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POPSMaking a Comeback: Male Belly Dancers in Egypt
More: Mesbaah is shimmying in a society that has long struggled with ever-changing limits of social tolerance. A carved relief at a pharaonic-era tomb near Cairo shows today's dance prohibitions were yesterday's norm. It depicts a chorus line of men at a religious festival; each wears a sash knotted on his left hip, a fashion for dancing men and women that lingers today. Male performers were once considered more reputable than females. In his book "The Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians," Edward William Lane, an Englishman who lived in 19th-century Cairo, observed that male dancers were preferred by Cairenes who thought women "ought not to expose themselves." From 1834 to 1849, women dancers, known as ghawazee, were banned from the city. Rakia Hassan, 62, a retired dancer, recalls that in her childhood, males peddled their skills along with women on Muhammed Ali Street, then a one-stop shop for belly dancer hires. Me: Never even knew males use to belly dance.
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POPSBritain Drops Label "War on Terror" And to think that those of us who suggested that describing this ideological battle as a war only aided fanatics were labeled as unpatriotic traitors. What a deference 6 years makes.
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POPSTV Show seeks to Humanize Arab-Israelis More: But "Arab Work" is more than a wacky sitcom about life for the Arab minority in Israel. It's a risky attempt to use slapstick humor to lampoon both sides in this deadly, divisive arena. "It's not perfect, but under the right circumstances it can be for Israeli-Arabs what 'The Cosby Show' was for blacks in America," said Vered Livne, the executive director of Agenda, an Israeli media strategy firm. "It has a chance to lower the barriers that Israeli Jews put up when they hear an Arab voice." Recent studies have found that discrimination against Arab-Israelis is on the rise. In one poll, 60 percent of Jewish Israelis said they felt hatred or hostility when they heard someone speaking Arabic. Three-quarters said they wouldn't live in the same buildings with Arabs. More than half said Arabs and Jews should be separated in places of entertainment.
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POPSIRAQ: Reduction in Violence = Ethnically Cleansed Neighborhoods More: Christoff’s conclusions echo that of ret. Gen. James Jones last month, who observed “progress” in a Shi’a-led ethnic cleansing campaign. Also in attendance at the hearing was Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) Stuart Bowen. In his quarterly report to Congress released today, Bowen acknowledged the reduction in violence but stated that it has not been accompanied by tangible political reconciliation, a finding that was neglected by the traditional media in its reporting today. In Baghdad, for example, Provincial Reconstruction Team officials note: Despite reduced violence, officials are pessimistic that lasting reconciliation is occurring. … In Diyala, there is a desire to work toward reconciliation, but it will take years to overcome ill-will between tribes. Earlier this month, Gen. David Petraeus confidently declared, “There’s a local reconciliation” in Diyala province.
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POPSRevealed: W knew Saddam was Willing to Bargain for Exile W is suppose to be our first MBA President but he can not even conduct a cost benefit analysis. Cost: Whatever minuscule amount compared to what we have spent that Saddam would settle for; and any bogus information his generals had convinced him existed. Benefits: 28,000 soldiers not wounded; 3800 soldiers not killed; 600,000 to 1,000,000 Iraqis not killed; $600 Billion to $1 Trillion dollars not wasted; standing and trust within the world community preserved. Ultimate cost to Bush: not looking tough; not having Iraqi oil under the control of US oil producers.
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POPSBanned from Iraq: Blackwater Mercenaries More: Blackwater is one of many security firms contracted by the U.S. government during the Iraq war. An estimated 25,000-plus employees of private security firms are working in Iraq, guarding diplomats, reconstruction workers and government officials. As many as 200 are believed to have been killed on the job, according to U.S. congressional reports. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee estimated in February that nearly $4 billion had been spent on security contracts amid the insurgency that followed the U.S. invasion in 2003 -- costs that have forced the delay, cancellation or scaling back of some reconstruction projects. Sunday's incident highlighted concerns in the U.S. Congress about a subject that one lawmaker, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Illinois, has called "one of the biggest gray areas of the entire war effort" -- the legal status of private security firms in Iraq.
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POPSPetraeus Political Ambitions Guide Decision Making More: Mr Khadim is sceptical that the "surge" is working. Commenting on the US military alliance with the Sunni tribes in Anbar province, he said: "They will take your money, but when the money runs out they will change sides again."
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POPSIraqis disagree with Bush/Petraeus Propaganda Spin More: Meanwhile, the level of satisfaction in other quality-of-life categories -- including the availability of jobs, supply of clean water and freedom of movement -- has decreased since March. The poll reveals a disconnect between U.S. commanders' view of a steadily improving situation in Iraq and a bleaker outlook among Iraqis.
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POPSBush knew Saddam had NO Weapons of Mass Destruction But the CIA officers working on the Sabri case kept collecting information. "We checked on everything he told us." French intelligence eavesdropped on his telephone conversations and shared them with the CIA. These taps "validated" Sabri's claims, according to one of the CIA officers. The officers brought this material to the attention of the newly formed Iraqi Operations Group within the CIA. But those in charge of the IOG were on a mission to prove that Saddam did have WMD and would not give credit to anything that came from the French. "They kept saying the French were trying to undermine the war," said one of the CIA officers.
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POPSCheney Aide, "We're One Attack Away From Our Goal" More revealing is Goldsmith's description of how the Bush administration systematically violated one law after the next employing tactics that are truly the hallmark of the most lawless third-world dictators. They literally decided they would break whatever laws they wanted based on patently baseless memos issued by obedient followers like John Yoo. Not only did they do this in complete secrecy from Congress, they refused even to allow Executive Branch officials who were told to follow orders to see the legal basis for what they were told to do. Goldsmith's first experienced this extraordinary concealment, or "strict compartmentalization," in late 2003 when, he recalls, Addington angrily denied a request by the N.S.A.'s inspector general to see a copy of the Office of Legal Counsel's legal analysis supporting the secret surveillance program. "Before I arrived in O.L.C., not even N.S.A. lawyers were allowed to see the Justice Department's legal analysis of what N.S.A. was doing,"
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POPSWho is the US fighting in Iraq? And when you hear Cheney say we have to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq, you will know that most of the people the US is fighting there are no such thing. Bomb Saudi Arabia! Wait I mean, look over there......it's the Iranians! Bomb the Iranians. Frigging nutjob lying chickenhawks.
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POPSPowell spills it about Bush / Iraq Al-Qaeda, Powell asserted, was only 10% of the problem in Iraq and Nouri al-Maliki, its prime minister, lacked the political will to establish an effective government. After a promising start to the surge at the beginning of the year, 453 unidentified corpses were found on the streets of Baghdad last month, 41% more than the 321 bodies found in January, according to unofficial Iraqi health ministry statistics.
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POPSUnsupervised Bush = KABOOM! Well what did you expect from the guy who couldn't find oil in Texas? Maybe W stands for Wile E. Coyote? (my sincere apologies to Wile E. Coyote).
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POPSThe Ties That Bind - Hussein, Bin Laden, BCCI and Bush When the BCCI scandal began to break in the late 1980s, the Sr. Bush administration did what it could to sit on it. The Justice Department went after the culprits -- was virtually forced to -- only after New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau did. But evidence about BCCI's broader links exist in numerous U.S. and international investigations. Now could be a good time to take another look at the BCCI-Osama-Saddam-Saudi-Bush connection.
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