I was traveling much of last week, then recovering from jet lag over the weekend, and at the same time quite busy finishing off various projects. Hence the conspicuous absence of new posts in the last ten days. Unfortunately, two days ago my DSL went kaput and it will take a few more days to [...]

[Thanks, Francesca.]

This is great online activism. Tunisian blogger Astrubal has used data
of plane spotters to track the plane of Tunisia’s Ben Ali on its visits to European cities. Comparing dates and destinations with official
newspaper annoncements, he suggests it could as well serve the First Lady’s shopping endavours.
(Via crisscrossed.net)

German scholar Thomas Demmelhuber recently presented an interesting paper on Egyptian-Chinese economic relationships at the German Orientalists Day in Freiburg, Germany.
These are the main points:
The rise of Egyptian-Chinese economic relations needs to be seen in the context of the Nazif cabinet which took office in 2004 and tries to orientate the Egyptian economy towards foreign [...]

Al Hayat’s Muhammad Salah uses Cairo’s seasonal “black cloud” of pollution as a metaphor for Egypt-US relations. There are some interesting ideas there about mutual blackmail, notably over Hamas — which Cairo has visibly warmed up to recently — and the Muslim Brotherhood.
The conviction even prevails among Egyptians that US reform plans have evaporated [...]

Middle East Online has a translation of a Monde Diplomatique article I’d previously linked to on the reversal of agrarian reform in Egypt. This excerpt deals with the new law passed in the 1990s that has led to many farmers losing land and helped former landlords regain land they had been forced to sell under [...]

Readers may be interested in reading this profile of Egyptian novelist Alaa al-Aswani from last week’s Le Mondes des Livres, accompanied by a review of the recently launched French edition of his last novel, Chicago.
We had mentioned Chicago when it came out earlier this year, while Baheyya had reviewed it.
Click on the image below to [...]

The US Embassy recently produced a CD of old interviews from the Voice of America Arabic service archives. (VOA Arabic was canceled a while ago, to be replaced by the much-criticized, pop-heavy Radio Sawa). The interviews — of major Egyptian writers, artists, singers such as Naguib Mahfouz, Mohamed Abdel Wahab and Tahia Carioca — are [...]

I’ve been wanting to put up for a while this audio file of Ibrahim Eissa’s speech at the massive press conference at the Journalists’ Syndicate on September 14th. Here is one (poorly) translated excerpt.
“We succeeded in saving the soul of this umma, which seemed about to die in the hospital of President Mubarak, and which has [...]

A new letter from the imprisoned blogger Karim is available here in English, follow the links for the Arabic original.

From the blurb:
When they’re not actively attempting to develop weapons of mass destruction, ‘Axis of Evil’ countries such as Iraq, Iran and North Korea are busy enjoying their region’s finest dishes. And their ‘Axis of Somewhat Evil’ cohorts, such as Cuba and Syria, are at it too. With over one hundred recipes, from soups and [...]

International Crisis Group - Hizbollah and the Lebanese Crisis:
Looking back over the past ten months, Lebanese can feel somewhat relieved. The massive demonstrations in December 2006, followed by a general strike and clashes between pro- and anti-government forces with strong sectarian overtones, as well as a series of assassinations and car bombs, brought the nation [...]

Below are some anti-Mubarak activist videos, some quite funny.

YouTube - The Mubaraks to children’s songs
YouTube - Gamal at NDP conference
YouTube - To President Mubarak: sankyoo
YouTube - Egypt’s Shittiest Family
YouTube - The Mubaraks in cinema

The very last one is the best, to the tune of the theme song from a movie (I forget its name) about [...]

A fragrant potpourri handpicked from the internets:

The sun sets early on the American Century, by Philip S Golub (Twilight of empire)
IntelliBriefs: Egypt: Security, Political, and Islamist Challenges (Long paper on Egypt)
Iraq - Kanan Makiya - Saddam Hussein - New York Times (Dexter Filkins profiles Kanan Makiya)
“Cervantes’s Golden Age” by Scott Horton (Harper’s Magazine) (Don Quijote, [...]

How else would one explain the following?
Israel seizes Arab land near Jerusalem:
JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israel has ordered the confiscation of Arab land outside east Jerusalem, the army and Palestinian officials said on Tuesday, reviving fears that the occupied West Bank could be split in two.
Hassan Abed Rabbo at the Palestinian local government ministry said the [...]

The WSJ is running an interview with Robert Zoellick, the new president of the World Bank,in which Zoellick’s idea of increasing the Bank’s focus on the Arab world is explored, albeit briefly. The impression I get from the interview excerpts below is that Zoellick is very much informed by his experience as US Trade Representative [...]

A mixed grill of hyperlinked morsels:

BBC NEWS - Egypt Bedouins in angry protest (the continuing Bedouin upheaval in Sinai)
Asia Times Online - Memories of monarchies revived (King Farouk nostalgia)
SyriaComment - Ticking Clocks and ‘Accidental’ War (Alastair Crooke on Iran/US/Israel)
Rural Egypt returns to the ancien regime, by Beshir Sakr and Phanjof Tarcir (land reform in Egypt)
The [...]

Two pieces about Egypt’s current press clampdown are worth reading in light of yesterday’s press strike. Egypt: September of discontent by Amira Howeidy puts the pressure on the press in the current political context:
The problem now is that the authorities seem convinced that the private press, especially al Dostour, has more power than the state [...]

Having used yesterday’s hugely successful press strike (22 newspapers did not come out, tons of blogs) to overhaul the design, welcome to the new Arabist.net: now in a great-tasting, sweet-smelling, 100% organic new flavor.
Hopefully this is the beginning of the introduction of new features to the site (more within a few weeks), but aside [...]

As part of the Why Democracy? project, a documentary has been made on Egypt’s Shayfeenku, an anti-corruption watchdog borne out of the Kifaya movement in 2005. It will be playing on different TV networks and cinemas across the world (on al-Arabiya in the Middle East on 5 November at 2100 GMT), check the listings for [...]