Thursday, February 14, 2008

Organizers: 2.5 (or more) Millions Lebanese flock to M14 Anniversary ...

(bastardly foreign dispatchers talk of mere thousands! Do I sense M14 media fatigue? Do I sense M14 bubble-burst? )

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

MANY WERE STUCK IN TRAFIC O GPC. A GOOD ESTIMATE WOULD BE AROUND 200,000.

Anonymous said...

Shou???????????? 200,000 In Lebanon we love BIG numbers.Millions, hundered thousands..... I bet 20 thousand MAX. People are fed up and preferred to stay home. This was a masquerade.

Anonymous said...

That's a lie and you know it (that's why you provide no link). Nobody used the number 2.5 million. That's just a lie.

As for "foreign dispatchers" and your other lie (that they only talked of "mere thousands"), let's set the record straight:


http://www.lemonde.fr/web/video/0,47-0@2-3218,54-1011578@51-965845,0.html

Trois ans après l’assassinat de Rafic Hariri, près d’un million de Libanais se sont rassemblés, jeudi 14 février, sur la place des Martyrs à Beyrouth. Saad Hariri, le fils de l’ancien premier ministre, a promis à ses partisans que “la vérité [allait] triompher” dans l’enquête sur la mort de son père. Une statue en bronze de Rafic Hariri a été inaugurée sur les lieux de l’attentat.

http://www.afp.com/english/news/stories/080214123943.4du1vocb.html

BEIRUT (AFP) - Hundreds of thousands of government supporters converged on central Beirut on Thursday for the third anniversary of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri’s assassination, as just miles away Lebanon’s opposition Hezbollah prepared to bury a top commander slain by a car bomb.

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL1444445020070214

BEIRUT (Reuters) - The second anniversary of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri’s assassination in central Beirut was anything but a somber and mournful affair. The mood was one of defiance rather than grief.

Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese turned the commemoration into yet another opportunity to finger-point at Syria and blame Lebanon’s political woes on the Hezbollah-led opposition.

Antoun said...

March 14 estimates have been placed at over 1 million, and there have been some media estimates at tens of thousands.

Eg. from the BBC:

"The organisers claimed the turnout was more than a million. Even if it was only tens of thousands, it was still quite a display."

The point of the matter is March 14have inflated numbers, in an attempt to exaggerate an occasion that has lost its flavour.

The majority of Lebanese are sick of demonstrating, sick of politics, and are at home trying to scramble a visa to get out of this mess.

Don't let our politicians fool you, they're not as important and adored they make themselves out to be.

Moussa Bashir said...

wlak aya 2.5 million, there were about 7.3 million khali2a down there, my friend counted them one by one, on his tv screen.

Anonymous said...

Must be an HD TV