According to Iraq Body Count, civilians reported killed by military intervention in Iraq stand at a minimum of 27,115 and a maximum of 30,559

US faces questions from Europe regarding secret CIA prisons in Europe. The uproar continues in Spain, Germany, Italy, Romania and Poland.
(Source: NYT & WP)

US Military covertly pays to run stories in Iraq press. As part of an information offensive in Iraq, the U.S. military is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the U.S. mission in Iraq.
(Source: LA Times)

Barbara Walters had another special last night. I pine for the old days of Gilda Radner. As Baba Wawa she tops the real BW any day.

Yesterday is the name of the movie and the female lead. A South African film in Zulu aired last Monday on HBO. The story of a dignified and resilient AIDS infected woman and her quest to secure a feature for her daughter. The scenery is stark, the story is moving and the actors just brilliant.

Michael Slackman reported from Mazghouna, Egypt about elections in today's NY Times. The winner of the race in Mazghouna is a Mr. Ahmed Abdo Shabun (how do you say that in Arabic?). Shabun is a long time member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and here is some of what he has to say. "This is an Islamic state ... But it is not always following the Islam God ordained..... Some ideas have to be adjusted.... If tourists want to drink, they can bring it (alcohol) with them ... I would abolish bank interest and introduce Islamic banking"

His uttering remind me of an old headline in the Egyptian press some 10 or 15 years ago. The President of Egypt, promised to reform of the economy in 1,000 days. And Egypt is still waiting for the economic miracle 4,000 days later.

My friend FE a sensitive and gifted writer sent me a few thoughts, which I will share. But first I have to figure out the myth of the PDF files. Specifically, how an Arabic PDF file can be converted to an Arabic "Word" file. More on that later.

Film Festivals

29th Cairo International Film Festival to begin next month. If you listen to the local press, you think it better than the Oscars. Morgan Freeman is supposed to be a guest of the festival.

2nd Dubai International Film Festival opens next month. Supposed to bring Hollywood & Bollywood together. This is one tall order, considering that there is more Bollywood in Dubai than in India. And yes, Morgan Freeman is showing up there as well.

Australian Film Institute Awards currently in Melbourne (Nov. 24 - 29). Don't know if Freeman is there or not.

French TV will remake "Starsky and Hutch" as "Duval et Madani". I know this is not a film festival, but it kind of goes there.

In the Movies

The Ice Harvest: John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, Connie Nielsen, Oliver Platt, Randy Quaid (Harold Ramis)

In the Mix: Usher Raymond, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Chazz Palminteri, Anthony Fazio, Matt Gerald (Ron Underwood)

Keane: Damian Lewis, Abigail Breslin, Amy Ryan, Liza Colon-Zayas, Lev Gom (Lodge Kerrigan)

Rent: Rosario Dawson, Idina Menzel, Anthony Rapp, Adam Pascal, Jesse L. Martin, Taye Diggs (Chris Columbus)

Ushpizin: Shuli Rand, Michael Bat-Sheva Rand, Shaul Mizrahi, Ilan Gannai, Avraham Abutbul (Gidi Dar)

Yours, Mine & Ours: Dennis Quaid, Rene Russo, James Lewis, Linda Hunt, Rip Torn (Raja Gosnell)

The Fruits of Liberating Iraq

According to the BBC, Former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has said that human rights abuses in Iraq today are as bad as those during the rule of Saddam Hussein.

In an interview with the UK's Observer newspaper, Mr Allawi said that Iraqis were being tortured and killed by secret police in secret bunkers. 'People are doing the same as [in] Saddam's time and worse,' Ayad Allawi told The Observer. 'It is an appropriate comparison. People are remembering the days of Saddam. These were the precise reasons that we fought Saddam and now we are seeing the same things.'

Did the US plot to bomb al-Jazeera?

The story continues in European and Middle Eastern media. Both the BBC & al-Jazeera published the Arab TV station's demand of the British government to explain the leaked report that US President George Bush wanted to bomb the TV station.

According to the BBC's story, Cabinet Office civil servant David Keogh has been charged under the Official Secrets Act of passing the memo to former Labour MP Tony Clarke's researcher Leo O'Connor. Both men are due to appear at Bow Street Magistrates Court next week.

Last week Labour MP and former defence minister Peter Kilfoyle tabled a Commons motion calling for the memo to be made public. He accused ministers of using the Official Secrets Act to save political embarrassment rather than protect national security as it is intended.

No charges for burning of Taliban bodies

BBC Reported today "US troops who burned the corpses of two suspected Taleban fighters killed in a gun battle in Afghanistan committed no crime, military investigators say.

Dinner with the Gibsons & the Grubens

Pictures taken this evening at Nit Noi in Houston. The occasion was the visit of Linda and Karl from Hollywood, FL.

Thanksgiving at the Gibsons

This afternoon, I had Thanksgiving dinner at the Gibsons. Present were family members from Houston, Austin, San Antonio and Petal, MS. Notice the new color of the outside of their house. I am told it is Navajo white. CMG might be lucky and gets his "white gravy" next year.

PS: Click on the picture and the image on the screen will get bigger

Egypt Elections

Last Sunday November 20, 2005, CNN Presents broadcast a report by Jonathan Mann (or does he spell his last name with one n?). The program was titled "Egypt, A Test Case for Democracy." It was not a bad program, and I liked it. I especially was impressed by the four women featured in the program, a University mathematics Professor, Dr. Seif al-Dwalah, Mrs. Ghada Shahbandar and a young woman from the AUC. It made me proud to belong to the same nation these women come from. The funniest (nothing was funny at all) moment came, when Mr. Mann went to a bookstore and asked if they sell Sayyed Qutb books. The store employee came back with a book, and Mr. Mann said something like "and his books are sold openly". The book shown was a book about Sayyed Qutb and not by him.

PS: When the late Qutb's name is mentioned, no one remembers his literary criticism work. He was the first to write a review of the then young novelist Naguib Mahfouz.

Muslim Brotherhood

On Wednesday November 23, 2005, Kahirat el-Shatir (of the Muslim Brotherhood) wrote a column in the Guardian titled "No need to be afraid of us." Now that he assured the west, I wonder if the MB can assure the Egyptians of their intent. More importantly, can they inform the Egyptians how the Brotherhood will attain its goals? I always wondered how can "Islam be the Solution", when no Islamic economic institutions and infrastructure are in place or even nascent, in order to take care of "the Promised Islamic State." After all, you will have to trade internally and with the rest of the world to survive as a state. The task is daunting and people have not yet forgotten the shenanigan of scam artists like al-Rayyan brothers.

Did the US plot to bomb al-Jazeera?

In an exclusive, a UK newspaper "The Mirror" published an article today 22 Nov., 2005 maintaining "President Bush planned to bomb Arab TV station al-Jazeera in friendly Qatar, a "Top Secret" No 10 memo reveals" . A White House official said: "We are not going to dignify something so outlandish with a response."

The story received coverage in the BBC English & Arabic , CNN, as well as in al-Jazeera websites.

Early in 2003, two of al-Jazeera correspondents had their credentials revoked by the NY Stock Exchange. The decision to remove the reporters was reached days after Al-Jazeera broadcast pictures of dead U.S. soldiers and prisoners of war in defiance of requests from both the U.S. and British governments, according the NY Civil Liberties Union.

Russia has applied to join the Organization of Islamic States, according to a report by Steven Lee Myers in the NY Times of 22 Nov. 2005

Two women are in the news this week for a first. The Liberian Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf is the first woman elected president in Africa.

The second is Angela Merkel. She is the first woman, East German & youngest Chancellor. (German Link)

The Library of Congress (LC) received a $3 million gift from Google to help LC begin building a World Digital Library. One of the first agreements is with the National Library of Egypt, to digitize documents of Islamic science from the 10th century. The story by Katie Hafner appeared in Nov. 22, 2005 issue of the New York Times.

Google has a beta version of the US Digital Books project, which is rather impressive.

Walking While Moslem

In Beijing this morning, President Bush attended Church and said upon leaving "My hope is that the government of China will not fear Christians who gather to worship openly" An admirable message, especially when considering where it was delivered.

I thought about the rights of ordinary law abiding US Moslem citizens. As it has become increasingly difficult for US Moslem to do exactly, what Mr. Bush is advocating for Christians in the China.

Consider Zakat, giving alms to the poor, one of the five fundamental pillars of Islam, and a duty for every Moslem. Regardless of State, Federal, City or other earthly taxes, Moslems are required to pay 2.5% of their liquid assets to the poor, every year.

Giving to charity is a way of life in the US. People give freely to any cause they champion. Citizens do it freely and without second thoughts. Status of Moslem Charity organizations is now questionable, due to the draconian aspects of parts of the "Patriot Act" And for the future, what will be the status of any given Moslem Charity, long after Zakat has been donated? And how will donors be considered then?

This may sound paranoid, but paranoia is a constant state of mind of any ordinary law abiding Moslems living in the US. Consider the case of Shaheen, an Afghan American, who was caught in the twisted mentality of ethnic profiling.

His story was told on National Public Radio's program "This American Life", episode 288 , Act One, which aired on May 6, 2005. I urge you to listen to this bizarre and compelling story. He was suspected of "loitering" in a neighborhood, where the daughter of Defense Secretary's Rumsfeld lives or lived at the time of his arrest. All he did was walk, walk while being a Moslem.

Movies

• Bee Season: Juliette Binoche, Richard Gere (David Siegal & Scott McGehee)
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Daniel Radcliff, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint (Mike Newell)
• Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang: Robert Downey Jr., Val Kilmar (Shane Black)
• Walk the Line: Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon (James Mangold)

Happy Birthdy Mohammed TS

محمد وأخوان - كل عام وانتم بخير

خليها تشترك فى سباق الجرى

أ ش - ايه الحكايه يا بابا - حاسب احسن قراص الودان ممكن يجيى لك وأنت نايم

In Asia This week, President Bush said "We Don't Torture"

Meanwhile, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak warned the US earlier yesterday that UN inspectors would not visit Guantanamo base in December as scheduled unless Washington agreed to unrestricted access without conditions.

'The situation is very clear: If the United States does not accept an unconditional inspection, we will not go,' Nowak told Agence France-Presse.

Nowak said that the US stance compared poorly to China, which had agreed to unrestricted access to its jails. (Source: Forbes.com)

From the News Last Week

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and a leading US IT expert Nicholas Negroponte unveiled the bright green and yellow working prototype of a 100 dollar laptop aimed at millions of schoolchildren in poor count UN Secretary General .

The first Christian satellite channel in Egypt started broadcasting on Monday.

Egypt said on Monday it was leading a diplomatic campaign against a Danish newspaper.

خلافات حادة في مؤتمر الوفاق العراقي بمصر

بعض الأحباب

Legal Stories

Julie Kay of Law.com reported the following on 11/15/05. "Last month, the 11th Circuit reprimanded judges in the Southern District of Florida for "hiding cases from public view by placing the cases on a secret court docket." Now there are allegations that judges in the 11th Circuit participate secret docketing."

Contributor: JRM

Yesterday, Adam Liptak reported for the NY Times on the "Mystery of Gossipy Blog on the Judiciary is Solved"

Happy Birthday Karl

My friend KTG of Hollywood, FL is 54 today, have a happy hurricane-free birthday.

He is seen doing what he likes to do on weekends, namely going to the movies. I bet there is a "Harry Potter" or "Walk the Line" for him this weekend.

Love the British Sense of Fun

This was posted on the BBC World Service web page 

White phosphorous used in Fallujah

This is my first posting on this Blog. I was moved by the story of white phosphorous used in Fallujah in 2004. I knew I had to start, so excuse the mess of the first post.

I started hearing about a few days ago on Radio Pacifica. This morning, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, covered it to some extent with an ex-US Interrogator in Iraq. The BBC this afternoon did cover the story, while my regular ABC national news made no mention of it.

It seems that the story started with a 27 minutes video film from Italy. Images of charred bodies are rather disturbing, so you have been warned.