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Nations in Transition Olympic News
Their budgets may be a tad tighter and their delegations smaller, but developing countries are no less excited about the Olympics than their northern counterparts. There are, in fact, a number of...
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Covering up on Egyptian TV
With her white hijab and the slight gap between her teeth, Fatma Nabil looks like my cousin. She probably looks like everybody's cousin. Yet after presenting the afternoon news last week, Fatma became...
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Rocking Egyptian economic policy like it’s 2010
This week I attended two events in Cairo devoted to Egypt's economic situation, but the setting could easily have been any point in the decade prior to the January 2011 revolution -- for better or for...
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Why are we arresting kids for blasphemy in Egypt?
"The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities," John Dalberg-Acton wrote in 1877. Egypt now seems to be reveling in its...
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A political comic book comes back to life in Egypt
My father recently bought a new copy of an old book. We couldn't buy it earlier because it was virtually impossible to get one when Hosni Mubarak was president. You'll understand why when you hear the...
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The sad reality of Egypt's vaunted military
An Egyptian expatriate friend asked me recently about the state of the Egyptian military back home. It's a difficult question. The military has always been mysterious, and that's just as true in...
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Egypt's ominous attack on porn
"I called people up so they would join the revolution. And they died. I let (Ahmed) Harara walk onto Mohamed Mahmoud Street, and he was blinded. My friends, who weren't into politics but whom I talked...
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Hamada Saber and his daughter – the intergenerational politics of fear
What happens when you are the head of a poor household -- so poor that there is only a single room for you, your spouse, and your three children, ages 15 to 20 -- and suddenly, as you protest near the...
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Chinese food on Revolution Day
There is one tradition that Muslims and Jews in the West agree on: They both like to eat Chinese food on Christmas Eve. It's a way of marking a day that both acknowledge to be special and joyful, but...
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Morocco: Where is the February 20th movement heading?
RABAT, Morocco – Yegor Talikov, a street musician, was playing his saxophone on the Hotel Balima plaza in Rabat. Some passersby slowed down without stopping, but a few did gather around, occasionally...
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Do the Ikhwan Shake
It turns out that the Harlem Shake fad has one redeeming quality: It seems to annoy Islamists to no end. [[BREAK]] The kids in the Pères Blancs high school in Tunis who filmed their version of the...
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Did Chokri Belaid die for nothing?
What has changed in Tunisia since opposition leader Chokri Belaid was assassinated? I've asked many Tunisian friends that question. Most remained silent for a few seconds, smiled sadly, and whispered,...
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Just how much are Qaddafi supporters worth to Egypt?
Mubarak's Egypt was one of the CIA's favorite destinations under their "extraordinary rendition" program: A human rights-free zone where torture at the CIA's hands, hampered by delicate legislation,...
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Don't overlook Bahrain, it's a matter of life and death
Zainab al-Khawaja, on hunger strike since March 17, escalated her protest last weekend and now refuses liquids as well, risking her internal organs shutting down, according to an urgent appeal by the...
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Bassem Youssef and the Sultan
Mocking rulers is a tradition almost as old as rule itself. At times mockery is subtle and allegorical; at others it is blunt, sometimes gauche, but always funny. Some wonderful examples are the...
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Farewell Ms. Weinstein
"You must be Esti's grandson," said one lady as she pinched my cheek. "Leave him be. He's a guest," responded Carmen Weinstein as she moved a tray of sandwiches under the sukkah. [[BREAK]] The first...
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MINURSO is making a mess in Morocco
I don't know much about the code of conduct of U.N. Peacekeepers, such as those deployed in the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO). But I'm going to assume that it's...
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The latest plot twist in Egypt's IMF soap opera
Lately I've found myself thinking back to those horrible American soap operas (the "Bold and the Beautiful," etc.) that my late grandmother used to watch. She managed to find interest in what seemed...
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The surprising new fight against domestic violence in Saudi Arabia
Hundreds of thousands of readers saw this image in their newspaper: A woman in a niqab with a bruised and bloodied left eye that you might miss at first glance -- but which you can't un-see once...
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Tunisia commemorates its revolution
Two years! It's been two years since Ben Ali packed his suitcase along with the passwords to his foreign bank accounts and fled, in extremis, the wrath of the courageous people of Tunisia, leaving...
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