Rod Nordland, who had admitted during his service in Iraq that he never left the Green Zone except when taken for a ride by US officials, is now officially working for the Hariri press office in Lebanon

So this guy, with no knowledge of Lebanon and no history in the country--hell, the man has no knowledge of the Middle East and no knowledge of one Middle East language--is parachuted into Lebanon and immediately starts vomiting articles on the country.  He knows the shtick: that you have to produce articles that favor US/Saudi clients in the country and that put the enemies of Israel in a bad light.  He starts with this:  "When government censors in Lebanon reviewed a new film, “Beirut Hotel,” there was one scene that particularly caught their attention — a reference to a USB memory stick with documents on it about the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri."  Then he wants to link censorship to Hizbullah so he says: "With a new government dominated by allies of Hezbollah".   In fact, the censorship regarding the Hariri assassination came from the Hariri coalition.  Censorship has been in place in Lebanon since 1992 (and even before) and most of the years, the government was dominted by Rafiq Hariri (more than 12 years) and his son, and his tool, Fu'ad Sanyurah.  So Hizbullah which is a party in this heterogeneous government is now responsible for censorship?  How did that come up?  In fact, all sides in Lebanon, Hizbullah AND Hariri organanization, want censorship in Lebanon: political and religious: but most of the censorship is due to pressures from Sunni, Sh`iite and Christian religious authorities.  They are the worst: the Maronite church, however, is the worst practitioner, by far.  But the ignorant reporter does not only take sides in the political conflict in Lebanon, he decides to take sectarian sides too:  "With the rise of the Shiite Islamists of Hezbollah, Lebanon’s Sunni Muslims — traditionally moderate — have been increasingly challenged by extremists..." So those poor Sunnis (all of them of course): they have been all moderate until those fanatics Shi`ites pushed them to extremism.  Can you imagine the quality of this analysis, and how dumb (and biased) it makes its author sound?  But then we realize where Nordland is getting his biases from: his main source (as you can read) for the whole article is a March 14 media functionary, who directs the Samir Qasir Foundation, which is known as a right-wing pro-March 14 propaganda outfit that only wants democracy in one Arab country only (Syria).  It is known for its close association with the regimes of gas and oil in the Gulf.   But Nordland is not only ignorant and willing to produce whatever propaganda trash fed to him by clients of Saudi Arabia in Lebanon, he also is a liar (and lazy):  "In Beirut, the censors have banned “The Da Vinci Code” as anti-Christian and the TV series “The West Wing” as anti-Arab. "  Any google search would have led Nordland to know that the Da Vinci Code was banned NOT for anti-Arab (anti-Arab?? in that movie?) bias, but because the Maronite Church pressured the Lebanese government to ban it because the movie conflicted with Christian theological doctrine.  This was even covered in the Western media, but Nordland was busy being sequestered in the Green Zone in Baghdad.   Finally, let me say this about the credibility of this Nordland:  he has a long article about a country that is deeply divided, and every single person cited in this article belongs to one side: the March 14 side.  Enough said.  


PS Correction.  In my angry rush, I missed seeing that he id say that Da Vinci Code was banned for being anti-Christian but the ban of the West Wing is a lie because people in Lebanon get TV stations from around the world, and thus the ban of individual shows is not possible.  This guy's dispatches from Lebanon will be an anthology of lies, fabrications, and propaganda from the Hariri press office.