Archive for September 24, 2005
For those who care, we (thanks Neal) have added a new section below. It provides links to the most circulated posts of the cite.
Posted on September 24, 2005 by As'ad
In Arab countries in the Gulf alone, some $450 million in advertisements are spent (or wasted) during Ramadan according to Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat.
Posted on September 24, 2005 by As'ad
This old Palestinian man was injured during the Israeli raid on Gaza yesterday. He will soon be considered a “terrorist.”
Posted on September 24, 2005 by As'ad
“So what were two undercover British soldiers up to in Basra?”
Posted on September 24, 2005 by As'ad
“The Hebron confessions: As ex-soldiers speak out about seeing Palestinian civilians being killed, Donald Macintyre talks to the victims’ families”
Posted on September 24, 2005 by As'ad
“Inside the best school in the world: Shorter days in class, long holidays, respect for teachers: it’s the formula for excellence”
Posted on September 24, 2005 by As'ad
“An extraordinary appeal to Americans from the Bush administration for money to help pay for the reconstruction of Iraq has raised only $600 (£337), The Observer has learnt. Yet since the appeal was launched earlier this month, donations to rebuild New Orleans have attracted hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Posted on September 24, 2005 by As'ad
“US forces have fired so many bullets in Iraq and Afghanistan – an estimated 250,000 for every insurgent killed – that American ammunition-makers cannot keep up with demand. As a result the US is having to import supplies from Israel.”
Posted on September 24, 2005 by As'ad
The American Left and the Middle East (Part 6): The Natives just don’t count. While driving last week, I heard Phil Donahue speak out against the war in Iraq on the O’Reilly show on Fox News. For 20 minutes, Donahue spoke against the war without once mentioning the plight of the Iraqi population, or the [...]
Posted on September 24, 2005 by As'ad
“Students and teachers at British universities are working to revive the academic boycott against Israel. The British Committee for Universities of Palestine (BRICUP) recently began organizing an open forum of British university campuses in an effort to place the academic boycott against Israel” (It is time for us to do something similar here in the [...]
Posted on September 24, 2005 by As'ad
I notice that politicians in Lebanon and US think that if they invoke the names of Churchill or De Gaulle they then come across as “statesmen”–whatever that means. Notice that the bufoonish Gen. `Awn has biographies of De Gaulle behind him when he gives interviews.
Posted on September 24, 2005 by As'ad
From Ruba`iyat-i Khayyam (my translation) (But don’t expect much Persian translations from me, as it takes me forever):“If we came respectful to the mosque,we did not come to attend tothe requirements of prayer;But we had stolen a carpet*,and to replace the old onewe came again”(He used sajjade as in the Arabic Sijjadah, which here means [...]
Posted on September 24, 2005 by As'ad
“Chrysler Unleashed: Are You a Speed Freak?”
Posted on September 24, 2005 by As'ad
A leader of a leftwing Palestinian organization who now resides in Syria told me a few years ago (and he had lived in Lebanon and Jordan) that there are such powerful energies among the Syrian people, but that they all are muzzled.
Posted on September 24, 2005 by As'ad
Yesterday, Bush asked the Jordanian King to go and visit Sharon. The king said yes. Today, Bush asked the king to get him a beverage, and the king asked him whether he wanted ice in it.
Posted on September 24, 2005 by As'ad
Neo-conservatives and Walid Jumblat: neo-conservatives (especially Charles Krauthhammer and Christopher Hitchens) have not stopped quoting the one interview that Walid Jumblat gave to David Ignatius of the Washington Post after the death of his friend/patron Rafiq Hariri in which he claimed that he was inspired by Bush’s wars, although he later repeatedly and regularly repudiated [...]
Posted on September 24, 2005 by As'ad
Whether Barbie is covered or uncovered, whether Barbie is veiled or unveiled, this is true: whether in the East or in the West, women are seen as sexual objects, to be covered or uncovered. It does not matter. The principle (in both patriarchal societies) is the same.
Posted on September 24, 2005 by As'ad
The American Left and the Middle East (Part 5): Molly Yard was a fierce political activist for (liberal) feminism and for progressive causes in general. When she was the leader of the National Organization for Women in the late 1980s, a group of us Arabs in Washington, DC, met with her hoping to urge her [...]
Posted on September 24, 2005 by As'ad
Ad-Da`wah Party: reading the encyclopedic book Hizb Ad-Da`wah-l-Islamiyyah: Haqa’iq wa Watha’iq by Salah Al-Kharsan, I came up with those conclusions.1. Hizb Ad-Da`wah, as other Islamic-oriented political parties in the Middle East benefited from the Leninist organizational experience (I wrote an article in the late 1980s in Middle Eastern Studies about Hizbullah in Lebanon, subtitled, The [...]
Posted on September 24, 2005 by As'ad
That somebody like Thomas Friedman is considered an “intellectual” is only a sign of the poverty of ideas in this country.
Posted on September 24, 2005 by As'ad