For the past three weeks, the story that has dominated the Egyptian media is the scandal that erupted in the wake of a fire in the small town of Beni Suef, 100km of Cairo, which killed 46 people included prominent critics and writers. Under tremendous public pressure, Minister of Culture Farouq Hosni tendered his resignation [...]

A few days ago Saad Eddin Ibrahim had a new op-ed in the Washington Post, in which he says the time is ripe for international monitors.
Many of the opposition parties that once went along with the Mubarak regime in opposing international election monitoring are now loudly insisting on it for the forthcoming November parliamentary elections. [...]

Richard Dawkins warns of a conspiracy to get people across the world hooked on a sociopathic drug. Governments are pushing it. Children are encouraged to do it. Gerin oil is all around us:
Gerin oil (or Geriniol to give it its scientific name) is a powerful drug which acts directly on the central nervous system to [...]

This site has a bunch of resources on reference to Islam in science fiction, and links to some interesting articles such as this one on Islamic and Arab references in Frank Herbert’s Dune. Fun.

Reading the news this morning, I see a pattern emerging…
Reuters on the closing of the trial of Lynndie England, one of the soldiers responsible for sexual abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib:
FORT HOOD, Texas, Sept 26 - Defense lawyers have a last chance on Monday to argue that U.S. soldier Lynndie England was not responsible [...]

Reporters Sans Frontieres has published a handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents. It’s available in several languages, including Arabic, and features a personal account from Chan’ad Bahraini, one of the best Bahraini bloggers around.

The Washington Post’s Daniel Williams has a moment with Ayman Nour, who has been facing multiple attacks by infiltrators in his party:
CAIRO — It was an unsettling moment. Ayman Nour, the politician who challenged Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s bid for a fifth term, shed tears of joy in the presence of a visiting reporter. He [...]

I think I only need to see this to know that subscribing to “TimesSelect” is not worth it.

While discussing what she dubs the “Gamal Mubarak Project” (Omar Suleiman Experience anyone?), Baheyya draws a quick portrait of Abdel Halim Qandil, a leader of the Kifaya movement and the editor-in-chief of Al Arabi, the mouthpiece of the Nasserist party and by far the most outspoken and virulently anti-Mubarak publication in Egypt (yes, more so [...]

I like Juan Cole’s blog, and I like some of the principled stands he’s taken against CampusWatch’s attack dogs, and his valuable coverage of Iraq over the past few years. And I like to watch the fights he gets into with people like Christopher Hitchens.
This makes it all the more painful to see him do [...]

Rumor is right now that Farouq Al Hosni, the painter turned Minister of Culture who is rumored to be a close friend and protege of Egypt’s first lady Suzanne Mubarak, has resigned.
This comes in response to a barrage of assault on him after a fire in Beni Suef that killed more than 40 people [...]

Mubarak has 78-80%, and Nour comes second with 12%. Huge upset in Nour’s favor, whom many people thought would lose out to Nomaan Gomaa for second place. This makes Nour a rising political figure and his party a strong contender to overtake the liberal flame from Al Wafd. Or, less likely, the Wafdists will get [...]

Okay, we’re sorry: we haven’t been good at keeping the blog updated. With the elections and all, we’ve been too busy that we were too exhausted to blog regularly. That will be rectified soon with some notes on yesterday’s elections that will come later tonight.
In the meantime, I wanted to share with you the impressions [...]

In Arabic or in English, don’t miss this site.

The Aardvark noted the whole scandal over Ayman Nour being forbidden to air his TV advertisement because he hadn’t paid the royalties over Muhammad Mounir’s song from the Youssef Chahine movie Al Massir–a catchy and appropriate song, actually, since it urges listeners to (loosely translated) “Raise your voice, anything is possible.”
And the Nour team should [...]