Charging for The Friday Times

Now they've decided to go subscription-only....

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Managing Editor

For me, the timing sucks. If they'd put that up last year, I might have ponied up some dough. Not this year, though. I don't get most of the jokes, the analyses are slanted or stilted, but sometimes little gems would shine through and provide an interesting insight into a society that is very different from the one I live in.

This week's issue (hot off the presses) has an interesting article by Leon Menezes that I reproduce in its entirety due to lack of permalinks. It turns out that he's a man after my own heart...

Another thing I did not do was to celebrate Independence Day. As a patriotic Pakistani, I celebrate it 364 days of the year – by being a good citizen, paying my taxes, obeying the laws of the land and doing all the things a loyal citizen is expected to do. But come August 14, the speeches and newspaper supplements, and I cringe at what we have turned this country into. Fifty-five years and the only thing we have to be proud of is our cricket team (and that too, only when they are winning).

What passes for “celebrations” is nothing but a chance for the entertainment-starved hordes of Karachi to drive all around the city, especially to the seaside. This “tamasha” started in the days of Zia-ul-Haq and ever since, we have been desecrating the flag by festooning it all over buildings and vehicles and leaving it to soil in the following days. I think we can pay better respect to the flag and Independence Day by doings things with dignity and decorum.

I forgot to mention this outrage from my recent beach vacation: an American flag beach towel. And yes, a bikini-clad buffoon had spread it out on the sand and was laying on top of it. Later, I saw it draped over her house's deck railing.

What's next? American flag toilet paper???  

10:51:58 PM  comment []    

Battle of the Bulge

Muslim clerics, who run the site, insisted the wall is stable and accused Israel of trying to fabricate a crisis as a way of asserting control over the shrine in Jerusalem's Old City.

And who knows better about fabricating a crisis than muslim clerics?

Daniel Pipes worries that a collapse could knock down lots of dominoes...

Judging by prior incidents in Jerusalem - the arson at Al-Aqsa Mosque in 1969, the opening of a tunnel in 1996 - this disaster would lead at least to wide-scale fighting in Jerusalem and a heated international crisis. If things really went wrong, it could precipitate a wave of violence in Europe and a full-blown Arab-Israeli war.

This wacko page has a picture of the Temple Mount and the bulge.  

10:35:19 PM  comment []    

Myths & Facts Online: A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict

MYTH

"Israel forced the Palestinian refugees to stay in camps in the Gaza Strip."

FACT

During the years that Israel controlled the Gaza Strip, a consistent effort was made to get the Palestinians into permanent housing. The Palestinians opposed the idea because the frustrated and bitter inhabitants of the camps provided the various terrorist factions with their manpower. Moreover, the Arab states routinely pushed for the adoption of UN resolutions demanding that Israel desist from the removal of Palestinian refugees from camps in Gaza and the West Bank. They preferred to keep the Palestinians as symbols of Israeli "oppression."

Now the camps are in the hands of the Palestinian Authority (PA), but little is being done to improve the lot of the Palestinians living in them. Journalist Netty Gross visited Gaza and asked an official why the camps there hadn't been dismantled. She was told the Palestinian Authority had made a "political decision" not to do anything for the more than 400,000 Palestinians living in the camps until the final-status talks with Israel took place (Jerusalem Report, July 6, 1998).

I've spent too much of today reading through this guide. While clearly heavily pro-Israeli, it does allow Israeli mistakes and provocations. It lays bare the Arab world's abuse of Palestinian refugees, their fundamental unwillingness to make peace (externally or internally) with the reality that Israel won't go away.

I've been loath to say this for fear of seeming intolerant or bigoted, but it seems that Arabs have a fundamental disregard for empirical truths. Show them evidence, they will deny. They neither support nor allow critical self-evaluations. It seems that Arab leaders lie, lie some more, then when faced with unsavory facts, blame them on others and continue the lying. They are not autocratic, they're prevarocratic.

It may take a while, but the truth always wins in the end. Unfortunately, I think it will get worse for Arabs before it gets better.

4:21:24 PM  comment []