SUN - 13 Nov - Bush on the Run: It was one of those TV moments where the question itself, regardless of the answer, is so telling. There sat King Abdullah II, with his British mannerisms and Georgetown University ways, trying to exploit the Amman bombings for whatever p.r. gain he could manage. He sent his articulate and attractive wife, solo, to the ABC network as he did NBC. But he was reduced to questionning one of the most respected polling organiations, Pew, when challenged that the great majority of Jordanians disdain the U.S., literally hate President Bush, and by a majority support 'suicide bombings' against the occupying powers -- to mean both the U.S. and Israel. More telling in a sense there was hardly a word from either Abdullah or his queen on what lay behind what is now happening, of the terrible apartheid realities imposed on the Palestinians, and of the first anniversary of the Fallujah massacre which appears to have brought on the Amman bombings on year later.

SAT - 12 Nov - Bush on the Run: Bush choose Veterans Day yesterday to lash out more harshly than ever at all those who have been chastising him, especially with regard to the false propaganda that was used to justify the Iraq invasion/occupation. Bush is on the run. And this isn't just about normal politics and the mid-term 2006 election, now less than a year ahead. Bush is playing an increasingly exhausting game of defense; with the political opposition not only continually on the offensive but making considerable inroads in turning the public still further against Bush/Cheney. Indeed Bush's rasputin-like 'cabal'-leading VP is even more unpopular than he, and he is at the lowest ever for a second-term President since President Nixon, and before him VP Spiro Agnew, who were both forced from office back in 1973. As previously discussed here the political blood in the water now is already far more than normal and should things continue to deteriorate for Bush/Cheney impeachment is no longer just a chant-word. THAT is what explains the gloves off speech from the President yesterday -- he knows that if his defense doesn't pick up and the other side keeps on scoring his already failed Presidency could also become an abbreviated one.
Today, by the way, marks the 10th anniversary of the Rabin Assassination, yesterday the first of the Arafat 'Stealth Assination'. Bill and Hillary are there for Rabin. And though Arafat was the most frequent foreign guest to the Clinton White House, they had nothing to say nor paid any attention to the grand 'old man' of the Palestinian struggle nor to the great poisons which have spread so far and wide from the ongoing Israeli-U.S.-Palestinian-Arab confrontation...or should we now refer to it as conflagration.

THU - 10 Nov - New Palestinian 'Ambassador' plays deaf and dumb: Any real 'Ambassador' that represented any real and self-respecting government (which sadly the 'Palestinian Authority' is certainly not) would find himself recalled if not dismised for gross incompetence. But after Hassan Rahman people in Washington are so use to deaf and dumb 'official' Palestinian representatives, on top of such a complacent, compliant, and mediocre Arab media, that Afif Safiya is praised by his little incestuous group rather than condemned. Safiya follows in the dastardly 20-year footsteps of Rahman who so terribly misrepresented the Palestinians in Washington for so long.
So there he sat silently in the audience yesterday afternoon, Safiya that is, as the last panel of the Middle East Institute debated the future of his people and the 'peace process' Safiya has so often fronted for and personally benefited from. Well, 'debated' isn't quite the right term. All four of the people on the panel in the auditorium of the National Press Club, including the moderator, a former Congressman, who came from Brooklyn to preside, were Jews. In fact all four were distinctly Jewish Zionists differing primarily with what kind of emphasis they used to blame the Palestinian victims for their oh-so-tragic predicament.
No use protesting about any of this to the Middle East Institute. MEI has been afraid of its own shadow for so long now, trying so hard to stay on the right side of the Israeli-Jewish lobby that a few years back they actually gave the keynote floor to the notorious Bernard Lewis -- this year it was the former head of the Saudi CIA now in Washington as Saudi Ambassador (see yesterday). It's the miserably inept and incompetent Palestinian representation in Washington that allows such things to happen; and this latest disaster was in a sense Safiya's coming out party here.
Just as this final panel was about to begin came word of the worst anti-American anti-Israeli anti-Hashemite attacks ever in Amman, Jordan. READ MORE...