Rosa Navarro, an American who was arrested and detained overnight at the Intelligence HQ, gives the BBC a disturbing account of her detention: "I went out with a friend yesterday to buy sim cards. We stopped by his house and while waiting for a cab we were approached by police officers in uniform. They asked us for our passports, released us and then came back two minutes later and we were arrested. We were interrogated and accused of being spies and in Egypt to bring down the Egyptian government. I was left blindfolded and sitting with around 50 or 60 other Westerners who had been picked up while waiting for a bus, or a taxi or just walking on the street. None of them, like myself, were arrested near the protest."
Link
04 February 2011
Greetings from Cairo
I have a bit of time so I thought I'd try and bring you up to date on what is going with Doortje and I. But as there is so much to tell I really don't know where to start. Umm, well, the weather here is really nice, it's been in the low 20s all week.
I just got off the phone with Door and she is quite busy at the embassy. She went to work on monday and is staying at the Marriott Hotel with all the other embassy staff but I'm staying at the house as the hotel doesn't allow dogs, for any reason, so going there with her isn't an option. Doortje didn't go to work sooner as she was just getting over a nasty cold which I suspect is still lingering but she wants to be at the embassy to do her part. As well she says they all walk back and forth from the hotel/embassy in a group for safety and that we shouldn't worry about her. But somehow, I still do.
As for me and the dogs we are doing well. The rich Egyptians on our compound have hired 20 or so men to provide security and they are doing a good job so I feel safe enough. I had been joining in with them sitting outside our gate from 0400 to 1800 but with the way things have turned we've decided that I should keep a lower profile, it's not like I'm adding a lot with my presences anyway. Except perhaps for the appreciation of the guards that I'm willing to sit outside and to eat breakfast with them, this I've been told means a lot to them. I am "Mr Brian" to them which is respectful, and I feel undeserved, but makes me wish I had more food/water/warm clothes to share.
My short term plan is to stay in the house as long as I can find enough food and, well, toilet paper but when the logistics/security becomes too difficult some desert friends and I plan to head to the Bahariya Oasis, if we can get out of the city safely.
I have buckets more to tell you but I'm in the middle of packing the truck in case we do have to leave as I suspect that will be done rather quickly. So I'll leave my stories for another time.
I just got off the phone with Door and she is quite busy at the embassy. She went to work on monday and is staying at the Marriott Hotel with all the other embassy staff but I'm staying at the house as the hotel doesn't allow dogs, for any reason, so going there with her isn't an option. Doortje didn't go to work sooner as she was just getting over a nasty cold which I suspect is still lingering but she wants to be at the embassy to do her part. As well she says they all walk back and forth from the hotel/embassy in a group for safety and that we shouldn't worry about her. But somehow, I still do.
As for me and the dogs we are doing well. The rich Egyptians on our compound have hired 20 or so men to provide security and they are doing a good job so I feel safe enough. I had been joining in with them sitting outside our gate from 0400 to 1800 but with the way things have turned we've decided that I should keep a lower profile, it's not like I'm adding a lot with my presences anyway. Except perhaps for the appreciation of the guards that I'm willing to sit outside and to eat breakfast with them, this I've been told means a lot to them. I am "Mr Brian" to them which is respectful, and I feel undeserved, but makes me wish I had more food/water/warm clothes to share.
My short term plan is to stay in the house as long as I can find enough food and, well, toilet paper but when the logistics/security becomes too difficult some desert friends and I plan to head to the Bahariya Oasis, if we can get out of the city safely.
I have buckets more to tell you but I'm in the middle of packing the truck in case we do have to leave as I suspect that will be done rather quickly. So I'll leave my stories for another time.
29 December 2010
We Are Back From The Desert
Good trip and great weather. Cloudless skies and zero wind for the entire trip.
13 December 2010
Cleaning Up After the Sandstorm
Ahmed and Nabil cleaning up. You can just see the square of sand on the bottom of the pool that Ahmed hasn't yet vacuumed up.
Sand everywhere, except the dogs bed, that, I was required to clean first thing.
Nabil beating the dust, and the stuffing, out of our dilapidated cushions. We only have 6 months left so haven't bother to replace them, and you can see why.
12 December 2010
The Second Day of This Sandstorm
A sandstorm, strong winds and lashing rains swept across Egypt on Sunday, closing several ports and disrupting traffic in the Suez Canal, officials said
Mosques are seen through fog and cold weather in Cairo December 11, 2010. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah
Officials at Cairo airport said preventive measures were being taken after visibility was reduced to 300 metres (yards).
Twenty-six ships were barred from entering the Suez Canal and 29 vessels delayed for three hours before they could move through the waterway linking the Mediterranean to the Red Sea.
The waterway was hit by poor visibility and winds of up to 40 knots an hour, said an official at the canal, Egypt's third-largest source of foreign revenue after tourism and remittances from expatriate workers.
High waves also closed all eight of Egypt's main Red Sea ports on Sunday for the second consecutive day, as well its Mediterranean ports of Alexandria and Dekheila, officials said.
Meteorologists said the bad weather was expected to last through Monday and have advised people to stay indoors due to a sandstorm that has blanketed the Egyptian capital.
With temperatures having plunged since Friday night, thunderstorms and heavy rains have lashed the north coast, Red Sea region and the Sinai peninsula.
I don't know anything about the heavy rains but we must have half of Libya in our living room. Brian
From Ahram Online
Officials at Cairo airport said preventive measures were being taken after visibility was reduced to 300 metres (yards).
Twenty-six ships were barred from entering the Suez Canal and 29 vessels delayed for three hours before they could move through the waterway linking the Mediterranean to the Red Sea.
The waterway was hit by poor visibility and winds of up to 40 knots an hour, said an official at the canal, Egypt's third-largest source of foreign revenue after tourism and remittances from expatriate workers.
High waves also closed all eight of Egypt's main Red Sea ports on Sunday for the second consecutive day, as well its Mediterranean ports of Alexandria and Dekheila, officials said.
Meteorologists said the bad weather was expected to last through Monday and have advised people to stay indoors due to a sandstorm that has blanketed the Egyptian capital.
With temperatures having plunged since Friday night, thunderstorms and heavy rains have lashed the north coast, Red Sea region and the Sinai peninsula.
I don't know anything about the heavy rains but we must have half of Libya in our living room. Brian
From Ahram Online
11 December 2010
13 November 2010
10 November 2010
Earth Observatory: Nile River Delta at Night
One of the fascinating aspects of viewing Earth at night is how well the lights show the distribution of people. In this view of Egypt, we see a population almost completely concentrated along the Nile Valley, just a small percentage of the country’s land area.
The Nile River and its delta look like a brilliant, long-stemmed flower in this astronaut photograph of the southeastern Mediterranean Sea, as seen from the International Space Station. The Cairo metropolitan area forms a particularly bright base of the flower. The smaller cities and towns within the Nile Delta tend to be hard to see amidst the dense agricultural vegetation during the day. However, these settled areas and the connecting roads between them become clearly visible at night. Likewise, urbanized regions and infrastructure along the Nile River becomes apparent (see also The Great Bend of Nile, Day & Night.)
Another brightly lit region is visible along the eastern coastline of the Mediterranean—the Tel-Aviv metropolitan area in Israel (image right). To the east of Tel-Aviv lies Amman, Jordan. The two major water bodies that define the western and eastern coastlines of the Sinai Peninsula—the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Aqaba—are outlined by lights along their coastlines (image lower right). The city lights of Paphos, Limassol, Larnaca, and Nicosia are visible on the island of Cyprus (image top).
Scattered blue-grey clouds cover the Mediterranean Sea and the Sinai, while much of northeastern Africa is cloud-free. A thin yellow-brown band tracing the Earth’s curvature at image top is airglow, a faint band of light emission that results from the interaction of atmospheric atoms and molecules with solar radiation at approximately 100 kilometers (60 miles) altitude.
22 October 2010
29 September 2010
08 September 2010
reddit.com
My dad spent 26 years in the Armed Services as part of Strategic Air Command. He's become a bit of a poet in his golden years. Today he sent me this:
_
In Arlington we lay to rest
our bravest and our very best.
We send our children off to war
defending what we soon ignore.
_
“You’re free to worship,” so we say.
“But if you’re muslim, go away.”
Is this what they were dying for:
Intolerance, and nothing more?
_
Must one be christian to obtain
the liberties that we proclaim?
These soldiers died for liberty.
They didn’t die for bigotry.
_
So look upon this hallowed field,
not only crosses are revealed.
For you’ll see stars and crescents too.
They also sacrificed for you.
_
In Arlington we lay to rest
our bravest and our very best.
They knew what they were dying for.
It’s something that we can’t ignore.
- Joe G
EDIT: I've always been proud of my old man.
05 September 2010
07 August 2010
In Cairo, An End To The Cacophony Of Calls To Prayer
EnlargeVictoria Hazou/AFP/Getty
Muslim men visit the Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo. Beginning next week, the call for prayer will no longer be issued by local mosques, but rather from a downtown studio and then transmitted to mosques around the city.
There are few Islamic traditions in Cairo older than the ritual, five-times-a-day call to prayer. But as of next week, that call is undergoing a radical change.
No longer will the melodic call, the azan, be delivered by a sea of voices from minarets across the sprawling Egyptian capital.
Responding to criticisms that the current uncoordinated delivery lacks dignity, the government's Ministry of Religious Endowment has announced plans to broadcast a single Islamic call to prayer from a downtown Cairo studio.
That call will be transmitted through special receivers to thousands of mosques registered with the government. The mosques, in turn, are required to stop using their own callers, or muezzinine, and instead use the new call.
The hope is to bring uniformity to a ritual that some say is out of control.
One voice will seem empty.
"It's chaos, chaos," says Abdul Munam Suroji, during a visit to a hilltop park in the capital where he listened to the call. The 54-year-old Syrian tourist says the azan in Damascus sounds much better because it is a uniform call.
Egyptian officials say they have selected 30 of the bestmuezzinine from among the thousands in the city to take turns delivering the call to prayer starting on the first day of the holy month of Ramadan next week. The new call will be heard in a single district of Cairo, but will gradually be introduced throughout the capital and eventually to all of the 106,000 official mosques across Egypt.
Many religious scholars, including Mohamed el Shahat el Gindy, who heads the Islamic law department at Helwan University, support the decision. El Gindy said the current call is "against the spirit of azan."
Also, he added, the verses sung may differ from mosque to mosque, thereby confusing worshippers.
EnlargeHolly Pickett for NPR
Ahmed Abdel Aziz sings the call to prayer, or the azan, at Al- Maghfara Mosque in a suburb of Cairo last month.
New Policy Meets Resistance
But muezzinine like Ehab Mohammad, who will no longer be allowed to deliver the call, are not happy about being silenced, even though he and others will continue to receive their monthly salary of roughly $55 a month.
His friend, Mohammad Fawzi, who delivers the call to prayer at a mosque down the street, says it is not just a job. He believes being a muezzingives him and others a leg up in the next life.
"The prophet says those who lead the [call to] prayer have the longest necks and will stand the tallest on judgment day," Fawzi says. "So of course I'm against them denying us the azan."
Cairo resident Aya Hassan, a 20-year-old pharmacy student, is displeased about the ministry's plan.
"All the different voices make you feel like everyone is kneeling and praying to Allah at the same time," she says. "One voice will seem empty."
Hassan worries that residents in the city's many squatter neighborhoods could end up unaware of when to pray if their unofficial mosques are not given transmitters.
Others say the call to prayer is a religious matter and the government shouldn't be involved in changing it.
But for the religion ministry, the matter is no longer open to discussion.
20 July 2010
15 July 2010
09 July 2010
23 June 2010
Pictures are Posted
07 May 2010
02 April 2010
Who Really Spends The Most On Their Military? | Information Is Beautiful
A story on the Guardian Datablog about unexpected results hidden in world-wide military budgets.
23 March 2010
02 March 2010
26 February 2010
25 January 2010
19 January 2010
BBC News: Flash floods in Egypt
Heavy rains and flash floods have left seven people dead in Egypt and Israel.
Rains washed away mud brick houses in southern Egypt killing two women, and in Israel a woman drowned when her car was caught in a flash flood.
And how much of this weather did we get in Cairo? About 5 minutes of drizzle. It's not fair, if any place needs a hosing down it's this place.
01 January 2010
Readability - The single best tech idea of 2009
When you click it, Readability eliminates everything from the Web page you’re reading except the text and photos. No ads, blinking, links, banners, promos or anything else. Times Square just goes away.
via
You wind up with a simple, magazine-like layout, presented in a beautiful font and size (your choice) against a white or off-white background with none of this red-text-against-black business.
Readabilityvia
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