From Al-Jazeera…
The guns have fallen silent in Beirut and the pro- and anti-government fighters who had been battling for four days, have left the city’s streets, but the power struggle is not yet over.
The violence spread on Sunday to Tripoli in the north, where opposition supporters clashed with those allied to the government of Fouad [...]

From AFP…
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni will attend the World Economic Forum on the Middle East at the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt, a senior official said on Sunday.
Click on the photo below, taken by Amr Abdallah, to read the rest of the report…

In other news…
The prices of exported Egyptian gas will [...]

Some Egyptian readers have complained recently that while they could find my new postings on their RSS feeds, they couldn’t see them on the frontpage. This I’m afraid is linked to the transfer of the Arabist blogs to a new host. Below is a message from Scot, on how to solve it…
This is not [...]

Thousands demonstrated in Britain on May Day… In Turkey, Istanbul was a scene of riots and clashes with the pigs… I received this message from Comrade Cigdem Cidamli on May 2…
dear hossam
I could not write you yesterday because of too much tear gas and other events but you can read what happened yesterday from the [...]

I’m having some IT problems.. In addition to the frequent collapse of the blog under heavy internet traffic since the Mahalla uprising, now my last eight postings have disappeared.. Issandr and other friends are currently looking into this.. Sorry for those who posted comments on those “disappeared postings”.. Hopefully they’ll be retrieved too.
I’m also late [...]

I’m preparing a longer posting on the Mahalla Uprising and the aftermath.. It’s taking sometime… but till I’m done, I just want to state on the record from now that I DO NOT endorse the call for a general strike on May 4th. I repeat I do NOT endorse the call for a general strike [...]

Click below to read an article by Alex Callinicos on why the ideas of Karl Marx are a good place to start if we want to provide an alternative to capitalism and change the world…

The SWP translated the Arabic booklet authored by Mostafa Bassiouni and Omar Said on the “Egyptian new workers’ movement: the strike wave of 2007“… Click on the poster below to read the English edition…

And make sure you also read Comrade Anne Alexander’s article on Egypt’s mass strikes…

An update on the Kafr Elw residents‘ protests by Michaela Singer…
The homeless families of Kafr El-Elew staged an all-day sit-in on Monday outside the Cabinet building to pressure the Cairo governorate to grant them housing.
The 24 families, who are now living in tents in the streets, had their homes torn down last September to make [...]

Read Simon’s posting…

[Gary Moore: Still got the blues...]

A posting by John Molyneux…
‘Democracy’ is about the most abused word in the political dictionary. Almost every reactionary politician you can think of - Bush, Cheney, Blair, Thatcher, Berlusconi – swears by it. Blatantly undemocratic regimes call themselves democracies: the ruling party of the Egyptian dictator, Hosni Mubarak, is called the National Democratic Party; [...]

I received the following statement from HRW…
Egypt continues to imprison journalists and editors who publish stories critical of President Hosni Mubarak and other high officials, Human Rights Watch said today. The organization called on the government to repeal laws that allow authorities to imprison writers and editors solely for exercising their right to freedom [...]