I arrived in Doha last night to attend a conference on democracy organized by Al Jazeera. For me and many of the journos on this trip, of course, this conference is an excuse to dig a little deeper into the forthcoming Al Jazeera International, the English-language station. I was looking forward to meeting some of [...]

The LA Times has a lovely article on Iraqi cartoonists under Saddam Hussein and now. The best thing about it is a flash slideshow, narrated by reporter Borzou Daragahi, with a lot of examples of past and present newspaper cartoons.

Democratiya has the first part of a thought-provoking long interview with Kanan Makiya in which he reveals a lot of his intellectual development from young Trotskyist to his present role as a supporter of the invasion of Iraq and one-time advisor to the State Department.
The first political event of my life was the 1967 Arab/Israeli [...]

Congress has for the first time allowed the Pentagon to assign up to $200 million of its budget to foreign armies:
The move, included in a little-noticed provision of the 2006 National Defense Authorization Act passed last month, marks a legislative victory for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who pushed hard for the new powers to [...]

Some of your comments in the past week or so were not immediately posted because of changes in the system. Apologies, they should now appear.

Human Rights Watch has just issued the first in a three-part report on human rights in Libya, a rare look into the bizarro world that is Qadhafi’s Libya. The HRW researchers that worked on the report are the first activists to get access to political detainees, senior government officials and dissidents in a long time [...]

Via Boing Boing, an eight-page comic by Joe Sacco (of “Palestine” fame) on Iraqis tortured by US troops. [PDF]

Interesting tidbit from a Le Figaro article interviewing Mohammed Hilal, an octegenarian member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Guidance Council:
The current leadership decided, for the first time in the history of the Egyptian branch, to define the outline of a party. It’s the minimalist tendency, associated with the ‘old guard,’ that won. “The Brotherhood will stay [...]

January 24, 2006
You could feel the reverberation of the explosion in your chest as it shattered the morning calm of the office.
We always hear bombs from around Baghdad from our 7th floor perch overlooking the city, but usually they are just distant thuds that sends everyone to the balcony, scanning the skyline for the telltale [...]

The New York Times has yet another Arab comics story, this time inspired by the 99 attributes (or names) of God:
The story concerns 99 gems encoded with the wisdom of Baghdad just as the Mongols are invading the city in the 13th century – in his version, to destroy the city’s knowledge. The gems are [...]

There have been a lot of calls for Jill Carroll’s release from religious authorities across the Islamic world as well as some Islamist movements. This one, by former Gamaa Islamiya member Montasser Al Zayat — who shared a cell with Ayman Zawahri after the assassination of Sadat — just arrived in my inbox:
An Appeal from [...]

Bidoun, the magazine about Arab and Persian art, pop culture, architecture and much else, has a new issue out on the theme of envy. It includes an interesting article on Nasr City, the neighborhood of Cairo built in the 1960s.
Medinet Nasr’s unapologetic modernist sprawl seems to insist on the physicality of history, especially the history [...]

Noaman Gomaa, the despised dictatorial leader of the Wafd — one of Egypt’s oldest liberal parties — has been unseated by an overwhelming vote of its secretariat, with Gomaa’s former deputy Mahmoud Abaza taking his place for 60 days until a new leader is elected. This has been a brewing coup against Gomaa over the [...]

This SMS is currently making the rounds in Cairo:
Egyptian State Security raids Ghad supporters at the entrance of Africa Cup stadium, beat women, kidnaps three and throws them in the desert after taking banner which said “Nour wishes Egypt victory” and “Free Ayman Nour.”
Looks like Egypt, which is hosting the Africa Cup of Nations (which [...]

From Harper’s. a job ad for a comic book artist interested in producing Arabic-language propaganda for Middle Eastern children:
In order to achieve long-term peace and stability in the Middle East, the youth need to be reached. One effective means of influencing youth is through the use of comic books. A series of comic books provides [...]

The plot thickens:
CAIRO, Egypt (Reuters) — Egypt could lose its chance of a trade deal with Washington if it cannot persuade the Bush administration to launch talks within the next few weeks, a congressional staffer told Egyptian businessmen on Wednesday.
The Bush administration has not yet decided to start talks with Egypt and both it and [...]

Good luck to them:
Yosri Fouda, an investigative reporter and acting Al-Jazeera bureau chief in London, told The Associated Press the network had hired Finers Stephens Innocent LLP in an “attempt to put pressure on the British government” to hand over part of the record of the conversation.
“We would like to know the truth,” Fouda said [...]

Apparently an US-Egypt Free Trade Agreement is yet again being postponed.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States has not decided yet whether to begin free trade talks with Egypt, a U.S. trade official said on Tuesday, amid U.S. concerns about Cairo’s commitment to democratic reforms.
“The decision will be made when the United States and Egypt together [...]

The wonderful and often weird Al Hayat columnist Jihad Al Khazen has been writing on blogs over the past few weeks. Three articles have appeared thus far, one general, one on Arab blogs, and another on advice you can find on Arab blogs.
Al Khazen also has his own blog collecting the English translations of his [...]

Dick Cheney was in Egypt today for a round of talks with Hosni Mubarak, the first such high-level visit in years. There was, predictably, a small demonstration at the Cairo High Court today against the visit by the usual leftist suspects. But the bulk of interest of the visit had to do with why Cheney [...]

For the Arab media junkies out there, the new issue of Transnational Broadcasting Studies Journal is shock-full of goodies:
This volume of TBS examines the hottest trends and controversies involving satellite TV in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Titled The Real (Arab) World: Is Reality TV Democratizing the Middle East?, this edition includes articles on reality [...]

I have just come back to Cairo a few days ago. It seems that these days one can’t live for a few weeks without two million important things happening here–it makes me almost nostalgic for the slow news days of 2003.
There’s a lot of ground to make up for, and I have been busy catching [...]

Chip Rossetti, an editor at AUC Press, is guest-editing Words Without Borders’ special on Egypt his month. There’s a bunch of new Egyptian fiction on it:
“With the confidence of a woman who knows three languages,” the Egyptian writers featured here write fabulism, social realism, modernist irony, and other tongues. In “Veiler of all deeds,” by [...]

I’m still on holiday (South Africa) but I thought this comment from Joe Vess deserved some highlighting:
I know Issandr’s not here, but I thought the big story from Egypt this week should be mentioned. Eric Reeves has an article on his website where he reports that the SPLM has recorded 265 Sudanese refugees murdered by [...]