Joumana Haddad made this up

"Officials of Hizbullah, the powerful Lebanese Shia movement, tried to close Jasad's stand at this week's Beirut book fair." Publishing sources in Beirut tell me that Joumana Haddad made this up to make herself a martyr of press freedom. For my view of Jumana Haddad, read this. Maybe I should do that: I should claim that Muslim fundamentalists added poison to my pizza to censor my artistic and literary expressions. Oh, yeah. Poor me. Of course, I never met a challenge of religious and sexual taboos that I did not like but Ms. Haddad is not the person to do it, and her production is rather less than mediocre. That reminds me: when I was at AUB comrade Rami Zurayq (I give his full name in case he ever runs for office so that would undermine his candidacy) and I started a wall newspaper. He and I would write it and provide illustrations to offend the religious and sexual sensibilities of the people on campus. And every day, this bearded religious nut would come to try to tear it down and we would keep it up. He was particularly offended by information (and illustrations) that we gave about possibilities of sexual positions.