Sunday 14/3/2010
Too funny to pass.br /br /strongFrom: Foreign Policy, by David Kenner; Feb 3, 2010./strongnbsp; br /span style="color: #45818e;"emDespite having served for years as a distinguished Pakistani diplomat, Akbar Zeb reportedly cannot receive accreditation as Pakistan's ambassador to Saudi Arabia. The reason, apparently, has nothing to do with his credentials, and everything to do with his name -- which, in Arabic, translates to "biggest dick": /ememIn Saudi Arabia, size does count.
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div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_OH3nPgKEbv0/S1zsoOdeN9I/AAAAAAAAAzs/SP56Rd0LdR4/s1600-h/books.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"img border="0" height="200" mt="true" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_OH3nPgKEbv0/S1zsoOdeN9I/AAAAAAAAAzs/SP56Rd0LdR4/s200/books.jpg" width="148" //abr //divDid you know that there are more cooking books in Arabic before 1400 than in all other languages combined?nbsp; I didn't, but I cannot say that I am surprised given how finicky Middle Easternersnbsp;are about the foodnbsp;they eat.strongemnbsp;/em/strongThis and many other tantalizing tidbits appear in strongemMedieval
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Here is a piece from a href="http://www.consortiumnews.com/"ConsortiumNews/a that shreds Obama's speech for it faulty reasoning:br /br /em"Whether Obama deserved the Nobel Peace Prize is not the point. He didn’t. The fact is he got it, and was gifted with the chance of a lifetime to make a classic speech on the politics of peace-making, a speech that in the glare of Nobel could have attained instant biblical standing./embr /emHe failed
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a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OH3nPgKEbv0/SxsyWM9C5rI/AAAAAAAAAzc/2RCpnC0fpeA/s1600-h/Picture3.jpg"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411974734231561906" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 291px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 391px" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OH3nPgKEbv0/SxsyWM9C5rI/AAAAAAAAAzc/2RCpnC0fpeA/s400/Picture3.jpg" border="0" //a divp align="center"span style="font-size:85%;"emMy Homeland!br /A word that sends chills down my spinebr /Emotions that confound mebr /And questions that persistbr /Is my homeland the place where I was bornbr /Or the place that I live inbr /Is my homeland the land that pushed me awaybr /Or the land that welcomed
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span style="font-size:180%;"U/spanntil a few weeks ago, I had never been camping. So when a friend, an experienced outdoors man, offered to take me on a camping trip, it was hard to say no. Not even the two degree overnight temperature forecast for the weekend of our trip, dimmed my enthusiasm; on the contrary, the extra challenge strengthened my resolve.br /diva href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OH3nPgKEbv0/SuZLwNobV3I/AAAAAAAAAyA/ZZSgx1h2E10/s1600-h/October09+043.jpg"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5397084495115147122" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px;
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a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OH3nPgKEbv0/SsAkfTY36TI/AAAAAAAAAww/rCBkgNrO83E/s1600-h/Picture5.gif"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5386345274534258994" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 186px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 152px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OH3nPgKEbv0/SsAkfTY36TI/AAAAAAAAAww/rCBkgNrO83E/s400/Picture5.gif" border="0" //abr /divIt was a eureka moment eighteen years in the making. Two years ago, a wealthy man made me a proposal I could not refuse. A family member with an inherited neurological condition was my patient. She suffered from a disease that I had been researching for a number of
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a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OH3nPgKEbv0/SqvH8A2SC4I/AAAAAAAAAwo/-5Q9hBUMqSw/s1600-h/automatons.png"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5380614013657942914" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 352px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 263px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OH3nPgKEbv0/SqvH8A2SC4I/AAAAAAAAAwo/-5Q9hBUMqSw/s400/automatons.png" border="0" //a divspan style="font-size:130%;"strongFossilized/strong/span thinking inflicts people who rigidly adhere to an ideology, be it religious, political or philosophical. Lest anyone misrepresent my post, let me say up front that when it comes to religious fossilized thinking, no religion is immune to fossilized thinking. Fossilized religious thinkers:/divulliConsider everyone who
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span style="font-size:130%;"strongPakistan/strong/span today occupies the front and center the global media's attention. Pakistan is also on my mind. You see, for the past several months, my younger brother has been in Islamabad working for an international organization. I worry about him, but not excessively; we've lived through more dangerous times in Beirut of the early eighties. In one of those ironic twists of fate, twenty years ago, it was my
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a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OH3nPgKEbv0/SqFI3BwzbpI/AAAAAAAAAuY/DW14-BSRKzE/s1600-h/Picture3.gif"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377659540260220562" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 323px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OH3nPgKEbv0/SqFI3BwzbpI/AAAAAAAAAuY/DW14-BSRKzE/s400/Picture3.gif" border="0" //abr /diva href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OH3nPgKEbv0/SqFHza5Lr5I/AAAAAAAAAuQ/VNUfBr3vys4/s1600-h/Picture1.JPG"/aI had been working on a post expressing my disappointment with the content of much of the Syrian blogosphere when I saw this today: a href="http://fadlatamazsibai.wordpress.com/2009/09/03/stop-mas/"A campaign to combat maturbation/a! Need I say more? I almost fell off my chair!! Is this for real? I guess I was
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emspan style="color:#336666;"strong"The more we sweat in peace the less we bleed in war"./strong - Vijaya Lakshmi Panditbr //span/embr /In several earlier posts (a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=19881627amp;postID=3052567144436394343"here/a and a href="http://levantdream.blogspot.com/2007/02/history-matters.html"here/a), I lamented the tendency of many Lebanese, including many politicians, the bury their heads in the sand when it comes facing the country's tragic history of the last thirty years. Two recent stories give me hope that things may be changing. There is
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Opinions of a Syrian expatriate living in the United States about Politics and culture as it pertains to the Middle East.