What can I say, You are a National Treasure

"Exclusive:Leaked documents show PA undermined Turkey's push for UN flotilla probe" just like they did with the Goldstone report.

Still not enough

The swedish dock workers union have boycotted Israeli goods for a week. They should follow the example of comrades at COSATU and boycott them for good. I love this quote from comrade Haidar's article Gaza 2009: The Moment of Truth : "Israel needs to be isolated in exactly the same way as apartheid South Africa... thus closing the world to Israelis until they open the world to Palestinians." This means we shut them out for more than a week, no?

Haidar Eid in the Haifa Conference

Excellent talk by comrade Haidar in the Haifa Conference

Samah Idris

An interview with Samah in Al-Quds Al-Arabi.

One state support in Ramallah

One state solution support in Ramallah:

To Mr DJ

We write a letter to DJ Tiesto to cancel his concert in Eilat: "Dear Tiesto, as you must be aware, we, in Gaza, have been denied the ability to express ourselves. We are denied a voice, denied a smile, to live in safety and security, denied the right to express love, denied sleep, denied the right to express pain, denied the right to read, to write, denied to be human, and what is left? This is life under Israeli medieval siege."

Ahlaam Mostaghamni's Nisyaan and As'ad Abukhalil

Ok. So I read Ahlam Mostaghmni's new book called Nisyaan that Aladaab published that basically is a so-called help book for women to deal with men who forget them. I mean really now how pathetic can it get. When comrade street fighter sent me the link to the online version of the book I responded in Arabic:

تذكرني محاوره بالكبت النفسي الذي عانى منه القديس اوغسطين .اولا ينصحون المرأة بألا تقف امام الرجل بل وراءه. ثانيا... صلّي؟ ماذا؟ تريدني الكاتبة ان اصلي؟! الله دخيلك قصفله عمره انشالله بتجيه قذيفة (احدى مقولات جدتي التي تفوقت رغم انها سقّط رابع(لم تنه الصف الرابع) في ذكائها على الكاتبة) نصيحة واحدة... تركك؟ ايه ستين عمره ما يرجع ما بتتمحور حياتي حوله و مع مين هو... ما هذه المازوشية.حتى انها استعانت باشتون كوتشر... واو . اما و بعد... "لا تنتقمي منه او من الاخريات التي معه"... لماذا يصورون النساء بأنهم ضد بعضهم من اين هذه الصورة الكريهة؟ اين الحرية في كلماتك يا احلام؟ لم ارى الا سجنا اهبط قلبي...اين المتعة؟ اين التلذذ... اين فن العشق اين الشغف و الحب و المطارحة... تغيب المرأة و تشيخ هنا فقط في التفكير به و هو يتلذذ مع من يريد و هي تعجز حتى عن الاستمتاع بجسدها و اكتشاف جنسانيتها لأنها مشغولة... بالتفكير به و ما حل ب...! لا اقلل من قيمة الحب ابدا... بالعكس... احبّي و بكثرة و بملىء قلبك... و من دون اي تملّك... "و ده حب ايه ده يلي من غير اي حرية"

She mentions Rousseau saying that women were born to find love to be happy, while men fall in love to be happy in life. It is essentialist and limiting. I really did not like the part where she told women to pray over His loss: Him the almighty, may He rot in a dish of chilli rotten garlic. I thought it was like those commercial books one finds on the shelves at the beginning of the bookstore. Her main question is: how do men forget ((ان احبه كما لم تحب امرأة و اكون جاهزة لنسيانه كما ينسى الرجال… if you are a man, can you please tell me?
This book bothered me. I read it like i was reading the cultural mainstream ideas of women and love. But, maybe I am just being too radical again, or maybe i am not part of the audience she intended to write for.
Can you really come up with a book and tell women how to cope with their love for men who leave them? Do they deserve a book?

Now you want love? Ok. Read As'ad Abukhalil's article (i disagree with him on the idea of monogomous eternal love)
أريد طائفة يقوم فيها أبناؤها وبناتها بعصر قلبي وتقديمه في كوب لحبيبتي فقط. طائفتي تنشر قلبي الرهيف على حبل غسيل أمام منزل حبيبتي. طائفتي تسجّل خفقات قلبي على قرص مدمج وتضعه على باب الحبيبة. يعزف أبناء طائفتي وبناتها على أوتار قلبي سيمفونيا الحب الخالد. طائفتي تحفظ لي وعني كل أشعار الحب والسكينة. في طائفتي مزاوجة بين الحب والبأس في المقاومة والثورة. (translated english version on as'ad's blog angry arab, a sect against all sects)
I have to admit , that this article was the first article I read for As'ad that I didn't have to divide into pieces to read later and finished it on the spot. This is worth mentioning not the man that Mostaghamni mentions.. The latter holds as much worth to me as Walid Jumblatt the extraterrestrial does

About Turkey and other violating states

In sawt el-niswaa (the voice of the women) site article by C. Partamian, this was written "“We talked a lot about the BDS (boycott divest and sanction Israel ) campaign and its relevance after the flotilla massacre. Personally I boycott and sanction Turkey , I boycott and sanction it for its denial of genocide, for its treatment of Kurdish, for its betrayal of Iraqi borders, for its murder of Hrant Dink. Turkey talks about Gaza ’s blockade but what about its 17 years blockade of Armenia ? And no we cannot choose, we cannot be picky, we cannot say one murder is more tolerated than another and one blockade more logical than another and this is why I also boycott Israel.”
I liked comrade street fighter's reply to it so I will post:

" I completely disagree! Boycotting apartheid did not require a prerequisite of boycotting all other abusers of human rights. This is exactly what Zionists are saying: ":why single out Israel?"; why not Sudan for darfur, china for Tibet..etc But Israel is the ONLY apartheid state; it has singles out itself. The argument [...] quoted confuses all matters in a way that benefits Israel's argument against BDS."

The Hala Nahra article in Alakhbar

I wrote in a previous post about the Alakhbar dedication of a section to Sheikh Imam. Well, Hala Nahra really put me off in her article. She quotes an Egyptian researcher Samha Khawli saying that Mohammad Munir's songs aren't authentic and they are illusory because they are away from the nationalisms that Shaaban Abedelraheem and Ali Hajjar provoke.
First, Munir's songs are pan-Arab (he was the only singer who dedicated a song to the memory of Sanaa Mheidly the great, sang against the Iraq invasion, to Palestine, and always expressed his love for his country through a non-chauvinistic very romantic style). This obsession with nationalism is too much ya Ms Nahra. Munir sang poetic pieces of Sudanese, Egyptian, Palestinian and Iraqi poets and his genuis in combining various tunes and world music in his work is of no precedence. He sang for the human, al-insaan, which is greater than any form of nationalism and as far away as possible from chauvinistic patriotism. When I listen to Mohammad Munir and hear him sing the poetry of Abdelrahman Abnudi, or Abdelraheem Mansour, or Salah Jaheen, or Mahjoub Sharif (ana qalbi masaken shaa'biyya انا قلبي مساكن شعبية which means my heart is the home of the people) I forget all the information on the passport or identity card that imposes a definition of who I am. So, Ms Nahra's ignorance is extremely offensive and unintelligent also. Mohammad Munir is the king of jazz and reggae of the Arab world and who doesn't agree can go eat cucumbers.

مشغول...ههههه

أنا مشغـول عنـك بيكـــــي وماليش إلا انت وسيــــــرتك
قلبــي كلمنــي عنـــــــــك وأنـا اكلم عنك صورتـــــــك
وخيالك دايماً في خيالــــــي يا غرامي ويا حبـــي الغالـــــي
مشـــــــــغول وحياتك مشـــــــغول أنا مشغول بيك على طــــول
مشـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــغول وحياتك وحياتك مشــــــــــــــغول

Great section on Sheikh Imam

Alakhbar dedicates a section to the Sheikh Imam

Just how low can academics get

"Most Jewish communities around the world, with the notable exception of the one in Ethiopia, can trace their genetic lineage back to the Levant" Genetics? genetics! Do we need gene pools to know that? But, no, it gets worse: "The journal authors collected DNA samples from 14 Jewish Diaspora communities and compared these with the genetic makeup to 69 non-Jewish populations from the same or neighbouring regions." Can we get the DNA of Walid Jumblatt and attribute his existence to a weird kind of a lying, sleazy, slimy extraterrestrial? Mumkin! mushkuli. This reminds me of how some scientists proposed that same sex desire is attributed to a gene abnormality. A shame

اول مرة

Great. Now I am stuck on Awwil Marra اول مرة

مشغول

I am stuck on the song Mashghoul by Abdel haleem since the morning. طب و بعد بكرا؟

الاتصال

كم احتجت لاسمع ذلك الصوت من قلب الحصار و كم اشتقت له. اشرقت شمس لندن و تبخرت غيومها السوداء و رجعت الاحلام... وعد سيتحقق بعد ثلاث سنوات و زيارة مطولة

The Arab Ships to Gaza

So many activists are arguing that the ships to sail from Lebanon to break the siege on Gaza shouldn't be leaving at this time, but rather should wait to join the next "international flotilla." Some are complaining that it is becoming so egoistic and that this is an egoistics initiative and so on and so on. These arguments are not only lame and neurotic, but also superior. Why should the non-International, or the non-Whites, send ships to Gaza like the "international"? Who put rules against other people organizing ships to break the siege on Gaza? Are non-international incompetent? Well, other than the fact that we don't have blue eyes and blonde hair, we believe this is necessary and any initiative to break the siege should be WELCOMED and ENDORSED. This reminds me of the unintelligent and incompetent decision not to support the courageous group of activists that were striking (and fasting) in front of the Rafeh Crossing at the Egyptian side in early to mid 2009. This is exactly the Western, bureaucratic, NGOized thinking that gets on my nerves.
I think that Free Gaza should endorse the decision of the ships leaving from Lebanon, if not... then who am I, I don't have blue eyes and blonde hair.

Note Down... note down

These artisits have cancelled their concerts in the occupied 1948 territories ("Israel") till now:

Elvis Costello
Gil Scott-Heron
the Klaxons and Gorillaz Sound System
the Pixies
Carlos Santana

Devendra Banhart

We just wrote a letter to DJ Tiesto from PSCABI. It will be published soon

Jamal el Khudary & Inc

So the "Palestinian International Campaign to Break the Siege on Gaza welcomes the European initiative to open all Israeli crossings to Gaza." OK. But, if the Rafeh Crossing remains closed how the f*** are people going to move in and out? Jamal el Khodary and Inc agrees with the European Union that if spaghetti can get into Gaza, then the siege is broken? This supremecist notion that if people in Gaza have just enough water, or electricity or chocolate that the White man thinks is enough for them, then there is no problem at all.

Racist and Proud

"Haifa University is proud to continue being the academic home for security forces and to teach the IDF leadership a large number of different and diverse perspectives" Might I remind you of Amitav Ghosh and Margaret Atwood... the anti-oppositional, hypocritical intellectuals of our time.