Holidays far, far from the Middle East in a remote and thankfully disconnected location mean the site will not be updated for the next two weeks. Have a good July!

Links from my del.icio.us account for July 16th through July 17th:

The New Arab Diplomacy: Not With the U.S. and Not Against the U.S. - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace - Carnegie paper says Arab states are breaking from US diplomatic priorities, Gulf stronger, Egypt weak
Hezbollah gives coffins to Israel in prisoner swap - Yahoo! News [...]

Links from my del.icio.us account for July 9th through July 13th:

IkhwanWeb: Brotherhood MP Calls on Gov’t to Fight Sexual Harassment of Tourists - Good idea, but how about fighting sexual harassment period?
Ex-Diplomat Sentenced for Anti-Arab Threats - US diplomat has sent "only good Arab is a dead Arab" theat to James Zogby
Khalil Ibrahim, le Darfouri [...]

AUC / Stanford Professor Joel Beinin, a leading expert on the Egyptian labor movement, has an article about the wave of strikes in Egypt over the past two years in the wonderfully designed magazine Waghett Nazar, a kind of Egyptian New York of Review of Books (only better looking). PDF link below.
WN 2008-07 Beinin.pdf

Links from my del.icio.us account for July 7th through July 8th:

FT.com / World - Gulf states urged to rethink dollar pegs - Sooner or later it will happen
Egypt summons Iranian diplomat over Sadat film - Reuters.com - Note that this happens as the Egyptian press is full of anti-Shia conspiracy theories
Family history | Mount Lebanon’s [...]

I was asked a while back to contribute a guest post to Washington Post reporter Jack Fairweather’s blog “Islam’s Advance” (about “Islam influencing and adapting to the modern world”).
I ended up writing on a phenomenon that has interested me for a while, every since I read Patrick Haenni’s great book “L’Islam de Marché” [...]

Links from my del.icio.us account for June 23rd through July 4th:

Almasry Alyoum: Opinion Poll: Gov’t Unfair; People’s Assembly Hypocrite; Local Administration Loose - Is your local councilman a slut? Joking aside, figures show self-perception of Egyptians as helpless and downtrodden
Almasry Alyoum - Ministry Of Interior Calls Scholars To Train State Security Investigation Officers On Combating [...]