The Skeptic الشكاك

581 Shabola Hearts Obama

Nightclub singer, clown, barometer of popular Egyptian opinion, opinion-maker, propagandist, preacher, snappy dresser, man of tremendous gravity and noted hater of Israel Shaaban Abd al-Rahim was quoted in Al-Hayat a little over a week ago as saying that he likes Barack Obama: “He’s a good man, not a lousy man like Bush.” Aw shucks, Shabola.

The topic came up because he was talking about his new song, a parting shot to President “Troublemaker” Bush (“Damn you, Bush! It was a dark day when you were born,” etc.). Al-Hayat promised that the song would be on the video channels this week. I’m looking forward to it. In the same interview, Shabola also revealed that the Ministry of Health has contracted him to spread awareness about Bird Flu, and that he’s working with televangelist Amr Khaled on a campaign against drug addiction among Egyptian youth. I think he still sings Wednesday nights at a nightclub on al-Haram. Busy man.

This via Gemyhood, now on a New Generation fellowship at Slate, who fed it to a Slate-affiliated blog and sent it to Sandmonkey (where I saw it first). Sandmonkey has some thoughts on what Shabola’s comment on Obama could mean for Obama’s candidacy. My own suspicion is “not much.”

And as much as I would love to hear Shabola’s tribute to Obama (“Oh, Oh, Oh, Obama” sung to the tune of “Bin, Bin, Bin, Bin Laden?”), I doubt Shabola would speak as fondly of Obama if he’d heard his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That is, if he’d seen Obama trying to find out how far down his throat he could get AIPAC’s talking-points without choking on Iran (then urging folks to come together to fight lobbyists and special interest groups).

But all this misses the most interesting part of the Hayat interview: Some day very soon Shabola, made of light and floating over giant, glowering chickens also made of light, will make his triumphant return to millions of Egyptian living rooms.

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I was saddened to hear that legendary Cuban bassist Cachao, credited with inventing mambo, died yesterday at the age of 89. He has been described as “the most important bassist in 20th-Century popular music.” Here he is playing London last year.

549 Best Blog… Ever

Thanks to the SP News Service for alerting me to The Best Blog Ever: Stuff White People Like.

Oh, and yeah, way to go Fidel! May all the other presidents-for-life hearken to your example.

520 Epizootics

An early parody of the lark that ate Hollywood and other places where rich fools congregate.

(Via Dana Goodyear)

519 Britney Spears to Convert to Islam, Ensh’Allah

Hannah Allam gives “the story behind the story” of Bush’s visit to the UAE. Bush arrived in Saudi today, close on Sarko’s heels. The French president offered the Saudis nuclear aid.

More importantly, a British tabloid reports that Britney Spears may convert to Islam to marry the “pap rat” who “lured” her with “Brummie dirty talk.”

Egyptian squash players are the talk of the town in New York.

Egyptian authorities discovered another tunnel and more explosives near the Gaza border.

The stock market continues to climb, surpassing the 11,000 mark by the CASE index for the first time yesterday.

A steel “monopoly” in Egypt… but would competition lower prices?

Fred “The Saboteur” Abrahams writes on Libya:

At the end of the day, one fact is clear: Gaddafi is interested first and foremost in protecting and promoting his own power, and perhaps in eventually ensuring a transfer of power to one of his sons. His decision to engage with the west was driven by this calculated goal, fearing he was next after the US invasion of Iraq, and his future decisions will follow that logical course.

He will never undertake radical reform, such as allowing independent media or opposition groups. But acting in concert, the west can condition its relations on small but significant steps, such as abolishing the death penalty, improving the penal code, and strengthening the judicial system, all of which Gaddafi himself has placed on the agenda. [Full story]

Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court yesterday maintained that article 33 bis of the Agrarian Reform Act is unconstitutional.

517 The Lost Archive

Interesting page 1 feature in the WSJ today:

On the night of April 24, 1944, British air force bombers hammered a former Jesuit college here housing the Bavarian Academy of Science. The 16th-century building crumpled in the inferno. Among the treasures lost, later lamented Anton Spitaler, an Arabic scholar at the academy, was a unique photo archive of ancient manuscripts of the Quran.

The 450 rolls of film had been assembled before the war for a bold venture: a study of the evolution of the Quran, the text Muslims view as the verbatim transcript of God’s word. The wartime destruction made the project “outright impossible,” Mr. Spitaler wrote in the 1970s.

Mr. Spitaler was lying. The cache of photos survived, and he was sitting on it all along. The truth is only now dribbling out to scholars — and a Quran research project buried for more than 60 years has risen from the grave.

“He pretended it disappeared. He wanted to be rid of it,” says Angelika Neuwirth, a former pupil and protégée of the late Mr. Spitaler. Academics who worked with Mr. Spitaler, a powerful figure in postwar German scholarship who died in 2003, have been left guessing why he squirreled away the unusual trove for so long. [full story]

508 Holy Smokes

Forget Hiya Fawda, this is the shit:

Ahmad Zaki’s Al-Bari’ (The Innocent), via TortureinEgypt and Hossam. Thanks, ya shebab. If anyone can pass me a full, uncensored copy, I’d be most grateful.

470 Jazz-Age Cairo

I sometimes think I was born in the wrong time:

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Via `Abd al-Monem, polemic and political theater:

For more on this sort of thing, Dan Williams’ article on the Sanna Sharq Theater is an accessible introduction.

461 Grouse-Worthy

What would I do without the following people to make me feel clever and superior?

• 9/11 carpetbaggers.
• Tangentially related: Lindsay Lohan, who told British GQ, “I find myself pretty darn intelligent.”
• Ali Gomaa, head of Dar al-Ifta’a, Egypt’s quasi-governmental body responsible for issuing fatwas. Rankled by more and more critical headlines in the press (most recently about the mufti’s refusal to call Egyptians drowned at sea trying to get to Europe “martyrs” and a fatwa saying police who ran over a woman trying to stop their car did not commit manslaughter) he yesterday held a press conference to deny that he is a government stooge. I slept late and missed it.
• Brad Pitt, who told NBC Today, “I’m so tired of thinking about myself.”

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