Posts Tagged ‘blogs’

Blogging the labor strikes الصحافة الشعبية والتضامن مع حركة العمال

"We stand on the shoulders of giants"

Tony Cliff: Theory and practice…

Socialist Stories حكايات اشتراكية

Comrade @revsocialist has launched a new blog…

Dissenting Voices in Arab Blogosphere

The New York Times News Blog reports…

If, like The Lede, you followed the State Department’s global live Web chat immediately after President Barack Obama’s speech to the Muslim world in Cairo this morning, you might have gotten the impression that an era of peace and good will was at hand.

Tens of thousands of words of comment flooded into the chat room, seemingly from nearly every country on earth, almost all of them positive and some as gushing as this post, from an Egyptian named Nour: “WE WANT OBAMA TO RULE EGYPT.”

It was not hard, however, to find more sober perspectives from some Arab bloggers writing in English. One was Hossam el-Hamalawy, a blogger and journalist in Cairo whose Op-Ed essay in The Times this week suggested that President Obama’s visit to Egypt was “a clear endorsement of President Hosni Mubarak, the ailing 81-year-old dictator who has ruled with martial law, secret police and torture chambers.” Mr. Hamalawy posted a stream of lacerating, often obscene commentary about Mr. Obama’s speech on his Twitter feed in real time, calling the speech “patronizing” and “cheesy” and saying it “could have been delivered by Bush or Clinton.” When Mr. Obama spoke of education, Mr. Hamalawy tweeted:

More scholarships for Muslim Students in America. Great! I need to study Hypocrisology in DC. They r good at it.

When the American president said Israeli settlement-building had to stop, Mr. Hamalawy responded:

Empty rhetoric about Israeli settlements. He says they must stop, but not dismantling what has been built already.

When Mr. Obama spoke of Al Qaeda’s violent extremism, Mr. Hamalawy replied:

Obama, Your govt have killed more people than Al-Qaeda did! So shut up!

Mr. Hamalawy also amplified and echoed the comments of other Twitter users who heaped scorn upon the speech, like this comment from the similarly unimpressed Wael Khalil: “same old Holocaust justification for Israel. Dude, it wasn’t us, it was the Germans.”

As’ad AbuKhalil, a visiting professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, who blogs as the “Angry Arab,” was not much happier with the speech. In a preview on Wednesday, Mr. AbuKhalil wrote on his blog:

What can you say about Obama? It will — and should — be remembered that he praised the “wisdom” of the Saudi King. What is next? Will he praise the public beheadings in the kingdom as example of ideal justice?

After the event, he wrote in a long post headlined, “Obama Speech: Part Vapid and Part Sinister,” that Mr. Obama “is not a man of courage,” for failing to say that Al-Azhar University was more “progressive under Nasser than Sadat or Mubarak. But, agreeing with Mr. Hamalawy and Mr. Khalil, Mr. AbuKhalil was most upset about Mr. Obama’s remarks on the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis:

I was offended by his lecturing to Muslims about Jewish suffering: as if the audience is entirely anti-Semitic. There are anti-Semites in the US and he does not lecture to them. He spoke about the repugnant practice of Holocaust denial but did not mention that the literature is entirely Western in that regard. And he then moves from a discussion of the Nazism to the Arab-Israeli conflict. What is his point here: that because of Nazi crimes, the Palestinians need to accommodate Zionist crimes on their lands? This is the most offensive section of course: he talks about the Palestinians without identifying who was doing those bad things to them.

New Socialist Blog مدونة اشتراكية جديدة

Helwan U Resistance activist Abdel Halim launches a new blog…

In Solidarity with AUC worker

Support Ibrahim Hassan Ibrahim…

Egypt's Industrial Action News in French

Follow Melanie’s blog…

Media, Old and New

Kafr el-Hanadwa forwarded to me this article about the Indian blogosphere… The argument put forward by the writer in this paragraph applies, in my view, to the Egyptian blogosphere…

But one fact internet crusaders omit to mention is that campaigns like these owe a great deal of their success to other, older media. Internet penetration in India is limited to 5-8 per cent of the population, and it is the extensive coverage that newspapers and TV channels give these Net initiatives that has vastly multiplied their visibility and audience outreach.

The number of those who have cyberaccess in Egypt, according to a 2008 government report, reached 9.17 million citizens, out of roughly 80 millions. This is a huge leap from the only 650,000 users we had in 2000. Still, this is a minority in the present time. But just like its Indian counterpart, the Egyptian mainstream media is obssessed with what goes on in the blogosphere. Local media outlets–whether they are Independent, opposition, governement owned, or privately run–regularly monitor blogs, facebook groups, web forums, and report on what goes on for their newspapers, TV and radio stations. Journalists are also hooking themselves up to Twitter and Jaiku to follow what the activists are tweeting and texting about. Many bloggers are also journalists, who have access to the mainstream media and can push for their stories and campaigns to get wider coverage. Of course this means we get on occasions tons of bullshit, negative and sensationalist reporting, but in all cases if a story now goes on some blog, or you launch a campaign on some website, you are more or less assured this will be picked up by journalists in the mainstream media who still have a wider audience than internet browsers..

Bringing the Riot to Your Computer Screen..

Check out this new blog…

BookMarx February 28th

These are my links for February 25th through February 28th:

• Egypt and beyond: Hossam Shahata released after 15 days with state security -
• Blog blues.. -
• Egypt and beyond: Railway workers and the state – Per reports on Tadamon’s event about the Railway Workers…
• Daily News Egypt – Al-Dostour journalists face trial for publishing offenses – The trial of Al-Dostour chief editor Ibrahim Eissa and writers Mostafa Bassiouni and Mohamed Abul Dahab began Wednesday, and was adjourned until March 25 when documents will be presented into evidence.
• ديجو: تعليم تشاركي، و إدارة حملات، و أداة للبحث | حَوْلِيَّاتُ صَاحِبِ الأشْجَارِ – The Activist Guide to Diigo, by Amr Gharbeia
• COVERITLIVE.COM – Home – Hmhmhm… Time to play around with this a bit and see what we can do with it… Give it a try too ya comrades
• The Activist Guide to Diigo عمرو غربية يشرح ديجو: تعليم تشاركي، و إدارة حملات، و أداة للبحث -
• عمال مصر – Group | Diigo – Pooling in resources, news, updates, info about the Egyptian industrial action
• اليوم السابع | السجن المشدد لمحاسب وزوجته لاختطافهما سيدة والاعتداء عليها بالإسكندرية – That doesn’t really make sense! What’s the motive for the rape and why would his wife aid him?!
• Diigo! – fantastic social bookmarking network…
• The Memory of the Class, bookmarked on Diigo – Creating pool of info and resources on the Egyptian labor movement..
• Diigo! – fantastic social bookmarking network…
• جدول نشاط مركز الدراسات الاشتراكية في شهر مارس -
• From the Memory of the Class: Railway workers strikes 1906-1986 -
• صيغة التحويل الموحد-8 – ويكيبيديا، الموسوعة الحرة – جريدة الدستور والبديل لا يستعملان تلك الصيغة
  ولهذا تظهر مقالاتهم في الأر إس إس زي الهيروغليفي
• CTA Bus Incident with Chicago Police – 02-13-09, 10:14pm – Chicago Cop Watch – Chicago pigs in action
• المصرى اليوم – آخر نكتة: التنصت على التليفونات.. يجلب الاستثمارات -
• التدوين المصغر | تكنوإعلام – شرح الجوهري للتدوين المصغر بإستخدام تويتر
• Scribd – Very useful tool for uploading and sharing PDF files
• جريدة البديل – إضراب المحامين يعطل 90% من جلسات الجنايات – Egypt’s lawyers on a national strike
• من السكة الحديد إلى الصيادلة: كيف نفهم الإضرابات الأخيرة – Center for Socialist Studies event
• Which of the Top 10 Social Bookmarking Sites should you focus on? | BuzzGain – Interesting tips..
• WordPress › traffic « Tags « WordPress Plugins – WP Plugins to increase internet traffic
• Wave of student revolt is transforming colleges|28Feb09|Socialist Worker – The student movement in support of Gaza shows no sign of slowing. Occupations, protests and campaigns continue to be a major feature on Britain’s campuses
• SHE2I2: Ontario Union Votes to Boycott Israeli Universities – The Canadian Union of Public Employees in Ontario, the largest labor group representing staff members at universities in the province, voted over the weekend to boycott Israeli universities because of Israel’s recent bombing attacks in the Gaza Strip
• Do we need leaders?|28Feb09|Socialist Worker – any action to change the world involves politics. As the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky pointed out, everyone is a philosopher – everyone has a view of the world and assumptions about how things works.
• اليوم السابع | فشل إضراب سائقى الميكروباص بسفاجا – The microbus drivers in Safaga suspended their strike to raise the passengers’ fees from 25 pt to 50 pt, in failure.
• اليوم السابع | فشل رئيس التليفزيون فى احتواء اعتصام المخرجين – Directors from the State-Owned Channels 1 and 2 protest their sacking
• الحكومة تنفي التجسس على تليفونات الوزراء والمواطنين – بوابة الشروق – The govt denies wiretapping.. What a bunch of horseshit..!
• LSE Solidarity with Gaza!: More occupations and articles – The full list of blogs launched by pro-Gaza students occupying their universities. Web2.0 tools like blogs, facebook, Twitter and YouTube have been central in spreading the word and gearing up solidarity.. Great work ya comrades..
• الطلاب الاشتراكيون – جامعة القاهرة: Socialist Students 2.0 English الطلاب الاشتراكيون وب 2.0 عربي – My Lenosphere blog posting on Egyptian Revolutionary Socialist student activism 2.0, translated into Arabic.. Circulate ya Comrades…
• Did Vladimir Lenin Predict The Banking Disaster Of 2008: Information Clearing House – ICH – جامد يا لينين يا فاشخهم يا مثبتهم
• Al Jazeera English – Middle East – Three arrested over Cairo bombing – Egyptian police have arrested three people in connection with a bomb attack in a busy Cairo market, which killed a French teenager and wounded at least 21 others.
• Egyptian chronicles: Follow Up : Closing the Mataria hospital death file !! – A7aaaaaaaa!
• Jess Hurd: Big Brother – Britain is one of the most chocking police states on the face of this earth..
• ZORIAH – A PHOTOJOURNALIST AND WAR PHOTOGRAPHER’S BLOG: Brick Making – Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya – I like this guy’s black and white pics
• Ireland shows way to resist recession|28Feb09|Socialist Worker – Anti-Capitalist resistance on the rise in Ireland
• الجزيرة توك Aljazeera Talk – حرب الشوارع فى مصر – Ahmad Mansour writes on the “war” between police and the people in Egypt, referring to street vendors, pharmacists, lorry drivers and the strike wave…
• حكم في دعوي إضراب عمال السكة الحديد سنة 1986 | موقع قضايا – The historical court verdict, acquitting all railway strike leaders from charges, affirming the right of workers to strike