The April 2 edition of the National Reivew had an interesting observation on the unfortunate state of Egyptian blogging:
If you're thrown in jail for calling the leader of your country a dictator, at least no one can call you a liar. Kareem Solimann, a 22 year-old Egyptian, has been sentenced to four years in prison for insulting the president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, and Islam as well. He wrote his "insults"--known as "criticisms" in free countries--on his blog, where he spoke in defense of women's rights, criticized his university, and so on.
The Sandmonkey, another Egyptian blogger, wrote of Solimann's plot, which only has made his life more complicates. So Sandmonkey is bagging his blog.
He writes:
Today is going to be the day that I've been dreading for quite sometime now. Today is the day I walk away from this blog. Done. Finished.
There are many reasons, each would take a post to list, and I just do not have the energy to list them. As anyone who has been reading this blog for the past month, I think it is apparent that things are not the same with me. There are reasons for that:
One of the chief reasons is the fact that there has been too much heat around me lately. I no longer believe that my anonymity is kept, especially with State Security agents lurking around my street and asking questions about me since that day. I ignore that, the same way I ignored all the clicking noises that my phones started to exhibit all of a sudden, or the law suit filed by Judge Mourad on my friends, and instead grew bolder and more reckless at a time where everybody else started being more cautious. It took me a while to take note of the fear that has been gripping our little blogsphere and comprehend what it really means. The prospects for improvement, to put it slightly, look pretty grim. I was the model of caution, and believing in my invincibility by managing not to get arrested for the past 2 and a half years, I've grown reckless. Stupid Monkey. Stupid!
Another legacy of the disastrous presidency of Jimmy Carter is the $2 billion in aid we send to the rat hole known as Egypt. The only reasonable defense of the aid, and that's being generous, is that the regime of Hosni Mubarak, who has been ruling by emergency decree since 1981, protects its citizens--and the Middle East--from something worse--the Muslim Brotherhood. Maybe. I think it's time we tighten the screws on Egypt.
Mubarak won't live for ever, but there's already a new one waiting in the wings, Syria style. Gamal Mubarak, Hosni's son, is Egypt's heir apparent.
Western bloggers have it pretty easy. A blogging "crisis" for us is a crashed hard-drive, a bad DSL connection, or writer's block.
Related post: Egypt, King Tut, and blogger Alaa
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