Wednesday, October 31, 2007
A: “Things are very clear and do not require proof." (thanks Nicholas)
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Monday, October 29, 2007
Sunday, October 28, 2007
"Dear Asaad,
I'm not entirely sure why I'm sending this to you but I read your blog all the time and I feel the urge to share this with you. I am a business senior at AUB; yesterday I went to Nahr el Bared with a group of 11 AUB students. We teamed up with an NGO called... (they got us the security clearance we needed to get in to the camp) and we had a small clean-up campaign for the houses that were not completely dilapidated--there were very little of these. I was infuriated with what I saw in Nahr el Bared, so much that I decided to write Siniora a letter. Could you check it out? It would mean a lot.
Dear Mr. Siniora,
I
Sincerely,
Tamara Keblaoui"
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Friday, October 26, 2007
Read this: "Hassan Fattah, who has been an anchor for us in Dubai, dashing off to story after story around the region, is resigning to take up an exciting opportunity, becoming managing editor of a new English-language pan-Arab daily. Hassan originally came to our attention through his work founding Iraq Today, an English-language newspaper in Iraq. He will be mentoring young Arab journalists, and we wish him well."
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20160924221034im_/http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_O5OuU90ru-Y/RyAhGwTKKNI/AAAAAAAABFQ/CDAAYCerTZk/s320/20060408-180512-5.jpg)
PS The author of the article tells me that her piece was radically edited (she sent me the original), and criticisms of Abu Mazen and Fath were deleted in the final version.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
PS Is it me or is the woman to the right smiling? (thanks Asa)
Monday, October 22, 2007
Sunday, October 21, 2007
PS I don't like the "denounced" in the Middle East reference in the headline. In fact, he is widely admired in the Middle East even if he has been criticized by one kooky cleric or two.
Your books denounce Islamic fanaticism, particularly as it curtails the rights of women. Is that your main theme? Oh, no, not at all. I don’t consider myself as a feminist but more a humanist.
Still, in your work, you are constantly contrasting your love of food, smoking and sensual pleasures with the acts of self-denial demanded by the mullahs, like wearing a chador. It’s a problem for women no matter the religion or the society. If in Muslim countries they try to cover the woman, in America they try to make them look like a piece of meat.
Are you suggesting that veiling and unveiling women are equally reductive? I disagree. We have to look at ourselves here also. Why do all the women get
I never really thought about goose anatomy. I looked when I was on a farm in France." (thanks Laleh)
Saturday, October 20, 2007
PS In the audio, but not in the video version, you can listen to the Q and A. You can hear Jumblat calling on the US to send "car bombs" to Damascus. The Zionist audience thought that the idea of "car bombs" in Damascus quite hilarious. They all seemed to laugh. (A few minutes later he said that he was joking. Is it not a Federal crime in the US to joke about bombs?)
Friday, October 19, 2007
"Fida’a Ittani of Al Akhbar, an independent pro-opposition newspaper, wrote on October 9: “How was the assassination of Al-Hariri planned and who equipped the alleged suicide bomber Ahmad Abu Adas who carried out the attack? Who handled the monitoring? And where was the truck used in the explosion rigged with explosives? And who is the real suicide bomber? A force of the elite division of the internal security forces enters Roumieh prison and starts beating up some of the detainees in the prison accused of belonging to the Fatah Al-Islam organization and to a logistical support group for the Iraqi resistance known as the Hassan Naba’h group or the group of 13. Despite many reports about the discovery and foiling of an attempt to escape from the prison which were denied by the interior minister Hassan Al-Sab’a, the reports about cooperation of one of the prison guards with the Islamic extremists and the discovery of communications from inside the prison to outside of it were accurate. “But the attack on the detainees who suffered from beatings, searches, and insults that reached the extent of tearing apart Qur’ans and insulting their religious beliefs, returned the matter to a critical point in the relations that were managed indirectly between the detainees and active political factions in the country and posed new questions about the identity of this group and the charges against it. The group that was interrogated in batches includes members from many nationalities: Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria. The interrogation was carried out in the centers of the internal security forces and the confessions were signed by the head of the information branch in the internal security forces. This group was also interrogated by non-Lebanese security forces, including American and Saudi factions without the detainees learning who they were being interrogated by." (thanks Nicholas)
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Monday, October 15, 2007
Reason: Why the initial aversion?
Hirsi Ali: Because I thought they would be religious, and I had become an atheist. And I don’t consider myself a conservative. I consider myself a classical liberal. Anyway, the Brookings Institution did not react. Johns Hopkins said they didn’t have enough money. The RAND Corporation wants its people to spend their days and nights in libraries figuring out statistics, and I’m very bad at statistics. But at AEI they were enthusiastic. It turns out that I have complete freedom of thought, freedom of expression. No one here imposed their religion on me, and I don’t impose my atheism on them.
Reason: Do you see eye to eye with high-profile AEI hawks such as former Bush speechwriter David Frum and former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton?
Hirsi Ali: Most of the time I do. For instance, I completely and utterly agree with John Bolton that talking to Iran is a sheer waste of time."
And here, she shares the results of her research and "scholarship":
"Hirsi Ali: Only if Islam is defeated. Because right now, the political side of Islam, the power-hungry expansionist side of Islam, has become superior to the Sufis and the Ismailis and the peace-seeking Muslims.
Reason: Don’t you mean defeating radical Islam?
Hirsi Ali: No. Islam, period. Once it’s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now. They’re not interested in peace.
Reason: We have to crush the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims under our boot? In concrete terms, what does that mean, “defeat Islam”?
Hirsi Ali: I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle ground in wars. Islam can be defeated in many ways. For starters, you stop the spread of the ideology itself; at present, there are native Westerners converting to Islam, and they’re the most fanatical sometimes. There is infiltration of Islam in the schools and universities of the West. You stop that. You stop the symbol burning and the effigy burning, and you look them in the eye and flex your muscles and you say, “This is a warning. We won’t accept this anymore.” There comes a moment when you crush your enemy.
Reason: Militarily?
Hirsi Ali: In all forms, and if you don’t do that, then you have to live with the consequence of being crushed."
Can you imagine the uproar if somebody, anybody, in the West spoke about "defeating" Judaism, for example?