At `Imad's 250-year old house in Jummayzah.

`Imad, at the Jummayzah stair way. The person to the right is the Mukhtar of Jummayzah.

"Former Iraqi prisoners claim in a BBC program to be broadcast today that British troops abused and humiliated them in the aftermath of the US-led invasion in March 2003. The fresh allegations fuelled suspicion that the Army was following a policy of "systematic abuse and torture" when dealing with Iraqi detainees."

Prisons of "liberation": "Responding to an appeal for more forces in Iraq to help manage a rising number of detainees, the Pentagon is dispatching an additional 700 troops from 82nd Airborne Division, defense officials said yesterday."

"Liberation" continues: "THE number of dead Iraqi civilians counted at the Baghdad morgue hit 1100 in July, the highest toll in recent history, a British newspaper reported today, blaming the daily violence.The Independent said the figure was just 700 short of the total number of US soldiers killed in Iraq since April 2003, after the US-led invasion.
"The July figures are the largest ever recorded in the history of the Baghdad Medical Institute," an anonymous, senior member of the management at the morgue was quoted as telling the newspaper."

An Iraqi woman in "liberated" Iraq yesterday.

Disregard her tears: she is a Palestinian. Her son was shot by an Israeli colonial settler yesterday--the same colonial settlers who are covered heroically in the US media.

This is Israeli animal rights group cares about dogs and cats...but not about Palestinians.

1 % of historic Palestine (or 6% of the West Bank-Gaza territory) is back--and it is not even free and I am supposed to celebrate? And why the Palestinians will not give up: Not only due to my fierce opposition to Zionism, but I do not enjoy Israeli occupations, and do not seem to enjoy their withdrawals either, as rare as they are. I have been really outraged watching the US (and its appendages in the Saudi Arab media) coverage of the withdrawal of the settlers. Did the withdrawal of French colonial settlers from Algeria cause such “anguish”—I hate that word as it is often almost exclusively associated by Michael Lerner and other liberal Americans with Israeli soldiers, and their heroic killing adventures and occupations. Who is the victim in this story? Would you know it from the coverage? Would you know that these (the Israeli colonial settlers that is) are people who deserve only scorn, condemnation, and contempt. They remind me of those Germans who moved into properties taken from Jewish victims under Nazi rule. How could the media be blind to the dimensions of the colonial settler movement? These are people who willingly and forcefully stole the land, water, airspace, and fruits of the Palestinian nation, and act all smug and arrogant about their theft and conquest project. And I am supposed to feel sorry for them? And each one of them is getting $500,000 from the state of Israel, and additional amounts from funds donated by American Zionists. How many of you would barter a house you own which is worth no more than $50,000 for a half million dollar? That is what is going on. But, no. The US media never misses an opportunity to shed tears for Israeli "victims," even when they are conquerors and occupiers. This is the reality of US ignorant but unjust endorsement of Zionism, and its consequences. But Zionism is in crisis. Make no mistake about it. Having said that, I do not want to react to the withdrawal the way the silly Arab (and Palestinian Authority) media are reacting. It is neither a victory for Israel, nor for the Palestinians, strictly speaking. We have suffered enough fake and imagined victories in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and I really am not looking forward to yet another version of that. Yasir `Arafat, especially in the 1960s and 1970s, made a career out of bombastic rhetoric and hollow propaganda; and today, Hamas seems to emulate that style. That will only confuse the issue and delude the masses. They, the latter group, deserve much better, but I do not believe that Hamas is capable of seriousness in rhetoric or in discourse. And the Palestinian Authority puppet president, a former Holocaust denier-turned-lover-of Zionist rulers, Mahmud `Abbas, wants to turn this partial withdrawal into a victory in order to deceive the Palestinian population, in order to propel the Israeli praetorian guards, known as the Palestinian police, to disarm Palestinian groups, to help in the protection of the Israeli expansionist aims. This is not a victory in that sense, and the land has not been liberated, but it certainly is a mark of defeat, especially by the state that is built on the racist expansionist ideology of Zionism. Zionism is in crisis. If the 20th century was the heyday of Zionism, the 21st century will witness its ultimate demise, and I will not shed a tear, and—if around—will do my best to celebrate, although I never was good at celebration. (I don’t know how people can do that. I cannot don the funny hats, and throw plates, and scream in celebration. I am not sure that I am good at handling festive moments. Some people are good at it; hell, some people are great at it, even when events don’t even call for celebrations. Look at George W. Bush: that man has been celebrating his imagined victories in Iraq, for over 2 years now. What do you call that? I am sure that there is a clinical name that escapes me here.) By the demise of Zionism I mean the inability of the racist state of Israeli that is based on military conquest and brute force to survive down the throat of the native population. The one miscalculation of Zionism was the silly assumption that the largely peasant non-European population (the Palestinians) is not capable of producing a modern nationalist movement; a nationalist movement that does not give up. At the risk of sounding emotional and sentimental, the Palestinian people have shown a resolve that is quite unusual. No matter how much it is fought from all sides (Zionist and Arab), no matter how dire the economic straits are, this people will not give up, and will never surrender no matter how much force Israel uses against it. The Palestinian people were assumed by the early Zionists (read Ahad Ha’am for example) to be nothing but dirt that can be simply swept by force under the carpet, to use that cliché. Shlomo Avineri commented in his book on Zionism about the case of Vladimir Jobotinsky: he expressed his surprise at Jobitinsky for not appreciating the nationalist potential of the Palestinian people. But that comment also applies to labor Zionism too, from the early founders to Shimon Peres: the man who, I will never forget, launched his electoral campaign in 1996 by ordering the shelling a bomb shelter in Qana near Tyre: there are AbuKhalils among the victims. He wanted to show his toughness, you understand. It is not personal, though. But I am always amazed at his casual invocation of the word “terrorist” whenever he speaks about the Palestinians. Yet, this man is received by people on the left in this country as a man of peace. Hell, this is a country where Sharon is a "man of peace". Real (as opposed to imaginary) Zionism can best be understood when you remember that Sharon and Peres have been close friends since before the establishment of the state. It is not personal though. It is all about policies and wars; policies and wars that they undertook and quite enjoyed. But Zionism is at a standstill: it came to face two huge stumbling boulders: the demographic reality of the population of the holy land (and the poverty of the Palestinian population—given its correlation with high fertility rates—was an asset for them, only in this regard, and the persistent resolve and unrelenting struggle of the Palestinian people. Zionism can not go on, and the project, as evidenced by what was not admitted in words in Sharon’s speech to his nation, has failed, and the failure will over time undermine the foundations of the state. Israel also failed in a major way by making sure to alienate its Arab surrounding: not that the populations around could have been won over, but the Chutzpah of Zionism was in conquering Palestine by force, and then going to war against Jordan, Egypt, and Syria, and then bombing on different occasions all of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, and Tunisia, not to mention the Israeli assassinations worldwide, and the downing of a Libyan airliner in 1973, and the regular bombings of the refugee camps by air, land, and sea--how heroic was that for Zionism. I am somebody who always believed in a one secular state encompassing Jews, and Palestinians, without a religious label for the state, and without the one-group-supremacy that is embedded in the Jewish state of Israel--yes, I also oppose the creation of any Muslim state, or Buddhist states, but wound not object to the creation of a Potato state, with its own potato flag. I worry that eventually the outcome of the struggle will be bloody and certainly not pretty, and not in favor of Israel, and it is because Israelis only dealt with Arabs through blood—Arab blood, and iron. Israel determined the terms of the conflict since its inception, and its contours, and in that sense Palestinian political violence, even when it takes forms that I do not like—like suicide bombings—is a direct outcome of Zionist violence, which since the advent of Zionism has been massive, random, indiscriminate, and merciless. Worse, it is an arrogant violence that gives itself a self-righteous mode, and considers the violence of the other side “terrorist”, always “terrorist.” To be sure, Israel has Bush and Clinton on its side; that is helpful and useful, but up to a point. Israel has managed to alienate more than Arab public opinion: it has become a frustrating example for Muslim public opinion due to its contemptuous and racist treatment of Arabs/Muslims, and due to its vapid propaganda. Israel has left Gaza--a mere 1% of historic Palestine, and will leave more lands, over time. The state cannot subjugate the angry Palestinian population forever, and its massive WMDs eventually will be dismantled, just as its counterparts (in racist exclusiveness that is) in apartheid South Africa did. Perhaps there was a chance for Israel to reach a different albeit painful—for the Arabs—accommodation that only `Arafat at one point could have imposed. An accommodation that I personally reject and dismiss as unjust, along the lines of the minimum acceptable demands presented by `Arafat at Camp David—oh, please spare me Thomas Friedman's fulmination and continuously changing versions about what really happened at Camp David. `Arafat did not accept the deal that was not officially made to him, because he simply could not. And now the silly clique at Bush’s White House and in Israel think that the duet of `Abbas and Dahlan can achieve for them what `Arafat could not? Good luck in that. We shall see how long those two last in power, or even out of power. And then you watch the media coverage and wonder: will they ever get it in the US press? Will they ever cover a story of foreign affairs intelligently and independently, and away from clichés and from cute little phrases that they reproduce from Zakaria and Friedman. Hell. I prefer Henry Kissinger: at least he had an interesting mind, and wrote intelligently. Bring him back, I say. Which reminds me: I read that a Russian astronaut broke a record of time spent in outer space. I bet you that Thomas Friedman can beat that record. I strongly nominate him, and he can take Zakaria with him, and I hear that the ego of latter is worse than the former. What do you think? And then you read this in New York Times' editorial about the Gaza matter: "It cannot be easy to be escorted out of one's home by soldiers." Not if the land is not your own, and the water is stolen, as are the olive trees. And not if the house is built by the hands of the native population who own it. But I will tell the New York Times what is not easy: to be kicked out--NOT "ESCORTED"--of your house, while Israeli soldiers are shooting at your family members. That is how the Palestinians were NOT ESCORTED out of their homes by Zionist soldiers in 1948, and after. Sometimes, I get a strong urge to subject all those who write on the Middle East to an examination in Middle East history and geography. That would be fun to do. Fun for me, anyway. And those people who are being dragged out, I meant "escorted out" to be more accurate, of Gaza's illegal settlements are not even (illegal) residents of those homes, but "infiltrators" from Israel and probably from Juilliard too.

"Niger's women and children starve as men hoard food"

"The talk in Damascus is of a bitter harvest on the border"

Bliar's "New Authoritarianism"

Philosopher of Optimism Endures Negative Deluge

Was Rafiq Hariri not a nice person? This is from an editorial by Ad-Diyar's Charles Ayyub (its editor-in-chief): "Ad-Diyar, o dear friend, loves Sa`d Al-Hariri, and his father had made charities to Ad-Diyar, and without the financial support of the martyr prime minister Rafiq Hariri in difficult times, Ad-Diyar would not have continued...." From the issue of August 17th, 2005. (And I should add that Ayyub is one of the most courageous of Lebanese journalists, but still...)

"Iran on points?"

The brilliance of Rashid Fayid, and why the Lebanese civil war went on for a very long time: This Hariri journalist at An-Nahar was on LBC-TV. Among the many silly things he said (especially his analysis of US foreign policy) was his theory for the longevity of the Lebanese civil war. Citing the authority of Ghassan Salamah, he said that the civil was was so prolonged because the Lebanese are so brilliant and devised ways to cope with the war, which facilitated its extension. He gave the example of the parition of Cyprus: according to this man, the Cypriot people are not as brilliant as the Lebanese and that is why they did not engage in a protracted civil war. So in other wars, the longer the civil war, and more savage it is, the more brilliant the people. OK.

This is `Imad (see picture below) who was sitting on the stair way of Jummayzah. Upon learning that I was seaching for old houses in the neighborhood, he took me to his house (behind him here). It is at least 250 years old.

The small city that is Beirut: I was taking a picture of the famous stair way in Jummayzah, when I recognized the man to the left. A classmate and friend from childhood.

"Liberation" news: "The battle over the constitution is regarded by most Iraqi women, confined to their homes by the occupation, as an irrelevance."

It is official: George can read. (or so claim his advisors).

Those pictures dominating the international media of Israeli soldiers gently helping Israeli colonial settlers in evacuating their illegal homes and settlements. Are they supposed to be tear jerking? Am I missing something in them? And do the media not notice the differences in the treatment of demonstrators by Israeli Offence Forces on the basis of their religion? And do I detect some acting on the part of those colonial settlers for the benefit of the cameras? Are those settlers or performers? Is that Tony Danza that I see in this picture? Israel gets (from US media) more propaganda advantages than it even needs. Israel gets paid (by US Congress) when it occupies land by force, and then gets paid for leaving those lands (due to mounting resistance by the occupied). Is there anything that Israel does that US Congress would not reward it for? I bet you that if Israel ever drops WMDs on Arab targets, the US Congress would intervene, but only to reward those who dropped the bombs. They probably would pass a legislation titled, The Compensation of Israeli Anguished Bombers Act.

"The Baghdad morgue is a fearful place of heat and stench and mourning, the cries of relatives echoing down the narrow, foetid laneway behind the pale-yellow brick medical centre where the authorities keep their computerised records. So many corpses are being brought to the mortuary that human remains are stacked on top of each other. Unidentified bodies must be buried within days for lack of space - but the municipality is so overwhelmed by the number of killings that it can no longer provide the vehicles and personnel to take the remains to cemeteries. July was the bloodiest month in Baghdad's modern history - in all, 1,100 bodies were brought to the city's mortuary; executed for the most part, eviscerated, stabbed, bludgeoned, tortured to death. The figure is secret."

"An Afghan detainee who died in military custody was injured so severely that has leg muscles were split apart, an Air Force medical examiner testified Tuesday in the trial of a soldier accused in the beating. Lt. Col. Elizabeth Rouse, who performed the autopsy on the prisoner known as Dilawar, said his muscles were "crumbling and falling apart.""

Not in the US media: Again, I heard this news on Arab media, but could not find it in Arab media. "US troops backed by helicopter gunfire mistook a group of Iraqi workers for insurgents in central Baghdad, firing on them and injuring 26, Agence France Presse reported on Tuesday. Earlier, a Defense Ministry official reported that US forces had exchanged fire with suspected insurgents in the area. However, AFP interviewed a number of the wounded at Baghdad's Al-Yarmouk Hospital who said they were workers and that a US helicopter had fired at them as they were standing outside a hotel. The US military has not yet commented on the AFP report."

"President Bush's campaign against what he once termed the "axis of evil" has suffered reverses on all three fronts in recent days that underscore the profound challenges confronting him 3 1/2 years after he vowed to take action. First, multilateral talks orchestrated by the United States to pressure North Korea to give up nuclear weapons adjourned last week after 13 days without agreement. Then Iran restarted its program to convert uranium, in defiance of the United States and Europe. Finally, negotiators in Iraq failed to draft a new constitution by Monday's deadline amid an unrelenting guerrilla war against U.S. forces."

"The Iran War Buildup"

"What al-Qaida Really Wants"

"Scientists have developed a way to turn pee into electricity." (Upon hearing the news, Bush plugged all his electronic devices into his toilet).

WMDs were found in Iraq. Look at the headline: "Military: Chemicals show explosive potential." And then you read this: "Col. Henry Franke, a nuclear, biological, and chemical defense officer, said chemical samples indicate that the facility could have been used to produce explosives, and that it appeared to be associated with insurgents."

An old house in Jummayzah, Beirut.

A street in Jummayzah.

To understand Zionism: just watch TV footage of Israeli soldiers dealing with Jewish demonstrators, and compare that to how Israeli soldiers deal--and have dealt--with Arab demonstrators.

"The attempt to draft a new constitution, however, has not registered on Mr Ashur's scale of momentousness: "It will change nothing. I don't believe in politics anymore. It is all promises and lies.""

"British soldiers are facing fresh allegations of abusing Iraqi prisoners" (US outraged)

"Harvard denies study is a response to creationism"

Robert Fisk: "How Can the US ever Win when Iraqi Children Die Like This? The Americans came back with an officer two days later," Selim al-Sammerai continues. "They offered us compensation. I refused. I lost my son, I told the officer. ’I don’t want the money - I don’t think the money will bring back my son.’ That’s what I told the American." There is a long silence in the room. But Selim, who is still crying, insists on speaking again. "I told the American officer: ’You have killed the innocent and such things will lead the people to destroy you and the people will make a revolution against you. You said you had come to liberate us from the previous regime. But you are destroying our walls and doors.’" I suddenly realise that Selim al-Sammerai has straightened up on his seat and his voice is rising in strength. "Do you know what the American said to me? He said, ’This is fate.’ I looked at him and I said, ’I am very faithful in the fate of God - but not in the fate of which you speak.’" (Except on Lebanon, Fisk can be recommended). (thanks to Naseer)

Sleazy Lebanese (former) cabinet members ogling right-wing MP, Strida Ja`ja`, as she returned to her seat. (thanks `Amir)

"Fax, its semi-annual report of top-line publishers estimates, for the first half of 2005. Titles across all categories, especially the slew of celebrity magazines, showed strong newsstand growth to help drive circulation gains..ewsweeklies continued to struggle for the first half of the year. Time magazine, published by Time Inc., saw circulation remain flat for the period at 4.05 million, while newsstand sales dipped 3.4 percent to 157,217 copies. Newsweek saw its newsstand sales plummet 14 percent to 126,163, while total paid circulation rose 1.8 percent to 1.05 million. Meanwhile, celebrity newsweeklies continued to post sparkling circulation increases, as scandalous Hollywood unions (between Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as well as Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes) kept readers clamoring for information. Time Inc.'s People saw total circulation rise 1.3 percent to 3.8 million. The king of the category was also the top seller on newsstands, averaging 1.49 million copies."

The Legacy of Yasir `Arafat: Zaki and the Shield of Jerusalem. As you all can tell, I have always had utter contempt for Yasir `Arafat, and what he has (or has not) done for the Palestinian cause. He allowed the flow of dirty oil money to corrupt the Palestinian resistance movement, thereby harming even the left-wing organizations that also benefited from `Arafat's funds, which intended to undermine the revolutionary potential of the movement, and to place various PLO leaders at his own service (Yasir `Abd Rabbu (even when he was the 2nd in command at the DFLP, Samir Ghawshah, Bassam Abu Sharif, etc), and to spread a compromising political line. Yesterday, I was most disgusted to see a `Arafat lieutenant, and a Mahmud `Abbas' emissary, Fath leader `Abbas Zaki, making the rounds in Beirut meeting with Amin Gemayyel and General Michel `Awn, among others. But what really upset me was the sight of Zaki awarding the shield of Jerusalem to `Awn. This `Awn, while serving in the Lebanese Army in the civil war, opted to fight with the right-wing militias, and he "fought" if that is the word, when the right-wing Maronite-oriented militias in East Beirut, with Israeli and Syrian assistance, laid a siege to the Palestinian refugee camp of Tal Az-Za`tar in 1976, and later ransacked it, and massacred many of its inhabitants. `Awn later shelled areas in West Beirut, and struck an alliance with Saddam Husayn, who also was an ally of `Arafat. `Arafat sent weapons to `Awn just because he was opposing (for his own purposes) Syria in Lebanon. In that case, the puppet `Abbas is a logical successor to `Arafat, who is in pain for not being able to send millions to the account of Suha `Arafat.

The car bombings in Beirut: I am not a technical expert (although I have provided free-lance expertise knowledge to restaurants on potato slicing) but I have been thinking about this as of late. I have no faith whatsoever in the UN committee investigating the Hariri assassination, especially after its head gave that interview to Le Figaro (see previous post on that). And there are other "truths" that I am after, to be candid with you. I don't spend sleepless nights wondering who killed Rafiq Hariri. But I was thinking about the case of Mohammad Boudia. (He was the head of Wadi` Haddad's unit in Western Europe, in which Carolos were later to work). Wadi` Haddad very much admired the Algerian Boudia, and never ever had any admiration for the braggart and mercenary that Carlos was, as contemporaries would tell you. But Boudia was killed with a mine under his car seat--detonating vertically--on rue Sainte- Anne in Paris in 1973 by the Mossad, in the same manner that Jihad Jibril (of PFLP-GC), Ghalib `Awwali (of Hizbullah), and Samir Qasir and George Hawi (this year) were all killed in Beirut. But you don't see anybody in the press making these connections. Why?
PS Contrary to lies later spread by Carols, Haddad never appointed Carlos as the successor to Boudia. The Lebanese Michel Mukarbil was appointed as successor, and he was later killed by Carlos himself in the famous shoot out in Paris.

Exams in Mubarak's Egypt:
I will simply translate the document above:
"Governorate of North Sinai
Directorate of Education and Ethical training
Department of `Arish for Education
Al-`Arish Secondary School for Boys
Grade: First Secondary
Subject: Art Training
Time: Two Hours
End of Second Semester Exam, 2004-05
One: Artistic Expression
The next following days witness a critical crossroad in Egypt regarding the future vision for the Egyptian people to determine the goals and priorities to improve the life of the individual and President Husni Mubarak is a leader with a continuing history and has succeeded in transferring Egypt through civilizational stages in economics, politics, education, culture, agriculture, and stability and security, and concern for not harming people with limited income, and a quest for improving the living conditions, and the setting of successive five-year plans for the prosperity of development, and the concern for the establishment of new cities and gigantic plans....to lift up the living of the sons of the homeland, and the president does not need electoral advertisement and all will say (Yes) on the day of the election for president Mubarak. Required:
Express in your pen (or pencil) and colors these scenes:
1. A view of one of the scenes of electoral support for President Mubarak in the streets or inside the electoral committee.
2. A scene of one of the scenes of reform and services in Egypt at the hand of President Mubarak."

A house in Ashrafiyyah.

A house in Ashrafiyyah.

Gaza under siege.

"WEAPONS designed to fire "electric bullets" into crowds are being developed for police and border protection agencies in the US."