes its freedom of speech and media, but I don’t feel I am exaggerating if I describe the Lebanese media as a plague which contribute to sectarianism and political void. I tend to come out with a headache or food ingestion when I watch their news.

Of course media can be politicised, but it’s done the wrong way in Lebanon. All sides are on high alert as if they are fighting a war, and the media is one of the weapons and ramparts at the same time.Lebanese media are directed by its political patronage, sectarian inclinations or just urge to show their politicians views with no real substance, reform agenda or impartiality.

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STL funding: everyone is a winner except March14!

02 Friday Dec 2011

Posted by in LB Politics, Lebanon, Politics

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What an end for a story climax, the completion of challenge of the 2011 funding of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL). It ended peacefully this time, with the least damages possible to all parties concerned, by the announcement of PM Najib Mikati on Wednesday 30th November 2011 that he wired the required $32m to the STL. No further details were given; he told us that he just did it! No news where the money came from and how. Rumours spread that it will be covered from donations, or from the High Commission for Relief (HRC) budget, or may be from some dodgy black box type account! Anyway, HRC denied the news that it was funding the STL from its budget, but I couldn’t think of a better relief to avoid a better disaster!
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Lebanon’s media council – in need of regulation – ‘regulating’ others

27 Thursday Oct 2011

Posted by in LB Culture, LB Politics, Lebanon, Politics

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A quasi-government Lebanese body, which is desperate for regulation and review itself, is planning to regulate the ‘electronic websites’. The National Council for Audio-Visual Media (NCAVM) announced this week its intention to create a register for websites. They didn’t specify for what type of websites and what are the criteria, though I can only speculate the initiative is targeted at the main sites that deals with news and politics, which became in the recent years as close as they can be to the ‘Main Stream Media’.

These websites would be the likes of Lebanonfiles.com, beiruobserver.com, cedarnews.net, elnashra.com, nowlebanon.com, Naharnet.com, 14march.org, Lebanonfiles.com, and many others including the websites of the main TV channels, newspapers and political parties. Saying that, media is not just ‘politics; it’s advertisement, films, entertainment, documentaries, social and cultural shows – all published or broadcasted. This move by the NCAVM to create a register has a lot of problems and unwanted consequences:

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A campaign to bring Lebanese war criminals to justice

08 Saturday Oct 2011

Posted by in LB Politics, Lebanon, Politics

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Lebanon’s civil war ended in 1989 with a collective agreement between the different fighting factions, aided by an international patronage from Saudi Arabia, United States and Syria. The agreement, which was annexed to the country’s constitution, was called the Taef Accord, referring to the area where the meeting was held in Saudi Arabia. Syria kept a strong influence afterwards until 2005, when its army withdrew from Lebanon.

At the time, the fighting factions compromised, accepted removing military presence and dismantling their militias structures, but they did that on one condition in return: sharing power. It was the easiest method (in theory) to stop the war, to hand power to the warlords. The civil war was actually a mini-global war fought by local pawns. It was fueled by the Lebanese internal divisions, but the United States, Soviet Union, Israel, Palestinians, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Libya had direct interests (or presence) in Lebanon’s war.

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Hariri’s long absence

24 Wednesday Aug 2011

Posted by in MB Politics, MicroBlogs

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Jumblatt and others:

…were critical of Saad Hariri’s long absence, blaming him for March 14′s lack of progress on developing unified positions, especially on whether to proceed with the presidential election.

I know, this is not news, especially with the current absence of Hariri from Lebanon for the past 7 months or so. But this quotation dates back to April 2008 (para 19).

Don’t we have a trend here, irrespective of the situation?

PS: read the full text under the link if you can, it refreshes some memories about Jumblatt & co. then.

Walid Jumblatt’s reincarnation(s)

30 Saturday Jul 2011

Posted by in LB Politics, Lebanon, Politics

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If you are confused by where Druze Leader MP Walid Jumblatt stands on the Lebanese political scale, then you are not alone. Even his political allies and opponents (or ex-oppenents and ex-allies if that makes sense) are finding it difficult to categorize Jumblatt’s position.

I personally I have my own theory about it; Walid Jumblatt left March14 alliance to March8 alliance, but kept its ideology! In other words, Jumblatt knew he can’t win on March8, so he prefered to join them for now, but kept his soft criticism to them inline with his previous speech. ‘Mechanically’, you can say this is similar to human reincarnation, which is part the Druze beliefs! It happens when the same spirit moves from one body to another after death…

In this way, Jumblatt would have prepared the ground for another U-turn, just in case. But Jumblatt’s endless contradictory remarks reached an extent where they appear in the same news article now, check this:

Jumblatt stressed on Monday the importance of the equation of the army, people, and Resistance…

…The weapons must be gradually incorporated in the official armed forces, since using [non-state] arms domestically is an adventure that can never succeed, no matter what the circumstances are [from the editorial of the PSP Al-Anbaa magazine]

There is a difference between: a guy trying to fix an issue between two women, and going out with these two women. Jumblatt is going out with both sides now, but his tongue will slip at some point. And I think there is a strong link between this is happening, and the turn of events in Syria.

If Jumbllat’s history is not full of U-turns, I would have said he really wants justice for Rafiq Hariri, stability in Lebanon, and reforms in Syria – irrespective of the local, regional and international balance of powers.

Do you think we can help? Jumblatt met Assad…

09 Thursday Jun 2011

Posted by in MB Politics, MicroBlogs, Politics, Syria

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So Walid Jumblatt met Bashar Al-Assad; I really like to be there to listen to the contents of the discussions! This time, Syria is in trouble (sad too) and not Lebanon.

According the state Syrian news agency (SANA), Bashar Al-Assad told Walid Jumblatt:

I hope the Lebanese will overcome their differences and a government will be announced soon

Oh yeah, that was fun too! but that could be the other way around; Jumblatt saying the same thing to Assad!?
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A view on a Syrian Friday – a new phase

14 Saturday May 2011

Posted by in Politics, Syria

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Two months have passed (15 Mar 2011) and the protests against the regime in Syria are still ongoing. Protests happened arbitrarily during the past weeks, but the focus was always on the ‘Friday’ of every week as it attracts more people. As it’s the weekly praying day, protestors tend to use the existing gatherings in mosques to go out for a protest; at the end of the day, it’s a weekend too in the Arab World!

Human rights organisations estimated the number of protestors killed to date to be around 700- 850. Today, the reported number of killed protestors was only 6, which is less than the long-term average since the start of the unrest. Yesterday’s Friday was called ‘Harayer’ which meant ‘free women’ and it refered to the recent wave of detentions to women, and to a firing incident against a women protest last week in Banyas. Although it was Friday & 13th yesterday, there were other reasons why the regime has not had it so good today, or in other words: the protestors have not had it so bad.
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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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