ati alan ortadogu'yu gecmis sen hala komplodasin pc'desin

from Visa for top Netenyahu aide in question

U.S. officials are also likely to find Arad, a long-time Netanyahu loyalist, difficult to deal with, apart from his intelligence past. Like Netanyahu, he opposed Israel's pullout from Gaza and as recently as last month suggested that he was against any territorial compromise with Palestinians, telling one television interviewer, "We want to relieve ourselves of the burden of Palestinian populations, not the territories."

...

For all of his academic and professional accomplishments, however, Arad showed remarkably poor judgment in his meeting with Franklin at the cafeteria in the Pentagon "on or about February 20, 2004," (...) In that meeting, according to the indictment, Arad ("...a person previously associated with an intelligence agency of Foreign Nation A") and Franklin discussed "...a Middle Eastern country's nuclear program."

In 2003-04, Lawrence Franklin had been the Iran specialist in the Department of Defense Policy Division headed by Undersecretary Douglas Feith, himself a long-time Likud supporter. Franklin worked in a unit called the Office of Special Plans (OSP), which was tasked, among other things, to make the case that Iraq posed a major - and soon-to-be-nuclear - threat to the U.S.

As that case fell apart in the aftermath of the 2003 U.S. invasion, Israel began warning about Iran's alleged nuclear-weapons programme, which was apparently the subject of Arad's tete-a-tete with Franklin, who was under covert surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Reading a Crappy Book on the Subway

Today, on my way out to work I was browsing my bookshelf for something to read on the subway. I needed something literary, since reading anything theoretical/academic at that hour is a proven way of putting me to sleep, and I decided to give a shot to Reading Lolita in Tehran, purchased not by me - thank Allah.

I say that because right now I am on page 16, and somewhere around page 10 I started contemplating whether I have to actually finish this book to be able to opine on how self-congratulatory, blah and almost carelessly malicious it is, all at the same time. While I am tempted to think that Oberlin trained me well, this is so blatantly a pile of orientalist bullshit (so much that it excuses employing the otherwise exhausted o-word) that its lack of sincerity should be clear to all, save for white book club ladies and Christopher Hitchens.

You and the people you write about say "Islamic Republic of Iran" every time you refer to your country, really?

Here's the extreme Hamid Dabashi critique:
Native Informers and the Making of American Empire

Here's the idiotic Christopher Hitchens critique:
The Captive Mind Now (I want to believe the whole essay is an exercise in sarcasm, but it might not be)

Here's the one I tend to agree with, mostly because Dabashi's anger is very similar to Finkelstein's too careful study of "Of Time Immemorial"; the book is dishonest alright, but it is also so horrible as literary work that the anger is not worth it:
Pawn of the neocons?

Note that in life reaching total happiness is impossible and thus the last article too manages to fuck up in its last sentence. Which makes me go full circle and end up with Dabashi.

Lastly, for our following immersed in academia:
Reading Nafisi in the West: Authenticity, Orientalism, and "Liberating" Iranian Women

Hamish: New York Times Bestseller don't mean shit.

For the record

I said that I want you all to know that my pariticpation was at the invitation of the University of San Francisco and that I strictly adhere to the boycott of Israel and I call on them all to boycott Israel at all levels. I told them that I met I(armed) Israelis first under occuapation in South Lebanon in 1982, and I resolved then that I would meet them only on my terms. I explained to them that I am strict against terrorists and terrorism: that I am opposed to any deal or negotiations with Al-Qa`idah or with Bin Laden and accordingly, I am opposed to any deal or compromise with the state that pioneered the practice of terrorism in the region.

-As'ad AbuKhalil

I thought we had an international court now..

Spanish judge accuses six top Bush officials of torture

from the article:

If Garzón decided to go further and issued arrest warrants against the six, it would mean they would risk detention and extradition if they travelled outside the US. It would also present President Barack Obama with a serious dilemma. He would have either to open proceedings against the accused or tackle an extradition request from Spain.

This is what we call "sahalarımızda görmek istediğimiz hareketler" in Turkish. But it only makes Spain look good. This investigation could easily fall under ICC's jurisdiction, either via nationalities of the victims, detention centers in Poland and Romania, both of which are parties, or through a security council resolution if the Obama administration had the courage to hold itself up to the same standards they don't miss any opportunity to preach for others. Are the American courts "unable or unwilling" to try their own criminals? Well so are the Sudanese. But we have an international criminal court for those. Inspiring.

Thats the Point of Selling Crack

Mos Def reciting MF Doom. 

find five differences between israel and turkey*

IHD 2008 Turkiye Insan Haklari Raporu/Turkey's 2008 Human Rights Report

I am currently on page 50 of 696. It's a fascinating read, gets better by the page**.

On page 49, I came across the incident I talked about
here. Or rather, I was talking shit about the reporting of the incident and the lack of clarity in terms of what's what and who's who. There are only so many W questions a reporter needs to answer, it shouldn't take a human rights report to do the job.

IHD: 30 Eylül'de Balıkesir'in Ayvalık Ilçesi'nin Altınova Beldesi'nde Murat Aygün, husumetli olduğu Oğuz Dörtkardes'le (23) “yüksek sesle müzik dinlediği” için baslayan tartısmanın kavgaya dönmesinin ardından, Dörtkardes ve yanındakilerin üzerine kamyonetini sürdü. Aracın altında sürüklenen Dörtkardes ile Ezer Kırcalı (31) adlı iki kisi öldü, 6 kisi yaralandı. Olayı duyanlar ise Murat Aksu'nun Kürt olmasını bahane ederek Altınova'da oturan Kürtlerin evlerini ve isyerlerini tahrip etti, bir ev ve minibüs atese verildi. Çıkan olaylarda 36 ev ve isyerinin hasar gördü. Güvenlik güçleri önlem aldığı Altınova'ya gelen Balıkesir Valisi Selahattin Hatipoğlu ise kalabalığı sakinlestirmeye çalısarak Kürtlerin evlerinin ve isyerlerinin tahrip edilmesinin anlayısla karsıladıklarını açıkladı. Saldırılar esnasında gruba herhangi bir müdahalede bulunmayan güvenlik güçleri 37 kisiyi gözaltına aldı ve aralarında Murat Aygün'ün de bulunduğu 10 kisi tutuklandı. Öte yandan Balıkesir Valiliği, bölgeye inceleme yapmak için bir heyet gönderen Demokratik Toplum Partisi'ne, heyetin “halkı kıskırtabilecekleri” gerekçesiyle izin vermedi.


some other things I learned from this report:
-legal institutions think The Republic of Turkey has so much extra time and money that they start a process for investigating Ocalan's 28 lawyers for addressing him "many times" using the word 'Sayin' in their faxes, which for all practical purposes means "Mr."
-following the above, investigation was started for 40 PKK member inmates in Adiyaman's high security prison who filed a petition saying "we call Ocalan 'Sayin' and hereby give ourselves in".
-within that investigation the Kurdish inmates gave their depositions in Kurdish. following this a second investigation was started about them.
-it kinda goes on likes this for 50 pages. I am bored.


*try harder
**no access to those who only speak a little Spanish

Hardliner Avigdor Lieberman set to become Israel's foreign minister

Let me make a prediction: This fascist is going to help Palestinians in the long run, involuntarily of course.