Newspapers, TV Stations and Websites are all screaming very loudly for our attention. The trick is to know the difference between good and bad sensationalism.

I’m sure all of you browsing through the Lebanese/Arab news outlets are noticing strange things happening: Alarbiya’s website is now having a story-du-jour about sex. (My favorite being the one where an Imam issues a fatwa condemning Muslims who have sex with all their clothes off. Apparently, that entitles the wife to a divorce). Albalad, A Lebanese Newspaper, has abandoned its broadsheet format for the scrawny tabloid look, complete with the dramatic combinations of striking imagery and headlines. New TV, a Lebanese satellite T.V. station has exhausted all metaphors, similes, dramatizations, hyperboles that could be available to the Arabic language. Their news bulletins are sounding more like ancient Greek epics (I’m wondering what’s next, background music?). Lebanon’s Future TV has set up a show called “Sabaya”, in which a bunch of very attractive young ladies chat away the 30 minutes just before the news bulletin (coincidence?). Naharnet, an offspring of the rather stern Annahar (a Lebanese newspaper), has once headlined: “Northern High Noon Showdown Decides Who Will Rule Lebanon”.

Increased competition and cheaper access to other news sources is the basic cause of this newfound attention-seeking. But are these attempts a senseless assault on news objectivity, or a legitimate instrument of marketing? The answer is: It depends.

I would differentiate between two kinds of approaches: the first is restructuring News, where a bolder format is adopted, but the content remains intact. The second is the Sugar-coated pill approach, where you surround news with sex and freebies.

Aljazeera’s new website structure and Albalad’s new Tabloid format are good examples of the first kind. Both outlets realized that in a world with too much information, readers will be attracted to simple covers with loud messages and convenient access. I personally am a fan of the new Albalad, it’s much easier to read in crowded spaces.

But the moral problem lies squarely in the second approach. where a sex-sells strategy is shamelessly being used to promote otherwise serious coverage. It reduces respectability, but it works so well people will often ignore mediocre and subjective content.

It is sad that news providers that have actually lost journalists in duty, would have to use such cheap tricks to get their messages across. Before they’ll know it, they’ll become just another Elaph.

The Shadow of Bamiyan

The only time I felt as sickened as when I saw the destroyed Golden Mosque in Samarra, yesterday was when I watched, live on Aljazeera, the destruction of two huge Buddha statues in Afghanistan by the Taliban back in March 2001.

Honestly, I don’t care about the religious significance of the Artifacts. What I can’t understand is: Why can’t the terrorist appreciate the beauty and magnificence of works of art that are thousands of years old and belong to our collective human heritage? Don’t they understand how invaluable such works are?

Do you think it’s the same dogma that guided both horrible incidents?

An attempt by US congressmen to block a Dubai-based company from running American ports smacks of racism

How odd would it be, if an American family decides to stop eating at a fast food joint because the Burger flipper is Saudi? If most of the Sept 11 highjackers where Saudis, the logic would go, wouldn’t the flipper in question be tempted to poison their Burgers?

American congressmen today are behaving just like that hypothetical family.

In a nutshell, a British company P&O, which used to run six American ports, was bought up by another company, DP World, which runs ports all over the world. The company is one of the world’s largest ports operators and is expected to run the American ports more efficiently than their predecessors. But there’s a problem: DP World is based in Dubai, which is –horrors!- an Arab city.

Never mind Dubai is one of the world’s fastest growing economies and best managed cities with the lowest crime rate in the world. Never mind that all the ports DP World runs are certified by the International Security Port System. Never mind that DP World has satisfied all the necessary regulatory approvals for the deal to be passed. All that matters to the American congressmen, who want to block the deal, is that two of the September 11 highjackers come from the United Arab Emirates.

Politicians from both sides of the spectrum are joining this nonsense. Of course, they are entitled to scrutinize the deal before approving it, but it is very telling that they are making a public fuss out of it, to get cheap political support from security-obsessed constituencies.

Lebanese political experts are finding it very difficult to classify this new-coming species to Lebanese politics; a breed previously thought impossible was miraculously engineered by the latest scientists in neighboring countries…

A reader, David, reflects calmly and candidly on why things are not working out between Aoun and Hariri…

Hopefully Saad Hariri will read GMA’s statement regarding the 1-Year anniversary of Rafic Hariri’s assasination, and take a moment to reflect on why things are the way they are between the FPM and the FM, and wonder whether or not they had to end up this way. Look how much things have changed from 12 months ago!

It seems as if it was just last week that the assasination occured and most Lebanese were united more than they ever have been since the time of the French mandate occupation. One year later, and it is almost as if March 14th never occured!!

I am personally distraught at all of this, because I can just imagine Bashar and the gang loving every minute of Lebanese disunity. They always tried to show that the Lebanese were so un-united that they could never agree and rule themselves.
We have proven them wrong in many ways, but in others, we sure have a long way to go.

Things between the FPM and the FM didn’t have to end up the way they did, the only problem is trying to figure out why things ended up this way. I still remember one year ago how we all thought that the FPM and FM had many things in common, starting with the fact that the FM was supposedly the most “secular” in outlook compared to all the other major Lebanese political groups, and I still remember many FMers praising the FPM for being among the first to hit the streets, to the point where they were even saying that they were learning from the FPM about how to be as organized and efficient as us!
SO what the heck happened?!?

Was it Walid Jumblat that was responsible for the schism between the FPM and the FM, because he heard GMA talk about an audit, and then freaked out that his history would be revealed?

Or was it the Qornet Shehwan gathering, that feared for their seats, now that the FPM was going to enter the electoral race?

Or was it some of the advisors of Saad Hariri, that didn’t like GMA and the FPM for a number of various reasons, and figured that if their “plan” was put into action, the FPM would be crushed during election time? Or did they also fear our electoral weight? Or did they get greedy and want the whole pot?

All I know, is that the FM turned around, did some things that were not that “nice” to the FPM, and their media went on the rampage against us.
It is still sad to see this situation, knowing that we have a country to build, hopefully together, and knowing that we still have enemies out their that want to harm Lebanon.

IT’s a shame to see things have turned out this way, for whatever reason, because I believe that things should have ended up that the FPM would be participating en masse on Feb. 14th.

Now the question is, can things be changed, before their is too much animosity between the two sides? Ya FM wake up before it is too late!

Forget the pessimists. Today, we broke the record.

**Update: you can find great pictures here

I woke up in the morning to watch T.V, and I was surprised to see the huge amount of people flocking down to martyr square in Beirut to mark one year of the Assassination of ex Prime Minister Rafic al Hariri. Let me put it this way: I come for Tripoli, and except for my old Grandmother and my pregnant sister, every single person I know has gone to the demo.

The problem is, the internet surfers are significantly under-informed about the scale of today’s demo. To people with satellite TV, it’s a completely different story. Aljazeera, for its now well known agenda, doesn’t even mention the demo on its webpage (11:00 GMT). Lebanese bloggers are not writing much because they left their pcs and joined. Worldwide media are not posting aerial pics. But the fact of the matter is, the people who came down to February 14, 2006, seem to outnumber those who came on March 14, 2005, considered back then to be Lebanon’s largest ever demo.

The event is unfolding and eventually better pictures will make their way to the net, but trust me on this one: if you had a TV, you would have been amazed.