Middle East Report Online: The Militancy of Mahalla al-Kubra by Joel Beinin.

‘The IED problem is getting out of control. We’ve got to stop the bleeding.’ - A fascinating WaPo piece on the history of the IED in Afghanistan and Iraq and the countermeasures developed against it.
Update: Part two of this series on IEDs is here: ‘The single most effective weapon against our deployed forces’.

Charles has a report on how the Jerusalem Post is trying to pass off a video of a Yazidi girl being beaten in Iraq as an honor crime by Hamas. The reporter behind the “story,” Khaled Abu Toameh, is known for his biased reporting.

Damon Albarn (of Britpop bands Blur and Gorillaz fame) is producing a kind of Buena Vista Social Club album, instead of Cuban masters you have Algerian chaabi masters: Once more, with El Gusto.
Luc Cherki is a big man. Carrying his guitar, he approaches the microphone with the swagger of Johnny Cash and sings a folk [...]

From Le Figaro, an article on how Saudi Arabia is creating a new security service specifically dedicated to protecting petroleum installations. Beyond threat perceptions about attacks on these centers, there is also the factor that this will create yet another service, exclusively under the control of Minister of Interior Prince Nayef and his son — [...]

Following up on this post from a few days ago, the office of the General Prosecutor has decided not to try al-Destour editor Ibrahim Eissa in a State Security Emergency Court:
CAIRO, Egypt: Egypt’s prosecutor general reversed a decision to send an outspoken tabloid newspaper editor who questioned President Hosni Mubarak’s health to the country’s emergency [...]

Egypt press plans day without papers in rights protest:
CAIRO (AFP) - Egyptian independent and opposition newspapers will not publish on October 7 in protest at a government clampdown that has seen several journalists sentenced to prison terms in recent weeks.
Editors from 15 newspapers agreed to the protest “against the fierce campaign against the free press [...]

Moroccan Unrest Over Bread Price:
CASABLANCA, Morocco — Violent protests over the cost of bread prompted the Moroccan government to annul a 30 percent price hike linked to soaring global grain costs.
Protesters clashed with police, cars were torched and buildings damaged in the demonstrations Sunday in Sefrou, 120 miles east of the capital Rabat. Some 300 [...]

Le Monde.fr : En Algérie, des adolescents sont les proies des recruteurs d’Al-Qaida:
Treize adolescents algériens ont été condamnés le 23 septembre à trois ans de prison avec sursis pour avoir entretenu des contacts avec Al-Qaida au Maghreb islamique, l’ex-Groupe salafiste pour la prédication et le combat (GSPC). Un suivi psychologique a été ordonné, et leurs [...]

Report Says Hussein Was Open To Exile Before 2003 Invasion:
“The Egyptians are talking to Saddam Hussein,” Bush said. “He seems to have indicated he would be open to exile if they would let him take one billion dollars and all the information he wants on weapons of mass destruction.”
I can think of several others I’d [...]

Muslim Brother Ibrahim al-Houdaiby has responded to Mona al-Tahawy’s critical column in the Forward on the group. In this pieces he distances himself from Supreme Guide Mahdi Akef’s remark that she appeared “naked” because she was unveiled — not the first time I hear Ibrahim condemn al-Houdaiby in favor of the person many see as [...]

Readers may be interested to know that Berkeley Press has just launched the Muslim World Journal of Human Rights.

I cannot believe that Ibrahim Eissa, fresh from a conviction earlier this month, will now face trial in a State Security Emergency Court:
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - An outspoken Egyptian editor whose newspaper questioned the president’s health has been referred to a court notorious for handing down swift convictions of spies and Islamists, in a move [...]

Richard Silverstein got through to the Kroc Theater run by the Salvation Army that had refused to host a Marcel Khalife concert. The explanation he got from them was that they could not rent the venue to the Palestinian organization al-Awda, which aims for the right of return of all Palestinian refugees.
It’s good that [...]

Saudi Religious Police Attacked by Girls:
Dammam, Asharq Al-Awsat - Members of Khobar’s Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice were the victims of an attack by two Saudi females, Asharq Al-Awsat can reveal.
According to the head of the commission in Khobar, two girls pepper sprayed members of the commission after they had [...]

Two posts I put up recently featuring opposition figures — Iran’s Akbar Ganji and Syria’s Maamoun al-Homsi — generated an interesting response: attacks on these activists as being cowardly, formerly close to the regime, or having some other negative side. It could be that these criticisms are fair — I really don’t know that much [...]

Boston Review - No Going Back:
The American occupation has been more disastrous than the Mongols’ sack of Baghdad in the 13th century. Iraq’s human capital has fled, its intellectuals and professionals, the educated, the moneyed classes, the political elite. They will not return. And the government is nonexistent at best. After finally succumbing to Iraqi [...]

From Tunisian magazine L’Audace:
Souha Arafat n’a cessé de se plaindre ces derniers mois d’avoir été trompée par Leïla en opérant divers placements à la Bourse de Tunis qui se sont avérés infructueux. De son côté, Leïla reprochait à sa partenaire en affaires de lui avoir mal conseillé certains placements à l’étranger. Leur idylle avait pourtant [...]

Babelmed has an interesting interview with the former Syrian MP Maamoun al-Homsi, who was imprisoned by the regime several years ago and now lives in exile. Part one and part two.

From George Packer’s blog in The New Yorker, an odd theory about why Professor Fouad Ajami is so upbeat about Iraq:
It would be wrong to see in Ajami’s version of Iraq the same delusional thinking as in George W. Bush’s. The difference between them is the difference between a strategy and a fantasy. The President’s [...]