THE PORT SAID FOOTBALL RIOT CASE IS A BIG MESS OF SADNESS AND DEATH
Posted March 12, 2013 at 9:00pm |
EGYPT CELEBRATED ITS ANNIVERSARY REVOLUTION BY FIGHTING IN THE STREETS
Posted January 28, 2013 at 10:23am |
HOW TO SHUT DOWN INTERNETS
The internet, as you may have heard some years ago, is a series of tubes. The internet does in fact enter Syria through four tubes – three undersea cables and one overland cable. The undersea cables are set to lead to one single, physical room. All four are controlled by a company called Syriatel. Syriatel is owned by oneRami Makhlouf, a close cousin to President Bashar Assad, incredibly rich and well ensconced within the Syrian power structure.
Last year, while Makhlouf was funding pro-government demonstrations, America was arraying commercial sanctions against Syriatel, due to its having conveniently suffered net outages in regions where government attacks on rebels were happening. Or, as the US put it, acting to “sever network connectivity in areas where attacks were planned”. There was also the little matter of recording conversations over mobile phones and turning the files over to the security services. Because, yes, Syriatel owns a chunk of the mobile market, too.
Anyway, if you own the tubes, and have free access to the open ends that poke into your country, you can essentially nail lids over them by switching off the Border Gateway Protocol routes that let stuff reach you through the tubes. All of Syria’s IP address blocks became unreachable. Nothing goes in or out.
Libya tried turning off the internet in stages, blocking in-country access to Facebook and the like, and, for a couple of days, the main service providers just turned off their servers. After that, they tried something new. They throttled the country’s bandwidth down to almost nothing. Sort of like treating Libya as if it’d been caught downloading a hundred gigs of porn on a Saturday afternoon and punishing it with a bandwidth cap that made connecting with a mobile phone in 1996 while up a tree in Wales seem like broadband. The chairman of both the General Posts and Telecommunications Company and Libya Telecom & Technology, unsurprisingly, was one Muhammad Gaddafi, the son of the late Colonel who’s currently enjoying an exile in Algeria. It appears to have been done for one simple reason: it’s selective. You can cap everyone else and still make sure dear old Dad’s laptop connection just rips along. Hell, he could probably have Ustreamed his own death.
Posted December 3, 2012 at 7:30pm |
I SPENT THE WEEKEND GETTING ATTACKED BY SOLDIERS IN CAIRO
At times the soldiers were just a few metres away, on the other side of the coiled barbed wire. Each side was pounding rocks against the shields of the other, the deafening clatter of their impacts filling the air. Over it all hung the swaying arc of a water cannon, making a rainbow on one side of the fighting.
Read the full article here
Posted May 8, 2012 at 8:30pm |
I SPENT MY WEEKEND GETTING ATTACKED BY SOLDIERS IN CAIRO
There are always some women at the front line of these things, but not that many, and they generally have to put up with a lot of hassle, as men try to “protect” and grope them (or both). All the women, activists and journalists, who go into these environments deserve extra respect. This woman was super cool. Men kept trying to stop her going to the front to throw stones, but she wasn’t having any of it.
Read the full article here
Posted May 8, 2012 at 11:31am |
FIGHTING DIRTY WITH THE MOBS IN CAIRO
I woke up in Cairo on Wednesday morning to the news that five people had died in clashes outside the Defence Ministry during the night. Part of me felt guilty: As someone who’s regularly documented the goings on in Egypt since last year, I should have been there. There has been a sit-in outside the Defence Ministry here in Cairo for a few days now, and each night some clashes have erupted. On Tuesday night one person died. There haven’t been enough journalists there to cover it.
Read the full article here
Posted May 3, 2012 at 12:31pm |
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN THE GAZA STRIP - PART ONE
In 2007 we tried and failed to get into Gaza through the Israeli-controlled Erez Crossing. Back then the rival Palestinian factions of Hamas and Fatah were engaged in a bloody war for control of this tiny strip of land. Hamas won. When the post-Mubarak government of Egypt decided to start letting small numbers of folks into Gaza through their Rafah crossing, we knew it was our chance to finally get a rare glimpse of the embattled Gaza Strip and to see what life was like under the rule of Hamas.
Watch the film here
Posted February 27, 2012 at 3:03pm |
The calm atmosphere gave us time to reflect on a crucial question. Namely – just what the fuck is the army up to? Why are they trying to hang on to power, even though they know that they’re probably going to have to give it up sooner or later (officially, anyway)?
Read the full article here
Posted January 27, 2012 at 11:53am |
A lot of people lost their eyes to shotgun pellets, and it’s common to meet people in the square with patches such as this over one eye. One policeman was caught on video apparently being congratulated by a superior for being good at hitting protesters in the eye. Revolutionaries made a ‘Wanted’ poster for him and covered the city in it.
Read the full article here
Posted December 7, 2011 at 2:44pm |
There was a march on Friday in memory of those killed in the past couple of weeks. This guy walked around slowly holding a photo of his son, Islam Assam Mohammed, who was 20. He was killed by some sort of bullet through the forehead.
Read the full article here
Posted December 7, 2011 at 2:42pm |
DISPATCH FROM CAIRO: THE PAST FEW DAYS IN TAHRIR
For six days, or 144 hours, Egypt’s loathed police and the young vanguard of the country have been fighting pitched battles in the streets, as the country burns, chokes and bleeds its way towards a (some would say second) revolution.
Posted November 25, 2011 at 3:55pm |
DISPATCH FROM CAIRO: THE PAST FEW DAYS IN TAHRIR
For six days, or 144 hours, Egypt’s loathed police and the young vanguard of the country have been fighting pitched battles in the streets, as the country burns, chokes and bleeds its way towards a (some would say second) revolution.
Posted November 25, 2011 at 3:52pm |
IS EGYPT ON THE VERGE OF A SECOND REVOLUTION?
Last week, traders in Cairo’s Tahrir Square were selling chintzy pharaonic souvenirs and the odd t-shirt alluding to the Springtime ousting of Hosni Mubarak. Now, they’re back to flogging scarves, gas masks and safety goggles.
Posted November 22, 2011 at 12:02pm |
