Judah at World Politics Review posts on an interesting story: For all the diplomatic fallout of the Gaza War, the deterioration in Israeli-Turkish relations might be the most alarming. This Youtube video of the Davos Forum where Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stormed off the stage (at the 1:01:30 mark) after not being permitted [...]
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Just quick post to direct Media Shack’s readers to have a look at this interviewwith Monika Borgmann, a German filmmaker and activist based in Beirut. I’m referencing this interview as a follow-up to a discussionwhich took place a few weeks ago between one of readers and myself, regarding what he considered to be my excessively [...]
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Editor’s Note: mregypt is an Egyptian who lives in Cairo. I cannot find any other reason for the fuss that’s made for Obama’s speech except one: that he came after Bush. I hardly noticed any attention to the interview in the Arab street, as for the Arab media I only noticed a passing reference here. If [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Al Arabiya, Arab Street, Obama speech, Public Diplomacy | 9 Comments »
Many people, especially in the popular Arab press, want to declare Fatah as irrelevant. If there’s no doubt that they are on the PR defensive, as passions die down and a sense of normalcy returns, they are going to make a comeback. Today, Al-Masri Al-Youm has a great interview with Fatah leader Mohamed Dahlan. One big accusation thats been [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Dahlan, Fatah, Gaza, Hamas | Leave a Comment »
1) Judah Grunstein. WPR. Worst_Case_Scenarios_for_Afghanistan. A good post which responds to the points I made yesterday about France and Afghanistan. 2) Nathan Brown. Carnegie. “Pointers for the Obama Administration in the Middle East; Avoiding Myths and Vain Hopes.” Good commentary by a top expert on Palestinian politics. 3) Samantha Shapiro. NY Times. Revolution,_Facebook_Style. [...]
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Under President Obama, the US is going to shift its focus from Iraq to Afghanistan, the argument being that we need to “finish what we started.” One of the key aspects of this new strategy is to convince the NATO countries to send more troops to Afghanistan. Convincing them to do so, however, is going to [...]
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Don’t get me wrong, President Obama’s order_to_close the Guantanamo Bay prison is a good thing. That being said, we should not exaggerate the effect that closing it will have. Of the things that people are pissed off at the US for in the Middle East, Guantanamo Bay is not near the top of the list. And if its [...]
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Editor’s Note: Yesterday, Libyan President Gaddafi gave a speech at Georgetown University in Washington DC (via Satellite ). I know MediaShack readers would be very interested in what he had to say, so my good friend and loyal reader Andrew wrote up a nice little post. Thanks man. Take the floor: ANDREW SPEAKING FROM HERE ON: On Wednesday, January [...]
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It’s still hard to speak of clear winners and losers of the Gaza war. There is, however, one definite result: religous extremism is going to increase in the Arab and Islamic world. For you guys in the CT community, your jobs aren’t going to get any easier. Ibrahim Eiisa, the prominent editor of Cairo’s Al-Dostor newspaper had a 1/16 op-ed entitled [...]
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I’ve added to the blogroll a new blog at ForeignPolicy.com by Stephen Walt, a professor at Harvard and one of America’s premier commentators on foreign policy. Today, he_wonders why many of Israel’s supporters in the US were silent during the recent IDF rampage in Gaza. If that lack of criticism is due to a belief that Israel’s leaders are “exceptionally smart [...]
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Following up from the previous post, here’s a subtitled episode of the Al-Jazeera TV show “Top Secret.” Yousri Fouda investigates “the path to 9/11″ and travels to Pakistan to interview Khalid Sheikh Mohamed before he was arrested. A couple points: 1) Mohamed Atta, the lead 9/11 hijacker, was once a student of English at the American University in Cairo. [...]
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I am not aware of any station in the world except for Al-Jazeera that makes the transcript_and_audio of every single program available. Its an amazing resource but now its even better- you can watch the actual TV program on Youtube. Yesterday, I was thrilled to come across the TV (or visual) of a 2006 episode of “Top Secret” by [...]
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A major theme in the Egyptian press (which contrary to public perception in the US is actually pretty free) is that the Government has “misplayed” its hand vis a vis Israel-Palestine. The critique goes something like this: ”instead of sticking up for Arab interests, the government has supposedly “sold-out” to the US and Israel. Or [...]
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In keeping with the trend of cultural posts today (see the previous one about the book “Off the Wall”), I would like to bring to Media Shack’s readers’ attention an incredible film that is been unanimously lauded by critics across the globe: “Waltz with Bashir” by Israeli director Ari Folman. “Waltz with Bashir” is unique [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: 1982, Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Sabra and Shatila, Waltz with Bashir | 9 Comments »
For those interested in the nexus between the visual arts and politics, an interesting new publication is being featured in the book review sections of many magazines and newspapers. “Off the Wall” by Zeina Maasri is a compilation of the political posters that graced the bullet-riddled walls of Lebanon during the Civil War and vied [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: American University of Beirut, Jafet Library, Lebanon, Off the Wall, political posters, Zeina Maasri | Leave a Comment »
Talk about a political comeback. Wasn’t it just a few years ago that Libya’s President Gaddafi was Public Enemy #1? In the same group as Bin Laden and Co? But tomorrow, Brother Leader will give a talk on the Washington DC campus of Georgetown University. Well, sort of. The talk will be virtual: Muammar Al-Qaddafi, the Leader of [...]
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On Sunday, I posted that I think that Hamas would come out stronger from the Israeli attack on Gaza. On January 7th, Muhammed Hassanein Heikal, in a long_interview on Al Jazeera, apparently agrees on that. For American readers Heikal (read an English bio here) is by far the most important, famous and respected journalist in the Arab world. He was the [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Egypt, Gaza, Hamas, Heikal, Israel, Pan-Arabism | 5 Comments »
What to make of the fighting so far from a military standpoint? According to the latest reports, it doesn’t seem that Israeli forces are taking heavy casualties. Just 7 according to CNN. So does this mean that Hamas is taking a beating, even “losing?” After all, the Islamic Resistance Movement faces several geographic and other challenges that Hezbollah [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Gaza, Hamas, IDF, insurgency, Israel | 29 Comments »
Adel Imam, hands-down the most popular actor in the Arab world, has ( according to the Jerusalem Post) “shocked many of his fans by expressing understanding for Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip.” This is not quite what he did though: Imam, a longtime outspoken critic of Islamic fundamentalism, lashed out at Egyptians who have [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Adel Imam | 14 Comments »
