"Waiting to Get Blown Up. Some Troops in Baghdad Express Frustration With the War and Their Mission" was one of the most talked about news articles in the Blog World. The author is Joshua Partlow of the WP. Here are some key paragraphs.

Army Staff Sgt. Jose Sixtos considered the simple question about morale for more than an hour. But not until his convoy of armored Humvees had finally rumbled back into the Baghdad military base, and the soldiers emptied the ammunition from their machine guns, and passed off the bomb-detecting robot to another patrol, did he turn around in his seat and give his answer.
"Think of what you hate most about your job. Then think of doing what you hate most for five straight hours, every single day, sometimes twice a day, in 120-degree heat," he said. "Then ask how morale is."

Frustrated? "You have no idea," he said.
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It sucks. Honestly, it just feels like we're driving around waiting to get blown up. That's the most honest answer I could give you," said Spec. Tim Ivey, 28, of San Antonio, a muscular former backup fullback for Baylor University. "You lose a couple friends and it gets hard."

"No one wants to be here, you know, no one is truly enthused about what we do," said Sgt. Christopher Dugger, the squad leader. "We were excited, but then it just wears on you -- there's only so much you can take. Like me, personally, I want to fight in a war like World War II. I want to fight an enemy. And this, out here," he said, motioning around the scorched sand-and-gravel base, the rows of Humvees and barracks, toward the trash-strewn streets of Baghdad outside, "there is no enemy, it's a faceless enemy. He's out there, but he's hiding."

"We're trained as an Army to fight and destroy the enemy and then take over," added Dugger, 26, of Reno, Nev. "But I don't think we're trained enough to push along a country, and that's what we're actually doing out here."

"It's frustrating, but we are definitely a help to these people," he said. "I'm out here with the guys that I know so well, and I couldn't picture myself being anywhere else."
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"The first time somebody you know dies, the first thing you ask yourself is, 'Well, what did he die for?' "
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"I mean, if you compare the casualty count from this war to, say, World War II, you know obviously it doesn't even compare," Fulcher said. "But World War II, the big picture was clear -- you know you're fighting because somebody was trying to take over the world, basically. This is like, what did we invade here for?"

"How did it become, 'Well, now we have to rebuild this place from the ground up'?" Fulcher asked.

He kept talking. "They say we're here and we've given them freedom, but really what is that? You know, what is freedom? You've got kids here who can't go to school. You've got people here who don't have jobs anymore. You've got people here who don't have power," he said. "You know, so yeah, they've got freedom now, but when they didn't have freedom, everybody had a job."

From Paul Krugman's column in the NYT titled "Reign of Error"

Amid everything else that’s going wrong in the world, here’s one more piece of depressing news: a few days ago the Harris Poll reported that 50 percent of Americans now believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when we invaded, up from 36 percent in February 2005. Meanwhile, 64 percent still believe that Saddam had strong links with Al Qaeda.

At one level, this shouldn’t be all that surprising. The people now running America never accept inconvenient truths. Long after facts they don’t like have been established, whether it’s the absence of any wrongdoing by the Clintons in the Whitewater affair or the absence of W.M.D. in Iraq, the propaganda machine that supports the current administration is still at work, seeking to flush those facts down the memory hole.

But it’s dismaying to realize that the machine remains so effective.
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It’s all very Orwellian, of course. But when Orwell wrote of “a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past,” he was thinking of totalitarian states. Who would have imagined that history would prove so easy to rewrite in a democratic nation with a free press?

At the Movies

Miami Vice: Jamie Foxx, Colin Farrell, Gong Li & Naomie Harris (Michael Mann)

Scoop: Scarlett Johansson, Hugh Jackman, Ian McShane & Woody Allen (Woody Allen)

فى يوم مولده - تقدير فوتوغرافى

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Crazy talk of the week

"He's in America, America deserves that. We've spent hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq, we've lost more than 2,500 American soldiers, more than 20,000 wounded. We deserve that answer." (Radio Free Europe)
Senator Harry Reid, Minority Leader about why Iraqi Prime Minster al-Maliki should denounce Hizballah. What about the cost of war to the Iraqis? Or Did the Iraqis ask for this?

"It is time for a new Middle East. It is time to say to those that don't want a different kind of Middle East that we will prevail. They will not." (Baltimore Sun)
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice after meetings with Prime Minster Olmert of Israel and President Abbas of the Palestinian Authority. And who ordered this new Middle East?

More from Maureen Dowd's column "The Immutable President" about the Iraq situation.
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If you turn on TV, you see missiles flying, bodies lying, nuclear missiles unleashed and a slaughterhouse in Iraq. But don’t despair, because yesterday President Bush announced the establishment of “a joint committee to achieve Iraqi self-reliance.” He called it a “new partnership,” as if it were some small business.

Isn’t it a little late, in July 2006, to be launching a new partnership for such an old mess? Isn’t it a little late to realize that Baghdad, a city where 300 garbage collectors have been killed in the last six months, according to press reports, has spun out of control?

In a press conference at the White House with his rogue puppet, the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, Mr. Bush explained that “our strategy is to remain on the offense, including in Baghdad.” Then why, after three and a half years, does our offense look so much like a defense?
The president sounded like a Jon Stewart imitation of himself when he assured reporters that Mr. Maliki had “a comprehensive plan” to pacify Iraq. “That’s what leaders do,” W. lectured, in a familiar refrain. “They see problems, they address problems, and they lay out a plan to solve the problems.”

From today's NYT, here are three editorials about Arabs, Moslems and America.

First: Nicholas Kristof "In Lebanon, Echoes of Iraq?"

The U.S. position on the fighting in the Middle East is essentially: “Stop the killing. But not yet.”

Washington is resisting an immediate cease-fire so as to give Israeli forces more of a chance to destroy Hezbollah. But more time isn’t likely to accomplish much militarily, while every day of grisly photos on Arab television strengthens hard-liners — and Iranian and Shiite influence — throughout the region.

The Israeli offensive and the American support for it seem to reflect the same misguided thinking that led to our Iraq war. It’s a utopian notion that every outrage must have a solution, and that armed intervention is a useful way to reshuffle the Arab political stage.
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For now Israel’s Lebanon adventure is playing out a bit like America’s Iraq adventure. It is bolstering hard-liners (like Bashar al-Assad of Syria) and undermining moderates (like King Abdullah of Jordan), while handing propaganda victories to Iran and Shiite militants.

Second: Peter W. Galraith "Our Corner in Iraq"

WHAT is the mission of the United States military in Iraq now that the insurgency has escalated into a full-blown civil war? According to the Bush administration, it is to support a national unity government that includes all Iraq’s major communities: the Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds. O.K., but this raises another question: What does the Iraqi government govern?
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While the Bush administration professes a commitment to Iraq’s unity, it has no intention of undertaking the major effort required to put the country together again. During the formal occupation of Iraq in 2003 and 2004, the American-led coalition allowed Shiite militias to mushroom and clerics to impose Islamic rule in the south, in some places with a severity reminiscent of Afghanistan’s Taliban.
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The administration, then, must match its goals in Iraq to the resources it is prepared to deploy. Since it cannot unify Iraq or stop the civil war, it should work with the regions that have emerged. Where no purpose is served by a continuing military presence — in the Shiite south and in Baghdad — America and its allies should withdraw.

As an alternative to using Shiite and American troops to fight the insurgency in Iraq’s Sunni center, the administration should encourage the formation of several provinces into a Sunni Arab region with its own army, as allowed by Iraq’s Constitution. Then the Pentagon should pull its troops from this Sunni territory and allow the new leaders to establish their authority without being seen as collaborators.
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This would be best accomplished by placing a small “over the horizon” force in Kurdistan. Iraqi Kurdistan is among the most pro-American societies in the world and its government would welcome our military presence, not the least because it would help protect Kurds from Arab Iraqis who resent their close cooperation with the United States during the 2003 war. American soldiers on the ground might also ease the escalating tension between the Iraqi Kurds and Turkey, which is threatening to send its troops across the border in search of Turkish Kurd terrorists using Iraq as a haven.

From Kurdistan, the American military could readily move back into any Sunni Arab area where Al Qaeda or its allies established a presence. The Kurdish peshmerga, Iraq’s only reliable indigenous military force, would gladly assist their American allies with intelligence and in combat. And by shifting troops to what is still nominally Iraqi territory, the Bush administration would be able to claim it had not “cut and run” and would also avoid the political complications — in United States and in Iraq — that would arise if it were to withdraw totally and then have to send American troops back into Iraq.

Yes, a United States withdrawal from the Shiite and Sunni Arab regions of Iraq would leave behind sectarian conflict and militia rule. But staying with the current force and mission will produce the same result. Continuing a military strategy where the ends far exceed the means is a formula for war without end.


Third: John Tierney "Another Man's Honor"

The result was a new honor system in the West, chivalry, that was an uneasy combination of Christian virtues and knightly violence. Eventually, with the decline of the aristocracy and the rise of the bourgeois and democracy, the system evolved into what Bowman calls honor-by-merit, epitomized by the Victorian ideal of the gentleman who earns his reputation by working hard, playing fair, defending the weak and fighting for his country.

The problem today, as Bowman sees it, is that the whole concept of defending one’s honor has been devalued in the West — mocked as an archaic bit of male vanity or childish macho chest-thumping. But if you don’t create a civilized honor culture, you risk ending up with the primitive variety.

“The honor system in Arab culture is the default honor system, the one you see in street gangs in America — you dis me, I shoot you,” says Bowman, a scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. “We need a better system that makes it honorable to be protective of those who are weaker instead of lording it over them.”

When you’re confronted with an honor culture like the one in the Middle East, there are two rules to keep in mind. One is that you are not going to placate the enemy with the kind of concessions that appeal to Western diplomats. “Hezbollah is fighting for honor, to humiliate the enemy, not for any particular objective,” Bowman says. “Israel has no choice in what it’s doing. Nothing short of victory by either side will change anything.”

The other rule is that you’re not going to quickly transform an honor culture. The Iraq war was predicated on the assumption that democracy would turn Iraqis into loyal citizens with new civic virtues. But for now the old loyalties to tribes and sects still matter more than any universal concept of justice. The men would rather have honor than peace.

أعلانات أيام زمان

اعلانات من صحف ومجلات مصريه من الخمسينات - أرسلها صديق من جدة م س ق

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At the Movies

Clerks II: Brian Christopher O'Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Rosario Dawson, Jason Mewes & Kevin Smith (Kevin Smith)

Lady in the Water: Paul Giamatti, Bryce Dallas Howard, Freddy Rodriguez, Jeffery Wright & Bob Balaban (M. Night Shyamalan)

Monster House: Steve Buscemi, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jon Heder, Kevin James & Jason Lee (Gil Kenan)

My Super Ex-Girlfriend: Luke Wilson, Uma Thurman, Anna Faris, Eddie Izzard & Wanda Sykes (Ivan Reitman)

Who Killed the Electric Car?: Martin Sheen, Dave Barthmuss, Jim Boyd II, Alec N. Brooks & Allan Cocconi (Chris Paine)

From Maureen Dowd's column today titled "Condi's Flying Dutchman "
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The more W. and his tough, by-any-means-necessary superbabe have tried to tame the Middle East, the more inflamed the Middle East has become. Now the secretary of state is leaving, reluctantly and belatedly, to do some shuttle diplomacy that entails little diplomacy and no shuttling. It’s more like air-guitar diplomacy.

Condi doesn’t want to talk to Hezbollah or its sponsors, Syria and Iran — “Syria knows what it needs to do,’’ she says with asperity — and she doesn’t want a cease-fire. She wants “a sustainable cease-fire,’’ which means she wants to give the Israelis more time to decimate Hezbollah bunkers with the precision-guided bombs that the Bush administration is racing to deliver.

“I could have gotten on a plane and rushed over and started shuttling, and it wouldn’t have been clear what I was shuttling to do,” she said.

Keep more civilians from being killed? Or at least keep America from being even more despised in the Middle East and around the globe?

Like Davy Jones, the octopus-headed creature who had to keep sailing Flying Dutchman-like without getting to land in the new “Pirates of the Caribbean,’’ Condi had a hard time finding an Arab port in which to dock.

The Arab street, declared prematurely dead by the neocons after the Iraq invasion, is so incensed over scenes of mass graves, homeless children and Israeli ground incursions into Lebanon that Egypt spurned Ms. Rice’s bid to meet next week in Cairo. (Her only consolation is that at least the autocratic Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, is listening to the Arab street as she has been harping on him to do for more than a year.)

The Arab allies, who agreed to meet her and European envoys in Rome, clearly did not want to be used as a stalling tactic on Arab turf, with Condi miming diplomacy to buy time for Israel. Maybe, like Jack Sparrow, they can at least bring a jar of Arab turf with them.
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W. continues to present simplicity as clarity. When will he ever learn that clarity is the last thing you’re going to find in the Middle East, and that trying to superimpose it with force usually makes things worse? That’s what both the Israelis and Ronald Reagan learned in the early 1980’s when they tried disastrously to remake Lebanon.

The cowboy president bet the ranch on Iraq, and that war has made almost any other American action in the Arab world, and any Pax Americana that might have been created there, impossible. It’s fitting that Condi is the Flying Dutchman, since Lebanon represents the shipwreck of our Middle East policy.

Book printing on-demand (NYT)

Maureen Dowd's Column in today's NYT is titled "Animal House Summit". The subject is President Bush's remarks made in an open-microphone at the G-8 Summit in Russia last week. The President was heard saying "shit" (in connection with what Syria needs to do to stop Hezbollah's rocket attacks on Israel) while chewing his food.

Dowd's last paragraphs are below.

After doing his best to undermine the U.N. and Kofi Annan, W. talked about the secretary general like a fraternity pledge he wanted to send out for more beer or a keg of Diet Coke: "I felt like telling Kofi to get on the phone with Assad and make something happen."

His loosey-goosey confidence that everything could be fixed with a phone call - and not even a phone call made by him, and not even a phone call made to the Iranians, who have more control over Hezbollah - was striking. He seems to have no clue that his own headlong, heedless actions in the Middle East have contributed to the deepening chaos there, and to Iran's growing influence and America's diminished leverage.

Mr. Bush may resent the sophistication required of a president. But when the world is going to hell, he should stop chewing and start thinking.

حين فقدنا العدل - للراحل كمال عمار - رحمه الله

السيد يجلس فى غرفتة العلوية
فى الكرسى الأبنوسى الارجل
يبدو مهمموماً
والصمت ينام على شرفات القصر الذهبية
دق الباب ضيوف ...رفعوا الاصوات
لم يفتح لهم السيد فانصرافوا
وما علمو أن السيد مات
ولو كان لهم آذان سمعوا
صوت الريح وهى
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تعزينا
فنحن فقدنا العدل
وأنطلقت كل أغانينا
متداخلة الأنغام ...فحينا
نبكى فى بدوات الضحك...وحينا
نضحك والدمع سيوف بمأقينا
فيا بارىء الكون ويا باريهم وبارينا
الارض الرملية ذابت فى أيدينا
واليل نهار
والبومه غطت عينها بالأزهار
والطفل المولود أشاح الوجه
عن الانظار
فماذا يبقينا ؟؟
والله شهيد فيما نفعله هذا اليوم
إن كنا نفعل مايرضيهم أو ما يرضيه أو ما يرضينا
ففى كل صباح نبداء رحلتنا فى التيه
فالبعض يباع بسوق النخاسين
والبعض يبيع بلا تموية
والبعض الاخر لا يعنية
من باع ومن بيع بوادينا
فماذا يمكن أن يحدث أكثر من ذلك؟
إلاأن تثمر أشجار الدوم
ساعتها يرتد الملك الى المالك
وتمتد المائدبة الكبرى........بعد عناء الصوم .. بعد عناء الصوم

The Crackdown in Cairo. President Bush stands by while the democratic movement he helped to inspire is crushed. (WP)

WITH THE TACIT consent of the Bush administration, authoritarian Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is continuing his campaign against the democratic movement that sprouted in his country last year. His latest target is the fledgling independent press, which in recent months has dared to publish stories about rampant official corruption, criticize Mr. Mubarak's promotion of his son's political career and promote the liberal democratic reforms that President Bush once advocated for Egypt. Last week Mr. Mubarak's ruling party reaffirmed a law that makes it a crime, punishable by imprisonment, to "affront the president of the republic" -- or insult parliament, public agencies, the armed forces, the judiciary or "the general public interest."
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The crackdown on the press was predictable, because it followed Mr. Mubarak's assault on opposition political parties and on a judges' reform movement -- the two other key elements of Cairo's promising Spring of 2005. In May the secular liberal candidate who ran against Mr. Mubarak for president, Ayman Nour, lost his final appeal against a five-year sentence on trumped-up charges. Hundreds of members of the Muslim Brotherhood, which won 20 percent of parliamentary seats in last year's elections, were arrested that month. In June the president forced through a new law on the judiciary that squashed the judges' demands for independence. That followed the prosecution of several leading jurists who had dared to denounce fraud in the elections.
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The only hopeful news is that Egypt's new democratic forces are bravely resisting Mr. Mubarak's crackdown. More than two dozen newspapers suspended publication for a week this month to protest the press law; the judges are threatening their own strike. Opposition bloggers continue to work, despite the regime's assaults on them; anyone who doubts the reports of brutality can view videos, posted on the Internet, of police beating female protesters. On Sunday a prominent former member of Mr. Mubarak's party, Osama Ghazali Harb, announced the formation of a new liberal democratic political party, with the goal of fighting for the reforms that Mr. Mubarak once promised.

Those promises were made at a time when Mr. Bush was publicly pressing Egypt to "lead the way" in Arab democratization. Now, in Cairo and around the Middle East, the common view is that Mr. Bush has abandoned that policy. Each step of Mr. Mubarak's crackdown prompts a tepid demur from the State Department -- which last week meekly asked Egyptian officials "to take a look at any law that they might be considering . . . in the context of the importance of freedom of the press." High-level Egyptian-U.S. contacts have been stepped up and the administration has strongly urged Congress not to subtract a single dollar from Egypt's $2 billion in annual aid.

Egypt's democrats feel betrayed by the United States -- and rightly so. In its opening manifesto, Mr. Harb's new Democratic Front denounced the "hypocrisy of those who preach the right way but stray away from it with their actions." The words apply to George W. Bush as well as to Hosni Mubarak.

U.S. Comptroller General David M. Walker told Congress last week that "massive corruption" and "a lot of theft going on" in Iraq's government-controlled oil industry is hampering the country's ability to govern itself.

"It took me about, you know, a second and a half to realize that, obviously, there was massive corruption going on, because the numbers just didn't add up," Walker said, referring to a trip he took to Iraq this year in which he was shown figures on oil production and revenue.
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The report concludes that neither the Defense Department nor Congress "can reliably determine the costs of the war, nor do they have details on how appropriated funds are being spent or historical data useful in considering future funding needs." He said it costs about $1.5 billion a week for U.S. military operations, reconstruction and support for Iraqi forces. (WP)

Hewlett-Packard unveils a radio chip for data storage (NYT)

حسن باشا كل سنه وانت طيب

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Georgia and Verdana, these are fonts for the Web (IHT)

كل سنه وانتم طيبين

See my Tabblo>

At the Movies

Fight Club: Ed Norton, Brad Pitt, Helena Bonham Carter & Meatloaf (David Fincher)

Leonard Cohen - I'm Your Man: Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave, Rufus Wainwright, Beth Orton & U2 (Lian Lunson)

A Scanner Darkly: Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson & Winona Ryder (Richard Linklater)

You, Me & Dupree: Owen Wilson, Kate Hudson, Matt Dillon & Michael Douglas (Joe Russo and Anthony Russo)

Wacky News

Calling 911 (Emergency Service) for a date (CNN)

The President and the pig (Yahoo News)

What does money laundering mean? Some people take it literary (NYT)

How does the internet work? (Daily Show)

The story of Steven D. Green, the former Army private accused of raping an Iraqi girl and killing her and her family (NYT). Or how misfits get drafted in the US armed forces.

Heard this morning on NPR's "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" about Stewart (aka Stuart) Baker, a White House staffer. His annual salary is $106,641, and his job title "Director of Lessons Learned"

Think Progress lists him, as one of the "Four Most Overpaid White House Staffers"

المجد لكم - للراحل كمال عمار - رحمه الله

هاتوا أوراق ضمائركم
أوشك أن أملى أخر كلماتى
حتى لا يخجل الجيل الاتى
حتى لا يفجؤنا الضحك الساخر
برمينا كتراب القبر المتساقط ...فى عين الموتى
هاتو أوراق ضمائركم
كى نبرىء ساحتنا فى وجه قضاة لا نعرف من هم
لانعرف كيف يضاهون الحق من الباطل
هاتو أوراق ضمائركم
هاتو
ماهذا؟
هل شح الورق الى هذا الحد ؟

الى المحمدان - محمد علآء ومحمد عادل

كل سنه وأنتم بخير وعافيه وشقاوه أولاد

Rory Stewart, a former British Foreign Service Officer and an Op-Ed Contributor in Today's NYT, writes about Afghanistan and Iran politics. Excerpts follow.

GREAT many of the failures in Afghanistan and Iraq arise from a single problem: the American-led coalitions’ lack of trust in local politicians. Repeatedly the Western powers, irritated by a lack of progress, have overruled local leaders, rejected compromises and tried to force through their own strategies. But the Westerners’ capacity is limited: they have little understanding of Afghan or Iraqi politics and rely too heavily on troops and money to solve what are fundamentally political and religious problems.
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While failing to destroy their enemies, the coalitions also weaken their best allies. Senior coalition officials whisper to journalists that President Karzai is indecisive; they complain about local corruption, violence and inefficiency. Yet Mr. Karzai and Mr. Maliki in Iraq have a much better understanding of their countries than the foreign advisers.

IF the two presidents believe that the Taliban and the Iraqi insurgents cannot be removed but have to be accommodated, the coalition should respect their superior political knowledge and instincts. America and its partners have neither the will nor the intention of becoming colonial powers. And they justified the invasions at least partly in terms of democracy. They must, therefore, allow elected leaders to follow their instincts, almost regardless of their ability, ideology or methods.

This will be uncomfortable: Afghanistan and Iraq are likely to remain, by our standards, corrupt and weak. But only their own legitimate leaders can create more humane, democratic and prosperous states. And they can succeed only if we respect local politicians, allow them to deal with our enemies, and drop our utopian dreams.

Newsweek published an article about post-Mubarak Egypt. The title is "After the Pharaoh" by Christopher Dickey. Excerpts follow and a link to the whole story is here.

During his recent weeks in prison, one of Egypt's best-known bloggers, Alaa Abdel Fateh, had a terrible fantasy. What would happen to him if Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, 78, the man he loves to hate, passed away while Abdel Fateh was in the slammer? "I'm sure millions are actively praying for his sudden death," he wrote in one of several postings that were smuggled out. "Normally I'd be happy. But now that I'm in jail it's a scary thought."
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Searching for a road map to the post-Hosni Mubarak future, intellectuals and businessmen in Cairo are talking about models that might guide Egypt's course. As they mull over the China model, the Turkey model, the Algeria model, the Mexico model and so on, they sometimes sound like blind men trying to describe an elephant, each touching some separate part and coming up with a wildly different picture of the beast as a whole. Yet, from each description one learns something significant about the elephant—about Egypt and about the whole notion of democratic experiments in the Middle East.
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Ultimately, of course, Egypt is Egypt, where the model of the pharaohs' dynastic rule goes back 5,000 years. The machine is getting ready to put Gamal in power if Hosni can ever be persuaded to give up his throne. Yet Gamal, like most young pharaohs, has been guarded by the palace priests for so long that he may have very little idea how the Egyptian people live or act or think. His entourage is a nomenklatura of consumerism, comfortable in and with the West, but deeply unpopular on the street. His National Democratic Party (NDP) is a tired machine bereft of ideas that bases its power on thuggish coercion and shameless patronage. A party ought to have structured cadres, training, discipline, loyalty and a good feel for the grass roots, says American researcher Joshua Stacher: "The NDP is as legal as it gets, and the Muslim Brotherhood is about as illegal as it gets, but the NDP has none of these things and the Muslim Brothers have all these things."

While Gamal Mubarak continues to cultivate his image in the West as a business-friendly leader, the opposition forces are discovering and cultivating each other—in prison. Soon after the long-haired, leftist Alaa Abdel Fateh was released on June 22 he told NEWSWEEK that he'd developed a great rapport with his fellow inmates, the Muslim Brothers. "It was a really incredible thing for me—the solidarity we experienced," he said. "We were all arrested together supporting the same cause." No longer willing—or able—to depend on Hosni Mubarak's irrepressible passion to endure, Egyptians are, by design and default, shaping their own model for the future. Whatever that may turn out to be.

Rubber sidewalk go where concrete fears to tread (CS Monitor)

أبا الهول بحائل - السعوديه

The Sphinx of Hail, Saudi Arabia and the real deal in Giza

William McCant of Combating Terrorism Center at West Point has translated Abu Bakr Naji's Book "Management of Savagery" (Idarat al-Tawahush) (NPR)

أنهار الملح - للراحل كمال عمار - رحمه الله

لاتقولى أى شىء
ربما أجدى السكوت
ولنجرب لحظة الصمت ففيها... ألف معنى لا يموت
نحن قلنا
والذى قلناه فى الصبح . أتانا فى المساء
حثة باردة دون غطاء
يا إلهى
من سقى الألفاظ سما..
وأحال البلبل الغريد تمثالاً أصما
الرياء
أم عيون الاصدقاء
أم تراة حظنا يضحك مما ..قد بنينا فى الهواء !
لا تقولى أى شىء
نحن غنينا بما فيه الكفاية
قلت عنك الصبح والأطيار.. والزهر والمواشى
قلت عنى نجمك الطالع فى ليل الحيارى
وعلى غير أنتظار
دون أن تطرق عين الليل أو يعشى النهار
كان فى أنحاء روحى يتمشى
الذى لا أعرف اسمه
سد بالملح عيونى
وبنى للهم عشا
لا تقولى أى شىء
وعلينا الآن أن نحمل نعش الكلمات
فالذى قلناه عندالصبح مات! مات

I read an article today on Middle East On-Line dealing with the revival of al-Zar in Egypt. This brought back suppressed memories from the late forties in al-Zagazig. Our landlady (Umm Bakr, May Allah Bless her Soul) would hold periodic Zars.

What I recall are frightening moments of the ritual (at least in my mind) of exorcising evil spirits and the cloak and dagger routine the elder members of the family will go through, when there was a Zar. I am sure my late mother (Mayy Allah Bless her Soul) went down to Umm Bakr's flat to attend the rituals, but I am not sure if other members of the family did join her.

What would have happened if the Palestinians had not fired Qassams? Would Israel have lifted the economic siege that it imposed on Gaza? Would it open the border to Palestinian laborers? Free prisoners? Meet with the elected leadership and conduct negotiations? Encourage investment in Gaza? Nonsense. If the Gazans were sitting quietly, as Israel expects them to do, their case would disappear from the agenda - here and around the world. Israel would continue with the convergence, which is solely meant to serve its goals, ignoring their needs. Nobody would have given any thought to the fate of the people of Gaza if they did not behave violently. That is a very bitter truth, but the first 20 years of the occupation passed quietly and we did not lift a finger to end it.

Instead, under cover of the quiet, we built the enormous, criminal settlement enterprise. With our own hands, we are now once again pushing the Palestinians into using the petty arms they have; and in response, we employ nearly the entire enormous arsenal at our disposal, and continue to complain that "they started."

We started. We started with the occupation, and we are duty-bound to end it, a real and complete ending. We started with the violence. There is no violence worse than the violence of the occupier, using force on an entire nation, so the question about who fired first is therefore an evasion meant to distort the picture. After Oslo, too, there were those who claimed that "we left the territories," in a similar mixture of blindness and lies.

Gaza is in serious trouble, ruled by death, horror and daily difficulties, far from the eyes and hearts of Israelis. We are only shown the Qassams. We only see the Qassams. The West Bank is still under the boot of occupation, the settlements are flourishing, and every limply extended hand for an agreement, including that of Ismail Haniyeh, is immediately rejected. And after all this, if someone still has second thoughts, the winning answer is promptly delivered: "They started." They started and justice is on our side, while the fact is that they did not start and justice is not with us.

Source: Who started? by Gideon Levy in Haaretz

The Heart of the Game: Darnellia Russell, Bill Resler & Devon Crosby Helms (Ward Serrill)

Pirates of the Caribbean – Dead Man's Chest: Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Stellan Skarsgard & Bill Nighy (Gore Verbinski)

Wassup Rockers: Jonathan Velasquez, Francisco Pedrasa, Milton Velasquez & Usvaldo Panameno (Larry Clark)

أسئله فارغه - للراحل كمال عمار - رحمه الله

ماذا لو أكل النمل الهرم الأكبر؟
- نبنى غيرة
فكما تعلم لا يمكن أن نحيا دون الأهرام
· والأحجار؟
أهرام القرن الواحد والعشرين ..تبنى من طين
*ولأمطار؟
أية أمطار يا مسكين
فمن عهد الطوفان الأعظم . كف المطر عن الادرار
فتساوى القش مع الصرح المحكم

وعلى كل ...ماجدوى الاسئلة... البينة البهتان
سيظل الهرم الاكبر ينهض فى وجة الريح
فأنطح رأسك فى الجدران
أتشب أظفارك فى حلقك
حتى لا تسمع صوت النمل يصيـــــــــح

Aryan Nations graffiti appears in Baghdad. It seems that large number of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists have infiltrated the US military (NYT)

Mixing Arabic plural endings to English words could cost you your freedom. Or, that is what an Algerian man (identified in the NYT as Laid Said, I suppose this is al-3Ai'd) said what happened to him. He was taken from Tanzania, to Malawi and on to Afghanistan. Sixteen months later, he was sent to Algeria and freed without ever being charged.

Said claims, it all has to do with a phone conversation with his wife's family in Kenya about airplanes. Here is how it went according to the NYT article:

In prison, Mr. Saidi said, he was interrogated daily, sometimes twice a day, for weeks. Eventually, he said, his interrogators produced an audiotape of the conversation in which he had allegedly talked about planes.

But Mr. Saidi said he was talking about tires, not planes, that his brother-in-law planned to sell from Kenya to Tanzania. He said he was mixing English and Arabic and used the word "tirat," making "tire" plural by adding an Arabic "at" sound. Whoever was monitoring the conversation apparently understood the word as "tayarat," Arabic for planes, Mr. Saidi said.

"When I heard it, I asked the Moroccan translator if he understood what we were saying in the recording," Mr. Saidi said. After the Moroccan explained it to the interrogators, Mr. Saidi said, he was never asked about it again.

What do you get when you add a cocaine bust at Dubai airport, a music Producer (Dallas Austin), a powerful US Senator (Orrin Hatch) and the Emir of Dubai? You get a pardon ... off course (NYT)

Bizarre Stories from Egypt

The renegade bishop and his new church (BBC)

It takes a president to pass an exam (BBC)

The film and the would be censors (BBC)

Zarqawi's heir in Iraq has been jailed in Egypt for the past six years (BBC)

Taking digital pictures further. An expose of websites devoted doing just that. OurStory, Tabblo, Pickle, Snapjot and Riya.

For details go to the WP article by Leslie Walker titled "A Clearer Picture of You"

Taking digital pictures further. An expose of websites devoted doing just that. OurStory, Tabblo, Pickle, Snapjot and Riya.

For details go to the WP article by Leslie Walker titled "A Clearer Picture of You"

"I am hard-pressed to think of any other moment in modern times where there have been so many challenges facing this country simultaneously," said Richard N. Haass, a former senior Bush administration official who heads the Council on Foreign Relations. "The danger is that Mr. Bush will hand over a White House to a successor that will face a far messier world, with far fewer resources left to cope with it."

From Michael Abramowitz & Robin Wright WP article titles "A Driven President Faces a World of Crises.

The Bush administration has tried to ignore North Korea, then, reluctantly, to engage it, and then to squeeze its bankers in a manner intended to make the country's leader, Kim Jong Il, personally feel the pinch.

Yet none of these steps in the past six years has worked. So now, after a barrage of missile launchings by North Korea, President Bush and his national security advisers found themselves on Wednesday facing what one close aide described as an array of "familiar bad choices."

From NYT article by David Sanger "Few Good Choices in North Korea Standoff"

Click: Adam Sandler, Kate Beckinsale, Christopher Walken & David Hasselhoff (Frank Coraci)

The Devil Wears Prada: Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci, Emily Blunt & Adrian Grenier (David Frankel)

Lady Vengeance (Chinjeolhan geumjassi) : Lee Yeong-ae, Yeong-ae Lee, Choi Mink-Sik & Mink-sik Choi (Parker Chan-wook)

The Lost City: Steven Bauer, Andy Garcia, Richard Bradford & Nestor Carbonell (Andy Garcia)

Superman Returns: Brandon Routh, Kate Bosworth, James Marsden, Kevin Spacey & Parker Posey (Bryan Singer)

Wordplay: Will Shortz (PatrickCreadon)

The Engines of Our Ingenuity is a radio program from the Public Radio Station at the University of Houston (KUHF). The program tells the story of how our culture is formed by human creativity. Written and hosted by John Lienhard.

Here is a bright face of America, Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, the Navy lawyer who beat the president of the United States in a pivotal Supreme Court battle over trying alleged terrorists, in the Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld case. (Seattle Post Intelligencer)

بسم الله ماشاء الله

The new Thelma & Louise

 

Umm Qasr's ambiguous image was cemented early in the conflict when Britain's defense secretary, Geoff Hoon, likened the city to the relatively upscale British port town of Southampton. To which an unidentified British soldier replied, "There's no beer, no prostitutes and people are shooting at us. It's more like Portsmouth." (NYT)

A new mission for the British Museum (NYT)