Manal and Alaa's bit bucket

Completely overwhelmed with work these days, pissing my employers off by procrastinating and redesigning this blog twice in about as many weeks while deadlines sail by. No more. While I’m buried under work, have a look at this. I laughed. Lots.

Always, Egypt first: The Sept. 12 Al-Misri al-Youm reports on Muslim Brotherhood MPs’ proposals for amending the Constitution. They suggest that presidents should only be allowed to serve for two five-year terms, that Parliament should have more oversight of ministerial appointments and the budget, and that the legislative branch should have other checks on the [...]

The president looks very handsome and distinguished in this hat. Too bad he’s too proud and statesmanlike to out-Qaddafi Qaddafi and start wearing one of these around in public. I would be the first to applaud.From GEMYHOoOD via Hossam.

Meron Rapoport has an interesting article in Haaretz on the use of cluster munitions and phosphorous in the last days of the Lebanon war:“In Lebanon, we covered entire villages with cluster bombs, what we did there was crazy and monstrous,” testifies a commander in the Israel Defense Forces’ MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket System) unit. Quoting [...]

Easy to miss this amid the 60 new mutilated corpses in Baghdad and Saddam Hussein’s messy trial, but on Sept. 10, Iraqi security forces detained Khalshan al-Bayati, Al-Hayat’s Iraq correspondent, from her house. Authorities also confiscated her car, which they said had been used in an insurgent attack.RSF’s statement is here.Technorati Tags: Iraq, Khalshan [...]

After another summer watching khaleegis slumming in Cairo, I figure that, like Flava-Flav, “I got a right to be hostile:”Technorati Tags: Saudi Arabia, women, niqab

Housekeeping…Some readers like the new stripped-down text design. Others don’t. Choose which ever design suits your fancy.Click on this link to bring back the Elder of Cafe Horreya and the serif font: http://elijahzarwan.net/blog/index.php?wptheme=ConnectionsIf you later decide you’re feeling minimalist, no need to erase the cookie. Simply click on: http://elijahzarwan.net/blog/index.php?wptheme=HiperminimalistThe option will live in the [...]

On Sept. 11, the Iranian Communication and Information Technology News Agency (CITNA) reported that Esma’il Radkani, head of The Information Technology Company’s director-general for management and technical support, had told it that “the relevant authorities, including the judiciary, the committee for identifying unauthorized websites and the filtering system database,” had censored 10 million Web [...]

What’s wrong with these people? First kittens, and now this? Kittens and women are among the best things God ever did for the world.Hooray for AP’s Donna Abu-Nasr. She seems not to be enjoying her trip to Saudi Arabia, and seems to be taking revenge by shining the torch of common sense on all the [...]

It only looks cute. Behind those contented eyes, there’s a world of evil, decadence, and malice. Via reader SP over email.Saudi religious cops ban dog, cat salesBy DONNA ABU-NASR, Associated Press Writer Fri Sep 8, 4:21 PM ETSaudi Arabia’s religious police, normally tasked with chiding women to cover themselves and ensuring men attend mosque prayers, [...]

Funnily, this article, “How Human Rights Watch Lost its Way in Lebanon,” immediately touched off a super-nerdy email debate on the details international humanitarian law as regards Lebanon among friends who once worked for HRW. Don’t want to alienate anyone by posting even anonymous excerpts, but Jonathan Cook may be gratified to know people are [...]

I harp on about Israel, but every now and again, something almost gives me hope that, as Madonna hopes, there will one day be peace in da Middle East. Like this Israeli blog post translated from Russian (Israel North Blog via Lisa Goldman). It’s downright touching if read carefully:The elder son is determined to become [...]

Always something good at Aqoul.Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestine

…and the world goes on. So J.M. Coetzee wrote in Waiting for the Barbarians. I discovered this today as I was taking a break from trying to catch up on what I’d missed while I was away.Israel’s decision to lift its air and sea blockade of Lebanon is important and welcome news. The daily carnage [...]

Issandr has a nice obituary at The Guardian’s blog site. I’m still away from Egypt; I’d appreciate it if any friends reading there could save me obituaries from the Egyptian press.Technorati Tags: Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt

Live, from New York, it’s CNN’s anchorwoman having a little chat in the bathroom while President Bush is on air. Too, too good. It could have been so much better. Video here. New York Post story (their masters came up with the headline ‘Flush and Bush’) is here.Technorati Tags: Bush, CNN, Kyra Phillips

Is that a cop coaching the Demon Children from Hell? And I know the soldiers are there to make sure things don’t get out of hand, but considering they’re not doing anything to clear the Demon Children from Hell out of the area, their presence seems to serve only to intimidate the women of the [...]

I can understand why my friends in Cairo like Iran’s diminutive president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, so much. He sticks it to The Man. Hilariously, he’s just challenged George Bush to a debate. It’s the same impulse that made Saddam Hussein a hero among many people who think President Hosni Mubarak is a tyrant.But my friends, really.Shirin [...]

There’s the actual minefield Israel left in southern Lebanon the last time it invaded. There are the cluster-bombs it left this time. But right now, the political minefield seems to be the trickiest to navigate. One misstep, everyone seems to agree, and this entire situation could explode again.Kofi Annan today called on Israel to [...]

Lebanon’s convoluted recent history and confessional politics breed complex public personalities. But opposition leader Gen. Michel Aoun—a Maronite, anti-Syrian, anti-Israeli, renegade military commander turned factional warlord, prime minister, exile, and, since February, ally of Syrian-backed Hizballah—is complex even by Lebanese standards. Speaking to reporters as Kofi Annan was finding a frosty reception from Hizballah supporters [...]

Credit: Carlos Latuff

Melting polar ice caps or changing migratory patterns of birds a little too abstract?  How does Black Death grab you?Technorati Tags: plague, environment, global warming

There they go, mucking up the Middle East again. Haven’t they done enough in Iraq?The Wall Street Journal’s editorial writers are masters of the art. Take today’s clever, well-written example: “Mission Unaccomplished.” It sounds great. It’s a pleasure to read. The facts are all correct. And it makes many good points. Here’s how it begins:Most [...]

The Lebanese defense minister is right to conclude that the cease-fire in Lebanon must hold at all costs, despite Israel’s commando raid near Baalbek yesterday. Defense Minister Elias Murr warned this morning that anyone retaliating for Israel’s breach of the cease-fire would be tried for treason before a military tribunal. It would be nice to [...]

will erode faith in the judiciary.

If anyone’s reading in Lebanon, here’s what an unexploded cluster bomblet looks like:This photo was taken in southern Lebanon on August 15 by the U.N. Mine Action Coordination Center for southern Lebanon. More photos here. Bloggers, particularly those in Lebanon: Please post these photos. You can see how easy it would be to miss these [...]

Asks Issandr in an op-ed reflecting on the war in Lebanon’s effect on moderates in the Arab world:The Bush administration’s intuition that it must reach out to moderates in the Arab world is an obvious one, and hopefully will continue to be the policy of future U.S. administrations. But it is not enough to speak [...]

It looks like the war in Lebanon is really over, that this cease-fire will hold. Thank God. I’m still a bit nervous because the Israelis are pretty entrenched in some places in the South and people are flooding back to their villages. All it would take is one accident to touch things off again.Friends in [...]

And now, for something completely different…

The new draft text of the U.N. Security Council resolution strikes an uneasy compromise on many of the key sticking points, but I hope it’s one everyone can support in the interest of ending the fighting. The key addition is the call for “a full cessation of hostilities,” though the confusing proviso, “based upon, in [...]