Blog archive all
20th April 2011
As protests continued in Syria on Tuesday, the newly-appointed cabinet held its first full-scale meeting and took a series of stepstowards "reform". These included approving a draft decree to end the 48-year state of emergency and replace it with a law "regulating the right to peaceful… Read more
19th April 2011
Shooting in Homs early on Tuesday. YouTube video posted byalhamoui
In an interview at the end of January, President Assad talked confidently about the lessons of Tunisia and Egypt: in Syria, he was handling things differently.
"If you did not see the need for reform before what happened in… Read more
18th April 2011
Zahi Hawass
Indiana Jones
Zahi Hawass, Egypt's controversial antiquities minister, was sentenced to a year in jail on Sunday for failing to comply with a court order. According to some reports the case relates to a land dispute while others, including Hawass's own blog, say it involves a… Read more
17th April 2011
Following the regime's harassment of al-Watan newspaper in Bahrain, the Committee to Protect Journalists reports that one of the paper's founding board members has died in state custody.
Karim Fakhrawi, who died last Tuesday, was apparently arrested after going to a police station on April 5 to… Read more
17th April 2011
Interesting comments about the emir of Qatar from President Obama. The remarks were picked up by a microphone which Obama thought was switched off.
Describing Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani as a "pretty influential guy", the president said:
"He is a big booster, big promoter of democracy all throughout… Read more
17th April 2011
President Bashar al-Assad's speech to his new ministers on Saturday was certainly an improvement on the speech he gave to the Syrian parliament at the end of last month. He acknowledged the protesters' grievances, touched on most of the key areas where reform is needed and urged a more open,… Read more
15th April 2011
Fashion for the less active kind of man? Photograph: Egyptian Picture Gallery. Copyright: Historylink101.com
I thought it must be a joke when I first saw it on Twitter, but apparently not. It's the Zahi Hawass fashion collection – named after the comical Antiquities Minister who is Egypt's… Read more
15th April 2011
The "new" Syrian government was announced on Thursday. Exiled dissident Ammar Abdulhamid comments:
"All those who keep betting on Assad the Reformer keep losing, as Assad holds on to his favourite title of Disappointment Maker. The new government is actually the old government with some old lower… Read more
14th April 2011
Following the revolution in Tunisia, I have begun updating theTunisia section here on al-bab. Links to several historically interesting documents had stopped working because of the deletion of websites belonging to the old regime. I have retrieved some of them through the Wayback archive and posted… Read more
14th April 2011
Two noteworthy developments were reported from Syria on Wednesday. One was a demonstration in Aleppo – the first in the city since the wave of protests began. The other was march by women from Banias/Baniyas (see video above).
According to a witness quoted by the New York Times, the… Read more
ARAB ART ONLINE: Susan Hefuna: Al Sabr Gamil (Patience is Beautiful) 2007. Ink stained on wood 140 x 170 cm. More information | Click to enlarge
