Manal and Alaa's bit bucket

So after a long silence, the Vatican spoke. It seems that in recent years it had been busy with book-condemnation and busy reading Harry Potter. It probably goes something like this:Happiness can be found [ahh.. happiness? meaning sins of the flesh], even in the darkest of times [darkness… they said darkness as in Prince of [...]

هو أنا مش قلت قبل كده ماحدش يلبس ولا يتكلم ويغنى ولا يقول أى حاجة بالعربى؟ وبعدين معاكم بقى؟ الأستاذ الزميل رائد جرار وهو مدون شهير يقوم بالتدوين عن العراق وأمور العراق وهو أيضا مواطن أمريكى - قام بمحاولة ركوب طائرة من مطار كنيدى وهو يرتدى تى شيرت مكتوب عليه باللغة العربية والإنجليزية: لن نصمتلأ [...]

While this is old news, I still find it important to mention because of its relevance to the behaviour of the blinded-by-the-spin-Americans, and also on the occasion of the anniversary of September 11th. The news was, of all places, and very surprisingly, on Fox News, as a four-part series of an investigative report on the [...]

The Bush administration wants a free Middle East. At least that used to be the rhetoric. He now half-heartedly repeats his mantra to snickers and laughter. But they do indeed want a free Middle East - one over which they can extend their imperial hubris and domination, whose resources are wide open to grab.تريد إدارة بوش [...]

Bush’s approval rating has taken a slight dip since the last NEWSWEEK Poll in mid-August. While 38 percent of respondents approved and 55 percent disapproved of his job performance back then, now 36 percent approve and 56 percent disapprove. That approval figure nearly matches the president’s all-time low of 35 percent in May.63% of Americans [...]

 Rep. Katherine Harris [of the Florida elections fame] and a Republican senate candidate from Longboat Key, attempted to explain her position after she dug herself in a big hole. On an election campaign visiting a Florida Baptist congregation, she said that that ‘failure to elect Christians to public office would allow lawmakers to “legislate sin”‘ [link]:“If you are not electing [...]

Bush Crimes Commission to Release Verdict on September 13Call for a National “Bush Crimes Day” September 19The Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration will release its final verdict on Wednesday, September 13, 2006.The final verdict will address the five indictments dealing with the Bush administration’s wars of aggression, illegal [...]

Just as the plans to attack Iraq were underway a long time before the actual attack, now the plans of attack against Iran are also moving along as planned. Who wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon? Not me by any stretch of the imagination. However attacking yet another country for no reason is not exactly acceptable [...]

In a press release yesterday UNRWA announced that there is an impending humanitarian crisis in Gaza because of the closure of the Karni Crossing. Not only is there food shortages, but there is a one-week’s supply of fuel left and if this runs out, there will no longer be any possibility of medical help because medical [...]

So was the allegded terror plot do-able? Initially, when the news broke, it was framed in such a way as to imply the plot was stopped as the terrorists were boarding the airplane. Then the officials said that the terrorists were one week away from carrying out their plans and that the officials, under US [...]

In an article entitled “Prepare for Iranian Strike, Israelis told,” a senior Israeli official said that Israel has to be ready for an impending attack [link].  “We are liable to face an Iranian missile attack. The Iranians have said very clearly that if they come under attack, their primary target would be Israel,” said Rafi Eitan, a [...]

Ehud Danoch, Israel’s consul general in Los Angeles, has been “cultivating relationships with a number of film industry insiders”, i.e. Hollywood-ians, according to the Jerusalem Post. He held meetings with actors, producers and directors over the last several days “to describe damage sustained by Israel and to explain the country’s position on the current cease-fire and [...]

This is the title song today of the Glenn Beck show*. Remember my post entitled Ahamadinejad is an alien? Well.. it was about 10 days ago and Beck had warned of an oncoming apocalypse on 22 August because it is the date of the Muslim prophet’s flight to heaven, and it is also the day Iran chose [...]

The British intelligence M15’s website  issues advisories regarding risk assessment from terrorist organizations. In Threats to the UK from International Terrorism, the site explains how vigilant people should be and how they may respond and help in capturing terrorists. The risk assessment is currently at Severe.On the same page, they provide a brief ’explanation’ of the source of [...]

وكل يوم فى حبك تزيد الممنوعاتلما تيجى تركب طيارة لازم تعرف أنك ممنوع من كل الحاجات دى. لو إتكلمت عربى أو إتكلمت لغة تشبه العربى, لو شكلك عربى أو لو قلت يا ليل يا عين بالعربى, أو لو لبست حاجة شكلها مش عاجباهم زى مثلا لبس جاكيت جلد فى عز الصيف والحر, إن شاء الله هيتقبض عليك [...]

The enemy tries to spread sectarian violence and they use violence as a tool to do that.Hmm.. no kidding? Those are words of wisdom from the Chief. So.. is Bush an idiot? Ok that is NOT my question. Surprisingly, it is Joe Scarborough’s question. In case you don’t know who Scarborough is, he currently has a show called Scarborough Country [...]

Saddam Hussein is not pleading guilty for his murderous campaign of gassing the Kurds in al Anfal, where around 100,000 Kurds were killed and 300,000 villages destroyed. He is refusing to plead guilty to genocide. CNN notes [link] that the other defendents include Sultan Hashem Ahmed, the military commander of the campaign; Saber Abdel Aziz, the director of [...]

Forget road maps, peace accords and negotiations and UN resolutions. Here is one person’s amusing suggestions for solutions, and you even get to choose which one of those three final solutions you want .. [and YES it IS a joke.. but isn’t the beauty of a joke in how much it touches upon the truth?] [link]:Final Solution [...]

A senior Downing Street source said that, privately, Mr Blair broadly agrees with John Prescott, who said Mr Bush’s record on the [Palestinian/Israeli] issue was ‘crap’. He added:“We all feel badly let down by Bush. We thought we had persuaded him to take the Israel-Palestine situation seriously, but we were wrong. How can anyone have [...]

“There’s only one solution for him. This man must die.” [link]Those were words spoken by an Israeli commander [on condition of anonymity] regarding Hassan Nasrallah. So what’s new? we know that already. The Israelis did it to Sheikh Yassin before.. and to others. All those targetted assassinations they have been conducting over the past 5 years. They [...]

The president seems to think that the best way to get results is to blow things up and then see what happens. It is sort of like what curious kids do in their back yards until they learn that somebody could get hurt. Bush enjoys unsettling things, confident in the belief that an unseen hand [...]

Keith Olbermann’s report on his show on MSNBC entitled The Nexus of Terror and Politics is an excellent recount of each of the terror alerts that have been used politically ever since this administration came to power. Every terror alert that came followed some form or other of the administration’s slipping grip on power. The amazing thing is [...]

“We almost killed each other.. We shot like blind people. … We shot sheep and goats.”…“We fought for nothing. We cleared houses that will be reoccupied in no time.” [link]Those were the words of Israeli soldiers on Olmert’s disastrous adventure into Lebanon. More soldiers spoke out:…thirsty troops threw chlorine tablets into filthy water in sheep and cow troughs. [...]

Nicole Kidman took out a full-page ad in [where else?] the Los Angeles Times condemning Hamas and Hezbollah. I can just visualize her and the signatories thinking: “Hey.. support for anti-terrorism measures? sure.. sign my name.” Who, in their right mind, would not support anti-terrorism? But what that is or what it implies means very little to [...]

Iraq, this administration’s primary success story, is importing fuel because there is a shortage of oil:Iraqi officials announced plans to double the amount of money spent to import fuel to combat the country’s worst oil and gasoline shortages in years. Much of the fuel crisis is due to insurgent attacks on convoys and on Iraq’s fragile [...]

Bush, we are told, was reading French-born Algerian/French novelist Albert Camus’s The Stranger while on vacation in Crawford this past week. The poor guy had to put it down to read the daily presidential briefs, but, according to him [or his spokesperson], he went through it pretty fast. Coincidentally, L’Etranger, is the story of a man [...]

On refusing to remove Rumsfeld for his role in the Iraq debacle, Bush said: “I’m the decider, and I decide what’s best.” Condi, on the other hand, was told on Meet the Press how there had been misjudgments made in regards to Iraq, to which she responded: “And there have been misjudgments not made.”Huh? So here are [...]

In a very telling article written before the war on Lebanon, Tony Judt, professor and director of the Remarque Institute at New York University writes in an article entitled Israel, the country that would not grow up:Israel, in the world’s eyes, is a normal state, but one behaving in abnormal ways. It is in control of its [...]

Irving Wesley Hall, in an article entitled Depleted Uranium for Dummies, writes that in March 1991, during the first Gulf War, Bush Sr. gave orders to immediately destroy a huge weapons storage dump in Khamisiyah, sending a huge toxic cloud over everything including American troops. According to Sgt. Dan Topolski, of the 87th Engineer Battalion, who participated in the Khamisiyah [...]

الملف العراقى والمسألة السودانية والقضية الفلسطينية والملف الكردى والمسألة السورية والقضية العربية…  أصبحت كل الدول العربية إما مسألة أو قضية أو ملف. متى نصبح دولا؟