Correction: about the picture of French soldiers with heads of "natives"

From Mohamed: "About the photo you posted of the heads of Algerians held by French soldiers:

Although there might be some gaps about the history of the photo, but it is generally agreed that it is actually from the Moroccan Rif, a bunch of Spanish legionnaires holding heads of Moroccans in the Rif (Northern Morocco) in the early twenties, probably 1922. Spanish Historian Maria Rosa de Madariaga includes the photo as such in her book "Los moros que trajo Franco: la intervencion de tropas coloniales en la guerra civil" (after p. 224). Also, in his book "Deadly Embrace: Morocco and the Road to the Spanish Civil War", British historian Sebastian Balfour publishes the photo with the same explanation adding, however, that during the Spanish civil war, the Phalange used the photo for propaganda purposes claiming that it is a photo of communists from the International Brigades capturing heads of Spanish "patriots."
Attached, you will find the full picture.
mohamed
PS. You can publish this if you want."

Listen to Nasser minute 4:30 explain why he rejects a separte deal with the Israeli enemy

Comrade Joseph Massad in Amman

For readers in Jordan, come attend comrade Joseph's talk about "Islam in Liberalism" in Amman.  Refreshments and Syrian appetizers are not provided.

from this blog in 2012: Al-Qa`idah in Lebanon

How the US helped bring in Al-Qa`idah into Lebanon (and subsequently to Syria)

How many times do you have to plagiarize before you are officially declared a plagiarizer?

Fareed Zakaria, who never had an insight, and whose non-insights were also plagiarized.

Israel has killed one in every thousand Gazans. That's the equivalent of 300,000 Americans

"8/19/14, 9:24 PM
Israel has killed one in every thousand Gazans. That's the equivalent of 300,000 Americans."

"Military gear beyond Ferguson: A look at how the Pentagon’s equipment has spread"

Source

Another Zionist liar: Mort Zuckerman

"Mort Zuckerman claims he toured the devastation in Gaza" although he never stepped foot in Gaza

This Washington Post columnist with a history of racism against blacks admits that Israel made mistakes

"Israelis make mistakes. For instance, the number and extent of Hamas' tunnels into Israel was apparently a surprise to Israeli intelligence. " (thanks Michele)

PS Do you know that this guy was a critic of Israel until one time the Zionists of ADL launched a campaign against him and then totally switched positions?  I remember him from my days in DC. 

Israel resumes killing women & children

"An Israeli air strike on a house in Gaza City killed a child and a woman late Tuesday, wounding 16 other people, local emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said."

How many bombs has Israel dropped on Gaza?

"If Abu Murad's estimate is right, then the explosive power Israel has fired on Gaza by land, sea and air so far is roughly equivalent to one of the atomic bombs the United States dropped on Japan in August 1945."

Steady expansion of BDS movement

From a reader: "Chants of "Free, free Palestine" rang out as Alameda County sheriff's deputies, who clearly outnumbered protesters, watched from a distance. Kate Rafael, a 55-year-old word processor from Oakland who has been protesting each day, said she believed the U-turn was proof that the demonstrations were having their desired effect. "It really makes them look desperate," she said. "There are blockades going on all over the world, from Seattle to Spain. They're not going to be able to hide much longer." "

Israeli Zim Lines ship trying to hide from BDS movement

Ferguson is Everytown, U.S.A.

"The killing of black men in incidents that begin as investigatory police stops are anything but unusual in America. In this sense, Ferguson is Everytown, U.S.A. There is a reason for this. More than 240 years of slavery and 90 years of legal segregation in this country have created a legacy of racialized policing." (thanks Amir)

An-Nahar newspaper in Beirut is bragging about a famous Lebanese

"Police in Paraguay have arrested a fugitive Brazilian fertility doctor, Roger Abdelmassih, sentenced for sexually abusing 39 of his patients."

Watch this Palestinian student tell her Washington, DC audience that she "wanted to quit" their normalization program

"Earlier this month, Nisreen Zaqout, a Palestinian student from Gaza studying at Illinois College, did just that. Watch the video above, and you can see how she told the audience at the closing session of this year’s New Story Leadership normalization program that she “wanted to quit” while in Washington, DC for the summer.

Nisreen described being part of NSL at such a time as “absolute torture.” Unlike the Israeli participants, her “firsts” were not of meeting someone new or going sailing for the first time, but instead, the first time she heard fear in her mother’s voice, the first time she heard her brother cry over the death of a young friend, the first time her grandfather said “no” to evacuation, “not again.” The ethnic cleansing and dispossession Palestinians experienced in 1948 — the year of Israel’s establishment — was enough."

By the way, Israeli media can be as silly in its bragging as An-Nahar newspaper of Lebanon

The terrorist state could not be more proud.  Let me guess: he stole the recipe from a Palestinian?  (thanks Asa)

Quibbling with the number of victims of the Holocaust: just as Zionist hoodlums quibble with the number of victims in Gaza

I, among other opponents of anti-Semitism, regarding those who quibble with the number of victims in the Holocaust as anti-Semites. Similarly, those Zionists hoodlums at WINEP who quibble with the number of victims in Gaza are similar in intent.  Look at this guy: he brags that a mere 1000 civilians were killed in Gaza: "By contrast, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have stated that the fatality count for combatants is 1,068 -- a majority of the total fatalities, meaning a civilian death rate of less than 50 percent and a considerable combat loss for Hamas fighters."  Look at his source, of course.  He then concludes that no matter how many civilians Israel has killed, this should not be blamed on Israel but on the victims themselves: "In the end, the number or proportion of civilian casualties on either side cannot alone determine right or wrong, or even degree of responsibility for this dimension of carnage."

Saudi regime (and Qatari regime) produced both Al-Qa`idah and ISIS: when will the West realize

"According to the veteran Middle Eastern correspondent, Patrick Cockburn, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies are the “foster parents” of Isis. And the former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, has pointed out that Saudi financial support has proved critical to the rise of Isis. How long can western public opinion tolerate support for the Saudi dictatorship?" (thanks Mohammad)

From the annals of the French occupation of Algeria

It is official now: the Qatari-funded Syrian Observatory has now been elevated to the status of an NGO

From Adam: "I was wondering if you knew when the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights stopped being a (severely biased) opposition group and became an official Non-Governmental Organization, that obviously is just trying to report the facts.  "

Is the US providiing intelligence help to the Syrian regime?

The highly able and reliable correspondent of As-Safir in Paris claims that the US has been providing intelligence help to the Syrian regime regarding positions of ISIS in Syria.

Syrian regime and ISIS

Western correspondents (and their sources in the corrupt Saudi and Qatari media) made claims (without any evidence whatsoever) that the Syrian regime does not bomb sites of ISIS.  But when the regime bombs sites of ISIS, the same sectarian Qatari and Saudi media complain that "Sunnis are being bombed".  Here, Al-Quds Al-`Arabi, which has become one of the ugliest forms of sectarian agitation and incitement, complains that the Syrian regime bombed sites of ISIS but that civilians were being killed. What do you want, o Qatari gas media? Just let us know. 

Not in the US press: Palestinian children mourned

"Grieving: Relatives of seven-month-old Ali Deif, the son of Hamas's military commander Mohammed Deif, hold his body as they mourn during his funeral in Jabalia in Gaza".
"Grief: Mustafa Harb Asfura (centre right), carries the body of seven-month-old grandson Ali Dief while fellow mourners hold the body of his mother Widad (top left) during funeral procession of the son and wife of Hamas's military commander Mohammed Deif who were killed by an Israeli air strike in Gaza".

"Thousands of mourners poured on to the streets of Gaza today for the funeral while angrily demanding revenge against Israel and firing shots into the air".  (Daily Mail)

An interview with Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta

This is a great doctor with a great reputation.  I met him briefly when my mother was dying last May at the AUB's Medical Center.  He left his work at AUH and volunteered in Gaza as soon as the war started.

Chief PA buffoon, Sa'ib `Uraykat: wearing a funny hat

The peom Wait for ME

The poem Wait for Me by Palestinian poet Samih Al-Qasim (my translation):
"My neck is on the edge of the knife,
O, my homeland, and yet
I tell you: Wait for me!
And my hands are tied behind my back,
O, my homeland
And yet I sing
for you, o, my wound..I sing
“I have not betrayed you…
so don’t betray me
I have not sold you..so don’t sell me!”
The homeland of the miserable psalms
and the lost faces
the homeland of the vengeful roots
the homeland of the storms, thunderbolts,
and cold nights
the homeland of the stolen orchards
and the prayful palms
the homeland of the villages, ruins, blood,
and crying
Do I strengthen your resolve?
Or do you, o betrayed one, strengthen my resolve?
The homeland of the old lies, tales,
and prophets
Do I become your secret?
Or do you, o betrayed one, become my secret?
The homeland of fragmentation in exiles,
Strange airports, and ports
homeland of anger
homeland of flames
You, whose hands are kissed
through the tears of one million refugee!
Homeland of humiliation, distress, and pride
I believed in the love which gives,
and which dissolves in giving..
Thus, I say to you: Wait for me!
My neck is on the edge of the knife,
But I say to you:
Wait for me!!"

The poem The Bird of Thunder by Samih Qasim

Samih Qasim died yesterday.  From the poem Awaiting the Bird of Thunder by Palestinian poet Samih Al-Qasim (my translation):
"And it happens that he comes
he comes with the sun
a face distorted in the dust
of school curricula
and it happens that he comes
after the suicide of
drought in my voice
something...its splendor
is limitless
something called in songs:
the bird of thunder!
He must come
we have reached it,
we have reached
the summit of death!!"

A makeshift tent in Gaza with a map of Palestine

 

From As-Safir (AFP)

Who covered up for ISIS in the case of James Foley?

From T: "Professor, I hope you didn't watch the gruesome beheading of James Foley (RIP), at the hands of a British ISIS member. The sad irony is, these "western" jihadi terrorists and James Foley flew into the same airport in Turkey, and crossed the same open and PURPOSELY porous border because Erdogan/Saudi/Qatar/John McCain/FSA were all too keen to use these terrorists for their own agendas ".

Those who are culpible in the brtual kidnapping and murder of American journalist, James Foley

For three years, Western correspondents in the Middle East and the American pundits have been promoting a Syrian "revolution".  In the course of this promotion, they lied and fabricated and gave their readers a totally different picture of what is happening on the ground.  They even invented a media phenomenon, called the Free Syrian Army, when no such army really existed beyond various gangs in different places using various names for their battalions and telling American agents on the ground in Turkey what they want to hear to get money and weapons. For three long years, Western correspondents in Beirut created a fantasy of a revolution where the armed groups are all run by two secular women operating from downtown Damascus.  The danger of the fanatical Bin Ladenite groups have been belittled from the very beginning and even recently those same correspondents have tried to promote Nusrah Front (classified by the US State Department as a terrorist organization), which is the OFFICIAL branch of Al-Qa`idah, damn it.  This is the real Syrian "revolution": a variety of terrorism and Jihadism.  Even the Saudi-funded Jihadi front, Islamic Front, was promoted as a moderate version of terrorist Jihadism.  All those who engage in such propaganda are culpable in the kidnapping and murder of James Foley.  They basically told unsuspecting American journalists that the Syrian rebels are reasonable friendly forces and that they would welcome the foreign press. All the cases of kidnapping and murder of foreign journalists were at the hands of Syrian rebels.  All of them.  Take the case of James Foley: the Western media covered up his kidnapping and pretended that he was in fact held at a detention center in Damascus. Look at this lie here from last yeAfter a five-month investigation inside Syria and the wider Middle East, GlobalPost and the family of missing American journalist James Foley now believe the Syrian government is holding him in a detention center near Damascus."  Only recently this paper had to retract its lie but only in the most vague way: "Editor's note: Since the publication of this story further investigations have been conducted on James Foley's kidnapping, pointing in a different direction. The latest public information is available here. "  But worse: even after the terrorist ISIS claimed responsibility for his beheading, there are Western correspondents (I am told that Kim Ghattas of the BBC is one of them) who are peddling more lies and claiming without a shred of evidence that the Syrian government surrendered Foley to ISIS.  Shame on all of those journalists who basically collaborated on the promotion of lies that were to the benefit of ISIS and its propaganda machine.

If you want to read one article to understand the origins and evolution of murderous ISIS read this one article

This Saudi dissident has the best analysis of ISIS that I have read in any language.  It should be translated into English.

I have my own red lines about Ferguson

If Obama continues to sanction the use of force on peaceful protesters, I may have to resort to NATO military intervention to keep the peace, just as NATO kept the peace in Libya.  Is this not a quintessential American policy?

Palestinian poet, Samih Qasim, is dead

Palestinian poet, Samih Qasim is dead.  He would have been far better known had he not lived in the age of Mahmud Darwish.

A most rare picture: Nasrallah, `Imad Mughniyyah, and Qasim Sulaymani

What do we know about Prince `Abdul-`Aziz bin Fahd: who was ambushed in Paris

I am hearing that the ambush in Paris aimed at kidnapping and not armed robbery but I have not confirmed that.  The Prince is the most powerful among the sons of Fahd by virtue of his wealth. The King has clipped his political wings as he was removed from the Council of Ministers, which was at the insistence of his father.  Fahd was at a fortune teller long time ago when the prince as a child. The fortune teller told him that `Abdul-`Aziz (`Azzuz is the pet name) is a good omen for him and will bring him good fortune. The super-superstitious king decided to keep the prince at his side, even at formal functions at Buckingham Palace, to the consternation of British protocol officials. The prince as a result did not get much of an education and you can review his Arabic tweets for that.  He was known for partying and jet setting.  He was an addict of the TV show, Baywatch, and developed an obsession with the actress Yasmeen Bleeth.  He spent a fortune (far more than what the Saudi government spent on Gaza) on Bleeth in the hope of romancing her.  In recent year, the prince changed ways and became a religious nut: he has been sponsoring a variety of TV Salafite channels that agitated for the Syrian Jihadi cause.  Enjoy him, please. He is one of US closest allies in the region.

Don't look for Al-Arabiyyah TV to cover this story

Don't wait for Al-Arabiyyah to cover the story of the armed ambush of the convoy of Prince `Abdul-`Aziz bin Fahd.  The prince has a big say at the station of his maternal uncle.

This is how Al-Riyadh newspaper coverd the story of the ambush of Prince `Abdul-`Aziz Bin Fahd

"Paris: a Saudi tourist was victim of armed robbery".

Prince `Abdul-`Aziz bin Fahd: look for dirty Lebanese hands

"Dès leur arrivée, leurs intermédiaires libanais ou égyptiens amènent jusqu'à eux toutes sortes de solliciteurs, bijoutiers, marchands de tapis ou agents immobiliers. »" (thanks "Ibn Rushd")

Who was the Saudi Prince who was ambushed in Paris?

According to Mujtahidd it was none other than Prince `Abdul-`Aziz bin Fahd. (thanks Pierre)

Smoking a joint versus committing terrorism in Saudi Arabia

In the Saudi kingdom of horrors, a man will be executed if he was caught smoking a joint. But a terrorist with Al-Qa`idah or ISIS, will receive a free pick up truck and a six month special vacation from the rehabilitation program centers of the Ministry of Interior. #Mothers_of_ISIS

Who is afraid of rape in Syria?

From a Western reporter who does not want to be identified: ""Residents take to the streets, begging the FSA to remain in their villages, save their lives, and protect them from ISIS’s signature mass murder, torture, and brutal rape."
please do not thank me or attribute to me.  now allegations of rape go down well but in reality residents of northern Syria are more likely to seek help from ISIS to protect themselves from the FSA's murder, torture and rape of course this was written by Fred Hoff not Dadem"

Nicholas Blanford's secret sources in Hizbullah: don't tell anyone

"said the Hezbollah veteran, using a slur for Shiites popular with Sunni jihadis. He requested anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the media." (thanks Basim)

Lies and fabrications of Nicholas Blanford: what is new, right?

So Blanford makes this claim that Hizbullah lowered the age of fighter from 18 to 16.  What is his evidence? It gets flimsy as usual:  "showed a slim youth with a mop of dark hair who looked even younger than his 16 years".  Because this guy is notorious for his lies and fabrications on all matters related to Hizbullah (look at his typical methods of documentation: "According to people close to Hezbollah and Shiite residents of the northern Bekaa Valley"), I in fact read this yesterday, and sent inquiries to my sources in Lebanon to check. The first thing that people told me is this: Al-Akhbar and As-Safir have much closer relationship with Hizbullah but how come the military branch of Hizbullah instead of divulging secrets and information to allies in the media, they always seem to chose this hostile Western correspondent whose only known in Beirut for his hagiography of Rafiq Hariri (I am told he is working on a second edition because the first edition contained the earlier theory of Hariri family which did not accuse Hizbullah of responsibility).  So I asked my sources in Lebanon and here what I was told on this matter: Training age in Hizbullah was and remains 16 years of age.  Fighting age was and remains 18, with permission from parents.  They added another condition: that an only child won't be allowed to fight, even with parents' permission.  And the party, is always strict in its rules. In the militias of Lebanese and Palestinian organizations during the war, there were cases of fighters below the age of 16 even.  Hizbullah does have its own scouts and Blanford is never a stickler for facts. But wait: he here pretends that he understands Arabic so well that he carried a conversation in Arabic to his readers: "“They were only 10 meters from us, yelling ‘we are coming to kill you, O Rafideen’,” said the Hezbollah veteran".  Oh, yeah? Only they never use the word Rafideen but Rafidah.  This man's reportage is an anthology of lies and fabrications. 

lies about ISIS

From a Western correspondent in the Middle East who is afraid of being labeled as an ISIS sympathizer:  "in reality there does not seem to be evidence that 700 people were killed, as far as actual sources from derezor can confirm, 1,200 members were detained and only 100 are confirmed killed
i am very skeptical about all accounts of ISIS killing children, enslaving women, raping etc, especially when there is no evidence
there's no reason to invent things about them, they're brutal enough, but because of that people are willing to believe anything and everything about them
they are briefly brutal when they enter a place and kill people who in their logic deserve it, and this salutary use of violence suffices to establish control and then violence in isis controlled areas decreases dramatically".

Israeli universities are accomplicies in the crimes in Gaza

"Almost every Israeli university is bolstering its complicity in this horror by rewarding students who took part in the attack on Gaza, including those who might have participated in war crimes. These benefits are not only practical; they also serve to glorify and elevate those who took part in the massacre, further cementing the cherished role of the military in Israeli society, especially among its youth."