Please dry your tears: "MEMRI in Finanznot" (thanks Norbert)

Eastern Orientalism. It is most dangerous to think of Orientalism as a mere Western phenomenon. To understand Orientalism and its impact, it has to be studied as an Eastern phenomenon too (as when the colonized mimic the colonizers). Here, some Lebanese pay tribute to Ernest Renan. "Ghazir dresse un monument en hommage à Ernest Renan." And I bet you that those who are paying homage to him don't know anything about him, and some do and not care. This is a man who thought that "the Semitic mind" is not capable of philosophy and science (he also thought that the Semitic mind can't even produce poetry--he made a small exception for Hebrew). Even an Orientalist like I. Goldziher criticized the Orientalism of Renan, whose Arabic was so poor that he cited Ibn Rushd's work in Latin in his work on the subject. I will be writing about this outrage in my next article for Akhbar. (thanks I.)

"Sewall can say what the generals who devised the manual cannot. She addresses the concern that the manual is nothing more than a “marketing campaign for an inherently inhumane concept of war,” arguing that if politicians continue to put young American men and women in harm’s way, military leaders have an obligation to enhance effectiveness, which in a globalized era cannot be disentangled from taking better care of civilians. Military actions that cause civilian deaths, she argues, are not simply morally questionable; they are self-defeating."

"However, in her review of four books on terrorism, especially Talal Asad’s “On Suicide Bombing” (July 29), she claims a moral distinction between “inadvertent” killing of civilians in bombings and “deliberate” targeting of civilians in suicide attacks. Her position is not only illogical, but (against her intention, I believe) makes it easier to justify such bombings. She believes that “there is a moral difference between setting out to destroy as many civilians as possible and killing civilians unintentionally and reluctantly in pursuit of a military objective.” Of course, there’s a difference, but is there a “moral” difference? That is, can you say one action is more reprehensible than the other? In countless news briefings, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, responding to reporters’ questions about civilian deaths in bombing, would say those deaths were “unintentional” or “inadvertent” or “accidental,” as if that disposed of the problem. In the Vietnam War, the massive deaths of civilians by bombing were justified in the same way by Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon and various generals."

You know the Lebanese, Elie Nahas, who has been accused of running a prostitution ring in France, is a famous Lebanese. His modeling agency, Style Modeling Agency, has an international network with a major branch in Dubai--for modeling only of course. Knowing Lebanon as I do, I will not be surprised if Nahas is given the highest honors upon returning. I noticed that An-Nahar has ignored the news of the prostitution ring. Thus far, only Al-Anwar has covered the story. Would LBC-TV feature Mr. Nahas in its segment on rich and famous Lebanese? I mean, he is rich, and now he is also famous.

"You see, I have a simple view about both Arab-Israeli peace-making and Iraqi surge-making". No, I see that you have a simple, nay simplistic, view of every aspect of the world. You have a most simple mind, which explains your popularity. You can't handle one complex idea in your head.

Shame on New TV. Today, New TV started the newscast with a "report" based on the latest issue of the magazine (EIR) of kooky Lyndon LaRouche.

I love the methods and logic of US media when it comes to concocting evidence of Iraqi support for the occupation of their country. This is like when Israeli media used to interview torturers of the South Lebanon Army to prove that Lebanese were supportive of Israeli occupation. We then saw those henchmen fleeing for their lives--literally--when Israeli occupation troops were forced to humiliatingly withdraw, leaving those behind. Same thing in Iraq. They find puppets of the occupation, and ask them for their opinions of US withdrawal: "Falluja’s police chief, Col. Faisal Ismail Hussein, waved aloft a picture of a severed head in a bucket as a reminder of the brutality of the fundamentalist Sunni militias that once controlled this city. But he also described an uncertain future without “my only supporters,” the United States Marine Corps."

Yesterday, LBC-TV reported that the Lebanese Army has made "noticeable" (malhudh) progress in Nahr Al-Barid. Today, New TV reported that the Lebanese Army has made "detectable" (malmus) progress.

"...and I asked Abed, my driver, to head south.."

"Senior military commanders have told the Government that Britain can achieve "nothing more" in south-east Iraq, and that the 5,500 British troops still deployed there should move towards withdrawal without further delay."

"It was the powerful Iraq that provided the threat then, and the weakened, chaotic Iraq that is threatening now. Jordan has a permanent "stability issue," as one U.S. official describes it. In the past, it was intimidated by its two powerful neighbors, Israel and Iraq; now it is troubled by the weakest of the weak, the Palestinian Authority and Iraq."

"Protesters held signs reading "No to settlement products" and "Stop the Israel-EU Association Agreement.""

Did I not tell you that the Syrian government will backtrack from the stance of Faruq Ash-Shar` toward the Saudi government? A Syrian official statement today said that Ash-Shar` did not say what he actually said about Saudi Arabia. You look at the Saudi media, and there is a campaign against the Syrian government, and the Syrian media are totally silent. In fact, a columnist at Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat (the mouthpiece of Prince Salman which has been leading a campaign against Syria for 2 years now) had the audacity to complain about criticisms of Saudi Arabia by two pro-Syrian politicians in Lebanon. I like it when the Saudi media roll out `Abdul-Halim Khaddam to counter the position of the Asad government. Here is a credible man. You can never count on the Syrian government to take a principled stand on anything, except the preservation of the Asad regime.

The most articulate person in the world is the Aljazeera's Cairo analyst of the Egyptian stock market, `Adil Muhsin. The man can talk non-stop unendingly without catching his breath, and he manages to make sense too. And when he speaks, you always feel that he overstays his welcome: you always feel that they can only get him to stop talking by hitting him on the head with a stick.

I swear. I saw a segment on AlJazeera on the new play by the talentless Mansur Rahbani, and it was so embarrassingly bad. It looks like a show that an elementary school group would put, with a big budget. Also, the music of Mansur is plagiarized from the talented `Asi (who was generous to produce his work under the name of Rahbani Brothers.)

"The war of 100 days and more against radical Palestinians in the Nahr al-Bared camp has also shredded any sense of security in Lebanon. Fatah al-Islam, with an ideological link to al-Qaeda and many Iraq war veterans, remains in control of a square kilometre of the now-destroyed camp after more than three months of shelling by the Lebanese army.The fighting, which has claimed more than 200 lives and displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians, has revealed an inherent weakness in the military and security services. The fear that Fatah al-Islam are only the first Sunni radicals with ties to Iraqi insurgents is legitimate and could be deeply destabilising in a country with little history of fundamentalism among its Sunni Muslims."

"A new law swept through Congress by the US government before the summer recess is to give American security agencies unprecedented powers to spy on British citizens without a warrant."

"Income inequality is usually measured by a country's Gini coefficient, in which 0 is perfect equality (everyone has the same income) and 1 is perfect inequality (ie, one household takes everything)."

"Mrs Clinton might be portrayed as a communist on talk radio in Kansas, but set her alongside France's Nicolas Sarkozy, Germany's Angela Merkel, Britain's David Cameron or any other supposed European conservative, and on virtually every significant issue Mrs Clinton is the more right-wing. She also mentions God more often than the average European bishop. As for foreign policy, the main Democratic candidates are equally staunch in their support of Israel; none of them has ruled out attacking Iran; Mr Obama might take a shot at Pakistan; and few of them want to cede power to multilateral organisations."

"But of the ten places with the highest correlation between being female and (relatively) satisfied, nine are mainly Muslim: Afghanistan, Iran, Egypt, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Bangladesh, Palestine, Jordan and Morocco."

"Gallup's pollsters asked a standard question: how satisfied are you with your life, on a scale of nought to ten? In all the rich places (America, Europe, Japan, Saudi Arabia), most people say they are happy. In all the poor ones (mainly in Africa), people say they are not. As Angus Deaton of Princeton University puts it, a map of the results looks like an income plot of the world (see map). There are some exceptions: Georgia and Armenia, though not among the world's poorest states, are among the 20 most miserable. Costa Rica and Venezuela, though middle-income countries, are among the 20 happiest. The Brazilians, pictured above, seem a bit more cheerful than their income level justifies."

He "was once asked to list the biggest influences on his life. His answer was, “My mom, my dad and our president.”"

"France has 82 universities, teaching 1.5m students. All are public; none charges tuition fees; undergraduate enrolment charges are a tiny €165 ($220). All lecturers are civil servants. Universities cannot select students, who can apply only to ones near them. The results speak for themselves. Not a single French university makes it into the world's top 40, as ranked by Shanghai's Jiao Tong University." Who cares if they make into the world's top 40 or 50 or US World and News Report?

Less than a $1 a day. (Click to enlarge NOW).

"Contrary to the cherished American notion that our racial and ethnic diversity makes us stronger, Putnam has found quite the opposite, at least in the short term. The greater the diversity in a community, the less civic engagement it shows, he says. Fewer people vote. Fewer volunteer. They give less to charity. They work together less on community projects. And they trust each other less, says Putnam, not only across racial and ethnic lines but also within the lines. In other words, residents of the most racially and ethnically mixed neighborhoods show the least trust not only of other races but also people of their own races. Does that mean people are better off living with, as the old racist mantra goes, "their own kind"? Or that we should impose a moratorium on immigration, as my column-writing colleague Pat Buchanan suggests in the piece that Duke touts? Not quite. In fact, in his first paper about his new research, "E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the 21st Century," Putnam says he wants to make three points perfectly clear: 1. "Increased immigration and diversity are not only inevitable" in modern societies, he writes, "but over the long run they are also desirable. Ethnic diversity is, on balance, an important social asset," as America's history demonstrates. 2. "In the short to medium run, however, immigration and ethnic diversity challenge social solidarity and inhibit social capital," he writes. "Social Capital" is the strength of relationships that bond you to people like you or "bridge" you to people who are different from you. 3. "In the medium to long run, on the other hand, successful immigrant societies create new forms of social solidarity and dampen the negative effects of diversity by constructing new, more encompassing identities," says Putnam. "Thus, the central challenge for modern, diversifying societies is to create a new, broader sense of 'we.' ""

Middle East Expertise in the US government. Look at this. Could it be more dumb? "The military says the soldiers were attacked at their outpost Thursday with heavy small arms fire that came from the Honest Muhammad Mosque in Tarmiyah." Honest Muhammad Mosque? Are you kidding me? Where do they get those Middle East experts and Arabic translators? You know what this is, right? Somebody at the US government was trying to be smart and they came across Muhammad As-Sadiq mosque and assumed that As-Sadiq is an adjective and not a name. So US policy in Iraq is characterized by big mistakes and small mistakes: and they all add up to a debacle. (thanks Nir)

""Anthropologists have the opportunity right now to influence how the national security establishment does business," writes Ms. McFate in an email from Afghanistan, where she is a senior adviser to the Human Terrain System project. A Yale University-trained anthropologist, she has been the target of bitter criticism from the anthropology establishment on account of her tireless efforts to convince the military that cultural knowledge is key to winning over the people in war-torn societies like Iraq and Afghanistan. She insists that a growing number of anthropologists are questioning the conventional wisdom and reconsidering whether the most effective way to influence the military is "by waving a big sign outside the Pentagon saying 'you suck.' "" "You suck"? Who is she talking about? I never read that Talal Asad writes "you suck". (thanks Amer)

Al-Arabiya TV has 30 minute daily segment in which the press is reviewed, and discussed with a visiting professor or journalist (always a male of course). The host (Jizelle Abu Jawdah) is quite good. Very competent. Today, she hosted Lebanese journalist `Adil Malik (a relatively moderate journalist who started with the state TV in Lebanon and started the genre of Arab documentaries in the 1970s when he moved to London after the civil war. He married a Druze woman from the Jumblat family, and the family opposed the marriage until Kamal Jumblat intervened). Malik, of course, now works for Saudi media. He said: 1) that Iyad `Allawi (former puppet prime minister/car bomber/Saddam's henchman/embezzler-in-Yemen) has the "best visionary perception" of Iraq; 2) he supported the Lebanese ban of a play because it it unhealthy for the Lebanese to remember the civil war. Angry Arab watched the program and I could see him getting angrier and angrier.

"I am a Jew who loves Israel, but who also believes that its policies are counterproductive to peace and its own long-term best interests. Does this make me an anti-Semite? We can’t even discuss it? Does the Anti-Defamation League not see the irony of the book’s thesis and its reaction to it?"

"“It is a pretty big leap between a mere indication of desire to attend a camp and a crystallized desire to kill, maim and kidnap,” said Peter S. Margulies, a law professor at Roger Williams University who has also written on conspiracy charges in terrorism prosecutions. The conspiracy charge against Mr. Padilla, Professor Margulies continued, “is highly amorphous, and it basically allows someone to be found guilty for something that is one step away from a thought crime.”"

"Worse still, the notion that Padilla received a "fair trial" is dubious, to put it mildly, and will undoubtedly be vigorously contested on appeal. Last year, the New York Times obtained a copy of a video from Padilla's imprisonment which showed techniques that can only be described as torture -- systematic sensory deprivation and gratuitous humiliations which clearly broke Padilla as a human being in every sense that matters, all before he had been charged, let alone convicted, of anything. Whether a person subjected to a torture regimen of that severity can possibly receive a "fair trial," in light of his obvious inability to participate meaningfully in his own defense, looms darkly over this entire proceeding. To this day, many people, including myself, cite the Padilla case as the ultimate wake-up call to the true character, the genuine soul, of the Bush administration. Imprisoning a U.S. citizen, on U.S. soil, with no charges of any kind, and then keeping him for years completely incommunicado, is just one of those lines which many people believed would never be crossed in America." (thanks Vivek)

"Israelis develop drug erasing long-term memory". I don't care what you develop, you will never be able to erase Palestinian memory. (thanks Haytham)

"As for the falafel, the ubiquitous fried chickpea ball or patty is generally accepted as having originated in Egypt, although Israelis claim it as their national dish..." (They claim falafil (which is from an Arabic word) as their national dish. But then again. They claim Palestine as their national dish too). (thanks Sobhi)

Are you telling me that what Bush calls "the democratically-elected" government of Fu'ad Sanyurah is engaged in censorship? "This week, an Interior Ministry censorship board banned performances of the piece, “How Nancy Wished That Everything Was an April Fool’s Joke,” which was to have received its premiere this weekend." (Also, do you notice that articles on cultures and arts in the Middle East that appear in mainstream US media are so deeply ignorant of arts and culture in the Middle East? The other day Sinan Antoon was expressing his outrage that the trashy novel by Saudi writer (influenced by not literature but by US trashy TV shows), the Girls of Riyadh (by Raja' As-Sani`) is coming out in an English translation by a major US/UK publisher. They just have no clue how to navigate through Arab culture because they write about it without knowing Arabic, so rely on people who also don't know Arabic to guide them through Arabic culture.) (thanks Amahl)

"The reconstruction of Lebanon after last summer's war was meant to strengthen the U.S.-backed Lebanese government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. Hundreds of millions of dollars poured in from U.S.-friendly Persian Gulf countries. Instead, as government officials acknowledge, the rebuilding effort in badly damaged areas of southern Lebanon, south Beirut and the Bekaa Valley has mostly highlighted the government's weakness..."There is a feeling that the state is absent from the reconstruction process," said Ali Amine, who has been closely following the rebuilding efforts in the south as an editor for Al Balad, a daily newspaper. "The government has shown no real interest in what happens in the south.""

"China has ordered its media to report only positive news and has imprisoned a pro-democracy dissident amid a clampdown on dissent ahead of the most important meeting of the communist party in five years." In the spirit of reporting good news, I report this: Thomas Friedman has been on vacation.

If there is a musical instrument I hate, it is Ar-Rababah. It sounds as nashaz (off key) even when it is not. What is its origin?

"Creative Destruction: An Exploratory Look at News on the Internet"

New TV's Riyad Qubaysi did a very interesting report on a new Hizbullah video game (the shoot-and-kill type). He interrogated a technical expert in Hizbullah, and asked him whether the Party is doing (with the video game and its themes) what Arabs fault Western media and culture of doing.

On the Pitfalls of Tenure. I was thinking about this. Of this, I am certain. If I were not a tenured professor now, and if I were on the job market (along with the Angry Arab affiliation), there is no way on earth that I would have obtained a job anywhere in the US--not even at a small community college in Alaska--not that there is anything wrong in small community colleges in Alaska. I have certainly noticed that untenured professors are today far more cautious and nervous about political advocacy (in comparison to 20 years ago or more). I often hear people say to me: I will become outspoken on Palestine AFTER I obtain tenure. I always tell them: no, you will not. If you condition yourself to be silent and passive during the tenure process, you will be changed once you obtain tenure. And some after tenure, aim higher: they harbor ambitions to move to a more "prestigious" college or university, and on and on. What people don't understand is that the tenure process is a conditioning process in which one learns how to dissimulate and how to stifle moral outrage. If you succumb to it, you reach tenure damaged. I remember early on in my career when a senior (well-intentioned and well-known) person in Middle East studies, took me aside and urged me to "suspend" or "tone down" my advocacy for Palestine. It is an advice that I never regretted ignoring. Of course, the ironies of freedom of speech (as far as the Middle East and Arab-Israeli conflict are concerned) are such that you will have more freedom of speech if you teach at a less "prestigious" college or university in a small town in the US. Thus, there is more scrutiny (and less freedom of speech) if you teach at Columbia or Harvard or Yale. So people need to decide what they want in graduate school: to decide that which is more important to them.

"Anderson said that young scholars of Middle Eastern literature or history (she stressed that she wasn’t talking about those who study policy or the current political climate) are finding themselves “grilled” about their political views in job interviews, and in some cases losing job offers as a result of their answers."

I support the American Library Association in this (without endorsing the book, which I have not read): "Unless there is an order from a U.S. court, the British settlement is unenforceable in the United States, and libraries are under no legal obligation to return or destroy the book. Libraries are considered to hold title to the individual copy or copies, and it is the library's property to do with as it pleases. Given the intense interest in the book, and the desire of readers to learn about the controversy first hand, we recommend that U.S. libraries keep the book available for their users."

What is a "comprehensive apology," I wonder? "Saudi businessman Sheikh Khalid Bin Mahfouz has accepted a comprehensive apology together with substantial damages from well known publishers Cambridge University Press in settlement of a libel action following publication of a 2006 book Alms for Jihad, it was announced in the High Court in London today."

I thought that Dalai Lama is capable of producing the most lame pearls of wisdom until I read this: "The Middle East has both challenges and opportunities." (thanks David)