The BBC is a stickler about Palestinian PA-Israeli laws

"Hamas did not seek the approval of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, as required under Palestinian law." But as a reader noted, Abbas has not been a president for a decade now.

The (Double) Faustian Saudi-American bargain

"The basic framework was strikingly simple. The U.S. would buy oil from Saudi Arabia and provide the kingdom military aid and equipment. In return, the Saudis would plow billions of their petrodollar revenue back into Treasuries and finance America’s spending."

Rewriting history on Al-Arabiya: Larsen claims that the UN kicked Israel out of South Lebanon

Larsen said that Israel withdrawal from South Lebanon was the result of the UN mediation "Contrary to what many believed it was not Hezbollah who pushed the Israelis out of Southern Lebanon, but it was actually the UN mediation, which drew the line of withdrawal, the so-called Blue Line.” (thanks Basim)

Israel commandeers UN for anti-BDS rally

"The conference was organized by the Israeli Mission to the UN, and was co-sponsored by a number of pro-Israel groups. The summit reflected the Israeli government’s increasing focus on the BDS movement. In recent months, Israel advocates, helped along by U.S. pro-Israel organizations like StandWithUs, have put on conferences in the U.S. and Israel to discuss the movement. In March, the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth held an anti-BDS conference in Jerusalem featuring Israeli government officials. The conference made headlines, and attracted criticism, after an intelligence official said Israel should engage in “targeted civil elimination” of BDS advocates,"

Zionism is a form of racism & racial discrimination

From a reader: ""Now, as Danon & Co. take the U.N. by storm, the moral of the story — essentially — is that the right of Jewish businesses to turn a profit in illegally occupied territory trumps the right of Palestinians to exist free of a constant danger of being slaughtered or otherwise deprived of basic dignity." "The AP report incidentally makes note of the fact that the anti-BDS gathering took place “in the same hall where 40 years ago 72 nations voted to equate Zionism with racism.” Indeed, in 1975 the General Assembly passed Resolution 3379 stating that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” "

 NOTE: La Nueva Televisora del Sur (teleSUR, English: The New Television Station of the South) is multi-state funded, pan–Latin American terrestrial and satellite television network sponsored by the governments of Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and Bolivia that is headquartered in Caracas, Venezuela. TeleSUR was launched with the objective of providing information to promote the integration of Latin America.

PS I apologize for the use of wikipedia in the second citation. 

a knife was deliberately moved much closer to the body of a Palestinian youth who had just been executed in cold blood

"This video, shown in an Israeli court on Wednesday, reveals that a knife was deliberately moved much closer to the body of a Palestinian youth who had just been executed in cold blood." "Indeed, human rights groups have repeatedly condemned Israeli leaders for inciting subordinates to carry out a wave of extrajudicial executions of Palestinians since a sharp increase in direct confrontations began last October. In many cases, Palestinians were injured, immobilized or otherwise presented no conceivable threat when they were killed."

Israeli woman admits concocting Palestinian rape story that Netanyahu called 'horrific crime'

"A Jewish Israeli woman who claimed to have been raped by a Palestinian minor while another man filmed the incident in Tel Aviv has told the police that she lied about the allegations." "Last Thursday night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu complicated matters with a Facebook post relating to the incident: “This was a horrific crime that requires wall-to-wall condemnation, but such condemnation hasn’t been heard."

Accused torturer to unveil Bahrain's cycling team at Tour De France

"A Bahraini prince accused of torturing prisoners during the country's 2011 uprising is behind plans to create a professional cycling team to compete in the UCI WorldTour, to the dismay of human rights campaigners. Prince Nasser Bin Hamad al-Khalifa, who was stripped of diplomatic immunity by a British court in 2014 amid allegations of torture, launched the new Bahrain Cycling Team on Monday." 

Let me define a "moderate Arab regime": U.S. ally Saudi Arabia sentenced a human rights activist to eight years in prison for speaking about the regime’s systematic use of torture, assassinations and enforced disappearances

"A so-called counter-terror court in close U.S. ally Saudi Arabia sentenced a human rights activist to eight years in prison for speaking about the regime’s systematic use of torture, assassinations and enforced disappearances, and for calling for the right to peacefully protest." "The U.S., which did more than $100 billion in arms deals with the Saudi regime from 2010 to 2015, calls it a “close ally.” U.S. government officials frequently visit the kingdom, which sits on the second-largest oil reserves in the world, and “reaffirm the enduring strength of the U.S.-Saudi bilateral relationship.” " (thanks Amir)

The chief buffoon of world religions, Dalai Lama, complains that there are too many Arabs in Europe

"'A human being who is a bit more fortunate has the duty to help them. On the other hand, there are too many now.'"  Will his Hollywood friends make a movie about his statement?

Exceptionalism of Islam: The Award for the most original insight on Islam--ever

"Unlike Jesus Christ, the Prophet Muhammad was a theologian, a preacher, a warrior and a politician, all at once. He was also the leader and builder of a new state, capturing, holding and governing new territory. Religious and political functions, at least for the believer, were no accident. They were meant to be intertwined in the leadership of one man."  I mean, how original is this thesis? I mean, no one beat him to this observation...except every single Western writer and traveler in the Middle East, and almost most Western Orientalists in the last few centuries.  He certainly deserves an award for originality.  

Gerrymandering and discrimination in Jordan

Discrimination against bedouins, Christians, and women in Jordanian electoral laws.

Has the US become the best friend of Al-Qa`idah? The Obama Doctrine

"US asks Russia to not hit Nusra Front in Syria" (thanks Marc)

When a bigot vouches for the credibility of Bernard Lewis

"An ardent historian of the Middle East, Bernard published his book The Middle East and the West in 1964. It was translated into Arabic by the Muslim Brotherhood. The translator wrote in the preface: “I don’t know who this person is but one thing is clear. He is, from our point of view, either a candid friend or an honest enemy and in any case one who disdains to distort the truth.”"  I don't know what "an ardent historian" means, but leave that alone.  This anecdote has been told by Bernard Lewis, among many fibs that he has been telling about himself over the years. When did the Muslim Brotherhood translate his book, and who was that person who said that about him? Bernard Lewis with those anecdotes is like Ribbentrop in Nuremberg when he pleaded with the court that "his best friends are Jewish".  Bernard Lewis also seems to imply that the translation of his books into Arabic is a validation of his thesis not knowing that books by Israelis and Zionists and even by Jean Sasson are translated quickly into Arabic.  Bernard Lewis is desperate to dispel the impression that the natives are fully aware of his biases and political hostility so he resorts to fibs to lend himself some credibility. He reminds me of Bill O'Reilly when he invites a Democratic fool to tell him how fair and neutral he is.  Lastly, since when has the Muslim Brotherhood become an authority on historiography? 

The distinctions of Nahda in Tunisia

An-Nahda is of course playing games. The distinctions it made were not what they were reported in Western media. They never spoke of separation between religion and state, as much as making distinctions.  And the words used were about Da`wa (propagation of faith) and not faith itself.

A lousy competition over Raqqa

So US alliance is racing to "liberate" Raqqa while the Russian-Syrain regime alliance is racing to beat them in the dubious honor.

Symposium on Joseph Massad's Islam in Liberalism

click here.

Supporting pedophiles if they belong to the right sect in Lebanon: the case of Father Mansour Labaki

An-Nahar, among other voices of the right-wing sectarian Christian and racist media of the Lebanon, are publicly defending Father Mansour Labaki, who was found guilty of pedopholia by France and the Vatican.  The Maronite church sentenced the priest to rest at a mountain resort. I kid you not.  The defenders are basically saying: yes, he molested children but he also sang to his victims.  

AUB and Steven Salaita

The statement by the president of AUB was typically convoluted and vague: it spoke about irregularities in the search committee without telling us what they were. Here is a response from students of AUB.

The New Tourism Minister of Jordan

Lina `Annab, the new Tourism Minister in Jordan was my student at Georgetown University more than 20 years ago.  I remember her as an excellent and capable student but I won't congratulate her on becoming a minister in a repressive and normalizing regime.  I will congratulate her if she were to resign in protest against the regime.

Listen carefully: Saudi King is fluent in Spanish and English

According to the site of his son, Al-Arabiyya, King Salman is fluent in English and Spanish. Please watch the video and listen carefully.  

Spying and repression in UAE--or as you call them: "moderate Arab Sunni states"

"In the last five years, Ahmed Mansoor, a human rights activist in the United Arab Emirates, has been jailed and fired from his job, along with having his passport confiscated, his car stolen, his email hacked, his location tracked and his bank account robbed of $140,000. He has also been beaten, twice, in the same week.

Mr. Mansoor’s experience has become a cautionary tale for dissidents, journalists and human rights activists. It used to be that only a handful of countries had access to sophisticated hacking and spying tools. But these days, nearly all kinds of countries, be they small, oil-rich nations like the Emirates, or poor but populous countries like Ethiopia, are buying commercial spyware or hiring and training programmers to develop their own hacking and surveillance tools.

The barriers to join the global surveillance apparatus have never been lower. Dozens of companies, ranging from NSO Group and Cellebrite in Israel to Finfisherin Germany and Hacking Team in Italy, sell digital spy tools to governments.

A number of companies in the United States are training foreign law enforcement and intelligence officials to code their own surveillance tools. In many cases these tools are able to circumvent security measures like encryption. Some countries are using them to watch dissidents. Others are using them to aggressively silence and punish their critics, inside and outside their borders.

“There’s no substantial regulation,” said Bill Marczak, a senior fellow at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, who has been tracking the spread of spyware around the globe. “Any government who wants spyware can buy it outright or hire someone to develop it for you. And when we see the poorest countries deploying spyware, it’s clear money is no longer a barrier.”"

PENTAGON: SPECIAL OPS KILLING OF PREGNANT AFGHAN WOMEN WAS “APPROPRIATE” USE OF FORCE"

"AN INTERNAL DEFENSE DEPARTMENT investigation into one of the most notorious night raids conducted by special operations forces in Afghanistan — in which seven civilians were killed, including two pregnant women — determined that all the U.S. soldiers involved had followed the rules of engagement. As a result, the soldiers faced no disciplinary measures, according to hundreds of pages of Defense Department documents obtained by The Intercept through the Freedom of Information Act. In the aftermath of the raid, Adm. William McRaven, at the time the commander of the elite Joint Special Operations Command, took responsibility for the operation. The documents made no unredacted mention of JSOC."

A most famous columnist in Saudi media: Americans who criticize Saudi regime are "Israeli agents"

Jihad Al-Khazen (former editor-in-chief of both Al-Hayat (mouthpiece of Prince Khalid bin Sultan) and Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat (mouthpiece of sons of King Salman) say that those American who criticize the Saudi regime: "some are well-intentioned and most are agents of Israel".

أقول للأميركيين، وبعضهم حسن النيّة وأكثرهم عميل لإسرائيل

Saudi regime propaganda is furious at the New York Times

That one editorial about the Saudi regime really upset the Saudi regime.  The whole propaganda machine has been activated.

gender question

Two years in jail and 80 public lashes for a retweet in Saudi Arabia

This won't get attention in the Western press. If this was in Iran, it would be plastered on the front pages of all newspapers and magazines.  But this is in Saudi Arabia.

Piketty in Arabic

Capital is now available in Arabic.

A clerical crook, literally

A man posed as a Shi`ite Sheikh, and as a Sunni Shaykh, and as a Sufi leader all to obtain money from non-suspecting believers.  He is being called the "imposter of the century".  Beware of believing and non-believing crooks.

Municipal elections in Beirut

The results of Lebanese municipal elections can be summed up thus:  that while all sectarian parties and Zu`ama' remain dominant, people are increasingly sick and tired of all of them, one by one.  You know what that means? They all need to engage in more intense sectarian agitation which always save them all.

Civil Society: Lebanese version

So in Tripoli the so-called "civil society" aligned itself with the sponsor of Salafi and Jihadi scoundrels of the city, Ashraf Rifi (a member of the board of Prince Nayif University for Security Studies, which has become a sponsor of all intelligence and torture apparatuses in Arab countries).  Rifi in declaring his victory sent his salutations to...Beirut Madinati.  

British wars on Muslims

From Amir:

"Over the past year there have been reports of SAS forces operating in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Libya – as well as advising allies in Jordan and Saudi Arabia." "One of the reasons British people are targeted abroad is because of our Army’s visible presence in other countries. And now, without our knowledge, British soldiers are being deployed in numerous countries across the Middle East."

 "Plans to exploit Iraq's oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world's largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show."

The decline of the Professional Managerial Class: what Beirut Madinati needs to read

"Today, the PMC as a distinct class seems to be endangered. At the top end, exorbitant compensation and bonuses have turned managers into corporate owners. At the bottom, journalists have been laid o , recent PhDs have gone to work as part-time, temporary adjuncts rather than tenure-track professors, and those now iconic recent graduates have taken to the streets. In the middle, lawyers and doctors are more and more likely to work for corporations rather than in private practices. Once independent professionals, they are now employees."

Gene Sharp, do you remember him?

Do you still remember back in 2011 when the New York Times and other Western media declared that Gene Sharp inspired the Arab youth?

A few days ago Mahmoud Abbas inaugurated a new street named after him. The sign of the street this morning.

Flash. The Qatari regime uncovers a most dangerous conspiracy represented by...TWITTER

The headlines of the this Qatari regime mouthpiece, Al-Rayah: "Twitter...A Platform for rumors and for agitation of public opinion: Users own fake accounts and they buy followers with dollars to spew their venom....Psychologically diseased people and seekers of fame seek to spread Fitnah."

Dissolution of parliament in Jordan

Of course, Western media who wish to convince their audience that the potentate of Jordan is a democrat ignore all his repression and his authoritarian schemes. Just yesterday, he dissolved parliament in preparation for a newly packaged Syrian-like parliament.  Just as they ignored how he stole the organization of Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, and appointed an alternative leadership and will be transferring the assets of the real organization to his fake organization. 

ISIS and Israel

There is a strange relationship between Israel and a small sect of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) based next to the Golan Heights. The very presence of a group like ISIS so close to Israel poses many questions.  Firstly why has ISIS not attacked Israel – a country they have sworn to destroy – from said base? Similarly why has the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) not attacked this small and weak group of extremists on their border? The answers to such questions show the truth behind the rhetoric all actors use in this conflict...Israel is focused not on ISIS and Sunni groups, but on the Shia groups in Syria. Israel's airstrikes have hit Assad’s Shia-backed regime and Hezbollah, not ISIS or al-Nusra. Correspondence between the then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and political advisor Jacob Sullivan about Israel’s aims in the region tried to rationalise why Israel ignores ISIS." (thanks Helena)

Obama's aggressive pursuit of new nuclear weapons

"But more alarming than this failure to destroy old nuclear weapons has been the Obama administration’s aggressive pursuit of new, “smaller” ones, for which the threshold of use would be lower, according to former military commanders. At great expense, the president has bolstered all three components of the nation’s “nuclear triad”: the strategic bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched missiles." "Obama’s much-publicised “nuclear security summits” largely ignored the greatest source of nuclear insecurity in the world today: 15,000 nuclear weapons, including 1,800 on hair-trigger alert." "Now the United States is stridently resisting diplomatic moves by two-thirds of the world’s nations to declare nuclear weapons illegal. It boycotted UN talks in Geneva this month aimed at setting the stage for negotiations on a prohibition treaty."

Texas men train to shoot Muslims

"A group of white men in Texas are training to shoot Muslims in case of an “uprising” and are dipping their bullets in pig's blood or bacon grease so victims would “go straight to hell”."

White football players raped black, disabled teammate with a coat hanger

"The victim “was taunted and called racist names by other members of the team which names included ‘Kool-Aid’ ‘chicken eater’ ‘watermelon’ and [the N-word],” the suit alleges. The civil complaint filed in the U.S. District Court in Idaho also claims that one of the students charged with sexual assault displayed a Confederate flag and demanded the victim recite a racist song titled “Notorious KKK.” All three of the attackers were white, the suit says."  

Discussion of Joseph Masaad's Islam in Liberalism

Read here.

Obama is set to maintain the U.S. arsenal of 1,528 deployed warheads — almost half of which are on 30-minute alert

"Obama’s Hiroshima speech was reminiscent of the one he gave in Prague, only three months into his presidency, when he announced that he would “seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” "But that was as far as he would go. Obama is set to maintain the U.S. arsenal of 1,528 deployed warheads — almost half of which are on 30-minute alert — despite a 2013 White House assessment that he could safely reduce the U.S. arsenal by a third. Obama is also pushing for a $1 trillion effort to replace the U.S.’s entire stock of long-range strike bombers, cruise missiles, nuclear submarines, and land-based missiles – which experts have said is sure to cause an arms race."

Hedy Epstein, Palestinian rights advocate & Holocaust survivor, dies at 91

"Her “personal wake-up call,” however, were the Israel-backed Sabra and Shatila massacre. Israel invaded south Lebanon in 1982. With the support of the U.S., it subsequently waged a war in alliance with far-right, Phalangist Christian militias. In September 1982, Israeli-backed Phalangist militias slaughtered thousands of civilians in Sabra and Shatila, Beirut refugee camps largely inhabited by Palestinians who were expelled by Zionist militias in the war that established Israel in 1948. Renowned scholar Noam Chomsky called it “a horrifying massacre,” comparing it to the anti-Jewish pogroms that took place in Czarist Russia. Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi noted that documents in the Israel State Archives “pin direct responsibility for much more of what happened in Sabra and Shatila on not only Ariel Sharon and the Israeli government, but reveal American responsibility for what happened.” " (thanks Amir)

The US assassination of a Taliban leader

From a comrade who wishes to remain anonymous: "I found the assassination of the Taliban leader to be a particular troubling though perfectly predictable development. Ostensibly, it was not carried out because the Taliban are a threat to the US, but because he was opposed to the peace process as it exists. Specifically, the Taliban are opposed to continued presence of the US in Afghanistan. So in effect the US is shaping peace negotiations through drone assassinations. Fair enough, and standard super power politics. But this is what drone assassinations are evolving into: an instrument shaping policy rather than the other way round. "