The Bush Zone. Stupid media bother me. And I know I have more than enough at my disposal--with the US and international media that I am exposed to, by default. I was reading tomorrow's issue of Al-Quds Al-Arabi (funded by Qatar and seems to mysteriously express admiration for Saddam and for Bin Ladin simultaneously), and the headline is "American Holocaust in Fallujah." I hate such language. I have consistently argued in Arabic and English that no matter how much one opposes Zionism and Israel, and I am fiercely anti-Zionist, one should not so casually use a word like "Holocaust" to stigmatize acts of murder and killing by an enemy. It is important, at least out of respect for the victims of the holocaust, that we not throw the word in to make a polemical point. It is not difficult to be fierce pro-Palestinian and yet be sensitive to the Jewish question, and respectful of the victims of the Holocaust in general: Jews, communists, Roma people, gays and lesbians, and others. I know that some Arabs, foolishly, think that they will get Western attention by invoking that word. But why do we have to compare injustices and inhumane acts of history. I am outraged by US war crimes in Fallujah, and am more outraged by the lack of outrage that I encounter here in the US, and the silence of the corrupt and tyrannical Arab governments (and I am not excluding any one government; I include them all: Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Algeria, Tunisia, Syria, Jordan, puppet Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Morocco, Yemen, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, etc). All are scared of the US government, and are willing to butcher their people to win points with Bush. So now Conoleeza Rice is the new Secretary of State. The Secretary of International Lying has resigned. Powell will be remembered in history not only for the war crimes of the 1991 Iraq war (remember the bombing of retreating Iraqi army units?), but also for the Anthology of Lies that he presented at the UN on behalf of the Bush administration. The neo-conservative team will now be in full control in alliance with the Christian fundamentalist camp. Let the world brace itself, again. My colleague at Stanford University who dealt with Rice when she was Provost tells me that he she never cared about the Middle East, and she did not think that the Middle East (or Middle East studies) are important in any way. She certainly deferred the Middle East files to the fanatical team at NSC and the vice-president's office. That explains why a fanatic who used to cover Latin America in the Reagan Administration (Eliot Abrams) is now the "Middle East expert" at NSC. Nathan Sharansky (the fanatic right-wing Israeli politician lionized by liberals and conservatives in the US) has a new book of wisdom on the Middle East and "democracy." This Sharansky was at the White House: he met with Bush for more than an hour, I heard. He must have taught him a few lessons about Arab inferiority. So Bush is now relying on Sharansky to learn about the Middle East. Lovely. Whenever you hear the word "democracy" in relation with the Middle East, especially from the mouth of Israelis or Americans, place it between quotation marks. They mean something else by it. They mean something mean and sinister by it. Well, watch the footage from Fallujah (if they let you) and you know what they mean. They went into Iraq to find WMDs and to end the alleged links between Saddam and Al-Qa`idah. They entered Fallujah to find Zarqawi and to end the supply of car bombs. They did not find Zarqawi (I just listened to yet another tape by Zarqawi in which he reiterates his threats) and car bombs have continued, and will continue. Ask the puppet prime minister: he is a car bomber himself. I saw him interviewed on the pro-Allawi and pro-US pro-Saudi channel, AlArabiyya TV. The interviewer (the right-wing Lebanese Elie Naquzi) is from what I have read either a formal or informal media advisor for Allawi. The questions were like the questions that Larry King asks to celebrities: "Why do we love you?" or "Why are you so great"? And some hard tough questions, like "Why do you look so good in blue"? etc. At one point, he asked him about his puppet government's arrest of an AlArabiyya correspondent. He said that he was not good. Biased, was the word that he used, I think. He was sitting on what appeared to be a Saddam chair, or throne really, fitted with a golden frame. He looked the role: (of a Saddam imitator). NBC aired the report of the shooting of the injured and unarmed Iraqi man. But NBC had to preface it with a "context" report that all but justified the killing. Patriotic media and patriotic Americans would accept no less. By the end of the report, the viewer is left with the clear choice: you either support American troops, or you are with with the terrorists. Make your selection now. Terrorists, terrorists, and terrorists. In the first phase of the occupation, we only heard about Saddam loyalists and dead enders and Fida`iyyi Saddam. Remember how much we heard about the latter group? They were supposed to be behind all the mayhem in Iraq. A decent retired US general was asked the other day point blank by Chris Mathews on MSNBC (after talking about terrorists and Saddam loyalists) about the percentage of Iraqi insurgents who are neither terrorists nor Saddam loyalists. He said: probably 70 percent (of all insurgents) and growing. Did you get that? Some Iraqis neither support Saddam nor Zarqawi but detest the foreign occupation of their land and are willing to fight it. What do you consider those? Terrorists too? Are we yet again redefining the term to suit the expanding imperial designs of a 2nd Bush administration? Whoever opposes US foreign policy is now a terrorist. Whoever objects to the presence of US troops on her/his land, is also a terrorist. Some body was talking about how the Arab world would receive a female secretary of state. Give me a break or a potato. I really hate it when some American male pontificates about sexism of Arab/Muslim men. I say: excuse me? You are giving lessons in feminism? You dare to give lessons about feminism. Of course, most men (American or Arab or Chinese) are sexist, but no one group should feel the right to lecture to the other group on this. The American record on domestic violence is quite shameful, and this does not absolve the Arab/Muslim male of course. The record of all is quite shameful. To Palestinian affairs: And they talk about "window of opportunity" now presented by the death of Arafat. What kind of bankrupt policy it is that is predicated on the death of one man. If this feels too weird, you have entered the Bush Zone.