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, [...]

Now this is just speculation….I don’t know anymore than anyone else. But I wanted to clarify my thoughts. Although this debate is looking very ploralized with some name-calling happening on some of the other blogs, I am not trying to offend anyone. Just because I don’t think it is Syria does not mean I think [...]

An organization calling itself Nusra wa Jihad fi Bilad Al Sham (”God-given aid” and Jihad in the Land of Sham, i.e. Syria, Lebanon and Palestine or what is sometimes called “Greater Syria”) has claimed credit for the assassination of Rafik Hariri, Al Jazeera just reported. It seems it is previously unknown, but could be linked [...]

Former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was killed today in a huge bomb blast. Nine others were killed, and over a hundred were wounded.
Hariri, a Sunni Muslim, was perhaps the single biggest businessman in Lebanon, with most of his money coming from Saudi Arabia (he worked closely with the royal family and acquired Saudi citizenship.) [...]

Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl has another scorching piece on Egypt and the Nour affair. He offers these little tidbits about the forthcoming trip by Foreign Minister Aboul Gheit and National Security head Omar Suleiman to Washington:
Some officials tell me that the Egyptians will get a cool, if not cold, reception in Washington and will [...]

Haaretz is generally pretty good, but the first paragraph of an opinion piece by Uri Benziman, “History suggests restraint,” is rather problematic:
From President Anwar Sadat’s perspective, Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in June 1982 was a major provocation. Shortly after Egypt had sent an ambassador to Tel Aviv, Israel violated a sister Arab state’s sovereignty and [...]

This statement in the NYT is actually the take in the Egyptian Arabic press (with the exception of al-Misri al-Youm, likely al-Arabi). I think the Atn-Gen made this same point that Nor’s case is not a “political case” at a press conference last Wed (it was in the Thursday papers, al-Wafd and Ahram at [...]

Here’s the response to the NY Times editorial from the press counselor of the Egypt Mission to the UN.
Ayman Nour, an opposition party leader, enjoys all privileges as a longtime member of Parliament, including immunity from arrest. He is entitled to his own opinions and is free to discuss his political beliefs. But Parliament [...]

Abu Aardvark asked over the weekend some of those who post on this site two questions: “do you have any comments on the Al Ahram Weekly reporting?  And, how has the Arabic language Egyptian press (not just the state-owned media, but the tabloids) been covering these stories?”
Here is my response. Regarding the Weekly’s coverage, what [...]

The Weekend Financial Times has a long essay on Egyptian reform and the Al Ghad party in particular by Mark Leonard. It provides a nice relatively in-depth background of the situation, with profiles of Ayman Nour and his wife as well as Al Ghad president Mona Makram Ebeid and the party’s foreign policy advisor, my [...]

Saad Eddin Ibrahim has an editorial in the Washington Post today asking President Mubarak some tough questions about the Ayman Nour arrest and the delaying of political liberalization:
Why does the Mubarak regime continue to resort to these heavy-handed tactics against its peaceful opposition? Here is an attempted answer. Over nearly a quarter of a century, [...]

In the 8 February LA Times, friend and journalist Hossam Hamalawy published an interesting article on the “other” often-rumored presidential successor to Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Mukhaberat head Omar Sulayman.
The article is a nice background piece for the uninitiated.
The substanital contribution comes at the end of the piece where al-Misri al-Youm manager, Hisham Kassem, [...]

In Thomas Friedman’s offering today, he tells us good things are happening in Iraq.
If this does not fill-up your daily intake of insanity, read on as Tom descends into a full-fledged ‘wait and see’ approach in what can only be described as a bridge too far.
As he argues, “Egypt and Syrian-occupied Lebanon both have [...]

Mareen Dowd’s column today is simply too funny and ironic not too point out.
While it focus on Condi’s trip to Paris, she also comments on US domestic legislative oddities, the Admin’s arrogance, and laughable, inconsistent ME policy.
The French are calling her Madame Hawk and the Princess Warrior and the view on Iran as a [...]

As an addition and in reference to Issandr’s post below, the government’s latest assault on al-Ghad’s paper is only the half of it.
_________________
So why is the paper closed. Ahram printing refuses to print it because the party’s newspaper papers are not in order.
Exerpts from Reuters story on al-Jazeera
[Ayman Nor's Asst. Wail] Nawara said a party [...]

This morning I went out to buy my papers, thinking I’d see the new mouthpiece of the Al Ghad party out there. The newspaper vendor hadn’t heard of it. Bizarre, I thought — the release had been widely announced for today. It turns out things happened differently — as a press release I just received [...]

In a sign of further diplomatic encroachment and normalization, Egypt will be sending its Amb. back to Tel Aviv soon. This, despite the fact the regime reserves and employs the right to negatively play the normalization card with ordinary Egyptians who travel to Israel.
The resending of the Egyptian Amb. simply confirms what many of [...]

“It is futile.”
President Hosni Mubarak on the opposition’s call for constitutional reform.
“We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile.”
The Borg, in Star Trek The Next Generation.
“My election manifesto has been announced and exists and is applied every day, for I’m not [...]

Reuters Cairo bureau chief Jonathan Wright on the many reasons Mubarak has for hosting the Sharm Al Sheikh summit.
Newsweek’s Christopher Dickey on the Pharaoh’s long shadow. Pretty poor.
Arm Hamzawy on Arab opinion-makers and the chasm that separate them from the public
Hussein Fattah has a primer on Arab media. Note the absence of radio stations — [...]

Here are some pickings from a pretty gutsy column by Al Misry Al Yom columnist Magy Mahana. It ran on Sunday. Could Mahana be the next Abdel Halim Qandil?
Will the constitution with its flaws remain governing us for more years to come, with no changes allowed to approach it. And will any call to [...]

I guess we’ll know for sure tomorrow, but here is the hot off the press news:
Israeli and Palestinian leaders have agreed a truce to end more than four years of fighting, both sides confirmed today.
Negotiators from both sides finalised the agreement during last-minute preparations for tomorrow’s summit meeting between the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, [...]