Lol..!

Read the report here…

I obviously have HUEG disagreements with the President of the (timid, coopeted) Arab Writers’ Union and Editor-in-Chief of state-owned Al-Ahram Hebdo Mohamed Salmawy and his lenient position vis a vis the asshole dictator President Mubarak… But I still wanna post those paragraphs from a conversation he had with a young journalist… another anecdote for the radical shift among the public in general and how the industrial workers are inspiring the middle classes and white collars to action…

A young journalist at one of those up-and-coming weeklies came up to me the other day and asked with serious concern: “Mr Mohamed, where is the Writers’ Union? Why haven’t we heard of any sit-ins, demonstrations, or protests organized by it? Don’t you have any demands from the government?”
He then took out a copy of another newspaper and pointed to a big reportage.
“As you can see in this report, last month alone there were seven sit-ins, five demonstrations and protests, and three strike threats, but none of them involving the Writers’ Union. What on earth has happened to the union?”
“Had you ever heard of sit-ins, protests or strikes by writers before?” I asked.
“That wasn’t a time of demonstrations, but now everyone is either protesting or on strike except you, why?” he said.

When I read this conversation, I also remembered this…

The Press Syndicate is holding a solidarity conference, to honor the released 6 April Strike detainees and to support those who are still in Mubarak’s Gulag… Sunday, 25 May, 7pm…

Captain Iraq strikes…

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, the most active internet rights watchdog in the region, has moved to a new web domain…

[Gamal Eid, the director of the ANHRI, with leftist lawyer Ahmad Seif el-Islam, anti-torture meeting, downtown Cairo, 2007.]

Here are some pix ya shabab, from the first film the hoss will be appearing in…

… or more accuarely I should say “disappearing” in… since the whole plot of the short 10-min film, by Laila Hotait, is about some Egyptian activist photographer dude, whose ass gets bombed by the Zionists in south Lebanon during the 2006 war… and the film is about his Lebanese widow receiving the news, tripping with the memories as she goes through his pix…

The SOAS union branch executive has agreed to send this letter of protest about the Mahalla 3 to the Interior Minister and the Egyptian Ambassador in London…

SOAS University and College Union (UCU) Executive calls for the immediate release of the three workers from Ghazl al-Mahalla textile factory detained by the Egyptian authorities on 6 April, and all others detained during the protests that day. We are deeply concerned by reports that Kareem al-Beheiry, Kamal al-Fayyoumy and Tareq Amin were tortured in custody and that their health has deteriorated while in detention in the Bourg el-Arab prison.
We wish to express our solidarity with our brother and sister workers in Egypt who are fighting to defend their living standards. We call on the Egyptian government to recognise the right of Egyptian workers to organise trade unions free from state interference and intimidation.
Graham Dyer,
UCU, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

بعد الإستقبال الحافل من القراء والزملاء والأصدقاء والأخوات والإخوة (وبالذات أخويا وحبيبي وائل عباس) لصور مزرعة الحيوانات (والتي تضم كلب وحمار والمعزة الشمطاء سوزي) قررت إني أفقعكم صورة تانية من اليوم نفسه

Tina Modotti…

I say he is the country’s no. 1 photographer now…

[Nasser Nouri during an anti-police brutality protest by Egyptian photographers, February 2007.]

Click on Latuff’s cartoon below to read an article by Comrade Sharon…

Myriam Zamora, St. Peter’s Housing Committee organizer and former Sandinista activist, San Francisco…

Victor Jara: A Desalambrar…

Here’s a translation of the lyrics, thanks to Angelique…

Yo pregunto a los presentes
si no se han puesto a pensar
que esta tierra es de nosotros
y no del que tenga más.
i ask those present
hasn’t it ever occurred to you
that this land belongs to us
and not to him who has more
Yo pregunto si en la tierra
nunca habrá pensado usted
que si las manos son nuestras
es nuestro lo que nos den.
i ask if in this land
if you haven’t ever thought
that if these are our hands
then what they give us is also ours.
A desalambrar, a desalambrar
que la tierra es nuestra, es tuya y de aquel,
de Pedro y María, de Juan y José.
let’s tear down the fences
because the land is ours, it’s yours, and it’s his,
it’s Pedro & Maria’s, and Juan’s, and Jose’s
Si molesto con mi canto
a alguien que no quiera oír
le aseguro que es un gringo
o un dueño de este país
if i bother with this song
someone who doesn’t want to hear
i assure you it’s a gringo
or a landowner of this country
A desalambrar, a desalambrar
que la tierra es nuestra, es tuya y de aquel,
de Pedro y María, de Juan y José.
let’s tear down the fences
because the land is ours, it’s yours, and it’s his,
it’s Pedro & Maria’s, and Juan’s, and Jose’s

Omar has launched a new website…

Mabrouk ya Omar…