Author Archives: Arab America

Nassim Nicholas Taleb has carved himself a niche as a prominent economic thinker of our time. Two seminal works, Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan, showed the author to be a brilliant statistician with a gift for illustrating complex issues in an understandable way.

The former options trader has since enjoyed an almost cult-like following that has seemingly gone to his head. Taleb talks often of his accomplishments, claiming to be the most voracious reader, able to compute seemingly impossible equations in the blink of an eye – and stopping just shy of leaping over tall buildings in a single bound.

Source: www.mortgagestrategy.co.uk

During the 1980s and ’90s, the historic alliance between the wealthy monarchy of Saudi Arabia and the country’s powerful clerics emerged as the major financier of international jihad, channeling tens of millions of dollars to Muslim fighters in Afghanistan, Bosnia and elsewhere. Among the project’s major patrons was Prince Salman Bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, who last month became Saudi Arabia’s king.

Some of those fighters later formed Al Qaeda, which declared war on the United States and later mounted major attacks inside Saudi Arabia as well. In the past decade, according to officials of both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, the Saudi government has become a valuable partner against terrorism, battling Al Qaeda at home and last year joining the American-led coalition against the extremists of the Islamic State.

Source: www.nytimes.com

I was one of the 15 ‘Muslim-American leaders’ invited to meet with President Obama on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s what it was like.
I can’t believe it but Louie Gohmert and Michele Bachmann were right after all. Muslims have infiltrated the White House—and at the highest levels. Sharia law can’t be far behind, so I hope you like turkey bacon and non-alcoholic beer because that’s all you will be getting once these Muslims have their say.

What am I talking about? Well, on Wednesday, I was one of 15 Muslim-American leaders to attend a one-hour meeting with President Obama at the White House. I must admit I was thrilled at the prospect of actually having a conversation with the president about issues of concern to our community.

Once I was in The White House, two main thoughts came to mind. First, it looks just like House of Cards. I kept waiting for Frank Underwood to walk out and share his plans for world domination.

And secondly, after I sat down in the Roosevelt Room and observed the glasses and plates that bore the White House insignia, I immediately began plotting how to sneak one out with me. Seriously, you would’ve had the same thoughts if you saw it. They are really impressive/cool. (No plates or cups were ultimately stolen.)

Source: www.thedailybeast.com

Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer and Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein rushed to meetings on Capitol Hill on Wednesday trying to calm a furor created by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned speech to Congress next month and quell a Democratic revolt that has dozens threatening a boycott.

If anything, Democrats finished the day more frustrated. According to a source in the room, one Jewish Democratic member of Congress even accused Dermer of being insincere when he claimed not to have anticipated the partisan uproar he’d ignite when he skirted protocol and went around the White House and scheduled the speech only with House Speaker John Boehner.

Source: www.politico.com

When Christian, Muslim and Jewish believers fall victim to hate crimes, no matter how small, the injury is global. Conversely, when those believers reconcile, forgive, learn and connect, the healing spreads worldwide.

This reconciliation and connection is the purpose of Neighbor to Neighbor, an East Bay partnership formed in 2011 between Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church, San Ramon Valley Islamic Center and Temple Isaiah in Lafayette.

Rejecting extremism, encouraging religious tolerance and promoting the constitutional right to worship freely, the interfaith initiative will screen the award-winning documentary “An American Mosque” on Feb. 7 at LOPC. Following the 27-minute film, the program includes a Q&A session with “American Mosque” producer and filmmaker David Washburn and small-group breakout discussions of ideas introduced by the film and applied to current events.

“Our approach is intergenerational, as well as interfaith, so families are welcome,” said Terence Clark, an LOPC member, Neighbor to Neighbor leader/coordinator and the president of the Interfaith Council of Contra Costa County.

Clark, Rabbi Judy Shanks of Temple Isaiah and members of the San Ramon Valley Islamic Center helm an unusual trifecta with Neighbor to Neighbor, but Clark says panel discussions led by experts from each faith and small-group discussions — sometimes dinners held in his and other Neighbor to Neighbor members’ homes — have led to unprecedented empathy.

Source: www.contracostatimes.com

By: Paul Farhi NBC News anchor Brian Williams conceded on Wednesday that a story he had told about being under fire while covering the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was false. Williams said he was not aboard a helicopter that was hit by enemy fire and forced down — a story he retold as recently as … Continued

While local reports revealed Wednesday that the Jordanian King Abdullah will authorize airstrikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group, a U.S. official described the Arab monarch as citing a Hollywood movie character when expressing his wrath upon hearing that the militants had burned his countryman pilot alive during his captivity.

“He mentioned ‘Unforgiven’ and he mentioned Clint Eastwood, and he actually quoted a part of the movie,” Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr., a Marine Corps veteran of two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, who was in the meeting with the king, told Fox News Channel in an interview aired Wednesday.

King Abdullah had to cut his U.S. trip short after hearing the news that Moaz al-Kasasbeh was burned alive.

During a private session with members of the House Armed Services Committee lawmakers, the king expressed his anger by citing American movie icon Clint Eastwood.

“He said there is going to be retribution like ISIS hasn’t seen,” said the Marine Corps veteran.

However, Hunter would not say which part of “Unforgiven” the king quoted, but noted it was where Eastwood’s character describes how he is going to deliver his retribution.

“He’s angry,” Hunter said of King Abdullah. “They’re starting more sorties tomorrow than they’ve ever had. They’re starting tomorrow. And he said, ‘The only problem we’re going to have is running out of fuel and bullets.’”

“He’s ready to get it on,” Hunter added. “He really is. It reminded me of how we were after 9/11. We were ready to give it to them.”

Source: english.alarabiya.net

In 2003, Sami Al-Arian was a professor at the University of South Florida, a legal resident of the U.S. since 1975, and one of the most prominent Palestinian civil rights activists in the U.S. That year, the course of his life was altered irrevocably when he was indicted on highly controversial terrorism charges by then Attorney General John Ashcroft. These charges commenced a decade-long campaign of government persecution in which Al-Arian was systematically denied his freedom and saw his personal and professional life effectively destroyed.

Despite the personal harm he suffered and the intense surveillance to which he had been subjected since as early as 1993, the government ultimately failed to produce any evidence of Al-Arian’s involvement in terrorist activities, instead relying at trial overwhelmingly on the pro-Palestinian writing and speaking he had done over the years.

His ordeal finally ended last night, 12 years after it began, as Al-Arian was deported yesterday at midnight (EST) from the United States to Turkey. His deportation was part of a 2006 plea bargain to which he acquiesced in order, he told The Intercept last night while at the airport preparing to leave the U.S., to “conclude his case and bring an end to his family’s suffering.” Al-Arian added: “I came to the United States for freedom, but four decades later, I am leaving to gain my freedom.”

A 2003 Justice Department investigation led by Ashcroft allegedly implicated Al-Arian and 8 other men in supporting Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a group which had been designated a terrorist organization under the Clinton administration for carrying out bombings and other attacks in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian Territories. Ironically, Al-Arian had been a prominent supporter of Clinton, and even met Clinton in the White House. He once remarked to The Intercept that the multiple occasions when he stood in very close proximity to the U.S. President should, by itself, demonstrate how ludicrous were the “terrorist” allegations. In 2000, he supported the Bush campaign (after Bush denounced racial profiling).

Al-Arian, while a Professor at the University of South Florida, was indicted on multiple counts of providing “material support” to the group and fundraising on their behalf in the United States. In the press conference announcing the indictment, Ashcroft claimed that Al-Arian and his co-defendants “financed, extolled and assisted acts of terror,” and praised the recently passed Patriot Act as being instrumental to helping bring about the charges.

The charges were part of a broader post-9/11 campaign to by the U.S. Government to criminalize aid and support to Palestinians, as exemplified by the successful prosecution of five officials of what had been the largest Muslim charity in the U.S., the Holy Land Foundation. Those charity officials are now serving decades in prison for sending money to Palestinians which, it was alleged, made its way to designated terror groups in the Occupied Territories.

Source: firstlook.org

The prince said in a statement on Wednesday that he would take the 6.6 percent of his Kingdom Holding Company’s ownership down to one percent.

However, he would maintain his 6.6 percent holding of Murdoch’s entertainment company, 21st Century Fox.

Back in 2013 when Murdoch’s media empire was split into two companies after a phone hacking scandal, Waleed had expressed “definitely unwavering” support for the Australian American magnate, saying, “We have a strategic alliance with Rupert Murdoch for sure and I have been with him for the last 15 or 20 years.”

In his new statement, the Saudi business tycoon voiced similar feelings despite his withdrawal, saying he is confident in News Corp.’s management and “fully supportive of Rupert Murdoch and his family.”

Explaining the reason for the move, he said that it was “decided in the context of a general portfolio review.”

News Corp. is made up of the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal along with HarperCollins, a book publisher.

Murdoch also owns the more valuable 21st Century Fox, a multinational mass media corporation.

Source: www.presstv.ir

Cairo is a sprawling loud concrete jungle, a metropolis that seriously rivals New York for the title of “the city that never sleeps”. Despite being the largest city in Africa, and home to millions of people, Cairo is sorely lacking in authentic cuisines from around the world. The capital has no shortage of wholesome dishes … Continued

What do they give us here? Three pitas and a little food; it’s not enough even for a small child,” Alaa Kullab complained to the Palestinian news agency Safa. He said his eight-person family, which has been living in a school in Rafah ever since this summer’s war in the Gaza Strip, received only five beds.

“We have no heaters, and we’re forbidden to use hotplates,” added Kullab, who began a hunger strike along with another resident of the school a few days ago.

More than 20,000 of the 450,000 people displaced by the war still live in schools or other shelters arranged by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Last month, UNRWA announced that it would no longer pay displaced families’ rent or fund reconstruction of their houses, because it was out of money, having received only $135 million of the $725 million it needs.

“People come to our offices crying and threatening, but we have no way to help them,” an UNRWA employee told Haaretz. “Children are freezing cold, they suffer from malnutrition and even the little food they get is unsuitable.”

Next week, cleaning workers at Gaza’s hospitals are expected to strike again, since the Palestinian government hasn’t produced the back pay it promised to persuade them to end the last 16-day strike. Some 45,000 government employees in Gaza have yet to receive their January salaries, and they may get only 60 percent, as they did last month, because Israel has frozen tax transfers to the Palestinian Authority. The PA says the transfers amount to over half the costs of these salaries.

Source: www.haaretz.com

Home to around 1,300 Palestinians, the village of Wadi Fukin sits in a fertile valley close to Bethlehem, right along the border with Israel. Driving along the only road that leads into town, I’m taken by the sheer size of the nearby Israeli settlement, Beitar Illit, built just to the East. White stone residential towers housing over 45,000 Israelis rise above on the hills as my car descends into the valley. The buildings slide down towards the village, ending in a towering wall built into the hillside that looms above groves of olive trees.


Residents of this valley grow fruits and vegetables on the fertile land that has supported agriculture here for over 800 years. But in the last few decades Wadi Fukin has become squeezed in on two sides – by Beitar Illit, an adjoining industrial site to the settlement, and Tzur Hadasa, a small Israeli town just over the border with Israel to the north. Making matters worse, the Israeli Civil Administration, a governing body that controls most of the West Bank, recently declared that 370 acres, over one-third of the village, would become state land as part of a seizure that totals close to 1000 acres.

Source: www.azdarya.com