Blog readers (this one specifically and readers of blogs more broadly) have probably noticed FP's slew of new weblogs. (There are many – read the full list here). One, Shadow Government, features a group of conservative thinkers, and their collective bios are full of phrases like “the McCain-Palin 2008 campaign” and “the 200something National Security […]
Two articles on religious programming in Arabic on Islam are out this week: The New York Times profiles Saudi moderate host Ahmad al Shugairi and the Los Angeles Times profiles Egyptian moderate Mostafa Hosni. Both pieces are concerned with a. highlighting a trend within the Arab world toward using television as a religious outreach tool, […]
(UNRWA stands for UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees). The donation announcement from DoS came in the midst of, well, this. The press release made sure to include the following: The United States reiterates its deep concern about the escalating violence in Gaza and commends UNRWA's important work meeting the emergency needs of […]
said Ismail Haniya today, after 225 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza. The Israeli military initiative was a response to increased rocket fire from Gaza into southern Israel; Defense Minister Ehud Barak is leaving open the possibility of a ground offensive. The United States has taken a strong anti-Hamas stance in the debaucle […]
This week the Egyptian Government selected Bechtel Corporation to advise on the construction of Egypt's first set of nuclear power plants in a 10-year, $180 million contract. This is good news for Egypt and the United States. Egypt has a long standing policy that the Middle East should be WMD-free. In a joint press conference […]
Jimmy Carter visited the Middle East this week, and spoke at the American University of Beirut on the importance of a settlement between Israel and Palestine in the near future. He seemed optimistic regarding the capacity of the President of the United States to nudge the Israelis toward mutually agreeable conditions for settlement: “I found […]
An Egyptian telecommunications company has become the first mobile-phone company to invest in North Korea. The 25-year license agreement includes a $400 million dollar investment and a 75/25 partnership with a state-owned Korean company. Read about it here and here. Naguib Sawiris, owner of Orascom Telecom Holding, is in North Korea to ink the deal. […]
Turns out that Bob Dylan dug Oum Kalthoum. Here's a paragraph from Al’ America: Travels Through America's Arab and Islamic Roots by Jonathan Curiel, excerpted here on alternet.org: Kalsoum, whose last name is often spelled Kalthoum or Khulthum, was Egypt's greatest singer — the equivalent of Barbra Streisand, Billie Holiday, and Maria Callas rolled into […]
Eid al Adha began on Monday in most of the Muslim world. (In some places it began on Sunday or on Tuesday). Hope everyone is having a wonderful celebration. The National has a journalist, Rym Ghazal, performing hajj maintaining a blog on their website – she discusses Eid briefly in this entry.
Elizabeth Warnock Fernea, professor of comparative literature and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas, Austin, died on December 2. She made significant contributions to the study of women in the Middle East, communicating their humanity to Western audiences in her ethnographies, the most famous of which is probably Guests of the Sheikh. She […]
In an interesting development this weekend, five Blackwater guards involved in the September 2007 shooting that killed 17 Iraqi civilians are facing charges. BBC News reports that the men are expected to surrender in Utah, the home state for one guard. Iraqi officials are happy with the news, and one Iraqi man who lost his […]
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