Israel in the news

"The Israeli head of a labor recruiting company accused of exploiting 400 workers from Thailand and forcing them to work on US farms is under arrest and pleading not guilty.  Los Angeles-based Global Horizons Manpower Inc. CEO Mordechai Orian surrendered Friday in Honolulu, and he entered his not guilty plea in federal court shortly afterward."

Never underestimate their stupidity

"The skepticism which plagued the Palestinian camp prior to the recent relaunch of direct Middle East peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority has all but disappeared, aides to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told the Arabic language London-based newspaper Al-Hayat on Saturday." (thanks Olivia)

highest available security clearance holders

"A 2006 Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigation into the purchase of child pornography online turned up more than 250 civilian and military employees of the Defense Department -- including some with the highest available security clearance -- who  used credit cards or PayPal to purchase images of children in sexual situations. But the Pentagon investigated only a handful of the cases, Defense Department records show."

believers

"An Armenian bishop recorded around A.D. 660 that the first governor of Muslim Jerusalem was Jewish.  The documentary evidence suggests that the term “Muslim” came into common use only in the eighth century. The earlier word, “Believers,” described a community that embraced many faiths."

Mubarak dirty tricks

The level of dirty tricks by the Mubarak regime is getting lower and lower. As long as the Mubarak family has the endorsement of the Likud in Israel, Mubarak feels confident--up to a point. So one of the goons of the Mubarak regime snuck into the Facebook account of Muhammad Al-Baradi`i's daughter, Layla, and posted in the Egyptian state press pictures of her in a bikini and her characterization of her faith as "agnostic."

The Fire of Nahr Al-Barid

My weekly article in Al-Akhbar:  "Fire (of Barid) with Flames:  When the Lebanese authority searches for Heroism"*

*The original title I gave was" ...when the Lebanese Army searches for heroism."

For the New York Times, anti-Islam bigotry is called anxiety.

Bigotry is bigotry but it seems that the New York Times now reserves a special word, anxiety, for anti-Islam bigotry.  Can you imagine if the paper labels anti-Semitism as "anxiety"?  And notice how this bigotry is justified: "Nearly nine years after the Sept. 11 attacks ignited a wave of anxiety about Muslims, many in the country’s biggest and arguably most cosmopolitan city still have an uneasy relationship with Islam. One-fifth of New Yorkers acknowledged animosity toward Muslims. Thirty-three percent said that compared with other American citizens, Muslims were more sympathetic to terrorists. And nearly 60 percent said people they know had negative feelings toward Muslims because of 9/11."

I trust Ibrahim like I trust Walid Jumblat

"Egyptian political activists are furious at fellow democracy and human rights campaigner Saad Eddin Ibrahim after the sociologist signed a petition urging President Hosni Mubarak's son, Gamal, to run in the 2011 elections."

Hitchens explains his motives

"Did you write the book for money? 
Of course, I do everything for money. Dr. Johnson is correct when he says that only a fool writes for anything but money. It would be useful to keep a diary, but I don’t like writing unpaid. I don’t like writing checks without getting paid."

If this was said about Jews and Judaism, it would be an international affair

"“As a mother and a grandmother, I worry,” Ms. Serafin said. “I learned that in 20 years with the rate of the birth population, we will be overtaken by Islam, and their goal is to get people in Congress and the Supreme Court to see that Shariah is implemented. My children and grandchildren will have to live under that.”  “I do believe everybody has a right to freedom of religion,” she said. “But Islam is not about a religion. It’s a political government, and it’s 100 percent against our Constitution.”"

Is making up interviews trendy these days? I mean, he was summoned by "the intelligence service" but refused to go?

"Sajjad: Yes, of course. I've received calls from the intelligence service. Two summons, in fact. But I refused to go. For the time being, I haven't been arrested."

A 90-year-old Saudi man will be lashed 100 times

"A 90-year-old Saudi man will be lashed 100 times with the whip after he was convicted of smashing the windscreen of a judge’s car to retaliate against a previous verdict against him, a local newspaper reported on Tuesday."

pressures

"A senior Palestinian source told Haaretz that the American administration renewed its pressure on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to stay in direct negotiations with Israel, even if some construction in the settlements resumes after the end of the current moratorium. The source warned that Abbas would not be able to agree to a renewal of construction and will be forced to withdraw from the talks."

Happy New War

"before we weave an autumn for tyrants
we must cross this galaxy of barbed wires
and keep on repeating
HAPPY NEW WAR!" (thanks Olivia)

They called his grandfather a traitor

"Even kids in Palestine know what he is up to: his grandson came to him crying and explained that children at his school had called his grandfather a "traitor"." (thanks Hicham)

false rumors and defamation of public figures

"Dubai's police chief, Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim, said that fears of espionage and information sharing by foe Israel -- as well as UAE allies United States and Britain -- helped prompt the possible limits on the popular BlackBerry.  Tamim told a conference on information technology that the proposed BlackBerry curbs are also "meant to control false rumors and defamation of public figures due to the absence of surveillance," according to a story posted Friday on the website of the UAE newspaper Al-Khaleej." (thanks Sarah)

the story that was gone

"ABC on Tuesday published on its website what seemed to be a major  exclusive story by Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross: Law  enforcement officials, according to Ross, had been "on a heightened  state of alert to a possible hijacking of U.S. carrier flights from the  Middle East" -- and as a result the number of air marshals on overseas  flights, particularly to Dubai, had in the last few weeks been "greatly  ramped up."  But then, just like that, it was gone." (thanks Layali)

Suha Arafat

"C’est un fleuron de la francophonie au Maghreb qui disparaît dans le silence général. Le lycée privé Louis Pasteur de Tunis ne rouvrira pas ses portes à la rentrée prochaine. Ainsi en ont décidé les autorités locales, sans fournir la moindre explication aux intéressés, familles en tête.  En visite cet après midi à Tunis, Nicolas Sarkozy aurait pu s’émouvoir de la fermeture brutale de cet établissement renommé qui accueillait plus de 1.000 élèves. Mais le sujet ne figure pas au menu de ses entretiens avec son homologue Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. Trop sensible.  L’épouse du président tunisien, Leïla Ben Ali, et son amie, Souha Arafat, la veuve de l’ancien dirigeant palestinien, lancent justement en septembre un lycée international, "International School of Carthage" qui proposera un double cursus américain et français. Par simple oukase, les voilà débarrassées de leur principal concurrent. Elles peuvent même espérer récupérer ses élèves désormais à la rue. "On est au courant du background, explique-t-on au Quai d’Orsay. Mais c’est une affaire tuniso-tunisienne dans laquelle on ne peut pas intervenir". Le lycée Louis Pasteur avait pourtant été créé en 2005 en partenariat avec l’Institut français de coopération et venait d’entreprendre des démarches auprès du ministère de l’Education, à Paris, pour être conventionné." (thanks Khelil)

Conclusion

"In his latest book, The Grand Design, an extract of which is published in Eureka magazine in The Times, Hawking said: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.”  He added: “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going.”"

This man has lost it--a very long time ago

"For the moment, there does not seem to be much prospect of a moderate Islam in the Muslim world. This is partly because in the prevailing atmosphere the expression of moderate ideas can be dangerous—even life-threatening. Radical groups like al Qaeda and the Taliban, the likes of which in earlier times were at most minor and marginal, have acquired a powerful and even a dominant position."

foreign maids in the Middle East

"Huge numbers of migrant domestic workers, mostly from Asia and Africa, are employed throughout the region. Some 1.5m work in Saudi Arabia, 660,000 in Kuwait and 200,000 in Lebanon. Many work very long hours and receive little food, no time off and pay that is a fraction of any minimum wage, if it materialises at all. Human Rights Watch (HRW), a New York-based group, says at least one domestic worker died every week in Lebanon between January 2007 and August 2008. Almost half were suicides and many were as a result of falling from high buildings, often while trying to escape their employers. Mistreatment is so widespread that the Philippines, Ethiopia and Nepal no longer let their citizens go to Lebanon to work as maids, though such bans have had little effect." (thanks Khelil)

the language of Zionism

"An Ethiopian soldier serving at an Air Force base in southern Israel petitioned the High Court of Justice Thursday over racial slurs hurled at him by a senior officer.  The soldier asked the court to order IDF officials to explain why disciplinary action was not being taken against a major whom he claims called him an "annoying nigg*r.""  (thanks Olivia)

Not only condemn

Abbas was so uncomfortable today that his grammatical mistakes while reading were as bad as those of Arafat. He said that he "not only condemns" the killing of the armed settlers yesterday but that he will chase the Palestinian attackers and kill them with his bare hands, if ordered to do so by his Israeli handlers.

The new Iraq

"The biggest failure of all is political. Building a state with a democratic government and institutions that work was central to President George W. Bush’s vision of the new Iraq. The country has ended up with a travesty of good governance. Positions in the bureaucracy are awarded on the basis of family or sectarian allegiance rather than merit. Partisan interference so mars elections that no Western diplomat will call them “free and fair”. The watchdog Transparency International reckons that corruption is endemic.  More than anywhere else in the world, Sunnis and Shias still fear each other in Iraq. Trust even between moderates is minimal, and national reconciliation non-existent. Five months after inconclusive elections, Iraq still has no new government. Parties are deadlocked in negotiations. The most obvious coalition partners are the prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, a moderate Shia whose block won 89 seats in the 325-member parliament, and Ayad Allawi, a former prime minister who is mainly supported by Sunnis and controls 91 seats. Yet the two men dislike and distrust each other so much that they rarely speak."

Don't you love it?

Don't you love it when White House Middle East experts (I mean, the two top Middle East hands, Feltman and Shapiro are horrible caricatures of classic DC Arabists who have been shunned from policy making since the Clinton administration) in Washington, DC invite King PlayStation and Husni Mubarak on the assumption that they would add legitimacy to the presence of the PA gang???  I really mean that: those experts think that those two are popular in the Arab world.  But then again: those same people thought the people of Iraq were destined to restore monarchy after the American invasion.  By the way, the descendant of the Hashemite family in Iraq is back in London, I am told, and has abandoned all his dreams that were fed to him by American neo-cons.

peace

Of course peace won't emerge from the masquerade in Washington, DC but will eventually emerge--but only after the demise of Israel and the elimination of Zionism from historic Palestine.

Syrian TV serials

The success of Syrian TV serials in this Ramadan TV season has been phenomenal. I only have a chance to follow Bab Al-Harah (the fifth part this season). The characters are most interesting and Syrian actors and actresses are full of charm and skill. They have buried the Egyptian TV production, it seems. But the messages of Bab Al-Harah are horrible: promotion of narrow, particularlistic identities (even based in Harah--locality or neighborhood), and the justification of traditional roles of women and the portrayal of polygamy as funny. The show also praises stupid traditional notions of machismo behavior and gestures. But...I cant wait for today's episode.

But it wont be the first time that Mossad has hired idiots

"Simon Wiesenthal, a Holocaust survivor who gained worldwide fame for decades as a one-man Nazi-hunting operation, was in fact frequently on the payroll of the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, a new biography asserts."

The puppet is not puppet enough

"but they also asked the Palestinian president to try to be flexible, according to advisers to all three sides."

In Zionist language, "strong right-wing" means fascist

"His 100-year-old father, Benzion Netanyahu, a scholar of the Spanish Inquisition, is a strong right-wing advocate, as is the prime minister’s wife, Sara."

Ethan Bronner's tribute to Netanyahu

"Despite that background and other similar credentials — he was a special operations commando in the Israeli Army, fought in two wars and has a commanding public presence..."

The Saudi-Israeli alliance

"But more recently, the Saudis pressed Mr. Abbas to agree to the direct talks, using their financial aid to the Palestinian Authority as a lever."

Names of the dead

"On the charts that the American military provides, those numbers are seen as success, from nearly 4,000 dead in one month in 2006 to the few hundred today. The Interior Ministry offers its own toll of war — 72,124 since 2003, a number too precise to be true. At the morgue, more than 20,000 of the dead, which even sober estimates suggest total 100,000 or more, are still unidentified.  This number had a name, though."

Lebanese hospital

A Lebanese hospital refuses to admit an Iraqi victim of beating because he had no money (he was robbed).

Conversation avec Adonis

So in the book, Ninar Esber (his daughter) said that those who criticize her dad want to kill him.  She actually said that.

Look at this

Why do kooky religious statements from Israel get no press attention, unlike kooky religious statement from Muslim countries?  "Interior Minister Eli Yishai announced Tuesday that Israel had lost the Second Lebanon War because its people had distanced themselves from God." (thanks Olivia)

Lebanon and Israeli spies

This Israeli spy reached the position of deputy chief-of-staff of the Lebanese Army.  What an army.

Repression in Gaza

A well-informed Palestinian journalist in Gaza reports to me that the people in Gaza are sick and tired with the repression and mismanagement by Hamas.

servants of the occupation

"Palestinian security forces have swept through the West Bank, arresting more than 150 Hamas members, after the group's military wing claimed responsibility for killing four Israeli settlers, according to senior Palestinian security officials."

chuckle of the day

I was reading Thomas Friedman quoting Michael Young.  I chuckled when I read that.  This is like Richard Pearle quoting Fouad Ajami.

Conversation avec Adonis

So Ninar (who can be as annoying as her dad and who said that feminists just want to be men), asked her dad, Adonis, in the book, to discuss his relationship with his siblings.  He answered:  well, i give them money when i think they need it, or words to that effect.

Zionism is racism

"Dozens of parents of Ethiopian origin have been blocked by the Petah Tikva municipality from moving their children from the majority-Ethiopian religious Ner Etzion elementary school to other schools in the city." (thanks Lidia)

She threw her maid out of the the 12th story balcony

A Lebanese woman was indicted for throwing here Ethiopian maid out of the 12th story balcony.  (thanks Farah)

Conversation avec Adonis

This is torture.  I am reading Conversation avec Adonis (the Arabic edition).  It is torture: i mean, not only from Adonis, but from his daughter too.  She is so outraged by how Muslims kill animals and how Africans treat animals.  Oh, yeah.  That is her pet cause, it seems.  Adonis, said, among other things: that he only "discovered" that he is beautiful and very attractive in his 40s.  He actually said that.  More on that later.

Foreign maid dead in Lebanon

A Kenyan maid was trying to flee her employer's residence, and she "fell" and died.  Lebanese police--OF COURSE--does not investigate.