روابط المدونات ضد قانون تجريم المظاهرات #right2strike

عمري ما فقدت الثقة في المدونات، من 5 سنين مع بداية انتشار المدونات المصرية بدأ نظام مبارك يتفضح، المدونين هم اللي فجروا قضايا التحرش الجنسي والتعذيب في أقسام الشرطة، باختصار كانوا أحد مقومات الثورة. والنهاردة كان في اتفاق على التدوين ضد قانون تجريم التظاهر أو الاعتداء على حرية العمل ده، دي روابط اللي كتبوا عن الموضوع وجاري التحديث:

1) الاعتصامات أسقطت النظام الفاسد فأصبحت جريمة - محمد رزق

2) حكومة الثورة المضادة - مؤمن مهدي

3) عن الإضراب في قاهرة المعتز بالله عبد الفتاح - مواطن مفروس

4) تجريم الإضراب سلاح الثورة المضادة الأخير - تامر موافي

5) المفروض في مصر عند المكوجي - أحمد طلعت

6)

Banning protests and handling labor problems: an email to Dr. Sharaf -

Perfectionatic

7) قانون تجريم الاعتصام جريمة في حق الشعب - لولو ديرافن

8) أنتم مصر - المواطن مصري

9) خالتك فئوية وخالتك فوقية بيقولولك ليه تعتصم لما ممكن تتبلطج - Me, Myself and my Imaginary World

10) اعتصم الصورة تطلع حلوة - هشام سري

11) عن قانون الاعتداء على حرية العمل وتخريب المنشآت - أحمد العش

12) عن القانون المجحف الذي يطبق حسب التساهيل - ليليان وجدي

13) قانون مصادرة الحقوق (تجريم الإضراب سابقاً) - محمد سمير

14) تجريم الاعتصام مش شرف يا دكتور عصام - محمد حمدي

15) العمال دائماً بيشيلوا الليلة - أحمد منيريان

16) لا تعتصم ولا تتظاهر بعد الثورة إنت تتاخر - أسور

17) اقرأوا التاريخ أولاً - أنا حرة

18) فئوية - أمنية نجيب

19) سلاح العمال

20) قانون تجريم الاعتصام باطل - لولو ديرافن

21) فيديو مينا نجيب: ضد تجريم الاعتصامات

22) الإضراب مشروع مشروع ضد الفقر وضد الجوع - خمسة فضفضة

23) ثورة سياسية واجتماعية - كمال المناوي

24) ليه فئوية تبقى خالتك - ساح يا بداح

25) قانون تجريم الإضرابات والاعتصامات انتكاسة ديموقراطية واجتماعية - عزة خليل

26) يعني إيه ثورة؟ - يوسف هشام

27) مدونة أي كلام - محمد سيد

Are you balady?

One of the most thorough analyses of Egyptian society that I have come across lately, from an old post by Sarah Carr:

I gradually learnt that the factors determining balady status include language, wealth, education and appearance. Thus someone who only speaks Arabic may be balady, but not if this person is my grandmother, because we are an excellent family, Amnesiac. If however he only speaks Arabic and he is a plumber, he is almost certainly balady. If the same plumber happens to have got lucky and accumulated wealth he is probably still balady and worse still ‘nouveau riche,’ and one determines this by looking at his shoes and his wife. In contrast if the son of a very rich man does nothing but go to the club everyday and knows mostly nada about nada he is still not balady because he speaks English and comes from good-breeding. Wealth is not a conclusive determinant of balady-free status because the family might be intellectuals, which means that at some point in their family history someone’s father had a full library but an empty bank account: members of these families will almost certainly never be balady. Education is important too: State universities are generally frowned upon, private universities are acceptable, and having attended AUC at some point virtually guarantees that the individual in question is not balady. A university education abroad (in western Europe or the US) means that the individual in question both has money and speaks another language and is decidedly not balady - though not if through his own brilliance he is there on a scholarship and his family live in Boulaq. Observance of one’s religious obligations is necessary and good, but excessive piety/religious conservatism is not, because it may indicate an uncultivated mind.

Traffiphobia

I have lately taken the conscious decision not to learn driving and therefore never to drive around Cairo for the sake of the barefoot children and the beautiful furry creatures in the streets.

I never really found driving any titillating at all in a city where the average speed has dropped to 20 kph on most roads. I look around and wonder how there are so many cars and too much poverty. And when you look inside cars, there is only a driver and four empty seats, which creates a traffic mess. Of course, this wouldn't have been the case had there been decent public transportation. But public buses are either too crowded, too late, or too full of perverts. These reasons are undeniable, but there's a deeper lurking reason yet. Most middle-class and upper-class Egyptians wouldn't use public transportation as it would seem demeaning and scandalous. It's like descending the social scale, somehow, because you don't get to pay using a Visa card.

Most of my friends and colleagues drive, and they're always going on about how nerve-wrecking, back-breaking and heartbreaking driving is. I am usually easily offended, so I can as well do away with more stress, thank you very much.

Instead, I just like to hop in taxis. I have always hated taxi drivers and viewed them as bloodsucking mosquitoes until I read Khaled El-Khamissi's larger than life book; Taxi. It was a total paradigm shift. The book does not make any attempt to either disparage or glamourise them, it simply chronicles incidents that are real to the point of smacking you in the face. So, following the author's footsteps, I would sometimes engage in a chit chat with drivers, waiting to hear an unembellished truth about any given subject. Of course I also started the conversation once because the driver was a Jason Statham look-alike.

It is annoying to have to beg for ten taxis to take me home though it is ridiculously close to work, but I will be buying my comfort and instead enjoy watching the comic Egyptian streets in every ride. Moreover, I have acquired a hint of fierceness through the years, which should make taxi rides safer.

أكتوبر شهرك...تمتعي بصحتك

أحد الأنشطة التي تنظمها وزارة الصحة المصرية أو بعض المنظمات غير الحكومية هي "السباق من أجل الشفاء وهو سباق يقام بالقرب من منطقة الأهرامات ومن المفترض أن هدف السباق هو زيادة التوعية بسرطان الثدي.
وجدت أحد دعاوي هذا السباق في مقهى راق، وتحتوي الدعوة على مكان وتوقيت السباق وكيفية الاشتراك إلا أنها لا تحتوي على أي معلومة صغيرة كانت أو كبيرة عن سرطان الثدي والفحص الدوري وكيفية الوقاية منه، أي أن على من تريد نشر التوعية أن تسدد قيمة الاشتراك في السباق وتشترك فيه وإلا فلا يوجد وسيلة أخرى سهلة لمعرفة سبل الوقاية من هذا المرض، وهو المفترض أنه الهدف من السباق. كما أنها وسيلة طبقية إلى حد كبير، فهذا المقهى لا ترتاده سوى نساء من شرائح اجتماعية ميسورة.
على عكس هذا الأسلوب للتوعية، وصلت إلي بطاقة تصممها منظمة الصحة العالمية عليها الشريطة الوردية الشهيرة وبها إرشادات سهلة وبسيطة:
إذا كان عمرك من 20 إلى 40 عاماً، أجري فحص الماموجرام مرة كل ثلاث سنوات
أما السيدات فوق سن الأربعين فعليهن إجراء الفحص مرة كل عام
وجهاز الماموجرام متوافر في مراكز الأشعة الخاصة (للأسف فقد سألت في بعض المستشفيات الحكومية فوجدت أن الجهاز إما معطل أو يتطلب الكشف بعض الإجراءات المطولة والزيارات المتعددة) ويبلغ تكلفة الكشف في المركز الذي سألت فيه 250 جنيهاً
تذكرن يا عزيزاتي أن هذه التكلفة زهيدة للغاية مقارنةً بتكاليف العلاج
وأن الكشف الدوري ما هو إلا وسيلة للاطمئنان أنك بحالة جيدة، لذلك فهو في الغالب مصدر ارتياح أكثر من كونه مصدر قلق
تمتعن بصحتكن...وواظبن على الكشف الدوري

المزيد من المعلومات: سرطان الثدي، قضية كل مرأة

Egyptian Police on Trial for Torture, Again

The "usual" item of news is, a group of policemen decided to randomly stop a young man called Shadi Maged in the street and check his IDs. They told him to accompany them to the police station, which he refused, simply because he was not accused of any crime. Of course they started hitting him and kidnapped him to the station, where he was repeatedly beaten and abused for ten whole days. He would pass out under torture, only to come about and be tortured again. He told the prosecutors what happened, but even this did not save him. The policemen falsely accused him of theft and drug possession. After months of ordeal, threats and detaining him with his wife and toddler for four days, he was finally released.

The unusual item of news is, Shadi refused to let the abuses go unquestioned. He identified the names of three high-ranking policemen who were involved in his torture and decided to file a lawsuit against them. The first session was on September 1st, and it was adjourned to the 22nd of the same month.
This means that Egyptian police will witness quite an embarassing week this month. On the same week, precisely on the 25th of September, the second session in the high-profile case of the murder of Khaled Said takes place.

I'd like to point to a detail that may seem secondary. In the case of Khaled Said, the policemen behind bars until now are low-ranking policemen whom witnesses saw beat Khaled to death. The high-ranking policeman, Ahmad Othman, who reportedly ordered the attack, somehow avoided being accused. He gave the prosecution a silly alibi of being on a vacation the night Khaled died, as if he could not order the killing by mobile phone. In the case of Shadi, however, all of the defendants are high-ranking policemen, which may make it more difficult to make them pay for forever traumatising an innocent man.

Both judges and policemen are elitist. In recent years, poor or middle class Egyptians have been the overwhelming majority of targets of torture and abuse. Judges pass more severe sentences against poor people. For instance, a boatman received a ten year sentence when his crumbling boat capsised and killed a bunch of girls, whereas powerful businessman Mamdouh Ismail recieved a fleeting 7 years when one thousand and thirty four people died in the February 2006 Ferry disaster, a sentence he will not even do, having easily escaped soon after the disaster. Similarly, policemen most probably mistreat people from the working class or underprivilidged people. I cannot imagine Hisham Talaat Mustafa being mistreated at any point during his detention.

This is why I implore upon everyone reading this post to blog about Shadi's case, link to this post on your twitter and or Facebook accounts or to the original story in Arabic, attend the second session, do something. Anything. This case has got to be known, for visbility is one way of attaining power.