http://www.sandmonkey.org Sun, 13 Jun 2010 07:01:00 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en A few years ago, I saw the french movie "Irréversible" , and like many movie watchers I was subjected to the-now infamous- utterly brutal and inescapable Monica Bellucci 9 minute rape and murder scene. That scene has left me disturbed beyond measure, not just for the extremely violent depiction of ... http://www.sandmonkey.org/2010/06/13/on-khaled-said/ Right now, I am in my tiny but yet very space efficient room in a Hotel in Alexanderplatz, Berlin. Right now, I should be showering and getting ready for the day ahead. Our organizers said 9 am sharp…and I do hate to be late. But honestly, right now, all I want to ... http://www.sandmonkey.org/2010/05/17/so-berlin-huh/ So, the government decided to finally release the detained activists on Saturday, and they arrived on Saturday night back to Cairo, unharmed and all. There was no beating, there was no torture, unless you count having to spend a whole day and night in a small room without anything ... http://www.sandmonkey.org/2010/01/18/what-happened-there/ Sectarianism is stupid. I know, I am not breaking any new grounds here. Not exactly the mind-blowing thought-provoking statement one would hope would come out of the writer of those words after such a long absence, but.. it's nonetheless true. Sectarianism is stupid. There is no arguing that. Unfortunately, in a country ... http://www.sandmonkey.org/2010/01/16/on-nag3-hamady-sectarianism-stupidity/ I don’t care about Football. (Dear American reader: by football I mean the real football. The one you call soccer? The one you used to practice as a child but then outgrew the moment you heard about actual contact sports? Yeah, that one!) I couldn’t care less, to tell you the truth. ... http://www.sandmonkey.org/2009/11/12/the-egyptian-algerian-war/ Oprah will end as a show, and come back as a NETWORK. Is there no God? After an Israeli company won an award for making the best prepackaged falafel, a lebanese man is waging a crusade to declare the falafel as an arab property. And they wonder why no ... http://www.sandmonkey.org/2009/11/12/quick-linksies/ I haven’t written ever since it happened. Don’t know what to write. Anything I think of will sound contrived anyway. I mean, the fucker was arab, muslim and palestinian to boot. What’s there to say? It’s an isolated incident? It might never happen again? This doesn’t mean that everybody in ... http://www.sandmonkey.org/2009/11/12/on-fort-hood/ *Updated* A couple of months ago, I had a chance encounter with an old friend name Samuel Tadros, who also happens to be a liberal activist. We were always saying we were going to meet up, and finally, before he was heading to Georgetown for his postgraduate studies, we managed to ... http://www.sandmonkey.org/2009/11/04/egyptian-liberals-and-anti-semitism/ Walking around the streets of downtown Cairo recently is like a full-blown conscious self-imposed session of De Ja-vu. You see, ladies and gentlemen, we might have parliamentary elections and a presidential elections all wrapped up by next year, which means that after 3 years of no work, old activists and ... http://www.sandmonkey.org/2009/11/03/all-thats-old-is-new-again/ The Egyptian Parliament is in uproar, the newspapers can’t seem to stop talking about the impending crisis, which spells doom and gloom to the Egyptian society. But what is the issue that is uniting the Egyptian opposition and the government, and is so urgent that it took not one, but ... http://www.sandmonkey.org/2009/10/31/fuckin-hymens/