India Blog Roundup

Enough about me, for once! There are approximately sixty VSO volunteer workers here in various parts of India, and among them are a few savvy bloggers. So I present the first in a series of India Blog Roundups, a sampling of other good stories from the lives of vols in India.

Our dear friend Isabel, a Briton living in a small village in Rajasthan, writes in her Indian Bells blog about the newsworthy yet chronically underreported issue of child marriage in India. Also she posts a recipe for mango curry, not to be missed, and a day-in-the-life-of enduring India's heat.

Our buddy Paul, an Aussie with an Enfield, and who lives in Orissa's capital Bhubaneswar, blogs about the Red Ribbon Express, a roving HIV/AIDS-awareness train on a year-plus journey around India. He also writes about his twin loves, lassi and Varanasi.

Gina and Corey, a fun couple of Americans who co-author Sustainable Dignity, blog from the western Orissa town of Koraput about booze in India, with which I have familiarity. And believe it or not a County Fair came to their little hamlet, complete with ferris wheel and the Joker!

Susie, who lives in the tiny village of Bhawanipatna in western Orissa, writes about India's 2011 census, perhaps the largest human project in history. Take some time, too, to visit the photo galleries on her site; gal's been to a few places!

And Sheila, also in Orissa and blogging at Ashramblings, has a great piece on food, including the jahni, a courgette-like veggie that looked tasty enough when we saw it at the market, but which disagrees (let's say nicely) with the mouth!

Last but not least, my partner Ashley has started a blog, Strange News from another Star, where she writes about extraordinary traffic behavior in our town of Berhampur, and also about encounters with caste.

Do not pity the fuul

An Arab Foodie blog? Why didn't I think of that?

One of the newest Middle Eastern blogs, from blog-mad Egypt, is called al-Masri al-Yum (a play on the Arabic al-Masri al-Youm, a popular Egyptian newspaper whose name translates as Egypt Today). The site offers recipes, reviews, snarky critiques of Egyptian food culture, and plenty of steaming hot puns.

Its authors give the following reasons for starting the blog:

"First, complaining about Egyptian food is a hardy perennial Cairo whine amongst khawagat and others. As an alternative to whining, we’re suggesting a more constructive activity: Learning to cook.

"Second, while we enjoy the restaurant reviews in some of our favorite local publications, we often find them a bit milquetoast for our tastes, sometimes reading like glorified press releases.

"Third, we love food, and it is sometimes very difficult to write about it, so we’ll try to sharpen our skills."

Check out the site here. Without further ado, here is al-Masri al-Yum's recipe for that most basic and delicious of Egyptian dishes, fuul:

Umm Lady HaSha’s Fuul
The recipe as written will feed a brunch full of hungry people. Feel free to scale up or down as you wish.

• 2 tbsp vegetable or olive oil
• 4 chopped onions
• 4 garlic cloves, chopped fine
• 1 green pepper, coarse chopped
• 3 tomatoes, diced or 1 can diced tomatoes
• .5 tsp of salt, pepper and cumin
• 4 cans of fuul (not the mashed beans, the cans with the whole beans. They are called “fuul medammis bil-khalta al-misriyya”)
• 2 tbsp tomato paste
• Juice of 1 lime

Saute the onions in oil on low heat. Add garlic and pepper. Add tomatoes and spices. Add fuul and tomato paste. Stir occasionally, maintaining low heat throughout. Add lime juice. Taste it. Add more spices or lime to taste. Serve immediately.

2nd annual Tuque Souq Autumn Reading List

The Tuque Souq is taking its annual autumn repose and letting the blog rest for a week. Jeepers, you say, a week without shoe-throwing pun-loving pirate camels... what'll I do?

Go outside, get some fresh air... for a few minutes. Then, get back in front of your interwebbed machine, slave, and read some blogs.

This year's Autumn Reading List features some new additions to the Blog Roll, a selection of Middle Eastern themed blogs that have popped into our field of cyberview recently, many of which have names almost as catchy as ours. Enjoy.

ENGLISH BLOGS:
Maya's Amalgam: A Lebanese artist's illustrative take on social affairs, very unique, often humorous. Definitely worth a look.
The Moor Next Door: Good political critique from North Africa, excellent title.
MondoWeiss: Self-described warrior of ideas on the Middle East. Mostly coverage of Israel/Palestine. Takes itself seriously. As it should.
Saudi Jeans: Social commentary from Saudi Arabia, from one guy's perspective. As he explains, he's Saudi and he likes to wear jeans. That's it. Also, he started his blog primarily to improve his English. You be the judge.
Jews sans frontieres: Good name that would be great if it rolled off the tongue easier. Venomous critiques of Zionism.
Lawrence of Cyberia: The name is catchy the first time you say it, less so each time after. The content mostly covers Israel/Palestine, with some general comment on Middle East news.
Tikun Olam: Very well done blog. Entries are more like essays. Covers progressive, mostly Jewish activism in the US vis-a-vis the Middle East.
American Bedu: Daily life of an American woman in Saudi Arabia. Presents itself as mainly educational. Often pedantic but occasionally insightful.
AquaCool: Daily life of a Palestinian housewife in the UAE, or sometimes Tunisia. Diary form. Interesting, let's say.
Abu Khaldoun: Father of Ibn Khaldoun? Topical coverage of Middle East news with a general, if sometimes rambling, commentary.
Friday Lunch Club: Random thoughts and impressions on Middle East news, including obscure new. Despite the name, it's updated as often as 10 times a day. Too much writing. Bloggerrhea.
Magharebia: News digest from Mauritania, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco. Very unbloggy.

FRENCH BLOGS:
Algérie-Maroc: Memory and history. Quaint.
Nouvelles d'Orient: Middle East blog of Le Monde Diplomatique. Obviously newsy.

ARABIC BLOGS:
Tunisie Socio-Democratique: The difficult job of opposing the mainstream in Tunisia. Or why there isn't an opposition in Tunisia.
Fettounsi: A critical media blog in Tunisia. Or why Tunisia needs a critical media.
Medounet Mohamed: Education in Morocco. Or lack of it.

And, to offer a final nugget from the Internet mine, here's a creative new site just started called Carpooling in Egypt, which is self-explanatory and, if you've ever been stuck in Cairo traffic, long overdue.

(Or you could just read last year's 1st annual Tuque Souq Autumn Reading List again.)

Syria bans The Tuque Souq!

A new report from the Damascus-based independent Syrian Media Centre called "Syrian Pens Fall Silent" laments that a record 225 Internet sites and portals are now blocked in Syria.

Among the URLs that can't be accessed from within Syria's borders: social-media favourites like Facebook, YouTube, Skype, and Google's entire suite of blogs (including The Tuque Souq).

In a related report, Syrians were found to have the world's lowest adult rates of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS), and Post-Traumatic Twitter Disorder (PTTD), a relatively new affliction in which sufferers cannot be in a confined rectangular space with more than 140 characters at a time.

Also purged from Syria's domain: An-Nahar and most other Lebanese news sites, the official website of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, as well as websites of dissident Kurdish and Islamist groups.

Syrian cybercafé proprietors are required to spy on their customers' surfing habits. Journalists and bloggers are routinely harassed for their online revelations; accused by the mukhabarat of "weakening state security."

In a Facebook posting to his 12 friends (all of whom are outside of Syria), President Bashar al-Assad* said: "Bashar al-Assad is lonely, might rent a film tonight. Any suggestions?"

Reached at his global headquarters, the Tuque Souq's supreme commander declined to comment on being banned in Syria. But he did say, Check out these other Tuque Souq postings about Syria:

• Syria installs market economy just in time for collapse
• Syria chastised for denying legal rights to Kangaroos
• Old Damascus, light on coke, gets high on hotels
• Syria to open embassy in Beirut, BBQ planned for opening night

* Bashar al-Assad is also president of the Syrian Computer Society**
** Wikipedia is not banned in Syria.

Egyptian secret police take blogger on joyride

When Egyptian activist and blogger Philip Rizk went to a demonstration to protest the Gaza war, he had no idea that the Egyptian mukhabarat - secret police - were planning to give him a 4-day vacation in jail.

He certainly didn't have a clue that he'd be treated to a high-speed getaway on his way to his incarceration.

But that's what happened. According to a posting on the blog of one of Philip's friends who witnessed these events, the mukhabarat took Philip and his lawyers into a local police station--after he was arrested at the demonstration--while his friends were asked to wait outside. Then:

All hell broke out at 11 p.m. The lawyers rang down to say that Philip had been kidnapped: state security officers had told him that they wanted him for questioning without the lawyers in a room next door. They took him downstairs and put him in a Suzuki microbus which, when it appeared at the police station's exit, we attempted to prevent moving by blocking its path. It forced its way through while state security officers frenziedly threw us out of the way.

Moftases meanwhile had started his car. Droubi and I got in it, Moftases put his foot down and the police attempted to stop us moving by standing in front of it. Moftases drove anyway.

There then followed a car chase, Moftases establishing that if he ever tires of Psychiatry he should consider a second career as a rally-driver. The microbus – whose rear number plate had been obscured by a piece of cloth – moved at great speed through the busy main street before suddenly veering off into a neighbourhood of narrow alleys where it attempted to lose us. They hadn't reckoned on Moftases.

Philip was sitting at the back of the microbus, with roughly four or five men including the driver in front. At one point he turned around, saw us, and smiled. I hope we provided some comfort, however fleeting.

This – extreme speed, dangerous overtaking, sharp turns - went on for about 45 minutes. I don't mean to make it sound exciting. It wasn't. It was sickeningly absurd and unglamorous (a Suzuki microbus for God's sake), frightening, dangerous, and I needed the toilet throughout.

After about half an hour it turned around and went back the way it came. Playing with us, we thought.

It turned out that they had been waiting for a police general who had been at the police station to get himself and his assistants to a police checkpoint building where they extended barriers across the road. We were done for: the microbus – and Philip – disappeared into the night.

Philip was held in jail, blindfolded, without charge for more than 4 days before he was quietly released. He says he was not tortured, only interrogated repeatedly. He was accused of being both a Hamas spy and an Israeli spy.

While he was in detention, the mukhabarat broke into his home and seized his personal documents, cameras, computers, even the passwords to his blog and email accounts.

He denies enjoying the high-speed chase.

POSTSCRIPT
There are more than 18,000 political prisoners in Egypt, including many young activists/bloggers. One is Dia Eddin Gad, who was also swept away by the mukhabarat while protesting the assault on Gaza. His whereabouts are unknown. His blog - Sawt ghadeb ("Angry Voice") - has not been updated since before he was kidnapped.

2008 Middle East Blog of the Year Finalists

Well, the Tuque Souq didn't crack the shortlist, but here are the finalists for the 2008 Weblog Awards in the category "Best Middle East or Africa Blog":


Finalists:
Michael J. Totten
Martin Kramer on the Middle East
Elder of Ziyon
Fundamentally Freund
My Marrakesh
Informed Comment
The Sudanese Thinker
Muslimah Media Watch
Days of My Life
Israellycool

Check 'em out, and then you can vote for the winner at the '08 Blog Awards website. The deadline for votes is Jan 13.

Gaza War: "Life must go on..."

If you haven't seen it, check out this blog called "Life must go on in Gaza and Sderot."

It's written by two men, one called "Hope Man" who lives in the Israeli town of Sderot, just east of the border with the Gaza Strip. The other, "Peace Man," lives in Gaza City.

They started their blog as electronic acquaintances wanting to provide 2 sides of the story of their perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Sderot is the town in greatest danger of being struck by Hamas' homemade missiles, and Gaza is, well, Gaza.

Obviously this blog has gotten even more insightful in the past week or so.

Iran to Blogfather: Don't ever go against the family

"A man that doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man."
- Don Corleone

Recently Iran's judiciary confirmed the whereabouts of Iranian-Canadian Hossein Derakhshan, a.k.a. the "Blogfather" in honour of his pioneering work in the field of Persian-language blogging.

Those whereabouts: oh, he's in the Iranian judiciary's custody. You know, with the family.

While on a visit to Iran, the Blogfather was arrested at the home of his actual family in Tehran around November 1, then was not heard from for some time.

Now Canadian officials in Iran have been alerted to the situation, but no one is yet sure why the Blogfather is under arrest or how he's been treated, or what offers have been made him that he possibly can't refuse.

Speculation is that the Blogfather was grabbed for violating Iran's strict laws against insulting Islam. Wilder stories include the charge that he is an Israeli spy, the punishment for which is sleeping with the fishes.

The record of the Blogfather's blog leaves one wondering which family he's working for. After all, times have changed. It's not like the old days, when [he] could do anything [he] wanted.

October 27, 2005:

I'm very sorry about what this fundamentalist moron [Ahmadinejad] who happens to be Iran's president has recently said [about wiping Israel off the map]. But I have to say he doesn't represent the way the majority in Iran think. This guy is a fraud... Ahmadinejad only represents a small number of radical clerics around Mesbah and some Revolutionary Guards commanders who benefit from violence and war. Ahmadinejad is an indirect result of America's policy shift against the reformists in Iran.

September 25, 2008:

Today is the eighth anniversary of this blog, which I started in September 25th, 2001. But it's amazing how some people are rewriting the history of the Iranian blogosphere as if I never existed and I did nothing for it. These were the same people who started calling me the blogfather after they made their own blogs using my instruction and technical help and now that they don't like my politics, they would rather removing me from teh [sic] whole narrative. But I'm sure in two years many of them would be where I am today, politically speaking.

And his last post, from October 5, 2008, just before the Blogfather disappeared:

Ahmadinejad's brilliant strategy of dismissing Israel and smiling to the U.S. has divided the the U.S. in all levels and that's a big achievement comparing to Khatami's weak anf failed U.S. strategy that led to Iran being part of the 'axis of evil'. Now the same Bush administration has officially opened the diplomatic line. Please get over Ahmadinejad's scruffy look, prayers, and plain language and see these achievements.

In summary, the Blogfather has been extremely crititcal of the Iranian government, its autocratic clerics and its current president. He's also (lately) been extremely supportive of the current Iranian regime.

No doubt the confused Ahmadinejad is just wondering of the Blogfather, "What have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully? If you'd come to me in friendship, then this scum that ruined your daughter would be suffering this very day. And if by chance an honest man like yourself should make enemies, then they would become my enemies. And then they would fear you."

Or something.

Blog Fodder: Two popular blogs go down the economic drain

At the Tuque Souq, we blog for fun, for cheeky infotainment and the occasional heart-felt call to arms (along with the odd research query). We're happy with a comment here and there, and our mere hundreds of page hits.

Some blogs have a much greater reach, with readership in the many thousands (or hundreds of thousands) per month, and aspire to provide a greater service to the public as collective newsgatherers and online communities. And to get to these ends they require a modest bankroll to be as successful and ingenuous as they are, though they provide what is essentially a free service.

Therein lies the rub for two popular Canadian blogs that have announced they are closing as of the new year. The popular Torontoist blog is closing down after more than 4 years of being the most popular blog in the GTA. And one of our all-time favs, MediaScout - put out by the great folks at Maisonneuve magazine in Montreal - is also folding its shutters indefinitely, citing lack of sustainable funding.

R.I.P. blog sisters and brothers. May you find happy days in blog heaven (or blog hell).

Egyptian bloggers report on deadly rockslide in Cairo

The death toll from the massive rockslide in Cairo has now topped 50. While the disaster – in which several multi-tonne boulders broke free from a cliff and crushed dozens of tightly packed homes underneath – has already found it’s way off the front pages of Egyptian news, Egyptian bloggers have kept up the commentary and the criticism of the authorities’ lack of rapid response.

Blogger Nora Younis reported the following from the Duwayqa slums, where the deadly rockslide occurred:

• Casualties & injuries in rock blocks collapse over slums of Doweiqa, Cairo. 02:51 AM September 06, 2008
• 30 'houses' collapsed. 11 dead, 18 injured in Doweiqa, Cairo. 02:55 AM September 06, 2008
• Army started 2 arrive Doweiqa. Ppl removing rubble with their hands. Massive rocks collapsed from Moqatam hill. Horrible pics on Jazeera. 03:33 AM September 06, 2008
• Sinking boats, burning train, parliament on fire, Now 35 houses under rubble! This is a dead state!! 03:42 AM September 06, 2008
• Its been 3 hrs without any rescue or bodies! Ppl r sending cell phone SOS from under massive rocks. But nothing is happening! 03:56 AM September 06, 2008

The government of Egypt has been lightly scolded in the foreign press for its perceived devil-may-care response to the rockslide (President Hosni Mubarak did promise a cool thousand bucks to the families of the victims). Inside Egypt, most of the criticism – at least that we can hear – is coming from the bloggers.

Zenoubia noted sarcastically:
“The prime minister visited the injured El-Hussein Hospital and said that the government would have given those misfortunate families the keys of their new houses in Suzanne Mubarak residential project after 3 weeks but fate did not give them a Chance!! “Yes, blame it on fate, it is easy to blame it on some else!!”