Alaa's arrest: a recap.

in «Politics & Human Rights» by moftasa

UPDATE: Alaa released

Here is a summary of what happened in the past two weeks regarding the arrest of the most prominent Egyptian blogger and a personal friend.

Alaa Abd El-Fatah (a.k.a Alaa Ahmed Seif) is a blogger, geek, activist and a remarkable person. Arrested, among others, on the 7th of May during a peaceful protest. He was protesting the arrest of Malek and others. Malek, a blogger, was arrested on the …

Alaa arrested

in «Politics & Human Rights» by moftasa

Let Alaa return to Manal

Originally by Socrates:

Alaa Abd El-Fatah was arrested today together with around ten more activists during a peaceful demonstration in solidarity with sixty activists who were arrested over the past two weeks in a non-violent sit in as well who were held in custody for two weeks under investigation for "crimes" that if anything would raise only mockery including: humiliating the president, possession of "publishing equipment"(graffiti spray) and blocking traffic. The first group of …

The Egyptian Bulbul and other birds

in «Experimental & Humor» by moftasa

Bulbuls

I never thought that there is such a large variety of birds living in Cairo. Check this photo collection by namq on flickr. Or you could check his blog Notice the tags, they have the scientific name of each bird along side the English name. Never knew that a Bulbul is called so in both English and Arabic. Not only that but there is a large family of Bulbuls living in Africa and Asia.

UPDATE …

Bipolar

She was one of the top ten students in the whole country in secondary education. She asked the minister for a night job to help support her family of two parents and 7 brothers and sisters.

One day, she stopped sleeping. She became more fun and daring. Other nights she sat alone in the dark and sobbed for no reason thinking life was not worth it. One day she went to her balcony and flashed …

الطوخي الفطاطري

in «Local & Regional» by moftasa

الطوخي الفطاطري

أنا: باب الشاعرية ؟ فكرتني بالطوخي الفطاطري
ضحك و قال: أيوة ... أنت ذوقك في الأكل كدة يا دكتور
قالها و هو بيصارع لسانة الثقيل و قلقة من الي بيحطلو المخدرات في الشاي.

Submit story

in «Blogging & Personal» by moftasa

Dear Blog,

Sometimes I stare in front of your 'Submit story' page for hours. I write something very personal in it. A story that will expose my weaknesses and imperfections. A feeling that is naive or childish. Or just plain foolishness I have done. It is important to me to confess and to let it all out. But I never click submit. I delete it and do something else. I think we are not good …

SMSs of the sit in

in «Politics & Human Rights» by moftasa

Alaa sent a number of SMSs from the sit in. Since he couldn't set up his blog to do the same due to Vodaphone putting restrictions on international SMS. These SMS appeared as published posts on the front page of this blog.

I removed the posts from the front page, but they are still accessible.

Some messages got truncated.

Here are the messages with approximate date and time:

2006-03-16 19:30:48 by Alaa

Dispatch …