Out of so many ‘Season’s Greeting’ cards I received this week form friends and business partners, this is my favorite one:

Very elegant and colorful.

Happy New Year, everyone!

It was the worst concert I’ve ever seen. Coming out from the syrian palerlemnt house, and watching it live on TV (Arabic link):

Syrian lawmakers demanded on Saturday that former Vice President Abdel-Halim Khaddam be tried for treason and corruption after he publicly broke with President Bashar al-Assad.

Speaking from Paris, where he moved after resigning as [...]

Background:
The UK government has been quick to deny that they practice, or tolerate the practice of Torture. So it is perhaps not suprising that they are determined that you should not see the following documents:
http://users.pandora.be/quarsan/craig/telegrams.pdf
http://users.pandora.be/quarsan/craig/npaper.jpg

BlairWatch is asking bloggers to publish the memos from Craig Murray, Britain’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan, detailing how the Uzbek Secret [...]

A couple of days ago, we celebrated the 2nd anniversary of MTC-Vodafone launch in Bahrain; with much of joy, fun and love.

If someone would ask me what does MTC-VB mean to you? I would undoubtedly say: its people! And that�s what I was trying to say through this big picture. [Alaa Ghawas]

And this is truly [...]

An almanac of 100 quirky snippets that we didn’t know this time last year.

Tonight is the last BBC World Have Your Say programme for the year. Debora and I will be on air later at the show. I we’ll be talking about blogging in the Middle East and the most memorable moments in 2005.

This will be my second interview with Have Your Say team in less than a [...]

The joint task force made up of FBI and Department of Energy “NEST” teams conducted the monitoring without first getting a warrant. The Washington Post reports that the United States, as a part of the controversial spying activity executed by President Bush, secretly spied on Muslim Americans and Mosques–listening in to phone conversations and monitoring [...]

“we Israelis have created and continue to create an economic, social, emotional, employment and environmental crisis on the scale of a never-ending tsunami.”

Ha’aretz
Last update - 11:07 28/12/2005

It’s not all [...]

وزير الشؤون الدينية التونسي: حجاب المرأة دخيل ونشاز و”لباس طائفي”. اعتبر وزير الشؤون الدينية التونسي المرأة التي ترتدي الحجاب بأنها “نشاز”، بحسبانه مظهرا “غير مألوف” إلى جانب أنه “زي طائفي”. وقال الوزير أبو بكر الأخزوري في حوار أجرته صحيفة “الصباح” التونسية الثلاثاء 27-12-2005 في رد على سؤال حول العودة النسبية لظاهرة الحجاب في تونس، إن [...]

Saudi mobile phone company Mobily has barred users from text message voting in the pan-Arab version of Star Academy, after an earlier religious edict deemed the show immoral. The program is carried by the Lebanese channel LBC and was very popular in its first two seasons. [Source: Reuters]

Business decision based on funny Fatwa (religious decree), [...]