!كل سنة وانتو سالمين

Happy New year!

Bonne année!
Guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr!

!שנה טובה (shana Tova)

Buon anno!

---

Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions.Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual

Mark Twain

Christmas Appeal: Hope for the children of Bethlehem

The Independent

--

The Village Voice's film critics poll- Best films of 2005

What are your top films?

--

Reviews of Munich:

The Morality of 'Munich'

Catch Them If You Can

---

Best books of the year

Picked by:

The Village Voice

The New York Times

Salon

---

The Coming Meltdown

"The year 2005 has been the hottest year on record for the planet... More importantly, perhaps, this has been the autumn when the planet has shown more clearly than before just what that extra heat means"

T-shirts in December here...read on..

--

The year is turning...If you celebrate Christmas, New year, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Bodhi Day, or Eid!...it's the time for remembering that we are all in this together folks..
.
Some ideas for making your gift giving more ethical this year..
.
Oxfam Unwrapped
You can plant 50 trees for 7KD, feed a family for a month for 12KD, feed 100 schoolchildren dinner for 3KD! and so much more..the site is worth a visit.
.
Shop at Ten thousand Villages, Natural Collection or Global Exchange
.
Give other gifts that don't need wrapping:
Sponsor a child in someone's name: Here, here or here..
Preserve part of the rainforest for someone: here and here
Help our fellow travellers on this planet here and here..
Clear a minefield, Give the gift of clean water, get essential medicines to people in need, or get yourself over to Artizana at Zahra center, or to KACCH or Bayt Abdullah or the Red Crescent...
.

The week in news..

In Lebanon another bomb ...another set of human lives sacrificed for whatever shadowy inexplicable purpose the mercenaries and the powers that be have agreed upon...
Truth postponed Al-Ahram
-
In the US, another life was taken by the hand of the self righteous state... And a self-righteous governor played the part of a merciless god ..
Sneering at Redemption: Why Arnold Killed Tookie by Dave Zirin
Quiet death of a man condemned Dan Glaister in San Quentin
Why do we kill people who kill people to show killing people is wrong
-
In Iraq...as we passed the 1,000 days of war...the numbers are out...over 30,000 civilians dead...66 journalists dead...251 Foreigners kidnapped ...25-40 per cent Estimated unemployment rate...70 per cent of Iraqi's sewage system rarely works...47 per cent Iraqis never have enough electricity ...

'It's an awful way to exist, without hope... We've gained nothing but endless deaths'

By Kim Sengupta

"There is no sign yet of the thousand-day war ending. Every month up to a thousand fresh corpses arrive at the mortuary in Baghdad. A new Iraq is emerging but it is already drenched in blood."

Patrick Cockburn

-

The WTO talks in Hong Kong are, as usual, met with protests and people who know what it's like to feel the heavy boot of indifference and exploitation...On Thursday Korean farmers and labour unionists performed a bow (sujood) every three steps on their protest march...On Friday the US Consulate in Hong Kong was pelted with eggs...And Hong Kong protesters declared a hunger strike...This is the BBC's take on the key issues at the talks....Here is a slideshow of the protests...here are short videos you can watch..

-

Coca Cola is banned from some US campuses...

NYU to Killer Coke: F-U!

'Most Wanted' Corporate Human Rights Violators of 2005,"

-

Iraqis went to the polls, again...Salaam Pax reports from baghdad, for the Guardian...

.

Ah! Every morning the war gets up from sleep.

So I place it in a poem, make the poem into a boat, which I throw into the Tigris.

This is war, then.

Fadhil al-Azzawi

Today is the deadline set for the murder of 74 year old British peace activist Norman Kember American Tom Fox, 54, and Canadians James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32...Yesterday the Muslim Brotherhood joined Hamas and Hizbollah and many other organizations and individuals worldwide to call for the release of the Christian Peace Activists who are in Iraq to act as advocates for the human rights of all Iraqis...to act as 'witnesses for peace'...
----
Watch Democracy Now's broadcast which informs us that "The Christian Peacemaker Teams which is is a non-missionary organization that has been documenting the abuse of Iraqi detainees and working with the families of prisoners"
----
"These men, Tom Fox, Jim Loney, Harmeet Sooden and Norman Kember, joined other members of Christian Peacemaker Teams convinced that people calling for a peaceful resolution to violence and political unrest must engage situations of violence taking the same risks as military personnel."Brian Martin Burkholder
-
Christian Peacemaker Teams
"Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) arose from a call in 1984 for Christians to devote the same discipline and self-sacrifice to nonviolent peacemaking that armies devote to war. Enlisting the whole church in an organized, nonviolent alternative to war, today CPT places violence-reduction teams in crisis situations and militarized areas around the world at the invitation of local peace and human rights workers"
--
Today is Human Rights Day..irony of ironies...it's a day when Amnesty encourages 'write for rights' writeathons that you can join/look at here....Bahrain is having walkathons and rallies and events all week long...Rights groups put the spotlight on the prohibition against torture and the countries that are trying to get away with it....60,000 Hit the Streets all over the US to protest the fact that workers have had their rights stolen from them...
--
On December 10, 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted andproclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
--
Amnesty's Make Some Noise (music for human rights by lots of people you know)

• It's called Apophis. It's 390m wide. And it could hit Earth in 31 years time
• Astronauts push for strategies, spacecraft to prevent calamitous asteroid strike

Of course it's a 1 in 5, 500 chance that it will hit, but those headlines got you to read about it...and the point is that disaster planning has to be perfected in advance just in case, because this would be 100,000 times worse than Hiroshima...and you don't want 'Brownie' style disaster management when/if it hits...
Apophis...the Destroyer, in Egyptian mythology...he used to try to devour the sun god as he rode his chariot across the sky every day...if he succeeded the world would be plunged into darkness..which explains eclipses...then the sun god would have to be rescued by cutting Apophis' belly...and then it all begins again..
---
The third part of the story about fawlty parts on Boeing planes is up on MoJo's site
---

The Egyptian playwright Alfred farag has passed away...

الفريد فرج: علينا أن نخلق حوارا مع العالم عبر المسرح
Egyptian Playwright Alfred Farag Analyzes Decline of Arab Theater
Mahmoud El-Lozy's revival of Alfred Farag's Sulayman El-Halabi at the AUC
Nehad Selaiha finds magic and enchantment in Alfred Farag's The Princess and the Vagabond
---
Rice continues to battle to get everyone to swallow the idea that they do "not tolerate, permit, or condone torture under any circumstances". Hey maybe she should say "read my lips" or better..."we did not have torture relations with those suspects"..y'think that might help?
---
Forced child marriage tests Pakistan law
Apparently in some parts of Pakistan there is a tradition called 'vani' in which child brides are offered to the sons of an enemy or feuding family to settle the score...Razi Azmi writes : " it is a centuries-old practice in Pakistan and parts of Afghanistan in which women are given in marriage as compensation in cases of murder, territorial disputes or other serious disagreements. Males of the “aggrieved” party seek young virgin girls as compensation for crime and to permanently tarnish the honour of the “guilty family”. In exchange, the accused men escape prosecution and punishment. This custom is also known as swara in the northern areas of Pakistan"
---
And at the Saddam "I'm not afraid of execution" Hussein..erm..what do we call it?...Trial? Can we say that when there are questions over whether it satisfies international standards, whether trying him for his smaller scale crimes (some say to protect the other countries that aided and abetted his worst campaigns) is legitimate considering the fact that he would be executed for it before he can implicate anyone else in any later trial...Here are ten reasons from Global Policy why justice may not be served by this trial.. Due process and not revenge is the basis of fair trials, and a fair trial means that no one can come back and say he was a martyr, or that he was innocent but tried unfairly..a fair trial means that his vicious atrocities get a full airing and he and his allies get the punishment served by international standards..anyway at his trial, the papers say chaos reigned supreme yesterday..
There is a blog devoted to the trial
Jurist's coverage of the trial
Raucous episode of Saddam show chips away at court's credibility
---

هو كان الرمز.. إبن الرمز

.

الإنسان الراحل

.

انا لله وانا اليه راجعون

.

"And what he greatly thought, he nobly dar'd" (A. Pope)

..

Have a listen

It's just a day for some music

In news that is hard to classify...should it go in the: 'it's so funny I'm having a heart attack' or the: ' what the $%?!!!! are you %!*&%!! Serious?? I need to leave the planet' file? :

.

Ex-FEMA Head Starts Disaster Planning Firm

Laughing stock of Katrina makes disaster his business

.

Wait, don't tear out your hair just yet..let's get really pissed by first remembering all the beautiful things that make Michael Brown worthy of getting tons of money from a consulting firm about disaster preparedness...

• The whereabouts of 6,644 people reported missing after Hurricane Katrina have not been determined, raising the prospect that the death toll could be higher than the 1,306 (USA Today)
• In television interviews the Fema director said he was unaware that hundreds of people were marooned at the New Orleans convention centre. "Don't you guys watch television?" the exasperated anchor asked (Guardian)
• On the day Katrina hit, his press secretary wrote of his appearance on television: "My eyes must certainly be deceiving me. You look fabulous -- and I'm not talking the makeup." Brownie replied: "I got it at Nordstroms. ... Are you proud of me?"
  An hour later, he added: "If you'll look at my lovely FEMA attire, you'll really vomit. I am a fashion god." (Molly Ivins)
• Brown blamed the victims, claiming that most deaths were the fault of “people who did not heed evacuation warnings”, although he knew that “heeding” had nothing to do with the lack of an automobile or confinement in a wheelchair.(Le Monde Diplo.)

.

I was on the roof trying to flag down helicopters. Nobody would stop. They would give us a thumbs-up and keep on going. You would see them going places. Looking around with their guns out the window, but they wasn't helping. I don't know who they was going to save, but there weren't saving us. They wasn't saving nobody around the neighborhood.Cory Delany

Shawls of Death

Yes it's a melodramatic title to the post, but... Do people really need to be reminded that indulging in a type of fur that is scraped off the skin of an endangered and very beautiful animal is a bad bad thing...Shops here are still trading in Shahtoosh...and people are enabling them by buying it and pretending to be cool and fashionable by wearing it...and I am sick of the 'oh it's soooo soft and warm and it fits perfectly into a small handbag' crap..There are alternatives and it's against the law so enough with the stupid excuses.

.

"International trade in shahtoosh has been prohibited under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) since 1979.." Traffic Network

Which Kuwait Ratified in 2002

.

"It takes 3 to 4 antelope skins to make an average sized shahtoosh"

.

.

"with today’s increasing demand, contemporary poachers have devised innovative, cost and time effective ways to kill. At night, they shine bright lights at whole resting herds. The innocent animal, baffled by this new experience freezes, and thereby signs it’s own death warrant. The poachers let loose their automatic weapons at these sitting targets." Shahtoosh Campaign

.

Confiscated: Shawls of Death

Shahtoosh, the lethal cost of luxury

.

What can we do?

• Do not Buy Shahtoosh in any form-your money tells smugglers that it is ok to trade in endangered Chiru wool.
• Discourage the sellers who offer you Shahtoosh from trading in it
• Tell people about the terrible way it is poached
• Report any shopkeepers who sell Shahtoosh to CITES and their representatives in Kuwait
• Encourage alternatives and push for them being fair trade alternatives

The Daily Star has an article : Arab-American comics combat ignorance with caustic humor

Includes references to :Suheir Hammad, Maysoon Zayid, Aron Kader, Amer Zahr, and Dean Obeidallah. Check out their sites, there are even some clips of them doing their acts.

-

Yesterday was Fairouz' Birthday..and we wish her many, many beautiful years to come..

How many of us have been to the mustawsif and had the doctor write up an antibiotic prescription for something that a warm chicken soup and some vitamin C could have taken care of? Well the antibiotic-quick-draw talent doctors have here has never been a good thing..as we already know the more antibiotics you take, the more likely you will be to destroy your immune system and the more likely you will be to create a strain of bacteria that is the superman of bad bacteria that will come after you with a vengeance.
Well, as as if things weren't bad enough.. there's more news this week:

-

Using antibiotics more than 10 times in childhood increases the likelihood of developing non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL), a cancer that affects the body's lymphatic system, new research suggests.

-

remember antibiotics can be in the meat you eat if the source is not organic. So that 10 times doesn't just come from a prescription.

Parents, keep your kids warm and eating healthy so that they don't have to get a cold every other week..and a cold is not the flu, and some vitamins and tlc are better than the quick fix you get with antibiotics when you don't need them (there are certainly infections that require antibiotic treatment. You and your healthcare provider decide which ones, with care)

-

Next time you are in the City of cities, be sure to flag down one of these..

-

Common Dreams had an article about a very interesting city in Brazil, called Curitiba...A model city...famous for their super efficient bus system..you can take a look at their fantastic Opera House ..Their beautiful parks...and just hope that one day we can have something useful to be proud of here..

-

MoJo has a map of the world's hotspots..it's pretty...and pretty scary too..

-

Rolling Stone has an article called Billie Joe vs. The World/Working Class Heroes

(for Greenday fans)

-

Read this and see what one man can do...

Outraged yet? Tired..and by that I mean sick and tired of the violence yet? Some kind of human committed the disgusting attacks on the hotels in Jordan and robbed families of their loved ones, robbed the world of people like Moustapha Akkad and all the other precious souls that went up in flames...Enough...whoever they are and I'll be damned if i know who got together with whom to send this filthy message to the world...(And what message that would be depends on where you take your theories from)...but whoever you blame and whatever the reason you assign...the point is that it's been time, for a long time now, to say enough... Not the kind of enough that means it's ok for me to bomb the hell out of you, but not for you to do it...the kind of enough that says all violence, no matter what slimy mask of 'just cause' has been plastered to it's horrorible face, is unjustified...there is a 7/7 or a 9/11 or an 11/9 happening somewhere all the time..in Iraq in Colombia, in Chechnya in the DR Congo ... in the ghettos and the slums and the hands of the working poor... in occupied territories and forgotten places.. in the secret prisons and the not so secret ones and in the noose and the injection that we use even when we know that the system that metes out your judgement is flawed..in the way we choose to make someone different...in the landmines lying quietly in wait for the next child to lay small feet on them... in the hospitals filled with people who will die of preventable diseases because of choices made by the dead heart of big business..in the bodies of people who are ravaged by the poisons we continue to pour all over the planet and ourselves, knowing full well there are alternatives... you don't have to strap a bomb to yourself and be a militant to take part in murder...you just have to choose to be silent..to ignore...and when is it that we start to really look, and really act? How much more has to happen before we get off our comfortable behinds and do something useful? Does the horror of what we have become as humans really have to come and knock so close to us and our loved ones before we take notice?... and don't we already know it will be too late then...What are we doing to make this world livable? I am so tired of asking.
---
CND--Int. Campagn to Ban Landmines--Hague Appeal for Peace--Adopt a Minefield---Desmond tutu Peace Foundation--Int. Fellowship of Reconciliation--The Ghandi institute---Albert Einstein Institution ---nonviolence.org--Martin L. King Institute--- Amnesty--Liberty-- FAIR--Project Censored--Mid East roups--David Suzuki Foundation--MSF---RAN

Films:
'Lord of War' --The foolishness of God--Hotel Rwanda--The Constant Gardener--The Corporation---Ironweed films

MORE Than 50 Million Sign Manifesto 2000 For A Culture Of Peace and Non-Violence

Music:
Peace Not War: hours of free streaming music.

whether long range weapon or suicide bomba

wicked mind is a weapon of mass destruction

whether you're soaraway sun or BBC 1

misinformation is a weapon of mass destruction

you coulda Caucasian or a poor Asian

racism is a weapon of mass destruction

whether inflation or globalisation

fear is a weapon of mass destruction

..

whether Halliburton, Enron or anyone

greed is a weapon of mass destruction

we need to find courage, overcome

inaction is a weapon of mass destruction

my story stops here, let's be clear

this scenario is happenin' everywhere

an' you ain't goin' to nirvana or far-vana

you comin' right back here to live out your karma

with even more drama than previously... seriously

just how many centuries have we been waitin'

for someone else to make us free

an' we refuse to see the people overseas

suffer just like we

bad leadership and egos unfettered and free

who feed on the people they're supposed to leadi

don't need good people to pray and wait

for the Lord to make it all straight

there's only now, do it right

Faithless

-

"I must forgive so that the desire for revenge does not corrode my being." ArchBishop Tutu

Call to all you people out there..

Nazzal directed me to an article by Ralph Nader about Malaria which gives us all a heads up about on a few events and touches on a topic that should just make you a little angry and fired up to help.
First things first (before getting to the interesting ways you can help):

• Malaria Kills 1.3 to 2 Million people per year...
• The equivalent of 7 jumbo jets full of children die every day from malaria
• The disease threatens 40% of the world's population
• A $5 net over a bed can mean the difference between life and death (how many nets can be bought with how much we spend on a watch, a mobile phone, a second third or fourth car..one night's dinner?)

1. For swimmers out there: There is a World Swim for malaria that you can get people you know (family, friends, classmates and your co-workers) to take part in..All you need is a pool or a beach, and we have lots of those available here...you know how this is done..you get people to sponsor you with a few KD (or a lot) and you pledge to swim a certain distance..You can register your swim here..the worldwide swim is happening Dec 3rd, and if you have access to an indoor pool you can take part on that day BUT you don't have to have it on that day..you can choose to do it in the summer...as of today there are no registered swims for Kuwait..who's going to fill up that page?
2. For basketball fans: There will be a Dunk Malaria I event on March 19. It's the same idea, you set up a dunk contest and raise money and awareness around the issue of malaria. C'mon school teams out there..yalla.
3. For unsporty types who still want to help in some way : You can pledge money to people you know are swimming or dunking, and also rustle up all the participants you can think of and get them to swim/dunk/pledge...you can also donate money to the Global Fund and to Doctors Without Borders
4. For those with access to the press: Turn the spotlight on malaria..it is a preventable killer..get your paper/show to cover any of the events taking place, like the swim/dunk events..

Malaria: from the words mal=bad and aria=air in old Italian. It was thought that you caught the disease by breathing the bad air around swamps..now we know it comes from the bite of a mosquito and they tend to live around swampy wet areas..

Background to the Paris/France events this past week

Naima Bouteldja has written an article explaining the reason behind some of the unrest that has manifested in violence and anger these past 12 days in France:

"Clichy-sous-Bois, the impoverished and segregated north-eastern suburb of Paris where the two men lived and where the violent reaction to their deaths began, was a ticking bomb for the kind of dramatic social upheaval we are currently witnessing. Half its inhabitants are under 20, unemployment is above 40% and identity checks and police harassment are a daily experience."

"Four days after the deaths in Clichy-sous-Bois, just as community leaders were beginning to calm the situation, the security forces reignited the fire by emptying teargas canisters inside a mosque. The official reason for the police action: a badly parked car in front of it. The government refuses to offer any apology to the Muslim community."

--

Trevor Phillips looks at the situations political implications and the problems of race/class relations not only in France but across Europe and the US..

"Prime Minister Dominique Villepin called emergency cabinet meetings, met the bereaved parents and urged a moderate response. His rival for the presidency, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, having denounced the rioting youths as 'scum', ordered a police lockdown. Whoever wins this power struggle will instantly become the frontrunner for the top job.

"Our French neighbours are giving us the loudest alarm call they can. Wake up, everybody."

--

Maybe the Gulf should be listening too..How long will the majority in this country for instance accept to be denigrated and left to substandard existence by the minority? tick-tock...

--

"The Sydney Morn. Herald has an interesting article called Hooded children of the revolution which situates the riots within a youth movement that has taken it's cue from the race issues in American culture as opposed to from their Muslim background:"

"Although many of the rioters come from Muslim backgrounds, "these guys are building a new idea of themselves based on American street culture. It's a youth riot - they are protesting against the fact that they are supposed to be full French citizens and they are not."
As black Americans in the 1960s objected to police using the word "boy", so today's French rioters want police to stop insultingly addressing them with the familiar form of you, "tu"."

--

More articles worth a look:The week Paris burned--Solidarity with Murad and Munir

For those of you who speak French:

Liberation: «Les flics aussi ont besoin de médiation»

Le Monde: Les violences urbaines au jour le jour (this is worth a look even if only for the photos. It's a day-by-day of the events)

Words of the day:

Banlieue:It means suburb, but has come to be more often used to mean the equivalent of a ghetto or what would be 'the projects' in the US.. Clichy-sous bois is this type of banlieue. The word splashed onto the global mainstream with the film 'Hate', but even before that, the Banlieue was represented in films like 'The Sound and the Fury' and Tea in the Harem.

Les Flics: The Cops (french)

First there's this:
Bird Flu!! (Tamiflu, Tamiflu) Pandemic!! (Tamiflu, Tamiflu) Be scared!! (Tamiflu, Tamiflu)
AND THEN...There's This:
Tamiflu and Rumsfeld-Rumsfeld Benefits From Avian Flu Hype-Donald Rumsfeld to Profit Millions from Bush Spending on Avian Bird Flu Pandemic
-
Democrats finally pulled up their socks and closed the senate for a secret session, to push a probe into the reasons and possible lies that led to war ..the Republicans pretended to be shocked and awed..Frist even showed off his talent for amateur dramatics -remember last week's Scooter Libby indictment..well..
"The Libby indictment provides a window into what this is really all about, how this administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq and attempted to destroy those who dared to challenge its actions,” Reid said before making the motion which sent the Senate into a closed-door session." MSNBC
-
Other Republicans in Trouble
Tom Delay: Rep. House Majority Leader: Indicted on charges of money laundering, conspiracy and corruption.
Bill Frist:Under investigation for insider trading..and possibly lying about it.
-
Day six, and Paris is burning..
-
Rabid Vampire bats are attacking poeple in Brazil
-
Quote for today:
Power goes to two poles: To those who've got money and those who've got people
Saul Alinsky
-

In a building of gold, with riches untold,
lived the families on which the country was founded.
And the merchants of style, with their red velvet smiles,
were there,for they also were hounded.
And the soft middle class crowded in to the last,
for the building was fully surrounded.
And the noise outside was the ringing of revolution.
Phil Ochs

Remember the story about Boeing using defective parts to build planes? Well part two of the story is out.

A rememberance service at St Paul's cathedral, for those murdered on July 7th in London, might be boycotted by families of the victims who are angry "Some are bitter about what they say is a failure of support from the government in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. Others blame Tony Blair's decision to go to war in Iraq for making London more vulnerable to suicide bombings"Guardian

Gulf War Syndrome is finally recognised by a tribunal in the UK...it had been denied by the US and UK since the 1991 war because they would have to pay the veterans suffering from it..and there are a lot..This is a landmark case, which means further cases and questions may arise as a result of the ruling. Season Two of the Awful truth by M. Moore had an episode where Gulf War veterans suffering form the disease that the government won't recognise staged a run to benefit the disease..of course most of them can barely walk, let alone run.. you get to see how real the disease is.

New Orleans residents are not being allowed to return to their homes and many are being evicted.."Some renters have offered to pay their rent and are still being evicted. Others question why they should have to pay rent for September when they were not allowed to return to New Orleans...The longer the poor and working class of New Orleans stay away, the more likely it is that they'll never return. That, some say, is exactly what those in power in New Orleans and Louisiana and the US must want. Otherwise, why are they making New Orleans a ghost town?MoJo

Sound too cruel to be true?

"We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did." –Rep. Richard Baker (R-LA)The Predators of New Orleans /Le monde Diplo

Ethnic Cleansing, GOP-style Alternet

Purging the poor from New Orleans Naomi Klein

-

• Prospect Magazine had a poll asking who was the Top Public Intellectual in the world..Here are the results..
• Al-Qaida is threatening Omar Sharif because he played St. Peter in an Italian film..and a parking attendant is suing him for punches and racial slurs...not a good week for Mr. Sharif.
• Since we have a lot of people with blood pressure problems, here is news that one of the common meds might not be the best...
• The pentagon finally admits that they do civillian body counts and the report shows that show that the daily number of Iraqi casualties has more than doubled in the past 18 months...such are the joys of democracy and mission accomplished..
• Malaria is the world's number one killer...anyone wearing a ribbon for it? The Independent says Medical research 'biased towards diseases of rich Westerners'

In the wake of a disaster there are always things that you hear that are just pure crayyzee...
-
After the Tsunami I had the disgusting experience of hearing from a Scottish female convert to Islam that the Tsunami was God's punishment for all the sins of those poor victims..What were those sins? Well they had to do with her real obsessive fears of all things sexual and her rabid anti-semitism...neither of which has anything to do with Asia...This was after she gave me a lecture about Islam that made Islam sound very much like Catholicism..confused, confused.
After Katrina..Christian conservatives in the US were convincing people that the hurricane was God's punishment for abortions..and in Israel, the spiritual leader of the right wing Shas party suggests that it was America's punishment for the Gaza pullout..I googled Katrina and Gaza and got only sites that supported the theory on the first three pages of google..there is that much crazy going around.
Right now in the Pakistan a Muslim cleric is suggesting that the Earthquake was God's punishment for...are you ready for this... watching too much cable tv...
-
Funny how God always punishes innocent folks for the very 'sins' that fundamentalists are obsessed with..I say if you're looking for the devil...he's the one saying it's your fault a natural disaster tore your life and loved ones apart..and then probably didn't help you out unless it meant he could use it as a chance to convert you.
-
By the way..the earthquake victims need our help..It's not unusual for people to have turned off their compassion switches after all the emotional fuss that was rightly made over the Tsunami and Katrina...but 80,000 people are dead and thousands more homeless and in need and we are getting near the end of Ramadan...which is more than about sleeping all day and pigging out at night and trying to buy our way into heaven by hiding out in the mosque...

Doctors without Borders

Save the Children

Red Cross/Red Crecent

-

Word of the day:

Donor Fatigue: A state in which donors no longer contribute to a cause because they have become tired of receiving appeals for donations

-

Updated

OK as you know these two days have seen a storm of speculation about Plamegate...and many have high hopes that Fitzmas is here...Fitz Wha? Don't worry if you have no idea what I'm saying I have the places you can go to stock up on tons of information, gossip and all you need to follow the events of this scandal as they unfold right before your eyes... So grab the popcorn and kazoos..
Of course it could all just uneventfully fizzle out tomorrow..in which case we could resume watching CSI...which is also fun.
-
If you want to keep up with the news you need to know the following names:

Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson
The figures at the center of the storm..

Partick Fitzgerald

the Special Counsel assigned to investigate the case...and here is his site
There are all the big guys...
with the big guns that are involved in the scandal at the top...the link also tells you a little about how they are connected to the affair...and you'll see why this is such a big deal.

Robert Novak..

"Novak has been frequently criticized as acting as a political operative of the Republican Party while posing as a journalist; ... Novak also has been implicated in a number of political scandals and violations of journalistic ethics and standards, the most recent of which is the Plame affair..
yes... he will sorta make you want to vomit a little...not because of his leanings but because he just has no shame...and well..his nickname is 'the prince of darkness'..which is both sad and creepy.
And speaking of sad and creepy..there's Judy Miller..

-
The story...Briefly...US wants reasons for Iraq war...finds a nice one in a story about Saddam attempting to buy uranium from Niger...Claims which made it to the President's 2003 state of the Union speech..Former Ambassador Wilson says he did not find any evidence of such attempts to acquire yellowcake-his claims are disputed here-Novak writes an article which outs Wilson's wife Valerie Plame as a CIA agent-Very very bad since it can be a felony to out a covert agent-blogs and news pick up the story and start running-the Justice Department is called in to investigate the matter-Patrick Fitzgerald is special counsel and this Friday the 28th is the day everyone expects him to deliver his findings because the Grand Jury effectively expires-the trail may well lead to administration officials in high places...so everyone is waiting with bated breath...
-
Here is a good timeline from the NYT..
If you are really on a roll and want to turn dinner conversation about the affair into an opportunity to show of your ability to wrestle the truth from the spin here is a handy tool...use it well..
-
The bloggers that are hot on the heels of the whole fiasco and will have up to the minute news for you are Blondsense-Daily Kos-TPM Cafe-Crooks and Liars- MoJo-Josh Marshall -David Corn-Arianna Huffington
-

More a listen than read kinda person? Well the folks at Air America will keep you right on the news and I am sure Amy Goodman will have something to say about it all..

.
Articles you can load up on :
Outing CIA Agents
Fitzgerald vs. the Bush Administration
.
Movie recommendations:
Three Days of the Condor
Boy, what is it with you people? You think not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth?
.
All the President's Men
You know the results of the latest Gallup Poll? Half the country never even heard of the word Watergate. Nobody gives a shit. You guys are probably pretty tired, right? Well, you should be. Go on home, get a nice hot bath. Rest up... 15 minutes. Then get your asses back in gear. We're under a lot of pressure, you know, and you put us there. Nothing's riding on this except the, uh, first amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press, and maybe the future of the country. Not that any of that matters, but if you guys fuck up again, I'm going to get mad. Goodnight.
.
Network
Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.
.
Updates:

Midday..Friday

Lewis 'Scooter' Libby has been indicted on 5 counts..for obstruction of justice, perjury and making a false statements...He has resigned...Scooter is Vice President Dick Cheney's Advisor...Karl Rove has not been indicted but remains under investigation...
Here is the Indictment
Here is the Press release
Fitzgeralrd explained over and over again in the press conference that "the harm in an obstruction investigation is it prevents us from making the fine judgments we want to make."..that is, that he cannot submit a 'leak' charge because of the obstruction charge..not because there was no alleged leak..but because the obstruction charge stands in it's way, as it were..

Casualties of a war a world away

Please read this..

Elaina Morton is not listed as one of the 2,000 Americans now confirmed killed in Iraq since the start of the war, but she might as well be. In US military parlance the 23-year-old lab technician from Kansas would have been referred to as a "surviving spouse". But three months after her husband, Staff Sergeant Benjamin Morton, was killed by insurgents in Mosul, Elaina picked up a gun and shot herself.

.

Wednesday the 26th of October was a day of vigils all across America..over a thousand of them in towns and cities across the country..it was to mark the 2000th American killed in Iraq..and the tens of thousands of those we don't do body counts on..and the billions being spent to do what wars do..

Almost a century ago a man who was to die a 25 year old in war wrote something that has been humming around us these past few days..

.

What passing-bells for those who die as cattle?

-Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,-

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

Wilfred Owen

.

And so it is...

Ok everyone at work came running into my office with their favourite morning paper, freaking out about the Bird Flu news today..and as much as I hate this whole drama..well..I just had to mention it..
....
Al-Qabas says that IF we were to get hit by bird flu we would expect 900 thousand cases within the first 8 weeks after the first case..
Gulp..


Have no fear...the Arab Times says

.

"an emergency team and an operation room were set up to receive information about the epidemic around the clock. He added that a special committee to monitor bird imports had been formed in cooperation with the health ministry, the customs department and the civil aviation directorate."

.

Sorry sorry, why is that funny to me? Is it becausue I have worked for too many ministries and can only imagine the "emergency team" within the context of scenes from Reno 911...

Ok no more laughing at possible disasters...or at the efforts put in by our officials...just wish they had put more solid precautionary measures in the articles rather than repeat 5 billion times (read the Arab Times article if you don't believe me, 5 billion) that the ministry is doing all it can do...and that it has drafted a contigency plan.

When asked about the much hailed contingency plan "officials refused to divulge details of the plan"..maybe they're afraid the plans might get leaked to those sneaky calculating disease carrying avians...because I can't think of any other reason they would have to hide the plan..
unless...it is the 'alleged plan'...

oh I must have forgotten to take my stop doubting them at all times pills today...

-

Rise up this morning,

Smiled with the rising sun

Three little birds pitch by my doorstep

Singin' sweet songs of melodies pure and true

Sayin', "This is my message to you-u-u.

"Singin'...

Don't worry about a thing,

'Cause ev'ry little thing gonna be al-right."

Bob Marley

Rosa Parks has passed away

Aged 92

.

On the first of December 1955 a woman refused to move to the back of the bus to make room for whites..she was arrested and it lit the fire under the already steaming civil rights movement with the Montgomery Bus Boycott...Tired of being treated like a second class citizen and already involved with the NAACP, Rosa Parks became a beautiful symbol of non-violent resistance...

-
Rosa Parks: She was Tired . . . Sick and Tired
The civil rights movement has been applauded as one of the most successful nonviolent movements in history. People believed in their rights so much so that they were willing to risk their livelihood and their very lives for the cause of equality and justice.

To learn more:

Rosa ParksThe Woman Who Changed a Nation

Bush is urging the UN to deal with what he calls a 'deeply disturbing' UN report... Rice calls the Mehlis report 'deeply troubling'(who's been looking through the thesaurus?) and Shimon Peres is singing the regime change song...ah the triple punch that signals the knock knock knock of intervention...the timing for distraction is perfect considering the dirty laundry hanging out Stateside...there are already reports of US troops and Syrians fighting... we wait and we shall see..

.
Kuwait's Ahmed Al-Rubei's opinion in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat---Al-Arabiya's Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid's opinion in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat
.

Full text of the 'censored paragraphs' of Mehlis report into Hariri assassination

Accusations in Mehlis's report shock Syrians Syria's Champress

Bashar in the eye of the storm Ha'aretz

Russia Opposes Politicization of UN Debates on Hariri's Murder

Hariri's son wants int'l court to try father's killers

'We do not seek revenge. We seek justice"

The Politics of Hariri's Assassination Naseer Aruri:

"There is no shortage of potential perpetrators, considering that numerous actors, including Syria, Israel, the United States, Libya and Palestinian militias have all tried their hands at political assassinations in Lebanon through the use of bombing. Although the identity of the assassins may never be known and indeed may prove less important than the consequences, the important questions are, what the crime will lead to in geo-political terms, and who the greatest beneficiaries are? What is the likely impact of this heinous crime on the Lebanese political landscape and the regional map? We might even add the global dimension."

.

Things to consider from the transcript of the UN Report at Ya Libnan:

205. The Commission considers that the investigation must continue for some time to come. In the short time period of four months more than 400 persons have been interviewed, 60 000 documents reviewed, several suspects identified, and some main leads established. Yet, the investigation is not complete.

210. As a result of the Commission's investigation to date, a number of people have been arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder and related crimes in connection with the assassination of Mr. Hariri and twenty-two others. The Commission is of course of the view that all people, including those charged with serious crimes should be considered innocent until proven guilty following a fair trial.

-

Since we're in the mood to solve assassinations..a very good thing...there's a backlog that the ever so conscientious international community might want to look into..in the spirit of fairness and cleaning house that is...

.

"can India put in a side-request for the extradition of Warren Anderson of the USA? He was the chairman of Union Carbide, responsible for the 1984 Bhopal gas leak that killed 16,000 people. We have collated the necessary evidence. It's all in the files. Could we have him, please? Arundhati Roy

.

Homework:

• MERIP's Inside Syria and Lebanon Fall 2005
• Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East-Patrick Seale
• Pity The Nation: Lebanon at War- Robert Fisk

Transparency International says Kuwait is one notch more corrupt than it was last year...but we knew that didn't we?
-
Guardian journalist abducted in Baghdad
Rory Carroll..33 years old.

"He volunteered for the assignment and his coverage has been critical of the US-led coalition"
That's another journalist critical of the occupation gone missing..

CPJ's coverage of attacks on Journalists in Iraq---RSF'S News agencies targeted by Iraqi and US troops---RSF's special on Iraq
-
As of news Friday the 21st-Rory Carroll has been freed
-

Coverage of the Saddam Trial at the Guardian--'I am the president of Iraq. I do not recognise this court' ---Watch with Real or Qtime---The who's who of the trial in pictures---BBC Coverage

To understand what is going on Please read :

Saddam and Iraq on trial

Read the piece from IHT written by the director of Human Rights Watch"Give Iraq Justice Not Vengeance"

A useful piece from FindLaw about the controversy surrounding the trial

Legal Lynching Of Saddam Hussein
-
Word of the day:
Kangaroo Court: An unfair trial in which the rights of the accused and precepts of justice are ignored and the outcome is usually known beforehand.
-
The death toll of the earthquake reaches 80,000..say that out loud, slowly..then see here
-
Reading list:
Laws for a secret state without any safeguards Sydney Morning Herald
The lies of war-Eduardo Galeano (I say again, Eduardo Galeano, so read it)