Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Egyptian jailed for insult poem

A civil servant in Egypt has been jailed for three years for insulting President Hosni Mubarak in a poem, according to newspaper reports.
Moneer Said Hanna's family said he wrote satirical poetry for fun, to entertain his work colleagues, and never meant to hurt anyone.
(Thanks Molly)
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6 comments:

  1. vJuly 15, 2009 at 5:05 PM

    GAZA BLOCKADE IS BROKEN FOR SECOND TIME

    http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=100784

    Finally some good news

    ReplyDelete
  2. vzaJuly 15, 2009 at 5:36 PM

    <span style="">President Mubarak is reported to have intervened personally in the case of an Egyptian student who failed her secondary school exams after criticising the United States and her own government in an essay.</span>



    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5134470.stm

    ReplyDelete
  3. thankgodimatheistJuly 15, 2009 at 8:50 PM

    Egypt journalists get jail terms

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5118876.stm

    ReplyDelete
  4. vJuly 16, 2009 at 7:01 PM

    "The BBC's Arab affairs analyst, Magdi Abdelhadi, says the case is bound to raise questions as to why the authorities decided to act against this largely unknown amateur writer, when satirical poems about President Mubarak by known poets are widely available in Egypt and on the internet."

    The same reason tyrannical governments always come after the unknown, poor, and weak - some go after nations... Essentially it implies that anyone can be a target

    ReplyDelete
  5. vJuly 17, 2009 at 12:09 AM

    I might also add, it is no different than a government that feeds on the poor by its agencies - legal, economic, and maintains a system which Gramsci only described too well many years ago -
    "What the unification of Italy did to places like Sicily,
    Naples, and Sardinia was to arrest and distort, then
    to isolate them in their lopsided social, economic,
    and certainly political actualities. To Gramsci, then, the
    south appears, he says memorably, like a vast social
    disintegration: a large mass of destitute and oppressed
    peasants are preyed on by a class of parasitic
    intermediaries (priests, teachers, tax collectors) on
    behalf of a small group of land owners."
    It has not changed for thousands of years, but some still do not get it, even after all this time -

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRO8CjzFIh8

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_sLNYDU1yQ

    Some see it better than others distorted and enamored by "the way life is supposed to be."

    ReplyDelete
  6. vJuly 17, 2009 at 12:21 AM

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLhuv-kLj_I

    ReplyDelete