It kind of snuck up on us, but today PM Nazif asked parliament to extend the emergency law for another two years, using the Dahab bombings as a justification. I received a SMS on my phone around 3:30pm saying it has already been passed. That’s a fast turnaround for a parliament that usually leaves things [...]

So I’d heard about this new publication called the New York Sun as (in a Jewish New Yorker’s own words) a paper founded, funded and aimed at New York neo-con Jews. (What, there aren’t enough of those kind of rags?) I’ve been following their foreign coverage lately, which seems very Middle East heavy, and it [...]

Strong words from the judges in this NYT story:
“It is enough that for the past 52 years, we have been carrying the liability of rigging the elections in this country,” Zakariya Ahmed Abdel Aziz, chairman of the Judges Club, said at a meeting in August.
And this WaPo one:
“We’re insisting that the elections were flawed. The [...]

Gameela Ismail, Ayman Nour’s wife, writes:
Unfortunately this regime is going madly nervous. Amid the judges reform movement crisis and the support given to it by civil society movements and parties, and amid the demonstrations for the last couple of weeks, Yesterday, the two main lawyers for Nour, Mr Amir Salem and Mr Ehab el Kholy, [...]

Hugh Roberts, the International Crisis Group’s North Africa director, has an interesting op-ed on the questions raised by the Dahab bombings:
The authorities’ reluctance to accept that Al-Qa‘eda may have been behind these events is understandable given the effect this admission could have on the tourist trade and may even be valid, but only underlines the [...]

I have a new piece on the recent Coptic clashes at MERIP:
For years, the Egyptian government and state-run media have brushed off acts of hostility toward minority Coptic Christians, or periodic Coptic-Muslim clashes, as exceptions to a rule of “national unity” and inter-communal brotherhood. But the sectarian street battles in Alexandria in mid-April, set off [...]

Maria Golia says what I want to say, but more nicely put than I could:
Egypt’s political lassitude and social anomie suggests that rather than ensuring public peace, the Emergency Law has undermined it by discouraging people’s natural impulse to help themselves and one another. The suspension of due process has eroded the fabric of society [...]

Take a noble idea, a tragic event, a grave issue and pervert it with bad analogies and facile rhetoric. You’ll get something like this. Putting Algeria, Sudan and Iraq in the same basket is insane. It’s the sign of a mind without historical context, or indeed much knowlede of what it talks about. But he [...]

Hussein Abdel Ghani, Al Jazeera’s bureau chief in Cairo, has been charged with “spreading false news” two days after he was arrested. I had heard that he had been arrested because Al Jazeera helped spread the rumor that Interior Minister Habib Al Adly would soon be sacked. Instead there was this lame excuse:
The interior ministry [...]

A Briton was a member of the A.Q. Khan network. Where will the trail end?

The Guardian on United 93, the first feature film about 9/11:
The film is a documentary-style re-creation of what Mr Greengrass calls a “believable truth” about what might have happened on the plane and in air-traffic control centres - from the moment a controller hears the first indications of the hijacks to when the Flight 93 [...]

Stupid Haaretz:
Without a dialogue with Hamas, Israel needs a responsible Arab adult, like Hosni Mubarak, who holds some valuable bargaining chips, the most important of which is to grant or deny Arab legitimacy to Hamas.
Yeah, right. Hamas needs Mubarak for legitimacy just like Fatah needed him, I suppose. Really served him well during those [...]

Below is a statement about the clashes that took place today, including more arrests and beatings. Names of activists who were arrested are cited.

I’ve mentioned before the shameful verdict against Le Journal Hebdo, a French-language Moroccan weekly, which forced it to pay the highest-ever damages for a libel suit in Morocco. Abu Aardvark had a post about it too, and The Lounsbury over at Aqoul had a response to it. Ustaz Lounsbury is, methinks, too tough on [...]

It’s in French only for now, but there’s a new ICG report out on Mauritania:
Mauritanians wish to break with the way power has been concentrated in the hands of a few tribal groupings, a syndrome that reached unprecedented levels under Ould Taya. However, the country’s new strongman and some of his colleagues are pillars of [...]

Matthew Carrington was at the judges’ demo that was squashed last night — he sent in this account of what he saw:

I stumbled on this demo. It’s the first one I’ve been to in a while now. And what struck me immediately about it was the immense disparity—the farcical dis-proportionality—between the numbers of protestors and [...]

I just got back from a trip to the Western Desert and have missed out on the tragic events of the last few days — a judge being hospitalized, dozens of demonstrators being beaten up, at least 25 dead and many more wounded in two series of bombings in the Sinai. Now, just as I [...]

About an hour ago and two days after the terrorist attack in Dahab, news broke that the multinational force on Sinai has come under attack, probably by a suicide bomber. There seem to be few casualties, but this has already happened before, once in August 2005.
The force has recently increased protective measures. Here is some [...]

Courtesy Manalaa, photos of Judge Mahmoud Mohammed Abdel Latif Hamza, after he was hit by police yesterday. He doesn’t seem to be too badly injured. The issue is that state security thugs should raise their hands to a judge at all.

At least three explosions have been reported in the tourist beach town of Dahab, in  Sinai. Egyptian TV says a supermarket and bridge were targeted.