Mind Soup

This is a guest post by Di Kar. Di is a Sudanese political science undergrad at the American University of Beirut. Follow her on twitter @ D3akar Politics and what not. The Arab Spring has been the highlight of everything I have read over the past few days from twitter, aside from numerous newspapers and Italian politics. Your probably wondering why I am mentioning Italy, right? Hold that thought. The Arab Spring, that started with a man in Tunis and sparked mass protests in countries from the Maghreb to Yemen, has now shifted the whole scope of the Middle East and North Africa region. It is, to me, a much needed breeze of change for a region that has been stagnant under the fists of despotism and western influences. For the first time, I feel optimistic about the region. Egypt is pulling weight, and heading towards democratizing its system of government - despite all the challenges - nevertheless, the sleeping giant has awoken. Perhaps the Palestinian diaspora might be resolved or ...

Egyption President Hosni Mubarak MIND SOUP : An Egyption lawyer has filed a lawsuit again the Egyptian Minister of Justice Mamdouh Merhi and others accusing them of misleading the Egyptian people by hiding the truth. The lawyer, Hamed Sayed Makki, claimed in the case memo that the minister has been hiding the death of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. What's more interesting, or maybe unbelievable, is that he believe that Mubarak has been dead since 2004 while winning the past elections in 2005 (a year after his alleged death). According to Horiyatna radio station, the lawsuit said that this is a "local and international scam to fool us about Mubarak's life." The source revealed more detail about his alleged death. It said that Mubarak has passed away in Germany on the 16th of June, 2004 while undergoing an operation to remove a cancerous tumor from his ear. The lawsuit adds that Mubarak underwent this operation secretly, and after the surgery, the doct...

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CAIRO – Egypt began slaughtering the roughly 300,000 pigs in the country Wednesday as a precautionary measure against the spread of swine flu even though no cases have been reported here yet, the Health Ministry said. The move immediately provoked resistance from pig farmers. At one large pig farming center just north of Cairo, farmers refused to cooperate with Health Ministry workers who came to slaughter the animals and the workers left without carrying out the government order. "It has been decided to immediately start slaughtering all the pigs in Egypt using the full capacity of the country's slaughterhouses," Health Minister Hatem el-Gabaly told reporters after a Cabinet meeting with President Hosni Mubarak. Egypt's overwhelmingly Muslim population does not eat pork due to religious restrictions. But the animals are raised and consumed by the Christian minority, which some estimates put at 10 percent of the population. Health Ministry spokesman Abdel Rahm...