Free Alan

For those of you wondering what the link on the right is, it's an article about Alan Johnston. He's a reporter for the BBC and was kidnapped in Gaza. A few Palestinians have even set up a website for him as well. Click on the photo on the right for updated BBC information.

Ghettoization of Baghdad

ABC News is reporting that the US Army is putting up concrete walls in Baghdad, separating Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods. What the hell kind of solution is that? People aren't getting along, so we'll put a wall between them - "good fences make good neighbors?" So now we can separate all neighborhoods into only Sunni or only Shiite, so that if anyone of the other religious sect goes into the wrong neighborhood they can get beat up. So that if anyone of the other religious sect wants to bomb someone, they know this neighborhood is all one sect. Yee-haw! Why bother trying to get people to live together and cooperate, when we can divide them along sectarian lines.

Egyptian Hijab

This one goes out to all those people I keep talking to who tell me that Islam is horrible and forces women to cover up. Two anchorwomen in Egypt want to wear the hijab on TV. So what's the big deal? Well, the TV station (state-owned) won't let them. They went to civil court and state court and both courts said they could wear a veil on TV, but the TV station still won't let them do it.

New Blog

A friend recently sent me the link to a new Middle East blog called Whippersnap. I prefer to call it "The Middle East for Dummies" or "The High School Guide to the Middle East." It's very amusing, and generally correct. There are a few things they got wrong, but hey, compared to conservative blogs they're a hell of a lot better. This blog is also easy to understand, speaking plain English and using good comparisons. So check it out!

New YouTube Iraq

There's a new YouTube section set up for the Mulitnational Forces in Iraq. It's www.youtube.com/MNFIraq. There you can watch actual combat movies, edited for security and offensiveness of course. I'm really not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, it will allow ordinary people to see what the troops over there are seeing. But on the other hand, it could go the way of Reality TV and you could get people cheering for other people to die because they just can't grasp that this isn't a reality show, it IS reality. I'm reminded of Max Headroom. I guess I'm showing my age there too. In the 1980s, Max Headroom was a TV show (among other things) and it's vision of the future was several hundred TV channels and people were just glued to the TV and TV shows were everything. I feel like our society has started down that slope already.

Huzzah - Hostages Freed!

Yes, you've all heard that the British hostages have been freed! And without anybody firing a shot - let's hear it for diplomacy. Of course, it might have helped that an Iranian diplomat who was kidnapped in Iraq was freed too. And the Iraqis are trying to get the US to free 5 other Iranians. Iran says they are diplomats, the US says they were helping terrorists. All I know is, they were affiliated with the Iranian Embassy, which in the rest of the world means you get deported for illegal activity, not 'disappeared.'