A new (sort of) twist in Saqrgate

[Originally posted at NOW]

In a new development that isn’t quite as interesting as it might at first sound, former General Security chief Jamil as-Sayyid has given Lebanon’s general prosecutor a CD purporting to contain four audio recordings of phone calls between MP Oqab Saqr and an “armed group in Syria”.

Saqr, you will recall, was in December the subject of a high-profile ‘exposé’ by OTV and Al Akhbar, who published calls between him and the Free Syrian Army in which he appeared to be negotiating the provision of arms at the behest of former PM Saad Hariri. In a somewhat grandiose press conference, Saqr retorted that the media outlets had tampered with the tapes, revealing what he said were the complete recordings, showing he had in fact been negotiating humanitarian aid.

OTV replied that he in turn had doctored the evidence, by which point few people knew who to believe – though in an oddly underreported development, an independent British company called Audio Forensic Services commissioned by al-Jadeed TV (not exactly known for pro-Hariri leanings) to investigate the tapes played by Saqr at his Istanbul press conference found them to be authentic, i.e., not edited. Saqr and Hariri subsequently launched a lawsuit against OTV and Al Akhbar for defamation and inciting sectarianism.

That was as much as was known yesterday. Do Sayyid’s new recordings change anything? Not really. Even assuming they’re genuine, they implicate Saqr only in negotiations to transfer funds and communication equipment to the rebels – not weapons. And that Sayyid freely admits their source is Syrian state television does not exactly recommend their credibility. Whether or not Saqr is in fact arming the rebels (and whether or not it would be such a bad thing if he were), as far as hard evidence is concerned, there remains considerable room for reasonable doubt.

Previous posts on this topic: ‘The Saqrpunch’

Let's be clear: They're not anti-imperialists

[Originally posted at NOW Lebanon]

Lebanese demonstrators on March 8, 2005, holding signs "thanking" Syria's Assad for occupying their country for 29 years (AP)

Twitter is abuzz today with recommendations of an intellectual “demolition” of what the author dubs “Assad’s useful idiots.” In a deeply-researched 4,000 word juggernaut, the Global Mail Middle East correspondent Jess Hill comprehensively details the manner in which Assad apologists from The Guardian’s Seumas Milne to the journalist John Pilger to the author Tariq Ali to British MP George Galloway are “willfully twisting the narrative on Syria to score points against the ‘imperialist West’” and thereby “excusing and providing intellectual cover for the Assad regime.”

It’s an excellent job, and one I thoroughly endorse, save for one slight but significant objection. Throughout the piece, Hill unironically labels these stooges “anti-imperialists” and even “leftists.” In a particularly regrettable lapse, she describes Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar as “the leftist Hezbollah-friendly newspaper.” Such misnomers sully the good names of these political traditions, which can and must be rescued from the villains who masquerade under them. Put simply, Assad, Hezbollah and their cheerleaders are not anti-imperialists but rival imperialists, whose contempt for liberalism places them not on the left, but the very-far-right.

An extreme example is Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, who calls herself both an “anti-imperialist” and a “Greater Syria nationalist” (an ideology, incidentally, that drew heavily on the fascism of 1930s Europe). Her ravings can often be found on Al-Akhbar, where she infamously once wrote that supporting Assad’s “struggle” against the opposition was the “litmus [test] of [...] commitment to the Palestinian cause.”

And where these “leftists” aren’t openly advocating ethno-nationalist expansionism, they’re making excuses for violent and totalitarian theocracy. As Michael Weiss drily noted to me after Max Blumenthal’s resignation from Al-Akhbar, “He was fine with writing for [it] when it was just pro-Hezbollah…”

It’s high time we started calling spades spades. An Islamist cannot also be a leftist, nor can a supporter of (say) the Syrian occupation of Lebanon be an anti-imperialist. Genuine leftists and anti-imperialists deserve better than being lumped in with such sinister company.

Former Al-Akhbar contributor tears them to pieces for Assad apologetics

[Originally posted at NOW Lebanon]

Max Blumenthal, the influential left-wing American journalist who was until yesterday a contributor to Al-Akhbar English, has today terminated his column and written an incandescent attack on his former colleagues and the Assad regime itself.

And, Christ, is it good. It’s all there: the “malevolent propaganda” of Amal Saad-Ghorayeb; the “dillentantish [sic] quasi-analysis” of Sharmine Narwani; the “friendly advice for Bashar Assad” from editor-in-chief Ibrahim al-Amin; the “nickel-and-diming” of the civilian death toll; and the “outlandish ravings” of the “morally compromised outlet” in general. He writes punishingly of the paper’s whitewashing the regime’s “pornographically violent crackdowns on what by all accounts is still a mostly homegrown resistance” as well its “long record of exploiting the Palestinian struggle to advance its narrow self-interests.” And he brilliantly ridicules the manner in which its apologetics have emulated the crudest examples of Israeli and US propaganda (I’ve been wondering myself where all this “leftist” hate for al-Qaeda was during the Bush years).

There are far too many haymakers to quote in a blog post of this size, but the one with which he concludes is perhaps the most damning:

“A few years ago, while visiting the offices of the Nation Magazine, a publication I frequently write for, I reflected on what it might have been like to be working there during the 1930s when its editorial leadership supported Stalin and willfully ignored his crimes. What were the internal debates like, I wondered, and how would I have reacted? The past few weeks at Al Akhbar have brought those questions back into my thoughts, and they are no longer hypothetical.”

The only remaining question is how Al-Akhbar and its groupies will respond. My guess is old-fashioned baseless accusation. Bought by the Lobby? Closet neocon? Naiive, provincial American who doesn’t even speak Arabic? I can’t wait to find out.