BBC News - Mystery tribute channel to Saddam Hussein launched:

"The 'al-Arab' channel, dubbed Saddam TV in Iraq first appeared on Bahrain-based Noorsat and Egypt-owned NileSat on Friday and is also streamed on the Internet.
An Iraqi member of parliament, Jaber Habib Jaber, condemned what he called the channel's 'glorification of a tyrant'.
One Baghdad resident told the BBC that the channel has become his favourite even though watching it makes him sad for reminding him of when Iraq was safe.
However the BBC's Natalia Antelava in Baghdad says that many in the city are indifferent to the news of the channel's launch.
It comes as Iraqi authorities are gearing up for parliamentary elections that are due to be held in January 2010."

This story made me think: what' the programming grid on Saddam TV? His old ghostwritten biopics? Variety shows presented by Comical Ali? Cooking lessons with Chemical Ali? Documentaries about Stalin, Saddam's favorite historical figure? Tributes by the many journalists, think tankers, arms dealers and others who took money from Saddam in the old day? The Qusay and Udday Show, a sitcom based around two sons of an all-powerful dictator who get to drive around and terrorize Baghdad?

Does every one and his dog have a satellite channel now in the Middle East?

Via @Linaattallah.

✪ 'Just World News' with Helena Cobban: Nozette: Pollard, 2.0? | On the latest Israeli spy scandal in the US.
✪ "friday-lunch-club": Netanyahu refuses Kouchner's request to see Gaza's destruction ... | Gaza? What Gaza?
✪ To Earn HIs Nobel Prize, Obama Will Need a "Plan B" | Stephen M. Walt | "If I were President Obama (now there's a scary thought!), I'd ask some smart people on my foreign policy team to start thinking hard about "Plan B." What's Plan B? It's the strategy that he's going to need when it becomes clear that his initial foreign policy initiatives didn't work."
✪ ذاكرة مصر المعاصرة - الصحافة | Alexandria Library's online collection of historical Egyptian newspapers, including the first issue of al-Ahram (which was founded, it must be reluctantly noted, by Lebanese.)
✪ News Analysis - Painful Mideast Truth - Force Trumps Diplomacy - NYTimes.com | Painful Media Truth: For NYT, bias always trumps journalism. Look at the language used in this piece: Palestinian violence is "very bloody" and Israel carries out "military action." Israel's plans to attack Iran are considered as legitimate. And there is a mixing of terrorism and the attacks on Israel's "legitimacy" -- i.e. the legitimacy of its landgrabs, occupations and militarism. Pure hasbara.
✪ Israel, US start major joint air defence drill - Yahoo! News |

The exercise will test the Arrow (Hetz) system, the THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defence), the ship-based Aegis Ballistic Missile Defence System, as well as Patriot and Hawk anti-aircraft systems, media said. It will simulate the firing of long-range missiles from Israel's foes Iran, Syria and Lebanon, and towards the end it will include a "live" missile interception, reports said.

✪ Matthew Yglesias » Bernstein on Human Rights Watch | A good retort to the latest silly attack on HRW (by one of its former chairman) "or having the temerity to hold Israel to the same standards of international humanitarian law to which it holds every other country." But this just points to the problem of bias in the higher echelons of HRW - among former and current staffers.
✪ Almasry Alyoum | No Fly Zone | Nice story looking at the recent airport detentions of various kinds of activists.
✪ Almasry Alyoum | Pope Shenouda: "I Support Gamal Mubarak" | What a nasty little man, and what disservice he does to his flock. I hope Copts flee the Orthodox Church en masse over this.
✪ Arab states consider joint counter-terror police unit | "Arabpol." Oh Lord Have Mercy.
✪ Egyptcarpoolers | A carpooling connecting website for Cairo.
✪ Saddam Interview | Transcripts of interviews with Saddam Hussein during his captivity in 2004.

The Saddam Hussein Golden Gun Collection:

More in this Flickr set.[Thanks, Mandy]

Also check out photog Richard Mosse's pictures of Saddam's palaces and their new uses by US forces.

Automatically posted links for January 29th through February 3rd:

• Qatar reports new damage to Gulf undersea cables - Fourth time in a week - I think there's a conspiracy afoot


• Libya Sovereign Wealth Fund to Shun U.S., Ghanem Says - Qadhafi puts his country's money elsewhere


• Ezzedine Choukri: "?? ???? ????? ?? ????? ???? ??? ?" - Rafah episode shows current situation is losing one for all


• The path of centrist political Islam by Khalil Al-Anani - Al-Anani says MB hopeless, Wasat way forward


• Robert Fisk: The curious case of the forged biography - Fisk, hagiographer of Saddam Hussein


• Making a Great Arab City - I like this Rami Khouri piece on Dubai even though I am skeptical, because it praises the tradition of Arab cosmopolitan urbanism


• Arab Media Watch Arab Media Watch > Home - UK outfit combats anti-Arab bias in press


• Hamas explodes a giant hole in Egypt's political cover - Op-ed takes Egypt's hypocrisy on Palestine to task


• It's time to herald the Arabic science that prefigured Darwin and Newton - Faraday prize winner defends historic Arab scholarship


• For sale: West?s deadly nuclear secrets - Whistleblower says top US officials sold nuke secrets to Pakistan (the person is not named in the article, but others say it's Marc Grossman)


• Al-Jazeera Journalist Arrested in Egypt - Howeida Taha arrested, again


• AFP: Egypt censors book fair - Mohammed Choukri, Milan Kundera, Elias Khoury, Hanan al-Sheikh censored from Cairo Book Fair.

Automatically posted links for November 27-28th:

• Critical writer jailed in Tunisia - On Monday, police in Sfax, Tunisia's second largest city, detained Slim Boukhdhir, a well-known blogger and contributor to the London-based Al-Quds Al Arabi.
• 'Aqoul: Hirsi Ali: Ideological Chameleon - Holy CRAP! Hirsi Ali's rightward shift
• tabsir.net » Al Qaeda?s generational split - Yemeni tactics for splitting jihadist groups
• Talking Points | National Security Network - Website of reality-based security types
• Le Monde.fr : Une vidéo-amateur contredit la version de la police sur l'accident de Villiers-le-Bel - Amateur video indicates initial shock of police car against motorbike not very violent, car was damaged with metal bars afterwards and police is lying about it
• WHO'S WHO OF PREZ CAMPAIGN SECURITY ADVISERS - New list of security / FP advisors to US presidential candidates, surprisingly does not include the more well-known rabid neocons in Rudy's list
• Hillary Clinton's advisers too gung-ho on Iraq war, critics say - Is Hillary Clinton the hawk masquerading as the dove?
• 'Not very good' Saddam spy gets 4 years - Yahoo! News - More examples of the terrible threat to the US that Saddam represented. Hmm, let me think, what other Middle Eastern country successfully infiltrated spies in critical national security institutions?
• Police say Paris rioters are armed as clashes escalate - Officials in Paris last night warned that rioters in the suburb of Villiers-le-Bel were armed with hunting rifles and air rifles as clashes with police continued to escalate.
• Boom fuels new Saudi spending spree | Business | The Guardian - Annual revenues of $165bn are funding six new cities to create jobs - but can it last?
• Cairo International Film Festival - Home Page - Schedules, events, etc. (apparently Morocco is focus of festival)
• In Annapolis, Conflict by Other Means by Robert Blecher and Mouin Rabbani - "As for the Annapolis meeting itself, it is being greeted with indifference, with few believing it will lead to either meaningful change in their daily lives or substantive progress toward the end of an Israeli occupation now in its fifth decade."