Bad News from the Arab World: First, one's ability to follow ME Satellite channels in the US has been substantially enhanced by a new package from Dish Network. There is a new Superpack Arabic package which would include AlArabiyya News Channel (the pro-Saudi competitor to the pro-Qatari AlJazeera), New TV (Lebanese TV station run mostly by leftist people but headed by the pro-Qatari Lebanese businessman Tahsin Al-Khayyat who detests Rafiq Hariri), and NBN (the channel of Amal militia movement in Lebanon--Muwaffaq Harb (who now head the US Arabic propaganda TV Al-Hurra) used to be director of NBN) plus Kuwait TV, but nobody watches that one. You have to pay extra for all that, and you have to install a new Superdish (I promptly had all that installed in my house last week plus the splendid HD DVR 921). My reading of tomorrow's (Monday) Arabic press is quite depressing. Al-Hayat-'s correspondent in Amman reports that based on an independent report, "serious violations" have occurred in one of the largest Jordanian prisons, and that "severe torture" resulted in the death of one prisoner, and the injury of eight others. But Jordan, as you may remember, is Thomas Friedman's (and George W. Bush's and John Kerry's) favorite Middle East dictatorship. So please keep this information confidential; you do not want to embarrass America's friends, OK? As-Safir reports about the arrest in Syria of Samir Rahhal (a member of the Communist Party-Politburo headed by the brave Syrian dissident Riyad At-Turk). In Saudi Arabia, the clerical Kangaroo courts there sentenced the Saudi academic `Abdullah bin Zu`ayr to five years in jail after being convicted of "inciting sedition and the urging to disobey those who are in charge." He got in trouble for appearing on AlJazeera it seems and for comparing Bin Laden's terrorism to Israeli and US bombings in Iraq. On LBC-TV, Iyad `Allawi (Iraqi puppet prime minister/car bomber/former Saddam's assassin/embezzler-in-Yemen) answered a question about the accomplishments of his government. I kid you not, the first thing that came out of his mouth in response to the question was: "the mukhabarat," which is the intelligence apparatus of which he was a prominent member when Saddam controlled it. He is very proud of his Mukhabarat, and maybe he wants to bring back the "past glory" that he basked in when he was a brutal Saddam's henchman. In Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper, they finally inform us why this `Allawi has his hand in bandages. He said that he got angry at his aide and hit the desk with his hand, and broke it. But it seems that democracy is finally coming to Iraq, thanks to George W. Bush, the preacher and advocate of "freedom, liberty, and potatoes." You see, Fu'ad Ma`sum (the puppet head of the puppet Iraqi National Council) said that the future Iraqi elections of next January may not be totally "free and honest" due to the disturbances in the country. But he insists that his appointment to his position by US occupation was "totally honest and free."