The Washington Post carries an uplifting story about the counter-counter demonstration in Lebanon on the one month anniversary of Hariri’s assasination. Not to be one-upped by the Hezbollah’s counter protest last week, the Lebanese people showed up in enormous numbers (by some estimates a quarter of the population of the country).
Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese rallied at the grave of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri on Monday to mark the one-month anniversary of his assassination and to intensify pressure on Syria to immediately withdraw its troops from a country that appears split into two rival political camps.
The demonstration covered wind-swept Martyrs’ Square and stretched for blocks into side streets, likely surpassing the size of the rally organized last week in Beirut by Hezbollah, the militant Shiite Muslim movement at the forefront of support for Syria’s three-decade presence here.
In a crowd that Lebanese police officials estimated at close to 1 million people, some demonstrators waved placards that read “100 percent Lebanese,” a direct challenge to Syria’s supporters here and the delicate balance among Lebanon’s sectarian parties that has prevailed since the country’s civil war ended more than 15 years ago.
Slate’s daily news round-up however, points out an interesting sentence buried deep within the story:
Many opposition members contended Monday that Hezbollah’s Beirut rally was populated mostly by Syrian intelligence agents and poor Shiites from the south. “They didn’t come by their free will,” said Charles Kanaan, 23, a systems engineer and Maronite Christian from Beirut. “And they weren’t 100 percent Lebanese. This is free will. This is the real Lebanon.”
In an apparent response, Hezbollah’s satellite channel, al-Manar, focused its coverage of Monday’s rally on the maids from South Asian countries who attended with their employers.
I get it. It isn’t patriotic Lebanese that want the Syrians out of their country. It is those dirty South Asian immigrant maids who make up the majority of the crowd. This is just another example that as bad as FOXNEWS is with their propaganda, it’s still nothing compared to the propaganda machines in the Arab world.
I checked out the link to al-manar and it was not to a story about this event, just their homepage. Is there any insinuation that these South Asian maids are “dirty,” Or is that all you?
Seems like a streatch. The argument relevant to this issue is who can mobilize the greatest numbers of supporters. Both sides are trying to show they have the greatest support. If one side is using their domestic help to beef-up their numbers in the protests that is worthy of note, and not propaganda.
And yes, Fox News is about as bad as al-manar and far far worse than al-Jazeera or the Daily Star.
Abhi…
You are slowly losing it, especially on the Fox News comment…its only ONE channel in the information universe..let it go…also your obsession with Bobby Jindal is also freakin out your loyal fans.
Take some time off and reflect….come back to us while you still can! a concerned fan
Whoa just to clarify, the South Asians are “dirty” comment was just my commentary on what I thought Al Manar may have been trying to do in terms of propaganda and has nothing to do with anything found on Al-Manar’s site. Their site is not in English.
However, after posting this entry I realized that I was basing my accusation of propaganda by Al Manar upon the subjective view of a Post reporter viewing Lebanese TV. He simply thought that Al Manar was focusing their coverage disproportionately upon South Asian maids. That is probably not objective enough for me to be so scathing in my opinion. Egg on my face.
Leo, Come on. Everyone knows I hate FoxNews. Am I not allowed?
Also I don’t care much about Jindal either way but I LOVE U.S. politics and writing about political issues. Because this is a South Asian oriented blog I have to go to extreme lengths to inject politics into it whenever I can (because there are so few of us in politics to write about). Unfortunately at the moment I have only one major subject that gives me my “in.” That happens to be Jindal.
As far as “losing it” though, I can only chuckle. You have obviously never read my own blog 🙂
Well, if it’s politics that are scarce, here:
As of today, Condoleeza Rice is in India (and then Pakistan and Afghanistan) to sell F-16s and other melee-machines in effort to keep the two countries at a stalemate. She’s also meeting with L.K. Advani and I wonder how Bush would feel if Kalam met with John Kerry during his visit… All this is, of course, a precursor to Bush’s possible visit to India in October and meat for people that have “grave concern” regarding the recently established India-Venezuela oil partnership. Adding fuel to that fire is the National Intelligence Council’s recently released five-year report detailing the rise of the next unrivalled superpower: India. The NIC represents fifteen U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA and embedded in the report are these notes:
“The same information-technology boom contributing to growth in China and India will help spread radical Islamic ideology…”
&
“…interests of Russia, China and India, as well as Iran and Turkey will intersect in central Asia”
All this is important only because I hope that at least one of the ten South Asians in the running for a White House Fellowship have enough interest in working bilateral relations so as to avert another “cold war” that is, this time, based on preemptive, non-nuclear strikes.
And, now that I feel like a nerd, I would like to mention that Bobby J’s first bill cleared the House yesterday.
SD, I am aware of all those stories except for the White House Fellows one. Unfortunately, at MOST I can get off only two or three blog entries a day (on a really good day). I’d rather spend it on internal South Asian politics (like the Fellows story) rather than U.S./India relations where I normally have very little interest. I just thought I’d mention that since its seems your last comment was directed at me.
Leo, Come on. Everyone knows I hate FoxNews. Am I not allowed?
Also I don’t care much about Jindal either way but I LOVE U.S. politics and writing about political issues. Because this is a South Asian oriented blog I have to go to extreme lengths to inject politics into it whenever I can (because there are so few of us in politics to write about). Unfortunately at the moment I have only one major subject that gives me my “in.” That happens to be Jindal.
Why don’t you write more about Narendra Modi and the rally against him on Sunday, March 20 at 4 p.m. in New York at 31st and 7th that Campaign Against Genocide is organizing 🙂 I love hearing about the rally against him on Sunday, March 20 at 4 p.m. in New York at 31st and 7th.
🙂
(to Abhi)
Yes, the last comment was directed at you, but in a friendly way… I spend time looking at U.S.-India relations, I know it’s not for everyone. I just thought I’d throw in my conspiracy theory to be heavy-handed. I am a wet-blanket.
Speaking of BJ, he has had a big week thus far and maybe you already heard this: he had a floor-spasm in which he first chewed out “liberals” for derailing faith-based initiatives and then announced he would be introducing a faith-based resolution in the coming week.
SD, Didn’t mean to sound so defensive. I’m just running into Blog fatigue today (both in reading people’s comments and in writing). I’m thinking about calling in sick tomorrow with the Blog Flu.
Well, you could put a blog in about taking a day off… Yes, you can talk about all the other things “South Asian” that there is to do [in whatever city you’re in] aside from blogging.
I suppose that would defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it.