‏إظهار الرسائل ذات التسميات Society. إظهار كافة الرسائل
‏إظهار الرسائل ذات التسميات Society. إظهار كافة الرسائل

1/18/2015

#FreeSpeechStories #France accused of 'double standards'



Tens of thousands of fans of the French comic Dieudonne - often criticised as anti-Semitic - are making claims of hypocrisy and double standards after French authorities opened up dozens of cases against people accused of justifying terrorism.

Fans of the controversial comedian reacted angrily after he was arrested and charged with condoning terrorism for a remark on his a Facebook page: "je me sens Charlie Coulibaly" ("I feel like Charlie Coulibaly").
The remark, which has since been taken down, was a mash-up of the#JeSuisCharlie tag and the name of Amedy Coulibaly, the man who killed a policewoman near a Jewish school and four people at a Jewish supermarket in Paris. Dieudonne later defended the remark by saying he felt like he was being persecuted by authorities as if he were a terror suspect.
"Freedom of expression is dead, but its funeral on Sunday was pretty!!" said one of the comedian's Facebook fans, referring to the enormous march through Paris in support of Charlie Hebdo.
"WHAT HYPOCRISY!!!!!" shouted another commentator. "You can legally caricature and insult the prophet and the Muslim world: the oligarchy calls this freedom of expression ... We are in a pseudo-democratic dictatorship."

Dieudonne is a comedian with a history of making crude jokes about the Holocaust (and occasionally getting into legal trouble). He has a huge following on social media including more than 900,000 Facebook fans. Most of the comments on his page were in support of the comedian, and his name was trending briefly on Twitter earlier in the week, but there were a few fans who thought Dieudonne had crossed a line.
"There is a big difference between freedom of expression and incitement to hatred," said one fan. "He knew what to expect ... Charlie Hebdo made caricatures of the prophet that I haven't agreed with, it has made a mockery of the prophet, made some laugh, shocked others, but there was no incentive to hatred and this is a big difference."

The arrest of Dieudonne was just one of dozens of cases - up to 100according to one estimate - opened by the French authorities since the attacks. Some people have even been jailed already under fast-track legislation that was passed last year.
In a typical year, only one or two people are arrested for speaking out in favour of terrorism, said Emmanuel Pierrat, a French media lawyer and member of PEN International, which supports free expression.
Pierrat told BBC Trending that free speech is an idea at the core of the French nation, but one that in his view has been eroded over the years by exceptions for things including hate speech.
"We have weakened the principle of freedom of speech, for good intentions, but without thinking about the consequences. We need to think about how we can recover the idea of freedom of speech after an event that is so emotional, like the one in Paris (last week)," he said.
He cautioned however, that Dieudonne's statements could not be directly compared with the Charlie Hebdo cartoons showing the Prophet Muhammad.
"One thing is for sure, in France you can make drawings or speeches against ideology or against religion. The French revolution of 1789 abolished the crime of blasphemy" and courts have consistently upheld the legality of speech directed at religions or historical religious figures, he says.
Pierrat, who represented Michel Houellebecq when the author wascleared of charges of religious hate speech against Muslims in 2002, says the Dieudonne case will be difficult to judge given the ambiguity of the comedian's outburst. But he says he believes the authorities are made a mistake by arresting him. A trial is scheduled for next month.

"If Dieudonne wins, he will be like a hero," Pierrat says. "It will gives a lot of young people the idea that he is a champion of Muslims or immigrants ... he's no longer a comedian or an actor, but instead his audiences are far-right sympathisers."
"What makes me somewhat afraid is that French justice is speeding up when it comes to these questions," he says. "Like Americans after 11 September, the worry is that judgments are coming too quickly, and influenced by a very emotional event."


Blog by Mike Wendling

1/01/2015

نهاية 2014 وبداية 2015

اممممممممم هتكلام على مصر الاول
احية طبعا على سنة 2014 من اولة لحد اخرة والى جاى اسود من الى فات و الى مش شايف دة اكيد ابن كلب اعمى اة او معرص و مستفيد من الى بيحصل و دول كتير اوى , طبعا فشخ الاخوان و مرسى والوسخة دية و السيسى و المجلس المعرص بتاع مبارك الى فعلا ركب على ثورة يناير 2011 الى شوفنا فية العجب و دم و عيون راحت للاسف ان الشعب ابن متناكة بطبعة طول عمرة شعب بيحي يعيش عبد ويعشق حياة العبودية و دة من ايام الفراعنة فا تقريبا دة فى الجينات المصريين انهم عبيد وبس.........
الى يزعل يخبطة فى الحيطة
يعنى بعد كل الى الى ماتوا والى راحت عيونهم و فى الاخر مبارك وعصابتة براة و الداخلية حمامة سلام, و احنا بقينا شعب بيتعاقب عقاب جماعى طبعا علشان شبابة فكر فى حريتة , كرامة ولقمة عيش لا اكتر ولا اقل بس ازى ما هما شعب عبيد

وطلع المعرصيين زى ما فى كل تاريخ طلع مبارك و عصابتة اطهر من الطاهرة نفسة والشعب هو المتهم اة هو كدة  ما هو قضاء مصر شامخ وعادل 

الى الواحد بيشوفة وبيسمعة وبقى يحصل و قطع الكهرباء  والقرف و الاشعار و عدم الامان و يا كدة يا هتبقى زى سوريا وليبيا ونجيب لك داعش هاة اختار انت بقى !! يا الوسخ يا الاوسخ

و الشعب دماغة اتغسلت وباقى تايهة و اتلعبت نفس اللعبة شعب ابن عرص بطبعة يا حب يكون عبد للفرعون وبس
الكرف التلات 
السيسى لم يحكم مصر أو أى عرص منهم هيفشخوا المصريين بسبب الثورة هيكدرونا و يفقرونا وهياخدو قروض من البنك الدولى و قروض من طوب الارض و دة هي سبب تتضخم  يعنى الدولار الى ب٦ هيبقى ب ٢٠ و ممكن ٣٠ جنية !!!!يعنى اكتر من ¾ سعر مصر يدخلوا الفقر....
غير شوية مشاريع وهمية فنكوش كبارى،مدن جديدة،مفاعل نووي أو والله لزوم تخليد فخامة الرئيس..
 و ممكن يدخلوا فى حرب وهمية مع دولة او مجموعات إرهابية مسلحة وهميةعلشان الى يفتح بقة يبقى عميل و خاين و من اعداء الوطن و طبعا هما مش هيفشخوا الشعب بس لا ابدا دة الهدف تدمير مصر و ثرواتة و ارضة تخيل لم الواقع يفشخ الخيال لم يتم بيع أرض مصر علشان نقدر نسدد ديون مصر 
و تجفيف كل موارد الدولة و اولهم النيل طبعا و الآثار هتكون للبيع عادى و شوية يتم إعلان إفلاس مصر و قتة الى هيحكم مصر هنا أصحاب الديون السيادية طبعا الامارات و السعودية و من خلف الستار اسرائيل 
و شعب مصر وقتة مش هتقدر يقول لا علشان بقى متعودة
هبقى اكمل بعدينا لحس اتبضنت ...............

10/31/2014

Stop #Islamophobia

Stop Islamophobia

Islamophobia is alive today, as I was reminded again a few days ago when someone told me that the Qur'an only teaches hatred. Chalk that up perhaps to ignorance, but like many people, he expressed at the same time a fear of Muslims that I have noticed in many countries all over the world. I define this as Islamophobia.

Yet I just read an article claiming that Islamophobia does not exist, and another contending that since anti-Islamic crimes have declined after peaking in September 2001 the US cannot be described as Islamophobic.

However, if Islamophobia is defined as a fear or hatred of Islam and Muslims, then it does exist. In fact, some Muslims argue that this term is inadequate to describe the hatred of their faith and the discrimination they experience. They would prefer to call it 'anti-Islamic racism' since it combines a dislike of a particular religion and an active discrimination against the people who belong to that faith.

Jews, who have suffered discrimination, protest Islamophobia

The Runnymede Trust in the 1997 document, "Islamophobia: A Challenge For Us All," identified eight components that define Islamophobia. These are just as relevant today as they were 15 years ago:
1) Islam is seen as a monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to change.
2) Islam is seen as separate and 'other'. It does not have values in common with other cultures, is not affected by them and does not influence them.
3) Islam is seen as inferior to the West. It is seen as barbaric, irrational, primitive and sexist.
4) Islam is seen as violent, aggressive, threatening, supportive of terrorism and engaged in a 'clash of civilisations.'
5) Islam is seen as a political ideology and is used for political or military advantage.
6) Criticisms made of the West by Islam are rejected out of hand.
7) Hostility towards Islam is used to justify discriminatory practices towards Muslims and exclusion of Muslims from mainstream society.
8) Anti-Muslim hostility is seen as natural or normal.


Islamophobia is a website that describes Islamophobia as "an irrational fear or prejudice towards Islam and Muslims." It includes many articles introducing Islam. Another site documents cases of Islamophobia.

Islamophobia is irrational, not Islam. We tend to fear the unknown or things that we are ignorant of. The list that the Runnymede Trust provides illustrates the appalling ignorance of many people about Islam. One of the most effective ways of combating Islamophobia is through education. It is by far the easiest, since deep-seated prejudices are harder to eradicate.

Some people, unfortunately, prefer to wallow in ignorance. They only know the myths that the media, or at least segments thereof, pedal in order to sell what purports to be news.


Nearly a fifth of Americans believe that Barack Obama is Muslim. This myth was popular during the 2008 election in the US. In this election year it is crucial that this blatant example of Islamophobia be eradicated once and for all. Unfortunately, it will probably be perpetuated by those who can benefit from such ignorance.

Europeans are not immune to Islamophobia either. Many there dread “Eurabia,” the ostensibly imminent Arab/Muslim takeover of the continent, even though its Muslim population is less than 3 per cent.

Islamophobia is not just interpersonal: it is systemic. It is intimately connected with sexism and violence, both of which are endemic in Western societies. That is why it is so difficult to eradicate Islamophobia.


The media are complicit in perpetuating Islamophobia. Many journalists know little about religion in general and Islam in particular. Deadlines are one factor in their ignorance but much more crucial is the relegation of religion to the private sphere in the West. Secularized journalists thus find it especially difficult to understand Islam, a religion that contradicts this relegation, since it emphatically denies the public/private distinction.

Anti-semitism and Christophobia exist as well in Western societies. The former is attacked more often than any other group in the US, but this does not mean that Islamophobia is "a gross exaggeration that has been peddled by Muslim political leaders with an agenda," as one website puts it. 

All hate crimes must stop, not just the one perpetrated against the group one belongs to. Islamophobia must be eradicated. The fight against every form of religious phobia is part of that process of eradication. 

We must support each other so that one day every form of religious phobia will be gone.
 Isha'Allah.

2/21/2014

Will #WhatsApp Reach 1 Billion Users Faster Than #Facebook Did?

It appears that the billion-user club is about to get a new member.

Facebook announced the acquisition of messaging app WhatsApp on Wednesday, a deal worth up to $19 billion in cash and stock that puts serious muscle behind Facebook's international reach.
In a call with investors to outline the acquisition, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and whatsapp CEO Jan Koum hinted multiple times that they expect WhatsApp to become a billion-user platform, a milestone that Facebook eclipsed less than 18 months ago.

"WhatsApp is the only widely used app we've ever seen that has more engagement and a higher percent of people using it daily than Facebook itself," Zuckerberg said on the acquisition call Wednesday, noting that WhatsApp has doubled in size over the past year. "Based on our experience of building global services with strong growth and engagement, we believe WhatsApp is on a path to reach over one billion people in the next few years."
WhatsApp has already over 450 million monthly active users (320 of which are daily active users), and the company claims it is adding more than one million new users per day. For comparison purposes, Twitter added nine million new users in the entire Q4 2013; Facebook did better, adding 40 million in the same three month period, but growth is slower for a company with a billion-plus users already under its belt.
Facebook reached one billion in October 2012, roughly eight and a half years after launch. Could WhatsApp hit one billion even faster?
Assuming the company continues to add one million users per day, then yes. Much faster, actually.
WhatsApp is on pace to reach one billion users in August of 2015, approximately a year and a half after being acquired by Facebook. At that time, WhatsApp will be a little more than 6 years old, achieving the billion user milestone more than two years faster than Facebook did.


Of course, WhatsApp's trajectory is likely to change over time. Just like other consumer services like Facebook and Twitter, growth may slow as the user base gets larger and new users are harder to find.
Regardless of the timing, Zuckerberg seems poised to own two separate billion-user brands in the near future, and he's understandably excited.
"Services in the world that have a billion people using them are incredibly valuable," he said.
For $19 billion, we'd certainly hope so.

2/20/2014

Five Reasons Why I Love #Egypt

With a string of bad news coming out of my beloved homeland (from bombings to fatal road accidents and lost mountain climbers), I have fallen into a bout of depression.
That depression then turned into anger (I got mad, I got very mad!).  Overwhelmed with emotions that I didn’t know how to digest, I decided to try and look at the bright side and remind myself of all the things I love about Egypt.

The Egyptian Smile
There is no other smile out there that is as genuine as that of an Egyptian. The radiating goodness and positivity you feel, even in these hard times, comes off as so genuine that it becomes contagious. Enough to turn your day around.
Egyptian Chivalry
Egyptians band together in times of trouble. If they know you or not, they will have your back regardless. Very recently, I had a very bad car accident on the way to Hurgahda (the car flipped three times). Complete strangers came to our rescue, flipped the car over and came running with their first aid kits.
As we were only two girls on the road, one truck driver took it upon himself to make sure we were taken care of, getting us into an ambulance. We thought that would be the last of us seeing him, but to our surprise we found him waiting for us at the Ras Gharib hospital and he made sure to take all the administrative work off our hands so we could concentrate on getting checked up.
I don’t know if God sent us an angel or if, like they say, “chivalry is not dead,” but this man will always leave an ever lasting, amazing impression of my fellow countrymen.
rwacegypt.blogspot.com


We Have the Beach All Year Round
Not everyone is as lucky as us to be able to go lay by the beach in December or party on the sand in April. With temperatures that would make an eskimo jealous, I have to say we are blessed with unrivaled beaches and gorgeous temperatures.
beachesegypt

Egyptian Creativity
Leave it to us Egyptians to come up with the most absurd inventions possible, from some that are outright genius (check video below) to some that get their job done but are a bit ridiculous.
Since the onset of Egypt’s revolution we’ve seen unbelievable inventions come out, like the pan hat that was used as a protective helmet in Tahrir.
Long live the Egyptian man’s mind – you put a smile on my face every day.
coolhategyptcreativity

Egyptian Humor
Leave it to us that in times of dire tragedy we find the humor in everything. When everyone wants to escape Egypt and is looking for a safe haven abroad we of course have to turn it into a joke. It is probably a psychological ailment we all suffer from, deferring our real issues through humor, but hey, it definitely makes us smile when everything else is so grim!
egyptianhumor




12/16/2013

Father demands 'one million likes' dowry for daughter Yemen Facebook

Father demands 'one million likes' dowry for daughter



A Yemeni young man who sought to marry his sweetheart was shocked when her father demanded “one million likes” on Facebook as a dowry for her.

The father, Salim Ayyash, asked the would-be husband he must write the word “like” one million times over a period of one month in all his tweets and contacts with friends on Facebook. But the father quickly assured the daunted young man, identified as Osama, that he might consider cutting that number before the end of the deadline.

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Ayyash, a well-known Facebook personality in the western Yemeni province of Taizz, also told the suitor that he would be watching his Facebook and Twitter activity to check whether he was making progress.
“Ayyash said he was watching Osama’s online activities as he set off to accomplish that dowry task



…he also told him that before the end of the month, he would evaluate his achievement and could reduce the dowry if he is satisfied with his achievement,” the Saud Arabic language daily Sada said in a report from Yemen.

It said the rare request by Ayyash came amidst soaring wedding expenses and dowries (money paid by grooms to their brides under Islamic law) in Yemen.
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6/06/2013

kiss inside a damaged public bus #Turkey

A young couple, who are anti-government protesters, kiss inside a damaged public bus, used as a barricade at Taksim Square in Istanbul. REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis

5/09/2013

Domestic violence in Saudi Arabia made headlines worldwide

 domestic violence in Saudi Arabia made headlines worldwide

Saudi Arabia, a country not exactly known for progressive attitudes toward women, has launched its first major campaign against domestic violence  — its latest effort to embrace, at least superficially, some women’s rights reforms.
The ads in the “No More Abuse” campaign show a woman in a dark veil with one black eye. The English version reads “some things can’t be covered.” The Arabic version, according to Foreign Policy‘s David Kenner, translates roughly as “the tip of the iceberg.” A Web site for the campaign includes a report on reducing domestic violence and emergency resources for victims.


Exact figures on domestic violence are hard to come by. The State Department’s most recent human rights report cites estimates that 16 to 50 percent of Saudi wives suffer some kind of spousal abuse. Saudi law does not criminalize domestic violence or spousal rape, and social repercussions can make reporting violence of any kind difficult. Both rape and domestic violence “may be seriously underreported,” according to the State Department report.


The Saudi government has begun to address the problem, at least in name. In 2008, a prime ministerial decree ordered the expansion of “social protection units,” its version of women’s shelters, in several large cities, and ordered the government to draft a national strategy to deal with domestic violence, according to the United Nations. Several royal foundations, including the King Abdulaziz Center for National Dialogue and the King Khalid Foundation, have also led education and awareness efforts.
None of this changes the fact, of course, that Saudi Arabia remains an often difficult place to be a woman. The World Economic Forum ranks the country 131st out of 135 for its record on women’s rights, citing a total lack of political and economic empowerment.
The country has a strong record on women’s health and education, however: On metrics such as enrollment in higher education, Saudi Arabia actually scores well above the global average.
Some of those well-educated women are leading the fight against domestic violence now. Maha Almuneef, a pediatrician, directs the National Family Safety Program, an anti-violence effort that has also benefited from the patronage of Saudi Arabia’s Princess Adela.
“Reporting violence and abuse should be compulsory, and there should be a witness protection program,” Adela said at a 2009 conference on ending the country’s domestic abus

4/16/2013

Did We Get the #Muslim_Brotherhood Wrong?

 


Nope. But it's time to revise our assessments. 


 The deterioration of Egyptian politics has spurred an intense, often vitriolic polarization between Islamists and their rivals that has increasingly spilled over into analytical disputes. Some principled liberalswho once supported the Muslim Brotherhood against the Mubarak regime's repression have recanted. Longtime critics of the Islamists view themselves as vindicated and demand that Americans, including me, apologize for getting the Brotherhood wrong. As one prominent Egyptian blogger recently put it, "are you ready to apologize for at least 5 years of promoting the MB as fluffy Democrats to everyone? ARE YOU?"

 

So, should we apologize? Did we get the Brotherhood wrong? Not really. The academic consensus about the Brotherhood got most of the big things right about that organization ... at least as it existed prior to the 2011 Egyptian revolution. U.S. analysists and academics correctly identified the major strands in its ideological development and internal factional struggles, its electoral prowess, its conflicts with al Qaeda and hard-line Salafis, and the tension between its democratic ambitions and its illiberal aspirations. And liberals who defended the Brotherhood against the Mubarak regime's torture and repression were unquestionably right to do so -- indeed, I would regard defending the human rights and political participation of a group with which one disagrees as a litmus test for liberalism.
But getting the pre-2011 period right doesn't let us off the hook for what has come since. How one felt about questions of the Brotherhood's ability to be democratic in the past has nothing to do with the urgency of holding it to those commitments today. Giving the group the chance to participate fully in the democratic process does not mean giving it a pass on bad behavior once it is in power -- or letting it off the hook for abuses of pluralism, tolerance, or universal values.  That's why I would like to see Egypt's electoral process continue, and for the Brotherhood to be punished at the ballot box for their manifest failures.
So what did we say about the Brotherhood, and what did they get wrong or right? I wouldn't presume to speak for a diverse academic community that disagrees about many important things, but some broad themes do emerge from a decade of literature. For one, most academics viewed the Brotherhood of the 2000s as a democratic actor but not a liberal one. That's an important distinction. By the late 2000s, the Brotherhood had a nearly two-decade track record of participation in national, professional, and student elections. It had developed an elaborate ideological justification for not just the acceptability but the necessity of democratic procedure. When it lost elections, such as in the professional associations, it peacefully surrendered power (and, ironically given current debates, it was willing to boycott when it saw the rules stacked against it). By 2007, it seemed to me that there was nothing more the Brotherhood could have done to demonstrate its commitment to democratic procedures in the absence of the actual opportunity to win elections and govern. I think that was right.
And of course it had developed a well-honed electoral machine ready for use whenever the opportunity presented itself.  Nobody in the academic community doubted that the Brotherhood would do well in the first wave of elections. Academics also pegged public support for the Brotherhood at about 20 percent, not far off the 25 percent Mohammed Morsy managed in the first round of the presidential election. They correctly identified the organizational advantages the Brotherhood would have in early elections, which would allow them to significantly overperform that baseline of support against new, less-organized opponents.
The Brotherhood's commitment to democratic procedures never really translated into a commitment to democratic or liberal norms, however. It always struggled with the obvious tension between its commitment to sharia (Islamic law) and its participation in democratic elections. Not being able to win allowed the Brothers to avoid confronting this yawning gap, even if they frequently found themselves enmeshed in public controversies over their true intentions -- for instance, with the release of a draft political party platform in 2007 that hinted at the creation of a state committee to review legislation for compliance with sharia and a rejection of a female or non-Muslim president.  As for liberalism, nobody ever doubted the obvious point that this was an Islamist movement with deeply socially conservative values and priorities. The real question was over their willingness to tolerate different points of view -- and there, deep skepticism remained the rule across the academic community.

4/13/2013

سقوط الدولة المصرية: غياب قواعد اللعبة السياسية

من ساعة 25 يناير 2011 لم أرى أي فصيل سياسي في مصر يتحدث عن وضع قواد أساسية و واضحة و بسيطة تكون أساس إعادة بناء النظام السياسي في مصر.
 
القواعد دي غير تقديمها، كان لازم يبقى عليها إجماع... تكون مجموعة مبادئ لا يتنازع عليها أي فصيل سياسي: ليبرالي، إسلامي/ديني، يساري، إلخ
من الأمثلة في التاريخ هو إعلان الإستقلال الأمريكي. كان إعلان إستقلال لكنه كان إعلان مبادئ. الإعلان كان لا يزيد على صفحة وحدة.
الوقت بين إعلان الإستقلال لحد وضع الدستور الأمريكي كان 11 سنة!في هذه الأثناء كان إعلان الإستقلال ومبادئه هم قواعد اللعبة السياسية في امريكا.
الليبرالية لايمكنها تقديم أي حلول لولم يكن هناك قواعد واضحة حتى وإن كانت أقل من المستوى لئن اللمنهج الليبرالي يعتمد على البناء و التصحيح.
 
 
 
 
لكن مصر في السنتين إلي فاتوا و بالذات الفترة الأخيرة تفتقد لأي معالم واضحة و مطبقة تعطي ضمانات و تطمينات لكل الأطراف السياسية.
 
 
و الأسباب معروفة... فالإخوان تغطرسوا و ابعدوا الأخر و شكلوا قواعد اللعبة و غيروها على أهوائهم كما تطورت الأحداث.
 
هم كدة فاكرين انهم على طريق النجاح... لكن اللي مش فهمينه إنه لا يمكنهم تحقيق حتى اهدافهم الضيقة من غير قواعد واضحة مطبقة بحياد على الجميع.
 
و عشان كدة اسلوبهم و منهجهم لن يخلق إلا نظام مهلهل ساقط كالوضع في باكستان.
 
ما يحدث في مصر هو انها ما بقتش دولة قانون... لكنها دولة ساقطة... Failed State... أو على طريقها لذلك.
 

تعرف على الليبرالية في ٣ دقائق: جشع التجار و غلو الأسعار

معنى حرية التبادل و إن أي التبادل طالما حر لازم يكون إيجابي المجموع و ليس صفر المجموع (أي إن كلا من المتبادلين يحسنوا من وضعهم وليس واحد فقط على حساب الأخر). حلقة إليوم بوضح فيها الأسباب العديدة غير جشع التجار و المنتجين اللي تؤدي إلى غلو الأسعار. الإعتقاد إن الجشع هو السبب الأوحد أو الأساسي لغلو الأسعار فكرة مغلوطة بل هي خطر عل الإقتصاد


الحشيش بكام

موقع مخصص لتقديم أحدث أسعار الحشيش وأماكن البيع يوميا».. هكذا يعرف القائمون

 على الموقع الإلكتروني،



«الحشيش بكام؟» موقعهم، حيث إن الهدف من إنشاء الموقع أن يقدم متابعة لأسعار

الحشيش من خلال التواصل عبر موقعي

«فيس بوك» و«تويتر»،

 حيث وصل عدد المعجبين بصفحته على «فيس بوك» إلى 1364 شخصا،

 ومتابعوه على «تويتر»

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الغريب ان وزارو الاتصالات الى كانت عايز تحجب المواقع الجنسية سايبة الموقع دة وغيرة من المواقع المشبوة والى من السهل تتباعة ومعرفة المسئول عن الموقع و القبض علية, ولحد علمى ان الحشيش غير قانوانى فى مصر يعنى احنا مش فى هولاند لسة 

4/12/2013

Sleeping with the Enemy

What happened between the Neanderthals and us?


The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig, is a large, mostly glass building shaped a bit like a banana. The institute sits at the southern edge of the city, in a neighborhood that still very much bears the stamp of its East German past. If you walk down the street in one direction, you come to a block of Soviet-style apartment buildings; in the other, to a huge hall with a golden steeple, which used to be known as the Soviet Pavilion. (The pavilion is now empty.) In the lobby of the institute there’s a cafeteria and an exhibit on great apes. A TV in the cafeteria plays a live feed of the orangutans at the Leipzig Zoo.
Svante Pääbo heads the institute’s department of evolutionary genetics. He is tall and lanky, with a long face, a narrow chin, and bushy eyebrows, which he often raises to emphasize some sort of irony. Pääbo’s office is dominated by a life-size model of a Neanderthal skeleton, propped up so that its feet dangle over the floor, and by a larger-than-life-size portrait that his graduate students presented to him on his fiftieth birthday. Each of the students painted a piece of the portrait, the over-all effect of which is a surprisingly good likeness of Pääbo, but in mismatched colors that make it look as if he had a skin disease.
At any given moment, Pääbo has at least half a dozen research efforts in progress. When I visited him in May, he had one team analyzing DNA that had been obtained from a forty- or fifty-thousand-year-old finger bone found in Siberia, and another trying to extract DNA from a cache of equally ancient bones from China. A third team was slicing open the brains of mice that had been genetically engineered to produce a human protein.
In Pääbo’s mind, at least, these research efforts all hang together. They are attempts to solve a single problem in evolutionary genetics, which might, rather dizzyingly, be posed as: What made us the sort of animal that could create a transgenic mouse?
The question of what defines the human has, of course, been kicking around since Socrates, and probably a lot longer. If it has yet to be satisfactorily resolved, then this, Pääbo suspects, is because it has never been properly framed. “The challenge is to address the questions that are answerable,” he told me.
Pääbo’s most ambitious project to date, which he has assembled an international consortium to assist him with, is an attempt to sequence the entire genome of the Neanderthal. The project is about halfway complete and has already yielded some unsettling results, including the news, announced by Pääbo last year, that modern humans, before doing in the Neanderthals, must have interbred with them.
Once the Neanderthal genome is complete, scientists will be able to lay it gene by gene—indeed, base by base—against the human, and see where they diverge. At that point, Pääbo believes, an answer to the age-old question will finally be at hand. Neanderthals were very closely related to modern humans—so closely that we shared our prehistoric beds with them—and yet clearly they were not humans. Somewhere among the genetic disparities must lie the mutation or, more probably, mutations that define us. Pääbo already has a team scanning the two genomes, drawing up lists of likely candidates.
“I want to know what changed in fully modern humans, compared with Neanderthals, that made a difference,” he said. “What made it possible for us to build up these enormous societies, and spread around the globe, and develop the technology that I think no one can doubt is unique to humans. There has to be a genetic basis for that, and it is hiding somewhere in these lists.”
Pääbo, who is now fifty-six, grew up in Stockholm. His mother, a chemist, was an Estonian refugee. For a time, she worked in the laboratory of a biochemist named Sune Bergström, who later won a Nobel Prize. Pääbo was the product of a lab affair between the two, and, although he knew who his father was, he wasn’t supposed to discuss it. Bergström had a wife and another son; Pääbo’s mother, meanwhile, never married. Every Saturday, Bergström would visit Pääbo and take him for a walk in the woods, or somewhere else where he didn’t think he’d be recognized.
“Officially, at home, he worked on Saturday,” Pääbo told me. “It was really crazy. His wife knew. But they never talked about it. She never tried to call him at work on Saturdays.” As a child, Pääbo wasn’t particularly bothered by the whole arrangement; later, he occasionally threatened to knock on Bergström’s door. “I would say, ‘You have to tell your son—your other son—because he will find out sometime,’ ” he recalled. Bergström would promise to do this, but never followed through. (As a result, Bergström’s other son did not learn that Pääbo existed until shortly before Bergström’s death, in 2004.)
From an early age, Pääbo was interested in old things. He discovered that around fallen trees it was sometimes possible to find bits of pottery made by prehistoric Swedes, and he filled his room with potsherds. When he was a teen-ager, his mother took him to visit the Pyramids, and he was entranced. He enrolled at Uppsala University, planning to become an Egyptologist.

4/04/2013

الصور التي لا تريد السعودية للعالم رؤيتها.. تقرير حول هدم #السعودية أقدس الآثار الإسلامية في مكة

تحت عنوان "الصور التي لا تريد السعودية للعالم رؤيتها وأدلة على هدم أقدس الآثار الاسلامية في مكة"، نشرت صحيفة "الاندبندنت" البريطانية تحقيقاً أرفقته بثلاث صور قالت فيه "بدأت السلطات السعودية بهدم بعض أقدم الاقسام في اكثر مساجد الاسلام اهمية، وذلك في إطار عملية توسيع للكعبة مثيرة للجدل تقدر كلفتها بمليارات الدولارات." وحصلت الصحيفة على صور يظهر فيها عمال ومعهم حفارات آلية وقد بدأوا بهدم بعض أجزاء من آثار تعود للدولتين العثمانية والعباسية في الجانب الشرقي من المسجد الحرام في مكة المكرمة. واشارت الصحيفة الى أن المبنى الذي يعرف ايضا باسم المسجد الكبير، هو أهم المواقع المقدسة في الاسلام لضمه الكعبة، القبلة التي يتوجه اليها جميع المسلمين في صلاتهم. والأعمدة هي آخر ما تبقى من أقسام المسجد التي تعود الى مئات السنين ، وتشكل المحيط الداخلي على مشارف الارض الرخامية البيضاء المحيطة بالكعبة. وحسب الصحيفة، أثارت الصور التي التقطت على مدى الأسابيع القليلة الماضية رعب علماء الآثار، كما تزامن نشرها مع زيارة ولي العهد البريطاني الأمير تشارلز الحريص على الحفاظ على التراث المعماري، إلى المملكة العربية السعودية ترافقه زوجته كاميلا دوقة كورنوول. واثار توقيت زيارة الامير البريطاني تنديدا من قبل نشطاء حقوق الإنسان السعوديين بعد اعدام السلطات السعودية 7 اشخاص في وقت سابق من هذا الاسبوع رغم حقيقة أن بعضهم كانوا أحداثا عند ارتكابهم الجرائم المدانين فيها. وقد حفرت العديد من الأعمدة العثمانية والعباسية في مكة المكرمة بالخط العربي وحملت أسماء صحابة النبي محمد ومؤرخة لحظات مهمة في حياة نبي الإسلام. ويؤرخ احد الاعمدة التي يعتقد أنه هدم بالكامل، لمعراج النبي محمد (ص) الى السماء في ليلة القدر، حسبما نقله موقع "بي بي سي".

3/18/2013

Homeland security bans “Jews of #Egypt ”

Homeland security bans “Jews of #Egypt ”

Do You remember that documentary “Jews of Egypt” ??
This ambitious interesting documentary was going to be the second Egyptian documentary to be screened commercially in Egyptian selected cinemas. Its official release was supposed to be tonight but just as we are waiting for its release we found out that it was banned.



  Yes it was banned from screening in Egypt officially despite it was approved by the Censorship bureau following the ministry of Culture. The film was banned by the Homeland Security previously known as State security.
The documentary film maker Amir Ramsis spoke about the matter on his Facebook page.
Ramsis' FB Page
The film’s producer Haitham Khamis also showed the approvals of the Censorship bureau on his Facebook page as well.
Here is the documentary’s English trailer. 


“Jews of Egypt” trailer
I think Ramsis should air the documentary on TV channels for free , let the whole world watches it.
By the way ironically at the same time we found out that the Muslim brotherhood got a film production company called “Cinema Al Nahda” and it is going to screen its first production ever “The Report” { a social drama} in the Arts academy !! The Arts academy is owned by the State.

#egypt #Giza Pyramids celebrate #St.Patrick’s Day

#Giza Pyramids celebrate #St.Patrick’s Day

The Embassy of Ireland in Cairo celebrated the St. Patrick's Day , the National Day of Ireland last Thursday in a very creative way. The pyramids and Sphinx turned green that night :)
Of course our tourism board and our media were busy in something else as usual.

3/08/2013

EgyWeather : Sandstorm alert

EgyptWeather : Sandstorm alert

And today we are having not so nice sandstorm in several cities in Egypt. Among the cities that got its share from the terrible sandstorm in Egypt today : Cairo, Zagzig, Fayoum, Suez "Canal city" and Ras Ghareb and Hurghada  "Red sea".
The main ports in Suez city and red sea have been closed.
Here is a photo for how Cairo looks today from Gregg Carlstorm's hotel window

It is extremely terrible especially for me , my nose is blocked and eyes are hurting me. It is the typical
I think this bad weather will affect the usual protesting activities in Cairo today. .