It has now been a week since reform-seeking protestors by the thousands began taking to the streets of Cairo and other Egyptian cities, clashing with police and calling for President Hosni Mubarak to step down. Since then, the Egyptian government shut down Internet access, installed a new cabinet, called in the military, imposed a curfew. The protests continue today, with hundreds of thousands (representing, per the New York Times, “a vast tapestry of a country’s diversity”) gathering in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
The reporting challenges here are myriad. Simply following this evolving story, as a news consumer, is a challenge. What to read? Who to watch? Which Twitter hash tags to monitor? So we ask you: Where do you turn for news about Egypt? What sources (reporters, bloggers, photographers, Twitter accounts) have you relied on to keep up with the latest twists and turns on the ground, as well as for bigger-picture context and analysis? And have any sources disappointed?
al jezeera english. Please post others' responses.
#1 Posted by MIke, CJR on Wed 2 Feb 2011 at 06:51 AM
al jezeera english. Please post others' responses.
#2 Posted by MIke, CJR on Wed 2 Feb 2011 at 06:52 AM
Seem's FP's asking a similar question, and including twitter and other sources:
blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/02/01/who_to_follow_on_egypt
#3 Posted by mike, CJR on Wed 2 Feb 2011 at 07:01 AM
Daily News Egypt is a good outlet.
#4 Posted by Justin Martin, CJR on Wed 2 Feb 2011 at 01:47 PM
Not so surprising, maybe, but: The New York Times
#5 Posted by Mike Hoyt, CJR on Wed 2 Feb 2011 at 03:04 PM
I've been reading The National, the Guardian's liveblog, and the Egypt page of Arabica: http://www.newarabica.com/egypt/?cat=Egypt
#6 Posted by Lauren Kirchner, CJR on Wed 2 Feb 2011 at 03:06 PM
Here's how I follow the news from Egypt: CNN International on TV, Al Jeazeera English on the iPad, and Al Jazeera Arabic on the laptop screen. On Twitter, I follow many friends and reporters on the ground in Cairo, and the hashtag used is #Jan25. Mona Eltahawy (@monaeltahawy) has been doing a terrific job on Twitter as well.
#7 Posted by Ahmed Al Omran, CJR on Wed 2 Feb 2011 at 03:08 PM
I've been watching a lot of Al Jazeera English, which has done a great job on this story. I also follow The New York Times's coverage and see lots of links from people I follow on the Twitter. Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish is always great at aggregating these kinds of stories with quick analysis of why they matter.
#8 Posted by Ryan Chittum, CJR on Wed 2 Feb 2011 at 03:16 PM
Like most, have been streaming Al Jazeera E and paying attention to its Tweets. Some CNN, and The National has been solid too. Standard stuff, but some good reporting coming out of these outlets.
#9 Posted by Joel Meares, CJR on Wed 2 Feb 2011 at 03:18 PM
Andy Carvin's Twitter stream (@acarvin)
Al Jazeera English - on the Roku
NPR for explainers and perspective
#10 Posted by Damon Kiesow, CJR on Wed 2 Feb 2011 at 03:20 PM
Mubarak policemen with civil clothes is killing the protestes
#11 Posted by Egyptmartino, CJR on Wed 2 Feb 2011 at 03:22 PM
Vadim Lavrusik just pointed to this list of valuable Egypt sources compiled by Anthony DeRosa—pretty formidable.
http://soupsoup.tumblr.com/post/3018900672/watch-live-stream-of-al-jazeera-english-google
#12 Posted by Joel Meares, CJR on Wed 2 Feb 2011 at 03:35 PM
I've been streaming Al Jazeera english, reading the New York Times and the Guardian, following Nick Baumann's Egypt explainer blog, subscribed to @nytimes/egypt list as well as reading updates from people I already follow.
#13 Posted by Corinne Grinapol, CJR on Wed 2 Feb 2011 at 04:41 PM
Without question, Al Jazeera has been on top of this whole story from the beginning, and The Guardian has been doing some excellent reporting. I also recommend following the updates of an Egyptian freelance journalist who posts here http://twitter.com/3arabawy, and some academic experts like Juan Cole (juancole.com) post links to local press and interesting historical analysis and background. For Arabic speakers or students, I also recommend www.shorouknews.com, a fairly new Egyptian paper.
#14 Posted by Tarek, CJR on Sat 5 Feb 2011 at 12:22 PM
In addition to the above mentioned, Ashraf Khalil, who writes for the Index on Censorship as well as foreignpolicy.com.
Democracy Now's coverage has also been incredibly impressive.
#15 Posted by Ilene Prusher, CJR on Sat 5 Feb 2011 at 05:40 PM
Mosaic World News and Democracy Now are both great sources.
#16 Posted by c rough, CJR on Sat 5 Feb 2011 at 07:18 PM
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/
English Aljazeera stream and twitter have been welcome surprises.
various twitter accounts linked from both above.
bbc news and blog.
yahoo news and blog.
washington post
#17 Posted by Bill, CJR on Sun 6 Feb 2011 at 11:19 AM
This entry from the Urban Dictionary is probably a clue to the senile ramblings of Frank the Wizzer. A good idea would be to collate what the Wizzer said with the excellent article in this weekend's Wall Street Journal on the bizarre university admissions industry in the US.
After all, the Wizzer is a product of.
The Guardian, Telegraph, and Independent should send a contingent to America to try to figure out the distinctly senile practices at Princeton and Georgetown and the other dens of strategic and foreign studies.
Study "Class 11" for the goofy mindset of the CIA. I suspect the Wizzer may be a tool of. Deny it, Wizzer.
1. Wizzer 56 up, 7 down
buy wizzer mugs, tshirts and magnets
the toilet (usually in a bar)
I've got to go hit the wizzer.
pisser john can piss wizz
by ColdRolledSteel Jul 25, 2009
#18 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Sun 6 Feb 2011 at 12:45 PM
A few 'revealing' paragraphs from the UK Independent:
[Revealed: US envoy's business link to Egypt: Obama scrambles to limit damage after Frank Wisner makes robust call for Mubarak to remain in place as leader.
By Robert Fisk in Cairo Monday, 7 February 2011]:
[Frank Wisner, President Barack Obama's envoy to Cairo who infuriated the White House this weekend by urging Hosni Mubarak to remain President of Egypt, works for a New York and Washington law firm which works for the dictator's own Egyptian government.]
[Mr Wisner's astonishing remarks – "President Mubarak's continued leadership is critical: it's his opportunity to write his own legacy" – shocked the democratic opposition in Egypt and called into question Mr Obama's judgement, as well as that of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.]
[But there is nothing "personal" about Mr Wisner's connections with the litigation firm Patton Boggs, which openly boasts that it advises "the Egyptian military, the Egyptian Economic Development Agency, and has handled arbitrations and litigation on the [Mubarak] government's behalf in Europe and the US".]
[The New York Times ran a glowing profile of Mr Wisner in its pages two weeks ago – but mysteriously did not mention his ties to Egypt.]
The way this story is playing out in the UK makes the President look incompetent. He does have a habit of handing off his work to the cognitively impaired. However, the issue is deeper than that. Not only is the WSJ Saturday article on the absurd rat race in US university admissions deadly accurate, the flow-through effects of university ineptitude do not even register with the political and economic classes.
How could ABC have just presented such a stunning investigation of the Peace Corps, when Cornell and Brown student newspapers are now writing up little stories on the benefits of joining up--without saying a word about the abuses ABC discovered? Not a single word.
It is uncanny. Even more indicative is the loss of connection with reality on the part of the Georgetown-type strategic studies and foreign affairs people. They have lost contact with the world. They are suffering from the Wisner pathology. It must pay well.
#19 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Sun 6 Feb 2011 at 10:35 PM
From the UK Guardian: (It seems that The New York Times is still having some trouble getting traction on this story).
[JulBorger
6 February 2011 10:03PM
As some of you have pointed out, I omitted to mention Wisner's work for Patton Boggs lobbying firm, and that firm's work in Egypt.]
Julian Borger's global security blog:
The Egyptian crisis: another day, another two US policies
An American envoy's praise for Mubarak has raised the question once more of what Washington really thinks:
[Frank Wisner's apparent love song to Hosni Mubarak has left confusion behind him. Speaking on a video link-up from New York to the Munich Security Conference, Barack Obama's special envoy to Egypt veered wildly off-message in seemingly fond remarks about the Egyptian autocrat.]
[Wisner's words bewildered the western officials gathered in Munich, raising a number of questions.]
[It raised other questions in Washington, like who is making US policy on Egypt?]
#20 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Sun 6 Feb 2011 at 11:07 PM
If we consider the link from "Frank G. Wisner," we will see that The New York Times has lost its mind. Perhaps we knew already:
February 6, 2011
Warning Against Hasty Exit for Mubarak
By MARK LANDLER
[MUNICH — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned on Sunday that removing President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt too hastily could threaten the country’s transition to democracy.]
[Her comments, made to reporters on the way home from a conference in Munich, echo what administration officials have said privately and some of what the White House’s temporary diplomatic emissary to Cairo, Frank G. Wisner, said publicly on Sunday: Mr. Mubarak is likely to remain in the picture, at least a while longer.]
#21 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Sun 6 Feb 2011 at 11:22 PM
The Frank G. Wisner link in the Landler story is back to this article, without any mention of the news developments in the Guardian, and especially in the Independent:
February 2, 2011
Frank Wisner, the Diplomat Sent to Prod Mubarak
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON — Once a month or so, a coterie of aging diplomats convenes at the elegant Metropolitan Club of New York. Over lunch in a glass-enclosed restaurant overlooking Central Park, they engage in verbal thrust and parry over the foreign policy issues of the day.
The man who sits at the head of the table is Frank G. Wisner, a bald, barrel-chested, martini-drinking (he gave up cigars, friends say) 72-year-old retired ambassador and businessman. Like his lunch mates, he is of a distinct class in Washington: a corps of foreign policy realists who came of age in an era when American power reigned supreme, and who have the heft and experience to troubleshoot the crises of the moment.
#22 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Sun 6 Feb 2011 at 11:28 PM
Al-Jazeera English above all. Of newspapers, the New York Times and the Guardian's Egypt blog.
#23 Posted by Adam Jones, CJR on Mon 7 Feb 2011 at 10:24 AM
al-jazeera english, washington post and new york times
#24 Posted by tks, CJR on Mon 7 Feb 2011 at 02:51 PM
In The Telegraph (UK) today:
[WikiLeaks: Israel's secret hotline to the man tipped to replace Mubarak:
The new vice-president of Egypt, Omar Suleiman, is a long-standing favourite of Israel's who spoke daily to the Tel Aviv government via a secret "hotline" to Cairo, leaked documents disclose.]
The UK Guardian, Telegraph, and Independent are covering this story.
The New York Times is considering renaming itself "The CIA News."
#25 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Mon 7 Feb 2011 at 05:01 PM
A couple of paragraphs from msnbc.com on Wisner. So why is it so important today when The New York Times slept on it yesterday? Either information management at the paper is so bad that senior editors should be fired, or The New York Times is playing the CIA's game:
U.S.'s choice of envoy questioned
By M. Alex Johnson, msnbc.com reporter
[After Frank Wisner — the former ambassador whom the United States used as an envoy to the Egyptian leadership last week — said over the weekend that it was "critical" that President Hosni Mubarak stay in power, Wisner's role as a foreign affairs adviser to a law firm that works for Egypt's government raised quite a few questions today.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was asked repeatedly at today's briefing whether the administration knew about Wisner's role at Patton Boggs, which devotes a page of its Web site to boasting that it "has been active in Egypt for 20 years."]
#26 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Mon 7 Feb 2011 at 05:16 PM
It might be hard to find adjectives to describe the performance of the US government in the Egyptian crisis. Perhaps we could settle for "amateur."
Who is running this mess anyway? Bill Clinton?
It has been clear for some time that the performance in CIA training is weak. ("Class 11" is an eye-opener.) If the US academic foreign policy and strategic studies industry is in anything but collapse, I would like to see the evidence.
What the tortuous (and torturous) US response to Egypt proves is that far too many illegitimate players are meddling in what is none of their business. The subject is the rights and freedoms of the people of the country. The pragmatic considerations of other countries should be background.
The US is mired in this foreign policy syndrome partially because of atrocious fundamentals at home. By now, the President should have ordered a comprehensive investigation into the education pathology so eloquently depicted in the weekend WSJ:
[Wall Street Journal: LIFE & CULTURE FEBRUARY 5, 2011
The Escalating Arms Race for Top Colleges
SAT tutor: $125 a session. Campus visits: $4,000. Why it now costs a fortune to do your parental duty By JENNIFER MOSES].
Look, people of America, your university admissions practices are expensive and parasitic trash. Have you no shame at all? Can't you see the connection between these shabby and exploitative practices and the compounding farce of US (CIA) policy in Egypt?
If Egypt is to remain a CIA prison, do not be surprised if there is eventual 9/11 type blowback. Something well beyond the grasp of the CIA's projections of the future. Obsolete. A good adjective for CIA foreign policy.
#27 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Mon 7 Feb 2011 at 07:58 PM
This Zakaria analysis should be required reading at the CIA. That is assuming that at the CIA it is possible to understand documents:
[If Washington is now perceived as brokering a deal that keeps a military dictatorship in power in Egypt, de jure or de facto, the result will be deep disappointment and frustration on the streets of Cairo. Over time, it will make opposition to the regime and to the United States more hard-line, more religious and more violent. That might be the real parallel to the forces that led to the Iranian revolution. comments@fareedzakaria.com].
#28 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Mon 7 Feb 2011 at 08:10 PM
The New York Times's website has by far the best coverage of Egypt today. The Kristof column, especially, focuses the issues for America in a way that is a credit to the newspaper. Despite the comment elsewhere (in The New York Times) about the need for America to see Egypt with a new lens, there has been no admission from the White House and the CIA that their psychological orientation to the Egyptian crisis has been a manifestation of obsolete eyes.
The President just does not want to face reality. For me, the tipoff was the silence on the part of the President of the United States (and university presidents) in the wake of the brilliant report in the weekend Wall Street Journal on American university admissions practices.
In his final paragraph, Kristof makes a fascinating point about the White House and the future tense. However, how can you see when you can't learn? The federal government should undertake an urgent and penetrating investigation of the pathologies of education so graphically depicted in the WSJ. The President should study minutely Mark Ashcraft's "Cognition" (2010) so as to help reorient the White House and give advice to the CIA on training.
America needs to take both psychology and language seriously. Projection of future matters relies on a deep grasp of the past (something Harvard has looked into). Ironically, America imagines that grammar is not worth studying up to the highest standards. Could I recommend the COBUILD English Grammar for the President's desk?
America is afflicted with so much education trash--the admissions process, the SAT, Kaplan--that it is little wonder that its foreign policy is going in circles.
February 9, 2011
Obama and Egypt’s Future
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF [...]
"Lots of Egyptians seemed to feel the same way. They said they’re sick of Mr. Mubarak and the entire regime — and are increasingly resentful that the Obama administration continues to seem more comfortable with the regime than with people power. My sense is that we’re not only on the wrong side of history but that we’re also inadvertently strengthening the anti-Western elements that terrify us and drive our policy." [...]
"Then our special envoy, Frank Wisner, called for Mr. Mubarak to stay in power, saying: 'President Mubarak’s continued leadership is critical.' The White House has tried to backtrack, but it has been backtracking from backtracks so much that on Egypt its symbol might as well be a weather vane." [...]
"That raises a basic question: Why does our national policy seem to be that democracy is good for Americans and Israelis, yet dangerous for Egyptians?" [...]
"To many Egyptians, the U.S. is conspiring with the regime to push only cosmetic reforms while keeping the basic structure in power. That’s creating profound ill will. In Tahrir Square, I watched as young people predisposed to admire America — the Facebook generation — expressed a growing sense of betrayal. In a country where half the population is under 24, we are burning our bridges."
"Americans, perhaps, don’t fully appreciate that the regime is mind-bogglingly corrupt and instinctively repressive. On my blog, nytimes.com/ontheground, I’ve linked to a video that appears to show Egyptian forces shooting an unarmed, unthreatening protester in cold blood and to another that apparently shows a government vehicle driving through a group of protesters, striking them and hurtling on. Those videos are heart-wrenching, and it is because of long experience with the regime’s callousness that ordinary Egyptians don’t trust people like Mr. Suleiman one bit. They think he’s stalling in an effort to retain the system — and they’re probably right." [...]
"Many years ago, when I studied Arabic intensively at the American University in Cairo, I was bewildered initially because for the first couple of months I learned only the past tense. That’s the basic tens
#29 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Thu 10 Feb 2011 at 12:27 PM