The following notice (translated from Arabic) has recently been put up in the swanky Cairo neighborhood of Zamalek, home of the expat, rich and famous (and Gamal Mubarak):

Security Directions for the Safety and Security of Residents in the District of Zamalek

Please do not give a copy of the key of any private residential apartment to [...]

Automatically posted links for December 12th through December 18th:

Democracy Digest - Newsletter on democracy developments in Arab world and elsewhere, current issue has article on MB
BBC World Service | ‘Free to Speak’ Events - Is new media the only truly independent media in the Arab world today?
GWOT: Egypt - Negar Azimi on Egypt and the [...]

The December issue of the Arab Reform Bulletin is out (well probably a week or so now), and it’s worth taking a look at. Steven Cook (who wrote this book on the military in Middle Eastern politics) writes about the US presidential candidates and democracy promotion in the Arab world, a notion all the first-tier [...]

Here’s Ulrich Ladurner of Die Zeit (one of Germany’s largest and most influential papers) travelling to a remote Iranian province to find out whether Ahmadinejad’s promises to improve life in the country’s regions were fulfilled.
(Which is a laudable intention, as few bother to look at the country beyond nuclear bomb issue.)
The article simply ends [...]

 I just saw the movie that everyone is talking about in Cairo these days: Heyya Fauda (It’s Chaos). It’s the latest by Youssef Chahine, but unlike a lot of his work lately, it’s eminently entertaining. It’s also very political. The film opens with actual footage of the many street protests and altercations between demonstrators and riot police [...]

It takes one of EgyptAir’s European offices more than three months to issue a simple refund (including what I thought were attempts to keep the money).
If it continues to refuse improving its services, the airline will be swept away by competition once Egyptian civil aviation is liberalized (which is why that hasn’t happened yet, but [...]

Finally, Nassef Sawiris has moved out of the shadow of his brothers who made a lot of headlines with their emerging markets telecoms empire (Naguib) and Swiss alpine village (Samih), while Nassef’s Orascom Construction Industries (OCI) maintained such a low profile it could (reportedly) do business with the Pentagon and North Korea at the [...]

Automatically posted links for December 9th through December 12th:

The Press Association: Army chief among Beirut blast dead - Michel Suleiman successor killed
Sacrés Marocains ! - Poll on the religiosity of Moroccans (post in French, report in various languages.)
CIA has recruited Iranians to defect - Los Angeles Times - A “handful” of defectors recruited, provided much [...]

Automatically posted links for December 5th through December 6th:

CAB Advised To Audit Independent Newspapers - al-Masri al-Youm English story on a decision to have government accounting office audit independent newspaper. Is seen as an attack on freedom of the press, could provide pretexts for newspapers to be shut down or financially pressured
25 Al-Azhar University Students [...]

I will be in Brussels for the next week, bringing some much-needed Arab advice on good governance to the people who were unable to form a coalition in SIX MONTHS. It is an initiative co-sponsored by Mahmoud Abbas and Ismail Haniyeh.
Blogging will be severely limited, as I expect Brussels has fallen to warring Waloon and [...]

Automatically posted links for December 4th:

Israel invites bids for new settlements in east Jerusalem (AFP) - That freeze on settlements sure lasted long
Israeli rejects talks with Hamas (AP) - “Israel’s defense minister said Tuesday it is time to “kill those who carry out attacks” against [...]

Prepare to have your head explode:

Dark Suspicions about the NIE NORMAN PODHORETZ - 12.03.2007 - 17:50
It is worth remembering that in 2002, one of the conclusions offered by the NIE, also with “high confidence,” was that “Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding its chemical, biological, nuclear, and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions.” [...]

I’d mentioned before this story about the Egyptian military’s attempts to takeover an island south of Cairo in order to build a new development, which means kicking out the farmers and other inhabitants that live there. There has been anecdotal evidence that the military is getting increasingly greedy about encroaching on the civilian sphere, particularly [...]

This is just plain bizarre. Where has this report been for the last two years?

WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 — Rarely, if ever, has a single intelligence report so completely, so suddenly, and so surprisingly altered a foreign policy debate here. An administration that had cited Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons as the rationale for [...]

Automatically posted links for December 3rd:

Wolfowitz Back in Govt.? - Rice appoints Wolfie to International Security Advisory Board
Younger Muslims Tune In to Upbeat Religious Message - New Egyptian televangelist is former playboy, “better than Brad Pitt”
Enquête de l?ADFM sur le port du voile : «Le hijab est un phénomène de mode au Maroc» - Study [...]

Automatically posted links for November 30th through December 2nd:

AEI - The problem of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood
Egypt frees jailed Shiite rights activists: lawyers - Dereini released
Self-styled morality police now commonplace in Egypt - This story might slightly exagerate but it is definitely becoming more common - just try to take the metro if you’re female. [...]

US withdraws Mideast resolution:

UNITED NATIONS - Because of Israeli objections, the United States suddenly withdrew a U.N. resolution endorsing this week’s agreement by Israeli and Palestinian leaders to try to reach a Mideast peace settlement — even though the measure had overwhelming Security Council support.
The U.S. about-face in less than 24 hours on Friday surprised [...]