Click below to watch some photos taken by Sarah Carr of the Thursday anti-price hikes protest in front of the Press Syndicate…

For continuous updates from Lebanon, Keep an eye on Comrade Farah Kobaissy’s Twitter account and Sursock’s blog…

From the Daily News Egypt…

CAPMAS announced Thursday that urban inflation in Egypt rose to a new three-year high of 16.4 percent in the year to April, up from 14.4 percent in the year to March.
Abu Bakr El-Guindi, head of the state statistics agency, told reporters in a news conference that inflation was driven mainly by higher food prices, which rose 22 percent in the year.
He added that in the month to April, prices of food and beverages rose 1.6 percent despite a decline in key prices such as rice, which dipped 8.4 percent, and wheat flour, which fell 6.5 percent.
Several public officials explained that prices of wheat flour on the domestic market have recently dwindled due to a drop in global wheat prices, which eased off to LE 2,500 per ton in April, compared to LE 3,000 per ton in March.
The decline has positively affected foodstuffs such as wheat flour, pasta and bread.
Rice prices have also dropped on the back of the government’s recent decision to ban rice exports from April 1 to October because of high prices of other grains, especially wheat, which has pushed up domestic demand for rice.
Inflationary pressure continued to escalate despite expectations that it would slow down in April.
“We expect the year-on-year change in the CPI [Consumer Price Index, which measures inflation] to be relatively stable or slightly less than the rate for March, considering the absence of additional significant increases in prices of goods and services in the CPI basket in April,” investment bank Beltone Financial said in a statement released before CAPMAS made its announcement.
“We expect the CPI to spike starting May, however, when the direct and indirect impact of the government’s measures starts affecting inflation,” added the statement.
President Hosni Mubarak — facing growing public unrest over price rises — offered last week public sector employees a 30 percent increase in basic salaries, provided necessary revenue could be found so that the increase did not add to the budget deficit. The decision prompted the government to introduce last Monday price hikes in several commodities including high-octane fuel, natural gas prices for energy-intensive industries, and cigarettes, as well as fees of vehicle licensing. The decision has boosted gasoline prices between 35-45 percent, which has raised inflationary pressure concerns.
Guindi said the latest price rises would show in the inflation figure for May, which will come out in June.
Simon Kitchen, senior economist at Egyptian investment bank EFG-Hermes, told Reuters on Thursday, “Most of this [inflation] is being driven by food prices and in the next couple of months you will see the effect of the fuel price rises taking effect. We are expecting inflation of around 20 percent by the middle of the year.”

Click on the poster below to read the full report…

Troubling news about Facebook activist Ahmed Maher… Here’s a report from the Daily News Egypt…

The administrator and arguably the real creator of the April 6 Strike group on Facebook Ahmed Maher was detained briefly Wednesday and beaten, his lawyer told Daily News Egypt.
Khaled Ali, who is the head of the Hisham Mubarak Center for Human Rights, posted details of the incident on the center’s website saying Maher was detained for the better part of the day before being released at dawn.
According to Ali, Maher was near his home in New Cairo and on his way to work at 1 pm when he was forced from his car and thrown into a microbus where he was transported to the local police station.
He was beaten there and then transported to State Security headquarters in Lazoghly downtown at 4 pm. There, he was reportedly tied at the feet and hung upside down and beaten again, Ali said.
Maher was dragged by the rope and was threatened with rape, all the while being questioned about the Facebook group and its password, Ali added.
When a group is created on Facebook, a password is not needed, with the creators and chosen “officers” given direct access to moderation of the group.
Maher was told that he amounted to nothing, the country was under control and a bunch of kids would not be able to change anything.
Ali told Daily News Egypt that State Security officers were angry that Maher had ignored a previous request to appear at the headquarters for questioning.

And then the bad-cop-good-cop game continues…

At that point another officer came in and shouted at the ones beating Maher telling them he had not ordered them to do this. The officer then told Maher they knew he was a patriot but that there were others within the group who were attempting to sabotage the country.
At that point the officer told him he would be released and he was given his clothes and other articles with the exception of his camera which the officer promised would be returned later. He was then taken back to his car at 4 am.

Click on the poster below to continue reading the DNE report…

Ma3lesh, I’ll go back again to the issue of photography…

I gave recently some talks about the Mahalla Uprising, among labor and progressive circles in the Bay Area, as part of the effort (tremendously helped by friends in California and NYC I’m grateful for) to spread the word about what’s going on back in Egypt among the activist circles here.. I always request from the organizers of the event to bring a projector if possible, so as to play a slideshow of pix from the Mahalla Uprising as well as other photos of demos and strikes in Egypt to accompany my presentation. Why? Because again spreading the image I believe is just as important as spreading the word.. I may sound like a broken record since I already posted few times about this before, but I’ll keep stressing it.. Whatever event you are holding, whatever protest you are staging, please take a digital camera with you and snap a pic or two of the event. (If you can take videos too that would be even greater). It’s important for other people around the world to “see” what you are doing with their own eyes, instead of just “hearing” or “reading” about it. People need to see with their own eyes both police brutality and social resistance… Struggles spread by the domino effect, as Mahalla proved since December 2006, and as the Palestinian intifada proved in 2000.. When a revolution (or what the Imperialists and the Arab regimes call “instability”) breaks out in one country, it hardly stays within its boundaries–and surely the coming Egyptian revolution won’t defy what has almost become a natural law in politics as proven in every single uprising in the last century. Spreading the image contributes tremendously as a catalyst in this process. A victory for the workers in one sector will inspire others within the same sector and outside to follow suit. Showing photos and videos of those victories helps in getting the message across to the workers: “They have done it over there.. You can do it over here!” Spending hours trying to convince someone with the ability of workers to self organize and bring about a smashing defeat against the state if they act collectively, could just be narrowed down to few minutes if they saw for example Nasser Nouri’s photos of the Mahalla Dec 2006 strike…

You can talk for hours about the revolutionary potential of the masses in the urban towns to overthrow their shackles of fear and confront the Mubarak’s dictatorship at times of rising social struggle, without the help of the American tanks… or you can simply show whoever you are talking with these photos from Mahalla, also taken by the brave Nasser Nouri last April…

Revolutionary activists involved in consciousness raising efforts, propaganda or agitation among the workers anywhere HAVE to do their best to visualize what they are talking about or arguing for. At the same time, there is an immense need for these images to reach millions of other workers and activists around the world.. That could be very inspiring for the latter, as well as a catalyst to generate more support for those facing the onslaught… If you have photos of demos, strikes, factory occupations, or whatever theme that is directly related to the social struggle in your country, please go ahead and upload them online.. don’t leave them on your hard drive.. This is the memory of the class, and we shouldn’t lose it coz the ruling classes always do their best to distort or delete it…

From Reuters…

Egypt has asked mobile phone companies to block service to anonymous subscribers as a public security measure, and at least two firms have begun efforts to comply, Egyptian officials and mobile firms said on Monday.
The move comes as Egypt tries to combat a wave of public discontent over rising prices and low wages that have sparked a series of labor and anti-government strikes, organized largely by mobile phone and over the Internet.
The move is expected to affect several hundred thousand customers who did not register their names and addresses when they acquired phone lines — still a small portion of overall subscribers in the most populous Arab country.
“Everyone who uses the telephone must be known,” Trade Minister Rachid Mohamed Rachid told a news conference, adding that the move was needed for “public security.”
Vodafone Egypt, one of three mobile operators in Egypt, has started disabling text messaging capabilities for anonymous subscribers, and was asking them to come forward with their details, a company spokesman said.
Rival operator Mobinil linked the move to government plans for mobile number portability, which would allow subscribers to change service providers while keeping their original phone numbers.

Click on the poster below to read the full report…

Japan Town, San Francisco…

Ya shabab, I saw this movie and I highly recommend it…

روحوا إضربوه من أي حتة على النت ولا من المكسيك.. الفيلم ده يا جماعة والله ينفع يبقى على مصر… وخصوصا إني مبضون من “المستوطنات” الي قاعدين يبنوها برة القاهرة ويدوها أسامي زي “بيفرلي هيلز” و”دريم لاند”.. يا أخي أحا فعلا.. المهم حاولوا تجيبوا الفيلم ده من أي حتة وإعرضوه للزملاء…

Zionist students have started their celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the founding of their apartheid genocidal state in Palestine, by distributing free falafel sandwiches and bringing “models” you can take photos with…

I find this very, aaaam, what’s the word? Ah, beidan…

Some Egyptian readers have complained recently that while they could find my new postings on their RSS feeds, they couldn’t see them on the frontpage. This I’m afraid is linked to the transfer of the Arabist blogs to a new host. Below is a message from Scot, on how to solve it…

This is not about ISPs caching content or sites. It’s about ISPs pointing their users to the *old version* of the site - the ISP’s *DNS caches* are stale. The users are getting *fresh* content from the *old* site. No amount of refreshing the browser is going to help.
This is happening because *some* Egyptian ISPs are not flushing their DNS cache. When an Egyptian user connected to one of those ISPs requests the site, their ISPs DNS system sends them to the old IP address, which still hosts the old version of the site.
To solve this: Have the affected users tell us what ISP they use. We will then contact those ISPs and tell them they’re serving stale DNS lookups. If the ISPs flush their DNS cache, the problem will go away.