If you’ve been keeping up to date with the goings on in Egypt you’ll know that the Egyptian government, with President Hosni Mubarak still technically in power, gave the order to shut off the internet for the entire country on Thursday. He hoped that this would quell protesters and decrease their power to assemble. What emerged instead was a renewed zeal among the protesters in a fight for their freedoms following a 30 year rule by President Hosni Mubarak. Protesters rallied together using grass roots campaigns to mobilize, such as this pamphlet describing techniques and things every protester should know.
Month: January 2011
The people are in control: Egypt, revolution and the days ahead
Five days of protest. At least 100 dead. Thousands injured. One sacked government. A new Prime Minister and Vice President. An army, and a country, in the balance. And the rage continues…
We woke up this morning to find that hundreds of thousands remained on the street in the face of a renewed curfew and promises of violence for those who disobeyed it. Soldiers so far have either not been ordered to use force to subdue the populist movement, or have refused to do so.
Speak Truth to Power: the revolutionary power of people in Egypt and Tunisia
For us dozy and docile westerners, for whom a protest means anything from a couple hundred to a couple thousand people chanting for an hour or two before going home, this past week has been startling in the extreme.
First, a wave of popular anger unseated a seemingly stable government in Tunisia in a matter of days. Then, while the shock waves from that event were still sinking in, today’s news out of Egypt came like a lightning bolt.
The perfect scam: put a meter on the internet and don’t pay for what you’re selling
If you close your eyes and think hard enough, you can almost see the smirks on the faces of the telecom giants. If you let your imagination run wild, you can even hear the pitch that sold them on their latest course of action.
“No, sir, it’s better than cable TV,” beamed some middle management type, proud of his discovery, “with cable TV, we pay for content and then charge our customers based on how much they watch. If we start charging for the net the same way we charge for cable, we get the same cash from the consumer without having to fork out anything to those…
Is Canada heading toward a spring election?
So it seems Canada might be going to the polls come April or May for the fourth time in seven years. None of the political parties are saying they want an election, at least not publicly, but you can already smell the hate in the air.
Stephen Harper fired “warning shots” at opposition parties last week by running television ads attacking each party leader on a personal level. This prompted retaliatory ads by…
Welcome aboard the earthship
Welcome to the Earthship. No, it isn’t a ship made out of earth, and no, it isn’t a spaceship made to boldly explore where no one has gone before. It’s an innovative type of home, typically built of recycled and reclaimed material, where the household itself functions like an ecosystem. The ecological footprint is minimal to nonexistent, and most of them are completely off the grid, using solar panels and wood stoves for heating, and semi-artistic designs for temperature regulation. Some use composting toilets, or just a plain outhouses in friendly year-round climates.
Textbooks: to copy or not to copy Police crackdown on photocopied textbooks
University students already face high tuition fees, so when students make their way to the campus bookstore and are forced to fork over an extra few hundred dollars it hurts. University textbooks are notoriously expensive with hardcover books regularly ranging between $100 to $200 each (especially for the science textbooks). Why are these books so expensive and who is making money off the backs of students?
Scamming on social media for no profit. Give me a Nigerian prince any day!
If you go on any type of social media, and in particular Facebook, on a semi-regular, regular or frighteningly frequent basis, this has probably happened to you:
You see that one of your friends, probably someone you haven’t heard from electronically for a while, has posted something on your wall. You go to check it out and take a step back. “Wait a minute, why is my anti-corporate activist friend posting a link to skin cream?” Then it dawns on you, their profile has been hacked by some spammer.
Going for Green at the Montréal Auto-Show
I hate cars… I know those words sound blasphemous to many people, but that’s the way I’ve always felt. Grandpa used to say “if they get you from point A to Point B who cares what you’re driving”. Personally, I’ve always thought of automobiles as either death traps or money pits . Let’s face it, almost everyone can think of someone who has died behind (or in front) of the wheel.
Still, with all this detestation I found myself Saturday at the Palais des congres checking out the 2011 installment of the Montréal International Auto-Show. My curiosity was peaked not by the overpriced Ferraris or Bentleys, but by the promise of a new beginning, a revolution in the auto industry. My hatred of everything on four wheels could never trump my love of the environment (or my abhorrence toward oil companies).
What’s your sign? Does it matter? Actually, it kinda does
When I was younger, I got a daily horoscope book for my birthday. I decided to do a little experiment with it. I put the book aside for a few months and lived my life like normal. Then, one rainy Sunday, I thought back on the most interesting, fun and exciting day I had experienced during that time and looked the date up in the book. It said I would have a quiet day at home. That coloured my view of astrology ever since.
Last week, stories broke about how a new astrological sign Ophiuchus had been re-added to the chart, moving millions of people’s signs up and causing mass panic among loyal devotees of the zodiac and people with now incorrect tattoos.