10 April 2009

UPDATE~Palestinian Blogger Al-Hadid Deportation

I wrote about this yesterday, what an outrage it is.Laila Al-Hadid and her two small children Yousef and Noor are being detained in Egypt and deported. Egypt needs to stop being Israel's agent. She runs the popular blog “Raising Yousif and Noor” and she kept everyone updated using twitter.

Bethlehem - Ma’an/Agencies - “I’m recording my ordeal with my flip mini,” Palestinian journalist Laila Al-Hadid told friends and relatives who subscribe to her Twitter service shortly after she was detained at the Cairo airport en route to her native Gaza.

News of her detention and questioning was made instantly available to the international news media via three technological innovations spurring instant communication: wireless internet at the airport, Twitter, and GroundReport.com.

First wireless internet made text communication via mobile phone instant. Second Twitter , a service allowing individuals to send text messages to a list of subscribers updating friends, family and followers on personal breaking news , allowed Al-Hadid to communicate en masse.

Third, GroundReport.com, a network of 4,000 journalists worldwide aiming at getting breaking news, video and photo to the public using local journalists who post to the site, saw one of Al-Hadid’s Twitter subscribers, “@Gazamom,” pick up the story and publish the first news of the events as little as 12 hours after her initial detention.

Al-Hadid, who is a well known blogger at “Raising Yousif and Noor,” communicated her frustrations and asked for assistance in getting government contacts via her Twitter account. She is currently in the Cairo airport with her two young children and is expecting to be deported to the United States, where she resides, Thursday evening.source
If you want to read her tweets, or follw this on twitter, read yesterday post where I have the URLS and links HERE