As’ad AbuKhalil, Lebanese politics professor at California State University, said Iranian opponents of Ahmadinejad — if they come out on top — would still likely promote a nationalist agenda that Riyadh sees as a threat to its interests. Opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi was prime minister under the Islamic Republic’s founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. “The site of public demonstrations by the thousands against their leaders …troubles all Arab leaders,” AbuKhalil said, pointing to the lack of popular democracy on a par with that of Iran in most of the Arab countries. “Arab regimes may also fear that if the Iranian regime feels cornered and pressured, it may lash out, and Saudi Arabia may be the first to feel the wrath of the regime,” he said. (more…)

It is frustrating that everyone I talk to from Pakistan to Egypt loves Ahmadinejad and is shocked to hear that many Iranians think he is ineffective and embarrassing. Meanwhile every Westerner seems to think that Mousavi is a great reformist or revolutionary, and some kind of saintly figure beloved by all. He’s an opportunist crook. (more…)

Some Western principles in assessing elections in developing countries:

1. When the favored candidates win, the elections are free and fair. And when they lose, elections are certainly unfree and stolen.

2. Violent protests against elections that produce winners favored by the west, are to be strictly condemned and protesters are to be called terrorists, hooligans and mobs (can you imagine if Lebanese opposition supporters were to engage in violent protests against the election results in Lebanon), while violent protests against enemies of the US when they win elections (like in Moldova) are to be admired (and the protesters in those cases are called “democracy activists”.

3. It is not against free elections to have Western governments interfere in elections and in funding candidates through Western groups for the promotion of democracy.

4. Candidates (or even dictators) who serve Western interests are automatically labeled as “reform candidates” (even the Saudi tyrant is referred to as “reform-minded”), while candidates who oppose Western economic and political interests are to be labeled enemies of reform.

5. Candidates who are not strident in their language about Israel are always favored.

6. Western observers of elections are always on hand to declare an election unfair and rigged if the favored candidates lose.

7. The corruption of pro-US candidates (like the March 14 bunch) is preferred to the non-corruption of, say, Mugabe.

8. The democratic credentials of dictators immediately improve if they change their policies toward the US and if they express willingness to serve US economic and political interests.

9. Countries where dictators do a good job in serving US economic and political interests need not hold elections.

10. If favored candidates can’t guarantee electoral victory (like the PA tool, Abu Mazen whose term has expired months ago), they don’t need to hold elections and will be treated as if they won an election anyway.

11. It is just not logical to assume that people in developing countries can freely ever decide to make choices that are not consistent with political and economic interests of the US.

12. Elections that are held under American and Israeli occupations are free and fair if the preferred candidates win.

Read the original at As’ad Abu-Khalil’s blog.

Tomorrow’s US media coverage will refer to the winning coalition as “pro-Western.” Tell them that Khalid Daher (a staunch pro-Bin Ladenite from Tripoli who was a major campaigner for recruits for Zarqawi in Iraq) won on Hariri list in North Lebanon. (more…)

Obama is not a man of courage: if he was politically courageous, he would have said that Al-Azhar under the rule of Nasser was a force of progressive thought, enlightenment, state feminism support, and quasi-secularism. Under American puppets, Sadat and Mubarak, Al-Azhar became a force of obscurantism, fanaticism, misogyny, religious intolerance, and violence. Al-Azhar does not deserve any praise whatsoever. The Copts, Freethinkers, and women all sufferes because of rulings from Al-Azhar. Ideas of Al-Qa`idah and religious fanaticism’s in general should be blamed on that obsolete institution which serves as a tool of the dictators in Egypt. His reference to the early roots of Islam in America is so disingenuous: he has one bland quote from John Adams and leave out various expressions of bigotry against Muslims by founding fathers. And he then condemns (unspecified) Western stereotypes of Muslims and then matches them with what he calls Muslim stereotypes of America as empire. But those two are not symmetrical: American stereotypes of Muslims are racist and essentialist, and the notion that the US is a war mongering Empire is shared by none Muslims and Muslims alike around the world. (more…)

Angry Arab reports that David Rose of Vanity Fair was personally threatened by Mohammed Dahlan after publishing his article “The Gaza Bombshell” last year, which exposed the failed U.S./Israeli-backed coup in the Gaza Strip.

When you encounter Israeli liberals in the US or in Europe, they present a different face. They never reveal what they actually had written in their books. This is very true of Amos Oz but also true of Amos Elon. You need to read the books of those Zionist liberals to realize that when it comes to the fundamental racism at the heart of the movement that founded the usurping entity, the left-right divide is rather meaningless. Obituaries of Amos Elon now fill the US newspapers and he is being presented as a humane and compassionate writer. Here is a sample from Elon’s book Herzl: “There was no symmetry between Arab and Jewish grievances. The Jews were always ready for a compromise; the Arabs have not yet contemplated the possibility of accomodation. The Palestinian dispersion was largely self-inflicted; unlike the Jews, they could live full Arab lives in any of a dozen other Arab countries.” (p. 407) So Elon had a long career of outright lies and fabrication. Read his biography of Herzl and you know what I mean. (more…)

I have a message to all the Zionist hoodlums out there: for all of you who campaigned and harassed and intimidated and who treated academic life like an aspect of Zionist thuggery, Joseph Massad has received tenure. He called me yesterday from Cairo to break the great news to me and I could not wait to report it to his enemies and mine. It is with great pleasure and gratification that I break the news to all of you. No matter what dirty tricks you (i.e. Zionist hoodlums) have resorted to, and no matter what sleazy methods you have employed and no matter what sinister propaganda you have resorted to, dear Joseph Massad deservedly received his tenure. I am looking forward to Joseph’s contribution to Middle East studies at Columbia and elsewhere. And as `Abdun-Nasser told the colonial power back in 1956, I say: if you don’t like this news please feel free to go and drink from the Mediterrenean sea.

To further incite a strong, heated response from AbuKhalil, Tor pointed out that he never looked at him and said “I wish you would humanize me in some way, maybe by looking at me.” Looking straight ahead toward the crowded audience, AbuKhalil responded, “I will treat you like you treated Palestinians in Gaza.” (more…)

“You have more freedom to express support for Israeli war crimes than to speak about the Palestinian civilian victims in the war on Gaza,” As’ad Abu Khalil, professor of political science at California State University, told AlArabiya.net. “There is a general climate that is very sympathetic and solidly dogmatic in favor of Zionism then it is to Palestinians and its supporters,” he said, adding that as people start pay attention to Israeli crimes Zionists are clamping down on any dissent by exerting “horrendous forms of pressure on school administrations … Academic freedom is not equally distributed here in the U.S.,” he said. “There is a tremendous illogical moral and ethical asymmetry on college campuses.” (more…)

Back to the daily From Lebanon segment on LBC-TV, which features “rich and famous” Lebanese, even if they are not Lebanese. Today, it featured former Sen. George J. Mitchell from Maine. Here is a story about Sen. Mitchell (whose mother had immigrated from Lebanon). A former student of mine in Washington, DC was working part-time in the US Senate. He was half-Lebanese. He once found himself in the same elevator with Sen. Mitchell, and he greeted him warmly, and asked him: “Do you speak Arabic? I heard that you are Lebanese.” Very rudely, Sen. Mitchell told him: “I am Irish. I am not Lebanese.” Keep bragging, LBC-TV. We are laughing at you. (original…)

“It took two longs days before Obama dispelled any notions of a change in U.S. Middle East policy,” said As’ad Abu Khalil, Lebanese-born and pro-Palestinian professor of political science at California State Univerity.

“Obama’s speech was quite something. It was like sprinkling sulphuric acid on the wounds of the children in Gaza,” he added. (more…)

People in the US don’t understand. Our TV screens are not like yours. Your TV screens are reporting the death of the Bush family cat, and our Arab TV screens are showing images of splattered body parts of children all over Gaza. And then Americans wonder why Arabs don’t condemn suicide bombings by some Palestinian groups (although some Arabs condemn killings of civilians anywhere). Do you see why? They don’t see you condemn the killing and butchery of their children when the Israeli military engages in terrorism on a scale far larger than all the suicide bombings of Hamas in its history. Israeli terrorists killed more in this week than years of suicide bombings. (more…)

It was a noisy night in Washington, DC. Cars were parading the streets and honking their horns all night long. People around were very excited and people walked the streets and yelled and shouted in joy.

AlJazeera offices: now that was a different story. The chaos there could not hide the festive atmosphere. People took bets and they had a sheet with staff names. I asked who was betting on McCain: no one, they said but they were betting on when the results would come in with news of Obama victory. People were excited and emotional.

As I sat with the three anchors listening to Obama’s victory speech, I would make critical comments. I could tell that people did not enjoy that and there was a white technician who was very emotional got really mad at me because I was being critical of Obama.

I ran into Lawrence Korb (former assistant secretary of defence under Ronald Regan) and I asked him if he had endorsed Obama. He said that he did not do that publicly but that he was advising him on defense and national security policies. He said that there is a move to appoint Richard Halbrooke as Secretary of State. I said: but the man (in addition to annoying the hell out of me) is the biggest self-promoter in the world. (more…)

When did the Lebanese civil war (the major one) start? Did it start in February of 1975 when Sidon-based leader, Ma`ruf Sa`d, was assassinated by a Lebanese Army intelligence sniper? Or was it the widely accepted “Sarajevo” (of the civil war) of 13th of April, 1975? I think that the civil war started in 1973, in April, when 3 Palestinian leaders (one of them a poet, Kamal Nasir) were shot in their sleep by an Israeli terrorist team headed by Ehud Barak (later prime minister of Israel). It brought the Lebanese internal divisions into the fore.

I was 15 years old, 30 years ago when the civil war started on April 13th, 1975. It was a Sunday that I still remember. My parents were out, and I was home in our middle class neighborhood in Beirut. We did not hear shots fired. We were not close to the scene of the crime. On that day, a bus carrying Palestinians who were earlier attending a rally for the PFLP-GC was ambushed by armed gunmen of the Lebanese fascistic Phalanges Party. My enmity to that party started earlier, much earlier. When I read about the civil war in Spain, I always felt that I could recognize the fascist side. When I read about the communist struggle against the Nazis in Germany, I recognized the Nazi side. I saw them in Lebanon. (more…)