the problem here is you define a land by a sovereign state only.
Palestine was and is the homeland of a large number of arabs, the Palestinians.
they have a right to live in their homeland and as a people that recognise themselves now and recognise their identity they have a right to find their own sovereign state.
the palestinians have always lived in palestine, they can trace the histories of their families, of their land and of their houses.
the fact that the palestinians did not get a chance to find their own state because of successive occupations does not change anything.
you wake up and smell whatever it is you want to smell, right now there are millions and millions of arabs who identify themselves as palestinians, who where born in palestine or have anscestors who where born in palestine, who have houses in palestine or had houses there and where driven out of them or had to flee them.
you want to deny these millions the right to their land, yet you find it very natural and acceptable that any jew who was born anywhere of parents who where born everywhere has the right to live in the same land.
anyway this is all pointless discussion, the millions of palestinians are going no where, they'll remain there and the millions who are not there will keep demanding to go back, as I said whatever you believe its obvious that the violence will not end until this situation is resolved.
what you refuse to accept is that almost all palestinians (and all arabs) would accept a return to the borders of 1967 and the return of the refugees.
most of the israeli public agrees to the return of the borders of 1967, international law and the UN demand it.
arguments about what happened at biblical times are completly beside the point, we're talking about human beings living now. we are talking about them being driven out of their homes and their lands right now.
the only history I care about in this conflict is the one that happened this century, since this is when the current conflict started, bringing in details from ancient and unrelated past offers nothing. which is why no one ever bothers to prove to you people that the palestinians existed in palestine hundreds of years ago, it is a fact that they existed when the british occupied the land, it is a fact that they existed when the jews started migrating and it is a fact that they existed in 1948 and in 1967 and most important of all you cannot deny the fact of their existance now.
The holocaust is no little thing at all, but it happened in one country only.
did the jews have good reasons to flee Germany? yes
did they have good reasons to migrate to other countries including palestine? yes
did they have good reason to claim on country exclusivly their own? no
but as I said thats beside point at the moment, no one is asking the israelis to leave the place.
no I would not get killed in Gaza for advocating these solutions, many are voicing similar opinions there all the time.
Palestinians have traditionaly lived in Palestine, period. expecting them to simply accept being forced to live in another country even if it is an Arab country is an unreasonable demand.
now this disscussion it totaly pointless, Israelis will not accept living elsewhere, and Palestinians will not accept living elsewhere either so if we want the war to end the solution has to be for both to coexist somehow (two state solution based on the 1967 borders is what most Israelis and Palestinians seem to want as far as I can tell).
In the 1930s, European anti-Semites used to sneer, "Jews, go to Palestine." Now, they say, "Jews, get out of Palestine." Where do you propose they go? Arabs have 22 countries and 11,796,381 sq km of land. Jews can't have 1 country and 20k sq km? Eretz Yisrael is their traditional homeland. They were there thousands of years before Mohammad lived.
well they should have fought for their rights to stay in Europe then, many did.
but thats beside the point anyway, the demand is not for anyone to leave the country anymore.
the original goal of the PLO was one secular democratic state to hold both people (this seems like an impossible dream now).
The current demands of almost every Arab and of UN resolution if for Israel to return to its 1967 borders, diband the settlments, allow the state of palestine to exist over the rest of the area and give palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes.
Arabs have 22 countries and 22 arab people want to live in their own country, I don't see what kind of an argument this is.
let me propose a solution then, Europeans have soo many countries lets give the Israelis one of them.
oh and while we're at it the US has far too many states why not give the Israelis one of them??
Egypt has a peace treaty with Israel. It's interesting that the Israeli Knesset recently had a ceremony to celebrate the 25th anniversary of that treaty, but the Egyptian delegation spurned the invitation to participate. Have any idea why?
the peace is very unpopular here, its a government thing, this does not mean egyptians want to join the war (on the contrary) but they want to be able to support Palestinians and don't want to cooperate with Israel in any form.
An Egyptian delegation was supposed to join the celebration contrary, almost all egyptians where totaly against it since they're against the peace treaty to begin with, at the last moment due to internal preasure, and acts of violence from both Israel and the US the egyptian goverment decided not to send the delegation anyway.
I'm quite sure Egypt attacked first, so you might say they were justified.
and I'm quite sure it is Israel that started it, so this will take us nowhere.
Why are Arabs not concerned that Syria is occupying Lebanon? Why were the Palestinians not concerned about liberating the West Bank (occupied Palestine) when Jordan was occupying it?
who says they're not concerned, they're very concerned.
The palestinians did not see Jordan as an occupier until it was too late (they where massacered there).
Moreover, can it really be said that areas such as the West Bank and Gaza Strip are occupied since that land has not been offically claimed and annexed by any state? It seems to me that, legally, it's simply disputed territory (as to state sovereignty).
The UN refers to the area as the occupied territories, hell even the Israeli government refers to it as so.
ask any palestinian if they're living under occupation or not
when settlers can and do take your land, then armies stop you from moving freely and living your daily life, when you're not allowed to go to your school, your fields or visit your friends and relatives in your land then your land is occupied.
no this is not what I said, profit needs not be the goal, to make a decent living could be the goal, a modest profit is then a nessecity a step you have to go through to achieve your goal.
sorry for the bad phrasing though, as you noticed, English is not my first language:-)
as I explained girls are encouraged to go into these fields, and do very well in math and science.
however once they get into university many proffessors would give girls less attention since they assume a large number of them will get married and stay in the house the moment they graduate.
nothing is farther from the truth thoug, the severe economic conditions we live under have forced all to seek work, only a fool or a very rich guy would ask his wife to stay in the house, however Egyptians are notorious for not accepting reality, while females have been working and gaining their freedoms for over 60 years now many Egyptian males would still talk about how this isn't right and how they should just stay in the house and raise kids.
note however the seperation between studying and a career path, egyptians value education (and value certificates and academic titles even more) and girls are supposed to have a full education including a university degree if possible.
that would be an unpronouncable word, we usualy don't repeat letters at all and ain (the one we transliterate as 3) can not be prounounced two times in a row.
but hey maybe I should just tell you it means Harem;-)
Well almost all Egyptians consider Israel to be an enemy state.
this is due to our history, Israel twice attacked Egypt, and there is always a feeling that they still have plans for terretorial expansion (check it out they've been expanding since 1948).
Egyptians typicaly feel solidarity to fellow Arabs, Israel's war with Palestine, Lebanon and Syria never stopped, a nation at war with 3 arab states is almost at war with us.
actualy for this particular movie the ban appeared to be more of a mistake.
the first Matrix movie was allowed without any fuss at all and did not sell much (we're not very mad about The Matrix here).
the censorship bearue has this panel of intelectuals (mostly university scholars or sociology and arts) which judges extremly controvertial movies (in an attempt to mkae censorship more democratic I suppose). The second Matrix movie was deemed uncontrovertial and was allowed and scheduled to show, the billboards hit the streets.
then some journalist started babbling about how this movie is anti religious or something, the sencorship guys scared of a backslash quickly sent the movie to the panel of experts.
The panel of experts decided the movie chalanged existance itself and asked deep philosophycal questions that are not suiteable at this point in time where strife between religions is growing, they decided to ban the movie for the sake on national security and to keep the peace!
when no one else bothered to publish about the movie and it became apparent that no one really cared (some actualy reminded the great panel that Islam has a rich history of philosophy and such questions are not uncommon) the third movie was allowed.
the company that distributes the movies appealed the ban descision and finaly the second movie was screened.
last week the 1st Matrix movie was shown on national state owned TV (this typicaly means the movie is so not controvertial).
the math-science gender gap is not big here at all.
however we don't have similar stereo types either, or we have the opposite (some people belive women are too emotional to handle certain jobs or tasks).
As for most arabs being against their governments being too pro Israel, well that is tough, it is not like their governments have been very succesful in past jihads against Israel.
past wars where not jihad in the sense you seem to imply.
anyway who said we wanted our governments to fight Israel, we just want to be able to support the palestinian cause freely (and no we are not, check how antiwar demonstrations are handled by the egyptian government).
and stop all forms of cooperation with the state of israel until the occupation is over and the refugees are back in their homes.
oh and among the interesting differences that this war brings, both Egyptians and Israelis think they've won the 1973 war.
first of all Islam is highly based on individual interpretation of the koran, I'm sure many can find a theoretical basis from the koran to say that honor killing is wrong (since it does not explicitly request it or approve of it in anyway).
however lets assume for a moment you're correct, so what? why would the arguments against honor killing have to be rooted in the koran? we can and do argue from the basis of human rights , or law (honor killing is almost always considered a crime, some of us are working on making sure it is always considered a crime).
AFAIK Christianity, Judaism and Islam do not preach tolerance towards followers of other religion very much, and even when they do there are other passages that preach fighting infedels or trying to convert them etc (I imagine other religions won't be very different in this regard but I don't realy know)
yet tolerance is accepted by many followers of the three faithes.
I just don't see it as amuslim thing (except for the honor killing part).
is the scale of wife beating here worse than anywhere else in the world?? dunno
if it was exactly like in some random western country would that make it ok? no
thats all there is to it, my interest in what is the reason behind social problems like these is to know how to solve them not to prove that non muslims are as bad as muslims.
rain in the winter is quite common in the north cost though.
reason why we're not deploying solar power is how fragile the cells seem to be, they break, and they need to be cleaned (remember sand, dust, polution).
I'm sure there are many solutions for these problems or even alternatives to cells but what did you think I said we where backwards for?
its not about having the technology or not, its about how you use it and develop it.
for various political and social reasons good ideas that might help us advance and raise the standards of living or lower its cost are either never implemented, or slooooooowlyy implemented.
not to mention the tight control the government has over everything means that any project you can think of will cost several times what it should cost due to corruption.
I thought most of the comments where pretty good. specialy when you compare them to the comments sent on the call for questions and the piece about the installfest.
thank you all for the warm welcome, I started with a very negative idea about slashdot and its readers.
now I know the problem was we where not talking, I mistook many curious and uninformed (through no fault of their own) comments as racism; my bad.
So, Alaa, if you're reading this, please, I encourage you, spread the word back home that people here care and would love to help. We just need to know how.
believe me, we know and we appreciate it.
and many do find ways to help us.
I don't know what you could do, you could keep the code coming:-)
any help you give to free software benefits us all.
and you can try to learn more about us and share the knowledge, maybe try to postivly influence your government policies towards us.
there is alot of harm being done through foriegn intervention (part of the disaster that hit the educational system here was due to policies pushed by the IMF and WB).
and there is alot of good work being done by government through cooperative development projects (the italian aid is trying to support Free/Open Source software projects here).
glad you enjoyed the interview
well what about a single secular democratic state where all are welcome?
if South Africa could do it then surely it could be done there.
and no I did not mean disband Israel at all, even if the one state solution is impossible and even if Israel will not stop being a zionist state, they could still allow the state of palestine to be formed on all pre 1967 lands and allow the Palestinian refugees to return to their lands.
Slashdot Mirror
you can make wget the default download tool by editing /etc/urpmi/urpmi.cfg
and if you use rsync sources it will resume your downloads.
personaly I always use rsync sources, this way I only need to download the difference when I update hdlists.
no I don't see.
the problem here is you define a land by a sovereign state only.
Palestine was and is the homeland of a large number of arabs, the Palestinians.
they have a right to live in their homeland and as a people that recognise themselves now and recognise their identity they have a right to find their own sovereign state.
the palestinians have always lived in palestine, they can trace the histories of their families, of their land and of their houses.
the fact that the palestinians did not get a chance to find their own state because of successive occupations does not change anything.
you wake up and smell whatever it is you want to smell, right now there are millions and millions of arabs who identify themselves as palestinians, who where born in palestine or have anscestors who where born in palestine, who have houses in palestine or had houses there and where driven out of them or had to flee them.
you want to deny these millions the right to their land, yet you find it very natural and acceptable that any jew who was born anywhere of parents who where born everywhere has the right to live in the same land.
anyway this is all pointless discussion, the millions of palestinians are going no where, they'll remain there and the millions who are not there will keep demanding to go back, as I said whatever you believe its obvious that the violence will not end until this situation is resolved.
what you refuse to accept is that almost all palestinians (and all arabs) would accept a return to the borders of 1967 and the return of the refugees.
most of the israeli public agrees to the return of the borders of 1967, international law and the UN demand it.
arguments about what happened at biblical times are completly beside the point, we're talking about human beings living now.
we are talking about them being driven out of their homes and their lands right now.
the only history I care about in this conflict is the one that happened this century, since this is when the current conflict started, bringing in details from ancient and unrelated past offers nothing.
which is why no one ever bothers to prove to you people that the palestinians existed in palestine hundreds of years ago, it is a fact that they existed when the british occupied the land, it is a fact that they existed when the jews started migrating and it is a fact that they existed in 1948 and in 1967 and most important of all you cannot deny the fact of their existance now.
The holocaust is no little thing at all, but it happened in one country only.
did the jews have good reasons to flee Germany? yes
did they have good reasons to migrate to other countries including palestine? yes
did they have good reason to claim on country exclusivly their own? no
but as I said thats beside point at the moment, no one is asking the israelis to leave the place.
no I would not get killed in Gaza for advocating these solutions, many are voicing similar opinions there all the time.
Palestinians have traditionaly lived in Palestine, period.
expecting them to simply accept being forced to live in another country even if it is an Arab country is an unreasonable demand.
now this disscussion it totaly pointless, Israelis will not accept living elsewhere, and Palestinians will not accept living elsewhere either so if we want the war to end the solution has to be for both to coexist somehow (two state solution based on the 1967 borders is what most Israelis and Palestinians seem to want as far as I can tell).
well they should have fought for their rights to stay in Europe then, many did.
but thats beside the point anyway, the demand is not for anyone to leave the country anymore.
the original goal of the PLO was one secular democratic state to hold both people (this seems like an impossible dream now).
The current demands of almost every Arab and of UN resolution if for Israel to return to its 1967 borders, diband the settlments, allow the state of palestine to exist over the rest of the area and give palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes.
Arabs have 22 countries and 22 arab people want to live in their own country, I don't see what kind of an argument this is.
let me propose a solution then, Europeans have soo many countries lets give the Israelis one of them.
oh and while we're at it the US has far too many states why not give the Israelis one of them??
you see the argument doesn't make sense at all.
oops direct link doesn't work try http://www.geocities.com/uniball13/tmp/
don't worry coversation is mostly in english or engrish on the forum and IRC channel.
katoob has a win32 port here
its very alpha though.
almost all of KDE and Gnome now support arabic, OpenOffice too.
//linux-egypt.org and #linux-egypt@irc.freenode.org
:-)
however the best software for writing text remains the text editor, and the best Arabic text editor is still katoob.
if you need any help with your arabic or want to practice it feel free to join us at http:
as for the police, I have this theory that they're all trained in the same place
and I'm quite sure it is Israel that started it, so this will take us nowhere.
who says they're not concerned, they're very concerned.
The palestinians did not see Jordan as an occupier until it was too late (they where massacered there).
The UN refers to the area as the occupied territories, hell even the Israeli government refers to it as so.
ask any palestinian if they're living under occupation or not
when settlers can and do take your land, then armies stop you from moving freely and living your daily life, when you're not allowed to go to your school, your fields or visit your friends and relatives in your land then your land is occupied.
no this is not what I said, profit needs not be the goal, to make a decent living could be the goal, a modest profit is then a nessecity a step you have to go through to achieve your goal.
sorry for the bad phrasing though, as you noticed, English is not my first language
as I explained girls are encouraged to go into these fields, and do very well in math and science.
however once they get into university many proffessors would give girls less attention since they assume a large number of them will get married and stay in the house the moment they graduate.
nothing is farther from the truth thoug, the severe economic conditions we live under have forced all to seek work, only a fool or a very rich guy would ask his wife to stay in the house, however Egyptians are notorious for not accepting reality, while females have been working and gaining their freedoms for over 60 years now many Egyptian males would still talk about how this isn't right and how they should just stay in the house and raise kids.
note however the seperation between studying and a career path, egyptians value education (and value certificates and academic titles even more) and girls are supposed to have a full education including a university degree if possible.
remember to drop us a line when you visit Egypt, we like to hold our geeks abroad parties :-)
oh and please do hang out at linux-egypt.org #linux-egypt@irc.freenode.org if you have the time
our next installfest will be in Alex BTW
that would be an unpronouncable word, we usualy don't repeat letters at all and ain (the one we transliterate as 3) can not be prounounced two times in a row.
;-)
but hey maybe I should just tell you it means Harem
Well almost all Egyptians consider Israel to be an enemy state.
this is due to our history, Israel twice attacked Egypt, and there is always a feeling that they still have plans for terretorial expansion (check it out they've been expanding since 1948).
Egyptians typicaly feel solidarity to fellow Arabs, Israel's war with Palestine, Lebanon and Syria never stopped, a nation at war with 3 arab states is almost at war with us.
actualy for this particular movie the ban appeared to be more of a mistake.
the first Matrix movie was allowed without any fuss at all and did not sell much (we're not very mad about The Matrix here).
the censorship bearue has this panel of intelectuals (mostly university scholars or sociology and arts) which judges extremly controvertial movies (in an attempt to mkae censorship more democratic I suppose).
The second Matrix movie was deemed uncontrovertial and was allowed and scheduled to show, the billboards hit the streets.
then some journalist started babbling about how this movie is anti religious or something, the sencorship guys scared of a backslash quickly sent the movie to the panel of experts.
The panel of experts decided the movie chalanged existance itself and asked deep philosophycal questions that are not suiteable at this point in time where strife between religions is growing, they decided to ban the movie for the sake on national security and to keep the peace!
when no one else bothered to publish about the movie and it became apparent that no one really cared (some actualy reminded the great panel that Islam has a rich history of philosophy and such questions are not uncommon) the third movie was allowed.
the company that distributes the movies appealed the ban descision and finaly the second movie was screened.
last week the 1st Matrix movie was shown on national state owned TV (this typicaly means the movie is so not controvertial).
the math-science gender gap is not big here at all.
however we don't have similar stereo types either, or we have the opposite (some people belive women are too emotional to handle certain jobs or tasks).
past wars where not jihad in the sense you seem to imply.
anyway who said we wanted our governments to fight Israel, we just want to be able to support the palestinian cause freely (and no we are not, check how antiwar demonstrations are handled by the egyptian government).
and stop all forms of cooperation with the state of israel until the occupation is over and the refugees are back in their homes.
oh and among the interesting differences that this war brings, both Egyptians and Israelis think they've won the 1973 war.
huh?
first of all Islam is highly based on individual interpretation of the koran, I'm sure many can find a theoretical basis from the koran to say that honor killing is wrong (since it does not explicitly request it or approve of it in anyway).
however lets assume for a moment you're correct, so what?
why would the arguments against honor killing have to be rooted in the koran?
we can and do argue from the basis of human rights , or law (honor killing is almost always considered a crime, some of us are working on making sure it is always considered a crime).
AFAIK Christianity, Judaism and Islam do not preach tolerance towards followers of other religion very much, and even when they do there are other passages that preach fighting infedels or trying to convert them etc (I imagine other religions won't be very different in this regard but I don't realy know)
yet tolerance is accepted by many followers of the three faithes.
I can see it and never denied it.
I just don't see it as amuslim thing (except for the honor killing part).
is the scale of wife beating here worse than anywhere else in the world?? dunno
if it was exactly like in some random western country would that make it ok? no
thats all there is to it, my interest in what is the reason behind social problems like these is to know how to solve them not to prove that non muslims are as bad as muslims.
thats my spellchecker to you, I was trying to build a word based on macho :-)
maybe male chauvinist pig is what I was looking for.
whats a Canuck?
White Rage White Rage
always good to know when a canuck finds you interesting, if you ever visit egypt you get a a free beer for living through these flames.
eh you must have been lucky.
it only rains for a few days every year in Cairo.
rain in the winter is quite common in the north cost though.
reason why we're not deploying solar power is how fragile the cells seem to be, they break, and they need to be cleaned (remember sand, dust, polution).
I'm sure there are many solutions for these problems or even alternatives to cells but what did you think I said we where backwards for?
its not about having the technology or not, its about how you use it and develop it.
for various political and social reasons good ideas that might help us advance and raise the standards of living or lower its cost are either never implemented, or slooooooowlyy implemented.
not to mention the tight control the government has over everything means that any project you can think of will cost several times what it should cost due to corruption.
I thought most of the comments where pretty good.
specialy when you compare them to the comments sent on the call for questions and the piece about the installfest.
thank you all for the warm welcome, I started with a very negative idea about slashdot and its readers.
now I know the problem was we where not talking, I mistook many curious and uninformed (through no fault of their own) comments as racism; my bad.
well what about a single secular democratic state where all are welcome?
if South Africa could do it then surely it could be done there.
and no I did not mean disband Israel at all, even if the one state solution is impossible and even if Israel will not stop being a zionist state, they could still allow the state of palestine to be formed on all pre 1967 lands and allow the Palestinian refugees to return to their lands.
yeah I know and I mentioned it in the first answer.
I was referring to awarness of computer technology.