Tag: counter-maspero

The Revolution will be Twitterized

Posted on By 3arabawy

I just wanted to share this (already known I’m sure) tip with you: GET ON TWITTER!

Though most people tend to use Twitter as a means to update other friends on social, personal events, etc., it has proved to be a savior in the case of James Buck, and in general it’s been popular for a while (say for the past couple of years) among Egyptian activists, for political mobilization and spreading news. It is one I strongly recommend for IST bloggers around the world.

During the Mahalla Sept ’07 strike and Apr ’08 uprising, in addition to downtown Cairo demos, Twitter was widely used by the Egyptian activists to disseminate information about the demonstrations or arrests. You can also install a simple plug in and your tweets will be posted automatically on your blog (Please look at the right side bar of my blog, under “3arabawy on Twitter”). This means you can blog while you are at demonstrations in the streets, provide continuous updates, as well as alarm your comrades about police moves, arrests, minute by minute. I also recommend that comrades in Egypt have a ready-typed text in the “drafts” of your mobile phones messaging menu saying something like: “State Security is at my house” ready to be sent out right away to your twitter page. And just click “send” as soon as the SS pigs show up at your doorstep, to quickly alert your comrades as well as the world that you are getting arrested. There are all sorts of other tips and applications Twitter can make your blogging life easier with, so I recommend you check Twitter Blog for more info.

Make sure you also add your website link to your profile on your Twitter homepage, as a way to increase the internet traffic to your blog. Once you get a Twitter account and install it on your blog, add me to your network of contacts and I’ll add you back. This way we can exchange information much faster.

Mahalla is not alone! لن نترك المحلة تواجه القمع وحدها – زيارة إلى المحلة لفك الحصار

Posted on By 3arabawy

Activists in Cairo are organizing a trip, Friday morning, in solidarity with the citizen of Mahalla, in an effort to break the police siege on the Nile Delta town. More details here.

Fellow journalists, bloggers, please join in and bring along your digital cameras.. We cannot be satisfied only with spreading the word, we need to spread the “image” too. The latter speaks more powerfully than 1000 words. My belief and faith in Mahalla, though built slowly over a decade of my involvement with the socialist movement, was only affirmed when I “saw” these photos with my own eyes! Reading about Mahalla in action was something, but “seeing” it was totally different (and of course it would have been something else if I was physically present there, which unfortunately I wasn’t). And for the past day, I’ve been shivering with adrenaline filling my body each time I see this:

​Mahalla citizens smash Mubarak's poster, 7 April 2008, Photo taken by Nasser Nouri

or that:

These images have to reach all the people we know inside and outside of Egypt.. Images play a central role in unleashing and furthering the radicalization of the masses, and it’s no wonder that our cameras are usually the first target of Mubarak’s pigs.

Whatever videos you take, go ahead and upload them to The Hub, YouTube, or whatever other video uploading services (and there are tons of them now).

Also please upload whatever photos you take to Flickr (which is the one I’m most familiar with) or any other website you deem user-friendly. Just put them online somewhere and email me the link. I appreciate those who generously email me photos they take, but I’ll be happier if you yourselves start uploading them to the net.