Nuhad Al-Mashnuq in As-Safir reveals (citing Saud Al-Faysal) that Hizbullah was not even invited by the Saudi government, but that Hizbullah invited itself. (I checked the words of Saud Al-Faysal in his press conference in Riyadh: he did say that the visit of the Hizbulalh delegation to Saudi Arabia was requested by Hizbullah.)

This kind of analysis bothers me. I heard it last week on New TV by Sayid Franjiyyah, and now I am reading it in Ibrahim Al-Amin's column. According to this theory, Bandar Bin Sultan is running Saudi foreign policy almost independently of the king. The analysis makes the King looks like an innocent bystander.

Another batch of "liberated" Iraqis. "Liberation" never stops.

An interesting analysis of the role of the Dahlan gang in the Fath Movement: but I am skeptical that Abu Mazen is a "prisoner" of the gang. It also has interesting information about the late arrival of Abu Mazen into Fath.

The US taxpayers-funded Abu Mazen's presidential militia terrorizing a Palestinian family above.

I wrote below about Muhammad Dahlan using civilians as human shields today while he gave his speech. My brother who watched the speech on live TV told me that he also saw children around him. The old woman can be seen clearly above, and even (less clearly) on top to his right. Haytham sent the picture on top, and Ann sent the picture below.

This is good. Haytham found the picture of the Patriarch with the helmet.

So I am back and quite pleased with the hats of the Patriarch's submissions. Here is a few. One is hatless but inserted for comparison. Thanks to Zeina, Hicham, Samer, and Diane. But we still need the most important one perhaps: the Patriarch in a US military helmet. You see, during the Israeli war on Lebanon, the Patriarch visited the US (and during the visit and after meeting with Cheney, he assured the press that Cheney will solve the Lebanese problem), and then wanted to return to Lebanon but not through Syria because he has not stepped foot on Syrian soil as a Patriarch (he thinks that the Syrian people are inferior), so he was taken by a US military helicopter from Cyprus to the US embassy in `Awkar. And he was photographed wearing the helmet. Please find it for me, NOW.

Zeina submitted this one.

Maronite Patriarch's Hats Watch. Here are two hat submissions from Emily in Beirut.

Beardsley, Aubrey, The Toilet, 1895-96.

Maronite Patriarch's Hat Watch. Here are some other ones. (Please submit your entries for the hats of Patriarch Sfayr. We will then have a poll of the best hat).

Dahlan's new bodyguard. Fearing for is life, Muhammad Dahlan resorted to a new tactic today during his speech before Dahlan gangsters and thugs in Gaza. He brought with him an old Palestinian woman and made her stand next to him for the duration of the speech. That is what I call using civilians as human shields. (Somebody please get me the picture, NOW).

The executioners of Palestinian civilians at the Fath rally in Beirut--(named the Day of the Martyr, no less). The Fath movement invited the Lebanese Forces to attend its rally in Beirut: Antoine Zahra (a notorious militia man of the Lebanese Forces during the war years) was a guest of the Fath movement at the rally. It is not clear whether Sultan Abu Al-`Aynayn and other Dahlan representatives in Lebanon will erect a statue for the killers of Sabra and Shatila.

"World Bank OK With Blood For Oil"

"America's new puppet: By its ill-judged invasion of Somalia, Ethiopia has become an accomplice in Bush's war on terror"

"The criminal inquiry into the massacre of civilians by US Marines in the Iraqi town of Haditha has unearthed chilling new evidence of how troops ordered five men out of a taxi and shot them one by one at near-point blank range. A leaked copy of the probe into the incident – the most serious case of alleged US misconduct in the Iraq war so far – quotes a horrified witness saying that the marines went "crazy" after a roadside bomb killed one of their squad and injured two others."

"Asked what she loved most about her father, she gave an answer that acknowledged his standing among his opponents. “I mostly loved his humanity and endless care,” she said."

"NEW film footage from Afghanistan has suggested the British Army controls little but isolated pockets in Helmand, the province in the south of the country where the troops are trying to establish stability."

"A prominent rights advocate who has accused Uzbekistan of abuse and torture said she was beaten by a group of women she alleged were sent by the police. Elena Urlayeva, a member of the outlawed Free Peasants party, said four "burly" women attacked her Thursday on a street in the capital, Tashkent. Police refused to comment."

Another American foreign policy plan succeeds: "Hundreds of angry and fed-up Somalis demanded that Ethiopian troops leave the city Saturday, smashing cars, burning tires, and hurling stones and threats as a prevailing sense of insecurity deepened in the patched-together neighborhoods of Mogadishu."

"In 2000, the Council of Ministers approved the history program, but the minister of education at the time stopped it because it did not suit the Syrian occupying authorities, Messarra says. Today, most history books stop at 1943 and cover only one region of the country." Messarra is lying here. The reason why the history program was not approved is because they could not agree on many narratives of the history of major events; and Hariri representatives clashes with Christians representatives. But notice how common it is for Lebanese to pin the blame--even for their internal problems--on Syria. In the past, it was Kissinger--not that he is not guilty, but his role is grossly exaggerated in Lebanon.

"When McWhorter confines regret and shame about this joblessness to the past, he implies that all that's left in today's black men is shamelessness. This, I think, comes perilously close to evoking a gilded narrative of master-servant nostalgia: How we miss the good old days when "those people" (and it has been said of the Irish, Germans, peasants, etc.) were all hardworking and happy and grateful. But "now," sigh, they're all so uppity that you can't find one who wants to do windows."

"Surveys increasingly show that, especially among the poor, women even more than men are turned off by marriage because they expect so little from it."

"General Clark said the time for a military solution was long past, that US troops lack the skills and the political legitimacy to pacify the conflict-ridden regions, and that the only way forward was a political initiative encompassing the entire region. We've never had enough troops in Iraq," writes General Clark, who was the Supreme Allied Commander of Nato forces from 1997-2000. "In Kosovo, we had 40,000 troops for a population of two million. For Iraq, that ratio would call for at least 500,000 troops so adding 20,000 now is too little, too late.""

"UN shame over sex scandal: The international organisation says that almost 200 of its peacekeepers around the world have been disciplined for sex offences - including rape and child abuse - but not one seems to have been prosecuted."

"The IDF was surprised when an Iranian missile was fired on one of its missile ships, and by the Hezbollah's extensive use of anti-tank missiles in the war, he said. Also, Hezbollah outposts in open areas were well concealed, and Israeli troops discovered them only when they happened upon their underground bunkers, Halamish asserted."

Yet another success for the Bush Doctrine: "Starving Afghans sell girls of eight as brides"

Don't you love it when Saudi propagandists criticize the Syrian regime for being undemocratic? This is like Syrian officials criticizing `Abdul-Halim Khaddam for corruption. Or like Khaddam criticizing Syrian interferences in Lebanon, etc.

"30,000 extra troops will be thrown into the battle for Baghdad". I say 40,000. Do we have 50,000? 50,000??? We have 50,000. Do we have 70,000? 70,000?

"Millions of Britons who visit the United States are to have their fingerprints stored on the FBI database alongside those of criminals, in a move that has outraged civil rights groups." (Arab visitors will be caramelized).

I would never want to defend Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch. But today, Iraqi puppet prime minister, Nuri Al-Maliki, blasted human rights organizations (for their criticisms of Saddam's execution) and asked "Where were they when Saddam was killing his victims"? In fairness, those human rights organization were criticizing Saddam's regime. He should direct that very question not to Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch but to his allies: US, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Germany, Canada, France, and Kuwait (among others).

"It is, therefore, a worry when research by Robert Putnam, a professor at Harvard University, suggests that higher levels of ethnic diversity in a community lead to lower levels of trust between its members." So what do you want? Just keep it white and "pure", or do you want to reinstitute segregation?

"Iran with nuclear weapons is unacceptable, new House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told The Jerusalem Post hours after entering the party leadership position. The Maryland Democrat said the view is shared by his party, rejecting assertions that the Democrats would be weaker than the Republicans on Iran."

"The Bush administration is imposing economic sanctions on Chinese, Russian and North Korean companies for selling missiles and weapons goods to Iran and Syria, administration officials said. "

"The Gates Foundation has poured $218 million into polio and measles immunization and research worldwide, including in the Niger Delta. At the same time that the foundation is funding inoculations to protect health, The Times found, it has invested $423 million in Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Total of France — the companies responsible for most of the flares blanketing the delta with pollution, beyond anything permitted in the United States or Europe."

When you read the byline of John Burns you know that you are about to read official US propaganda. This is third article by Burns in which he asserts that the US had nothing to do with Saddam's execution. OK. Enough already.

"Iraq's massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days. The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972."

"Revealed: Israel plans nuclear strike on Iran". You know, I read this and thought: for much of my life, I have always been certain that the liberation of Palestine will come. I, however, was certain that it will happen, but not in my life time. But since the Israeli war on Lebanon last summer, I have been thinking that I may after all see the liberation of Palestine in my life time. I mean that. Now I have always been in favor of a secular state in all of Palestine (and not a religious state for any one religion) where Jews, Muslims, Christians, and atheists can live as equal citizens with equal access to their religious places (and restaurants and residences), and were all Palestinian refugees are allowed to return (and--NOT OR--be compensated). The massive violence of Zionism over the years, however, threatens my vision for the area known as "the holy land." Successive Israeli wars and massive violence have posed, and will continue to pose, a threat to the permanent Jewish existence in the Middle East--which I always supported, just as I support the return and compensation of all Jews who were forced to leave Arab lands. I always viewed them as rightful owners as everybody else in the region. What I am trying to say is this: the outcome of the Arab-Israeli conflict will not go in Israel's favor, but it will be an ugly outcome. And that does not please me at all.

"Iraqi academic Falih `abd al-Jabbar expressed his disappointment as one of the Iraqis who have “waited in exile for over three decades” hoping for the urban Iraqi middle class to “rise and rebuild the civic state”, only to discover that this class had “acquired much of the pettiness of its rural leaders ... and had submitted to the flood of the migrant rural poverty”. This thesis of the rural-urban divide is quite familiar in modern Arab political writing (as in the sociological works of the Bahraini intellectual Muhammad Jabir al-Ansari); but what `abd al-Jabbar ignores is that the ‘urban’ population of Baghdad was capable of similar displays of public violence in 1941 and 1958 before it was ‘polluted’ by the rural migration."

Ghassan Ghusn is the chairperson of the leadership of labor unions in Lebanon. Today, he announced that the labor leadership will launch protests against the (horrific) economic plans of the Sanyurah government (formulated by World Bank/IMF--in fact, they were drafted in English and then translated into Arabic to be released to the public). But Ghassan Ghusn is a mere tool of the Amal movement. I met him for the first time last summer in the office of the Minister of Labor; I was never impressed with him, and was impressed even less having met him. The Minister of Labor told me that I would like "the work of Ghassan Ghusn." To which, I said: No, I don't like his work one bit. I looked at Ghusn and told him: "You have been dormant all throughout the Hariri-Syrian intelligence years, permitting the labor unions to be domesticated by Ghazi Kan`an and Rafiq Hariri." He said that they will pay more attention to socio-economic issues. He will only do...what he is told. And Hizbullah has just discovered the importance of socio-economic justice having ignored it for more than decade. For all the long years of Hariri-Sanyurah injustices, Hizbullah stood by while the most cruel forms of capitalism were imposed on Lebanon, with the support of Syrian mukhabarat, which--Hariri made sure--profited form the arrangements. And the Sanyurah-Hariri privatizations are not like any privatization plans that you may know: they don't sell a state venture and open the service for competion. Oh, no. They sell a profitable state enterprise (like the Middle East Airline) and sell it at a loss to one monopolizing company--always linked to a son or uncle of one of the ruling elements.

Well, this is a news item that makes you feel better for sure. If this does not lift up your spirits, nothing will: "Crown Prince Sultan, deputy premier and minister of defense and aviation, yesterday announced Saudi Arabia’s plan to purchase 72 military aircraft from Britain."

The Poverty of Arab Liberalism (thanks Amer) Does anybody know anything about this author?

The editor-in-chief of Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat interviewed Prince Sultan--look at the demeanor of the "liberal" editor. I will only translate one question for you in order to understand better the "liberal" Saudi-funded media:
"Question: Your highness, do you agree that this system can be considered as a bridge for the Saudi state to cross through better into the land of constitutional stability, and we are facing new systems that are as big in the near future, like transforming the Shura Council into a partially or fully elected body?
Answer: Our constitution in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the glorious Qur'an and the pure Sunnah. And the Qur'an is the word of God subahanahu wa ta`ala, and we rely on it praise be to God, and have not deviated from it, and we have become with its blessings brothers. As for the system of government it is derived from this constitution. And these initiatives come in the framework of total reform pursued by my master, the Guardian of the noble sancturies, King `Abdullah bin `Abdul-`Aziz, in all fields. And the wheel of reform that he, may god preserve him, moved is still continuing and advancing forward. Thus all the issues that revolve in people's minds or are circulated by the media are part of the ideas and topics that he, may god preserve him, seeks to apply gradually and according to a timetable, and which do not violate the axioms of religion and society and which fulfill the interest of homeland and citizens." Tell the truth. Have you read more interesting and more thrilling interviews ever in your life? And see how "liberal" the Saudi media are?

I wonder. The Maronite Patriarch, Sfayr, must have a huge hat collection. Where does he keep them all, I wonder? He must have as many hats as Imelda Macros has shoes. Will he let me try on some of the hats, I wonder? And did God design this hat for him, I wonder? And can he do magic tricks with that thing he is carrying in his hand, I wonder?