Archive for January 4, 2012
Politics and Change in a Traditional Society
In Iliya Harik’s very interesting (but politically problematic) book, Politics and Change in a Traditional Society, he tries to prove that there has been a notion of Lebanese entity and history. He cites Tannus Shidyaq’s Akhbar Al-A`yan in that h…
Posted on January 4, 2012 by As'ad
The legacy of Orientalism
I was thinking that European scholars of the Middle East are overall more critical of the Orientalist legacy than their American counterparts. I thought about that as I read the critical chapter “Definitions and Representations: The Legacy …
Posted on January 4, 2012 by As'ad
endangered species
“The states in that exposed position — including Georgia, Taiwan, South Korea, Belarus, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, and the greater Middle East — are today’s geopolitical equivalents of nature’s most endangered species.” (thanks FLC)
Posted on January 4, 2012 by As'ad
Ha
“A year ago, Israel had a taste of what a cyber attack on national infrastructure might look like when one of its cellular phone carriers crashed and left nearly a third of the country incommunicado.The failure was later determined to be a malfunction …
Posted on January 4, 2012 by As'ad
lobbying for Bahrain royal repression
“A top executive at Lockheed Martin recently worked with lobbyists for Bahrain to place an Op-Ed defending the nation’s embattled regime in the Washington Times — but the newspaper did not reveal the role of the regime’s lobbyists to its readers….
Posted on January 4, 2012 by As'ad
space creature over Idlib
I am not making this up: Syrian regime media report the sighting of a space creature over Idlib. (thanks Ahmad)
Posted on January 4, 2012 by As'ad
If Muslims spoke this sectarian language, there would have been an uproar in the West
“Acouple of years ago, the Israeli writer A.B. Yehoshua upset many American Jews by asserting that a full Jewish life could be had only in the Jewish state. Jews ruled by Jews, he said, were deciding whether to withdraw from territory and torture terro…
Posted on January 4, 2012 by As'ad
Western preference for elected democratic Arab leaders
“under the auspices of King Abdullah II of Jordan, who enjoys Western backing”.
Posted on January 4, 2012 by As'ad
America’s best friends in Egypt: Mubarak holdover types
“She called the officials behind the campaign against the organizations “old Mubarak holdover types who clearly are not on the new page with the Egyptian people.”” What kind of hypocrisy is this? Old Mubarak holdover types are none othe…
Posted on January 4, 2012 by As'ad
Why did she get a long eulogy in the New York Times?
Well, the headline says it all: ”Yaffa Yarkoni, Who Sang for Israeli Soldiers, Dies at 86.”
Posted on January 4, 2012 by As'ad
Why Israel is doomed
Israel has constructed a wall in the West Bank. It is constructing a wall with Jordan and Egypt. And this week, it announced that it will construct a wall near the Lebanese border. And you still express doubts that Israeli years are n…
Posted on January 4, 2012 by As'ad
Israeli silly bragging
“The Israeli team won the World University Debating Championships in the category of the English as a Second Language on Tuesday, securing the title for the second time in three years.Tel Aviv University students and brothers Omer Nevo, 26, and Sella N…
Posted on January 4, 2012 by As'ad
silly and racist Israeli liberalism
“Culture Minister Limor Livnat announced Wednesday that she had ordered the Tel Aviv Museum of Art to install signs in Arabic by the end of February, after a Haaretz probe last week revealed that half of the Israeli museums required to provide visitors…
Posted on January 4, 2012 by As'ad
They want NATO
“A Syrian opposition leader says most of his colleagues now support international military action to oust President Bashar Assad “but they might not be brave enough to express it openly.” Samir Nashar, a member of the Syrian Na…
Posted on January 4, 2012 by As'ad
Al-Manna`
After Haytham Al-Manna` (the courageous Syrian dissident) signed the agreement with Burhan Ghalyun, he has been vilified by Syrian March 14 intellectuals. I could not believe the venom of such attacks. I have not seen such Stalinist dogmati…
Posted on January 4, 2012 by As'ad
playwrights
Havel was as much of a failed playwright as was Herzl.
Posted on January 4, 2012 by As'ad
Yes, he saved Jews but he was a "dirty Arab"
“During the horrors of the Holocaust, non-Jews saved many thousands of Jews from death and depravity at the hands of Germans and their allies. Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial museum, has recognized more than 23,000 of these brave men…
Posted on January 4, 2012 by As'ad
Taliban in Doha
Make no mistake about it. Qatar opened an office for Taliban in Doha, Qatar only at the behest of the American administration. The US wanted Qatar to become intimately involved with the Taliban in the hope of bringing them to the negotiatin…
Posted on January 4, 2012 by As'ad
New ideas in the Arab world
“So while the Arab uprisings generated a marvelous range of innovative tactics (uploading mobile-camera videos to social media like Facebook and Twitter, seizing and holding public squares), they did not introduce any particularly new ideas.” Wel…
Posted on January 4, 2012 by As'ad
The US and Arab uprisings
“The uprisings were also about America — just not in the way most Americans would have it. Arabs found the idea that Iraq’s liberation had inspired their democracy struggle laughable; if anything, it was the protests against the Iraq war that taught t…
Posted on January 4, 2012 by As'ad