It’s unbelievable what Rosa al-Youssef is doing these days. The daily paper, which is regarded as close to Gamal Mubarak’s NDP Policies’ Secretariat, is launching a crusade against journalist/blogger and friend Wael Abbas for helping to expose the downtown Cairo molestation fiesta during Eid.
The horrific incidents went unreported by the local media, except for Al-Masry [...]

Bloody clashes have been going on for the third day on the row at Ain Shams University campus in Abbassiya, as student union elections approach.
Pro-government students assaulted Muslim Brotherhood activists at the Faculty of Education at Ain Shams University, and tore down their electoral posters. The MB mobilized demos to denounce the attacks, but they [...]

The Center for Socialist Studies will hold a seminar on Discrimination against Copts in Egypt, Friday 3 November.
The First Session, 1pm to 2:30 pm: The Roots of the Problem
The session will try to situate the historical roles of the parties involved, the Egyptian state, Coptic Church, and the Coptic masses, within the socio-economic and [...]

Police kidnapped Mohamed Hassan, an activist with Workers For Change, an hour ago in front of the General Federation of Trade Unions HQ in Cairo. Hassan was distributing leaflets denouncing the security intervention in the labor unions electoral process, and warning of serious vote rigging to come. Security personnel nabbed him, and took him to [...]

Workers For Change are holding a meeting at the Center for Socialist Studies, tomorrow Friday 6pm, on how to resist vote rigging in the coming Labor Unions elections.
The Center is located 7 Mourad Street, Giza.

Hassan Abdallah, the coordinator of Sinai’s Youth For Change, has been released few hours ago and is on his way home to Al-Arish, according to Kefaya’s website.
Hassan was detained by State Security in Arish on 7 September, then transferred to Bourg el-Arab prison in Alexandria, with no access to lawyers or family visits. His two [...]

Socialist activist Sameh Naguib’s booklet on the Muslim Brothers is available now online, in a pdf format, here.

The booklet is in Arabic, and provides a Marxist analysis of Egypt’s largest Islamist opposition group, and outlines the Socialist strategy vis a vis it.
A must read… الإخوان المسلمون: رؤية اشتراكية… تأليف سامح نجيب

I’m away from the computer for sometime because of IT problems and work commitments. Happy Eid to all of you…
When you get the time please check out the following feature I co-authored with Al-Masry Al-Youm’s Ali Zalat, on the Muslim Brotherhood’s plans to produce a movie about its founder, Hassan el-Banna.
Hassan el-Banna Super Star?
The feature [...]

The New York Times, which, despite its manifold faults, has at least remained reasonably critical of the trough-feeding manner in which the Iraqi “reconstruction” business has been funded, is retailing a report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Construction that criticizes contractors for spending too much on “overhead.”
There seem to have been a bunch [...]

Take a look at this fine speech by retired US Ambassador Chas Freeman about public diplomacy and, well, everything else: Why Not Let Them Hate Us, as long as They Fear Us?
It seems like every day, a new angry retired foreign service or military officer comes out of the woodwork. I know from personal experience [...]

I don’t believe a coup in Iraq will happen, but it’s interesting that this is being reported — it suggests that there are feelers out there at the very least. (Sorry, no link.)
Oct 23, 2006- United Press International: Coup against Maliki reported in the making
Iraqi army officers are reportedly planning to stage a military coup [...]

According to Rick Santorum, anyway:
In an interview with the editorial board of the Bucks County Courier Times, embattled Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has equated the war in Iraq with J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings.” According to the paper, Santorum said that the United States has avoided terrorist attacks at home over the past five [...]

Since I attacked Human Rights Watch on this site for what I still maintain was a biased (in favor of Israel) coverage of the first two weeks (at least) of this summer’s Lebanon war, it seems fair to me to bring attention for the virulent attack against HRW and its head, Kenneth Roth, by the [...]

Credit where credit is due: the generally anti-Arab, uber-neocon New York Sun does a decent job of keeping track of Arab opposition movements and their interaction with Washington. Here it writes about a Syrian opposition group — a rather loose group that includes Islamists — that is about to open a formal Washington office:
The National [...]

An interesting article about Islam, the Quran, and wife-beating. The author tackles the kind of issue that is fundamentally difficult when talking about “liberal interpretation” of Islam: if it’s written pretty unambiguously in the Quran, it’s difficult to justify change. What these interpretations miss out however is that just because something is written in the [...]

I completely agree with Abu Aardvark’s analysis of the Fernandez controversy (the State Dept. spokesman who said that the US had on occasion been stupid and arrogant in the region on Al Jazeera):
The State Department, and especially Karen Hughes, must back Alberto Fernandez to the hilt in this StupidStorm. If he’s fired, or transfered to [...]

October 22, 2006
They beat up one of our photographers today.
And smashed his cameras. Now that’s pretty tough – not so much slapping around our photographer and threatening to drag him into a car so that he could join the ranks of nameless corpses, that’s common. But destroying these big clunky professional Canons, with metal frames [...]

So here we are in Antwerp, where it seems that the friendly face of the diamond trade is now a Russian with watermelon forearms and eyes like a three-day-dead fish. Passed on the diamond-rimed .357 pendant and hit the Koninklijk Museum for a bit of high-culture in low-land light.
An hour of perusing paintings of martyrdom [...]

Very interesting article in Al Ahram Weekly on Sunni-Shia relations in Egypt, looking at converts to Shiism and the mostly mundane reason they switch.

A few days ago, Muslim Brothers celebrated the 100th anniversary of the birth of Hassan al-Banna, their movement’s founder. Among the things planned to mark this event is a new film biopic of al-Banna’s life:
Muhsin Radi says too little is known about Hasan Al-Banna, the founder of a movement which would become Egypt’s strongest opposition [...]

The following is a translation of a message by Tunisian rights activist Moncef Marzouki, sent to me by my friend (exiled Tunisian activist) Kamel Labidi:
Communiqué
On 14 October, I appeared on Al Jazeera to discuss the situation of complete deadlock in which Tunisia has been for years, under the ruthless grip of an ever-worsening police state. [...]

I haven’t followed this story, but got this in my inbox yesterday from Al Jazeera:
Press Release
For Immediate Release
Al Jazeera Denounces former British Home Secretary’s Statements
DOHA, QATAR – October 18th, 2006: It is with great disappointment that the journalists and staff of Al Jazeera have received statements made recently by former British Home Secretary, David Blunkett. [...]

Several readers have emailed in this NYT story about how many US officials involved in the Iraq operations and the Global War on Terror (or is it Extremism these days?) are unable to answer the question, “what’s the difference between Sunni and Shia?”
Well of course it is rather worrying that, at this stage in the [...]

I am hearing that a couple of days ago, when Gamal Mubarak was hosting his Geel al-Mustaqbal (Future Generation) NGO iftar, he urged young people to fight against the phenomenon of wasta, i.e. connections used to get jobs or favors.
I say lead by example.

A BBC survey in 25 countries on the usage of torture showed some depressing results. One third of those surveyed insisted torture could be used in prison on circumstances.
More than 27,000 people in 25 countries were asked if torture was acceptable if it could provide information to save innocent lives.
In Egypt, according to the poll, [...]

One of the little devices that helps me get through the month is ticking up how many stories in the Atlantic Monthly annoy me. When I hit a certain number (yet to be determined), I’m going to cancel my subscription.
This piece scored a tick.
Headlined “Carriers of conflict” it outlines one of the unpleasant side effects [...]

Jack Straw mentions the palpably obvious—that, in London, covering your body from head to toe in an impenetrable black gown and peering at the world through a slit the size of a pack of cards tends to separate you from those around you—and is characterized as a racist anti-Muslim bigot.
The irony, of course, is that [...]

A big thank you to reader Marwa for alerting me to a BBC Radio rendition of Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy, featuring the great Omar Sharif and my friend Ihab Sakkout (he’s also great):
The Cairo Trilogy, part 1 of 3
By Naguib Mahfouz, dramatised by Ayeesha Menon
Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawab, a prosperous shopkeeper, is a tyrant at [...]

Fifty two civil servants and workers are currently on a sit-in at the Ain Shams University Campus, after the administration’s decision to cut down their basic monthly salary from LE220 (US$38) to LE134 (US$23.3), according to Kefaya’s website.
The workers tried without success to meet the University’s dean, so they went on strike, and are refusing [...]

Dozens of wives of Islamist detainees demonstrated today in front of the Lawyers’ Syndicate, Downtown Cairo, to protest their husbands continuous detention by the Interior Ministry. Some of them have been in jails without trial since the 1980s.

Meanwhile, a handful of Muslim Brothers journalists demonstrated in front of the Press Syndicate, protesting the closure of [...]

From Al-Jazeera…

Some fundamentalists have all the luck.

As Homer Simpson says, it’s funny because it’s true:
The Football Rules of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict:
RULE 1: Israel has the right to play on both sides of the field, but the Palestinians can only play in their own half.
RULE 2: During the match, Israel has the right to build a wall anywhere across the field to [...]

The diversity of attempts to normalize relations between Israel and Arab states always astounds me:
The Red Sea Institute of Cinematic Arts is in line with His Majesty’s efforts to harness the skills of Jordanian youth by exposing them to the latest technologies in filmmaking and production. The institute would also contribute to His Majesty’s vision [...]

Great Onion-like headline:
Many Egyptians haven’t heard of opinion polls -poll
CAIRO (Reuters) – An opinion poll conducted by an Egyptian government body showed that 61 percent of those surveyed had never heard of opinion polls before, the official Middle East News Agency MENA reported on Thursday.
The poll, conducted by the Cabinet’s Information and Decision Support Centre, [...]

After the green book, Qadhafi launches the green laptop:
With the project scheduled to be completed by June 2008, Libya could become the first nation in which all school-age children are connected to the internet through educational computers, Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of the One Laptop per Child project, told the The New York Times on Wednesday.
The [...]

Since I’ve been traveling I’m late to this, but a big ahlan wa sahlan to Marc Lynch’s project Qahwa Sada, a kind of roundtable for Middle East experts. It goes on the “essentials” list, and go check out Toby Jones’ post on Bahrain, one of the few really interesting small countries (politically) in the Gulf.

Check out Josh’s take on the recent NDP convention in the latest issue of the Arab Reform Bulletin:
Although the younger Mubarak spoke in terms of consensus, process, committees, and programs, his descriptions did not match what actually took place. NDP delegates from the nation’s 26 governorates used the conference to air personal concerns and rub [...]

So the clash of civilizations turns into a bun-fight over a handicapped parking space.
In this corner we have the Brotherhood and their new “just say no to Denemark [sic!]” campaign (just when we could get decent butter again!), while over in the far corner (but not far enough for my taste) we have the none-too-bright [...]

Tomorrow we mark the 25th anniversary of the start of Mubarak’s disastrous rule.
BBC: Mubarak’s quarter of a century

Also, tomorrow the Muslim Brothers will be celebtrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of the group’s founder, Sheikh Hassan el-Banna.

[Undated photo of Hassan el-Banna, (second row, third from the left) with MB members and boyscouts. Courtsey [...]