Le Liban: un autre assassinat politique

[lagatta]

I'm translating something by a left-wing Lebanese: I'll ask him if he is writing anything about this.

I suspect that even though Internet use is high in Lebanon, as reflects a developed and highly-urbanised society, there is still a strong class component as to who can blog. That means they have their own internet-worthy computer - I think a lot of poorer Lebanese rely on the many internet cafés.

Remember reading that the phone polls gave FDR as the loser in his first election in depression-era US - although there were millions of phones by then there was still enough of a class component to phone ownership to skew the poll results.

[skdadl]

Yeah -- I suspect that is the case. Somebody's got to tell Hezbollah: "Hey, you guys! Divert some of that money to good internet connections, and get blogging!"   :wink:

You'd think Ahmadinejad could tell them that. He's got a blog, after all.  :wink:

[Holly Stick]

Mark Levine suggests Israel is the only one to benefit from Gemayel's assassination.
http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/32159.html

...Pulling off an assassination like this, which is by no means beyond Israel's ability, would serve several goals: First, it would turn the chaos that Hezbollah was trying to create in the Lebanese political system against it. Instead of Hezbollah managing the post-war chaos in order to strengthen its position, the movement is now forced onto the defensive and must react to a new dynamic in which Christians (with the exception of the breakaway Aoun faction) and Sunnis are more united than ever in their desire to block Hezbollah's takeover of the system. Second, if the country descends into civil war, which is a frightening, if still distant possibility, Hezbollah would be effectively neutralized, and Israel could rely on Maronites and perhaps Sunnis to attack Hezbollah without Israel facing the international condemnation it received during the war....

[skdadl]

It's always worth asking "Who benefits?" And I agree with Levine's answer to that question.

There's a complication, though. Actors are not always rational. Someone may have done something stupid, something that would not work to his benefit.