[whataretheysaying] Mary Madigan: Eleventy million Rage boys

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Posted by Mary Madigan:
Eleventy million Rage boys
http://whataretheysaying.powerblogs.com/posts/1182956672.shtml


   In his Middle East Journal, [1]Michael Totten insightfully critiques
   Islamist Rage Boy and his ilk - and the paparazzi who pursue them:

     If there is any more absurd a group of âactivistsâ in the world
     than Rage Boy and his Islamist pals throwing tantrums over Salman
     Rushdieâs novels and knighthood, Korans allegedly flushed down the
     can, and pencil drawings in Danish and other newspapers, I donât
     know about them. I have deliberately avoided writing or even
     posting about such people because they really ought to be starved
     of media oxygen.

     ..I can think of no better evidence of journalism malpractice than
     the fact that the popularity, strength, and sheer malevolence of
     the regionâs bad actors are both exaggerated and downplayed by the
     same media organizations.

     There is no shortage of lunatics in the Middle East who blow up
     civilians with car bombs, kidnap journalists, hurl political
     opponents off skyscrapers, shoot rockets at foreign cities, and do
     everything in their power to exterminate racial and religious
     minorities. These people are very often portrayed as less extreme
     and dangerous than they really are.

     Meanwhile, average Middle Eastern people are indirectly shown to be
     more extreme than they really are by the gross and apparently
     deliberate magnification of stunts by the most extreme elements of
     their societies. Almost every photo Iâve ever seen taken in the
     West Bank shows a nut job with a hood over his face and a rocket
     launcher or gun in his hand. But I didnât see a single person who
     looked anything like that when I went to the West Bank myself.

     Thereâs a flip side to this story.

     I was in downtown Beirut when Hezbollah first occupied it with
     their sit-in and rally last December, and I took the following
     photos of Martyrâs Square.

     [2]razorwire 

     [3]razorwire 

     Martyrâs Square is by far the largest open area in the city. Itâs
     where Lebanonâs famous March 14 rally against Syrian occupation
     took place. Hezbollah claims they filled Martyrâs Square and the
     rest of downtown with demonstrators. They claim their rally was
     much larger than the anti-Syrian rally on March 14 the year before.

     Itâs a lie, as those pictures show. The Lebanese Army barricaded
     the entire area and forced Hezbollah into much smaller parking lots
     for their rally and photo ops.

     The previous year Lebanonâs Syrian-installed President Emile Lahoud
     remarked that the March 14 rally against his patrons was tiny.
     March 14 responded by saying Zoom Out so the world could see how
     many people actually showed up to protest downtown.

     Hereâs the zoomed out picture.

     [4]march14beirut 

     That crowd was genuinely enormous. Thatâs Martyrâs Square, the area
     Hezbollah wasnât allowed to even set foot in. Almost a third of the
     countryâs population showed up that day.

     When you zoom out the cameras on Hezbollah, Rage Boy, and the
     masked men of Fatah, they look pathetic and small by comparison.
     Zoom out on the liberals of Lebanon and youâll see an ocean of
     people.

   It's true, and it's not just Hezbollah and the media who do this.
   Hezbollah's Western 'anti-war' supporters have no shame when it comes
   to gross exaggeration.

   A few weeks after I returned from Beirut, [5]I went to a pro-Hezbollah
   "teach-in", sponsored by local Rage Girl [6]Charlotte Kates and the
   New Jersey based [7]Activists for the Liberation of Palestine. The
   speaker, Bill Doares, Workers World writer and friend of Ramsey Clark,
   had also returned from Beirut.

   Doares told the group that there were 2.5 million people at the march
   on December 10th, an absurd exaggeration given that the population of
   Lebanon is 4 million. If he'd said that there were eleventy million
   protesters, I wouldn't have been surprised.

   According to most reports there were "thousands", many fewer than at
   the March 14th Cedar Revolution rally...

   During the question and answer session, I mentioned that I was
   attending this talk because I also been in Beirut during the Dec. 10th
   rally. Doares wasn't happy to hear that. I mentioned that the crowd at
   the rally wasn't nearly as big as he'd claimed. Doares said I was
   lying. I said that I could prove what I said with photographs of the
   empty streets set aside for the protest.

   Again, the 1.5 million crowd at the March 14th rally:
   [8]march14beirut 

   vs. the much smaller "in the thousands" crowd at the largest
   pro-Hezbollah rally on December 10th.
   [9]crowd 

   Here are the many empty spaces the pro-Hezbollah crowd didn't fill on
   December 10th, 2006, the day of their largest rally...
   [10]emptyspace1 

   [11]smallhezbrally2 

   [12]emptystreetshezb 

   Doares didn't ask to see the photographs but he dropped the "2.5
   million" issue like a hot potato.

   Charlotte Kates immediately jumped in and screamed "this is not a
   debate!".

   I won that battle, but since Doares and the Rage Boys and Girls of the
   world never stop repeating the same old lie, the war of words is still
   going on.

   Hopefully these pictures are worth at least eleventy-million words.

References

   1. http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/001476.html
   2. http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/001476.html
   3. http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/001476.html
   4. http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/001476.html
   5. http://whataretheysaying.powerblogs.com/posts/1168732124.shtml
   6. http://www.tzemachmusic.com/fyi/docs/20050901.htm
   7. http://www.newjerseysolidarity.org/
   8. http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/001476.html
   9. http://www.flickr.com/photos/29136804@N00/639409418/
  10. http://www.flickr.com/photos/29136804@N00/639409442/
  11. http://www.flickr.com/photos/29136804@N00/639409442/
  12. http://www.flickr.com/photos/29136804@N00/639374342/