What US Media do not report about the Middle East? While the Syrian president is busy trying to appease the US and Israeli governments (and shaking the hand of the president of the government that occupies Syrian lands--it shows you how principled those lousy Arab leaders are) attacks on poor Syrian workers in Lebanon continue. Neither the lousy Lebanese nor the lousy Syrian government has addressed the issue of abuse and murder of poor Syrian workers and Ka`k street vendors in Lebanon. Just yesterday, some Lebanese patriotic racists set 12 tents where poor Syrian workers live in Mustadirat Al-`Abd in `Akkar on fire. They were all destroyed, along with whatever was inside. The racist ideologues of the Lebanese patriotic opposition (especially an-Nahar newspaper) have been trying to whip up more Lebanese racism against the Syrians--the people. After the rape and murder of a college student in South Lebanon, all attempts were made to mobilize the villagers in the area against Syrian farm workers in the region. To their credit, and after the arrest of the murderers/rapists (3 were Syrians and one was a local Lebanese--although the racist Lebanese press is only focusing on the Syrians because all Lebanese (especially if they are right-wing racists) are angels--the residents of the village of Burghliyyah (which I had visited in the past) issued a statement against racism against Syrians and the political statement distanced the village from the right-wing opposition, and expressed their belief in "the unity of destiny and joint path" between Syria and Lebanon. In other news, another visit by US embassy staff in Lebanon was interrupted in Hirmil, this time. During a visit by some employees of the US embassy in Lebanon, people started gathering and chanted slogans against the US and Bush. Some people even attacked the diplomatic cars, and the delegation had to flee the scene quickly. Local parties and organizations later issued a statement in which they expressed their opposition to "provocative US presence of the delegation of the US embassy." This will not be noticed by the Washington Post reporter in Beirut who noticed a picture in the Beirut demonstration of March 14th which said "thank you Bush." Nobody else (not even in the right-wing Lebanese press as far as I remember) noticed that sign, but then again, American reporters in the Middle East are genetically gifted and have keen observation skills that other reporters lack. And today, there was a massive demonstration in Iraq against the US (and Macedonian) occupation of Iraq. There were demonstrations in Sunni and Shi`ite areas of Iraq. When I travel, I get to painfully see US TV "news." CNN and Fox News tried their best to downplay the significance of the demonstrations that were opposed to both Saddam and Bush. They could not simply label the demonstrators as Ba`thist "remnants of the old regime." Fox estimated the crowd in Baghdad at 10,000 while CNN--trying to outdo Fox these days--put the figure at 5,000. Other non-American sources put the figure higher. But who cares. Most Americans still believe that Bush is "making progress in Iraq." I am really suffocating.