
The Yugoslav war reappears in Syria
War never ends: it breeds skills that just get applied to perpetrating bad deeds later on

Israel, Prisoner X, and widely known secrets
Israeli denials about the anonymous prisoner who committed ‘suicide’ confirm how valuable he was

My twenty years in Egypt
My first trip to Cairo was in 1992. Here are some thoughts on how it has changed

On Egypt’s constitutional referendum
The Muslim Brotherhood has changed its political strategy, a loss for everyone

If you missed the Egyptian royal family…
A film made by the Egyptian royal family about a coup d’état that was lost for nearly sixty years

Car bomb in Beirut, invisible map revealed
Even in peacetime, every Beiruti knows which sect ‘owns’ each district

New York Times op-ed on Syria is wrong about the Obama doctrine
How not to make the case for US intervention in Syria

The embassy mobs and Obama’s ‘failure’ in the Middle East
Is Obama’s policy in the Middle East in ‘epic collapse’? Hardly. But serious people have doubts now

Latest in the battle over the Mohamed Mahmoud mural
The New York Times blog The Lede picks up the battle over street art in Cairo

The amazing mural on Mohamed Mahmoud that was just painted over
What a loss for Cairo, artistically as much as politically

In a first, a new dictionary of ancient Egyptian colloquial
The language was on the Rosetta Stone but the dictionary is only now being published

How the US is playing into the hands of the Salafiyeen
The US just told the Salafiyeen they have the power to affect aid talks. Big mistake

Tracking how the Egyptian government is doing
Before the revolution, Egypt had no politics. Now it does, and the small things matter

Pay no attention to these anti-American protests in Cairo
I was in Cairo 48 hours ago: there is no great wave of anti-Americanism right now

The Egyptian Angel of Darkness passes away
For the US, Omar Suleiman was ‘our man in Cairo.’ That only makes it worse

The Syrian gun market as horoscope
New York Times reporter C. J. Chivers says weapons are expensive so bad things lie ahead

Mubarak the undead
Mubarak, Sharon, Arafat: there are new actors on the stage now and the old men have been forgotten

Syria, citizen journalism and the New York Times
The paper of record embraces citizen journalism at last

On the Egypt revolution and America’s War of 1812
A bad week in Egypt, but profound political change can take a very long time

Looking at the war in Syria
Unlike Gaddafi, Assad has international allies who will protect him so this is likely to get worse

What made Khaled Saeed a symbol?
All humans are imperfect but imperfect symbols don’t work: they get vilified for political purposes

Actually, in Egypt now it is Chirac vs Le Pen
Large parts of the political spectrum have no representation at all in the second round

Mubarak gets life in prison, Egypt gets nothing
Mubarak earned the sentence a hundred times over but it does not feel like justice was done