February 10, 2011

MBs show their impressive communications skills

Well, it's two for two for the Muslim brotherhood in the NYT and WaPo today. On the op-ed page of the WaPo, we have Abdel Moneim Abou el-Fotouh, arguing why...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:48 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

February 09, 2011

Egypt: Regime's slow crumble continues; MB leaders spell out their position

The demonstrations and anti-government protests continued and multiplied throughout many parts of Egypt today. No sign the opposition is backing down. Indeed, it is settling in for the long haul,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:55 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

February 06, 2011

Can Omar Suleiman be Egypt's De Klerk?

... As a Quaker, I have to believe in the possibility that any person on God's earth is capable of becoming a better person and acting in a more generous...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:44 AM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

February 05, 2011

Many details about Mubarak/NDP's counter-revolution plan

... are in this well-researched article by Esam al-Amin. H/t to Jonathan Wright. Amin gives a lot of details of the plan to launch the counter-revolution, starting with a key...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:46 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

Egypt, the world food-price crisis-- and JWB's next book!

I just want to pick up on the food-price dimension of what's happening in the Middle East (and other parts of the world) today. Since the beginning of the current...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:10 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

February 04, 2011

Asmaa Mahfouz: The girl who kicked Egypt's hornet's nest!

A friend sent me this vlog, which was recorded on January 18 by Asmaa Mahfouz, a young Egyptian woman who describes on it how earlier in the month she had...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:16 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

February 03, 2011

My piece in The Hill yesterday

... was here. This was the piece I wrote Tuesday morning, that I mentioned in this JWN post later that morning. So really, you could read the two together... First,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:30 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

February 02, 2011

Mubarak and the Egyptian army: the Pinochet option?

In last night's post, I said that prior to his speech, Muabarak had the option to be like Frederik De Klerk but instead had come out swinging with his dead-end...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:27 AM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

February 01, 2011

Mubarak gives go-ahead to his goons

This afternoon (U.S. Eastern time) we were waiting anxiously for the statement that, Egyptian state TV promised, was coming "shortly" from-- or on behalf of-- Pres. Mubarak. Would it contain...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:25 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

Arab democracy movements and the power of the 'rule of law'

I've been writing yet another piece of journalism on the Egyptian uprising. (I hope I can share it with you soon.) Writing truly does help me to think. So I...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:05 AM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

January 31, 2011

My Middle East Channel piece on the MB

... is here. The editors there took quite a bit of time to turn it around. If I had had the time I would have tightened up the ending-- and...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:08 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

My Salon piece on the geopolitical ripples from Cairo

... is here. I only really got to the start of where I wanted to go with the piece, by the time I got to the last paragraph there. I...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:15 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

Tactical deployment of Muslim prayer in nonviolence

Yesterday I tweeted (@justworldbooks) about this amazing, 9-minute video clip from the Egyptian paper Al-Masry al-Yawm, which shows the large-scale confrontation across, I think, the broad expanse of Qasr al-Nil...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:06 AM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

January 29, 2011

Cairo, Washington, etc

Issandr's reporting and analysis, now that he's back in Garden City from his brief stay in Tunis, has been extraordinary. He is The Man! Earlier today: We have army and...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:21 PM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

Threat of sabotage & Islamophobia re Egypt

As Pres. mubarak desperately hangs onto his last threads of power, he and the many Egyptian and international forces who have supported him can be expected to engage in damaging...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:05 AM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

January 28, 2011

Obama's know-nothings discuss Egypt

Via TPM's intriguing new "Egypt wire", this: President Obama was reportedly briefed for 40 minutes on the situation in Egypt today. Here, a photo of his meeting with National Security...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:18 PM | Fulltext link (12 comments)

Note on the term 'imperium'

A friend asked why I used that term in my big post yesterday. It was a semi-conscious reference to the (heavily British-dominated) "Anglo-Egyptian Condominum" that controlled the governance of Sudan...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:17 AM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

Wiklileaks, Egypt

Is here. H/T Adam Horowitz. I hope some JWN readers have time to peruse and post highlights (with links) in the comments section here? Sadly, I don't. Got a publishing...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:06 AM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

January 27, 2011

Jonathan Wright's great reporting from Cairo

I learned from Issandr that Jonathan Wright, former long-time Reuters newsman now living and working in Cairo as a translator (hey, we former Reuters people end up doing the darnedest...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:09 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

Agents provocateurs in Cairo?

Issandr's reporting on this from 1 a.m. Friday Cairo time is very worrying: I have received eyewitness reports from three people that Central Security Forces (the riot control police) are...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:03 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

November 29, 2010

U.S. diplomacy in tatters-- and not from Wikileaks

Our country's ability to influence events around the world is in tatters-- and this was already the case before the latest round of Wikileaks started to dribble out to the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:01 AM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

June 01, 2010

Keep watching Egypt

Egypt's compliance with Israel in maintaining the siege of Gaza has been an essential element in the siege's inhumane "success" until now. But as Issandr el-Amrani blogged yesterday, Israel's lethal...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:26 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

May 31, 2010

Israel's flotilla violence changing everything, Part 2

A. The fact that PM Netanyahu has decided that fallout from the IDF's gratuitously violent flotilla assault requires him to cancel his planned meeting in Washington Wednesday and return to...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:15 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

August 15, 2009

The definitive word on 'confidence building measures'

... comes from Ezzedine Choukri in this great piece in Al-Ahram Weekly. (HT: Abdulmoneim Said Aly at MEI on Thursday.) Choukri's piece is an excellent illustration of the thinking by...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:48 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

July 09, 2009

NYT plays catchup with JWN on Mubarak story

Yesterday evening I put up a short post here about the fears swirling around the Middle East about the possible physical weakening of Egypt's 81-year-old President Hosni Mubarak, an authoritarian...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:15 PM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

July 08, 2009

Mubarak's hold on power weakening?

There have been several reports in both the Arab and Israeli media in recent days that Egypt's ageing, 28-year president Hosni Mubarak may be weakening his long-clenched hold on power....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:20 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

March 21, 2009

"Gaza first" on the horizon?

With respect to the Egyptian-Palestinian-Israeli triangle as it manifests regarding Gaza, I'd add the following general notes: 1. Egypt and Hamas share a strong interest in preventing Gaza's 1.5 million...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:18 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

IPS piece on Egypt's diplo challenges

I had a new piece up on IPS yesterday, titled " Pressure Mounts on Egypt to Deliver Results". You can find it on IPS here and on my analysis-archive here....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:10 AM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

February 14, 2009

One further note about Egypt

I want to clarify regarding this sentence in the IPS piece about Egypt that I filed yesterday... "The arguments the state media made that Egypt should put its own interests...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:21 AM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

February 13, 2009

My IPS piece on Egypt's role, and related observations

My latest IPS analysis, " Egypt's Star Rising in Regional Politics", is here. The key judgment I made there was this one: If, as all the polls indicate, U.S. ally...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:28 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

February 11, 2009

Philip Rizk, freed

On the Facebook page for Philip Rizk, the following message was posted at 4 a.m. this morning, Cairo time: Philip is out, he is safe and home with his family....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:15 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

February 08, 2009

Egypt: Free Philip Rizk!

I tried to call Philip Rizk in Cairo today, but he didn't answer. Philip is a courageous and principled young man, of joint Egyptian and German nationality, who has done...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:09 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

September 01, 2008

Egyptian delegation to break Gaza siege

The plan, as described on Hamas's website here, could be huge. It will almost certainly have a much bigger impact than the two-small-ship siege-busting effort undertaken from Europe last month....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:02 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

April 07, 2008

Serious unrest in US ally, Egypt

Ever since the Washington managed to broker the 1978 Camp David agreement between Egypt and Israel, Egypt has played a huge role in American military planning in the Middle East....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:47 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

March 31, 2008

Human Rights Watch opposes Egypt's political arrests

Kudos to Human Rights Watch for having issued a strong statement criticizing the Egyptian government’s continuing mass round-up of opposition activists and would-be candidates. This campaign, HRW said, "puts the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:59 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

March 20, 2008

Problems inside Egypt's ruling party?

Egypt's landmark local elections are coming up April 8. As noted in my 'Delicious' comments over recent weeks, the Mubarak regime has gone to great lengths to prevent representatives of...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:26 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

March 10, 2008

Support democratic principles in Egypt!

Reuters is reporting from Cairo that Egypt's biggest opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood says that only 50 or 60 of the thousands of its members who have tried to register...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:19 PM | Fulltext link (13 comments)

March 08, 2008

Progress in the Gaza ceasefire talks?

The western MSM has been fixated on Thursday's tragic, unjustifiable killings of eight students at a West Jerusalem yeshiva (Jewish religious school), and to a lesser extent on the effect...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:25 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

February 11, 2008

Congratulations, Egypt and Abu Treika!

Egypt's national football (soccer) team won the African Nations Cup final in Ghana last night. Huge congratulations to them and to their scorer! Muhammad Abu Treika (no. 22). Abu Treika...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:25 AM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

February 09, 2008

Mubarak on the Gaza question

This is the English-language version of an interview conducted on January 30th with Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak by two correspondents from Italy's La Repubblica. A very well-informed person tells me...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:52 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

January 31, 2008

Al-Ahram Weekly on Egypt and Gaza

I've been unbelievably busy with the galley-proofs (or whatever they call today's functional equivalent of them) of my book. Five chapters down, and two to finish tomorrow... Meanwhile, I see...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:07 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

February 23, 2007

Interview with Dr. Abdel Monem Abul-Futouh

Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:37 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

February 22, 2007

Egyptian blogging on trial

The trial of Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer, who is on trial for his writings criticizing Egypt's al-Azhar religious authorities, Islam and President Husni Mubarak, resumes in his home town of...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:50 AM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

February 21, 2007

Notes from Cairo, #3

I have been incredibly busy, "uploading" information and impressions from here in Egypt into my brain, renewing old acquaintances here, making new ones, rushing around in general. My daughter-- and...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:36 AM | Fulltext link (20 comments)

February 17, 2007

Interview with Dr. Issam el-Arian

Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:42 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

Notes from Cairo, #2

I have gathered such a lot of great material from my time here in Egypt so far that it has been a challenge for me to figure out how to...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:55 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

February 08, 2007

Sunni Arab view of US-Iran Tensions

If jwn readers and our generous host will pardon me, I (Scott) wish to draw early attention to Helena Cobban's important column in today's Christian Science Monitor. Writing from Cairo,...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 12:01 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

April 16, 2006

Violence and tragedy in Egypt

Posted by Helena Cobban at 06:22 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

February 08, 2004

Luxor fun

We had a totally awesome three days checking out various tombs and ancient temples in Luxor. I got back to Cairo yesterday, and started pulling together the raw materials for...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:44 AM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

February 03, 2004

Posting from Egypt

I'm traveling in Egypt this week. Not sure how much I'll actually learn about What Egyptians Think, since we're doing mainly touristy stuff (Luxor, etc.) And I am not the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:08 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)