Thursday, June 06, 2013

Al-Qusayr: in the news

Yesterday, I wanted to see the coverage of the "fall" of Qusayr on various media.  It was quite amusing, if it was not or the victims (the victims of the regime and of its armed foes).  The Lebanese MTV station said that Qusayr has been under siege for "more than a year".  LBC TV said that it was under siege for two weeks.  Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat said that it was under siege for more than 45 days.  Suddenly, stories about the danger to civilians in the town disappeared.  No one talked about civilians there anymore.  And the Western human rights organizations (which, on human rights, have the credibility of Abe Foxman on human rights) went silent about the imminent danger to civilians in the village.  Once the fighters were allowed to leave, Western media and human rights organizations felt a sigh of relief.  They were no more worried.  Suddenly, it was the revealed, the stories about the thousands of families left in Qusayr disappeared.  Hizbullah meda assumed that viewers and readers are idiots: there was no mention to Hizbullah fighters: it was portrayed as a victory for the Syrian regime army.  Aljazeera, which I rarely watch these days, was a caricature of itself, even after its major transformation two years ago.  The major story on Aljazeera was not the fall of Qusayr: but it was a great victory for the armed rebels: that they were able to heroically capture a checkpoint by the Syrian regime.  I kid you not.  The reporters on the scene (in the studio in Doha, Qatar) don't even sound like reporters of Aljazeera of yesteryear.  They all sound like TV presenters and correspondents of Saddam Husayn TV or even of Bashshar Asad TV.  Aljazeera is so indistinguishable except that it is more crude and more vulgar and more blatantly sectarian than all Arab regime media (except those of House of Saud).