Blogging Lebanon since 2005

Why would anyone kidnap or kill Alan johnston?

Journalists protest in Beirut today (Photo New York Times)

Sign petition here.

I saw this today:

Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr pulls his ministers out of Iraq’s cabinet to press for a timetable for US withdrawal.

Sounds familiar, I wonder where I’ve seen it before..

Some minds just need to be refreshed. Check out this excellent article by Liz Cheney in the Washington Post:

Anyone familiar with the past two years of Lebanese politics would never claim, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did in Damascus last week, that “the road to Damascus is a road to peace.” Her assertion must have seemed especially naive to the people of Lebanon, where the list of the slain reads like a “Who’s Who” of Syria’s most vocal and effective opponents.

Update: And guess who sees this article as “The Cheney team’s [..] last ditch effort to get the Security Council to establishing an international tribunal to try the Hariri murder”

Google dabbles into politics

Remember that famous before/after picture of Dahieh which used Google Earth to expose Israeli brutality in the Lebanon war? That picture was an example of how users of Google Earth can use the program for political purposes.

The news now is that Google itself wants to point its users to international trouble spots, starting with Darfur.

Now, after logging in, users of Google Earth will see fire icons scattered all around Darfur (see picture above). When they zoom into these icons, they will see clear views of villages burnt by government-allied forces, in addition to pictures and stories of survivors and witnesses.

The purpose of the praise-worthy enterprise is to raise awareness among the 200m Google Earth users of the genocide taking place in Darfur.

But questions remain about Google’s policies.

Would it for instance feature satellite images of bombed areas in Lebanon if heaven-forbids, another war with Israel took place?

Hassan Nassrallah may be loud, but he is increasingly isolated

Please hold me tightly and don’t let go

You have to be seriously short on allies to attempt to resurrect the widely hated four generals implicated in Hariri’s assassination. Also, when your own underlings start contradicting your highness, you know you’re in trouble. This is why when our dear Sheikh starts shouting and threatening, you should know that his feet are beginning to catch fire in his cave.

The divine decider is insecure about his unkept divine promises, not to mention the 1701 ropes tying his hands in the south. So like a caged bleeding tiger, he tries to roar away the steel bars slowly closing in on him.

His own allies are shying away from defending him. Aoun keeps changing the subject to, euh, corrupt government baddies who are bent on breaking the constitution, while lamely insisting that he supports the international tribunal. Mr. Berri, meanwhile, watched silently as his boss shattered away the benign façade he was slowly trying to build and the promise he had made just a few days ago that the tribunal would be ratified in the parliament.

The Lebanese are queuing up to calmly and confidently denounce “the President of the Republic of Hezbollah” (sounds cool, we should use that more often). Unlike the sheep that keep cheering him, the Lebanese are starting to see Mr. Nassrallah for what he really is: an annoyance whose bluffs can easily be called.

Rashed Fayed: Hezbollah supporters cheered when Hariri was killed (Arabic)
Fayed thinks it’s ‘boring’ every time Nassrallah calls Hariri a martyr.

Michael Young, a veteran Lebanese commentator, is not happy with the “dilettante” Pelosi’s visit to Syria. He explain why her trip was a “fool’s errand” and then he sighs:

Unfortunately, foreign bigwigs come to town, their domestic calculations in hand; then they leave, and we’re left picking up the pieces.

More from Anton Efendi who also points out editorials with a similar point.