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.

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In an effort to amend the salt tax without breaking the law, on March 2, 1930 Gandhi wrote to the Viceroy, Lord Irwin: “If my letter makes no appeal to your heart, on the eleventh day of this month I shall proceed with such co-workers of the Ashram as I can take, to disregard the provisions of the Salt Laws. I regard this tax to be the most iniquitous of all from the poor man’s standpoint. As the Independence movement is essentially for the poorest in the land, the beginning will be made with this evil.”

On March 12, 1930, Gandhi and approximately 78 male satyagrahis set out, on foot, for the coastal village of Dandi some 240 miles from their starting point in Sabarmati, a journey which was to last 23 days. Virtually every resident of each city along this journey watched the great procession, which was at least two miles in length. On April 6th he raised a lump of mud and salt (some say just a pinch, some say just a grain) and declared, “With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire.” He then boiled it in seawater to make the commodity which no Indian could legally produce–salt.

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Following up on my earlier post about Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s invitation to speak at the conference of the Asian-American Hotel Owners Association (AAHOA) meeting in Fort Lauderdale, FL, tipster Anuj G. alerts us to the fact that Chris Matthews of Hardball has canceled his speaking commitment after being pressured by Muslim groups. The New York Sun reports:

A prominent talk show host has canceled a speech to a conference of Indian-American hoteliers after coming under pressure from Muslim organizations and human-rights groups, who said another speaker invited to the meeting has a record of condoning anti-Muslim violence.

The host of MSNBC’s “Hardball,” Chris Matthews, announced yesterday that he would not appear as planned on March 24 at the Asian-American Hotel Owners Association meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

“Due to a scheduling conflict, Chris Matthews has canceled this appearance,” an MSNBC spokesman, Jeremy Gaines, said. He would not elaborate on the nature of the conflict.

In recent days, Muslim activists and others flooded the network with calls, letters, and e-mail urging Mr. Matthews to distance himself from the group. An Indian official billed as the “chief guest” at the meeting, Narendra Modi, has been accused of tolerating anti-Muslim violence in the state of Gujarat, where he is chief minister.

The president of the Indian Muslim Council-USA, Dr. Ashwini Rao of New York, said he does not credit the official explanation for Mr. Matthews’s action. “Most likely, that’s not correct, because we’ve been talking to him for the last week and a half, at least, and they’ve never said it’s a scheduling conflict,” Dr. Rao said. “I was hoping he’d take a more moral stance.”

There is another interesting twist to this story however. Apparently the way the press found out that Matthews was backing out was via a PENTAGON mailing list. What the heck does the Pentagon have to do with Matthews and Modi?

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