“Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.”
– Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, October 3, 2001.
Simple, straight-forward and very true.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) today stopped distributing emergency food aid to some 600,000 refugees in the Gaza Strip, or approximately half of the refugees receiving UNRWA food aid in the occupied Palestinian territory, following restrictions introduced by Israeli authorities at the sole commercial crossing through which the Agency is able to bring in humanitarian assistance.
Stocks of rice, flour, cooking oil and other essential foodstuffs that UNRWA provides to refugees reduced to poverty, or otherwise affected by a humanitarian crisis now in its 42nd month, have been fully depleted.
The severe economic hardship of the children and adults in Gaza is well documented by US AID and other sources. Preventing the access of humanitarian aid will exacerbate already existing conditions of starvation and malnourishment.
“They think power in Iraq should come out of the barrel of a gun…that is intolerable.”
— Paul Bremer (US Administrator of Iraq), on the insurrection
Look who’s talking!
Related Links:
– Iraqi Battalion Refuses to ‘Fight Iraqis’
– US to ‘capture or kill’ Iraqi Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr
[via Je Blog, Jalan-Jalan]
The Star Academy Middle East students will be passing by Tunisia in their Arab tour to perform 2 concerts.
The first concert will be on May 1st at the Palace of Sports in El Menzah / Tunis.
The second will be on May 4th at the open air theatre in Sfax.
It’ll be a live concert in which the students will dance and sing their best songs from the show as well as some other songs especially for the tour.
The Tunisia concerts are 2 of a series of concerts that will be held across the Arab world.
3 Tunisians competed for the title at Star Academy Middle East, 2 of whom reached the final stages Ahmad & Bahaa.
It still hasn’t been announced when tickets will go for sale.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 10 – Moneer Munthir is ready to kill Americans.
For months, he has been struggling to control an explosion of miserable feelings: humiliation, fear, anger, depression.
“But in the last two weeks, these feelings blow up inside me,” said Mr. Munthir, a 35-year-old laborer. “The Americans are attacking Shiite and Sunni at the same time. They have crossed a line. I had to get a gun.”
“To be honest, we weren’t like this before,” he said of his friends and him. “But we’re religious people, and our leader has been threatened. We would be ashamed to stay in our houses with our wives at a time like this.”
This is just an example of how Anti-US outrage is uniting a growing Iraqi resistance.
[More: NY Times]
[Via: Current Affairs]
A new Kill Bill 2 Trailer is out, and some reviews of it are available here and there.
I’ve been dying to see this movie ever since I saw part one last year, and by the looks of it, I think I won’t be let down, not that I ever expected to be.
Tarantino is a master of his craft, and knows how to tell a story in his own unique way of film-making.
We open on The Bride, aka Black Mamba (Uma Thurman), driving a convertible. The camera is trained close on her face. Her hair is blowing in the wind. She tells us she is on her way to kill Bill.
Man, I can just picture that in my mind and see how great it’s going to turn out.
Tarantino rocks!
The movie is due to be released on April 16th in the US.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today called for a Pentagon investigation of a photograph circulating on the Internet that apparently shows an American soldier mocking an Iraqi child.
The photo sent to CAIR seems to be of an American soldier standing next to two Iraqi children who are giving the thumbs-up sign. One child holds a hand-lettered sign in English that reads: “Lcpl Boudreaux killed my Dad,
th(en) he knocked up my sister!” (“Knocked up” is American slang for making someone pregnant out of wedlock.)
“If the United States Army is seeking to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, this is the wrong way to accomplish that goal,” said CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad.
Awad said CAIR has also received an anonymous letter from a soldier who recently returned from Iraq that claims a commanding officer engaged in inappropriate conduct with prepubescent Iraqi girls.
This is disgusting!
[More: CAIR]
[via Bouillabaisse]
Lately, Senator John Kerry has been reassuring voters that he will be as pro-Israel as President Bush. He has expressed his support for Sharon’s policy of unilateral disengagement, building of the so-called security barrier and the political isolation of Yasser Arafat.
The candidate’s present position toward Middle East peace contradicts his past support of the Oslo peace process and provides a surprising contrast to his views when he was a young anti-war leader in the early ’70s.
Last year Kerry told an Arab-American audience that the so-called security barrier that Israel was building was “an obstacle to peace.” Now he claims he has no problem with the barrier.
In summer 2003, Mr. Kerry published an article in a Brown University publication titled, “A Powerful Journey, An Essential Dream,” where he wrote, “in this difficult time we must again reaffirm we are enlisted for the duration – and reaffirm our belief that the cause of Israel must be the cause of America – and the cause of people of conscience everywhere [emphasis mine].” Kerry ends his article with a slogan associated with the religious pro-settler bloc, “am yisrael chai” or long live the people of Israel.
I think that it looks like no matter who is president of the United States, things don’t look like they’ll change at all for the suffering Palestinians.
[Source: Electronic Intifada]
Today LBC aired a special called “The Best of Star Academy” in which they presented the best moments of the recently finished Arab Star Academy.
As I mentioned before, I only got to watch the last prime, and actually thought that Bashar deserved to win.
Anyway, after watching the best moments from the past primes and some other off-prime moments with the candidates, I actually think that either Ahmad (the Tunisian) or Bashar (the Kuwaiti) should have won.
They both have the best voices of all, even though Bashar is more active and more present on stage.
Anyway, I can also see why people liked Mohamed Attiah, the winner of Star Academy LBC, he seems like a really nice and funny guy.
What I find the most interesting from this whole Star Academy experience is how much people got addicted to it and how it became some sort of cult.
It’s one of the first attempts at reality tv by Arabs and it somehow revolutionized prime tv.
No, it doesn’t blind you. And now medical researchers say it’s not going to give you cancer either.
Frequent ejaculation during masturbation or sex, a new study has found, isn’t associated with an increased risk for prostate cancer, laying to rest a popular misconception. In fact, it may even decrease the risks for certain people.
The research, published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, is based on surveys of nearly 30,000 men from 1992 to 2000. The mostly white males, ages 46 to 81, provided histories of sexual intercourse, nocturnal emission and masturbation during their twenties, forties and within the previous year.
Results showed no relationship between ejaculation frequency and prostate cancer for most categories.
In fact, men who reported frequent ejaculation over their lifetime–that’s more than four to seven times per month, in case you’re counting–had fewer overall cases of prostate cancer than those who ejaculated less often.
And those tireless individuals averaging 21 or more ejaculations a month over their lifetime showed only half the risk for developing the disease.
The researchers noted 38% of married people over 60 in the United States have sex one-to-four times per month, while 15% are sexually active at least five times per month.
Hmmm, very interesting 😉
[Source: Forbes]
