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Sat - Mar 13 -

MUQTY VS FELDMAN: Thousands of devotees to a Shiite Muslim sect called "Advocates for the Virtuous" gathered in Baghdad on Friday to demand the implementation of Sharia and the establishment of a mullarchy like that in Iran.

"We will never accept a constitution written by the Jews," they chanted.

Prof Noah Feldman from NYU helped provide the Iraqi Interim Council with reference sources in drawing up their transitional papers.

But he is rather observant and, consequently, does not read on Saturdays.

+ Funny, he didn't look Yewish.

~ Well, you never know.

+ Muqty al-Sadr doesn't look Yewish either.

~ Muqty is not Yewish.

+ Oh, well, maybe that's why.

::Aljazeera::Iraqis protest interim constitution

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Sat - Mar 13 -

LAUNCHPADS: Looking for something to do this weekend and out of ideas? If so, you might want to give this a try:

In ancient times, the Library of Alexandria was seen as a universal store of human knowledge. As the Library grew in size, however, it became increasingly difficult to locate relevant material. The poet Callimachus solved the problem by compiling a catalogue called The Pinakes. On a far smaller scale, these Web pages hope to provide a similar function for Internet resources, by linking to the major subject gateways.

:: PINAKES :: A Subject Launchpad ::

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Thurs-Fri - Mar 12 -

FILTERING YEWISH: Some of the comments posted for this entry at FreeRepublic.Com may be funny, but Politically Incorrect.

:: A Follow-Up to the message board topic below provided the explanation for the board's response.

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Thurs - Mar 11 -

RIGET REMAKE: Are you following the new TV mini-series called Kingdom Hospital? It's been adapted by Stephen King from a Danish opus.

According to the BBC, they'll get it next. And you know they have a special page for this kind of material. They call it Cult TV.

We don't have a special page like the Beeb's. But we do have a website and forum where folks gather to discuss shows like this:

:: Television Without Pity ::

There you can discuss the episodes, characters, and other such things. Some people who have already seen the Danish version are comparing the King version with the original.

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Thurs - Mar 11 -

TWEE MESSAGE BOARD PROBLEM:

"What do you get when you
cross a Chinaman with a Rabbi?"

Poster Veronica contributes a thorny
dilemma to the FreeRepublic Forum ;-)

:: CBC Web site bars certain words ::

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Thurs - Mar 11 -

WHICH RAED: A popular question of last year's vintage was whether Salam Pax's friend Raed was the same Raed as the son of the Iraqi diplomat who surfaced briefly in the news media. Fatefully, Salam's blog and activities probably attracted a lot more attention to Raed Roman al-Anbuke than espionage usually
allows for.

*The charges against Ms Lindauer are included in a case against the two sons of a former Iraqi diplomat.

Wisam Noman al-Anbuke and Raed Roman al-Anbuke were charged last year with passing information to Iraqi intelligence about Iraqi dissidents living in
the US.

US authorities believe the Iraq Intelligence Service was involved in trying to locate, intimidate and kill Iraqi defectors and dissidents, as well as terrorist operations including an attempted assassination of President George Bush senior.*

:: BBC: charged as 'spy for Saddam'

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Thurs - Mar 11 -

US ESPIONAGE CASE: Susan Lindauer, 41, a former journalist and congressional press secretary was arrested Thursday in her hometown of Takoma Park, Md, on charges she acted as an Iraqi spy before and after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, accepting $10,000 for her work, prosecutors said Thursday.

:: By Larry Neumeister ::
-- AP via Yahoo!News

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Wed - Mar 10 -

CH-CH-CH-CHANGES: Richard Warner at Lost Remote Blog reports that the Clear Channel Syndicate's radio talk shows are being put on a five-minute delay.

Actually, according to that blog's source, this procedure is being reserved for only the more decency-sensitive shows. Normally, CC has its eye on a twenty-second delay as the new standard. The delay gives a technician more time to hit the "dump button" which silences offending words.

CC recently suspended the Howard Stern morning drive-time show on this basis. The new protocol should enable the CC Syndicate to achieve better management of the loose blue material it wishes to avoid.

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Wed - Mar 10 -

SERIAL KILLER AGAIN: *Unknown assassins have gunned down yet another prominent Iraqi scientist as he stood outside his house in the Amiriya district of Baghdad.

The scientist, Shakir al-Khafaji, was the former head of the Central Bureau for measurement and Quality Control.*

The Case of the Whistling Babylonian. Maybe someone from MWA should start a Database on this guy. The FBI is probably too busy over there at the moment.

Omar Sharif once played a detective tracking a serial killer during World War Two in a movie called The Night of the Generals.

:: MORE KILLER :: from The IraqPress Online ::

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Wed - Mar 10 -

MIGRATING THE MARTHA:

*Future of Martha Stewart Brand*

An oddly compelling transcript of a WashPost Live Online interaction.

*Happily, we noted 21 months ago that the company ought to be considering a contingency plan that would migrate the brand away from MS (the person) to a label.

That way you could keep the name and do away with the possible outcome that she (the person) was found guilty and had to go to jail.

Oh, wait a minute, that's what happened!*

Recommended.

:: Brand Keys - WaPo ::

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Tues - Mar 9 -

IRAQI INTERIM DOC SIGNED: Gwen Ifill of PBS NewsHour interviews Feisal Istrabadi and Prof Juan Cole about the new Iraqi Proto-Constitution.

If you haven't encountered Istrabadi before, he is the Iraqi-American lawyer who helped draft the document. His photo is included here along with an audio link to this segment of the show.

:: Online NewsHour ::

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Mon - Mar 8 -

BAGHDAD BOOKCROSSING:

*Every year, the Frankfurt Book Fair chooses a featured country. In October 2004, the book fair guest country is going to be "the Middle East."

I wonder if there will be an Iraqi booth anywhere. I would like to see at least one person sitting there with a poster saying: Please visit the websites of Salam Pax and Riverbend; young writers, male and female, with a superb command of English. A new Iraqi generation of digital publishers who, in spite of the promised democracy in Iraq, wish to remain anonymous.

As we left the book fair, while gliding through the corridors on a conveyor belt, a compatriot of mine said: "Without their books on our shelves, we are naked."*

The beginning of a Buzzz...

:: Excerpted from "Between two book fairs"

-- By Betool Khedairi - the Jordan Times - Mon.

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Mon - Mar 8 -

IN MOURNING FOR BB ARABIA: *And their reasons for watching appeared to be the same as ours: to watch relationships and personalities develop, to eavesdrop on the rich complexity of emotion and interaction which lies beneath the apparent banality of everyday experience.

They wanted to be voyeurs, as we've been voyeurs of Big Brother since it launched in 2000, not for sinister or sleazy motives but because we human beings, Christian, Jew, Muslim or atheist, are united in our existence as social animals, and the behaviour of other human beings interests us intensely.*

Brian McNair contributes not-the-last-word-yet
on the subject of the aborted Bahrain production
of Big Brother.

:: Arab BB's Demise :: Scotsman.Com ::

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Mon - Mar 8 -

Update - Laleh Park: BBC REPORT.

See POLICE CRACKDOWN entry just below.

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Mon - Mar 8 -

~~RETURN FROM ASHURA: *"On the morning of Ashura (March 2), Samir and I, using a combination of Baghdad bravado and my out-of-date press card, bluffed police into letting us park near the city center. Dressed in a black dishdasha, a long tunic favored by Arabic men, and a black and white khefiyya, I followed my guide into the massive crowd.*

Good account of what happened, to him at least, in Karbala.

:: By Steven Vincent - NRO ::

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Mon - Mar 8 -

POLICE CRACKDOWN: *Eyewitness reports from Tehran to KRSI radio station in Los Angeles indicate that a gathering by Iranian women and young men commemorating women's day, in Laleh Park, is being savagely repressed.

Chants of "Non Violence" were filling the air when police charged the demonstrators.*

:: Iran va Jahan / KRSI Radio ::

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Mon - Mar 8 -

AN IRAQI BEACON: "Some may say that the Bill of Rights were imposed by the West," said Adnan Pachachi, a senior member of the Governing Council. "These rights and values are not exclusively the property of the west... it is thus a beacon of light and hope for future generations."

:: FAST FACTS :: RIGHTS GUARANTEED ::

-- By IRAQI CONSTITUTION (printer friendly)

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Mon - Mar 8 -

SIGNED ON: Iraq's temporary constitution will take effect from July 1... The main points in an English-language version of a draft seen before the final document was signed can be found here.

:: SkyNews ::

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Mon - Mar 8 -

MARTHA INC GOING DOWN:

"They've got to figure out what they're doing-- if they are going to keep the Martha Stewart name, change it or liquidate the company," Dennis McAlpine said. He has a "sell" rating on the shares and doesn't own any. "Advertisers are gone. The business is in tenuous shape. I don't think they'll fare well."

:: Bloomberg.Com :: Top Worldwide ::

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Sun/Mon - Mar 8 -

OFF THAT ROOF! Rageh Omaar, whose destiny it was to stand on the roof as the BBC's rep in Baghdad and witness the Allied Coalition's military domination of Iraq, has written a book about his experiences. It all looked so simple, didn't it? Telegenically, maybe it was. But nothing is as simple as it looks On Camera.

:: Guardian Books ::
-- Interview by Simon Hattenstone

:: Review :: of Omaar's REVOLUTION DAY ::

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