As would be expected the new election law was front and center in today’s press. Al Ahram ran a special cover page with a rather amusing photo of the President during the conference extending his arms out to the crowd like a gift bearing messiah. There were no less than nine pictures of Mubarak in [...]

There is no doubt in my mind that today’s announcement was a historically important one in Egypt’s history. When you change a country’s way of electing its topmost leader in such a fundamental way, the immediate effect does not matter, it’s the principle that is important. What Hosni Mubarak has done is to significantly loosen [...]

I am eating my words. This morning, in a speech broadcast on TV, President Hosni Mubarak asked the Shura Council, the upper house of parliament, to change article 76 of the constitution to allow for multiple candidate elections. If you’ve been reading this site for a while, you’ll know that I never thought it would [...]

This morning a very small and toubling story appeared on the BBC.
It details how Iraqi rebels confessed to being directed and sent from Syria. As US pressure increases on Bashar & Co. in the wake of the Hariri assassination, in which no evidence has been marshalled of Syrian involvement, it appears certain interests are preparing [...]

Imprisoned Al ghad leader Ayman Nour was admitted to hospital last night after he became ill while being interrogated:
Nour’s wife, Gamila Ismail, told Reuters Nour had fallen ill during questioning at a State Security Prosecution office in the early hours of Tuesday.
“He was sweating, vomiting and holding his left arm,” Ismail told Reuters, adding that [...]

Seasoned Syria analyst and author Patrick Seale weighed in on the debate over the Hariri assassination, Lebanon, and Syria. His article appeared in today’s Guardian.
Seale argues that he does not know who killed Rafiq Hariri but he is sure the Syrians did not do it. This has been my position since the assassination. I still [...]

According to Electronic Iraq, Scott Ritter is dropping hits that Seymour Hersh will reveal a plan to bomb Iran’s nuclear plant in June.
Meanwhile, the pro-Israel Washington Times is reporting that Israel is lobbying the US to take out the plant:
Israel has been privately pressing Washington to solve the Iran nuclear problem in a hint that [...]

As Josh posted a few days ago, a new Egyptian English-language weekly is out. It is called Cairo and its first issue will come out on 3 March. For the past several months, I have been a member of the team that has been working to put it together. Although the first issue isn’t out [...]

Today’s event that was used as an excuse not to write-up the remaining chapter and a half of my thesis was the Human Rights Watch press conference at the Hisham Mubarak Legal Center in downtown Cairo.
The press conference was convened on the occasion of HRW releasing its latest report regading the ongoing detention and [...]

There is a debate concerning the amount of people that participated in yesterday’s protest. My colleagues and I that attended noted that there were approximately 200 people. We gathered this by guessing.
Reuters and BBC both said that this was the largest of the three anti-President protests with protesters reaching in the hundreds or over [...]

This afternoon at Cairo University the Popular Campaign for Change held the third Anti-Mubarak demonstration in two and a half months.
The Popular Campaign for Change, aka Kifaya (or Enough), gathered at Cairo U’s main gate a little before 1pm. Several journalist friends and I decided that a fair estimate of protesters to be [...]

Just a heads-up to the Arabist’s readers.
A lot of longerish Cairo-based journalists and former staff from the Cairo Times are starting up a new English-language publication called “Cairo”. It will be a weekly publication - slated for Thursday street releases - and will cover Egyptian (and regional) news, business, and leisure topics.
The print magazine [...]

The G-8 sponsored conference that was to be held at the Arab League HQ in Cairo’s Tahrir square has been delayed indefinitely, announced Egyptian FM Ahmed Abul-Ghait yesterday. The conference was scheduled for the first week in March.
According to an AP story, it was postponed because of the Egyptian government’s unwillingness to [...]

I was out last evening and speaking to a dear activist friend, who also is a key organizer for the Egyptian Popular Committee for Change.
We were talking about what was coming up on the Committee’s schedule.
On Monday (21st February), The Popular Committee, Movement for Change, and the defunct/frozen Hizb al-Amal (Labor Party) [...]

Sorry for my erratic presence of late. I was in the US for a stretch and was a bit overwhelmed upon my return to Egypt, thus had little time to post. Anyway, I missed out on much of the Hizb al Ghad fun, so I’d like to chime in, if a bit late.
When Hizb [...]

An interesting tidbit from MENA, the Egyptian official news agency (sorry, no link):
KUWAIT, Feb 17 (MENA) - Israel and Turkey have put their air forces and
airstrips near the border with Syria at maximum alert Wednesday dawn
following European and US notifications over possibile Western military
intervention in Syria and Lebanon to topple their regimes in the fashion
of [...]

Joshua Landis posts that Syria will have to withdraw. He’s absolutely right. As Juan Cole points out, it no longer matters whether Syria was behind the attack or not. Most of the Lebanese factions seem to believe it was, or at least their leadership is seizing the opportunity to push for a pullout — as [...]

If Condoleeza Rice told Egyptian Foreign Minister Aboul Gheit about her “strong concerns” about the Ayman Nour affair, why isn’t it in the official transcript?
Also, here is the statement by the Public Prosecutor on the case.

While everyone was talking about the Hariri assassination, the big story in Cairo yesterday was that Minister of Information Mahmoud Beltagui swapped jobs with Minister of Youth Anas Al Fiqi. This is a big demotion for a man who has been in the cabinet for over a decade. Beltagui cut his teeth among other things [...]

The backlash has begun:
In Hariri’s hometown of Sidon on southern Lebanon’s Mediterranean coast, dozens of demonstrators attacked Syrian workers Tuesday, slightly wounding five before police intervened. Hundreds of others marched in the streets. Black banners and pictures of the slain leader covered the streets as the country began three days of official mourning.
On Monday night, [...]