Sunday 29 January 2012

Email I sent my mailing list


Dear friends

Here is my latest article in The Guardian: Reform in Arab Gulf regimes is unattainable – for now 

I am in Cairo once again for the Jan25 uprising anniversary, it was a hassle to go up one of the Tahrir buildings for me to take this photo so I am posting a link to it. 

There were several Twitter rankings that mentioned my Twitter timeline these past few weeks. The UK's Independent came out with its voices of 2011: The most influential non-celebrity users of Twitter. Middle East entrepreneurship organisation Wamda has also come up with its own ranking of "The 100 Most Influential Arabs on Twitter". The United Nation's Dispatch had an Egypt special called: #Jan25 One Year Later: The 12 Twitter UsersWho Shaped Our Experience of the Egyptian Uprising and finally the London based Asharq Al Awsat also published a report on the "Arabs that shaped the news on Twitter in 2011"

I spent my birthday in Cairo with many friends and met dozens of Egyptian activists. When I was here three weeks ago a Cairo publication called Campus mag interviewed me on my views on Egypt, so did ON TV (Arabic, with great Special FX).

A good friend of mine who moved to Egypt sent me this highly insightful email about life in Cairo. I asked his permission to share it, it got over 1,000 hits. I recommend you read it.

I have a piece on Tribalism in the Arabian Peninsula out in the next week or so, and one on Qatar-Saudi economic relations, keep an eye out for them.


Sultan Al Qassemi
Cairo, Egypt

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