Comment moderation

I´ve enabled comment moderation this morning after being spammed with anonymous comments. This goes against my way of thinking, which is that everybody should be allowed to express their opinion as long as it´s not done with the use of abusive language or hate speech.

I´ve been lucky in the past, in not having encountered this kind of problems on anything, but a very limited scale.

This is hopefully just a temporary measure, as i would like to go back to the normal state of things as soon as possible.

Gouwa al Shabaka at the Press Syndicate tonight

The documentary film about bloggers and freedom of expression on the internet in Egypt, Gouwa al Shabaka is screened at the Press Syndicate at 6:30 P.M this evening(Feb 12th). For those of you who haven´t seen it yet, i strongly recommend it.

It was first shown at the Human Rights film festival in Cairo last November, and you can read more about the 18 minutes film in my blog post on the festival,where you can also view Gouwa al Shabaka.

Philip Rizk released

Philip Rizk was released in the early hours of Wednesday, February 10th, and is at home with his family.

This was the message , originally posted on the facebook page in support for his release.

Philip is out, he is safe and home with his family.
He requests that all upcoming planned protests and marches still take place to end siege on Gaza.

More details to come soon.
Please do not call the family members at this time.

Almost 100 hours after he was smuggled out of Abu Zaábal police station in a Suzuki microbus, by the very people whom are supposed to protect the safety of the Egyptian people, an hour later at a police security checkpoint at Qalaq all traces of Philip ended, until last night when he was on the phone with his parents, and then released.

Happy 27th birthday tomorrow , Philip!

This is a proper moment to pay homage to the unsung heroes of laywers who seldom gets the recognition they deserve, in this case HMLC and ANHRI laywers in particular, as well as people like Mostafa Hussein and others, they are the ones, together with people like Philip that makes me think that Egypt might have a bright future, regardless of it´s current state.

More later.

Update: Though Philip has been released there´s still others whose not, one of those is 22-year-old Diaddin Gad student in Gharbeiyya, Gad is also a blogger and activist involved in the latest protests on a local level against the war in Gaza , and Egypt´s policies towards the war. He´s a member of the Wafd party as well as Kefaya. He was picked up from his house on Friday, and is like Philip held at an undisclosed location. He might not have the network and international backing that Philip had, but it pleases me to see that both the BBC and AFP has written about his case, lets hope for an equally happy and speedy ending to his ordeal as with Philip.