About the Alternative

Alternative is a non-profit and non-partisan monthly newspaper first published on March 2003.

Alternative covers worldwide news of interest to young people and nonconformist groups. It aims at presenting different views and offering objective news coverage. Even though it is published by the Leftist Alternative Group which endorses leftist ideology, Alternative is not the mouthpiece of any faction, party or group.

Writing, editing, photography, design, web design and circulation are all made available by members of the Leftist Alternative Group on a voluntary basis. The group also funds the printing of 3, 500 issues circulated in Beirut every month free of charge.

The Leftist Alternative Group is a grass-root organization of leftist activists. The group does not endorse, nor it intends to adopt or draft, a defined leftist ideology. On the contrary, the group's activists include socialists, socio-democrats, progressive socialists and communists.

The group's goal is to demonstrate organization skills and commitment. It also aims at proving that, unlike all previous attempts, leftists possess the ability of offering well thought of and properly packaged and displayed products.

The group strives to minimize endless debating and to maximize efficient work and output. By doing so, the group hopes to fight apathy and lack of interest especially among the youth.

It also hopes that through other projects, the group would prompt the youth to take some desperately needed initiative and embark on some public activity.

The Leftist Alternative Group is not opposed to any leftist group or faction. Relations and affiliations with such groups are welcome and are based on common interest and the organization of public activity.

On the broader political spectrum, the Leftist Alternative Group does not belong to anyone of the two dominant world camps that have taken different names such as "the Good and the Evil," "Muslims and the Infidels" or "Collaborators and Nationalists."

The group rather intends to reassess the failure of human ideologies and to marry them with Western-style organization. This puts the group in the "nowhere classification," a classification of a third way different from that of the dominant schools, a way that might be an alternative.