Lina Attalah
Chief Editor
Lina studied journalism at the American University in Cairo. Before joining Al-Masry Al-Youm English Edition, she wrote for Reuters, Cairo Times, the Daily Star, and the Christian Science Monitor, among others. In 2005, she worked as radio producer and campaign coordinator with the BBC World Service Trust in Darfur, Sudan. She also worked as project manager for a number of research-based projects with multi-media outputs around the themes of space, mobility, and intellectual history. Lina is particularly drawn to border areas, where human geography issues of conflict and desire are rampant.
Contributions
News
Cultural activists, artists and critics convened for two days late last week to discuss collaboration in cultural production and change as a precursor to redefining positions in a conference organized by HaRaKa, a dance development and research...
For the first time in its long history, Egypt and its working class celebrate Labor Day with independent unions, said Kamal Abbas, a worker and general coordinator for the Egyptian Center for Trade Unions and Workers Services, at a press conference...
“We joined [the union] because our rights are lost,” says Fahmy Adel Fahmy, a member of the Independent Bakers’ Union. “We never resorted to protesting or having strikes; we demand retirement plans and a better minimum wage....
State-run papers featured the unexpected accords between the Palestinian factions of Fatah and Hamas on their front pages. Al-Ahram said the accords, agreed to in Cairo and to be signed “in a matter of days,” signified a renewal of Egypt...
A Coptic governor’s resignation in the Upper Egyptian governorate of Qena is prominently featured in Wednesday’s papers. Commenting on Qena strikes in protest of the governor’s original appointment, independent daily Al-Shorouk...
When US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with a group of civil society members during her Cairo visit on Tuesday, she interrupted one of them when he explained to her that the military has been torturing activists in the Egyptian Museum....
With the clock ticking down to the referendum on constitutional amendments slated for Saturday, the pro-democracy movement remains divided on how to vote.
While some of the divisions concern legal issues pertaining to how the amendments are written...
For the past few years, Aly Sobhy has been part of a street theatre troupe whose work was one of the reasons you might have dared to think a revolution was possible.
Unsurprisingly, Sobhy was part of every stage of the uprising that began on 25...
You know it's a revolution when the same protesters, who two years ago timidly protested in front of state security premises for three minutes to demand the release of a prisoner, freely promenade through its offices and search through its files...
Salloum--Egypt’s western frontier is home to 750,000 Bedouins from the Awlad Ali tribe. While the neighboring Libyan east ceded to revolutionaries who overcame attacks from incumbent dictator Muammar al-Qadhafi, the tribesmen of Egypt...
Opinion articles
I don’t expect the state to be creative, because power is an end in many ways, and only a threat to power is conducive to the state going outside of its comfort zone.
I don’t expect the state to be creative, because creativity is put...
I spent days grappling with the difficulty of identifying ways of remembering 25 January — and we’re only down to the second anniversary. Every possible story seems to have been told and retold. Barracks have been cast on both...
During the painful Ettehadiya battle earlier this month between Brotherhood supporters and youthful opposition, the violence was not just physical. The scene was also a battlefield of chants. We chanted, “horriya” (freedom). They...
Bashing the Egyptian state for its utter failure in Sinai is no longer news. But some microcosmic incidents still illustrate the state’s impotence in dealing with the tumultuous border area.
Indeed, Sinai can serve as a laboratory in which one...
Amid Egypt's troubled transition, news from Sinai is emerging again, albeit in its old familiar form. Lawlessness is the story of the arid peninsula, which is home to an intricate set of historic, political, social and economic conditions that...
I was recently sipping a cup of tea in Café Riche, Downtown Cairo’s 100-year-old café. I sat next to one of its windows, fenced with interlocking iron wires to close it off from the hurling sounds of the busy heart of town. As I was gazing at the...
