ANALYSIS / Loud-mouthed rabbi reflects IDF’s religious bent – Haaretz – Israel News | Article on Brigadier General Avichai Ronski, the Israeli Army's chief rabbi. Interesting tidbits on how he brought the influence of settlers and religious right, was recruited by Dan Halutz to "bring the IDF closer to the sectors of the public that [...]

Hosni Mubarak, latter-day Pangloss:
CAIRO: President Hosni Mubarak said the Arab world is currently in the best of states and that its problems will end in time.

Someone please explain this website to me: Michael Jackson Family. Its address is even more mysterious: http://michaeljacksonestate.blogspot.com/
This is its about blurb:
My name is Princess Zaynab bint Fahd bin Khalid al-Saud. My father is popularly known as Satan the Devil. I am from Saudi Arabia and I am married to the American Superstar Singer [...]

Following up on the recent post about Egypt’s recent military procurement, here’s a phenomenally stupid, or just disingenuous, article from the Jerusalem Post (yes what else would you expect):
In a sign of mounting concern about Teheran’s missile capability, the Egyptian military recently expressed interest in purchasing the Russian-made, advanced S-300 and S-400 air defense systems.
The [...]

Unverified – al-Mesryoon and translation via Mideastwire:
- “Arrest of 306 Shi’is on charges of undermining Egypt security”
On June 30, the independent Al-Mesryoon daily carried the following report by Fathi Magdi: “Al-Mesryoon learned from prominent sources that Shi’i cleric Hassan Shehata, the former speaker of the Kobri el-Gam’a mosque, was arrested earlier this month along with [...]

Barack Obama’s Cairo speech — whatever you might say of his fine rhetoric on Islam and Palestine — was also, and over time might also be chiefly, a reassertion of the traditional relationship between Egypt and the United States, dropping most pretense of being interested in democracy promotion. Instead, in the democracy segment of his [...]

Arab Techies in Business | More Arab geekery.
Arab Techies | Cool Arabic tech/web projects.
Love in KSA « Saudiwoman’s Weblog | On the importance of women's reputation in Saudi.
"Politics, culture, and dissident:" New study maps out trends in Arab blogosphere | Menassat | Cool map of the Arab blogosphere, divided by country, language, and political trends.
Saudia [...]

Yesterday’s detention of Wael Abbas at Cairo Airport, as he returned from the Tallberg Forum in Sweden, is now resolved. (Rather troubling is Wael’s claim that pro-NDP Egyptians at the conference may have reported him to the authorities.) But Wael still had his laptop and papers confiscated, and is having trouble filing a complaint with [...]

In my email inbox this morning:
A new Jewish-Muslim initiative is seeking to derail the planned Museum of Tolerance, which is currently being built in Jerusalem on the site of a former Muslim cemetery.
The initiative’s hopes to get the site declared ritually impure under Jewish law, due to the fact that the construction has involved [...]

Here is a collection of links on Israel/Palestine accumulated in recent days, as there was widespread speculation that a prisoner exchange between Hamas (for up to 450 people, including Hamas MPs) and Israel (for Gilad Shalit) would take place, opening the way for an easing of the blockade and truce. This now looks less certain [...]

The BBC World Service has posted the second part of its excellent documentary on Egypt, Hosni Mubarak and an uncertain future. I highly recommend it as one of the rare attempts to make a judgement about the Mubarak years, as they reach their twilight.
Play
Part one was posted here.

The Great American Bubble Machine | The great, indispensable Matt Taibbi on the US economy:

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells [...]

PR documentary, from the late 1940s or the early 1950s at the latest I would guess, on Coca Cola’s bottling plant in Egypt. There’s some great footage of upper class social club type people at the beginning and at the end, with a very modernist exposé on the state-of-the-art bottling facilities at the plant. [...]

Israeli Prisons: Are Palestinian Children Abused? – Yahoo! News:
“Walid Abu Obeida, a 13-year-old Palestinian farm boy from the West Bank village of Ya’abad, had never spoken to an Israeli until he rounded a corner at dusk carrying his shopping bags and found two Israeli soldiers waiting with their rifles aimed at him. ‘They accused me [...]

Honduran people military forces in the aftermath of a US-backed coup in the Central American nation. The president has been kidnapped and a leftist political leader assassinated., originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos.

More pics at this Flickr user’s page.

Egyptian mega-blogger Wael Abbas is being detained at Cairo Airport after his passport was confiscated last night. This is the first time this happens to Wael, who is currently holding a sit-in with a banner at the airport requesting his passport back. He’s been Tweeting his situation – below are his updates as of 8:40am [...]

Don’t celebrate Israel’s minor relaxation of some checkpoints. This is the daily reality of some Palestinians:
A West Bank checkpoint managed by a private security company is not allowing Palestinians to pass through with large water bottles and some food items, Haaretz has learned.
MachsomWatch discovered the policy, which Palestinian workers confirmed to Haaretz.
The Defense Ministry stated [...]

Please go NOW to Mondoweiss and read my friend Ashraf Khalil’s account of reporting for the Los Angeles Times on what happened to Mohammed Omer, a Palestinian journalist who was returning from a European tour where he received an award for his work. Omer came back through the Allenby terminal between Jordan and the Occupied [...]

Almasry Alyoum: Israel above all Constitutions | Magdi el-Gallad has a good column today about a German dignitary, lecturing Egyptians on secularism, refusing to answer a question about Israel's self-definition as a Jewish state.
Mondoweiss: ‘I think this is the most emotional event I’ve ever done’ (Naomi Klein in Ramallah) | Philip Weiss has a recording [...]

From the Daily News, an image of anti-riot police preventing Egyptian protestors from commemorating the death of Neda Agha-Soltan in Cairo on Saturday.
It kind of reminds you, when Cairo’s streets were full of battles between protestors and security over elections or the movement for judges in 2006, and all the subsequent elections that were [...]

From the always excellent Strange Maps:
The Bir Tawil Triangle is a desert of sand and rocks on the border between Egypt and the Sudan. It is also officially the most undesired territory in the world. Bir Tawil is the only piece of land on Earth (*) that is not claimed by any country – least [...]

You may remember my coining of the acronym CRAP – Courageous Arab Reformist Personality – to describe the people who have made it a lucrative business to appeal to Western (and especially American) sensitivities by posturing as daring reformists taking on their countries’ repressive culture. Typically, this involves adopting a position so out of touch [...]

It’s become almost routine to see Muslim Brothers being arrested in the last few years, especially in the Delta, but the recent arrest of some of the group’s most prominent members is rather curious:

State Security Services launched a wide crackdown today at dawn against three Muslim Brotherhood high-ranking figures in Cairo. Among those arrested are [...]

Presidents Naguib and Nasser, originally uploaded by Kodak Agfa.

It recommend checking out this Flickr user for historical pictures of Egypt. I like this hand-colored pic of Nasser and Naguib.

A little more clarity on Barack Obama’s national security — and mostly Middle East and AfPak — team:

National Security Advisor Jim Jones and Deputy National Security Advisor Tom Donilon both have the rank of assistant to the president. NSC Director of Strategic Communications Denis McDonough and Chief of Staff Mark Lippert have the rank of [...]

As part of a plan to return to more prolific blogging and revamp the site over the next few months, we are starting a series of regular podcasts about the Middle East. The aim will be to carry out interviews with informed commentators on various regional issues, and hopefully eventually carry out some interesting discussions [...]

MEI Editor’s Blog: "She was a Splendid Beast": The Arabic Transliteration Problem | Michael Dunn on transliteration. I say, don't worry about it too much, spell it like it sounds even if that changes dialect to dialect, and use fuzzy query software for information retrieval.
Arab world mourns Michael Jackson | There's a bizarre number of [...]

Note: Going back to the daily link dump, unless you prefer the individual posts. Most people I asked seem to prefer this method…
Tamim death sentences upheld – The National Newspaper | On HTM, case will now go to appeal, perhaps ultimately to Cassation Court.
Moving Out of Kuwait’s Political Impasse – Carnegie Endowment for International Peace [...]

Iason Athanasiadis is still being held in an Iranian jail, with no news on the charges against him or when he might be released. (See previous post on Iason’s arrest.)
Iason’s parents have issued a statement:
Meanwhile the parents of the journalist Iason Athanasiadis issued a statement appealing for the authorities to release their son, who was [...]

Barack Obama on the phone to Benyamin Netanyahu / White House.
I’ve been thinking about the settlement issue, which is currently at the forefront of the tug-of-war between the Obama and Netanyahu administrations and key to relaunching the Middle East Peace Process. I am disturbed by the emphasis on natural growth of Israel’s settlements, rather than [...]

OK, so may be I haven’t quite blogged enough to get back to silliness, but I can’t help it with this one, continuing on our previous post on Cairene sartorial silliness:

It’s a whole collection now.

✩ Tehran ‘like a war zone’ as ayatollah refuses to back down on election
Bloody clashes broke out in Tehran yesterday as Iran’s supreme leader said he would not yield to pressure over the disputed election. The renewed confrontation took place in Baharestan Square, near parliament, where hundreds of protesters faced off against several thousand riot [...]

Robert Ménard quitte le Centre de Doha pour la liberté d’information, "asphyxié" – Le Monde.fr Former head of Reporters Sans Frontieres leaves Doha-based center for freedom of information, saying he was asphyxiated by the lack of freedom and clashes with funders. Menard blames Sheikh Hamid bin Thamer, al-Jazeera's chairman, for his troubles but praised [...]

Time for a real national coalition for Middle East peace Hussein Ibish calls for a union of Arab-Americans and Jewish-Americans for peace.

Israel sees "hard work" settling dispute with Obama Bibi cancels meetings with Mitchell, over lack of progress on settlements issue.

The BBC World Service has put up the first part of an excellent documentary piece on Egypt’s current predicament, looking at the Mubarak era, the role of the military in it, and many more things. It really delves into questions rarely probed in depth by most journalists, notably the important role played by the military [...]

The Arabs’ Forlorn Envy of Iranians – Tehran Bureau Rami Khouri takes the words out of my mouth – I'll have my own stuff to add on this topic a little later.
I started writing this column Sunday in Amman, Jordan, and finished writing it Tuesday in Beirut, Lebanon — a short journey that captured [...]

Iason in Tehran, Washington Times
The drama unfolding in Iran has many victims, and it may seem arbitrary to focus on any single one of them. But professional solidarity and personal acquaintance move me to speak out for the release of Iason Athanasiadis, a reporter and photographer who has worked on Iran for several years and [...]

Bahrain’s oldest newspaper indefinitely suspended After publication of anti-Khameini commentary. A sign of how sensitive this Sunni-ruled, Shia-majority country has become to the pro-Iran (regime) sentiments among its population. Which of course suggests that the Iranian regime must have spent much time building up a constituency there.
Update: I posted this as I was clearing [...]

Moussavi the architect Slideshow of the architectural work of Mir Hosein Mousavi.