Spiderman, G.I. Joe, He-man, She-Ra, Leonardo, Polly Pocket, Rainbow Brite, Strawberry Shortcake and Luke Skywalker starring in the latest installment of survivor. Check it out.

The ara world has to brace itself for the latest christian, american, zionist conspiracy: Gay arabs. Gasp.

When Ahmad Mahfouz told his mother he is gay, she took him to a psychiatrist, thinking he had a disease that could be cured by antidepressants. When that didn’t work, she urged him to date a woman. He ignored her advice. “So now, whenever she sees me, she beats me with anything she can lay her hands on: a metal hanger, leather belt, her shoes.”

The 19-year-old Lebanese college student is unusual in his candor and willingness to be identified, though not photographed. But more Arabs are coming out as gays, or at least coming to terms with their sexuality, even though in some countries they face laws that can land them in jail, and extremists who beat them up because Islam condemns homosexuality.
On top of that, homosexuality is widely seen as a disease spread by the United States and
Israel to corrupt Arabs and undermine their religious faith.

[...]

A recent Egyptian news report posted by Al-Arabiya TV on its Web site described a Kuwaiti gay wedding party in Cairo and triggered hundreds of blistering messages. Some of them said insurgents in Iraq should be killing gays instead of innocent Iraqis. Many claimed the United States and Israel were promoting homosexuality to strip Arab men of their manhood.

LOL LOL LOL LOL

So, let me get this straight: Israel and the US are promoting homosexuality to undermine arabs’ religious faith and strip them of their manhood? How does that work again? How strong is your faith if it’s undermined by the existance of gay people? What kind of manhood do you have if it gets stripped by the fact that some men like to play the skinflute? What the hell are those people talking about?

Let’s be honest: Homosexuality exists in arab countries and it’s becoming more “in your face”, especially in Egypt. The fact is, it’s rampant in closed arab socities, like a lot of the Gulf countries. They just don’t wanna admit it. They believe that if they ignore and deny- and maybe kill a couple of gays- that the problem will go away. Yeah, cause that works. Gotta give them props for keeping up with the APU rules: It always helps to blame the US and Israel, no matter how illogical the accusation may be. They must be putting something in the water, or putting subliminal messages on american TV shows and songs that turn arab men into gays. But if that’s the case, wouldn’t it be easier to try to convert them into jews or christians or something? Wouldn’t that be more beneficial to them, then, you know, turning all arab men into fags?

Hmm….

There is a syrian TV-show, being broadcasted on a Saudi-owned TV network, during Ramadan, that attacks terrorism and Jihadis. I must be dreaming.

A new television series being broadcast around the Middle East tells the story of Arabs living in residential compounds in Saudi Arabia and the militant Islamists who want to blow them up so they can collect their rewards in heaven — 72 beautiful virgins.

The show’s message: terrorism is giving Islam a bad name, and Muslims are suffering because of the actions of a few.

Amazing. And was it embraced?

The programs, which began last Tuesday on the first day of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, have come under a blistering attack on the Internet in Arabic language chat rooms.

Oh..

The critics are demanding the Saudi-owned and Dubai-based Middle East Broadcasting Corporation, a popular Arabic satellite television station that bought the show and broadcasts it across the region, cancel it.

Others lambasted its Syrian Muslim director and producer, Najdat Anzour, as an infidel for tarnishing the image of Islam.

It’s not all bad, however…

But still others have praised the groundbreaking series.

[...]

“The series is aimed at those who have not made up their minds about terrorism yet,” he said, puffing on a cigarette in his studio in Damascus.

“We want to tell them that Islam is a religion of tolerance, peace and dialogue,” he added. “It’s not a religion of violence.”

An advertisement for the show aired on different Middle East television stations before it debuted made clear its anti-terrorist theme.

It said the show was dedicated to “all innocent victims of terrorism.”

[...]

Anzour said he wanted to focus on the victims of such bombings through the story of five families from Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco and Jordan who, like tens of thousands of Arabs, went to oil-rich Saudi Arabia to make a living.

Anzour also focused on the influence of underground clergymen luring young men from the more moderate message of other clerics and brainwashing them into becoming suicide bombers.

Bjad, the former militant, said the show’s “provocative” title was just one reason it has come under attack. He said it has incensed militants because it touches on the violent actions of al-Qaida in Saudi Arabia and on Islamists whose radical mind-set offers justification for those who want to commit terrorism.

Bjad, 35, said he decided to work on the show because it offered a way to counter such radical views. “In the serial, we refute every militant argument by referring to the Quran,” Bjad told The Associated Press from Dubai.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

Baby steps people. We will hopefully get there one day.

Ok, even though i said that maybe we should keep god out of it, this caught my eye and made me wonder about yet another theory: Maybe God hates Jihadis?

Training camps used by jihadists battling with the Indian army for control of Kashmir were buried by landslides or left in ruins by the earthquake, bringing hope of a new opportunity for peace-making after a 16-year Islamic insurgency.

India and Pakistan, nuclear rivals who both lay claim to Kashmir in its entirety, have fought two of their three wars over the territory.

Security analysts said yesterday that the earthquake in Pakistan’s highly-militarised Kashmir region had “significantly depreciated” the insurgents’ capacity to carry on their fight for independence in neighbouring Indian-administered Kashmir.

“The militant groups and their army handlers will now be totally absorbed in relief, rescue and rehabilitation efforts,” said Arun Sahgal, of the United Service Institution in New Delhi.

India claims that Pakistan backs various insurgent groups, assisting them across the line of control that divides the disputed territory. Pakistan denies the claim.

Military sources said that an estimated 1,000 Pakistani soldiers died in the earthquake after their concrete-roofed bunkers along the Kashmir frontier collapsed. Security sources said 15 militant training camps had been put out of action by the earthquake.

Almost all groups fighting the Indian army in Kashmir had ”camp offices” either in Muzafarrabad, the devastated capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, or surrounding areas.

And now they are all out of business thanks to this quake.

Hmmm……..

God I love this country:

A professor at the faculty of physical education in Port Said was very lightly reprimanded after it was found out that he had translated a book into Arabic, then claimed it as his own. Investigators were asked why there were no harsher legal actions taken against the professor who had committed plagiarism, the most serious crime in academia. The response? Translating is a creative art, no less important than writing, and that what the professor had done was like doing a good job, but forgetting the final touches, which in this case was the tiny detail that he had not actually written the book.

Only in Egypt man. Only in Egypt.

Reading the newspaper today, I was confronted with the news of the Pakistani Earthquake and how 20,000 people are dead so far. Given how God’s punishment to America, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, only yielded less then 1000 dead, one would have to conclude that God really hates the Pakistanis and thinks that they deserve to be punished more then the american infidels. It must be because the Pakistani troops oin Iraq or their unflinching support to Israel that this happend to them. Oh, no, wait a minute.

Okay, better theory, god hates colored people.

No?

Fine, then maybe we should just leave God out of it?

Allright! Fine by me!

That was the headline. For the story, which is true, go here!

A wonderbra helped save a women’s life by stopping and circumverting a bullet. Nice!

Remember how those hand-picked Saudi women gave Karen Hughes a hard time about how Saudi women are not opressed? Rememebr how i noted on how they must say that, or else they will get their ass kicked at home? Now Remember that Episode on Oprah where they brought on the story of Rania El-Baz, the Saudi TV presenter, whose Husband beat the shit out of her to the degree where he thought she was dead and how she broke the silence on saudi domestic abuse by agreeing to show her face? Well, if you missed it, that’s what happend, and now she has escaped Saudi- after not being allowed to leave it- and is now safe and sound in Paris, where no one can beat her up, and her views on what goes on in Saudi do not go well at all with what those women told Karen Hughes.

After 12 operations, Baz has recovered her beauty - if anything, the few scars that remain are cogent, rather than disfiguring. She sips a glass of St Emilion and emphasises that she is a devout Muslim - “but I do not think about who is Muslim or who is Christian - we all come from God.” But, she adds, “none of this is about a religion, it is about society. What happened to me happens to women all over the world. But you can take what happens to women all over the world, and in Saudi Arabia, multiply it by ten.

“It is a society in which we have the worst of all worlds. We have a private, closed society according to the Bedouin tribal system, mixed with Givenchy and the invasion of technology from the west. We have the traditions of the Bedouin equipped with every technological gadget you can imagine. And then we have the people who hate anything American or western. And all the world sees is an Arab country, full of oil and full of money.”

[...]
For all her moments of doubt, Baz has fundamentally challenged the culture of silence in her country over violence against women. “In our country, if a woman complains to the police or a member of the family that her husband is violent, she is told to be patient, men are like that. What will the neighbours say? What will your family and friends say? Do nothing, otherwise he will divorce you - you will be a divorced woman, a whore, you will lose your future. So if a woman is abused, there is this mixture of humiliation and pride. She is afraid of speaking out, of being criticised. She wants to keep this perfect image of a woman.”

“And this is what we have to change among women. We have to change ourselves, to awaken women who think that for her husband to beat her is normal, and that she must remain silent in public.”

Rania El Baz, we salute you for your courage and candor. Let’s hope things do change over there.

Break out the champaigne, Gerard “the dipshit” Shroeder is out of the Chancellor seat and Merkel is in. Wohoooooooooo.

Conservative leader Angela Merkel said Monday she had reached a “good and fair” deal that will make her Germany’s first female chancellor in a power-sharing agreement that would end
Gerhard Schroeder’s seven years in office.

Under the agreement, which ends a three-week political deadlock, Merkel would have to give most of the seats in the new Cabinet to Schroeder’s Social Democrats as the price of governing, including top jobs such as foreign minister.

Merkel also said good relations with the United States — another possible sticking point with Schroeder’s party — would be a priority. “I am convinced that good trans-Atlantic relations are an important task and that they are in Germany’s interests,” she said.

That’s my Girl!

Things are interesting under the helm of Papa Ratzi: The Vatican will allow Gay men to become priests. Sure, it’s not like many of them weren’t gay anyway, but now it will be official. There are , of course, some conditions:

The Vatican will allow gay men into the priesthood if they can show they have been celibate for at least three years, a report in leading Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera said on Friday.

But the Vatican will ban men “who publicly manifest their homosexuality” or show an “attraction” to homosexual culture “even if it is only intellectually,” Corriere added.

It said the views were contained in a highly secret, 16-page document which is expected to be released next month.The document is an “instruction” by the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education and covers one of the most sensitive issues in the Roman Catholic Church.

The Corriere report said: “Candidates who show a homosexual tendency will not be allowed into the priesthood unless they can demonstrate that they have been able to remain chaste for at least three years.”

Ok, so you can be gay, but you can’t act like it or talk about it or even say it’s ok if you wanna be a priest. It’s like the Vatican own “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, only with a slight dose of extra self-hate involved. Fabolous.

Ohh, how you must’ve missed me!

Sorry for being gone, but Life has been getting in the way of me Blogging. I promise to resume it tommorow, because today I will address the 56 e-mails that need replying to in my Inbox. Procrastination, thy name is Me.

See y’all tommorow!

Aww. Poor Piglet. This wouldn’t happen if the british attempts of tolerance and religious understanding weren’t so retarded.

In case some of you don’t know or weren’t aware, there is a group of US Marines and Secret Service agents currently residing in every major Hotel in Egypt. They are not there to protect any US visitor or anything of the like: They are there to secure the hotels , they have been doing this for a while now and they are there on a permenant basis it seems. You don’t believe me, go to J.W. Marriot. You will see them there.

The reason why they are there?

Ehh, the Ministry of Interior has apparently acknoweldged its inability to secure those “terrorist targets”, so they outsourced the job to the americans. Yeah. The country of 2 million policemen can not secure its hotels. Don’t you just feel proud to be an egyptian?

The pragmatist in me is not against it; I am glad we have someone there who knows how to do their job for a change. It’s the principle that pisses me off, or what the news implies about the state of this country: We have become a country that admitedly can’t even secure it’s own hotels. That’s how inept we are.

Sigh…

The Venezuelan government has implemented an interesting program : The poor could bring in trash, and trade it for Food. I guess it beats looking inside the trashcan for food. Now the people will fight over the trash instead of the food inside the trash. That’s what I call Dignity.

She and other Venezuelans who came to turn in their trash in a Caracas slum last weekend said they felt grateful to President Hugo Chavez and his political ally, Mayor Freddy Bernal, who promoted the program as a way to clean up the streets while helping to feed the needy.

No word on what will happen the moment they run out of trash.

But a majority of Venezuelans remain poor, and many among the hundreds who showed up lugging bulging plastic bags and scrap metal said life remains a struggle despite some improvements. One man brought an old sofa that had been lying in the street.

Bonilla turned in a bag of clothes and a bag of newspapers weighing 18 pounds, and in exchange chose a bottle of cooking oil and a small bag of powdered milk.

18 pounds of junk = cooking oil bottle and a small bag of powderd milk. Kaa-ching.

Some of Chavez’s leading opponents accuse his government of running handout programs that help the poor just enough to win their political allegiance while not addressing deeper issues of poverty.

You think?

I was gonna report it, but Nadz beat me to it: In Britian, the Dudley council (in a Tory area nonetheless) has banned all all work pictures and knick-knacks of novelty pigs and “pig-related items” because a muslim employee complained that she found it to be offensive. Among the items : A Piglet (from winnie the Pooh) Box tissue. Yes, people, Piglet is Haram. It’s part of the super-conspiracy to make muslims like pork, or something.

And the forces of “educated tolerance” and “cultural understanding” of course went right ahead and followed through without thinking on the piglet ban: A Headteacher in Yorkshire has banned books containing stories about pigs from the classroom in case they offend Muslim children.Guess they won’t be reading the story of the three piggies and the Big Bad Wolf anytime soon.

And if that’s not enough, this stupid moron called Chris Doyle, who is the director of something called “the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding” is asking that the English flag be changed, because it’s an “insensitive reminder” of the crusades.

Doyle added that it was now time for England to find a new flag and a patron saint who is “not associated with our bloody past and one we can all identify with.”

Ok, let me be the first to say this to you England: Don’t you fuckin dare change a thing.

I am sorry, but this is bullshit. Imagine if someone sued muslims because the word “Jihad” or Allahu Akbar” offended them? Imagine if someone sued Turkey (which is secular mind you) for using the symbol of the cresecent on their flag, which brings also a bloody reminder of the Islmaic expansion wars, which i am sure not everyone back then was happy with. Would you support that? And does that mean no one can use the crescent again out of fear of being associated with it? Are we becoming this retarded?

And I am sorry, but piglet offends muslims? Piglet? Pictures of Pigs? Since when? I have yet to meet a single muslim in Egypt who thinks a picture a pig is offensive. Au contraire. Egyptian muslims love pigs. That’s their favorite nickname for the Jews, and on a good day, sometimes even the christians.

But maybe that’s the key to all this: British people need to start suing back. Women groups should start suing the Hijab and Niqab, cause i am sure it offends them. Victims of terrorist attacks by islamists should start suing Mosques that even mention the word “Jihad”. Customers should sue Burger King to bring back that ice cream that had an inscription that in some way resembled the word “Allah” and then go buy it and eat it in front of the house of the dude who got BK to ban it in the first place. Hell, and the students who go to the same school with that Moron who insisted that going to school wearing the school Uniform instead of the Shiraz Qamiss violates her religious rights should sue the school for the right of wearing whatever the hell they liked or even going there naked. After all, they could decide to convert to the Nudadistic religion, which was founded by Egypt’s own Big Pharaoh.

My point is simple: Live and let live. You get offended by unislamic things, move to an islamic country. You want to wear Shiraz Qamiss to school, go to Pakistan. The cross on the flag offends you, move to Israel or Saudi Arabia. You don’t like the image of pigs on mugs, well, go to a therapist you freak. You have pig-issues, probably a Pig Phobia. Just don’t use Islam and muslims as your excuse; they both get exploited enough as it is.

In order to meet their recruitment targets, the US Army is lowering the bar and letting more people in who scored on the lower side on their apptitude tests. Not very wise army people. Not very wise.

The International Crisis Group just issued a report on Egypt that examines the chances for democratisation following the country’s first democratic elections. Check it out.

Her latest post is awesome.

Moneyshot:

We are constantly being told that we have to sit down after each terrorist attack and analyze the motives and grievances of terrorists. We’re supposed to wring our hands and ask “why?” and ponder what we can do to appease people with explosives. Christopher Hitchens, however, is introducing a radical idea: Why Ask Why?

So, what did Indonesia do to deserve this, or bring it on itself? How will the slaughter in Bali improve the lot of the Palestinians? Those who look for the connection will be doomed to ask increasingly stupid questions and to be content with increasingly wicked answers.

On one level, I think that understanding the pschology of the enemy is a wise move - understanding a person’s motives does not mean that you agree with those motives. However, I also agree that maybe, just maybe, there isn’t a rationale behind a lot of terrorism except the illogic of theocratic ideology.

Instead of asking if we are to blame, perhaps we should try just blaming terrorist attacks on terrorists themselves - on their distorted worldview, their ideology, their malice. Instead of thinking of ways to appease them, we should be thinking of ways to defeat them, both militarily and intellectually.

Amen.