Thursday, June 23, 2011
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Fury over advert claiming Egypt revolution as Vodafone's
Vodafone is facing a backlash in Egypt over an advert suggesting it helped inspire this year's revolution in the country.
The three-minute commercial featured excerpts from a Vodafone ad campaign entitled Our Power, which was launched three weeks before an anti-government uprising swept the country. The video goes on to show images from protest rallies in Cairo's Tahrir Square before claiming: "We didn't send people to the streets, we didn't start the revolution … We only reminded Egyptians how powerful they are."
The short film features screengrabs of Facebook and Twitter messages posted by Egyptians approving of the Vodafone ad campaign, then an audio recording of Hosni Mubarak's resignation as president being announced on TV.
In fact, many pro-change activists blame Vodafone and other mobile phone companies for following Egyptian government orders and implementing a communications blackout at the height of the revolution. They have condemned the advert as a "sickening" attempt to push up sales by "riding the revolutionary bandwagon", and an insult to the hundreds who died in the struggle to bring down Mubarak.
"Apparently this tagline inspired people to take the streets," said prominent blogger Mohamed El-Dahshan in one of many angry and satirical responses that have spread across the web. "I mean, never mind the years of activism, the protests, the decades of cumulated grievances, the terrible economic situation, the trampled political freedoms, the police brutality, the torture, etc. Nah – we just watched a Vodafone ad, and thought: 'Hey! We're powerful! Let's topple the president!'"
Vodafone has strongly disassociated itself from the commercial, which was produced by the international marketing firm JWT. "The company does not have any connection to this video and had no prior knowledge of its production or posting on the internet," said Hatem Dowidar, the chief executive of Vodafone Egypt.
The advert appeared on the public website of JWT, which was hired by Vodafone Egypt to mastermind its recent communications strategy. The agency said the video was for "internal use" only and "not intended for public display". It has since been removed from the website, as havecopies posted on YouTube.
Egyptians queued up to vent their disbelief online. One YouTube comment said: "Are you guys seriously planning on leeching something out of this after you cut the phones and internet, after protesters who were being shot at could not call others and warn them about being shot at by snipers because of you? SHAME!"
Pro-change activist and former Google executive Wael Ghonim, who became an international media star of the revolution following his arrest and subsequent TV interview about the ordeal, also denounced the advert as unethical and accused JWT of using his name in the advert without permission. Meanwhile, a new website namedihatevodafoneegypt.com has rapidly become an online sensation.
To make matters worse for Vodafone and JWT, both the original ad campaign and the latest video feature Adel Emam, a veteran Egyptian actor who initially denounced the pro-change protests in January and has been widely derided in Egypt for his close links with the Mubarak family.
Vodafone is one of several firms in Egypt that agreed to shut off its mobile and internet networks in the early stages of the revolt as the government attempted to isolate anti-Mubarak protesters. It also allowed the Mubarak regime to send out anti-revolutionary text messages en masse to subscribers. It said it had no choice and has since apologised.
The firm is facing a series of legal challenges over what some critics have called its "complicity in dictatorship". It is accused of passing on information about opposition activists to the Mubarak regime's security services – a claim seemingly confirmed by Vodafone's global head of content standards, Annie Mullins, in February 2009 but later denied by Vodafone Egypt.
"All companies in Egypt are trying to use revolutionary and nationalist imagery right now to drive sales and in most cases it doesn't concern me," said Ramy Raoof, an activist with the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights who had his own Vodafone Egypt service cut off for several months under orders from Mubarak's apparatus.
"But when the communications companies try it – the ones who handed out our personal information to state security, the ones who shut down our lines and who helped the government cut us off – it's too far. People are talking about compensation but we don't want money. We want to see people on trial."
Vodafone is not the only mobile firm to come under fire for its alleged use of revolutionary material for marketing. Rival company Mobinil launched a huge advertising campaign at Cairo airport with billboardsfeaturing quotes from world leaders such as Barack Obama and Silvio Berlusconi praising the Egyptian revolution, stamped with the Mobinil logo.
"We have not used any images of the Egyptian revolution at any time in any of our external promotional material," a Vodafone spokesperson told the Guardian. "Any suggestions to the contrary are incorrect."
Friday, June 3, 2011
Ta7ya ya Misr
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Even a smile is charity
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Aid EGYPT - the quest to help our heroes
As some of you that pass through my blog may know, I am a very proud and devout member and one of the managers to Draw a Smile. Draw a smile is now a registered charity raising thousands of pounds week by week by the invaluable effort of young people in the UK. It aims to do one thing only which is to Draw a Smile onto the faces of orphans worldwide. The majority of the group, self excluded are Egyptian which is why it made sense to start this astronomical task within a country they were familiar with. Draw A Smile now has a sister organisation called aidEGYPT which, of course was fuelled by the protests that started and ended this month.
Last Sunday I had the rare opportunity to attend a Draw A Smile/Aid Egypt function as a guest and experience the impact of the message myself and others strive so hard to deliver; that Together We Can!
The charity Dinner was held at Assaha restaurant renowned for its ambient interior and high standard food although none of the 100+ attendees that Sunday night noticed a bit of it. Along with a fantastic speech given by a young UK Egyptian male that decided to go over during the crisis and see what was going on for himself, was this video made by a fellow DAS member and friend.
It is my pleasure to share it with you all, whom ever may be watching and hope that it breeds the same level of consciousness into you that it did in me.
Allahu Akbar
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Misr - No pretenses
Monday, May 4, 2009
One of my own, upon inspiration and situation.
it just depends on how you tell it.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Thoughts
that just makes me want to shut them out even more because they obviously don't understand me and I'm all out of patience for people that are'nt on the same page as me.
I know, it sounds incredibly selfish, my problem is that selfish doesn't come naturally and as a result I tend to let every1 walk all over me.
There used to be a day that I could make a vow to give everything of myself to someone knowing that it wouldn't go unrecognised, unapreciated or unreciprocated. Now I offer all and I get a shrug of shoulders or 'hmm'.
So, 'don't give anything' I hear you say, yea sounds simple doesn't it, although it's against my natural order, my grand design. I long to be someones crutch, someones everything, someones get out of jail free card, someones google, to just be someones.
I said that they brought out the worst in me;
'paranoia, selfishness, insecurity, un certainty, angst, addiction'
It will crown you as it will crucify you!
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Sweet bitterness
The samsar (estate agent type guy) introduced her and let us arrange a day and time amongst ourselves for the job.
I sat there on the bed in the dreary box of an apartment trying not to let my skin touch the dirty mattress as beat down all the walls with a dirty pillow cover removing the cobwebs and insects after which she threw water all over the floor.
This lasted allot longer than she should have as she spent most of her time babbling on the phone, she finally dragged alll the dirty watter through to the bathroom drain. It turns out I needed a Sebek (plumber), that was the word she kep repeating over and over again as she shoved her chubby arm down the hole in the floor to drag up what ever could be stuck down there.
She then started to put on her Abaya (long over dress) as I stared at the dirt incrusted door frame and window and the dingy stained kitchen. "I have work, call me after you get a Sebek!"
So I looked in my purse for a part of the money but for some reason gave her 40LE and told her she would get the rest when she returned, despite the all the advice of not letting her place a foot out the door untill she had finnished!
After a week the Sebek came and went and again we arranged a convenient time for her to show.
So I waited at the flat untill i recieved a phonecall that she would come if I paid for her taxi!, I should have seen the rest from there.
She arrived finally had paid for the 4LE taxi herself and climbed the stairs to the top floor of mz apartment, onlz she wasnt alone there was another exasperated boisterous Egyptian with her with a plump round kind face.
Again me and a freind's little sister (age 14, Egyptian) sat there and watched them talk on the fone and do a little cleaning inbetween each call.
There was no water... I don't have a motor so I only recieve water in the night and at noon, it was now the afternoon.
Lucky for me my next door neighbour does so I would disapeer every now and then to re-fill the bucket.
They kept trying to get dressed despite not having cleaned anything from what I could see and making exuses like Im too short and all the rest of it.
So after having to keep re-telling them to clean behind the pipes in the bathroom and the door frames and everything else they finally said they were finnished and made long winded exuses to everything else.
So I handed my cleaner 20LE, baring in mind that her fee had now gone up to 60LE.
Her face was priceless I explained everything to her but she just kept demanding money telling me that I should pay her 50LE for her last visit and 50LE for this visit. This was never going to happen! let alone the fact that I couldn't afford it. Then she orderd that I must pay her friend, to which I reminded her that I called her not her friend and that she works for me but her friend is working for her. She refused to move and sat herself on my bed with a face like a smacked monkey's butt (as my mum would say). So I continued to spray the cockroach and ant killer into every nook and cranny and stood by the very small open window as Hamsa (my friends little sister) stood at the door ( I later found out that this was because the cleaner had tried to close it and she suspected the worst from this action) as she choked and spluttered from the toxic fumes I had unleashed into my room of an apartment she reluctantly in the end left.
I sat reflecting over every detail of the tiring day and congratulated myself on keeping my cool through it all and keeping a low tone in her vulgar screams and shouts, and never once insulted her cheek.
Then I realisesd that the age old saying of 'God works in mysterious ways' may have been perfectly demonstrated in the days events. You see, I remembered feeling bad as they choked and spluttered as there lungs struggled to grasp enough air to shout insults at me as I was fumigating the place but I what I didn't realise was how me and Hamsa were fine. It turns out that the only two air ventelation points were being consumed by us both.
It may be wrong for me to feel satisfaction about this oint but It's more to do with the fact that I struggled to keep the right behaviour of a muslim and yet had I let myself go that was the kind of punishment I would have hoped for!
