Manal and Alaa's bit bucket

As posted before, google has based its Middle East activities in Egypt, to the surprise of observers who expected the search engine would select Dubai.I spoke to the regional manager of google, Sherif Iskander, a few days ago, and he told me that it was simply the size of Egypt that has attracted google here [...]

This gets little attention at the moment, as the dispute with Iran over its nuclear program and international assistance to Lebanon dominate international diplomacy headlines, but I was disappointed by the outcome of the summit of the EU foreign ministers.It was hosted in Finland (which is currently performing EU presidency), and the Finish foreign minister [...]

More information is coming out on the motives of the two train bombers that failed to blow up two regional trains in Western Germany about two months ago.The head of the German Federal police, Jörg Ziercke, told the magazine Focus that – based on first interrogations of one the subjects who is held in Lebanon [...]

From Fustat:During July and August, the Czech republic has recieved 300 egyptian asylym seekers, this is in sharp contrast to January when they recieved one.The authorities thinks it´s the neighbour Italy that they wan´t to reach. The asylum laws in the Czech republic is somewhat milder than in Italy. Most of the Egyptians claim to [...]

Samer Shehata, a very smart professor at Georgetown whom I’ve had the pleasure to spend some time with earlier this year, and our very own soon-to-be-professor Josh Stacher have a jointly written article on the Muslim Brotherhood in the new issue of Middle East Report. Thankfully, unlike most of the magazine, it’s online. It’s a [...]

A must read….The Domestic Wages of War

In Raed Jarrar’s own words:Then I once again asked the three of them : “How come you are asking me to change my t-shirt? Isn’t this my constitutional right to wear it? I am ready to change it if you tell me why I should. Do you have an order against Arabic t-shirts? Is there [...]

Lewis Lapham, erstwhile editor of Harper’s, is back after a couple of issues off with a classic lead editorial on the profitable business that is war in Iraq, George Galloway is sucking wind in the Guardian and Nassrallah calls on the anti-imperialist workers of the world to unite!The Lapham piece, unfortunately, isn’t online, and I’m [...]

Sorry I’m short of time thesedays due to work commitments, so can’t blog regularly.Anyways, here are pix by Nasser Nouri of Naguib Mahfouz’s funeral today.

So dangerous, in fact, that you can’t board airplanes wearing a T-shirt with an Arabic slogan:Arabic T-shirt sparks airport rowA demonstrator wears a similar T-shirt at a New York protest in JulyAn architect of Iraqi descent has said he was forced to remove a T-shirt that bore the words “We will not be silent” before [...]

A wedding in a bombed-out neighborhood in Southern Lebanon.

Naguib Mahfouz passed away this morning after more than a week of hospitalization, finally succumbing to complications that included internal bleeding. There’s a good essay about Mahfouz on the Nobel Prize site.More later.

Sweating out the truth in Iran - excellent op-ed by Iranian journalist Maziar Bahari on Hizbullah’s relationship with Iran and hairy mullahs in saunas.I was a propaganda intern in Iraq - interview with former Lincoln Group Baghdad intern Willem Marx, who planted US Army articles in the Iraqi press.Key US legislator says will block aid [...]

No, the above picture is neither the deluded fantasy of a member of the al- Saud family, nor the paranoid hallucination of an AIPAC staffer. It’s a picture from a new ad campaign for the old strategy board game “Risk” devised by advertising giant Saatchi & Saatchi.I played Risk regularly in Cairo during Ramadan, when [...]

A neat story:TENERIFE, Canary Islands — It rains little on this island. There are no natural rivers, and the air is full of the dry heat of the nearby Sahara.But in a ravine on the island’s northern tip, tree limbs drip with water and a tropical forest flourishes, sustained almost entirely by condensation from the [...]

A coalition of Arab human rights organizations are starting a movement to freeze Israel’s UN membership. I looked quickly through the list, and while some major ones are missing, the list does contain some of the most courageous rights groups in the region. Here’s an excerpt from their statement, and links to download the press [...]

Most articles about what the Arabs need to do to get out of their current predicament tend to be rather tiresome at best and badly-disguised attack jobs for some ideology that is unsympathetic to Arabs at worst. If they’re written by Thomas Friedman, they’re both tiresome and offensive. The article below, I think is different [...]

It looks like Hamas may launch its own regional satellite television station:Gaza, 28 August: Ramattan news agency learned today from sources close to Hamas that the movement plans to launch its satellite television channel on 1 October.About a year ago, Hamas launched its private television station, Al-Aqsa Television, but the station remained an experimental terrestrial [...]

Disasters seem not stopping anytime soon…Eight Egyptians killed in building collapses28 Aug 2006 10:07:54 GMTCAIRO, Aug 28 (Reuters) - Eight people were killed when two buildings collapsed within hours of each other in Egypt, and rescuers were searching for any others who could be trapped in the rubble, security sources said on Monday.The two residential [...]

Just after those Fox News journalists were released in Gaza, I heard that twice Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Paul Salopek has been charged with espionage in Sudan. I had the opportunity to meet Paul once, around the time Iraq was invaded. He was an extremely humble and smart journalist (a rare combination in this profession) [...]

Journalist, rights activist, and long time friend Sally Sami has launched her own blog. Check it out: SalamanderMabrouk ya Sally. I look forward to following your blog.

Sameh Naguib, a Socialist activist with Kefaya, speaks on Hizbollah and how the war transformed the region. You can find the interview here.

(Via The Blubbering Corner)These posters are circulating the Arab cyberspace, depicting Hizbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah as the new Ché Guevara.

As I’m writing now, our King Ramses II is finally making his way to his new home in Giza.I posted before on the rehearsal, which was successful, but now is the BIG DAY! The statue was scheduled to start moving by 1am, and is expected to arrive at the Grand Egyptian Museum by the Giza [...]

17 Egyptian human rights organizations called for the release of the kidnapped Fox journalists in Gaza, in a statement today. The Arabic statement could be found here.

No prizes for guessing where this is.

The Raiess has spoken…Egypt’s Mubarak dismisses Lebanon, train criticismBy Aziz El-KaissouniCAIRO, Aug 24 (Reuters) - Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak lashed out at critics who have slammed his handling of the conflict in Lebanon as indecisive and slow.In an interview with Al Massai newspaper published on Thursday, Mubarak dismissed criticism of Egypt’s diplomatic handling of the [...]

Fisk’s latest bit has an interesting fifth paragraph—he claims that Hizbullah is encouraging erstwhile residents of the now flattened southern suburbs of Beirut to rent, not buy. Seems that someone’s thinking tactically here, and has decided that there’s no point in rebuilding quite yet.Lebanon and Iraq are beginning to look like a giant fire sale, [...]

Blogger Wael Abbass of Misr Digital posted the following video, saying it’s of an Egyptian citizen being abused inside a police station. The video purportedly shows a police officer tormenting and slapping a citizen, while his colleagues are giggling.Related posting:Back to “serving the people”

Another nice AP report by Rawya from Baghdad…Iraqi reality TV show defies odds in this violence plagued countryBy RAWYA RAGEHBAGHDAD, Iraq– Clad in a beige suit, the TV news anchor fiddles with his glasses as he announces there’s been an explosion: “The microwave blew up in Soha’s face as she was preparing her trademark pizza,” [...]