Lebanon's Comedy Train

Here are some statements from politicians that show once again how close laughter is to tears.

From the Daily Star:
Hizbullah's number two, Sheikh Naim Qassem, said the "main goal" of the sit-in was to tell the world that Lebanon "is in trouble." Rather than intending to "paralyze" Lebanon, Qassem said that "the sit-in is meant to denounce all attempts to paralyze Lebanon on the political, social and economic levels."

Just for clarification: by paralyzing Downtown, you are actually demonstrating against paralyzing. Boy, do I feel stupid for not getting this.

Nabih Berri, in the same article:
"It is possible for me to convene a ... session. And if they had not done this act today, I would have called the session sooner," he said, referring to the gathering of pro-government MPs. "But now I want to call it later."

Err, wait a minute. Yesterday was the first day that Berri could convene parliament, according to the Constitution. So what exactly does he mean by calling the session sooner? He was willing to ignore Constitution? Nah, not him.

And what’s with the time warp: if the pro-government ministers had not acted yesterday, Berri would have called the session sooner. Right, ok, I see… but, but, but… he could only find out yesterday, and by then it was already too late to call a session sooner.

Unless the famous fortune teller Michel Hayek was giving him private consultations. But the quality of his predictions is doubtful at best, especially when you notice that his own website cannot be found. Don’t know about you, but I don’t trust seers who can’t find their own things.

Clearly, I must be missing the point and even more obvious am far short of possessing the eminent intelligence of the Saudi ambassador to Lebanon, who said in the same article:

In the first of many statements on the news conference held by the speaker, Saudi Ambassador Abdel-Aziz Khoja described Berri's comments as "sensible…Speaker Berri's speech clarified matters”

Now, that’s annoying when you’re really trying to understand someone and utterly fail…only to hear someone else say that it’s actually quite sensible and clarifying. What’s worse: this was only 1 article. Imagine how you’d feel after finishing the whole newspaper!