Lewis Lapham, erstwhile editor of Harper’s, is back after a couple of issues off with a classic lead editorial on the profitable business that is war in Iraq, George Galloway is sucking wind in the Guardian and Nassrallah calls on the anti-imperialist workers of the world to unite… or did he?
The Lapham piece, unfortunately, isn’t [...]

Sorry I’m short of time thesedays due to work commitments, so can’t blog regularly.
Anyways, here are pix by Nasser Nouri of Naguib Mahfouz’s funeral today.

And here’s a report by Reuters…
Pomp, ceremony but no public at Mahfouz’s funeral
By Aziz Kaissouni
CAIRO, Aug 31 (Reuters) – Nobel Prize-winning author Naguib Mahfouz was given a state funeral on Thursday [...]

So dangerous, in fact, that you can’t board airplanes wearing a T-shirt with an Arabic slogan:
Arabic T-shirt sparks airport row
A demonstrator wears a similar T-shirt at a New York protest in July
An architect of Iraqi descent has said he was forced to remove a T-shirt that bore the words “We will not be silent” before [...]

Naguib Mahfouz passed away this morning after more than a week of hospitalization, finally succumbing to complications that included internal bleeding.
There’s a good essay about Mahfouz on the Nobel Prize site.
More later.
Update: I have a reflection on Mahfouz on the Guardian’s Comment is Free website and was also interviewed by Radio France International’s English broadcast [...]

A wedding in a bombed-out neighborhood in Southern Lebanon.

Sweating out the truth in Iran – excellent op-ed by Iranian journalist Maziar Bahari on Hizbullah’s relationship with Iran and hairy mullahs in saunas.
I was a propaganda intern in Iraq – interview with former Lincoln Group Baghdad intern Willem Marx, who planted US Army articles in the Iraqi press.
Key US legislator says will block aid [...]

No, the above picture is neither the deluded fantasy of a member of the al- Saud family, nor the paranoid hallucination of an AIPAC staffer. It’s a picture from a new ad campaign for the old strategy board game “Risk” devised by advertising giant Saatchi & Saatchi.
I played Risk regularly in Cairo during Ramadan, when [...]

A neat story:
TENERIFE, Canary Islands — It rains little on this island. There are no natural rivers, and the air is full of the dry heat of the nearby Sahara.
But in a ravine on the island’s northern tip, tree limbs drip with water and a tropical forest flourishes, sustained almost entirely by condensation from the [...]

A coalition of Arab human rights organizations are starting a movement to freeze Israel’s UN membership. I looked quickly through the list, and while some major ones are missing, the list does contain some of the most courageous rights groups in the region. Here’s an excerpt from their statement, and links to download the press [...]

Most articles about what the Arabs need to do to get out of their current predicament tend to be rather tiresome at best and badly-disguised attack jobs for some ideology that is unsympathetic to Arabs at worst. If they’re written by Thomas Friedman, they’re both tiresome and offensive.
The article below, I think is different [...]

It looks like Hamas may launch its own regional satellite television station:
Gaza, 28 August: Ramattan news agency learned today from sources close to Hamas that the movement plans to launch its satellite television channel on 1 October.
About a year ago, Hamas launched its private television station, Al-Aqsa Television, but the station remained an experimental terrestrial [...]

Disasters seem not stopping anytime soon…
Eight Egyptians killed in building collapses
28 Aug 2006 10:07:54 GMT
CAIRO, Aug 28 (Reuters) – Eight people were killed when two buildings collapsed within hours of each other in Egypt, and rescuers were searching for any others who could be trapped in the rubble, security sources said on Monday.
The two residential [...]

Just after those Fox News journalists were released in Gaza, I heard that twice Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Paul Salopek has been charged with espionage in Sudan. I had the opportunity to meet Paul once, around the time Iraq was invaded. He was an extremely humble and smart journalist (a rare combination in this profession) [...]

Journalist, rights activist, and long time friend Sally Sami has launched her own blog. Check it out: Salamander
Mabrouk ya Sally. I look forward to following your blog.

Sameh Naguib, a Socialist activist with Kefaya, speaks on Hizbollah and how the war transformed the region. You can find the interview here.

(Via The Blubbering Corner)
These posters are circulating the Arab cyberspace, depicting Hizbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah as the new Ché Guevara.

As I’m writing now, our King Ramses II is finally making his way to his new home in Giza.
I posted before on the rehearsal, which was successful, but now is the BIG DAY! The statue was scheduled to start moving by 1am, and is expected to arrive at the Grand Egyptian Museum by the Giza [...]

17 Egyptian human rights organizations called for the release of the kidnapped Fox journalists in Gaza, in a statement today. The Arabic statement could be found here.

No prizes for guessing where this is.

The Raiess has spoken…
Egypt’s Mubarak dismisses Lebanon, train criticism
By Aziz El-Kaissouni
CAIRO, Aug 24 (Reuters) – Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak lashed out at critics who have slammed his handling of the conflict in Lebanon as indecisive and slow.
In an interview with Al Massai newspaper published on Thursday, Mubarak dismissed criticism of Egypt’s diplomatic handling of the [...]

Fisk’s latest bit has an interesting fifth paragraph—he claims that Hizbullah is encouraging erstwhile residents of the now flattened southern suburbs of Beirut to rent, not buy. Seems that someone’s thinking tactically here, and has decided that there’s no point in rebuilding quite yet.
Lebanon and Iraq are beginning to look like a giant fire sale, [...]

Blogger Wael Abbass of Misr Digital posted the following video, saying it’s of an Egyptian citizen being abused inside a police station. The video purportedly shows a police officer tormenting and slapping a citizen, while his colleagues are giggling.
Related posting:
Back to “serving the people”

Another nice AP report by Rawya from Baghdad…

Iraqi reality TV show defies odds in this violence plagued country
By RAWYA RAGEH
BAGHDAD, Iraq– Clad in a beige suit, the TV news anchor fiddles with his glasses as he announces there’s been an explosion: “The microwave blew up in Soha’s face as she was preparing her trademark pizza,” [...]

From Reuters…
Egypt seeks $1.5 bln to revamp railways after crash
By Abdel Sattar Hatita
CAIRO, Aug 23 (Reuters) – Egypt, reeling from its worst train disaster in four years, scrambled on Wednesday to find $1.5 billion to overhaul its antiquated rail network.
Fifty eight people were killed and scores injured on Monday when two commuter trains collided in [...]

The picture below was taken by John Waterbury, president of the American University in Beirut. More here.

I just read that Kifaya has started to work towards collecting a million signatures for a petition calling for the cancellation of the Camp David peace treaty. Can anyone confirm this?
I’ll have more to say about this soon, but want to confirm it first.

Since today is 22 August, and we all know what that means, am kind of surprised the end of the world hasn’t come yet… What’s up Ahmedinejad? Get on with it already.
Then I started thinking about it, trying to emulate the great mind of Bernard Lewis. The threat might not be literal, but something more [...]

I’m receiving news there is some nasty bus accident that happened in Sinai today, with casualties.
UPDATE: Here is a Reuters report on the bus crash…
Up to nine Israeli Arabs die in Egypt tour bus crash
By Cynthia Johnston
CAIRO, Aug 22 (Reuters) – Up to nine Israeli Arabs were killed on Tuesday and 39 injured when their [...]

My friend Rawya wrote a very interesting piece form Baghdad on Cellular phones culture in Iraq…

Texting, ring tones all the rage in Iraq
By RAWYA RAGEH, Associated Press Writer
Sun Aug 20, 2:45 PM ET
Beep, beep, beep. Then the text comes: “President Bush calls for a timetable for the withdrawal of the Iraqi people from Iraq.”
It’s not [...]

That Amr Hamzawy — he’s so hot right now (you have watched Zoolander, haven’t you?):
This widening ideological divide between ruling elites and oppositions will make it more difficult to adopt political reform measures, which require at least some consensus and flexibility on both sides. More troubling is that the positions of putatively democratic Arab opposition [...]

Never heard of this before:
CAIRO — A Saudi opposition group is set to breathe new life into the kingdom’s dormant political reform movement. But in a sign of changing alliances, its founder hopes for a boost from public anger over government criticism of Hezbollah.
Founded in Paris by the exiled son of the last ruler of [...]

I found this short video clip on Egyptian activism, via this blog. Check out Alaa Seif, Hossam Bahgat, and other rights activists talking about street activism.
Current TV: Democracy in Egypt

I’ve just uploaded a brilliant recent Daily Show interview with their Middle East correspondent in Beirut to YouTube. Instead of their usual correspondents, they has a guy act as their Arab correspondent. And while Jon Stewart was expressing concern about the carnage, the correspondent kept reacting as if he loved the whole birth pangs of [...]

I’ve been on the phone since the morning with a journalist friend present in the scene, and with Photographer Nasser Nouri who managed to make it to Qalyoub.
I was told the rescue services did not show up to the scene, except after at least an hour and half, during which ordinary citizens and uninjured passengers [...]

I just got off the phone with Gamal Al Ghitany (a famous novelist, the editor of the literary magazine Akhbar Al Adab and a good friend of Mahfouz’s for 40 years now). He says Al Ustaz is “better.”
I met Mahfouz last Spring. I was invited to one of the “nadwas” he has with groups of [...]

It’s been a week that Naguib Mahfouz has been hospitalized, and the latest reports say he is critically ill and no longer taking food. At 95 and after many health complications since he was attacked in 1994, his chances don’t look very good. I haven’t had a chance to go through much local press coverage [...]

One detainee was judged a threat in part because he was a karate expert and had taught martial arts to Bosnian orphans, tribunal records show. He was also classified as potentially dangerous because he was familiar with computers. Another detainee was flagged because he had performed mandatory service in the Algerian army more than a [...]

There’s been serious train accident not too far from Cairo this morning in Qalyoub. At least 80 dead so far, but the death toll has been steadily going up all morning.
QALYOUB, Egypt, Aug 21 (Reuters) – A collision between two trains killed 80 people and injured 131 on Monday in a Nile Delta town north [...]

Eric Alterman on how neo-cons and Israel Firsters are attacking American Jewry for putting America’s interests before Israel’s:
Things can become a little confusing when the same neocons who insist it is ipso facto anti-Semitic to ask what role Israel plays in their calculations instruct American Jews that they are paying too much attention to [...]

French specialist on Islamist movements Olivier Roy has a very interesting op-ed in the FT, reproduced below.
Hizbollah has redrawn the Middle East
Published: August 17 2006 20:29 | Last updated: August 18 2006 01:49
The perceived victory of Hizbollah in Lebanon may be short term but has highlighted some new and important developments. For the first time, [...]