Blog archive all
4th April 2011
The authorities in Bahrain have ousted the editor of the kingdom's only independent newspaper, along with two of his senior colleagues.
Al-Wasat newspaper was not allowed to publish on Sunday and access to its website has been blocked inside the country. The paper has also been suffering production… Read more
4th April 2011
The United States has quietly shifted its position regarding the embattled Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Salih, and has concluded that he must be eased out out office, according to a report in the New York Times which is attributed to unnamed American and Yemeni officials.
The paper says that… Read more
4th April 2011
There is a widespread assumption that Islamist opposition parties in the Middle East are seeking to govern at the earliest opportunity. But that idea is challenged by Shadi Hamid of Brookings in an interesting – and, I think, important – article headed "Arab Islamist parties: losing on purpose?"… Read more
3rd April 2011
With the presidents of Tunisia and Egypt gone, and continuing turmoil in Libya, the two North African regimes still largely undamaged by protests are those of Morocco and Algeria.
Early in January, at the height of the Tunisian uprising, it looked as if Algeria might be heading in the same… Read more
3rd April 2011
Oman continues to be largely off the international radar. Protests there are still on a small scale compared with some of the other Arab countries. Nevertheless, as Simeon Kerr notes in the Financial Times, Sultan Qaboos is facing "the most sustained period of unrest since he took power in a palace… Read more
2nd April 2011
Zahi Hawass
Indiana Jones
Here is Egypt's own Indiana Jones – antiquities chief Zahi Hawass – describing his role in the revolution:
We entered the Egyptian Museum – along with a group of commandos – through the museum's back door; the door through which the tourists exit past the newly-… Read more
2nd April 2011
The Syrian uprising appears to be growing but, as with Tunisia last December, it is getting relatively little coverage – especially in comparison with Libya. Libya has no great strategic importance, though of course foreign forces are involved and the events there are the sort that TV companies… Read more
29th March 2011
More than 100 people are reported dead following an explosion at a munitions factory in southern Yemen on Monday . The Financial Times says:
According to a resident of the area, the explosion took place when local people swarmed into the building to steal ammunition, after government security… Read more
29th March 2011
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal last January, President Assad of Syria talked about reform. Not reform under pressure but reform with "conviction", as he put it.
"If you did not see the need for reform before what happened in Egypt and in Tunisia," he said, "it is too late to do any… Read more
27th March 2011
SYRIA
More protests, more repression. The NOW Lebanon website, which is monitoring events from Beirut, has the latest blow-by-blow updates.
Writing for the Syrian Revolution Digest, Ammar Abdulhamid notes that momentum shifted northwards on Saturday to the coastal city of Lattakia… 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
