Posts by: Mohamed ElGohary

An Egyptian veteran blogger.Global VoicesLingua manager.

A year passed unnoticed

I just found out that a year passed on my blogging experience, if I can call it an experience. I began blogging in 22th of April, 2006. After that, blogging just embraced me time after time, transforming myself from other online activity sharing. Many of us maybe liked forums, making personal sites for a few percentage. But blogging? Way different.

Of course people made of it sometimes, warned me from the "government" sometimes, attacked me for it sometimes…

But who cares, ALL these people are now gone, with the most annoying phrase in the world: I love you. If all is loved, where will hate go then? Commit suicide? Human are so ridiculous sometimes.

Pink Floyd are really genius, like they sometimes actually tell me what do in certain situations. Like in "Breathe" for example.

The problem with forums, is that they are usually biased and more dictator. You are literally controlled by the moderators and administrators. The control which produce a certain type of members to continue in this forum or another, which usually never cross the lines made by those who run the forum . So, they "make" their forums in a way or another, like their own place. Though, the forum is nothing without their members, what a closed circle.

Blogs are free, universal, standardized. A sign of a good future really, esp with the maturation of blogs from being personal time after time through sister services like Twitter for example.

Anyway, the aim of this post is to thank all the special people I knew through blogging, thank you very much for being you and nothing else. Thanks for your real care. Just thank you for everything.

From my old papers

Posted in : Monday, June 26, 2006

Today I saw the movie Omar AlMokhtar. I saw it many times before, but it is the first time for me to see it from a very different prospective. When I was in the CIMAL session we discussed the principle of the one person rule in the history of Arab countries, and I really realized that even in the times of Arab dignity and prosperity, there was a rare chance of talking about democracy or Shura within the minds of our Arab people. We always depend on certain people to defend us, and thus giving away this precious right to others while in the mean time we are the ones who mustn't ever give up this sacred responsibility.

When people who oppress us torture, or harm, or even kill the symbols of this fight for freedom, for this sacred of responsibility of defense against the destruction of the sacred right of being secured, the sacred attack towards corruption in all the principle fields which the country is based upon. Imagine how can this fight against corruption and authoritarianism be of great use to your own self, to your feeling of being secure. Financially, physically, and in all other aspects of your own life. How can this massive amount of public money to be in the hands of real economic projects. How can this stolen taxes and loans to be in the hands of the people, in the hands of its owners. How can we give the right of management to people who just use us without any kind of service return. How can these kind of people ever happen to understand that ruling is just mere Civil Serving, which means that they are servants to US, the people, not the US the states. Not just to be the little good dog that is thrown a bone for being a good defender of any rights other than the Egyptian rights. Don't you think that Egyptians don't have these most powerful amazing powers of observations? These powers which is going like blowing air in the air, no use at all.

And again, we see our own defenders of freedom assaulted in different aways in front of own eyes and we are afraid to speak our own voice in this narrow space available to us in the internet.

I hope to feel that Egyptians are human anymore, not to be in the state of nobody home, like Pink Floyd is saying:

I've got a little black book with my poems in, got a bag, got a toothbrush and a comb.
When I'm a good dog, they sometimes throw me a bone in.
I got elastic bands keeping my shoes on. Got those swollen hand blues.
Got thirteen channels of shit on the T.V. to choose from.
I've got electric light and I've got second sight.Got amazing powers of observation.
And that is how I know when I try to get through on the telephone to you there'll be nobody home.

I've got the obligatory Hendrix perm and the inevitable pinhole burns.
All down the front of my favorite satin shirt.I've got nicotine stains on my fingers.
I've got a silver spoon on a chain. I've got a grand piano to prop up my mortal remains.
I've got wild staring eyes. And I've got a strong urge to fly. But I got nowhere to fly to.
Ooh, Babe when I pick up the phone"Surprise, surprise, surprise…"
There's still nobody home.
I've got a pair of Go hills boots and I got fading roots.

But who knows, maybe I wont find any surprise.

Who knows the best?

Many Egyptian students in University face this situation a lot. A decision made by the professor or the lecturer or whosoever which is made by the name of General Benefit. False use however. For example a few days ago we had an exam, the timing of the exam was long for me personally, it was like 1.5 hours. This timing was determined by the professor and everything is cool. THen after the half-time the tutor responsible for supervising us during the exam made a personal decision that the exam timing will be less by 15 min. Just like that. The whole 100 examined student raored of course, but still with negative reaction from the tutor that every one talking will have his exam cancelled and this shit.

And then they talk about political activity and WTF they say about this and all this shit complaining from the youth. This is really idiotic.

Then came the Biochemistry lecture which came ironically just after the biosensors exams. We had a good deal of information and all. After like 2 hours and after it by 5 min we were supposed to have another 4 hours Data Sturctures lecture which on its own can consume the whole week energy or something. The Biochemistry doctor still wanted to go on after the official timing of the lecture ignoring our calls for ending it to take a 5 min rest. Still he insisted to continue telling us that we were a nuisance and so. And in the end he told us that the rest of the chapter will not be explained in the lectured and will be included in the next exam after 4 days.

I really don't know then why the heck do these people complain from the government when you professors act like this. Unless you were corrupted like them. You are just another image of this terrorist government. The examples are countless. Fuel prices sudden rising. All elections. All major decision concerning other people like pensioners for example.

STOP THIS DICTATORSHIP

Chaos and religion

Some people see chaos as something prohibited in religion, though, any revolution against governmental terrorism must, MUST contain some kind of chaos. A transitional interval of time when chaos prevails after which, chaos is turned into creative chaos, converting the socio-political environment to its right pace.

Judge Murad Abdel Fattah (Round 2)

Sandmonkey's Coverage

For those who are not familiar with this case, please go here , here , here , here and here for background information. For those who are, this is what happened today:

Today was the first session of the case at the new court, the sixth district court, to cover the case of Judge Mourad against the 21 websites. The Judge was supported by the Hesbah lawyers of the AbdelKarim case (they are trying to add his blog to the list of banned websites), and our side was supported, by, like many many many people, including the government. Imagine that. The Ministry of telecommunication sent a lawyer that was, for the lack of a better word, excellent. But more on that Later.

Judge Mourad presented his case, which was a whole lot of Bullshit. His first line of argument was that he was being attacked and slandered by those evil websites, which is something that could happen to any Judge (Hint hint, presiding Judges, hint hint), and that he faces a very organized campaign of attack and slander against him since day one. His case then became that those websites and organizations insult the Quran, God, The President and the country, and some of them are funded by "foreign sources" that give them "bags of dollars" to help them continue to defame the country. He asked the court to demand from the NGO's a detailed account of where their funding comes from and then presented posts and printed web pages to support his claims. He also demanded that the court makes the sessions private and not allow publishing anything in the newspapers on the case.

Then our side striked back.

Gamal Eid from HR Info presented the plagiarism document, and made a very elequont case that this is very much a private vendetta thing and an attempt by the Judge to hide his plagarism, and has nothing to do with defending Egypt. He also wanted the Judges to ignore the gag order and continue making this case as public as possible, since the man just publicly defamed them in court.

The Government Lawyer made a very detailed argument that a) It's practically impossible to block a website, since there are proxies that can access it, and b) That it makes no sense to block every website someone defames somebody on, and made the analogy that if a wrietr in a newspaper insults someone in his writing, the newspaper doesn't get shut down and c) that the Judge has no business telling the government which websites to block and which not to, and that if thatd oor gets opend, everyday someone will demand the pulling of a website, and they do not have the time, energy or respources to investigate every single one and block it , given that they know how futile it is.

The Judge then announced that he will make his decisions on the demands known at the end of the session, then came out with a decision to move the next sesion to the 5th of may and to ignore the Judge's demand for a gag order. The thing that makes you very optimistic is that the Judges seemed to really know the case and what's at stake and weren't exactly friendly to the Judge. So there is hope and a very good chance that this case could be very well thrown out.

After the session was over, a small but heated argument started between The Hesbah Lawyer and Alaa and Gamal Eid, given that the Lawyer was a witness at a police report accusing Manal and Alaa of insulting Judge Mourad the last hearing. This is bullshit, because, well, Manal wasn't even there. She had left at 10 am and the scuffle that took place last hearing where the alledged insulting happend, occured around 1:30 pm. The Hesbah Islamic lawyer, with his beard and all of his Koran spouting skills, is a liar and Alaa told him that to his face. Not that it matters of course. The man has no conscience!

It feels weird though to be on the same side of the government. Not sure that I am going to get used to that feeling.

Thursday's Message to Mubarak

I was walking in the YouTube city and found out about this amazing person. I saw all the videos he uploaded. Addressing Mubarak with all kind of comedy (esp black comedy). What a weapon the internet can be to a regime like this. Very effective really.

V fighting his last enemies


If you saw V for Vendetta, you will compare these videos to the role of Gordon Dietrich in the movie, when he made fun of the High Chancellor Adam Sutler, the same thing.

Gordon Dietrich


At first when I saw that movie, I thought that we might needed the person himself, but after some analysis, I now realize that V already exists in the people. And as Mr. Finch said, all what V wants is chaos. And then…something stupid happens, when it become worse. And then, only then, people will move…

Chief Inspector Finch


When will come the day when the Scarlet Carson is put in the pocket of this regime, I hope I will see this day.

V with Adam Sutler just before Sutler's Death, putting the Scarlet Carson in his pocket.

Egypt prevails.

Kelmetna Bloggers Meeting

Today I went to the Kelmetna seminar about bloggers by invitation from Tohamy. I went 10 minutes late to find Mohamed Hamdy, Maged, Armoty, Shimaa, Tohamy, Michael, Mustafa Fat'hy, Sarah and others already came. First we filled some kind of application for something like introducing us to the magazine. Then everyone talked about his/her blog. You know, the usual questions. Why, when and how type of questions.

Then we reached the basic questions which is related to blogging in general.

1. Copyrights
2. Freedom of Speech in blogs (and in general)
3. Karim Amer of course
4. Obscenity and foul language in blogs (and obviously verbal harrasment)
5. Censorship
6. The question if blogging affect people directly or what?
7. Consequently, definition of the effect of blogging

and while discussing, Yasmine came and she was warmly welcomed by all :).

We discussed again the previously mentioned points on a more broad scale. After that we discussed some ideas concerning optimizing the functionality of bloggers in general, in cooperation with the magazine in some of the points.

The ideas mentioned were:
1. Publishing a corner or a section in the magazine for blogs, and the form I guess will need more thorough discussing.
2. Forming an NGO (this is a really big goal and I'm proud of the idea.)

This post is not complete yet, wait for updates :)

__________

Updates:
Coverage from Mohamed Hamdy.

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