I should be grading, but...The new Iraqi puppet leaders sound so much like Saddam's henchmen. Well, many of them actually were Saddam's henchmen. They are crude, vulgar, bombastic, and recklessly defamatory. I read an interview in Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat with the Iraqi puppet Minister of Interior today: he was out of control. Accusing AlJazeera of financial support for Iraqi insurgent groups. The Iraqi puppet government still has not apologized for being caught in a lie for accusing the brother of AlJazeera's closed office director in Baghdad of being an aide to Zarqawi. By the way, recent US officials were last week quoted in US media saying that they now found who really is masterminding the insurgency. This week it is `Izzat Ad-Duri. I will keep you posted about the culprit next week. I can barely keep up. And Bush declared today as: "such a hopeful moment in the history of the world." I kid you not. Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat is obsessed with AlJazeera. Of course, this reflects the deep Qatari-Saudi feud. The editor of AshSharq Al-Awsat (who was a tool for Prince Salman's son for years) today (tomorrow's issue) urged US to close down AlJazeera's office instead of AlManar TV, which was closed down this week. If hate speech is grounds for closing down TV stations, many US stations would have to be closed. I lived in this country for years, and have been subjected to an avalanche of hate speech against Arabs/Muslims, among others. I find it incredible that a media outlet urges the closing of another media outlet. That is very low--from the journalistic point of view--by my dictionary. I find Arab media suffocating: that they are loyal to this dynasty or that, to this wealthy prince or that. There is no independence, politically or financially. You have to be very careful and keen to know what is going on. Saudi money has coopted so much of the Arab press/intelligentsia. In other depressing news, I read in the Saudi Al-Watan newspaper that a recent study revealed that 92.69 % of Saudi internet users look at pornographic sites, this in a country that prides itself on having a highly "sophisticated"--if that is the right word--network hub which filters all incoming sites into the kingdom. And 7.3% look at "illegal sites" (politically or culturally). I have mentioned before the riveting interview with Lebanese businessman (with Saudi and American intelligence ties--according to him) Khalid Khudr Agha. Those who read Arabic should read it here. The text has now been posted. In other news, Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish read a eulogy for Yasir `Arafat yesterday. I will not quote much of it. It was nauseatingly hagiographic. But he said this: " The world will not wait for long to learn that Sharon's four "NO"s, which were adopted by the American president, do not only constitute the greatest obstacle to peace but they make peace impossible, because they make the possibility for the creation of an independent Palestinian state impossible. For peace does not coexist with the continuation of occupation and the enslavement of the Palestinian people. And the temporary does not coexist with the eternal. And who after Arafat will agree to a quasi temporary state forever?" Abu Mazin was in the audience when Darwish read those words.