Days after “The Economist” decided no-one in the “Middle East” reads books, Ahdaf Soueif dedicated a short piece to Cairo in Newsweek. Just like Youssef Chahine’s Cairo, beautifully expressed on film, Soueif identifies the ugliness that exists alongside the lovely in al Qahira.
The Narcicyst, an Iraqi hip hop artist (and scholar!) based in Canada, released this video in honour of the one-year anniversary of #Jan25. Most of the scenes are from around Cairo, though it does dip outside of the city into Nile farming country and what could even be a few shots of the Mediterranean in Alexandria.
One year ago Mostapha El-Shafey took this now iconic photo of a protestor, Abdulrahman Ezz, confronting police in Meydan Tahrir. Today, Egyptians aim to take back Tahrir and the revolution. There will be many more photos and videos of bravery, of violence, of fear and of triumph. As I now reflect on my thoughts from last […]
Remember way back when in 2011, when I shouted out Egypt’s crazed football fans for kicking ass during and after the fall of Mubarak? Well, in honor of the upcoming protests marking one year since the initial #Jan25 uprising, it looks like the Egyptian Football Association has decided to pick sides–the wrong side–again.
Literally hot off the press (or whatever the youtube equivalent is) here is Tha Suspect’s video for SUBsidy, an anti-corruption theme song offering for the ongoing Occupy Nigeria protests. h/t Siddhartha Mitter
Next week Omar Barghouti, one of the organizers of a cultural and academic boycott against Israel, will join legendary U.S.-based scholar-activists Angela Davis and Fred Moten to discuss the correlations between the divestment campaign against South Africa’s apartheid regime and the disinvestment movement against Israel in Southern Calfornia
No list about the “Arab Spring” is complete without Jadaliyya, the kick-ass open-source news and opinion blog arm of the Arab Studies Institute, which also puts out the Arab Studies Journal.
Robert Mackey’s The Lede over at The New York Times has an update on the detained Egyptian blogger Alaa Abd El Fattah:
Not unsurprisingly, the news that the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, along with Salafists, received the bulk of votes cast in Egypt’s first elections since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, was met with dismay by our friends in the media. “What does this mean!?” pundits on CNN, Fox and whatever other useless channel you’re […]
Egypt’s parliamentary elections are underway despite the intense violence that has rocked the nation over the past few weeks. While we all watch and wait (and vote!), a friend reminded me of this song (originally by the legendary political musician Sheikh Imam) sung by Eskenderella, a popular Egyptian band. A rough translation of the lyrics (from […]
