I love reading him and listening to him. He truly has a great mind: he also has an excellent education and knowledge. He wrote at the Lebanese University a dissertation on Lebanese theater. He knows a lot about various topics and has excellent command of Arabic literature and heritage. Politically, it is a different matter. I last saw him when I visited him in his office when he was Minister of Culture. I was trying to argue against the Lebanese obsession with Francophone matters and congress. He made it clear that he did not care about such matters himself. I then bluntly asked him whether he is "for Lahhud or for Hariri". He told me that he does not belong to either of them. Of course, I did not believe that because no minister is brought in as the representative of his/her person. I felt naive when I later learned that he had been a close adviser to the Hariri family and that he has been close to one of the dirtiest figures in Lebanese potlics, Johny `Abdu. I watched him on MTV yesterday: he was interesting and I agree with his refutation of the notion of Israeli/US control of the Arab uprisings. But I noticed that he never ever said one critical word about GCC countries and that he was careful to not utter a word about Hariri camp in Lebanon (he is March 14, but pretends falsely that he is independent). I was not surprised: I noticed on twitter that he flits with the foreign ministers of Bahrain and of UAE. So I guess we can state it officially: Ghassan Salamah wants democracy in Syria but finds the regimes of GCC to be fine and dandy. OK.