Stories about Egypt from April, 2010
Egypt: Gearing up for May 2 Protests
Egyptian blogger Zeinobia is urging her readers to mark May 2 on their calendars. A massive sit-in is being planned to call for a higher minimum wage in front of the Egyptian Cabinet. The official minimum wage has been LE35 ($6) for the last 26 years.
Egypt: Saudi Arabia Blocks ElBaradei's Site
Bikya Masr quotes the Arabic Network of Human Rights information saying that Saudi Arabia has “blocked the Internet website promoting Egypt’s leading opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei’s National Coalition for Change.”
Egypt: Economic Vegetarians
Red meat prices have risen dramatically in Egypt in recent weeks. Amidst calls for meat boycotts, many Egyptians are being pushed to vegetarianism due to high prices.
Egypt: Let's Shoot those Protesters!
In a debate on recurrent demonstrations, Egyptian ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) members of Parliament lashed out during a verbal battle with Muslim Brotherhood MPs over protesters in the country and said Egyptian pro-democracy demonstrators “should be shot” by police. Bloggers react in this post by Marwa Rakha.
Egypt: Hashish Crisis adds to Nation's Woes
Alongside bread, fuel and cooking gas, Hashish (cannabis) has been added to the list of things which Egyptians are starting to miss. Bloggers argue why this narcotic is the one which will me missed most as prices and poverty continue to rise.
Arab World: Arab Tweeple Launched
ArabTweeple is the first directory indexing more than 15,000 Arab Twitter users.
Egypt: Cairo Protest Turns Violent
From Egypt, Wael Abbas tweets: “Urgent: a protest in down town cairo is now in progress, security is dramatically violent, some protesters fell unconscious due to beating!”
Egypt: Lessons in Oppression from Iran
On Twitter, Daila Ziada comments: “Egyptian security forces are learning from the Iranian experience. They think exaggerated use of violence will stop protesters!”
Egypt: Linux InstallFest a Success!
Free Open Source Software (FOSS) is picking up in Egypt, thanks to awareness programmes being organsied by Egyptian Linux Users Group. Tarek Amr sums up reactions to a recent event in this post.
Egypt: Crackdown on Peaceful Pro-Democracy Protests
On the second anniversary of the first call for civil disobedience in the history of modern Egypt, new protests broke out through out the country. Egyptian police violently beat and randomly detained people to disperse protests calling for constitutional reform. Eman AbdElRahman reports.
Arab World: Pulling all the Stops for the BoBs
Arab bloggers nominated for the annual Best of the Blogs award (The BoBs) are pulling all the stops, to attract more votes. Who are the nominated bloggers and who will you vote for?
Lebanon: ArabNet discussed the future of Arabic web in English
Arabnet 2010 is a tech conference that was held in Beirut recently. While many of the participants considered it a success, there was a major criticism that kept people talking and writing about it days after the conference was concluded. The problem was that while the conference supposedly focuses on Arabic web it adopted English as its official language and the website, discussions, and presentations were all in English.
Egypt: Excellent Cat Meows for President Mubarak
Egyptians are quick to pounce on the opportunity to use all the social media tools at their disposal. Marwa Rakha takes a look at how bloggers and online peers mobilised themselves to poke fun at an editorial in a daily newspaper.
Lebanon: First Threatened Voice
Lebanon has been known and envied in the MENA region for its free cyberspace. Well not any more since March has marked Lebanon's first cyber censhorship incident. Layal Al Khatib has more details in this post.
