The Skeptic الشكاك

523 Bush’s Sword Dance

I love the BBC’s caption on this little video:

As part of his official visit to Saudi Arabia, US President George Bush took part in a ritual sword dance.

There is no commentary on this footage.

It’s true: What could they possibly say? There are no words…

522 Promotional Materials

I’m pleased to find two former colleagues of mine, Andrew Yurkovsky and Debbie Kuan, blogging. They’re both very clever, and they both write very well. Strongly recommended. Also see Tara Todras-Whitehill’s new photo blog. Tara’s a wicked talented photographer who recently broke all of Cairo’s heart by leaving us to take a job for the AP.

I’m also happy to find that, thanks to my friend Lawrence Krauser, who is probably a genius, the horrible child is now online.

521 Egypt’s Declining Brestige

First Sarko comes and plays Antony and Cleopatra with his mistress before getting down to real business in Saudi, showering the shuyukh with praise and nuclear reactors, now Bush touches down in Sharm for a few hours on a courtesy call…. Why, you’d almost think Egypt was a hopeless, decaying, fin-du-régime backwater in a decaying, hopeless region, and that the Saudis, with all their rotting trilobites, are the real go-to guys. How long will we suffer these insults?

Never mind. Looks to me like the Egyptians have (correctly) calculated that their future lies with the Chinese.

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]

516 Camp Gay Men Against Ahmadinejad

Great. Now I can’t get this out of my head. Damn you, SP!

515 Bedouin Storm Border Post

EL-ARISH, Egypt (AFP) — Dozens of Bedouin tribesmen, some firing rocket propelled grenades, attacked Egypt’s Al-Oja crossing point into Israel on Tuesday, wounding two people, a security source told AFP.

A police officer and customs official were wounded at the commercial crossing point, known as Nitzana in Hebrew, which lies southeast of the Rafah crossing point between Egypt and the Gaza Strip.

Security forces retook control of the crossing point, which was damaged in the attack, and the situation at the border returned to normal on Tuesday afternoon, the source said.

The Bedouin were protesting the arrest of two of their number by police on Monday following a tribal dispute.

[Full Story]

512 Direct from Pakistan…

(via Orly Sud):

Enlarge (thanks, SP)

511 Robots to Patrol Gaza Border

Ellen Knickmeyer reports: “Egypt has agreed to spend $23 million in U.S. military aid on robots and other advanced technology to detect smuggling tunnels along its border with the Gaza Strip, a U.S. congressman said Sunday.”

The congressman’s name is Steve Israel (D-NY). No joke. I don’t even know if he’s Jewish, just that I will never again bother trying to tell a Cairo cab driver that, as powerful as AIPAC is, it’s one lobby among many and that the Jews don’t actually control Congress.

Amazing how this has worked, eh? Congressmen make $100 million in U.S. aid to Egypt conditional on Egypt’s taking steps to bolster the independence of the judiciary, cut down on police abuse, and tighten security on the Sinai-Gaza border. Months later, all discussion of points one and two has disappeared, and congressmen are fretting because Israel says Egypt is doing “a terrible job” of policing the Gaza border. So Steve Israel comes over with a solution: “We’ll just buy some expensive robots from U.S. manufacturers and call it a day.” Everyone gets on with his dysfunctional life, the U.S. government is $23 million deeper in debt, some exec buys a new beach house, and the officer rolls up his sleeves, picks up his electrode and his baton, and gets back to work.

Perhaps the Gaza border will be more secure. And perhaps I’m being too cynical. Perhaps there was also a secret deal to place anti-torture robots in police stations and State Security dungeons. Anyone starts to abuse his power, and Zap!

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