Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Rod Nordland: Remember his name: another clueless New York Times correspondent

"Gunmen erected roadblocks, burned tires and fired into the air in downtown Beirut in the predawn hours of Tuesday, while in the suburb of Jounieh to the east, at least two land mines were found on the grounds of a hospital.
The roadblocks were manned by Shiites who apparently support President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and who were angry over the arrest of a Shiite man for firebombing and shooting into the offices of New TV, a Lebanon broadcaster that has been critical of the Syrian government."  Notice that the headline and the narrative her insists on dragging the Syrian issue into it when it has absolutely nothing to do with foreign policy. The matter is about the appearance of Shaykh Ahmad Al-Asir on New TV and his expressions of sectarian incitement which apparently enraged a group of Shi`ites whose political affiliation is not even known (Minister of Interior stated that they were neither Amal nor Hizbullah, and the two movement denied any link with the thugs).  But Rod Nordland's ignorance does not stop here: even when Karma Khayyat tells him that the issue is about sectarianism and not about Syria, he wants to make it about Syrian issue.  And notice that Rod, who clearly has no knowledge of Lebanon or Arabic, insists that Al-Asir attacked Hizbullah and Amal when he is known for attacks on Shi`ites.