Thursday, July 16, 2009

This is a first: proud of Al-Akhbar

This is a first: literally, as Joe Biden would add. Al-Akhbar publishes a letter of attacks against comrade Ibrahim Al-Amin: the founder and CEO of Al-Akhbar newspaper. The person who wrote the letter was furious because Al-Amin criticized a recent reference in a speech by Hasan Nasrallah which he rightly thought was quite sectarian. The person who wrote the letter also mocks communists and leftists in Lebanon. I can't imagine any other publication in the Arab world which would publish letters against the founder of the paper. Salim Al-Lawzi (the highly corrupt--in every way possible--founder and editor of the highly successful magazine, Al-Hawadith, in the 1960s and early 1970s) for example would himself write the letters to the editors and would often attack in them some reporters and journalists in his staff that he would be mad at for one reason or another.