Ralph Kinney Bennett of the excellent Tech Central Station has written an excellent piece on the Lebanon situation, in which as I noted yesterday the people are virtually in lock-step with the Bush doctrine and demanding freedom and democracy, much to the chagrin of liberals everywhere.
It’s called Deconstructing Demonstration Day and was a little risky for the author in that it could have proven either awesomely prescient or the exact opposite. No matter—it’s very informative and well-written—and he wrote me a nice note praising my blog, so it’s all good.
The other shoe dropped in Lebanon, Sunday. (Or was it one of those curly toed slippers?)
Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the bespectacled, boyish-looking leader of Hezbollah, decided there had been enough “liberation” euphoria in Lebanon the past few weeks, so he said, “Enough!”
Nasrallah, speaking from his fortified “stronghold” in southern Beirut, condemned, without the slightest sense of irony, “foreign interference” in Lebanese affairs while in the same breath calling for a massive demonstration backing Syria.
He wants the people of Lebanon to take to the streets Tuesday to “express their gratitude” to Damascus and their condemnation of UN Resolution 1559, which calls for Syrian withdrawal from the country.
The demonstration, now a few hours away, promises to be a showcase of raw power on the part of Hezbollah and possibly Syrian intelligence operatives, who will be herding people in front of the television cameras.
As if on cue, the media is reporting a huge pro-Syrian demonstration in Beirut.
BEIRUT, Lebanon – Nearly 500,000 pro-Syrian protesters waved flags and chanted anti-American slogans in a central Beirut square Tuesday, answering a nationwide call by the militant Shiite Muslim Hezbollah group for a demonstration to counter weeks of massive rallies demanding Syrian forces leave Lebanon.
Organizers handed out Lebanese flags and directed the men and women to separate sections of the square. Loudspeakers blared militant songs urging resistance to foreign interference. Demonstrators held up pictures of Syrian President Bashar Assad and signs saying, “Syria & Lebanon brothers forever.”
Other placards read: “America is the source of terrorism”; “All our disasters are from America”; “No to American-Zionist intervention; Yes to Lebanese-Syrian brotherhood.”
Black-clad Hezbollah guards handled security, lining the perimeter of the square and taking position on rooftops. Trained dogs sniffed for bombs.
Large cranes hoisted two giant red-and-white flags bearing Lebanon’s cedar tree. On one, the words, “Thank you Syria,” were written in English; on the other, “No to foreign interference.” […]
As I indicated yesterday, the media tends to have a strange habit of over-inflating the number of participants in anti-U.S. demonstrations around the world or at home, and under-inflating pro-U.S. numbers.
To borrow from my post yesterday about the anti-Syrian demonstration numbers, I said: “The AFP reporter informs us that it’s “up to” 150,000. So did they count them? Not likely, no. They would normally rely on the police. But the police say “more than 150,000 people attended”. The organizers say “between 200,000 and 250,000”. How did the reporter arrive at “up to 150,000?” Seems to me it’s up to 250,000, or nearly double what the reporter would have us believe. It just seems to me at anti-America rallies, the official media estimates are always based on the organizers’ estimates.”
In the AP story on this Syrian-organized anti-U.S. rally, they inform as thusly:
Tuesday’s rally was far bigger than the more than 70,000 anti-Syrian protesters who filled the nearby Martyrs’ Square on Monday. That was the biggest rally yet of anti-Syrian furor, as demonstrators waved Lebanon’s cedar-tree flag and thundered, “Syria out!”
A little history re-write can do wonders for anti-American media.
By the way, how did Tanalee Smith, Associated Press writer, arrive at the “Nearly 500,000 pro-Syrian protesters”? There’s absolutely no reference to any official police or organizer counts. So I guess it’s just “factual information” garnered from the mysterious and ingenious media ether, and we should just absorb it. OK got it.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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