Magdy is hilarious.

"I admit that I am responsible for the crimes, torture and execution at S-21," said Kaing Khev Iev, 66, better known as Duch, using the code name for Tuol Sleng prison, where more than 12,000 men, women and children were tortured before being executed in the nearby "killing fields" outside the capital.

Enable multitouch on any Linux laptop using synaptics touchpad. Even on old laptops.

This is somewhat similar to Emad el-Kebbir video. Discuss.

Of course, the very idea that you can defame a religion at all flies in the face of both fundamental rights of expression and belief. A religion, like all ideas and beliefs, must be open to debate, discussion, and even criticism. For this reason, religions themselves do not have rights. Rights belong exclusively to people.

265,000 results for this annoying phrase. Stop it!

Yesterday I came across a slightly mysterious website — a collection of Polaroids, one per day, from March 31, 1979 through October 25, 1997. There’s no author listed, no contact info, and no other indication as to where these came from. So, naturally, I started looking through the photos. I was stunned by what I found.

“Since 2006, AUC has had a contract with the US Naval Medical Research Unit in Egypt (NAMRU – 3) to recruit and provide scientific staff in support of infectious disease research throughout the region, specifically relating to Avian Flu. The total value of this contract since 2006 is $1,964,035, i.e. $600,000 per year for the basic award, plus an additional $164,035 for travel expenses in the 2008 renewal,” the statement explained.

Daily News Egypt RSS feed with proper links .. now there isn't a single Egyptian newspaper with a proper site. Thanks to Yahoo Pipes.

“An officer responsible for April 6 [strike] internet activity asked me very strange questions such as, 'Why do you blog? Why do you use the internet? Who in the Shebab 6 April movement is in a relationship? Who wants to get married?'”

Can't we do the same against el-Adly? Can't HR lawyers outside Egypt raise a case against the US extraordinary renditions program and include Habib el-Adly and other Arab mercenary torturers?

Excellent post.

كريم ــ 3 سنوات ــ فاكر إن ماكدونالدز ده بتاعى وكل شوية عاوز هابى ميل علشان اللعبة. ده حمل تقيل، إلا الأولاد مش ممكن أقولهم لأ على حاجة، وكمان صعب الواحد ياكل حاجة من غيرهم... ولذلك وفى الأعياد الرسمية، بعد انتهاء «شفت العمل»، يأخذ محمد أولاده إلى أحد مطاعم الشركة، «على الأقل يحسوا إنى بأعملهم حاجة، أصلهم مش فاهمين إن المحل ده مش بتاعى».

The reason we’ve never heard about any of this, apparently, is that the US is not advertising the operations, the al-Bashir regime in Khartoum has declared a media blackout, and Egypt is respecting the blackout but keeping a close eye since this involves major arms traffic (it’s an old route, once used by the French poet Rimbaud) going through its territory. Today al-Shorouk said that an Egyptian intelligence agent visited the area to verify the issue.

“Defamation of religions may offend people and hurt their feelings but it does not directly result in a violation of the right to freedom of religion.”

Richard Falk, the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian Human Rights, argued recently, any attempt to view the two sides as "equally responsible" is an absurdity: one is a lightly-armed militia, effectively operating underground in occupied territory – the other the most powerful army in the region, able to pinpoint and pulverise targets with some of the most sophisticated weaponry in the world.

Excellent introduction to subdural and epidural hematomas.

A proposal for an MD study that aims to: "identify the profile & clinical characteristics of PTSD among Iraqi population, comparing it with that of an Egyptian sample; to demonstrate a possible impact of culture & cultural variation. Study the quality of life & coping behaviour in relation to cultural & sociodemographic data, & the effect of culture on the phenomenology and clinical characteristics of posttraumatic stress disorder."

It began with a demand by students for the right to sleep with each other. And it ended in one of the greatest upheavals in French society since the revolution.

Agent provocateur is a person employed by the police or other entity to act undercover to entice or provoke another person to commit an illegal act.

May '68 was a political failure for the protesters, but it had an enormous social impact. In France, it is considered to be the watershed moment when a conservative moral ideal (religion, patriotism, respect for authority) shifted towards a more liberal moral ideal (equality, sexual liberation, human rights) that today better describes French society, in theory if not in practice. Although this change did not take place solely in this one month, the term mai 68 is used to refer to this general shift in principles, especially when referring to its most idealistic aspects.

Positivism is the most evolved stage of society in anthropological evolutionism, the point where science and rational explanation for scientific phenomena develop.

... the slopes of the Middle Eocene rocks

UN-Habitat (2003) Global Report on Human Settlements 2003, The Challenge of Slums, Earthscan, London

There is a remote possibility the assessments so far have mistakenly not found an underlying mental problem, but to my mind, if they establish that he is merely a psychopath, he deserves to be put in a normal prison, just like any other criminal.