650 The Ambassador’s Dog, and Other Stories

The soupy season has begun. I’m starting to think there was a wisdom to the enforced idleness (and replenishment of the soil’s nutrients and washing-away of the salt in the soil) the flood used to bring. It’s too hot to do anything fast.

A few quick items in the meantime:

  • Via Arabist‘s del.icio.us feed: Margaret Scobey, the new U.S. ambassador to Egypt, is grieving for her dog. It was poisoned soon after she arrived in Cairo. The Al-Hayat story is 90-percent bullshit, but I hear through the grapevine that it is true that Ambassador Scobey is taking the dog’s death seriously. I’m sorry for your loss, Ambassador. Pooch is in a better place. It’s time to move on.
  • As Egyptian Culture Minister Farouq Hosny’s bid to become director of UNESCO nears, he seems to care less about domestic opinion (long pitted against him), and more about getting what must be the cushiest job in the world. His two-faced pronouncements about cultural exchange with Israel have prompted outcry from Zionists and Muslim Brotherhood members of Parliament alike. See the Wall Street Journal‘s review. If Hosny gets the job, and I expect he will (it’s an Arab’s turn), I’m less interested in what will happen to UNESCO’s policy on Egyptian-Israeli cultural exchange (nothing) than what will happen to the Ring Road. Apparently UNESCO opposition prevented it from running through the desert around the Pyramids, as the government had planned.
  • Congratulations to steel magnate and ruling-party whip Ahmed Ezz, who successfully campaigned to get penalties for monopolistic business practices cut in half. I have long wondered how Ezz’s steel empire, which the Egyptian brokerage HC estimates has 68 percent of the local market, has not run afoul of the 2005 Anti-Monopoly Law, which set a 25-percent limit on market share.
  • Some of Egypt’s most famous bloggers with an interest in human rights, including Alaa Seif, Malek Moustafa, Wael Abbas, and Nora Younis, are participating in a conference on the Internet organized by the government’s National Council on Human Rights today. They hoped representatives of the relevant ministries would attend. I’m sorry I missed it, but check their blogs for accounts of how it went.
  • An informer at the Cairo Marriott has turned in a tourist for possessing a video tape on sectarian tensions in Egypt.

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