Archive for September, 2009
Your propaganda is killing us, literally
“A box of leaflets dropped by an RAF plane in Afghanistan landed on and killed a young girl, the Ministry of Defence said.” (thanks Carlos)
Posted by As'ad at 7:20 AM 09/30/09
…off to Montana
Leaving for Montana later today (you know what that means, don’t you? Angry Arab in the Sky, with diamonds). Returning on Saturday. I am speaking on Thursday.
Posted by As'ad at 7:16 AM 09/30/09
Military justice in the US
“The government has dropped a murder charge against a Marine who pleaded guilty Tuesday to dereliction of duty for killing an unarmed Iraqi detainee during a battle to recapture the city of Fallujah…Nelson is the only remaining defendant in a case …
Posted by As'ad at 7:13 AM 09/30/09
Farm workers in Europe
“Every year thousands of immigrants, many from Africa, flock to the fields and orchards of southern Italy to scrape a living as seasonal workers picking grapes, olives, tomatoes and oranges. Broadly tolerated by authorities because of their role in …
Posted by As'ad at 7:09 AM 09/30/09
Lebanese love of ranking
You want rankings? Here is one for you (it won’t appear in An-Nahar for sure): “Lebanon is the most stingy country in the Middle East when it comes to charity, with less than a third of Lebanese in a recent survey saying they plan to donate money to…
Posted by As'ad at 7:08 AM 09/30/09
Crisis in An-Nahar
I have written yesterday about the unfolding story of the financial crisis at An-Nahar (the right-wing, sectarian Christian, racist anti-Syrian (people), anti-Palestinian (people), White Man worshipping newspaper). Read the comment by the nephew of Mi…
Posted by As'ad at 7:05 AM 09/30/09
Saudi reforms: impressing the hell out of the West
“Saudi Arabia flogged a group of teenagers after a rare riot in the eastern region of the Islamic kingdom in which shops and restaurants were ransacked, a witness and local newspapers said today.” (thanks Sana)
Posted by As'ad at 7:01 AM 09/30/09
What “democracy in the Middle East” really means for the US
“Jordanian authorities have refused to permit a demonstration which the country’s Islamic groups planned for Friday in reaction to the entry into the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem by Israeli police earlier this week, the Islamic Action Front (IAF) sai…
Posted by As'ad at 6:56 AM 09/30/09
Spying for Israel
This is a full account of the Mossad recruitment of accused spy, Ziyad Humsi. When you read the full account you realize: 1) they are not very bright; 2) they have a hard time disguising that typical Israeli/Zionist racism towards Arabs. The reporte…
Posted by As'ad at 6:54 AM 09/30/09
Now Hariri
Commenting on my post on NowHariri yesterday, a Western source in Lebanon sent me this (I cite with his/her permission): “at the same time they are complaining on their english site (on the front page) that none in the opposition wants to speak to th…
Posted by As'ad at 6:50 AM 09/30/09
Gore Vidal on Obama
“He’s acting as if Afghanistan is the magic talisman: solve that and you solve terrorism.” America should leave Afghanistan, he says. “We’ve failed in every other aspect of our effort of conquering the Middle East or whatever you want to call i…
Posted by As'ad at 6:49 AM 09/30/09
Faruq Husni Mubarak: the Mossad role
Al-Masri Al-Yawm started as a decent semi-independent newspaper before it became an arm of the apparatus of Jamal Mubarak. The closer an Arab paper gets to the regime the dumber it gets. Here, Al-Masri Al-Yawm is “reporting” with front page coverage …
Posted by As'ad at 6:46 AM 09/30/09
Amin Rihani came back from the grave
“The University of Michigan-Detroit is offering a new course to teach the English literature of Ameen Rihani as the founding father of the Arab-American literature during the 20th century, Rihani told The Daily Star in a statement.” Well, first Ameen …
Posted by As'ad at 6:41 AM 09/30/09
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, by Ahmadinajad
Upon hearing of the death of “Lucy” from the “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” song, Mahmoud Ahmadinajad insisted on performing the song with a full Iranian Orchestra. (Asna)
Posted by As'ad at 6:39 AM 09/30/09
Analyzing the Middle East.
There is a category of American analysts of the Middle East, like Thomas Friedman, who only speak about the Middle East in recycled generic cliches. Ask them about the economy of a particular country, and they say: the economy is in shambles, and more…
Posted by As'ad at 6:36 AM 09/30/09
How Israel treats its Arab collaborators
“Bedouin soldiers, for example, who are usually recruited as trackers, have to search for mines and booby-traps. Last year, a 28-year-old Bedouin man was blown up by a roadside bomb along the perimeter fence around Gaza as he went ahead of soldiers …
Posted by As'ad at 10:41 AM 09/29/09
This is personal: the Family Guy? My favorite show on TV?
“Venezuelan authorities plan to impose fines on cable television companies that refuse to stop airing the animated television series “Family Guy.”" Based on this, and on this alone, I now support the overthrow of Chavez. (thanks Ibn Rushd)
Posted by As'ad at 10:33 AM 09/29/09
Clerical kooks
“A leading Egyptian scholar has demanded that people caught importing a female virginity-faking device into the country should face the death penalty.”
Posted by As'ad at 10:30 AM 09/29/09
All that you have done to our people is registered in notebooks
“During this civil war period, Esber writes, “Zionist Jewish military organizations forced more than 400,000 Palestinian Arab inhabitants from their homes in about 225 villages, towns and cities in Palestine.” That comprises approximately half of the t…
Posted by As'ad at 10:28 AM 09/29/09
This story is big, and will get bigger
This is about the expulsion of Lebanese Shi`ites from the UAE. They expellees formed a committee and yesterday one of them made threats to UAE on New TV.
Posted by As'ad at 10:26 AM 09/29/09
Arab wealth in the sky with potatoes
“Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) of four oil-exporting Gulf states lost around $350 billion last year due to the global financial crisis, according to a U.N. report.”
Posted by As'ad at 10:21 AM 09/29/09
Saudi-UAE conflict
“Relations between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have been strained in the six months since Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef Bin Abdelaziz was appointed second deputy premier, effectively catapulting him to become next in line to rul…
Posted by As'ad at 10:18 AM 09/29/09
This dude in the ground with shoes
“Big Country congressional hopeful Canyon Clowdus wants no more Muslim immigration to America.” (thanks Ibrahim)
Posted by As'ad at 10:14 AM 09/29/09
I don’t mean to be sketpical but…
I just sometimes notice that a relatively large number of Saudi princes die in their twenties from–according to official announcements–from heart attacks. Prince Mansur bin Muhammad Bin Nawwaf (son of the Saudi ambassador in London), 26, died from a…
Posted by As'ad at 10:14 AM 09/29/09
Berekely in the sky with diamonds
“Berkeley would become the first city in the United States to independently try to comply with U.N. treaties on torture, civil rights and racial discrimination, if the City Council passes a measure on the issue tonight.”
Posted by As'ad at 10:13 AM 09/29/09
There are no bounds to the audacity of Zionist hoodlums
“Leading academics, journalists, legal and security experts, including Elie Wiesel, Professor Alan Dershowitz, former CIA Director R. James Woolsey and Professor Judea Pearl, called last week for an independent review and reform of Human Rights Watc…
Posted by As'ad at 9:49 AM 09/29/09
Foreign maids in Syria
An Ethiopian maid kills her self by hanging in Syria.
Posted by As'ad at 9:48 AM 09/29/09
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha
I don’t like smiling faces and don’t like to spell the sound of laughter but could not resist this one. “Hizbullah had better intelligence information than Israel and better control of its forces during the Second Lebanon War, according to an officia…
Posted by As'ad at 9:47 AM 09/29/09
وراك, وراك والزمن طويل
“British lawyers for 16 Palestinians are seeking to obtain an international arrest warrant for the Israeli defence minister, Ehud Barak, in a London court over alleged war crimes in the Gaza Strip.” In our case against Israel, this Arab proverb appl…
Posted by As'ad at 9:45 AM 09/29/09
“Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.”
“Ms. Vodden’s connection to the Beatles dates back to when she was Lucy O’Donnell, a schoolmate and friend of Julian Lennon, John Lennon’s son. Julian, then 4, came home from school with a drawing one day, showed it to his father, and said it was…
Posted by As'ad at 9:36 AM 09/29/09
Flash: wake up the children and release the pigs from the barn
I thought that you should know this. “Virgin” Mary has appeared in Syria near the border with Turkey. It is not clear whether “Virgin” Mary was visiting to taste the famous Aleppo Kabab. Will update you on this breaking story as more news arrive. (…
Posted by As'ad at 9:28 AM 09/29/09
Al-Aqsa
Azmi Bisharah was on AlJazeera. He gave an excellent interview on recent developments. My favorite part was the beginning when he warned against basically fetishizing the Al-Aqsa as if it is more important than the rest of Palestine, or as if there i…
Posted by As'ad at 9:23 AM 09/29/09
To Zionist hoodlums in US media
I don’t use the word hysteria (because of its sexist etymology) but there is a craziness in US Zionist media regarding the tenure of Joseph Massad. Let me quote reference from the New Testament and tell this to Zionist hoodlums in US media: Joseph Mas…
Posted by As'ad at 9:17 AM 09/29/09
Faruq Husni Mubarak and Hala Mustafa
These are the two big cases in the Egyptian and Arab press these days. Michael Slackman has a story (with contributions from Mona El-Naggar who is a Sadatist in political sympathies, but do you expect anything different when the New York Times hires a…
Posted by As'ad at 9:09 AM 09/29/09
The financial crisis at An-Nahar
Al-Akhbar had a scoop the other day: about a major financial crisis at An-Nahar (the Lebanese racist, sectarian Christian, right-wing, anti-Syrian (people), anti-Palestinian (people) newspaper in Lebanon. An-Nahar was from the 1960s to 1975 the major …
Posted by As'ad at 8:54 AM 09/29/09
Tajribat
Al-Arabiyya TV (the private station of King Fahd’s brother-in-law) had some Lebanese dude from Rand by the name of Ghassan Shibli. He was talking about Iranian missiles tests and his Arabic was so bad that he kept referring to “tajribat” as plural of …
Posted by As'ad at 8:53 AM 09/29/09
Dirty Tricks at NowHariri
The journalistic ethics of Now Hariri are comparable to the standards of Hearst newspapers in the US early in the 20th century–only worse, and with more lies. They of course have many ways in which they violate the basic ethics of journalism–first t…
Posted by As'ad at 8:50 AM 09/29/09
Lebanese crooks
There are many Lebanese crooks peddling different treatments and schemes on Lebanese TV stations: their version of infomercials. One guy wants to sell you a cream that you can put on your head to cure hair loss, or use as an anal cream, if you suffer …
Posted by As'ad at 9:52 AM 09/28/09
Arab dynastic incests
The son of the King of Bahrain is marrying the daughter of the ruler of Dubai. It is supposed to be cute.
Posted by As'ad at 9:51 AM 09/28/09
Account of French racism
“An extraordinary article appears in today’s Le Monde revealing the extent to which racism is still a major problem in French society. Mustapha Kessous is a thirty year old journalist at Le Monde. He is of Arabic orgin as his first name clearly im…
Posted by As'ad at 7:30 AM 09/28/09
Dahlan, O Dahlan
Muhammad Dahlan is back. He is now threatening a Third Intifada. He calls for the protection of the Aqsa mosque. The man, as you can see from picture above, is very pious and has Sufi tendencies. He said that if Israel continues in its provocations…
Posted by As'ad at 7:25 AM 09/28/09
Ranking
“The annual survey on the quality of living in 215 cities around the world ranked Beirut as the 175th most desirable city for overall living standards and 16th among 21 cities surveyed in the Middle East and North Africa region in 2009, as reported …
Posted by As'ad at 7:20 AM 09/28/09
Can you imagine? But then again this Zionism
“The Israeli army will close off the West Bank from Saturday on the eve of Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar which starts at sunset on Sunday, a military spokesman said.” (thanks Sarah)
Posted by As'ad at 7:17 AM 09/28/09
Nahr Al-Barid: don’t forget, and don’t forgive the Lebanese Army and its cheerleaders
“Today, more than two years after their camp was destroyed in a war, the residents of Nahr El Bared camp continue to wait to return to their homes, not knowing how or when, their stories echoing those of their grandparents’ exile from Palestine.”
Posted by As'ad at 7:15 AM 09/28/09
I am opposed to Palestinian terrorism
I am really opposed to Palestinian terrorism. I am strictly and fiercely opposed to Palestinian terrorism as practiced by the US-trained, US-funded gangs loyal to Salam Fayyad and Abu Mazen, and acting at the behest of Israel. You should join me in c…
Posted by As'ad at 7:13 AM 09/28/09
Look how sincere: he is just worried about the US ability to fight wars
“The argument that Israel presented to American officials and to diplomats from Russia and key European countries was designed to appeal to their own self-interest. The Goldstone report, Israeli officials asserted, carries a hidden danger for all co…
Posted by As'ad at 7:11 AM 09/28/09
Labor unrest in Egypt
“Almost everyone in Egypt seems to have gone on strike these days — lawyers and judges, doctors and engineers, pharmacists and government employees, public transport workers and garbage collectors. Fueled by poverty, rising costs and a lack of gove…
Posted by As'ad at 7:10 AM 09/28/09
You can’t disagree with numbers
“This is apparent when one considers the results of a Global Marketing Research Services poll in July of self-identified American Jewish Democratic Party supporters, which found that 55 percent believe President Obama is naïve to try to set up a Pales…
Posted by As'ad at 7:08 AM 09/28/09
If Muslims did that…
“Proud of his religion and worried about its future, Chicago dentist Max Feinberg wrote a will with an unusual catch: His grandchildren wouldn’t inherit a penny if they married someone who wasn’t Jewish. His decision led to family feuds, lawsuits, c…
Posted by As'ad at 7:04 AM 09/28/09
Who is scaring whom?
Look those pictures: and you wonder why I have such faith in Palestinian resistance? What heroic defiance. (AP and AFP)
Posted by As'ad at 7:01 AM 09/28/09
When the occupiers are seen as natives
I saw an interview with Gen. McChrystal on CBS the other day. It was quite astonishing: I mean, it was a PR gig for the man and for the mission. He said about what he was doing in Afghanistan: “If they view us as occupiers, we can’t win.” What will…
Posted by As'ad at 7:00 AM 09/28/09
Disease in the Holy Land
“His most important contribution to Israel’s establishment was in turning Zionism from a theory alien to many American Jews into a pragmatic program to rid the Holy Land of disease.” Yes, he wanted to rid the Holy Land of Palestinians.
Posted by As'ad at 12:09 PM 09/27/09
Podhoretz
“I have always thought that there were (to oversimplify somewhat) two kinds of Jews in American political life — those who saw Jews’ experience with discrimination and persecution as an example of a broader and more generic phenomenon that embraced…
Posted by As'ad at 11:43 AM 09/27/09
Would they call for his release if he were Arab or Muslim?
“Le ministre de la Culture et de la Communication, Frédéric Mitterrand, C’est une arrestation “absolument épouvantable”, “pour une histoire ancienne qui n’a pas vraiment de sens”, a jugé dimanche Frédéric Mitterrand, le ministre de la culture…
Posted by As'ad at 11:42 AM 09/27/09
un problema de consistencia
“As’ad Abukhalil, autor de Bin Laden, Islam & America’s New War on Terrorism (2002), opinó que Gadhafi hizo críticas importantes sobre la ONU, pero no es alguien con quien se pueda hablar al respecto. “Es un problema de consistencia. Si al…
Posted by As'ad at 11:08 AM 09/27/09
Al-Qa`diah funding
The (phone) video clip that aired on Al-Arabiyya TV proves that funding for Al-Qa`idah still comes chiefly from Saudi Arabia.
Posted by As'ad at 11:03 AM 09/27/09
“in its totality”
” Human Rights Watch is urging the European Union to endorse the Goldstone report. In a letter to EU foreign ministers, Human Rights Watch called on the union and its 27 member states to “promote an international order where no state is above the law”…
Posted by As'ad at 11:00 AM 09/27/09
The White Man rapes Kenyan girls, literally
“We have been on a harrowing journey – from nightclubs where European men pick up 12-year-old Kenyan girls; to an orphanage where children as young as six have found sanctuary after sexual abuse by foreign tourists. A journey into a world of crue…
Posted by As'ad at 10:58 AM 09/27/09
Faruq Husni Mubarak
“In an interview with Egyptian newspaper al-Masri al-Yaum, Hosni charged that he lost the UN vote because of “radicalism, racism, and the Jews,” who he claied attacked him over his harsh views against cultural normalization vis-à-vis Israel.” By t…
Posted by As'ad at 10:53 AM 09/27/09
If he was Arab or Muslim, the story would be on the front pages
“We’ve had a week of sex scandals in schools. Now Terence Kealey, vice-chancellor of Buckingham University, seems intent on stirring things up on the academic front. Female students, he declares, are a perk of the job for male university lecturers …
Posted by As'ad at 10:49 AM 09/27/09
