other people to read

I've been a bad aardvark the last week, but not a half bad academic and a pretty good daddy.  But at least I've got one finished draft article, one finished first draft of an article, a couple of finished manuscript reviews, two finished letters of recommendation, and two really happy kids to show for it.  It's about to get worse, though, because I'm leaving town soon for almost two weeks.   

So here are some excellent people to read instead of me. 

Jon Alterman on the tough choices in the democracy debate.

Geneive Abdo on the Islamist undercurrent in the Egyptian elections.

Baheyya on how much she still doesn't like Gamal Mubarak.

Patrick Cockburn on corruption and missing money in the Iyad Allawi administration - as much as Saddam made from kickbacks through the whole Oil for Food program.  Hey, if that was the "worst financial scandal in the history of humanity" (William Safire), what does that make this?

Ethan Zuckerman rounds up the great blog conference of '05 (Rachel, we will have coffee soon, I promise!  In, um, another two weeks maybe?).  Peter Daou throws in his 27 cents. 

Another report on public diplomacy.  Cultural, this time.   Link here, via John Brown.  We'll see what it adds to the other 29 reports on public diplomacy listed in a recent CRS report.

Finally, of course, Jenn and the great battle of the poo. 

Comments

[praktike]

I'm not sure I agree w/ the Abdo piece ... from my perspective, I see a handful of Islamist intellectuals and Hizb il-3amal getting along w/ Kefaya and a failed attempt by the MB and Kefaya to agree on a common approach. I certainly didn't see any demos involving tens of thousands of Islamists.

[Rachel]

Coffee in a couple of weeks sounds grand. Safe travels!

[AB]

Aaah...but you're missing all the Akram Khuzam-AlJazeera controversy. Was he fired because of what he said last year or was he just replaced? Until the Aardvark is around for his take on it, catch the inside story at http://www.friendsofaljazeera.org/node/292