L’article de Roger Cohen pour le NY Times est évidemment grotesque. Mais la partie la plus ridicule est sans conteste l’interview de Riad Salamé (pas un mot sur la dette, hein, pas un mot sur les menaces de sanctions américaines, pourtant reprises à son compte dans son évocation de sa lutte contre le « financement du terrorisme », qui désigne, en néocon-speak, la Résistance libanaise, etc.) :
Opinion | Lebanon Battles to Be Born at Last
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/25/opinion/lebanon-protests.html
“Today, everybody can say whatever via social media,” Salameh, who came to this job from Merrill Lynch, told me. “I have read various so-called biographies of myself, and am discovering I did not know who I was before.” He smiled a wan smile. “My contribution over the years has been to try to hold Lebanon stable.”
It’s not easy, he said, when you have a tiny dollarized economy, where 73.5 percent of deposits are in foreign currency, budget deficits are high, and protecting the currency is a daily battle.
“I don’t know if the government is very corrupt,” he continued, “but I can say I worked very hard to put in place a special investigation commission to combat money laundering and terrorist financing, and I never compromised on this. Those who suffered from my decisions are now trying to drag me down with accusations of corruption.”
The Central Bank, he insisted, had no control over the private bank accounts of government members. “The Central Bank does not handle private accounts. I do not have this privilege. The banks should know their clients and report to us if they see something suspicious.”
As for the supposedly lavish wedding in France, the focus of much ire, Salameh said it took place overseas because his son, a Christian, wed a Muslim and it was easier to have a civil marriage in France. “It was just a normal dinner,” he said.