Birthday in Palestine

Here is how you celebrate your birthday around here:

You go watch a football game with friends in a seedy cafe,
where the team you're cheering for wins the Cup,
then you interview for the national television of the country that won - in spanish, por favor,
then you hit the dancefloor in a techno party in the woods,
flirt with a cute Italian NGO worker,
get your friends, and some random people, to buy you drinks,

Then you go home - because your birthday is actually the next day and you're just getting started!

Here's to many years of random events and a series of some good, and many bad decisions which have somehow compiled to get me to where I am right here, at this very moment.

And it couldn't have turned out any better.

And many thanks to my friends for their many "Happy Birthday" emails and messages!

Dumbass sells "his life" on E-Bay

Have you ever wanted to leave everything behind, your house, your job, even your clothes and your friends, and go away with nothing but your passport and a pile of money?

Well, that’s what this man is attempting to do.

By “selling his life on E-Bay” - to be more precise, selling all his belongings, Ian Usher, an Englishman in Australia, wishes to let go of his past life, laden with memories of his ex-wife, and move on.

He’ll even introduce you to his friends and offer you his (incredibly boring) job. Yipee, I say..

He is advertising “a house and all its contents, a car, a motorbike, a jetski, kitesurfing gear, a great lifestyle, a group of friends, even a job! Absolutely everything I have, I take nothing with me”.

Now you can justly think that it’s either a romantically naïve idea; or that it’s completely immature.

You can also smirk that - if this guy believes his life sucks, why would anyone want it?

The most interesting about it though is that selling his belonging = selling his “Life”. I find it sad that he believes that his life is only defined by his belonging - and even more so that an E-Bay auction can deliver him from his miserable existence.

Even more so that this guy’s life is barely worth $200,000, the closing price of the bid. Which means that every year of his life is worth $4545.

I’m almost tempted to buy a year, just for the fun...

Extremist Jewish students fire a rocket at Palestinians

Found that one on Sandmonkey. Laughed my head off.
The homemade rocket, which was fired from the Yitzhar settlement in the West Bank, didn't hit anything, of course...

A little cynical question, though. (sorry, I can't help it!!) Since those kids shot a rocket at Palestinians - does that make them a legitimate target for a "targeted killing"?
Let's hope not...

Reading between the (pipe)lines of the Oil Conference in Jeddah

OPEC States are too cocky to admit that they don't control the prices anymore; the organisation has barely any control on its member states production shares AND with large producers like Russia and Norway pursuing different policies, OPEC is barely 40% of the market supply.

They're just easier to pressure than other producers.

Which was the purpose of last week's meeting in Jeddah, KSA, which joined the main consumers and the OPEC states for the former to convince the latter to increase production to bring down prices. OPEC states (except for Saudi) held their ground, and said that there wasn't a supply inadequacy; there is an increasing demand and the market is stabilising at a higher (more expensive) equilibrium point.

Everyone also omitted the embarrassing truth that most of the price at the pump that consumers pay goes to their government in taxes.
Britain's gas tax is of 60%. France's is of nearly 70% -- its revenue from the gas tax in 2007 was 17 billion Euros. If they were truly keen on reducing prices, they'd just alleviate the taxes they impose.

The Times' Carl Mortished poke fun at the Conference and particularly at Gordon Brown who went there to tell oil producing countries to invest their surplus in nuclear and renewable energy production in Britain -- saying that it is "tantamount to asking British American Tobacco to invest in nicotine patches."

I can't stop laughing at the metaphor. In the same time -- Brown is anything but stupid and wouldn't make such an outlandish suggestion if he couldn't back it up with some conviction / coercion..

I remembered a scene in Syriana, where the Prince (Alexander Siddig) brags about his education in Oxford and Georgetown (G-town? oh peu-lease... :-P) and tells his smarty-pants consultant, Bryan (Matt Damon) about his grandiose plans for democracy, development, energy efficiency, etc etc etc.

""Bryan: That's great. That's exactly what you should do.

Prince Nasir: Exactly, except your president calls my father and says, "I've got unemployment in Texas, Kansas, Washington State". One phone call later we're stealing out of our social programmes to buy overprices airplanes. We owed the Americans - but we've repaid that debt. I accepted a Chinese bid - the highest bid. And suddenly I'm a terrorist.""

(photos Agence France Presse / screenshot from Syriana from IMDB)

Shalit's family petitions the Supreme Court to keep the blockade on Gaza

Fourth day of the truce in Gaza, 'meager' increases in the humanitarian aid that Israel will let in the Strip. I hope things will improve over time.

But some people are trying actively not to alleviate the suffering of the Gazans, purposefully keeping them in the near-starvation state they've been in for more than a year now. These include hardcore extremists and politicians attempting to embarrass Olmert - and the Shalit family.

Times Online reports that "Members of the Schalit family petitioned Israel's supreme court yesterday to block the truce deal, arguing that border crossings should stay closed as long as their son was held."

Wow.
I do understand that a bereaved family isn't expected to be magnanimous and I empathise with them, I really do.

In the same time, with 600 Palestinians killed in Gaza in the past year only, partly in retaliation for the soldier's kidnapping, one would think that their blood thirst would be quenched. Not quite, apparently.

Obama's speech to AIPAC, 4 June 2008

Very late post but I just watched the speech in its entirety (here) so it’s still worth it. (Plus James asked for it!)

We can listen to, and analyse his speech in two ways.

Either in the absolute value of its content, breaking it down and assuming he’s a big boy and knows what he’s saying and where that positions him.

OR - as a typical AIPAC speech, which means that we acknowledge that he’s kissing the buttocks of the Israel lobby and that he’d be draped in an Israeli flag if he had one handy (he did wear one on his lapel pin, though, alongside an American flag).

We have to do both, because, while we can excuse him for temporary madness - it is AIPAC after all, so he has to go a little nuts at the thought of the cash taps (or lack thereof); but he’s still a big boy and must be held to his words.

I’ll still cut him some slack, though.

Of course, he said everything he had to say: that he feels for the Israelis fearful for their lives, that he will do anything for Israel’s right to defend itself, that he will defend Israel against “all threats, from Gaza to Tehran”, etc.
Of course he absolved Israel of every responsibility in the past, present and future, in this world and all parallel ones.

Abbas is blah, Hamas totally sucks. Iran, long discussed, is the worst thing in the world since Britney Spears’ second album.
“Israel’s security” was mentioned nearly twice per minute and is probably more important than, hmm, keeping Britney away from the stage.

And he asked Arab countries to normalize with Israel. Ooooof course.

In short, Obama will bend over whenever Israel asks him to.

Actually - that's fine. And expected.

(Picture from armed with knowledge)

HOWEVER.

There was a lot of crap being said, and far-reaching crap moreover that we can’t let fly.

He believes that the 2006 Palestinian elections - which he opposed (audience clapping, clapping) led to a “Gaza controlled by Hamas with rockets raining down on Israel”.
Wow. That’s quite a shortcut. It’s like blaming Gutenberg for Danielle Steel’s novels...

He will stand by Palestinians “committed to crack down on terror and carry the burden of peacemaking”.
Juxtapose that with Edward Said’s timeless reminder that “Since when does a militarily occupied people have the responsibility for a peace movement?” and you’ll know that Obama doesn’t read Said. Or, you know, History.

He did mention that Israel should - well, might want to - ease restrictions on the Palestinians and refrain from building new settlements (though expanding existing ones is okay? And new outposts, still okay?), “as agreed to do with the Bush administration” - so he doesn’t want to bear the stigma of having made Israel do something it doesn’t like, even if it means crediting Bush for it? Ridiculous.

“Petrodollars pay for weapons that kill American troops and Israeli citizens.”
WHAT?

And “Israeli action was entirely justifiable to end (the Syrian nuclear) threat”. Huh? Coming from someone who knows that the info about this very event (Israeli bombing a military (non-nuclear) building INSIDE Syria) is scarce and unconfirmed, a lawyer like him should know better.

As for the “Jerusalem must remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided” which earned him whistling and hurrays, all I can say is...

TOO MUCH TOO EARLY, BARRY BOY. I blame that on inexperience - and a stupid speechwriting crew.

Going against reason, justice, and International Law shouldn’t be used to get a few pats on the back at the AIPAC conference. That’s the kind go stuff you leave for real election time. Obama fired the fireworks six months before New Year’s Eve.

The problem is that now he’s forced to backtrack and explain why he said those obscenities. “Flip-flopping” was heard a lot in the days following the speech... and that will surely damage his campaign. (here's an example -- an aide explained the 'Undivided' comment by... "Obama meant that "the holy city won't be divided by barbed wire". Pffffwhahahahahaha).

I never had any illusions about Obama being anywhere near balanced when it came to the Middle East. He is, after all, American.

There is nevertheless a limit to how low a politician can stoop - or so I thought.

Oh, and he blamed Egypt for weapons entering Gaza. Asshole.

Give me my 25 dollars back, you son of a bitch.

Angelina and the Geek

I noticed this tattoo on Angelina Jolie -- and I couldn't help but try to figure it out on a map. I know, I am a geek.


In any event, I checked out a map online and it turns out to be the geographical coordinates for:
Phnom Penh; Addis Abeba; the coast of Namibia (near a town called Swakopmund?); and Ho Chi Minh City.
I'm presuming it has to do with her adoptive kids or something?

(I know, totally pointless post. Don't overthink it :).

Brussels' last chance to pretend, ehemm, show it cares

The Irish “No” vote to the referendum on the Lisbon treaty proves that, once again, that the European peoples are incapable of deciding for themselves. As a matter of fact, Europe acknowledged that as well a few years ago, when they decided to resubmit the consitutitonal treaty - in its new, improved and watered down version (a.k.a. the Lisbon treaty) - to PARLIAMENTARY vote because, well, the French and Dutch were deemed too immature to decide for themselves because voting NO was obviously the wrong answer.

(I will agree to one part of the argument: the French voted “No to Turkey in the EU” regardless of what was in the treaty... And in Ireland, the vote regarded “No to abortion, No to high taxes, No to a European army” - none of which were, of course, in the Treaty. Dumbasses.)

The ongoing EU summit in Brussels, with a preliminary agenda of cool stuff like food crisis and oil prices, is now bogged down to discuss the Euro 2008 games and ways to circumvent the silly silly Irish rejection.

Funny it would come from Ireland, the only country holding a referendum, and which is barely sobering up from its intoxication on EU structural funds and Common Agricultural Policy money.

As a hardcore institutionalist, I believe that EU treaties are too important to be left to referenda (sorry, you 400 million European citizens - you can’t think for yourselves).

In the same time, this very example is proof that Brussels has to make a decision about how it’s going to run the lives of these 400 million - NOW.

Is it going to pretend that it actually gives a crap about the opinion of the voters, and tweak the treaty - AGAIN - to resubmit it to the Irish?

OR is it going to push through anyway, convincing the Irish to vouch for the agreement in the parliament, y basta?

With the need for a unanimous vote of 27 countries - including the Eastern European peewees who were admitted to the Varsity league, somehow - it’s going to be mad to try to renegotiate anything in this agreement.

I foresee the French presidency, which takes over in less than 2 weeks, will spend a long time discussing voting process and maybe, just maybe, submitting an idea either more relaxed (non-unanimous) voting procedures, or just a ‘Two-speeds Europe’. (again).

And it won’t be pretty. Especially when you have the peewees whining about “we don’t want to be pressured” to quote the Czech minister for European Affairs, or the Lithuanian president using the term ‘bully’ and then quickly changing it to ‘pressure us’...

Occupation 101 - Meet the Israeli army

Eleven P.M., at the infamous ‘Container’ checkpoint on the Bethlehem-Ramallah road.

Two soldiers. The first, early thirties, appears to be over-compensating for many, many things;the second, barely out of puberty, is still struggling with his pimples.

Let’s call them... Grumpy, and Dopey. (Ou Grincheux et Simplet, pour nous autres petits francos!).

Mona at the wheel, me riding in the passenger seat. As we line up behind other cars, waiting for their Highnesses to usher us to approach, we switch the cars’ lights off. Headlights are to Israeli soldiers what a red cape is to a wounded Spanish bull.

Grumpy flashes his white flashlight into my eyes. Says something in Hebrew which I totally miss.

“What?”

He sighs.

“Me eifo atem?” (where are you from?).

None of your mama’s fucking business, is my first impulse. I smile as I think of that answer.

Mona promptly answers before I say anything stupid. “We’re from Ramallah, and we’re travelling back to Ramallah”.

He sighs. Says “Hawiyya” (I.D.). I hand him my passport, open on the visa page - I am foreigner and have a diplomatic ‘service’ visa.

The flashlight is off my eyes for a few seconds, then back to me - then back to the same visa, as if Grumpy was hoping my valid visa would’ve been a mere illusion and that he’d get to play a little longer.

Light back to me - I’m getting used to it by now - then Grumpy decides to flip through my passport (which, with my passport, generally takes a while.)

Grumpy is still grumpy, muffling something in Russian to Dopey.

(hmm, so they’re Russians? And THEY are fucking checking ME? Irony...)

“Me eifo ata?” (where are you from?) asks Dopey, pointing at my passport.

“Egypt”, with a big smile, also pointing at my passport.

The passport open at what must be my entry stamp, Grumpy mumbles to Dopey “something something something Ben Gurion”, of the name of the Tel Aviv airport. Upset I got a permit to travel through Israeli soil, perhaps?

Dopey whispers a question back - still in Russian, pointing behind his back.

Now acquainted with the flashlight, I notice a dozen of Palestinians, standing in the street, as the soldiers keep them waiting indefinitely. Suggesting that I join them, perhaps?

Ok. I’m getting tired. It was fun for the first three minutes, but Israeli soldiers are just so devoid of imagination it gets boring. I get my UN ID out.

“I work for the United Nations. Ani oved ba-OUM”. (‘OUM’ is the acronym for OUmot Meyouchadot, United Nations in Hebrew). Grumpy directs his flashlight to my ID.

Simpleton’s whisper displays a tiny bit of anxiety (I’m guessing their orders are to NOT hassle internationals? You don’t want the world to know think the Israeli army are racist pricks..) and he points behind his back, now down the road.

Grumpy is still, well, grumpy (this nickname suits him so well!) and eventually hands me down my passport. Actually, he THROWS IT in my lap. Hijo de puta.

“Go”.

We take off.

Now here's the thing. I'm shielded from that nonsense when I travel in white cars with large initials inscribed on the hood. And even when I’m in a bus, the soldiers who check my ID are unintelligent but they’re generally more bored than rude.

I cannot imagine having to go through the above experience twice a day, though.
Nor seeing this happen to my father as I am forced to shut up, in fear of receiving the butt of a rifle in the jaw.

You can get used to the presence of a Wall separating you from your field of olives. To the presence of a Jews-only highway on that very field. Perhaps even to losing a child, or the use of both your legs. And so on. We get used to one-off injustices, as awful as they may be: our power to adapt is surprising. (and they are counting on it).

But it’s the repetitive, never-ending never things that you never get used to. And when all hell breaks loose - it’s going to be over them.

Ahmedinejad advertising for an Israeli cable network!

Since today is obviously commercials day on this blog..

HOT network has a new advert, starring no less than the Iranian president...
It’s hilarious - see the article copied below (and a translation) which I copy from Lisa’s "On the Face".



""Israel’s satellite company YES has adopted a new ally in its war on cable rival HOT - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

A new commercial for the company shows Ahmadinejad - who in real life has repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel - addressing the Iranian nation.
“My brothers,” says the mock Iranian president in a speech broadcast through loudspeakers across the country, “the uranium is in our hands and after Monday it will be goodbye to Israel.”

Unexpectedly, the Iranian leader’s supporters - dressed in Shiite religious garb - take exception to the speech, dismayed at the prospect of missing their favorite Israeli television series. “What are you talking about?” asks one of his followers. “It’s the last episode of Danny Hollywood on Monday.”

The declaration of Iranian president’s intent to destroy Israel is met with riots, and the police are deployed to control protests which suddenly take the form of a big budget musical.
The commercial, produced by advertising company McCann Erickson, is entirely a parody of “Cazablan,” a hit Israeli musical of the 1960s."


(I'm hoping Iranian readers will take no offense from this post... I think it's just plain hilarious!)

Coca Cola poking fun at the French football team in an Egyptian ad. (I know, very random..)

A hilarious television ad where - I think - Coca Cola is making fun of the French team - and of Egyptians still stubbornly supporting this team.. (it’s in Arabic though. Translation below because I know Seg. will get a laugh of it.).

On the tune of the Marseillaise:

Although Henry isn’t in his best shape

And Thuram is totally over

Half the team is from northern Africa

And the rest is from Sierra Leone

And Zidane quit a while ago

But we’re still cheering for France

(Voice-over)

France’s supporters are cheering, and so are we

Coca Cola, sponsor of the Egyptian supporters, sponsor of the Euro 2008 tournament

(Thanks to Hannah for the tip!)

The Kito commercials, back after 15 years!!

I was watching television on Thursday evening (yes, I’m THAT lame) and they played this 15-year old advert (at least) for the Kito mosquito repellent...

The funny thing is, I could totally remember the jingle! “Kito da esm el ors.. Banaam!”

Egyptians out there: do you remember this advertisement?

I find remarkable though that the company didn’t find it weird to replay such an old commercial... I’m not sure whether every company would have the guts to do that!

Israel 101 - Iraqi Jews

I met Israeli Jews of Iraqi descent on two separate occasions, by accident.

The first was in the market in West Jerusalem, in a spices store. I heard the vendor, a forty-ish man wearing a kippa, joking in Arabic with the delivery boy. His old shop, smelling like every spice you can think of and a little more, with a black-and-white photo of his father in the back seemed too much like home for me to stand there silent.
I introduced myself, and asked him how long he's worked here.

Abu Najah, he said, was his name. He had worked in the spices shop for 15 years: the shop, however, has stood and the same place for 60.
"My grandfather came from Iraq", he explained, gently passing his fingers over the sacks that make up his counter. "He arrived on May 8th 1948". A week before the declaration of the State.
The shop has been there since, and Abu-Najah works there with an aide he introduced as "Mahmoud".

The other time was on a bus. I had heard this elderly man speaking in Arabic to the driver as he boarded the bus. He sat next to me. And as he asked me something in Hebrew - I replied in Arabic, which he found very surprising, for some reason.
I told him I was from Egypt, he said he was from Iraq.

I wasn't sure whether he was an Arab or a Jew, so I asked him whether he was Palestinian; "No", he quickly answered, then added proudly: "I am Baghdadi!"

He quizzed me about my work - and my salary -and as every old person in Palestine had asked me, he asked me if I were married, said that I should, if not to have children as beautiful as I am (:-) so at least to please my parents. He sighed, as if thinking about his own family, and quickly confirmed it by adding: "I have three kids - two daughters and one son. They don't have children and don't want to hear anything about it. Back in the day, in Baghdad, parents would have a say in everything. Not anymore. Now my kids tell me that it's their life and that I should butt out".

He sighed again.




(for those interested, here's a rather good story on Iraqi Jews. Once nearly 120,000, they are now the staggering statistic of... 7 or 8.
Probably 6 by the time I post this article...)

Israel 101 - Introduction

Just as my time here serves to discover Palestine and life under the Occupation, I am also trying to explore the Israeli society. The "Israel 101" sur-title will identify entries that discuss Israel as a country, a people, a culture, etc.

With emphasis on the etc. because this country can be surprising, fascinating, disappointing - but always interesting.
I will try my best to discuss avoiding the occupation and related matters and try to put my feet in Israeli shoes for a little while. Should be fun. Don't expect grand analysis - rather quick impressions, human stories. Snapshots.

A Saudi minister, speaking to a bunch of Harvard students visiting his country a couple of years ago, told them:

"You know, if something is too good to be true, it probably is. And if something is too bad to be true, well, it also probably is".

He was speaking about the perception of Saudi Arabia in western eyes - but it very much applies to Israel in Arab eyes.
I mean, it can't be that bad across the board, right?

Hate mail and comments, of course, are very welcome. :-D

Farouk Hosni’s bid for UNESCO presidency is threatened by Israel

Seems that Farouk Hosni, Egypt's minister of Culture, said in the Parliament that “he would burn Israeli books himself if he found any in libraries in Egypt” in response to an inquiry.

Pfff. Idiot.

Now the Israelis are all worked out and have been complaining to everyone: the Egyptian embassy in Tel-Aviv, the Government in Cairo, and even - which is pretty damn childish - whining to the Director General of UNESCO, telling him that Hosni doesn't play nice is not worthy of succeeding him.

I find that very, very childish. What he did was totally stupid - classic Farouk.. - but seriously, now a minister has to watch out for his words inside his national parliament as to not upset the Israelis? That’s seriously pathetic.

But in any event I can’t stand Farouk Hosni, so I actually don’t want to see him preside the UNESCO. ;)

The Worst places to be a Woman

The UN Millenium Development Goal # 3 -- "Promote gender equality and empower women" seems to have never reached these places.
Foreign Policy Magazine lists the places in the country where it sucks the most to be born with an XX pair of chromosomes.

The list is regional so the following five country might not even be the worst in the world, just in their respective regions... (meaning, the Congo could be worse than Papua New Guinea but it's not on the list because there is a worse African country).
How crazy is that?


Worst in the Americas: Haiti
Worst in the Middle East: Yemen
Worst in Africa: Sierra Leone
Worst in South Asia: Nepal
Worst in Asia-Pacific: Papua New Guinea
Worst in Europe: Moldova

Polyglot dogs, etc.

Using the infamous 'Google for spell-check' method, I checked for the word Onomatopoeia. (I was missing an O).

I did however get to the eponymous wikipedia page and it's pretty hilarious. So apparently, dogs that go 'ouaf, ouaf' in France would say 'haw, haw' in Arabic but 'wan, wan' in Japanese. Catalan dogs opt for 'bup, bup' for, we know, Catalans are special.
Enjoy.

(okay, I admit it - not my most intellectually challenging blog entry. Kinda makes up for the extra-long previous one, doesn't it? :)

The Rachael Ray keffiyeh story: a ridiculous play in three acts, plenty of scenes and a (cancelled) commercial break

Act 1

Rachael Ray, a cute-and-clueless daytime TV presenter (with a mildly irritating show that would do stuff like inviting Matthew McCounaughey to taste her stew) stars in the Dunkin Donuts ad campaign, wearing a black and white scarf that vaguely looks like a keffiyeh. Very vaguely.

What happens afterwards is sheer ridicule: she is 'outed' (pfff...) by wanking ultra-conservative right-wing bloggers of the type of Michelle Malkin (a 'white America' and 'let's deport foreigners' enthusiast, who despite being half Japanese, wrote a toilet paper-like book praising racial profiling of the Japanese after WW2 - you know the type, the token Asian woman on Fox News? Once described by a fellow Fox News commentator, Geraldo Rivera, to be "the most vile, hateful commentator I have ever seen. She actually believes that neighbours should start snitching on neighbours and that we should deport people") and Little Green Footballs who scolded Ray for 'supporting terrorism' by wearing the keffiyeh, which, in their definition, is the "traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad" (says Malkin).

There's a lot to say about that. First, that the neo-cons are so fresh out of whining material that they're screening TV ads for something to bitch about. Next time they'll be complaining that NBA players have their shirt numbers written in Arab digits and will say it's a plot to convert America to radical Islam..

Second, that someone actually listens to their completely pointless argument. Seriously, these people are so outlandish that we should almost automatically disregard their arguments, and let their blogs become the racist forums where their little Aryan friends can go say something nasty about (Muslims/ Arabs/ Democrats/ Jews/ Immigrants/ Environmentalists/ Obama) and feel like they've achieved something with their day (besides wanking).

Third, is that we're actually debating that...

Oh wait. That's the next act.

Act 2

Dunkin Donuts declares says that the scarf wasn't a keffyieh but "a black-and-white silk scarf with a paisley design" which is probably true (take a good look at the scarf, it's not even checkered); then it freaks out and pulls the campaign offline altogether.

Some people - Americans and foreigners alike - try to educate the obviously ignorant mob, by explaining to people what the heck a keffiyeh is:

"Kaffiyehs are worn every day on the street by Palestinians and other people in the Middle East — by people going to work, going to school, taking care of their families, and just trying to keep warm", says Amal Bishara of Chicago U. "I think that a right-wing blogger making an association between a kaffiyeh and terrorism is just an example of how so much of the complexity of Arab culture has been reduced to a very narrow vision of the Arab world on the part of some people in the U.S."

That wasn't the end of it, though.

First, because rather than focusing on the fact - that the keffiyeh may represent Palestine or Palestinian resistance but the accusation that it has anything to do with terrorism is ludicrous - we let the debate go to the 'did she or did she not know that she was wearing a keffiyeh?' thereby wasting a good opportunity to hold the ultra-conservatives to their lies.

Second, because the media dealt with the issue in a seriously ridiculous way. BBC News shamefully titled "US chain drops 'terror scarf' ad", de-facto endorsing the extremist version of the story. Terror scarf my arse. Idiots.

Act 3...

...is still unfolding.

Sensible people start to feel outraged, both because we've allowed extremists in the type of Malkin to actually have a influential say in the public debate and because we've become we've let the level of the political debate stoop to politically correct wussiness (remember when calling anything 'French' meant that it was bad? Like "I can't vote for John Kerry, he looks French"?).

See, for example, the Foreign Policy blog pointing out both the ridicule of the debate and of its arguments. (idiots read Malkin, sensible people are more found around FP, even sensible neo-cons... there are few out there.)

Intelligent people are driving back the debate to what it's really about: xenophobia and racism.

"People have hidden agendas and they somehow associate the kaffiyeh with Islam and terrorism," said Habeeb Ahmed, president of the Islamic Center of Long Island. "It's not a religious symbol. … How can a piece of cloth be a symbol of a terrorist identity?"

(Me: hmm... if it's a KKK hood, perhaps?)

Katie Halper pokes good fun at Malkin's arguments as well as her taste in clothes - probably the most entertaining article I've read in this whole mess).

MuslimMatters.org predicts a US boycott of rice, "a signature food of terrorists (and communists too)."

And a Facebook campaign asks people to wear a keffiyeh tomorrow - or at least to have their online avatar wear one!

And Jeffrey Goldberg has good some fashion suggestions for Rachael Ray.

Pff. All that for a "black-and-white silk scarf with a paisley design".

Beaten, confiscated, and hungry: the story of an Egyptian village

Just saw this video, an amateur documentary about a village in Egypt - Kafr el Eloww - where the Government confiscated 27 feddans (1 feddan = 4200 sq metres).

One fine morning, most men of the village were summoned to the police station where they were detained - to facilitate the task of expelling the rest of the inhabitants.
People lost their land, their houses were wrecked.

The announced compensation of 10,000 Egyptian pounds (per family, I guess?) - 1700 USD, a mere fraction of the land's worth - was never paid out. Of course.

This land was actually handed out by late president Gamal Abdel Nasser in the fifties, during Egypt's long flirt with socialism. The idea was, at the time, that the concentration of capital in the hands of a few landowners (my family included) was a remnant of colonialist times and was bad for growth. (the first part of the argument may be true but the second is a common mistake. Regardless, I would've voted for that nationalisation policy at the time...)

And now, it's also the government confiscating the land. Galal Amin's argument that we're heading towards a pre-1952 economy and society seems almost prophetic.

And if one thinks pre-1952, we're almost bound to think 'pre-revolution'... are we?)




"في العراء" (found here).




The footage of the destroyed fields of sugarcane reminded me of the bulldozed olive fields in Palestine - only in this case, it's not an occupation. It's the Egyptian government vs. the Egyptian people. Which makes it even more disigusting. It happened there, people.

People were insulted, beaten up. Police officers carried blank arrest orders, and those who objected would be arrested and the officer would pen down their name to give their tyranny a breath of legitimacy..

A7a. This country is going to hell and it's going fast.

Public Service Announcement - Walt and Mearsheimer in town! 12 June, 20:00

Forum Gush Shalom
"Is the Israel Lobby doing harm to Israel?"

A public debate on this issue will take place with participation of

John Mearsheimer (Chicago University)
Steven Walt (Harvard University)
Co-authors of the book "The Israel Lobby" which recently caused a storm in the U.S.

The discussion will take place on Thursday, June 12, at 8pm in Beit Sokolov, 4 Kaplan St., Tel-Aviv.

The discussion will be in English with simultaneous translation.
Entrance is free. The speakers will answer questions of the audience.

(assuming the Israelis don't refuse their entry based on 'security reasons', hahaha...)

'I kicked the Arab, I stepped on his head' - Chronicle of an urban massacre

From Haaretz.

In a nutshell: 80 or more Israeli kids making an appointment (by SMS or ICQ messages) to meet by the mall to 'harm Arabs for being Arabs'. They catch two random Palestinian chaps who were going shopping, beat the living crap out of them - the two kids only survive because a police patrol causes the mob to flee.

Irony - this took place in Pisgat Ze'ev, which is a settlement of occupied East Jerusalem. I was actually taken once to do some grocery shopping in the mall's supermarket...

Next time, I'll know better. I should take my flak jacket next time I'm around heavy concentrations of potentially angry Israelis...

Sen and Stiglitz on the world food crisis

Two different sets of policy interventions for developing countries facing a food crisis and soaring inflation..

Stiglitz provides the DON'Ts - don't follow inflation targeting textbooks: by the time you push the breaks hard enough to actually curtail price rises (à coup de increasing interest rates) you'd have caused an economic slowdown and rising unemployment that is almost guaranteed to offset whatever gains you obtained.

Sen goes for the DOs. Highlighting the widening income gap between the poor (which, in terms of immediate terms, can be relatively more important than the 'poor' vs. 'rich' gap) and warns against inappropriate policy that doesn't take this assymetric growth into consideration. (now that I think of it, he also gives us DON'Ts. What's wrong with economists?)

"Domestic economic reforms are badly needed in many slow-growth countries, but there is also a big need for more global cooperation and assistance. The first task is to understand the nature of the problem."

Much of the same recipes, in fact - we're just in a more pressing phase.