It has came to my attention that the reasons of my quitting were not clear for some people, which is probably due to the fact that I didn't exactly elaborate on why I did what I did or what it means. This is an effort to remedy that. This is not me coming back to blogging though: this wasn't me crying wolf or a publicity stunt, so fans and haters, don't raise your hopes up or don't get disappointed, respectively. This is a clarification, more than anything.

1. While it is true that I am currently in the States , it doesn't mean that I have "escaped" Egypt or have no intention of going back. On the contrary, come next week I will be gracing the Cairo International Airport with my fabulous presence again. I have no intention of letting those goons get me out of Egypt so easily; If I am to leave it will be on my terms, and not theirs. Me traveling to the US right after shutting down the blog was purely coincidental: the trip was planned for months in advance and the decision to shut down the blog was more of a spur of the moment decision. In retrospect, it probably would've been better and smarter- or at least less rumor inducing- to do this after I came back from the States, but alas, what's done is done. However , to make it clear once and for all, I maybe down, but I am not out.
2. I have stated two reasons for quitting, and the majority of the people took the first one and ignored the second one, even though for me the second one was one of the major reasons for doing what I did. The truth of the matter is, the secuirty situation and intimidation aside, this was a protest, my way of telling the Egyptian blogosphere that we need to focus. That we now have the media attention, the people's admiration or at least interest, and the "zeitgeist' is ours if you will, so it's time we use it wisely. Blogs actually allowed the world to listen to us, so now that we have this tool, the question is : what do we have to say exactly? It's personally depressing to see that very few, handful really, from those who command the attention, have anything to contribute to the debate, and even those are censoring themselves now. I am not saying that we should take ourselves too seriously, or start going on ego trips over our importance and role and believe that we are leaders and influential, but there are things to be done that we can easily do. At the end of the day, a blogger is purveyor of information: we can supply people with the information and the lessons they need to affect change and reform. Just think about it: None of the things we are demanding or calling for are exactly new. There has been countless civil rights movement, democracy movements, nonviolent activism movements, very successful ones, all over history and all over the world. We should learn from them. We should provide their lessons to the public, think about how to apply their strategies to our situation, and see which things that they did are applicable to our situation and which aren't. We are not inventing anything new here: the knowledge is available and many amongst us know it already. Maybe it's time to share it.

   And even if you do feel disheartened about the apathy or the lack of interest or activism on the part of the average Mo in Egypt, well that too needs to be examined and worked on. Let's face it, the average Egyptian is scared of political reform, and shies away from religious reform, so how do you get them involved? Well, there is still social reform, and they have shown keen interest in that. Take the anti-sexual harassment protest for example: For the first time ever you have had a protest that included foreigners, AUC students, regular University students, Hijabis, liberals, alongside your run-of-the-mill activist. Finally, something we could all agree on: Let's capitalize on that. The question becomes: Why did the campaign stop? Why didn't it go forward? We should've. If you draw the people in using social reform, than sooner or later they will become interested and active in political and religious reform as well, because it is all connected. That's an example of how to reel them in. And it can be done, easily. But do we do it? Nope! Some of us were too busy picking up cute AUC girls at the protest instead. It's shameful. It's time for us to stop being distracted about such things and focus: All of those people could've been mobilized , and instead the opportunity got wasted. We shouldn't allow this to happen again.

3. That being said and thus out of way, I am not saying that first reason is irrelevant either: Our security situation is dire, and not only in Egypt, but rather all across the middle-east. Bloggers have been intimidated by the authorities in Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan, Syria, Iran, Bahrain, just to name a few. It seems like the period of hope and reform that the bloggers of those countries have pushed for and represented in the past 2 years is now coming to an end, with the authorities more and more focused and intent on shutting us up, using everything from intimidation to imprisonment. And we have no defenders, no one to protect us, or champion our causes or lobby for our rights and safety. There used to be the Committee to Protect Bloggers, but that went defunct due to lack of funding, media-pressure- only strategy and too large of a scope: To champion the causes of every single persecuted blogger all over the world takes incredible time and effort. Not to mention they relied heavily on the media, and the media is selective of which stories to publish and which don't, and even when they do mention it, there is heavy doubt on how effective the media is as a pressure tool against repressive regimes. But it's the only tool we had, and god bless them for trying in the cases in which they did. God knows that without the media and the pressure they applied, Alaa probably would've stayed a lot longer in jail. So don't get me wrong Media, it's not that I am ungrateful, thanks for all you have done, but it's starting to be not enough, and the Abdel Karim case has proven that so far.

So what now? What's the solution? Well, here is what I am proposing:

I am proposing creating an organization that deals with championing the causes of blogger and freedom of speech in the middle-east, at least as the first step, since it seems that 90% of the cases of blogger intimidation and oppression comes from this region anyway. This new organization / committee / coalition / whatever would exclusively bring focus to our causes, champion them and push for our protection. It would do so by utilizing a strategy that doesn't only rely on bloggers and the media to pressure governments. This new coalition would include 1) prominent bloggers from the US on both sides of the political divide (cause one of the few things that I think the left and the right can agree and co-operate on is the importance of free speech), who will bring light, focus and attention of the American public and the media to the plight of those bloggers, and help mobilize their readers to start letter campaigns and pressure against those governments who do oppress bloggers, 2) prominent bloggers from each and every middle-eastern country, who will provide us with the news of who is getting arrested or persecuted, and help mobilize their local blogosphere and media to come to aid of those who are being persecuted, 3)Human rights organizations and interest groups, local and international ones, to help with the legal, physical and moral support for those imprisoned or charged with crimes due to what they wrote, and 4) Members of American and Europeans Think Thanks and Interest groups, who will help with spreading the word and lobbying their respective government or the select lawmakers who do care about freedom of speech to apply pressure on our governments to leave us the hell alone. This way we would cover all fronts and apply pressure from everywhere: The Media, the blogosphere, both legally and physically on the ground , internationally through lobbying governments and lawmakers, and not to mention, most importantly, through the campaigning of the thousands of caring people world-wide that do give a damn about our freedom and spend their time and effort writing e-mails to our embassies and their government respresentitives, forwarding letters and informing others, and raising money through online donations to support those bloggers affected and in need. If something like this gets created and gets operated correctly, the playing field would be drastically changed in favor of the side of the middle-eastern bloggers, and eventually persecuted bloggers everywhere. It would eliminate a huge part of the worrying associated with blogging and would stop people like me from quitting, and even eventually get me, and others like me who quit, started on blogging again. Such an entity is essential, necessary and its time has come.

Pursuing such an organization this would be the logical next step, for me, for us, to take. This will be my focus in the few remaining days I have here in DC: How to make such an organization real. If you are interested, if you think this is a good idea and would like to help, or have suggestions or ideas or input to help improve or facilitate this, please contact me and let me know. I am all ears, and open to all suggestions.

To risk sounding cliché and trite, let's light and candle instead of cursing the darkness.

We can do this!

The Sandmonkey

PS: I am overwhelmed on the incredible amount of love and support shown in the blogs all over, the comment section of my previous post and all over my Inbox. It's really humbling, and in many ways depressing, because my decision has seemingly caused a lot of people pain and that was the last thing that I wanted to do to any of you. You have my love and sincerest apologies for any grief or disappointment my decision has caused any of you. Thank you so much for your kind words and your best wishes. I honestly do not know what I could've possibly done in my previous life to deserve such fantastic readers, but I must've been a freaking saint or something. Anyway, hopefully, if this works out, One day you will find me ranting over here once again.

Here's hopin!

Today is going to be the day that I've been dreading for quite sometime now. Today is the day I walk away from this blog. Done. Finished.

There are many reasons, each would take a post to list, and I just do not have the energy to list them. As anyone who has been reading this blog for the past  month, I think it is apparent that things are not the same with me. There are reasons for that:

One of the chief reasons is the fact that there has been too much heat around me lately. I no longer believe that my anonymity is kept, especially with State Secuirty agents lurking around my street and asking questions about me since that day. I ignore that, the same way I ignored all the clicking noises that my phones started to exhibit all of a sudden, or  the law suit filed by Judge Mourad on my friends, and instead grew bolder and more reckless at a time where everybody else started being more cautious. It took me a while to take note of the fear that has been gripping our little blogsphere and comprehend what it really means. The prospects for improvment, to put it slightly, look pretty grim. I was the model of caution, and believing in my invincipility by managing not to get arrested for the past 2 and a half years, I've grown reckless. Stupid Monkey. Stupid!

And speaking of the state of the egyptian blogsphere, it has been pretty depressing in its own right. One has to wonder at some point the futulity of being a keyboard warrior in a country where nothing seems to matter to its people anymore. At the same time, there has been those amongst us who have loved the fame and the attention, and are now becoming the egyptian blogsphere's equivelant of Paris Hilton: They are famous for being famous, peddling the same stories and not really presenting anything of value to the debate. And then there is the fact that we are entering the "Iconogrphy" phase : We are becoming Icons. Too much Media attention, too many american organizations claiming to champion our causes while they are cashing out in donation from people gullible enough to believe them, too much hype generated by us and others, so many of us tooting our own horns and even crying wolf at times has made Icons of us. We now have young bloggers who come up to many of us "Old Guard" and tell us how they are such great fans of ours, and how we are their role models and heroes and how they are starting to blog because of our "courageous example". And there are those of us who are buying into it, taking in undertsudies to placate our big heads, hooking up with groupies to feed our egos, acting as if we are the warriors for change we are made up to be and forgetting why we started blogging to begin with. It seems that we are entering a state of transformation, and we should either 1) evolve, take the next step whatever it is, 2) stay the way we are and risk becoming carricatures of ourselves or 3) quit. Not knowing what the next step is, and needing time and space to figure it out, I chose the only other option that made sense: I quit!

So here comes my apology to those of you who read me: I am sorry. I really can't continue to do this. You guys have been the best readers anyone could hope for, altough there are some of you who made me come close to shutting down the comments section many many times. I love you all for everything you have done for me, for all of the egyptian blogsphere. When I asked for your help, you gave us more than a helping hand. You cared. You gave a damn about a bunch of egyptians who had a dream to be free and stood by us in our houres of need. For that you are my heroes, and I can not possibly thank you enough.

May the day comes when I rant once again….

Love you all,

The Sandmonkey  

A lot of people rejoiced when Edrogan said that he won't run for president, and instead will have one of his men run for it instead, but I wasn't. What He is doing is basically cornering the country in a very well played game: He stays as PM, the President is one of his men, and whatever changes or reforms he wants to do to Turkey will get rubber stamped by the new president, as opposed to the old one who vetoed more than 200 ammendments to the constitution and new laws proposed by Edrogan's party. It seems that this new direction will force the turkish army to confront Edrogan and his men and start another military coup with a very secular transitional government for the next 5 years. But ecen that is unclear, because the military would be gambeling against the people's wishes and it would shake Turkey's world image as a Democracy. The whole thing is entirely messy, and it won't be over anytime soon!

Well, that's what the majority of the egyptians and pakistanis believe! Interesting, no?

This is why I love and miss Penn and Teller!

Not really him, but the way he is portrayed. It's, hmm, well, check this out:

Many blacks and Muslims in the troubled neighborhoods ringing French
cities voted for the first time, saying they were motivated by one
desire: to stop law-and-order, tough-on-immigrants Nicolas Sarkozy from
becoming president.

So, he is the law- and -order candidate, and that's suppsoed to be his weakness? The reason why he is disliked? And the people from the troubled french regions, the areas of highest crime rates and the cause of the fear fueling the french people to vote this time, are opposing him for it? 

How exactly do your opponents expect you to lose an election when they are calling you law-and-order guy, and they are the ones causing the most criminal trouble in the country? Wouldn't that be like Bin Laden getting mad at Bush for going after him? I mean, even Bin Laden knows better than to do that. But it gets worse…

Sarkozy's campaign has been haunted by his use of the word "scum" to
describe young delinquents days before widespread riots erupted in 2005
in the bleak suburbs on the outskirts of the country's cities. Some
youths took Sarkozy's comment as a declaration of war.

"If Sarkozy wins, there will certainly be riots here in Clichy and
all over France," said Mohammed Saidi, a first-time voter who was born
in Morocco. The 43-year-old electrician and father of four voted in
Clichy-sous-Bois, where the riots broke out and spread nationwide.

Another first-time voter, 20-year-old Fatma Celik, said that if
Sarkozy wins the runoff May 6, "people are going to go crazy here."

So they shouldn;t vote for Sarkozy, because the people he cracked down on, who broke the law, might break the law again? Aren;t they saying that he better not win or else huge riots and acts of mayhem will take over the country? Isn't that using fear and the threat of violence to ensure getting their goal? Would we be stretching it, if we said that this is similar to terrorism?

Again, I am not a Sarkozy supporter, but god damn, If I was an undecided frenchman, and I see this piece in the newspaper, saying that the gangs do not want Sarkozy to win because he is tough on crime and they will conduct riots if he does get elected, well, I would want to elect this guy. Get some order restored to the streets, no?  And again, this is the image that his detractors and critics are penning of him. Amazing, no?

My danger senses are tingeling and they are telling me that this should be a major shitfest!

You know, I don't really like the guy, but something tells me that this is a bit too much!

McCain singing Bomb Iran , and John Kerry explaining to people how the world trade center building 37 was destroyed using controlled demolition!

In case you didn't know, there was an egyptian Victim amongst the V-Tech shootings: 32 year old Waleen Shaalan, who got killed while trying to stop the crazy fucker gunman and save the life of another student. He is survived by his wife and 1 year old baby.

May God bless you Waleed, for being who youa re and for doing what you did. You are a true egyptian Hero!

I don't know if any of you is familiar with Michael Muhammad Knight 's Book, the Taqwacores , but it is a book I have been reading for a while, and it's really interesting. It envisions an America where Punk Islam exists, where Niqabi girls sing " I wanna fuck you like an animal" and lead friday prayers, and people do the call for prayer using an electric guitar and young muslims envisoning crashing CAIR and ISNA conventions and ruining them for all of the fundies that are running those places. Needless to say the book is funny and amusing as hell, and it is reportedly the inspiration for Amina Wadud to be the first female tolead a coed friday prayer. It was also the reason why - in the form of life imitating art- islamic punk bands came into fruition, also inspired by that book. I heard one of their songs, called "Mohamed was a Punk Rocker". An Inspired effort to say the least (you can hear it as the background music to this video).

My friend Kim- who introduced me to the book- is doing a piece on them for newsweek and he already wrote a post on them on his blog. Check it out here! 

I am finally back from Turkey. So much to report, so little time.

I have to say that my feelings towards Turkey are mixed at best: I really like the country, the food, the city of Istanbul and the ambience of it all, but I am having serious issues with a big part of the turkish population that I had to deal with. When I arrived, 2 seperate attempts to con me took place before I even got out of the airport, and then I spent a day escaping from the 58400572065879 pimps that surrounded my Hotel, who all spoke arabic. I felt like yelling and screaming" No, I don;t want Turkish girls, I don;t want hot russian girls, and my name is not Hajji". I ended up needing to take a girl with me everytime I walked out of the hotel because they wouldn't approach or harrass me if I had a girl with me. Imagine the ironic fruedian mindfuck of it all.

Also, amongst the things that did occur: an attempt by a friend to purchase hash for himself that turned horribly wrongand placed him and me in the clutches of turkish gangsters, which I managed to get out of with my money and ass intact; a weird foriegn lady living in the room next to me, who grabbed my ass and forced me to chnage rooms and floors; a number of cafes without menus specifically to cheat you out of money when the check comes, and a car accident on the way to the airport between our taxi and a truck which bruised my back and fucked up a friend's leg. And if that wasn;t enough, the secularists the day before I arrived did a huge demonstration to protest Adrogan's-turkey's islamist Prime Minister- presidential ambitions. The Islamists, sensing the secularists' fear, responded in the way expected from them, and slaughterd 3 turkish christians. To say things were tense in Turkey, well, that would've been an understatment!

But the food was good, the apple tea was good, the turkish coffee with pistachios were good, taking a cruise all along the Bosphorous was good, The haja Sophia and Sultan Ahmed were awesome. So all in all it was an ok trip!

Anyway, back to 270 unreplied e-mails, and this blog and a house that needs cleaning, and shitloads of laundry. Hmmph. Good thing I bought a lot of Alcohol Bottles coming in. Yay for Bacardi Reservoir Superior 8 anos rum. Hmmm….. 

Ok, so I don't have any internet here, so this will be a brief dispatch from Funky Cairo..I mean Istanbul.

This place is insane. Within 2 houres of arriving, the driver that was supposed to pick me up didn't, the shuttle guy at the airport tried to con me into getting a  car for double the price, the cell phone guy tried to con me into buying a link that would've been more expensive than the Turkcell one by 80% and a pimp who spoke perfect arabic tried to sell me on his privately onwed hamam with, and I quote, the nicest russian women I have ever seen. Needless to say, this place is insane! No wonder I love it.

 Pictures and stories will come later. They have the funkiest food. They have a desert called chicken pudding, which is pudding with chicken in it. They sell turkishcoffer grounded with pestachio, They have 10 flavors for tea, apple tea being my favorite so far. And the people I am with are excellent. And I am , again, getting confirmed that this is a messed up region. Who knew that the assyrians were opressed in Syria? Crazy world!

But for now, I am ok, and I miss blogging. Damn you Hotel! 

Untill then… 

Will be in Istanbul tomorrow and the majoirty of next week. If any of you are from there, e-mail me!

The Rumor mill is working overtime on this!

The latest episode of Southpark. Brilliant!

One of my friends, a staunch marxist antio-zionist Israeli, once told me that Venezuela is the most democratic place on Earth. I guess we must have different ideas of democracy, because the shit that is being pulled there is classic socialist military takeover!

But I wanna see me some genies. Don't you?

The Hostage crisis defined the line!

Something has been bothering me of late, and you, dear reader, can help put my mind to rest regarding it.

As you all know, I never really think before posting anything about Egypt. My posts are usually emotionally charged and reflect my anger or disdain or cyncisim towards what Egypt has become over the past two years. I used to get attacked by people who accuse me of tarnishing Egypt's reputation, which I always thought to be bullcrap, because 1) Unless to expose our problems we will never truly confront them or try to solve them, and 2) what I write about what's going on in Egypt isn;t any different than what many arabic prominent blogger writes, Wael Abbas for example. The difference is, I am told, that Wael writes for egyptians and arabs, while my audience is a bit more, ehh, ecclectic. I always thought this line of reasoning- that we have to hide our problems from the west- was bullshit, and still do till this day. However..

Ok, so a couple of days ago I was sitting with a friend and reflecting on the last refrendum election, and how we have videos of forgery. VIDEOS. And they were broadcasted on TV, and everybody had seen them, and yet nothing freakin happend. The people were not botherd at all, while a similar thing in any other country would've probably brought the entire government down. The thing is, I told him, we are used to this shit by now. When we get shocked, it is not because of the act, it's about how brazen it gets carried out now. We always knew there was torture in egyptian police stations, but we never expected them to be so brazen to videotape it and share it with friends; we always knew there was sexual ahrassment of women, we never envisioned a mass sexual assault during the first day of eid of all times. We always knew they were stopping cetrian people from entering voting polls, but we never expected to see them get shot at by the police. We always knew there was poll rigging, but we never thought they would videotape it and show it to the world. All of this crap, we expect it, because this is Egypt. Things that horrify any foriegner from any self-respecting country wouldn't raise the eyebrow of the average egyptian. We are used to this. Heyah dih masr ya abla!

The thing that bothres me now, is this: How does the average foreigner, who never been to Egypt, knew nothing about it aside it being the land of the Pyramids, and who only got his image of Egypt from reading this blog, well, view Egypt now? I mean, I have been blogging for almost 2 and a half years now, and some of the people who started reading me back then continue to read me today. My question for you is: How do you, based on my writing and those like me in the egyptian blogsphere, view Egypt? 

Please let me know!