]> http://planet.syriamirror.net/taxonomy/term/171/9 en http://planet.syriamirror.net/node/2548 More violence in Alexandria this afternoon. Jar al-Qamar has another post worth translating. I’d like to post it here. I’m getting really depressed. I want to go to Alexandria tomorrow to see for myself.I’m also way past deadline on an article I promised a friend. I might still go. But she’ll kill me if I [...] The Skeptic الشكاك egypt internet region The Skeptic الشكاك عام Mon, 17 Apr 2006 05:02:03 +0300 http://planet.syriamirror.net/node/2544 Clashes broke out today at a murdered Christian’s funeral. Alexandrian blogger Jar al-Qamar’s account of the tensions immediately following the attacks provide a depressing window into what sparked them. Here’s a translation:Yesterday we were a minority, and today I am a minority. Yesterday, [Alexandrian blogger] Solo and I were the only Muslims in a crowd [...] The Skeptic الشكاك egypt internet The Skeptic الشكاك عام Sun, 16 Apr 2006 03:39:19 +0300 http://planet.syriamirror.net/node/2542 The wolves are circling around U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Great. Hope they eat him. But the swing in sentiment against him makes me tired. Back when most Americans polled thought the war Iraq was a swell idea and sat around the dinner table cursing the French, Rumsfeld was a hero and was even [...] The Skeptic الشكاك internet The Skeptic الشكاك united states world عام Sat, 15 Apr 2006 05:00:09 +0300 http://planet.syriamirror.net/node/2541 This really must be seen to be believed.(I’m late to this party. Thanks to Forsoothsayer and Cerise for cheering me up. Poor Mohamed Osman. I personally would be very happy if I looked like him.)Technorati Tags: Egypt, Mr. Egypt The Skeptic الشكاك egypt internet The Skeptic الشكاك عام Sat, 15 Apr 2006 01:15:13 +0300 http://planet.syriamirror.net/node/2537 N’DjamenaChad cut ties with Sudan today after Khartoum-supported rebels tried and failed to take over N’Djamena. President Idriss Déby, a Zaghawa of the Bideyat clan (one of the groups against which the janjaweed, with the support of the Sudanese government, have conducted a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Darfur), has threatened to expel the hundreds [...] The Skeptic الشكاك egypt internet region sudan The Skeptic الشكاك عام Fri, 14 Apr 2006 19:19:04 +0300 http://planet.syriamirror.net/node/2530 I’ve been following this for a while, but had gone to sleep while the rebels poured out of Darfur and made it all the way across Chad to the capital N’Djamena. This is huge:Heavy fighting has subsided in Chad’s capital after breaking out at dawn, between government troops and rebels trying to overthrow the president.A [...] The Skeptic الشكاك egypt internet The Skeptic الشكاك عام Thu, 13 Apr 2006 19:17:02 +0300 http://planet.syriamirror.net/node/2520 Here’s what President Hosni Mubarak said on Al-Arabiya the other night:Definitely Iran has influence on Shia. [They] are 65 percent of the Iraqis … Most of the Shia are loyal to Iran, and not to the countries they are living in. [Full Text]Not his best moment as a statesman. It was pretty clear those comments [...] The Skeptic الشكاك egypt internet iraq region The Skeptic الشكاك عام Wed, 12 Apr 2006 17:23:02 +0300 http://planet.syriamirror.net/node/2519 The weekly Rose al-Yousef, which admittedly is not above making shit up, says it has a taped interview with Mohammed Mahdi Aakef, the supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, in which he says some pretty impolitic things. Among them: “Screw Egypt, screw the father of Egypt [no one’s sure whom he means], and screw [...] The Skeptic الشكاك egypt internet The Skeptic الشكاك عام Wed, 12 Apr 2006 14:55:04 +0300 http://planet.syriamirror.net/node/2516 Consider this: Last week I linked to a Washington Post op-ed attacking an American academic paper published in an abbreviated form in a little-read British publication a month ago and wrote seven oblique words about it. Visitors spent thousands of words repeating the arguments in the Post op-ed. Never mind that some hadn’t read even [...] The Skeptic الشكاك internet palestine region The Skeptic الشكاك عام Tue, 11 Apr 2006 15:37:09 +0300 http://planet.syriamirror.net/node/2514 First a confession: I’m a few steps behind. Here in Cairo, a blissful step removed from the U.S. news cycle (but, I like to think, a few steps closer to the events that shape it), I missed this. Only today’s BBC online story alerted me.The Pentagon’s new 20-year plan seems sensible enough from the Post’s [...] The Skeptic الشكاك internet region The Skeptic الشكاك united states world عام Tue, 11 Apr 2006 12:45:05 +0300 http://planet.syriamirror.net/node/2473 What more can anyone say about this than that it’s awful?Al-Hayat’s Jihad Al-Khazen warns that “if the Iraqi political situation does not clear up during the next 48 or 72 hours, then it will most definitely explode.” But he’s optimistic because the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and The Islamic Virtue Party (Fadhila) [...] The Skeptic الشكاك internet iraq region The Skeptic الشكاك عام Sat, 8 Apr 2006 21:07:59 +0300 http://planet.syriamirror.net/node/2472 File this under “Join the Queue to See Hamas Fall.”And as a new stage in the game of brinksmanship that will probably end in Hamas’ climbing down from its old rhetoric. This will probably happen faster if they’re allowed to do so without losing face.Hamas had some success on a fundraising tour of the Gulf. [...] The Skeptic الشكاك internet palestine region The Skeptic الشكاك united states world عام Sat, 8 Apr 2006 20:54:58 +0300 http://planet.syriamirror.net/node/2468 Dictators of the region take note: You don’t need an official press to get propaganda on the front page. You can do it without the expense of serving a city-block full of journalists tea six times a day.Technorati Tags: Bush, Libby, United States, Iraq The Skeptic الشكاك egypt internet region The Skeptic الشكاك united states world عام Sat, 8 Apr 2006 17:51:07 +0300 http://planet.syriamirror.net/node/2463 Just ran across this blog from Tekla Szymanski, a polyglot journalist and editor who’s worked as a journalist in Germany, Jerusalem, and, most recently, New York. Her recent comments on the Israeli elections and her recollections of coming to Amrika are worth checking out.Tekla and I used to get into daily debates about Middle Eastern [...] The Skeptic الشكاك internet palestine region The Skeptic الشكاك united states عام Fri, 7 Apr 2006 16:19:02 +0300 http://planet.syriamirror.net/node/2457 …The Harvard Crimson reported April 1. And the student daily ran this photo and caption on its front page today:“Danielle L. Charlop ‘09 and Rory M. Sullivan ‘09 make beaded bracelets with Hebrew letters yesterday at Harvard Students for Israel’s ‘Israel Fest’ celebration outside the Science Center. Former Virginia governor and prospective Democratic presidential candidate [...] The Skeptic الشكاك internet palestine The Skeptic الشكاك united states عام Thu, 6 Apr 2006 17:10:17 +0300