Last week President Nazarbayev urged the Kazakhstanis to buy housing now, when the prices have decreased. Slavasay is wondering [ru]:

Obviously, neither me nor any of my friends having income “above average”, do not belong to the “people”, which the president means. I don’t have money to buy an apartment in Almaty at these prices. I have even less desire to mess with the construction companies now, when thousands of people are not able to get their flats for which they paid – and which were never built.

Russia – the closest ally and the Kazakhstan’s neighbor with which it shares the longest border line – follows the steps of Kazkahstan, blogger megakhuimyak says [ru]. Russian leader Medvedev delivered his first state of the nation address and suggested extending presidential term up to 6 years, parliamentary term – up to 5 years, and to extend the powers of both institutions:

“Kazakhstan today is Russia tomorrow!”. Last year Kazakhstan extended the term of presidency – now Russia does the same. Last year we’ve got crisis – now look at Russia. You can taste the validity of this slogan”.

schriftsteller addresses the issue of integration between the two countries [ru]:

Against the background of financial crisis, the talks about Russo-Kazakh integration resurrected – they say cooperation can be an effective tool in fighting crisis. But if you take a look at the facts, it can be seen that integration has been undermined – large Russian companies refused to let Kazakh business enter the market and blocked all projects, which could have promoted integration. Ultimately, integration is the ability to share with the neighbor.

Alim-atenbek, however, is not too happy with the direction in which the country is moving [ru]:

Sometimes it seems to me that all public officials, police officers, judges et al. get employed with the state structures because they are not intelligent enough, or just want to make money out of their positions, or – rarely – desperate patriots. When these people get power, they get infected with superiority complex of a man who rules the world. The country gets rotten in the official lawlessness and we often contribute to its further corruption.

Finally, here is a brief update on Livejournal accessibility from Kazakhstan. Yesterday, Livejournal was moving onto another server facility in Montana, United States. Of course, the IPs have changed during this procedure. And at night Kazakhstani users were able to reach their favorite website without proxies and anonymizers. Pycm imagines what happened next [ru]:

Then the censors came to their office, had some tea for a start. And at 10.25 a.m. switched Livejournal off again.

In this regard, rosvet remembered [ru] a Stalin-era aphorism: “If you are still not in jail, it’s not your desert. It is our omission”.

Programmila says [ru] that repeated blockage means censorship “by order from the upper levels” – so, technical problems with the routing are not an issue any more. Adam-kesher stresses [ru] that it is not serious for Kazakhtelecom to deny their implication in blockage, because it is clearly an IP filtering.

Also posted on neweurasia.net

Segundo ela, na semana anterior, os executivos seniors do canal nos EUA receberam cartas com severas considerações e críticas sérias em relação ao filme. As cartas foram enviadas pelo PSDB de Minas Gerais. O PSDB afirmava que meu filme tinha caráter político-partidário, que não representava a realidade do acontecido no estado e questionava minha conduta ética na produção do filme. Junto as cartas foram enviadas também cópias da versão em inglês do vídeo produzido pelo PSDB e postado no YouTube.

Many bloggers, such as Paulo Fehlauer from Na Rua (screenshot above) had uploaded the video and for over a month exhibited an error message. Meanwhile, Current TV launched a month long investigation into the allegations and into Florêncio's journalism procedures, resulting in Gagged in Brazil being put back online. André Deak [pt], who had interviewed Florêncio [pt] for his blog earlier this year, brings the news as a victory for freedom of press:

Em alguns lugares (especialmente na rede), parece que o jornalismo ainda é possível.

Released on the Current TV in UK on May 27, 2008, and in the US a week before, Gagged in Brazil had a Portuguese subtitled version uploaded on YouTube, triggering a huge reaction: its link made the rounds on e-mails, networking websites and the video achieved over 2,000 hits on Google, over 100,000 views on YouTube, not to mention the 6,000 hits on the Current TV version, in English.

Commenting on the film at the time of its release, Catatau [pt] says:

Salta aos olhos o enquadramento jornalístico de determinadas figuras políticas, como Aécio Neves e Lula. Enquanto para determinados políticos a linha editorial é branda, para outros a cobertura é implacável. Como se a imprensa escolhesse o rigor ou a parcialidade a partir de um jogo que foge aos olhos do espectador.

Soon after, Gagged in Brazil - The Other Side, the video response below, was posted on YouTube by the youth group at PSDB - and other six followed. The filmmaker has been accused of partisanship, data manipulation and non observation of journalistic principles. It also suggests that the documentary did not deserve that much attention because the filmmaker was just an expatriate Brazilian from Minas, not a reputed British journalist.

Freedom of press - an old issue

Gagged in Brazil was inspired by Liberdade, Essa Palavra (“Freedom, That Word”), a 2006 video report by then journalism student Marcelo Baêta, shot for his graduation dissertation. It linked the firing of five journalist in 2002 and 2003 to stories they wrote/broadcast that were critical of Aécio Neves. As Neves gets ready to run as presidential candidate in 2010, “the issue of press manipulation continues to unfold in Brazil”, discovers Elizabeth Tuttle during an interview with Marcelo Baêta for the Columbia Journalism Review. What's the relevance of his documentary now?

First, Neves is one of the main presidential hopefuls for the 2010 elections. Second, the international repercussions of my video-documentary are still reverberating. This past May, it was heavily featured on the Current TV documentary “Gagged in Brazil,” which has since been viewed on YouTube 50,000 times. In June, the governor’s PR department posted yet another video response, this time to the Current TV's video.

In a recent comment on the article above, reader Diógenes Pinto Carvalhaes claims that Columbia Journalism School should not have published such an interview without “showing ‘the other side' of this controversial subject”:

I thought this subject was buried in the past, but it returns again like a ghost. Why is it coming back? For the same reason that it has appeared in 2006… At that moment, the alleged censorship in Minas Gerais was a leitmotiv in the opposition campaign, when Aécio Neves was running for a second term. Macelo Baêta’s video was a precious item of propaganda against Aécio Neves and largely scattered by anonymous spams in the internet. Now, Aécio Neves is one of the names most seriously considered for nomination in the next Brazilian presidential campaign.

However, the case of media censorship in Minas Gerais is far from a buried issue. In the middle of the local election last September, the opposing news website ‘Novo Jornal' was taken down by Brazil's Public Ministry (state level prosecutors) on charges of anonymity, as reported by Global Voices. And not even blogs escape from politicians' attempts to gag those who try to have a voice on their own. Only last month, political scientist Fernando Massote [pt] was under threat of legal action by a local politician for replicating unfavorable news on his blog:

Informo que estou respondendo a interpelação judicial interposta pelo Sr. Marcio Lacerda. O candidato a prefeitura de BH me intima a confirmar conteúdos publicados no meu blog  www.massote.pro.br e me ameaça de processo por difamação, calúnia e injuria. Sendo assim, confirmo a autoria de todos os textos definitivos que foram postados e permaneceram no meu blog, da data em que foram publicados até hoje. Estes textos são muito conhecidos pela alta freqüência de visitantes à minha publicação eletrônica. A difusão do meu blog, como todos sabem, é uma conseqüência entre outros fatores, da grande crise da imprensa em Minas Gerais, causada também pela censura de que é vitima e que tem sido amplamente denunciada.

On May 8th Economy Arabia wrote:

On November 19, 2008 an Egyptian court ruled in favour of Ibrahim Yousri, a lawyer who said that Egypt is losing $9m for each day because of that agreement.

Egyptian Chronicles wrote:

Ok this is a blow to the government , to Hussein Salem and to Israel. The judicial administrative court bans natural gas exports to Israel today. Now the Egyptian Government is obligated to listen to the court order or will they neglect it as usual?? More to come. I am very happy by the way.

And in a follow up post, she wrote:

Economically the Egyptian government made a huge mistake when it signed the agreement to export natural gas to Israel through Hussein Salem’s EMG Co.

It is unacceptable to waste your natural gas for price less than the average price now especially prices are escalating and we are entering an energy crisis era.

It is unacceptable to export your natural gas to Israel without the approval of the people represented in the Parliament.

It is unacceptable to export natural gas to Israel when the people in Gaza got no fuel.

Then she quoted the basis of the court's decision as per the judicial administrative:

The oil ministry has broken the constitution and law with its agreement in 2005 to export natural gas to Israel for 20 years. According to article no. 123 in the Egyptian constitution “ The natural resources are considered a very valuable resources to be owned by the coming generations not only for the current generations and thus the administrative authorities before the exploit of these natural resources should go to the parliament to be grant the permission”

At the end of her post she concluded that:

… the regime could not dare and go to the parliament to get an approval because it knows very well the people would refuse it totally.

As for Israel's reaction, she wrote:

The Israeli Ministry of National Infrastructure expressed Israel's confidence that the political agreement between the countries' governments will remain in force in keeping with the memorandum of understanding the two countries signed in 2005!!

 I also will quote their closing line in the same article in Haatrez :

The court's ruling is subject to appeal in a higher administrative court and the Egyptian government sometimes ignores court rulings it does not like.

We kick off our round up with Stilettos in the Sand from Saudi Arabia, who writes:

We are in for heavy rain. It has rained quite hard in other parts of the Sandbox, but we've gotten only a few drops and sprinkles, here. Rain is good. We look forward to it and relish it. A good rain cleanses everything and turns the trees green and lush - so much prettier than the tan and gray we are so used to and it controls the dust. If it is overcast all day today and we finally get some rain you will hear no complaining from me!

Our second stop is in Libya, where Khadija Teri welcomes the rain too. She notes:

The rains have finally come, accompanied by lightening and thunder. The weather is cooler and the dust has settled. We'll see how treacherous the roads are today. Usually the first big rains bring on flooding because the drain systems in the roads are clogged with sand and garbage. But never mind - no one expects anyone to be on time in weather like this.

Speaking of treacherous roads, Seabee, from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, is happy that this year rain wasn't blamed for road accidents, but that the drivers were.

Here's a picture taken by Seabee showing the dark clouds which gathered in Dubai's sky:

When the first drops fell from the sky, Seabee predicted that the rain will be blamed:

Woke up this morning to a strange darkness, peered out and saw gray clouds and wet ground.
We had the first rain of the season.

So here's a prediction.

Tomorrow's papers will report chaos on the roads, including multiple crashes.
The rain will be to blame.
Motorists will be exonerated. Driving inappropriately in the conditions will not be the cause.
The rain dunnit.

Kuwait too had a change in weather and intlxpatr, who reports that the mornings are chilly, posts this picture of the light fluffy skies which have gathered in the sky, signaling some rain:

From Israel, Dr Savta also reports nicer weather.

Lately the weather has been beautiful. Yes, even those couple of days of rain were beautiful. The heat of the summer is gone and it’s still warm enough to go out without a sweater. If it were only like this all year round!

But for one Israeli mother, A Soldier's Mother, the rains summon a different feeling. She writes:

Now, the rain means Elie and the soldiers are probably wet; the winter means they may be cold; the summer means they are hot and likely uncomfortable. I've always loved thunder and lightning, the power of the storm fills me with awe. But the world of wind and rain is less friendly when you have a son outside in it.

Chronicling Cairo wrote in a very sad post:

Since we moved to Heliopolis we've been dealing with an incredible amount of sexual harassment. Keep in mind that the entire time we've been living in the hotel so far has been during the month of Ramadan, the holiest month of the year for Muslims and the time in which all Muslims make extra effort to worship God and live in a pure and holy way.

As such, all sexual thoughts and acts during the fasting hours are technically forbidden. However, we cannot walk down the street in Heliopolis (in daylight or after sundown) without catcalls, honking cars, constant hissing, and what i'm sure are likely extremely lewd expressions in colloquial Egyptian being tossed our way. I was warned to expect the harassment, I can take the verbal abuse.

What I have difficulty accepting, however, is the physical component of the problem. Two weeks ago this sequence of events happened:

The fact that we're foreigners has no bearing on the level of harassment we're receiving–our Egyptian and Arab dorm-mates are harassed at an equal level. Surveys conducted of Egyptian women indicate that veiled women experience only 10% less harassment than unveiled women. My Palestinian suitemate told me that it will get even worse once Ramadan ends.

By deciding to house us in a completely isolated area full of military compounds that is hostile to outsiders in general, AUC put their female students in a terrible situation where there is absolutely nothing we can do to stop men from touching us inappropriately. And that makes me angry.

Scene and heard published the following letter from a foreign exchange student at AUC

Dear S&H,

I am currently doing a semester abroad here at AUC at the new campus and am unfortunately really disappointed. My friends recommended the program after spending a summer studying Arabic at the downtown AUC campus and told me how amazing it was to be right smack dab in the middle of the city and cultural festivities. I had heard about the new campus but was told it wasn't “that far” from downtown and figured I had nothing to lose. I'm sure you can imagine my surprise when I arrived at the new campus and realized I was in the middle of a number of developing upscale communities surrounded by desert…not exactly the cultural experience I was looking for. I have to take a bus or Cairo Cab downtown to be able to experience the streets and true culture of Cairo. I wish I was able to walk down the streets near Tahrir square and eat koshari and falafel sandwiches between my gaps like my friends had told me about…and although Cilantro's not bad, that's not exactly what I flew thousands of miles to experience.

I recently read an article in the Daily News that really hit home and I thought that this was the best place to voice my opinion and maybe open a discussion forum. In the article, the reporter recommended: “For the sake of its foreign students, AUC’s Arabic Language Institute should seriously consider returning to the university’s old location in the heart of downtown Cairo.”

YES PLEASE.

Will Ward wrote a post titled AUC: Food fight at the new campus

On my first day at the AUC new campus I waited in line over half an hour to buy a cardboardy bagel from one of the three chain food outlets that were up and running.

This was because the university had sold a concession to Delicious Inc, a company that operates chain franchises like Cinnabon, McDonalds, Cilantro, etc, to be the sole foodservice provider on campus.  A cup of coffee at one of these places runs 12-15 pounds, and a sandwich or salad would set you back at least 20.

For Ramadan this was not a huge deal because most people weren’t eating on campus anyway, but after Eid all hell broke loose.   With fasting over, no one was prepared to wait forever in a line to overpay for meh food.

After a few days, something fantastic happened.  Instead of complaining (my default response), a group of students set up small stands around campus and began selling snacks, apples and little packages of homemade pasta with roasted veggies.  These were cheaper and more delicious than Delicious Inc’s products, so naturally, the company tried to shut them down.

I am told that, after being closed initially, the students appealed the decision to the AUC president and were given permission to continue operating.  But then yesterday I noticed that Delicious had set up their own kiosk and had dispatched two Cilantro employees to hand out cookies to the passersby.

Getting warmer….but I’m not sold yet.  When they start delivering free double macchiatos to my office, then we’ll talk.  That may even earn them a coveted Friday in Cairo endorsement.

But in the end, even the student food is priced head and shoulders above the cheap filling lunch you can get for a few pounds at the downtown places.  The real scandal is that, with November almost here, there is no sign of fuul, tamiyya or koshary on the new campus as promised.

Meanwhile, I continue to spend a great deal of time at the old campus.  The wireless internet is still up and running, the cheaper, better coffee shop is still open, the bank is open with no lines.  There are trees, birds chirping, no desert rats, you get the picture.

Angry students got an apology from AUC's President

The head of The American University in Cairo apologized to attendees at a raucous and at times angry student forum today meant to address concerns about the new campus, which continued even as a blackout hit the university.

Flanked by two armed bodyguards, President David Arnold asked for the audience’s understanding and forgiveness for the problems the university has experienced this semester.

“I want to express my deep personal apology about the problems and suffering that we have encountered at the past two months,” he said.

The forum was hastily organized in response to a sit-in held by dozens of student protesters last week outside the administration building.

The group organizing the protest asked the school provide the details of its contract with food consortium Delicious Inc. and publicize all of its financial records, provide cheaper food alternatives, guarantee the campus is finished by spring, a reimbursement of four weeks of tuition, and a cap on tuition hikes.

During his address at the Motaz El Alfy Hall in the newly opened section of campus, Arnold acknowledged student frustration with the problems AUC has experienced in the move to Kattameya.

Arnold defended the move as the “right decision,” though he was immediately heckled for the comment.

He did not give a definitive answer about when the campus would be fully completed, but said he expected student housing would be ready for tenants at the end of the semester. An updated construction schedule is expected next week, AUC said in a statement.

To address student concerns about food on campus, the university has created a Food Services Committee, and will provide a summary of its agreement with Delicious Inc, the university said.

At the forum, Arnold announced that students would also receive a food coupon worth 200 LE.

He also agreed with the concerns that staff and students have raised about the bus service provided by Family Transport. Drivers for the Heliopolis-based firm have been in at least two accidents since the beginning of the semester.

“Bus service was not that good for the first two weeks of this semester, as many problems were taking place, such as the bus was sometimes full or it wasn’t on time,” Arnold said.

The bus services rebate will be worth 500 LE to each student, a third of the value of the bus pass.

But he said he was not entertaining a tuition refund of any kind. In its release, the university stated tuition covers 70 percent of education costs, the remainder covered by donations and AUC’s endowment funds.

“We have made a commitment towards offering higher education programs for you, so a reduction of tuition is unnecessary,” Arnold said.

In previous remarks to the Caravan, university officials said AUC has suffered a decline of almost $100 million in the market value of its securities investments, which were largely made with endowment funds.

On Facebook, several groups were created by students venting their frustration: Petition to return to the old campus, We hate the new campus, and Don't sell the old campus

.

Egyptian blogger Hanan El Sherif wrote about blogging and bloggers in Egypt (Ar) saying:

El Sherif continues:

Standing up for other people's rights, says El Sherif, has had its consequences: