Month: July 2006

Hizbullah’s psy-ops in Israel?

Hossam beat me to posting about the great BBC article on Israeli psy-ops (the stuff about Al Manar’s satellite feed being hacked is especially fascinating, since they are all Arab or Iranian owned), but I will beat him at his own game:

Dozens of Israeli customers of the Orange cellular service provider received unexpected SMS messages on their phones Wednesday evening, with the English message:

“Now Now Now…Go out from your home Hizballah willing shelling of the area, Israel Government Cheating you And refuse recognition Defeat.”

It was not yet clear whether Hizbullah operatives were in fact behind the messages of intimidation, or whether the messages were no more than a joke in poor taste by other network subscribers.

. . .

Rani Rahav, a spokesperson for Orange, responded that the text messages were coming from a small service provider “somewhere out there in the Pacific Ocean. We are working right now to block the provider from transmitting further messages to Orange customers.”

This will be remembered in Israel as “the Micronesian betrayal.”

Sadr to send Hizbullah more troops from Iraq?

Does anyone know whether this has any credibility?

A senior member of Muqtada al-Sadr’s Iraqi Shi’ite militia, the Mahdi Army, says the group is forming a squadron of up to 1,500 elite fighters to go to Lebanon.
The plan reflects the potential of the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah to strengthen radical elements in Iraq and neighboring countries and to draw other regional players into the Lebanon conflict.
“We are choosing the men right now,” said Abu Mujtaba, who works in the loosely organized following of radical Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. “We are preparing the right men for the job.”

It is the Washington Times after all…

Misr Digital on resistance week

Wael Abbass of MisrDigital has posted a fantastic virtual coverage of solidarity demos in Cairo accross last week. As always, Wael takes good pix and videos of the protests, clashes, portraits of security officials present when abuses happen. The most interesting video this time was one taken of a CSF conscript mumbling “Amen” as pro-resistance demonstrators were praying for Israel’s and America’s defeat.

Wael also said his blog has been recently coming under attacks from Israeli hackers, so he sent them the following post card…

Thousands demonstrate in support of resistance

Thousands of Muslim Brothers activists took part in demos following Fri prayers today in Giza and Shoubra.
Around five thousands supporters of Egypt’s largest Islamist opposition group prayed and demonstrated in front of Istiqama mosque in Giza, according to Photographer Nasser Nouri. The protestors were surrounded by CSF, who banned them from marching to the nearby Israeli embassy, but no arrests were reported.
In el-Khazendar mosque in Shoubra, around a thousand MB supporters, half of them children, demonstrated for an hour after the Friday prayers, according to a photographer present in the scene. The mosque was surrounded by CSF, who made sure the demo did not turn into a march. Ten children were detained by security, according to Ikhwan Web.

(You can find a slideshow of the two demos here.)

Here’s a good dpa roundup by Jano Charbel of the protests in (the above-mentioned) Giza, and another two in Al-Azhar Mosque and Mansoura province. Jano puts the number of Giza demonstrators at less than what Nasser Nouri said, however. Continue reading Thousands demonstrate in support of resistance

Detaining Egypt

Ma’at Center for Legal and Constitutional Studies will organize a conference, Monday 31 July, on “Conditions of Detention in Egypt.”
Several speakers will take part including Dr. Diaa Rashwan of Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, Hussein Ibrahim, the deputy head of the Muslim Brothers’ parliamentary block, in addition to some detainees’ family members and a number of recently released detainees.
The conference will start at 1pm, in Hor Mohebb Hotel, in Haram Street in Giza.

Continue reading Detaining Egypt

وداعاً رمسيس

So finally Ramses is gonna escape the polution, dust, fumes, and garbage hills of downtown Cairo, to assume his new position in front of the new Egyptian Museum, currently under construction.


As happy as I am we are saving this valuable piece of our country’s history, but I know I and many Cairenes will miss it. May Ramses find some peace now in his new home by the Giza Pyramids…
Here is a slideshow of the mock transferring process that took place last night. The Antiquities’ authorities moved a replica of the statue, to see if the experiment was going to work.. and it did..

UPDATE: The actual tranfer of the original Ramses statue will take place on October 6, according to Al-Masr Al-Youm

If you are interested in more background information on the new Egyptian Museum, check out this story I wrote for the LA Times last year.

Continue reading وداعاً رمسيس