Egypt Feature: Not All "Islamist" Movements Are the Same.... (Youssef)

Protests in Alexandria, 21 December (Photo: Mahmud Hams/AFP)Alexandria is known to be a Brotherhood stronghold and is also home to some of the group’s most prominent leaders, including Essam al-Haddad and Hussein Ibrahim. It was also in this city that the Salafi movement was established, namely the Alexandria school of the Salafi Dawah in 1979.

But after the revolution, several loosely organized Islamist movements have emerged, influenced by recent developments and new ideas, including Hazemoun, the Third Islamist Current and the Salafi Front. Jama’a al-Islamiya and other jihadi movements have also made a strong comeback to the political scene.

Click to read more ...

Iran Live Coverage: Cheerleading for Sanctions

Al Jazeera English reports on the effect of US sanctions on Iranian air travel

---

2115 GMT: Foreign Affairs Watch (Syrian Front). Former President Hashemi Rafsanjani has reportedly predicted that Syrian President Assad will leave or be forced from power.

Click to read more ...

Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: UN Envoy Brahimi's Mission is "Dead in the Water"

Friday's message from protesters in Kafranbel in Syria to United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi

See also Syria Feature: The Growing Crisis in Health Care
Turkey Opinion: Democracy v. "Erdogan's Personal Lust for Power"
Friday's Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Brahimi's Futile Mission to Moscow?

---

2137 GMT: Syria. Activists are claiming, supported by video of bodies, that five children and two women were among 10 people killed by shelling of the Damascus suburb of Douma today.

1829 GMT: Syria. The Local Coordination Committees is now including 220 people "field-executed" in the Deir Baalba section of Homs (see 1749 GMT) in its claim of 364 victims today.

The Committees write more than 20 children and 20 women are among today's deaths.

Click to read more ...

Syria Feature: The Growing Crisis in Health Care (IRIN)

Doctor with Syrian Refugees in LebanonThe nearly two-year conflict in Syria has claimed tens of thousands of lives, destroyed entire neighbourhoods, and sent hundreds of thousands of people fleeing. More quietly, however, it has eaten away at the country's healthcare system. Pharmaceutical factories, which used to produce more than 90% of the country's drug needs, are down to one-third of their former production.

Click to read more ...

Turkey Opinion: Democracy v. "Erdogan's Personal Lust for Power" (Akyol)

All such accomplishments of the ruling AKP have recently been overshadowed — not by the “hidden Islamist agenda” that the secularists feared, but a more mundane problem: lust for power, especially Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s personal lust for power.

Click to read more ...

Iran Live Coverage: The Economic Crisis Claims the Minister of Health

See also Iran Special: New York Times Notices Important Nuclear Story...Four Months Later
Iran Analysis: The Politicians Unite to Fight Ahmadinejad
Wednesday's Iran Live Coverage: Tehran Picks A Fight Too Far with Turkey

---

Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi1650 GMT: Refugee Watch. The BBC posts a video report on thousands of Iranians who fled to Turkey amid the unrest after the disputed 2009 Presidential elections.

Many refugees are frustrated that they are still waiting for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees to process their asylum applications so they can settle in European countries.

The UNHCR says it does not have enough resources to process applications at a faster rate.

1600 GMT: Sedition Watch. Ayatollah Alamolhoda, the Friday Prayer leader in Mashhad, warms to this weekend's theme of "victory over sedition" (see 1200 GMT) with discussion of detained opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi: "We cannot call Mousavi and Karroubi seditionists, but they paved the way for foreign elements and imperialism."

Click to read more ...

Iran Special: New York Times Notices Important Nuclear Story...Four Months Later

Because Washington still envisages that it can get Tehran to agree to its conditions --- a suspension of all 20% uranium enrichment, a shipping of the existing stock outside the country, and a halt to operations at Fordoo --- it gave the lead to David Sanger and James Risen for their article today.

Those clues to the politics and propaganda of the Obama Administration, rather than journalism on Iran's nuclear programme, is the real value of The New York Times coverage.

Even it is sometimes months late.

Click to read more ...

Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Brahimi's Futile Mission to Moscow?

2124 GMT: Syria. A message from Kafranbel:

Pac-man makes a debut in Kafranbel, and the message is gold. || #Syriayfrog.com/h7erzhvj

— NMSyria (@NMSyria) December 28, 2012

It may be hard to make out, but the "Pac Man" is really the opposition flag, gobbling up AK-47s on its way to eating Assad. The "ghosts" chasing Pac Man are the flags of Russia, China, Iran, and (perhaps) the US (it's hard to see, but it's red and blue).

2110 GMT: Iraq. Across much of Iraq, large protests have been held today against government policies and behaviors that some Sunni Muslims view as sectarian in nature. In Fallujah alone there may have been tens of thousands in the streets. AP reports:

Tens of thousands of Iraqi Sunnis angry over perceived second-class treatment by the Shiite-led government massed along a major western highway and elsewhere in the country Friday for the largest protests yet in a week of demonstrations...

The biggest of Friday's demonstrations took place on a main road to Jordan and Syria that runs through the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi in the Sunni-dominated desert province of Anbar, west of Baghdad.

Several thousand protesters took to the streets in Fallujah, holding aloft placards declaring the day a "Friday of honor." Some carried old Iraqi flags used during the era of former dictator Saddam Hussein, whose Sunni-dominated government was ousted in the U.S.-led invasion nearly a decade ago.

Click to read more ...

Syria 1st-Hand: Why Insurgents Are Fighting Each Other in Aleppo (Abdul-Ahad)

Destroyed Storefront in AleppoIt wasn't the government that killed the Syrian rebel commander Abu Jameel. It was the fight for his loot. The motive for his murder lay in a great warehouse in Aleppo which his unit had captured a week before. The building had been full of rolled steel, which was seized by the fighters as spoils of war.

But squabbling developed over who would take the greater share of the loot and a feud developed between commanders. Threats and counter-threats ensued over the following days.

Abu Jameel survived one assassination attempt when his car was fired on. A few days later his enemies attacked again, and this time they were successful. His bullet-riddled body was found, handcuffed, in an alley in the town of al-Bab.

Click to read more ...

Iran Analysis: The Politicians Unite to Fight Ahmadinejad

Less than four years ago, most politicians within the Iranian system --- all the way to the Supreme Leader --- united behind the effort to keep Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the Presidency, even as many Iranians questioned the legitimacy of his re-election.

Today they are rallying against Ahmadinejad as their political enemy.

Click to read more ...