و كل يوم بحبك أكتر من اللي فات
مش عقل و لا مصالح دي بس هرمونات

حربية — راديو تيت

… to 4 years in prison for mocking religion — one year for each major religion; Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the Egyptian Presidency.

(news from Sharkawy (arabic))

For the past few weeks, I’ve been going out on the pond for two hours of pickup hockey on Sunday afternoons. This is the first winter I’ve kept it up for more than two weekends in total. Now, while I’m having a lot of fun out there, and getting better each time –as perhaps would be attested to by the increasing number of times I am managing stick-puck contact and the decreasing number of times I am forced to perform a butt-ice contact– I am certain I wouldn’t be a welcomed addition to any team playing in the World Pond Hockey Championship, which is held every winter in Plaster Rock, New Brunswick, Canada. This year, the championship attracted 120 teams from every Canadian province, as well as 23 U.S. states, and such countries as England, Ireland, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, and -get this- Egypt! Naturally, I was curious… I know Egypt is quite good in field hockey, but pond hockey? I mean, there are quite a few more fields –as few as they are– than there are frozen ponds.

Turns out the contact person for the team “from” Cairo is a Mr Schofield, Bill. Hardly an Egyptian name, I’d say… So, unless, the name was lost in translation from something like ostaaz Bilal Shafiee, the Egyptian connection is still a mystery to me.

Since the advent of online video hosting, a number of videos have appeared on the internet showing Egyptian police –to put it very mildly– mistreating and humiliating citizens in the most deplorable ways. Most recently, two videos were widely circulated; one showing a man being violated by some sort of a stick (maybe a broom handle), and the other showing a man being repeatedly slapped on the face. I didn’t link to the videos at the time, and I won’t now, for reasons that will hopefully become clear by the end of the post.

First, let us examine the process with which these kinds of videos become available. It is hard to tell who’s doing the recording in every single case, so a generalization wouldn’t be fair. However, in many cases it appears –or at the very least it is plausible– that the incidents are being recorded by the perpetrators’ colleagues (talk about adding insult to injury.) Some videos are then leaked and posted online (I say leaked because I can’t imagine someone being arrogant or stupid enough to post self-implicating videos online, but I could be wrong.) These videos are then further popularized when certain popular blogs link to them (if not being the ones to post them in the first place). And, in the case of the aforementioned incidents, a certain newspaper report, complete with stills from the videos, brought the topic to a wider audience (which reportedly led to an investigation by the general prosecutor.)

As far as I can tell, not a single link in this chain has gone to any length to conceal the identity of the victims. Of course, one doesn’t expect the perpetrators of such heinous crimes to respect their victims’ privacy, but what about everyone else?

Don’t get me wrong; I am totally in favor of making these records available to the public, if not for anything but for raising awareness at the very least; I also applaud the efforts of these bloggers, and the reporters who helped bring this case to the public. However, in the course of raising awareness and fighting for justice, one has to be careful not to trample on the rights of these victims; one should employ all possible means to spare them any extra humiliation.

There are ways to tread that line. In these particular cases, simple video-editing to distort the faces of the victims would’ve done the trick; it would’ve concealed the identity of the victims while still delivering the desired impact.

I have not provided any legal arguments here, partly because I am ignorant of such arguments (and maybe those knowledgeable about the law could enlighten me (us) on that perspective,) but mainly because this is intended as a friendly reminder of sentiments that I believe should be upheld by anyone claiming to defend human rights.

The news item about the anger over the annual Jerusalem gay pride parade (now in its fifth year) got me wondering when (if ever) there’ll be one in Cairo. Anyone ventures to guess?

(TheDailyShow’s take on the news.)

اقلع غماك يا تور و ارفض تلف
اكسر تروس الساقيه و اشتم و تف
قال :بس خطوه كمان…خطوه كمان
يا اوصل نهاية السكه يا البير يجف
عجبى

Via Arabist:

Activists are organizing a sit in at the Press Syndicate, 12 noon, on 9 November, to protest the sexual assaults against women during Eid. The activists are demanding the resignation of General Habib el-Adly, the Interior Minister whose security forces stood by watching the assaults without intervention.

Mohammed Madbuli, a member of [a] prominent family of Cairo publishers, complains:

Members of the security services came to our shop and confiscated 280 copies of [Mohammed Fattuh’s] book: [Modern Sheikhs and the Industry of Religious Extremism]

Anybody heard of this book and/or this incident?

Ok, so we all know it is bad, but just how bad? … Dr. Loffredo, you are the Director of the Cancer Genetics and Epidemiology program at Georgetown University Medical Center, and you have been studying tobacco use in Egypt since 1997, surely you can tell us?

People who use these devices don’t realize that they could be inhaling what is believed to be the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes in one typical 30-60 minute session with a waterpipe, because such a large quantity of pure, shredded tobacco is used.

Holy! But … at least the water absorbs the toxins, no?

… that is true to some extent if the toxins are water soluble, but tar isn’t, and tar contains the carcinogens. We believe that, compared to the typical cigarette smoker, waterpipe smokers are exposed to larger total amounts of nicotine, carbon monoxide and certain other toxins. And…

There’s an and?

because the tobacco is burning at a lower temperature, it is more tolerable to inhale deeply, and in fact you need more force to pull air through the high resistance of the water pathway. That means the tobacco smoke can be penetrating deeper in a person’s respiratory tract than cigarette smoke does. The damage could be even worse than seen in cigarette smokers, but we haven’t done studies long enough to quantify the true cancer risk.

Oh, so you haven’t really quantified the risk …

Even so, the incidence of lung cancer is increasing rapidly in Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries, comparable to lung cancer rates in the U.S. after cigarette smoking became newly fashionable

But… but… but… it’s sooo good.