Robert Fisk, is that YOU? Is it really you? Robert Fisk on Lebanon. Thanks to all who sent me the recent articles by Robert Fisk on Lebanon. But I am still waiting for the smoothie. I still can't believe how predictable and mundane Fisk articles have become on Lebanon. Ever since the Hariri assassination, and ever since Fisk told us unashamedly about his "friendships"--can you be friends with Rafiq Hariri, one wonders--with Hariri and with Jumblat, a new Robert Fisk (on Lebanon) has emerged. A spokesperson for the Hariri Inc has emerged. He writes like the royal court's chronicler. In one article for example, he heaps praise, and repeatedly, on Fu'ad Sanyurah. And by the way, Sanyurah was not educated in the US (he got his BA and MA from the American University of Beirut), and Sanyurah, Mr. Fisk, was not banned from the US for making a donation to "Hizbullah's charity", as you claimed. He had made a donation to a charity run by Ayatollah Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah, who is now quite independent (and often critical) of Hizbullah, especially on theological matters, and has rejected Wilayat Faqih in recent years. Fisk even called Ghassan Tuwayni "great". Has Fisk been in Lebanon for too long, and has he become too willing to accept the standards and biases of the Lebanese upper class without questions and without scrutiny? But I also wonder, how many people who are not of the Westernized upper class usual suspects talk to Mr. Fisk. I spoke to an Italian journalist in Lebanon about that last summer. She was aware of this problem; that most Western journalists talk to a small group of people in Lebanon, and they have views that are not representative of the entire Lebanese population. And another article by Fisk was even worse, much worse. It is important that the US left (the real left and not the bogus left) be aware of the biases and problematique of Fisk's reporting on Lebanon, but not on the Middle East as a whole. Here, he even dares to call the prime minister to who was installed by Syria as a pillar of its security order in Lebanon "the Sunni Muslim philanthropist." This about Rafiq Hariri. And Hariri was not a mentor of Jubran Tuwayni. Hariri did not like and did not get along with Jubran Tuwayni until the last few months of his life. Hariri, as prime minister, sent many journalists to jail, and closed down TV stations, and stopped the airing of many shows. Hariri wanted to close down New TV, but could not. He banned an episode of Bila Raqib that featured the Saudi opposition. Let Fisk remember, and note, that. And the third article, was even worse. Who except somebody who does not read Arabic would ever call Jubran Tuwayni "an intellectual?" Who except you, Robert Fisk, would call him an intellectual? I have no problem in Fisk's rage against the Syrian regime. But this most critical, cynical, and skeptical reporter has stopped being cynical about the place where cynicism, skepticism, and criticism are most required and most needed if one is to understand the politics of the place, and if one is not to serve as a willing or unwilling propagandist outlet for this or that side. And why has Fisk been so uncritical of Mehlis and his two reports? And look at this 4th article by Fisk: "But Jibran Tueni was a courageous man and would have been my friend, had we had the chance to be friends." What does that mean? How did he know that? For all I know, he could have been friends with Bashir Gemayyel too? Jubran Tuwayni's ideology is not different from that of Bashir Gemayyel. My friend J. tells me that when Libyan dictator threatened to expel the Palestinians in Libya in the 1990s, Jubran Tuwayni expressed concern that the Palestinians in Libya would wind up in Lebanon and said: "Lebanon will not accept the human filth [huthalah bashariyyah]". But I could not verify that, although I vaguely remember something along those lines. Yes, Jubran Tuwayni was a victim of a terrorist car bomb, but please do not re-write his history, and don't invent a biography for him, especially you, Mr Fisk, you of all people.