I obviously have HUEG disagreements with the President of the (timid, coopted) Arab Writers’ Union and Editor-in-Chief of state-owned Al-Ahram Hebdo Muhammad Salmawy and his lenient position vis a vis the asshole dictator President Mubarak. But I still want to post those paragraphs from a conversation he had with a young journalist. Another anecdote for the radical shift among the public in general and how the industrial workers are inspiring the middle classes and white collars to action:

A young journalist at one of those up-and-coming weeklies came up to me the other day and asked with serious concern: “Mr Muhammad, where is the Writers’ Union? Why haven’t we heard of any sit-ins, demonstrations, or protests organized by it? Don’t you have any demands from the government?”
He then took out a copy of another newspaper and pointed to a big reportage.
“As you can see in this report, last month alone there were seven sit-ins, five demonstrations and protests, and three strike threats, but none of them involving the Writers’ Union. What on earth has happened to the union?”
“Had you ever heard of sit-ins, protests or strikes by writers before?” I asked.
“That wasn’t a time of demonstrations, but now everyone is either protesting or on strike except you, why?” he said.

When I read this conversation, I also remembered this.