- Josh Landis, still blogging from Damascus, on an emerging theme of many Arab posts: though March 14 won the Parliamentary seats, March 8 won the popular vote.
- Landis again, on why George Mitchell's visit to Syria is crucial.
- Thomas Hegghammer at Jihadica on suggestions Air France 447 was brought down by terrorism. He's skeptical, and he follows the Al-Qa‘ida folks more closely than almost anyone in the open-source world.
- Several items from Maghreb Politics Review worthy of note: unlike many Arab leaders, Abdulaziz Bouteflika in Algeria is not likely to pass his office to a son because he's childless (and likely to remain so, as Algerians are well aware); but his brother suddenly seems to have political ambitions.
- Also from Maghreb Politics Review, "Now for the Post-Election Purge," suggesting Bouteflika is ready to reshuffle the Army. How Bouteflika managed to outmaneuver the generals who really ran Algeria throughout the 1990s is a mystery to me, but this post sheds some light.
- Aluf Benn at Haaretz on how Netanyahu if failing. Of course it's a politically hostile paper, but some interesting commentary.
- Can we be a little less precise, please?: a Daily Star article cites Kuwait's Al-Qabas as reporting, "A critical meeting will be held in one of the major Arab countries between Lebanese officials and officials from another Arab state." Thanks for making that clear. The Daily Star, rather logically, assumes "another Arab state" to be Syria, but doesn't guess what "one of the major Arab countries" might be, though I guess that might rule out Qatar, which tends to be doing a lot of this lately. This seems like one of those old gossip columns along the lines of "what Hollywood star has been seen on the town with someone not his wife?". Okay, I'm guessing Saudi Arabia. Any takers?
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