Vacation Postings

This weekend I begin a two-week vacation. Unlike some past years I have not prepared one post daily in advance, but I do have two or three in reserve and will likely come up with more, but the rate of postings will be less than usual.

Another Round of Views on the Latest War

 I had barely posted yesterday's post with nine links, called "Many Voices on the Region's Newest War," when I discovered my Inbox, Facebook and Twitter newsfeeds, etc. were filling up again. (I haven't posted links in Arabic because right now they're running very biased.) I'm assembling the links, not endorsing the views:

• Ibrahim Sharqieh, Brookings, "Will Saudi Arabia's 'Operation Decisive Storm' Restore Order in Yemen?"
• Juan Cole, The Nation, "Is Iran Conquering the Middle East?''

• Daniel Green, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, "Yemen Redux; Reclaiming Stability in the Arabian Peninsula."

• Eric Trager, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, "Egypt's Yemen Campaign."

• Noussaibah Younis, The Guardian,"The Saudi-Iran powerplay behind the Yemen conflict."

• Mahmoud Salem, Confessions of  a Sandmonkey, "Quick Notes on Egypt and the Yemen War..."

I'm sure there will be more.

A Note on Holiday Blogging

The Middle East Institute offices are closed during the holidays. I will continue posting to the blog, including my usual posts about Christmas in the Middle East and my World War I series, as well as noting key developments, but at a reduced pace.

Why Blogging is Light this Week

Most of you probably won't have noticed, but blogging has been light this week, and perhaps a structural/historical footnote is in order.

The Middle East Institute was founded in 1946 and the first issue of The Middle East Journal appeared in January 1947. In those days of paper editing, remote typesetting and mailed galleys, not to mention hot lead type, I assume the turnaround time for an issue could have been months. In this electronic era, it's not. Our deadlines are the first (or given weekends, the first few days) of January, April, July, and October. But the Winter issue is the killer. It needs to go to press around January 1. But during the Winter issue cycle (October to January) the following always occur: 1) the MEI Annual Conference, which our staff must attend; 2) MESA, where we always send somebody and when (as this year) it's in Washington, even more; 3) Thanksgiving weekend; and the 4) Christmas to New Year's period, when MEI offices are frequently closed. So the usual cycle time on the issue is much foreshortened and compressed for Winter. (If there's an afterlife I plan to raise this with the founding fathers of 1946: younger publications like Middle East Policy sensibly put their Winter issue in December so it doesn't burden the holidays.)

Last year we ran late and it caused problems, cascading down the schedule. I'll not let that happen again, ever, and I also don't want myself or my staff working through the holidays, so we're racing flat out on the Winter issue, and I have less time for the blog. Things should ease considerably by next week, so forgive if there's dearth of postings this week.

A Note on Vacation Postings

I'm going on vacation for two weeks. I won't be traveling the entire time, but will be off the clock as it were. As I've done in previous years, I've prepared/am preparing blog posts ahead of time on historical and cultural topics that won't be overtaken by events. These will include, but will not be limited to, the second and third parts of the Goeben/Breslau saga and the rest of the unfinished Lady Hester Stanhope story, as well as two other subjects already nearing completion. I had intended to put up part two of the Goeben and Breslau tale tonight when I remembered belatedly (forehead-slapping moment) that the Ottoman Minister of Marine/Head of the Admiralty/Member of the CUP Triumvirate Jemal (Djemal/Cemal) Pasha's memoirs exist in English translation! (I have no Turkish at all.) They contain a lot of great first-person anecdotal material. As a result I'm deferring Part II to Monday to mine Jemal for anecdotes.

Since the Middle East never takes a vacation (during my 2011 vacation Tripoli fell to the anti-Qadhafi forces; 2012 Morsi reshuffled the Army and named Sisi commander [oops!]; 2013 Sisi crushed the Morsi backers at Raba‘a Square),and given the fact that everything is so much in flux right now, I'm sure I'll be checking in with commentary as well. But there will be a minimum of at least one post a day on weekdays in my absence.

A Housekeeping Note about Hester Stanhope

Two weeks ago I ran Part One of an intended three part post on the eccentric Lady Hester Stanhope, "the mad nun of Lebanon." For those of you wondering what happened to the rest of it, the answer is Gaza, Libya, ISIS, the centennial of WWI, etc. In past years, I've prepared posts ahead of time for when I'm on vacation, and since I'll be starting vacation in a little over a week, I've decided to postpone the rest of Lady Hester to my vacation posts. Do stay tuned.

Today Marks Five Years of This Blog

Five years ago today, on January 28, 2009, I posted my first substantive post on this blog, about Hisham Melhem's interview with president Obama. I posted two other posts that day, one of them about ‘Omar Suleiman, who's still making news posthumously. (Strictly speaking I put up  a "placeholder" "Watch This Space" announcement on January 27, so I could have marked five years yesterday, but the January 28 posts were the first with content)

In those five years, if I'm adding right, I've posted 4,080 posts; this one is number 4,081.

I know some readers are very loyal and others just drop by now and then, but thanks to all of you, and thanks for the many compliments, including those quoted in the right column under "kind words from others." And thanks to the Middle East Institute for giving me the opportunity. Somehow I sill haven't run out of things to say, so stick around and see what comes next.

A Note for Readers on Recent Thin Postings

Just a quick note as regular readers may have noted that posts have been a bit sparse the past week or so. This is because I'm in the midst of a full-court-press aimed at clearing a manuscript backlog. I've still managed to post at least once daily, but not always very original stuff.

Fear not. I'm starting to see light at the end of the tunnel. And I should be back to normal soon. For one thing, for those of you who like my historical posts, note that we're coming up on the 70th anniversaries of the First Cairo Conference, the Tehran Conference, the Second Cairo Conference, and the FDR-Ibn Saud meeting, so the World War II material alone should give you much to chew on. I may not hit stride again for a week or more (our Annual Conference also looms), but I Shall Return.

Updating the Look of the Blog

I hope you like the new look. Our tech folks are trying to make it look more like the main MEI website; that was also the intent back in 2009, but the main website has gone through two or three evolutions and this blog had not. I hope you like it, and the branding should be clearer with the new banner.

The General Sisi Comments Continue

The satirical comments to my original post about General Sisi really picked up after my second post noted that my readers have a keen sense of humor. The second post now has 37 comments, in addition to the original five at the first post.

A small selection:

Abdel Moneim said...

That's not the only invention that our kindly leader for life came up with.

In order to pay for his sister's wedding he sold the Winklevoss Brothers the idea for Facebook or Kitab al Wag as he called it for Fifty Pounds. They were visting on Spring break from Harvard.

As an honorable man, he never went back on his word on the sale or tried to extract money from them because to a man of honor his word is more important than mere money.

The General's idea came from his study of ancient Egyptian temple paintings. A story for another time of how he influenced a young Zahi Hawass choice of career and later guided him to make several important discoveries in the Valley of the Kings.

 

Zahi said...

Even the hat was his idea.

 

M. H. Heikal said...

You published the picture of a young AlSisi giving flowers to President Nasser but you did not tell the story!

Maybe you do not know or maybe you are trying to hide our selfless leaders accomplishments.

When he gave Nasser the flowers, Nasser bent down to thank him and AlSisi said "You should build a dam at Aswan".

Nasser liked the idea and later used to consult him on a regular basis.

AlSisi was sick with influenza in June 1967. Had he been well, the course of history might well have been changed.

My readers are kidding, but the state media continues to draw parallels between Gen. Sisi and Nasser, and I think they're serious.

Vacation Posts Coming

I'm going to be on vacation the next two weeks. As I did the past two years, I'm preparing a number of posts on historical or cultural subjects that won't be easily overtaken by events. At least one should appear daily; I may add others on the road, and if major events require it I'll do more, but expect at least one longer post a day; not my usual pace, but hey, I'm on vacation. The pre-prepared posts will appear each morning, and some years they've drawn more comment than my usual daily fare, so keep on dropping by.

My Four-Year Blogiversary, and Post Number 3416

Four years ago yesterday, January 27, 2009, this blog began with a single placeholder post; four years ago today, I began regular blogging.

I had posted 3415 posts as of Friday, with posts every day except for (most) weekends, holidays, and a few days in 2010 when I was hospitalized with a broken hip and the painkillers made me too incoherent (even more so than usual, at least) to blog.

Let me thank my regular readers. In that first post I noted that the blog would eventually move from the Blogger platform to the main MEI website. Four years (and a couple of MEI webmasters) later, let me say that again; only this, time, I believe we're really going to do it. Don't worry; nothing essential will change.

Due to Major Spam Attacks, Comments Will Be Temporarily Moderated

From the beginning of this blog, I've been as liberal as possible about comments. Anonymous comments are welcome and I have not insisted on moderation before the comments appear. In the past two weeks, though, there has been a major spam attack going on with, last weekend, over 100 postings, most of which never showed up because posts over two weeks old did have to be approved. But the attacks have continued.

I am regrettably shifting, at least temporarily, to moderated comments: usually I should be able to approve legitimate comments soon after you post them, but it's much more efficient if the comment appears only with my approval instead of my having to take down dozens of spam posts every day.

I hope I can relax this soon. Your legitimate comment will be approved as quickly as I can, but there may be delays on weekends.

It's Time for Vacation Posting, but There'll Be Plenty to Read Here While I'm Gone

Tomorrow I begin two weeks' vacation. Since there's no clamor by colleagues eager to occupy this bully pulpit for the next couple of weeks, and since I'm not fond of summer reruns, I'm doing what I did last year: writing up non-time-constrained, but I hope interesting, posts ahead of time. Since I've found I often get more traffic and linking from my cultural/historical/linguistics posts, and since those aren't easily overtaken by events, the bulk of the vacation posts — at least one is cued to appear automatically each day — will be of that type. Many are quite a bit longer than my usual posts, in fact, since I often have to fill in a lot of background. So keep coming around; there'll be something new daily.

Last year the Libyan rebels undermined my advanced preparation by taking Tripoli while I was on vacation, and as I did then, I'll drop in from my holiday and comment if I feel I have something that needs saying.  But don't worry, there will be something new here every weekday I'm gone.

Three-Day Weekend

For those of you outside the US, you should know that this is the Memorial Day holiday weekend in the States, the traditional start of summer. Unless something major happens, I'll return to blogging on Tuesday.

Blogging Will Be Late Today

I'll be busy with other duties till later today. Posts should resume in late afternoon.

Three Years of Blogging

Today marks the third anniversary of my very first post on this blog, January 27, 2009. That was acltually a placeholding "coming soon" announcement, and the first substantive post was the next day, January 28, a post on Hisham Melhem's coup of becoming the first Arab journalist to interview the newly-inaugurated Barack Obama.

In those three years there have been over 2600 posts. In the near future we'll be migrating the blog to a new home in the Middle East Institute's new website, but nothing else substantive will change. Thanks to all my readers for the past three years!

New MEI Website is Live

 MEI's newly revamped website is now live; please check it out. It's the same address so your bookmarks should still work. It may be a little harder to find the link to my blog, but the old page was too cluttered: it's down under "Middle East Journal." Or just bookmark the blog, too.

What You Liked Best in 2011: Dead Villains, Nude Bloggers, Great Novelists

This is a graph of my Pageviews during 2011 from Google Analytics. It's mostly predictable, chugging along at a few hundred a day, with surges in January and February during the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, and late in the year due to the renewed violence and elections in Egypt. But what are those two huge spikes that look like the Burj Dubai? (Excuse me: Burj Khalifa?) They were days I passed 1,000 pageviews in a single day. But why those days?

Well, the one in May was the death of Usama bin Ladin, and the one in October was the death of Mu‘ammar Qadhafi. Are my readers just bloodthirsty, or what? I think in the Qadhafi case a few news sites and bigtime blogs linked to me and spurred my traffic. I didn't even write all that much about Bin Ladin, though.

My blog is structured so if you visit regularly you can read the recent posts on the homepage; you don't have to click through to another page by clicking "Read more," as in many blogs. As a result I can only judge the popularity of individual posts by those who clicked on the individual link, either coming to it from a referral, a search engine, or one of my own links later. Curiously, the single most Googled-for post in 2011 was one I posted in 2010 on the 10th anniversary of the USS Cole.

Of course if I just look at the last couple of months of the year, I find that one of the most searched for terms was Aliaa Elmahdy, the "nude blogger." But I'm also gratified to see that my interview with Raymond Stock, Naguib Mahfouz' biographer, on Mahfouz' centennial brought a lot of incoming traffic. (I think I owe Raymond for that as he plugged it at the Arabic Literature (in English) blog and on Facebook, which probably brought over many Arabic lit types who might otherwise not have heard of my blog. Neither was the most searched topic across the year, but they led searches in December, when the Mahfouz interview appeared.

I do wish I could figure out how much overlap there is between those searching for Aliaa ElMahdy and those searching for Naguib Mahfouz. And I guess I should root for more bad guys to bite the dust in 2012, since that really seems to bring you in.

A Post in Lieu of the End-of-Year Retrospective I Probably Won't Write

Sorry, I just can't resist printing this picture yet again.

This is the time of year when publications, newspapers, websites, etc, all do their "looking back on 2011" retrospectives. Does anybody actually read those? I don't, though I've written a few in my day. I'm on vacation this week; why should I write something even I don't particularly want to read?

You know what happened. Whether you called it "the Arab Spring," " the Arab Awakening," or "Why are My Loyal Loving Citizens Baying for my Scalp?" (if you were a head of state), it happened, and is mostly still happening. So far only one dead head of state, Qadhafi, but lots of dead revolutionaries, especially in Libya and Syria. It's an unfinished business.  Will Egypt's revolution end in revolutionary progress, Islamist regression, military rule, or not with a bang but a whimper? Damned if I know. Will Bashar al-Asad survive? I wouldn't want to sell him a long term life insurance policy, but who can say for sure? Will Salih ever actually leave Yemen?

Now, I think, while avoiding a "Major Stories of 2011" retrospective you won't read anyway,  I may do a collection of some of the most iconic photos of the year, but as for a retrospective, it's all in the archive. I may even list some of my own favorite posts of the year, which are mostly the historical ones. And after January 1 I may give you a summary of what the most popular posts of the year by number of pageviews were. But I don't think I'll relive the year in detail, since who needs to relive what we're still living?

I do note many changes in theme, by looking at my labels/topics list (officially "Categories" over there on the lower right). Although the sexual harassment and abuse of women is a notorious and longstanding problem in the Middle East, and the label has 12 posts in it, every single one of them is from 2011. That's not because the problem arose in 2011 for the first time, but because the revolutionary fervor and the presence of men and women together in the angry streets drove it into the forefront of our attention. Good. Women need to scream about it and men need to stop their denial and hear what they're saying. The Arab revolutions have brought such issues to the forefront, even as they have empowered the Islamists whose views are at odds with the young revolutionaries but whose presence in the streets helped bring down the old regimes.

This rollercoaster ride has just begun, I suspect. I'll talk more about it in the new year of course. Meanwhile, hang on for the ride.