A “return to tyranny”

Neil Macdonald:

Beirut, easily the most vigorous, emancipated, glittering capital city in the Arab world, has descended into a miasma of fear, apprehension and uncertainty. Foreign journalists in this once-relaxed city are now assigned “minders,” as they are in Damascus, or were in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. All is now forbidden. Interviews dry up at the last moment. No one wants to antagonize Syria or Hezbollah.

This sounds like a sensationalist exaggeration and sloppy agenda-driven journalism to me. Sure journalists are escorted when they approach Hezbollah’s “security squares”, but that is hardly new, it’s been like that for as long as we can remember. That is not the case with any other politician or party. He makes it sound as if the government is assigning minders to journalists as soon as they land in Beirut.